Epilouge - The Bloodstained Queen's Sojourn

Five Republic mobile weapons lay in ruins, slumbering for all eternity within their casket of fortified glass.

It was in a blooming spring field, off a traffic route belonging to the Federal Republic of Giad. The sky was a gorgeous, crystalline blue, giving the landscape a sort of illusory, dreamlike appearance. It was where the border between the Republic of San Magnolia and the Empire of Giad once existed.

Having been allowed to enter the large, fortified glass case, which had been set up for preservation purposes, an eighteen-year-old Vladilena Milizé looked up at the wreckage of a Juggernaut. Its visage evoked the image of a headless skeleton. Her silver hair flowed, a section of it dyed red, sliding off her now-black Republic military uniform.

The remains of a Scavenger also lay there, with letters sprayed onto its flank. Fido, Our Loyal… The rest of the sentence was lost forever—a hole, caused by bombardment, in its place. But Lena had an idea what the rest of the message said. By now, she knew why Shin and the others had named a Scavenger but couldn't name a kitten.

They were warriors fated to fight to their deaths. To them, only those who would fight and die alongside them could be considered comrades. Only their brothers-in-arms, who would struggle next to them until the bitter end and fall on the same battlefield—only those who fought the same war—could be called comrades.

The five containers Fido should have been carrying were all missing. It had probably purged them all after depleting the supplies. Fido's own supply container was empty as well. It had matched the distance, considering they were marching through territory that was, at the time, completely under Legion control.

For one long month, they had marched through Legion-infested territory where they shouldn't have survived for more than a few days. They had probably kept going until their supplies ran out. They had made it out of the Republic's contested zones and entered the regions under the Legion's control. This place was now under the control of the Federacy, on the cusp of its contested zones. It was probably here that they'd exhausted their supplies…and here that they'd likely died.

This was their final destination. The plates Shin had etched the names of the 576 dead Processors onto had been temporarily removed from the Juggernauts' cockpit when the glass case was set up and returned after accurate replicas were made and their names recorded.

It had taken the Republic two years to reach Shin's final destination. The Republic had been destroyed, just as Shin had predicted, by its own sloth and arrogance.

After the Spearhead squadron's Special Reconnaissance mission, Lena was appointed as Handler to another squadron. She merely commanded them and knew she never truly stood by their side on the battlefield. The only things one could do on the battlefield were fight and die. Nothing else. Once one died, everything ended, and she had no intention of making herself out to be a tragic heroine when she'd never fought alongside Shin and the others. She included the Black Sheep, the Shepherds, and the Long-Range Artillery type in her report, but those were all treated as Eighty-Six nonsense and brushed off as unconfirmed hearsay.

Her new position was also a highly contested Sector of frequent sorties. It was on this deadly battlefield that Lena had resolved not simply to send her Processors to their deaths but to use them up and win at all costs. This earned her an alias.

The Bloodstained Queen, Bloody Reina.

It was a play on her first name, and while it sounded like the name of a villainess from some third-rate movie, Lena was quite fond of it. She saw it as a fitting moniker for someone like her, who could only trample the lives of others as she sent them into battle—a cruel, haughty person incapable of saving anyone. In spite of this, the rate of casualties in her squadron was significantly lower compared to other units. Even a year later, Lena's squadron continued participating in combat without having been restructured even once and came to be known as the Queen's Knights.

It was at that point that Lena frequently visited citizens who'd opposed the Eighty-Six's internment in the past, those who had tried to shelter their friends and families, as well as former Handlers who'd resigned out of guilt. She would speak to them and record the names, words, and characteristics of the Eighty-Six they'd known. Even if the government could erase formal records, it couldn't take away people's memories. She recorded them so that, when the time came and the Republic fell, someone would remember those lost souls.

And then catastrophe struck, all too quickly and all too suddenly.

It happened the day of the festival commemorating the Republic's founding. That year's high school valedictorian had said those shocking words during his speech. He was a young man, the same age as Lena, his eyes burning with conviction.

"Many among my classmates died fighting the Legion."

Pitying murmurs began filling the hall. Some people began sobbing in the crowd. As he looked down on them with cold disdain in his eyes, the young man's words turned into angry shouts.

"This country belittled them, called them Eighty-Six. They may have died on the battlefield, but it was the Republic that killed them! How long will this continue?!"

