Universal Century: Emerald Flames. The First Saga (My Hero Academia x Gundam UC)

[DefenderGerson]

It was the year 0079 of the Universal Century. A half-century had passed since Earth began moving its burgeoning population into gigantic orbiting space colonies, a new home for mankind, where people were born, raised, and died.

And die they did.

The cluster of colonies furthest from the Earth, called Side 3, or Munzo, had proclaimed itself the Principality of Zeon and launched a war of independence against the Earth Federation. Decades of accumulated grievances had conspired to bring about this moment: the proliferation of Zeon Zum Deikun's philosophy concerning Spacenoids and the potential of "Newtypes," the infamous Bardot Policy that strangled the colonies with economic embargoes, and a smouldering resentment toward the Earthnoid elites whose souls were weighed down by gravity. Conflict had become all but inevitable.

Realizing the immense material might of the Federation, however decadent it had grown, Zeon had turned in the preceding years to the military applications of Minovsky Physics and a revolutionary innovation: the Mobile Suit. Equipped with Active Mass Balance Auto-Control systems and designed to exploit the radar-scrambling properties of Minovsky Particles, these humanoid weapons upended conventional warfare as it had been understood since the Anno Domini calendar. Even as Mobile Suits overwhelmed Federation installations, however, the upper echelons of Zeon's high command, at the behest of Gihren Zabi, devised a cruel and audacious plan to end the war in a single stroke: Operation British, a colony drop targeted at the Earth Federation's military headquarters in Jaburo, South America. The scheme failed. The colony fell instead on Sydney, Australia, erasing it from the map. Two hundred million people died as a direct result, with many more following in the famines and chaos of the coming weeks.

The world recoiled in horror. Yet faced with the bulk of the Earth Federation Space Force threatening their Homeland, the people of Zeon pushed forward. At the Battle of Loum, fought in the ruins of Side 5, their Mobile Suits emerged victorious, annihilating much of the Federation's spaceborne military capacity and capturing the esteemed General Revil. But neither side would budge. Revil escaped. His subsequent "Zeon is Exhausted" speech rallied the Federation to refuse surrender. Enraged, Sovereign Degwin Zabi authorized the invasion of Earth itself.

The Earth Drop Operations began on March 1. The First Terrestrial Mobile Division made landfall in the Caucasus and western Kazakhstan, and four more divisions followed over the course of a month, seizing territory across North America, Southeast Asia, and North Africa. While Earth's lower population density made large tracts of land easier to claim, the Spacenoids had come prepared with massive fortress-planes and an arsenal designed for terrestrial conquest. The Earth Federation Ground Forces, meanwhile, learned through horrific casualties that conventional arms and doctrines meant little against Mobile Suits. But as Zeon's advance ground forward, trouble loomed. In several fronts, the offensive slowed to a crawl. The Earth Attack Force's gains were becoming unsustainable, and logistic officers estimated that within two weeks, further offensives would be impossible.

---

June, UC 0079. The Siberian front.

All Izuku could feel was the cool air of the Siberian wind slamming against his already numb face.

He hunched lower in the trench, his fingers stiff as they tapped out a message on his phone. The Minovsky particle density was still thick enough to degrade the signal, but short-range personal communications could sometimes slip through. He was writing to his mother. He didn't know if she would receive it. He didn't even know if she was alive, and that uncertainty was a cold weight in his chest heavier than the weather.

Around him, the trench murmured with the low hum of soldiers killing time. A man two meters down was rubbing his gloves together and muttering, "Nee, Tanaka, kono samusa wa yabai na... my fingers are completely dead." His companion, a wiry corporal with a scarf wrapped to his eyes, grunted back, "You think this is bad? Wait until Zeon comes. Then you'll wish for just the cold." Someone further along laughed dryly. "Oi, keep that kind of talk to yourself. Bad luck."

Another soldier, younger, barely out of his teens, was checking the action on his rifle for the third time in ten minutes. His lips moved soundlessly: a prayer, maybe, or a letter he was composing in his head. An older sergeant noticed and clapped him on the shoulder without a word. The boy flinched, then nodded.

