Blue-eyed young man beheld an enormous machine, its red-and-white livery and size inspired awe. This machine was the product of hundreds and thousands of human minds, past and present. The Armir-class Titan, a swift combat machine. And the young man, one of the few whose body could afford to control the titan, was Paul Wint, a pilot.
Among the rows of dozens of lined-up titans, Paul's titan stood as well. The guy clenched his fist; at that moment, a gust of wind began to lift his hair skyward, where two stars bathed the planet in light.
His eyes momentarily dazzled, and he turned to the massive doors, where dozens, if not hundreds, of people were carrying ammunition, supplies, and much more. Before him was a military base on the planet Cain, almost at the very center of the Federation.
Paul was dressed like many pilots in a suit, with a red-and-white livery, snugly fitting his body but sporting several protruding details, from pouches to special modules. In his hands, he held two things: a helmet.
The bracelet on his wrist began to flash, and Wint immediately understood—he was being summoned.
Putting on the helmet, he saw many familiar symbols; among them flashed a notification: "Emergency gathering of pilots!" Without much thought, he headed toward the building in front of him.
Passing through the loading and unloading zone, the noise vanished, and the empty corridors filled with the sounds of his footsteps. But a sudden collision with someone made him stop. Two people crashed into each other; a multitude of papers flew into the air, and the girl fell.
"Excuse me, I didn't mean to!" He quickly got up and reached out his hand.
But the girl quickly rose to her feet, gathered all the papers without a sound, and silently ran towards the exit. Paul's eyes looked at the fleeing girl; she wore a black uniform not common here, and a strange item at her waist, something unknown to Paul—a sword.
He wanted to follow her, but he started hearing other pilots approaching. It was a group of hundreds of recruits.
"Oh, Paul, you arrived before us. I wonder what they'll give us besides training!" They quickly reached Paul, who was perplexedly looking at an empty sheet of paper that the girl had been carrying until recently.
"After you, gentlemen!" Wint stood up and went into the auditorium with the others.
The doors swung open, and many took their seats in the dark but familiar room.
A huge screen with hundreds of dots, each denoted by strange symbols named after letters of the "new" world, displayed a wealth of data and then went off. A man in military uniform, standing a little further at the podium, looked at dozens of young men—pilots.
"You've received orders!"
The man spoke as loudly as possible in the quiet auditorium; everyone listened to him incredibly attentively.
"You're heading to Point Jell, to the planet Jelda-1!" Paul's blue eyes tensed after those words.
When the screen began to zoom in on the designated point, images of various resources mined on that planet appeared.
"Your task will be to defend the planet from the impending Lincore attack!"
"Our?" Paul raised his hand.
"Correct! You're leaving today!" The man surveyed the audience in search of the voice that interrupted his speech.
"No-no-no, not there, not again," Paul thought to himself.
"But we're newcomers, and we haven't even spent a week here. What front?" Paul jumped in.
"This is an order from the General Staff and 'your'—the newcomers'—job. Challenging it is prohibited!" the man shouted.
"Do you even realize what this is about?! I was in Zantel when Lincore arrived in Federation's space. Can you even imagine the hell that was unleashed there?" Paul's voice began to change; he was gradually starting to shout.
"So you're one of those who escaped from there? You, the Federation, as usual, run away, while thousands of ours die defending the Coalition's common lands!"
"Are these your words or the General Staff's? Not sure if many agree with you," Paul said, pointing at the commander.
"You're just a captain of a bunch of new recruits; maintain discipline! If you or your people don't go to Jelda-1, you'll end up in prison!" He waved his hand at everyone who was silent and listening to this conversation.
"So, you propose living locked up or going to die in the impending hell? Do you think I don't know where Lincore is now? It's only 20 light-years away from Jelda-1. We'll all be dead if it arrives there!"
"I'm not going to just listen to your statements; you, like all citizens of the three states that signed the mutual defense treaty, should go to war when told, not whine!"
"So this is what the Republic thinks—send a hundred people who've just learned to pilot titans to the front?"
"Just one more word, not just a reprimand and reprimand won't save you; you and your people will go straight to the front lines!"
The sound of a siren interrupted the man's words; the terrified looks of the young men turned to the notifications popping up in their helmets:
"Code 'Red,' enemy forces have crossed the borders of this space system, everyone prepare for battle!"
"A-a-ah! Damn!" the captain pointed at the pilots. "Your sole task is to defend, so defend, don't just sit on your ass!" The man himself began to move toward the door, quickly undressing, taking off his uniforms, and much more.
The siren filled the vast military base; meanwhile, the pilots headed to the titans. Paul ran faster than anyone; he reached the exit, and his eyes witnessed something dreadful. The sky "burned," the protective system around the planet was being destroyed, and in the distance, a massive ship was rapidly approaching the planet.