Not a single voice rose to agree with him.

Some fools mocked him, asking whether he couldn't tell pigs apart from humans. Others bit their lips, harboring the same indignation but unable to speak up. Others simply ignored him and moved on with their lives—and they all died, equally.

That night, a large force of Legion, of a scale never before seen, marched on the northern front, where the fighting had been the calmest.

The squadrons assigned to defend the Sector were easily decimated. The fact that it took their Handlers so long to learn of their squadrons' defeat was a sort of just revenge, however insufficient it might have been. During the fighting, the Handlers were all drinking in celebration, and none were Resonated with their troops.

Had any of them done their job more diligently, they would not have had to hear the news after it was far too late. Most of the interception cannons were inoperable, and the minefields were all blown away by the Long-Range Artillery type's bombardments. Any guided projectiles the Republic launched were shot down by the Stachelschwein before they had a chance to detonate.

The Republic's last hope, the Gran Mule, was powerless to stop their advance. Its walls were blasted down by a Rail Gun type, capable of firing spherical ammunition at supersonic speeds of eight thousand meters per second. A new type of Legion the Spearhead squadron had once reported encountering… A report that had been discarded. The immobile fortress walls swiftly crumbled before the nightmarish force of their destructive supersonic projectiles.

By the time the government realized the severity of the situation, the Legion had already invaded the Eighty-Fifth Sector. None of the civilians, who had pushed the duty of defending their safety onto the Eighty-Six, had any means of resisting the invasion.

And just one week after the fall of the Gran Mule, the Republic was destroyed.

The Republic's fall could not be seen as punishment. Very few died regretting their own cruelty and carelessness. They all blamed the ineptitude of others and perished believing themselves tragic victims. For those who met their fate unaware of their own sins, even death was not punishment.

Lena was in the First Sector when the invasion of the north happened, and she was able to escape the massacre, thanks to her preparations. She used every interception cannon in the vicinity of the minefield to blast open the Gran Mule's gate. She then employed a hidden feature Annette had embedded in the Para-RAID to Resonate with all the Processors, requesting their aid in reclaiming the Eighty-Fifth Sector.

Many squadrons answered her call to arms, the Queen's Knights and other squadrons where former members of the Knights now served. But it wasn't out of good will or trust. The Processors probably decided that siding with the Republic—with its electricity and production plants—would increase their chances of survival. Many other Eighty-Six formed their own defensive positions, holding their ground to defend the internment camps where many of their friends and loved ones were.

Lena took command of these forces and formed a defensive line.

Some Alba took to the battlefield, piloting spare Juggernauts, but the majority cowered in fear, doing nothing. Some regarded the Eighty-Six with scorn and loathing, but unlike before, the oppressed were the ones holding the weapons this time. The battle-hardened Eighty-Six endured the Alba's foolish treatment, realizing internal strife was the worst scenario in the middle of a war. But had things lasted any longer, there's no telling what would have happened.

Two months after they formed their defensive line, a rescue force arrived from a neighboring country. They had come from beyond the eastern border, crossing into the Legion's territories. The Legion's forces were concentrated in the north, and the neighboring country's army broke through the mostly vacant eastern front to come to their aid.

They were the forces of the Federal Republic of Giad, who had overthrown the Empire and reformed themselves into a country for the people. The Empire was abolished by a revolution shortly after the war began. What the Republic intercepted, at the time, was a transmission from the militants' final defensive fortification. Having destroyed the Empire, the Federacy was also acknowledged by the Legion as an enemy and had spent the past decade fighting back against them. Many citizens willingly joined the war effort, believing the Federacy's ideals that it was the duty of the people to protect their brethren, and slowly yet surely, they liberated their lands from the Legion's control.

Armed with state-of-the-art weaponry, the Federacy's powerful army marched with their heads held high as they helped the Republic's remnants reclaim their lost territories, eventually making their way to the First Sector, where they were locked in a stalemate. The Republic's civilians greeted them with grateful applause, but unfortunately, things didn't end there.

The Federacy somehow knew the Republic had subjected their fellow Colorata, the Eighty-Six, to persecution and countless atrocities. Having freed the Eighty-Six from internment camps and frontline bases as they marched, bolstering their ranks along the way, the Federacy's army saw the terrible cruelty to which the Eighty-Six had been subjected with their own eyes.