Izuku exhaled, his breath misting, and looked past them. The trench stretched in either direction, a raw scar dug into frozen earth, lined with soldiers of the First Japan Regiment. They were bundled in Federation-issue winter gear, chatting among themselves in low voices despite the cold. Some laughed. Some just stared at nothing. The regiment had been called up to defend this new frontline after Zeon's advance into Eurasia had finally slowed, and now they were the ones standing in the path of the next push.

Colonel Shota Aizawa had ordered the trenches dug across the Siberian border, reinforced with M-101A3 Regina anti-mobile suit missile launchers as primary defensive armaments. The M61A5 main battle tanks rumbled in support positions behind the line, their twin 155mm cannons the only Federation ground weapons that could reliably penetrate a Zaku's armor at range. It wasn't much. It was what they had.

Izuku's squad had been positioned around the southwestern sector of the trench line. He sent his message: I'm okay. Stay safe. I love you. Then he pulled out his notebook and began to write.

Zaku II weak points: main camera (visual range only under Minovsky interference), cockpit hatch (center torso, heavy armor), knee and elbow joints (less armored, critical for mobility). Consistent field reports indicate a minimum of two to four Regina missiles required to guarantee a kill, depending on angle of impact and pilot reaction time.

"Need two to four missiles as a minimum to take down one Zaku as per consistent reports from..."

"Deku!!!"

The roar cut through his muttering like a blade.

Izuku looked up, his pencil still pressed to the page. Katsuki Bakugo was stomping toward him through the frozen mud, his breath steaming, his face twisted in that familiar snarl that had not changed one bit since childhood. Behind him, stacked in their heavy transport crates, were the components of a Regina launcher that needed to be reassembled and loaded.

A nearby soldier glanced over and whispered to his buddy, "Mata ka... Bakugo's at it again." The buddy shook his head. "That guy's got a screw loose. Did you hear what he did in the Air Force?" "I heard enough. Just keep your head down."

"Enough with the daydreaming, you nerd! I need your help reloading these damn missiles!"

Izuku looked at Katsuki with eyes that had long since learned to carry stress like a second pack. He remembered exactly why Katsuki was here, in this trench, in this squad.

Katsuki Bakugo had been a pilot in the Earth Federation Air Force, and a terrifyingly good one. His kill count in the early weeks of the war had been exceptional. But his aggression was a blade with no sheath. He had conducted unauthorized ground-attack runs on retreating troop columns and supply convoys, pursuing total annihilation long after the tactical objective was secured. He treated the Antarctic Treaty as a suggestion for lesser men. Eventually, even commanders who admired his kill ratio could no longer ignore the liability.

So they had stripped him of his wings and reassigned him sideways into a punishment duty. Ground Force. An Anti-MS Squad. The one Izuku was already in.

This was Katsuki's personal hell: forced to crawl in the dirt with soldiers he considered extras, hauling the components of a Regina missile launcher to hunt Zaku IIs he could have out-flown in a cockpit. And it was here, in the most inglorious unit in the Federation forces, that he had been reunited with Izuku Midoriya.

"Katsuki," Izuku said, his voice steady, "I outrank you here. Show some respect." He had matured since enlisting, hardened by the months of war that Zeon had unleashed. "I'm technically senior by experience in this squad."

"Deku, I don't give a damn about your rank!" Katsuki's voice was a serrated edge. He jabbed a finger toward the missile crates. "Get over here, because you're the only one who wants to help everyone, right?"

"I help people who don't scream at me first, Kacchan," Izuku replied, the old childhood nickname slipping out before he could stop it. A soldier nearby snorted into his glove.

Katsuki's eye twitched. "What did you just call me?"

But Izuku had already closed his notebook and was walking toward the crates. He missed his mother. He couldn't tell if she was okay. The message he had sent might dissolve into Minovsky static before it ever reached Japanese airspace. But amidst the cold wind and the dirty trench, all he could do was go down to business. "Come on. These launchers won't assemble themselves."

---

The Siberian command base, such as it was, presented a different picture.

The base was nothing more than a green military tent pitched against the wind, its canvas walls shuddering with every gust. Inside, a radio set crackled on a folding table beside a paper map weighted down with a canteen and a sidearm. The air smelled of cold metal and stale coffee.