Explosions, shells began reaching the ground, these pinpoint strikes destroyed the anti-air-ST (AAST). The blast wave knocked over many pilots and people, trees were felled, but the titans held their ground.
Paul's eyes caught sight of a couple of men and women carrying ammunition, their bodies crushed by these same massive ammo crates. The guy tried to get up, but the second wave knocked him down again. Nevertheless, he didn't give up and ran toward the people. His breath was as labored as many others'; he tried to lift the heavy cannon shells for the titans alone. The blue circle on his exosuit's back started pulsating, and the liquid inside the circle surged. As if his life depended on it, Paul managed to push away the shell and free the people. But at that moment, a third shockwave made him fall onto the people, whose legs were broken.
"Pilot, please take your position," it was Devion's voice, Paul's titan.
Wint quickly got up and ran towards the titans; he remembered the sequence of Lincore troops' attacks. And what he feared happened: hundreds of lights were falling towards the planet - titans.
"Oh no!"
There was something the Coalition vastly outnumbered Lincore's forces in, in quantity, but Lincore covered it with the quality and strength of its troops. And now, Paul saw hundreds of titans, as many as the Coalition knew of at that moment.
"What's a Destroyer doing here with such a huge number of titans?" Paul thought to himself as he leaped onto the massive arm of his titan. Shortly after, he swiftly found himself in the cockpit.
Taking his seat, his eyes began to see through the titan's eyes, and his brain started controlling the movements of the enormous and until recently, unwieldy machine.
"Welcome, pilot!"
Edem began to fill the pilot and his titan; together they rushed toward the enemy's titans. But Devion's signal made Paul look at his titan's shoulder, where a strange man stood with a sword and a triangular helmet.
"Lincore filth!" Devion's hand gestured towards the swordsman, but it didn't even reach him; he just disappeared.
But at that moment, Edem, the overwhelming force encompassing everything, began to suffocate the boy. He stopped the titan, unable to even move it; something was crushing him.
"Sword Technique: Schism"
He didn't hear those words; they were said incredibly far from Paul.
The swordsman extended the sword, aiming at a dozen recently landed titans, and hundreds of thin lines began to reach the sky.
Everyone was being crushed by an unprecedented force, but one sound—the violin—dispersed this force, just as it disrupted the communication between many Coalition pilots. But even this didn't prevent a few attacks. Though the man was small compared to the titans, his strikes cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
But one titan didn't fall; it stood, its appearance much more menacing than the others, as dark as the night.
The swordsman clicked; he looked at the sky, where the destroyer began to descend even faster. He realized that the one before him was a high-ranking officer, a very unpleasant enemy.
From behind the titan, a girl leaped out. She had snow-white hair and a white-pink outfit. Her hands were made of metal, and in the air, her two hands lit up. After that, many more hands appeared around her body, floating behind her back. As soon as the girl began to descend to the ground, all her hands aimed at the swordsman. These small hands left huge craters on the planet's surface but never touched the swordsman.
Immediately after, the girl attacked the swordsman, and their blows rocked the space around them; it was a strange battle. Two small silhouettes against the backdrop of huge titans that were arriving from both sides. At that moment, the enemy's titans joined the battle.
"You must fall!" a shout was heard from the titan that tore the Coalition titan in half. Two iron parts of the body fell to the ground, forming a whole mountain of fallen Coalition titans around it.
"You betrayed our lord, and for that, only death awaits you! You betrayed your world!" the titan headed towards the swordsman, and its sharp sword cut him in half, just like everything behind the titan.
"Klaus, your world has long fallen, what are you trying to achieve by following the will of the dead?" the swordsman shouted; his voice was strange due to the destroyer's interference.
At that moment, a man jumped out of one half of the titan. A small whip in his hand turned into an incredibly long weapon. The whip's swing left hundreds of cuts around Klaus on the ground.
Klaus and the girl attacked the swordsman together; they didn't speak, but the swordsman's swift sword strike made them step back. They watched his actions. Hundreds, thousands of lines moved into space; it was an incredible network of snow-white lines.
"I am Klaus Nebel, a Senior Officer, and I dare not deviate from our path! You're a traitor; you dare not wear our uniform or speak our language!" the swordsman didn't respond to Klaus's words, knowing that he was buying time for his partner, who was already retreating.
"You're just another puppet, just a fake!" thought the swordsman.
A strike, an astonishing pressure, made everyone gasp for air; they seemed to lose consciousness, the number of Edem was beyond any imagination.
"Sword Technique: Schism"
The white glow absorbed the surroundings; the light tore apart the space around...