The commander of the rescue forces would go on to tell the Republic's president and high officers, "If you hated colors that much, you may as well have dyed your flag white." It was a cutting statement, spoken without sarcasm. The Federacy favored the Eighty-Six, granting unconditional citizenship to whoever wished for it. On the other hand, they granted the Alba what minimal amount of support they needed but prioritized looking into how deep the persecution went.

Things weren't quite as bad when they discovered countless personnel files relating to the casualties in the Republic military's headquarters' underground warehouse. It seemed someone in the personnel division had preserved them in secret. There was some criticism when they saw that the majority of the dead were child soldiers, but the fact that some people in the Republic were still decent and repentant curbed their anger.

But the Federacy's gaze turned colder once they discovered journals written by inmates in the internment camps, detailing the atrocities to which they'd been subjected. The survivors also gradually began talking, and a great number of skeletons were discovered, buried in the ruins of internment camps and the fortress walls. When they eventually found records of human experimentation and the trafficking of infants, alongside footage of horrors performed by Republic soldiers, they no longer looked at the Alba as anything but human trash.

It wouldn't have been surprising if the Federacy had retracted its support then and there, but still they provided the Republic's remnants with minimal assistance. That was probably the Federacy's way of punishing them. The Republic might be the greatest scum in existence, but the Federacy refused to lower itself to the same level. Let those who know shame suffer from it until their dying day. And any pigs incapable of feeling shame don't even warrant attention or acknowledgment. Such was the Federacy's solemn condemnation.

It was around the time the First Sector's northern region was liberated from the Legion that the Federacy requested, in exchange for reinforcements, that an officer from the old Republic's military be dispatched to their army to serve as the commanding officer of rescue forces or, otherwise, as their aide. While many officers recoiled from the post, Lena willingly volunteered—which brought her to this place and time.

Lena left the glass case behind her, picking up her suitcase and small carrier containing a black cat with white paws, which she had left outside just before entering. She turned her gaze to a large stone slate standing in this spring garden, commemorating these five Juggernauts and the 576 fallen soldiers who lay with them. It was the tombstone they were granted after fighting, surviving for as long as they did, and eventually finding their way here.

She didn't know she would find them here and so didn't think to bring any flowers. She would have to prepare some for next time. She still hadn't truly made it to the same place they had. She didn't have the right to offer them flowers yet.

She turned to face the Federacy officers waiting for her, bowing lightly.

"Pardon me, Your Excellency. I've kept you waiting."

"Not at all. One can never spend too much time grieving those they hold precious, my dear."

The middle-aged Jet officer smiled gently, looking more like some detached, erudite philosopher than a military official. His beard was a graying shade of black, and he wore a mass-produced business suit and had a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. He regarded Lena, who was dressed in black and had a section of her hair dyed red, with a gentle, polite smile.

"You were mourning those lost lives and the deaths of your subordinates, were you not, Bloody Reina…? Frankly, there are quite a few in the Federacy calling to cut all aid to the Republic, saying we should only support our brethren. But with people like you around, I can say with certainty that we were right to save you. The Federal Republic of Giad welcomes you, Colonel Milizé."

She smiled back timidly, shaking her head. Many lives might have been lost, but this tombstone was for the subordinates she had allowed to die. This bloodstained queen was undeserving of praise. The old official smiled at her fastidious expression and turned. Several figures had stood up a short distance behind him, a group of young officers dressed in the Federacy military's steel-blue uniform.

"Come, this way. I'll introduce you to the officers who will be serving under you in your new squadron."

"Yes, sir."

She set forth, stopping only to look up at the tombstone one more time. The remains of those quadruped mechanical spiders and their attendant nestled together, slumbering for eternity. This was the place those boys and girls fought to find at the end of their harsh, cruel lives.

The war wasn't over yet. The Legion's forces still controlled the majority of the continent, and even now, someone was out there, fighting.

Until the moment the final Legion fell silent. So they could all reach this final destination, following in their footsteps.

Lena steeled herself in determination and stepped forward, making her way to those five officers. They were the same age as she was, and they saluted her in single file, welcoming her. She strode to their side, to her new battlefield.

So she could fight to the end. So she could live until the very end.