Colonel Shota Aizawa's forehead was damp with sweat despite the Siberian cold.

He stared at the map. Zeon had conquered nearly all of Eurasia before the lines had solidified into this fragile stalemate, and now their advance was creeping toward Siberia like frost spreading across glass. The next attack would come. The only question was where.

"What is Zeon's next move in the region I guard?" he murmured to himself.

He turned. "Kaminari."

The radio operator snapped to attention. Kaminari Denki was young, blonde, with the slightly jittery energy of a man who drank too much coffee and slept too little, common traits in a signals operator whose equipment was half-blinded by Minovsky interference. His fingers hovered over the radio dials. "Yes, Colonel. Ready."

"Contact our forward scout team for any updates," Aizawa ordered, his voice flat and unhurried, the kind of calm that came from years of expecting the worst. "I don't care how bad the interference is. Get me something."

Kaminari pressed the transmit button, twisted the frequency wheel with practiced precision, and spoke into the mic. "Command to Scout Team Four, do you read? Over." Static hissed back. He tried again, his jaw tightening. "Scout Team Four, this is Command. Respond."

Waiting.

"No response yet, Colonel Aizawa."

Aizawa's expression did not change, but his silence was its own pronouncement. Caution settled over the tent like a held breath. Zeon would attack soon. Every instinct told him so. He had been in this war long enough to recognize the weight of a quiet radio.

Then Kaminari's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "Wait... I got one!"

Aizawa stepped closer. The radio spat out a voice, fractured and urgent, cutting through the static in fragments. It was breathless, panicked, the voice of a man running.

"...surviving scout reporting! Heavy skirmish underway! Possible breakthrough attack at the southwestern sector of the Siberian trench line! Repeat, the southwestern trench line is..."

The transmission dissolved into noise.

Aizawa was already moving. "Kaminari, signal all units. Southwestern sector, full alert."

---

The red beacon fired upward through the Siberian snow, its light bleeding through the gray-white haze like a wound opening in the sky. Eijiro Kirishima, one of the forward scouts, had fired the warning signal. Zeon was coming.

The trench erupted.

"All hands, positions! Move, move!" a sergeant bellowed, his voice cracking with urgency. Soldiers scrambled in every direction, boots pounding the frozen earth, breath misting in frantic clouds. A corporal nearly collided with two riflemen as he sprinted toward the ammunition stockpile. "Out of the way, out of the way!" "Yamamoto, where's my Regina team?!" "Loading, sir, we're loading!" A soldier fumbled with his helmet strap, hands shaking too badly to fasten it, until a squadmate grabbed him by the shoulders. "Breathe, idiot. Breathe and clip it. We need you."

Izuku raised his binoculars, the lenses cold against his eyes. The wind and snow made it difficult to see clearly, shapes distorting and shifting in the distance. His heartbeat was a steady drum in his ears. Beside him, Katsuki had already crouched behind the Regina launcher's targeting monitor, his gloved hands moving with the practiced fury of a pilot who refused to be outdone by a ground-pounder's weapon. He was muttering to himself, a stream of curses that blended Japanese and English into something barely intelligible. "Kuso... come on, you piece of... there. Got it. Deku, I need a firing solution!"

Through the snow, shapes began to resolve. The loping, inhuman silhouettes of Zaku IIs, their mono-eyes cutting through the white like single red stars. Behind them, infantry in Zeon uniforms advanced in loose formations, their movements confident. They knew the snow was their cover. They had done this before.

The wind howled. All around the trench, soldiers gripped their weapons tighter. Some whispered prayers. Some spat into the mud. A young rifleman beside Izuku muttered, "Kocchi ni kuru na... don't come this way, don't come this way..." Izuku tried to count the approaching shapes, tried to coordinate, but the storm swallowed detail. All he could do was breathe, steady his hands, and wait for the trembling of the earth that would announce the first Zaku's footfall.

It came. A deep, resonant thud that vibrated up through the soles of their boots and into their bones.

The ground shook again. Closer. The mini-earthquake of a mobile suit's metal foot planting into frozen soil.

"Here they come," Izuku whispered. "Everyone, ready."

---

From his position dug into the frozen trench wall, Izuku pressed his binoculars to his eyes and watched the distant shapes resolve through the veil of snow. The lenses were cold enough to sting his skin, but he did not lower them.

Roughly ten Zakus were approaching his section of the line. He could feel them before he could see them clearly, each footfall transmitting a low tremor through the permafrost, up through the soles of his boots and into his bones. A rhythmic, mechanical earthquake. He knew what a Zaku could do. The war had taught everyone that lesson in the first month, written it in the wreckage of tank columns and the craters where bunkers used to be. The fact that something so large could move so quickly, could destroy so thoroughly, was what still made his stomach clench.

He keyed his specialized radio, the signal degraded but functional over short range, and contacted the sector major and the other Anti-MS squads.

"Sir, this is Izuku Midoriya! At least ten Zakus approaching our section! Firing now?!"

The response came back quickly, the major's voice strained but holding. "Wait for all our sector tanks to line up and fire their turrets simultaneously! I repeat, do not shoot until I tell you all!" The man was panicking. Izuku could hear it in the way his words stumbled. But who could blame him? Ten Zakus was not a skirmish. Ten Zakus was a breakthrough attempt.

"Be prepared and aim!" the major declared across the sector radio, and the words carried the weight of a man trying to sound like a leader.

All along the trench, soldiers were already hefting the heavy components of the Regina launchers, locking missile tubes into firing cradles with gloved hands made clumsy by the cold. Now they just needed to aim. The targeting monitors flickered with static interference as Minovsky particles saturated the battlespace, scrambling resolution and making every lock a struggle.

"Come on! AIM! AIM! AIM!" Katsuki Bakugo's shout cut through the wind, and he was not alone. Across the trench, soldiers cursed as they fought their targeting systems. A gunner to Izuku's left slammed his fist against his monitor and hissed, "Kuso, kono yarou... work, damn you! Work!" Another voice, further down, rose in frantic Japanese: "Mieru, mieru! I see them, but the lock keeps jumping! Nande da yo?!" A third soldier, barely more than a boy, was muttering a stream of panicked Japanese under his breath as his hands shook on the guidance controls: "Kowai... kowai yo... please, please..."

"Shut up and breathe!" his squad leader barked, slapping the back of his helmet. "You can't aim if you're shaking like a leaf! In through the nose, out through the mouth, and SQUEEZE the trigger when I tell you!"

---

Behind the trench line, the sound of heavy treads grinding through snow announced the arrival of the M61A5 battle tanks.

Roughly thirty of them were stationed along this stretch of the southwestern Siberian border, their engines growling as they maneuvered into firing positions. Thirty Reginas were dug in here as well, an overlapping net of the only weapons that could reliably hurt a Mobile Suit. The tanks rolled to a halt, their turrets rotating with hydraulic whines as the commander-gunners acquired their targets through periscopes and external cameras, the Minovsky interference reducing their sophisticated systems to little more than iron sights.

The major's voice came through the radio again, stuttering but forcing the words out anyway. Izuku could picture him in his command post, gripping the transmitter, knowing that the next sixty seconds would determine whether this section of the line held or collapsed. He was braving it by himself, and then the countdown began.

Izuku and the other Anti-MS squad leaders repeated it into their own comms, voices overlapping in a ragged chorus. "Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five!"

Out in the snow, the ten Zakus seemed to recognize what was coming. Their formation shifted. The loping walk broke into a run, metal feet pounding the earth in a quickening drumbeat. Weapons raised toward the trench line but did not yet fire. The Mobile Suits began to spread out, their pilots buying precious seconds of survivability against the volley they knew was coming.

"Four! Three! Two! One! Fire at will!"

A soldier somewhere to Izuku's left screamed, "Ima da! Fire, fire, fire!"

All at once, the Earth Federation Ground Force's First Japan Regiment opened fire.

The M61A5 tanks fired first, their twin 155mm smoothbore cannons erupting in near-unison. Armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot rounds cut through the Siberian air faster than the eye could track, aimed at the approaching Zakus before their pilots could fully bring their own weapons to bear. The sound was not a series of shots but a rolling thunder that shook snow from the trench walls.

"Die, Spacenoid!" Katsuki screamed, and his voice was swallowed by the roar as he fired. "Die, die, DIE! Shinjimae!" All across the sector, the other Anti-MS soldiers released their missiles. Thirty Regina missiles leapt from their launch cradles, trailing guidance wires, their exhaust painting white streaks through the falling snow as they screamed toward the Zaku formation.

"Hit them, hit them, HIT THEM!" a gunner bellowed in broken English, his Japanese accent thick as he wrestled the targeting monitor. Another soldier was screaming wordlessly, just a raw, open-mouthed howl of terror and fury as his missile streaked away. "Tobe! Fly, fly, you bastard!"

But the Minovsky particles were thick, and the Zaku pilots were experienced. The missiles corkscrewed, some losing their locks mid-flight and veering wide. Others were juked by Mobile Suits that moved with an agility that belied their size. Of the thirty missiles, most found only snow and frozen earth. Two or three struck home: one square to a Zaku's chest, obliterating the cockpit in a fireball; another tearing through a shoulder joint and spinning the machine into the dirt; a third clipping a head unit and leaving the Zaku blind, staggering.

"Yatta! Got one!" someone screamed.

"Two more still coming! Reload, reload, kuso!"

The remaining Zakus fired back.

Their aim was furious. Giant-caliber rounds hammered toward the snow-covered trench line from three kilometers out, and the first shells found the tanks that had been too slow to reverse.

"Everyone down!"

Kirishima's warning came a half-second before the first shell impacted. Izuku threw himself against the trench wall as the world erupted. The tanks were the first targets, because the Zaku pilots knew their priorities, and though the wiser drivers had already thrown their vehicles into reverse, some were too late. A direct hit lifted an M61A5 into the air and dropped it on its side like a child's toy, its turret blown clean off.

"TANAKA!" a voice shrieked from further down the line. "Tanaka was in that tank! TANAKA!"

"Forget him! Stay down! STAY DOWN!"

The shells walked across the trench line, and Izuku's entire existence narrowed to the sensation of the earth heaving beneath him. It was not like the rhythmic tremor of a Zaku's approach. This was violence without pattern, the ground itself seeming to panic. Snow and frozen dirt rained down on his helmet. The cold air filled with the smell of cordite and burning fuel.

"Ahhh! My leg! MY LEG! Dareka tasukete... someone help me!"

"Medic! MEDIC! Kono yaro, where's the damn medic?!"

"Keep your heads down or you're dead! Down, DOWN!"

For a long moment, Izuku's ears rang so loudly that he could hear nothing else. His vision blurred. He blinked hard, once, twice, forcing his mind to clear. Beside him, Katsuki was already moving, pushing himself up from the dirt with a string of Japanese curses spilling from his mouth. "Kuso kuso kuso... those bastards... I'll kill them, I'll kill every last one of them!" He did not wait for the shelling to fully stop before he scrambled back to the Regina's loading position, grabbing a fresh missile crate with hands that shook only from rage.

Izuku looked at his surroundings.

The trench was littered with bodies in Federation uniforms. Some had been turned into unrecognizable gore, the human form rendered abstract by sheer concussive force. Others had simply lost a limb and lay screaming, their blood steaming in the cold air. The snow was no longer white. A man Izuku had spoken to that morning, the one who had been praying under his breath, was slumped against the trench wall, his eyes open and empty. Further down, a corporal was trying to stuff his own intestines back into his abdomen, his mouth open in a silent howl.

"Okasan... okasan..." A young soldier, barely old enough to shave, was curled against the trench wall, his rifle forgotten beside him, tears freezing on his cheeks as he called for his mother. "Okasan... I don't want to die here... I don't want to die..."

"Get up!" his sergeant screamed, grabbing him by the collar. "Get up or you WILL die! On your feet, soldier! Ima da! NOW!"

The screaming was everywhere. It mixed with the sound of the advancing Zakus' footfalls, the metallic clang of their spent shell casings hitting the ground, the crack of their rifles still firing until the magazines ran dry.

"Deku! Deku! Deku!"

Katsuki's voice cut through the ringing. Izuku turned his head, slow, still half-dazed.

"Huh? Nani?"

"Stop with your damn daydreaming!" Katsuki snarled, his face inches from Izuku's, his breath hot despite the cold. "We have Zakus to kill! Kirishima, where are the other missiles?! I want to fire again now! Ugokase, move it!"

Izuku's mind snapped back into focus. The ringing in his ears faded, replaced by the sharp clarity of necessity. He needed to act. Now. He keyed his radio with one hand while the other helped Kirishima drag a fresh Regina missile into its cradle, the weight of it pulling at his shoulders. Around them, the surviving Anti-MS squads were doing the same, scrambling to reload while the remaining twenty-two M61A5 tanks reoriented their turrets and fired again, their cannons barking in defiance.

"Reload faster! HAYAKU!" a squad leader bellowed.

"My hands won't work! Kono te ga... they're too cold!"

"Then warm them on the barrel and MOVE!"

"This is Izuku Midoriya! Our situation here is critical! Over!"

The voice that answered was not the major's.

"This is Neito Monoma." The tone was different, younger, sharper, edged with something that might have been fear or fury or both. "The major is dead. Turned into a sack of meat. I'm taking his position."

"Nani?!" The exclamation came from both Izuku and Katsuki at once. Katsuki's face twisted. "Monoma?! That blond bastard?! Since when is he..."

"Shut up and listen!" Monoma's voice cracked through the radio.

Izuku cut him off, already processing. The M61A5s were crossing the trench line now, their tracks chewing up the frozen earth as they advanced into the kill zone to distract the Zakus and buy time for the infantry to fire back. It was a sacrifice play, and everyone knew it. The tanks fired their dual cannons on the move, shells punching through the snow toward the Mobile Suits that were now locked in a deadly dance with the armored column.

"Go, go, GO! Get those tanks moving!" a commander screamed from somewhere. "Draw their fire! Buy us time, damn you!"

The remaining Anti-MS squads had become disorganized. Missiles flew at random, some without proper locks, fired by soldiers too terrified to wait for a clean shot. "Just fire! FIRE! Don't think, just fire!" But some found their marks. A Zaku that had turned to engage a tank took a Regina to the cockpit and crumpled mid-stride, its pilot dead before the machine hit the ground. Another staggered as a missile tore through its weapon arm. But the survivors avenged their fallen with heat axes that glowed orange even through the snow, swinging the superheated blades through tank armor like it was paper.

"They're cutting us apart!" a tank driver screamed over the radio. "They're cutting us..." Static.

Kirishima stood in the open, firing his machine gun at the leg of a passing Zaku. The bullets sparked uselessly off its armor, but he kept firing anyway, his face twisted with desperation. "DAMN YOU! Damn you, damn you, damn you! Kono yaro! Why won't you FALL?!"

Katsuki fired again. His missile streaked toward a Zaku that jinked at the last second, the warhead detonating against a snowbank behind it. He was already reaching for another. "We are dying on this front! Where is Colonel Aizawa?! Where the heck is he?! We need reinforcement! HAYAKU!"

Izuku, phone pressed to his ear and handgun in his other hand, raised the magnum and fired at a Zaku's mono-eye. It was a futile gesture. The bullet would do nothing. But it was all he had. "Tell and advise Colonel Aizawa to call artillery and aircraft to bomb the invading Zeon! Just stabilize the frontline! Don't care if it hits us!"

The words left his mouth before he could weigh them. He was desperate. The prospect of the Siberian border collapsing under a Zeon breakthrough was worse than the prospect of friendly fire. If the line broke here, everyone behind it would die anyway. His friends. His squad. Men whose names he had learned over the past weeks, whose faces he saw every morning in the trench. He was not the leader, but the thought of retreating while more of them were killed behind him was a cold terror that outweighed any fear for himself.

A soldier nearby grabbed Izuku's arm, his eyes wild. "Are they coming?! Are we dead?! Oretachi shinu ka?!"

"No one's dying!" Izuku shouted back, though he didn't believe it. "Just keep firing! Keep firing!"

The ground shuddered. An M61A5, kicked bodily by a Zaku's metal foot, came crashing over the trench line and exploded behind them, the shockwave washing over Izuku's back like a wave of hot pressure. Someone screamed, a long, high shriek that cut off abruptly.

"Shimatta! The tank... Watanabe was still in there!"

"Forget him! Watanabe's gone! Reload the damn Regina!"

All around, the surviving soldiers of the First Japan Regiment were firing with whatever they had. Rifles. Machine guns. A soldier Izuku didn't recognize had an RPG-7 shouldered and was taking aim at a Zaku's knee joint, muttering, "Come on, come on, hit the joint, hit the JOINT..." Others had scavenged AK-pattern rifles from fallen comrades and were firing on full auto at the Zeon infantry now visible in the distance, hundreds of figures in green uniforms advancing behind armored cars through the snow.

"Here they come! The infantry! Zeon infantry! So many... KAMI-SAMA, there's so many of them!"

"Who cares how many?! Shoot them! SHOOT THEM ALL!"

"Who the hell is ordering me?! You lower-rank scoundrel!" Monoma's voice crackled back through the radio, shrill with indignation. But then a pause. A breath. When he spoke again, the petulance had been swallowed by something harder. "I will tell him, then, you jackass!"

He could not ignore the situation. If Zeon truly wanted to break through the Siberian front, the Federation needed to enforce a stalemate here, in this snow, in this hour. Pride meant nothing. Rank meant nothing. Only the line mattered.

In what remained of a forward command bunker, a half-collapsed structure of sandbags and frozen timber at the rear of the trench network, Neito Monoma gripped the radio transmitter with white-knuckled hands.

He was a blond Japanese native, and he had not asked for this. The senior officer was a pile of meat somewhere in the rubble, and now the weight of the southwestern sector sat squarely on his shoulders. Outside the bunker's shattered viewport, the screaming had not stopped. The wounded. The dying. The furious.

"Tetsutetsu! Is the radio functional or not?!"

"You baka! I am fucking trying here!" Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu's voice was a gravel roar from across the bunker, his hands working the primitive radio set with the brute force of a man who refused to let machinery fail him. "Ugoke, ugoke, kono kusottare... WORK, you piece of junk! Southwest Outpost to Aizawa, copy! Do you copy?!"

"Keep trying! Don't you dare stop!"

"I'M NOT STOPPING!"

And finally, a miracle.

Static. A crackle. Then a voice.

"This is Kaminari! I hear you! What's the situation?!"

Monoma lunged for the transmitter, shouldering Tetsutetsu aside. "Out of my way!" Outside, a soldier screamed and then went silent. "Give me straight to Aizawa! Ima sugu! NOW!"

A pause. Then Aizawa's voice, flat and steady despite everything. "This is your commander speaking."

Monoma's voice tore out of him, raw and desperate. "Requesting artillery and aircraft to bomb the invading Zeon! Just stabilise the frontline! Don't care if it hits us! Hit us if you have to, just STOP THEM!"

A pause. Then Aizawa's voice again. "Just how severe is the southwestern border?"

Before Monoma could answer, another transmission cut in: Izuku's voice, breathless and panicked. "Zeon has infantry numbering around two thousand rushing toward us with armoured cars! Our troops are tied up trying to kill the remaining Zakus! They're also bringing three more Zakus! HELP!"

In the background of Izuku's transmission, the sounds of the trench bled through: gunfire, explosions, a man screaming "Tasukete kure!" and another roaring "Koko de shine! Die here, you Zeon bastards!"

"Kono yaro!" Monoma screamed into the transmitter, all pretense of composure gone. "Colonel Aizawa, more enemies about to break through our line! PLEASE! We can't hold! We CAN'T HOLD!"

The radio was silent for a heartbeat. Then Aizawa's voice returned, cold and clear as a blade.

"This is Aizawa. I hear you loud and clear. Request granted. Tell me more accurate coordinates. And Monoma..."

"Yes?!"

"Hold. You will hold that line until the barrage arrives. Do you understand me?"

A ragged breath. Then: "...Understood."

---

In the command tent, Aizawa turned from the radio and began issuing orders with the precision of a man who had long ago learned that speed was the only mercy he could offer.

"Tenya Iida! Call the air base in Manchuria for aircraft reinforcement! Tell them to scramble everything they have that can fly in this weather! I don't care if it's fighters, bombers, or crop dusters with grenades strapped to the wings... get them in the air NOW!"

"Yes, sir!" Iida's response was immediate, his hand already on the secondary radio. "Manchuria Air Base, this is Siberian Command, do you copy?! Emergency scramble request, repeat, emergency scramble!"

"Rikido Sato! Call your minions and load every 240mm howitzer M1 'Black Dragon' we have! Target the southwestern sector of Siberia! I want high-explosive and incendiary rounds ready to fire in five minutes! Five minutes, Sato, not six, not ten!"

Sato's heavy footsteps thudded toward the artillery relay, his voice already booming into his own radio. "All batteries, all batteries! Load HE and incendiary! Coordinates to follow! Move, move, MOVE!"

The tent erupted into organised chaos, voices overlapping as orders were relayed and coordinates were plotted. Kaminari hunched over his radio, sweat dripping onto the console, relaying firing data as fast as it came in. Aizawa stood at the centre of it, his forehead still damp with sweat, his eyes fixed on the map where the southwestern trench line was marked in red pencil.

'Hold on,' he thought, though he did not say it aloud. The words would not help anyone. 'Just hold on a little longer. We're coming.'

Outside the tent, the distant rumble of artillery preparing to fire began to rise, a low thunder that promised fire.

 

[DefenderGerson]

Back on the frontline, the situation had curdled into nightmare. Only three Zakus remained, but they were enough. They waded through the trench line like gods of death, their massive machine guns chattering as they slaughtered any Federation soldier too slow to find cover. The snow had turned to red slush beneath their metal feet, each footfall a minor earthquake that rattled loose the sandbags and sent tremors through the duckboards. The remaining Zakus pushed deeper into the defensive network, their mono-eyes sweeping the communications trenches, and they were closing on the concrete outpost where Neito Monoma and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu were still frantically working the radio.

"Deeper! They're coming deeper!" a soldier screamed as he scrambled past, his helmet gone, blood streaming from his scalp. "They're going to overrun the outpost!"

"Shoot them! Shoot them, damn you!" another voice howled, but rifle fire did nothing against Mobile Suit armor. The bullets sparked and whined and left no mark.

Izuku, Katsuki, Kirishima, and the other surviving Federation troops had fallen back into a section of the support trench, the second line of the defensive network. The reinforced concrete outpost stood behind them, its viewport slits glowing faintly with the light of the radio equipment inside. The trench here was narrower, the walls shored up with frozen timber, and the men packed into it were breathing in ragged, visible gasps.

All remaining M61A5 main battle tanks had been reduced to burning husks on the forward slope. Only five had survived the initial exchange, and they had made an early retreat behind the support line. Now they were regrouping, their surviving commanders coordinating a desperate counterattack through the smoke.

"KUSO!!!" Katsuki's scream tore through the chaos as he hauled an RPG launcher onto his shoulder. He had long discarded the Regina—too heavy, too slow to reload in this kind of close-quarters hell—and the rocket tube was a brutish substitute. He sighted on the nearest Zaku, which was busy gutting another section of support trench with its heat axe, the superheated blade steaming as it swung through flesh and earth alike. "Shinjimae! DIE!"

The rocket streaked across the gap and struck the Zaku square in its mono-eye. The sensor exploded in a shower of sparks and glass, and the Mobile Suit staggered, suddenly blind, its arms flailing.

"Now!!!"

Izuku and Kirishima rose from the trench lip, their own RPG tubes shouldered. They fired together. The rockets slammed into the Zaku's cockpit hatch, one after the other, and the machine convulsed as its pilot was vaporized. The Zaku toppled backward and detonated, the explosion painting the snow orange and black.

"Take that, you Zeon evil!" Kirishima roared, his voice cracking with exhaustion and fury.

"KATSUKI! TWO MORE TO GO!" Izuku screamed, his throat raw. "We must halt them before reinforcement arrives!"

"Izuku, that was manly!" Kirishima shouted back, his face streaked with soot and frozen sweat. "But we need to survive this first, or it will be nothing! We have to stay alive!"

Izuku lashed out, the tiredness in his limbs forgotten beneath a surge of desperate rage. "I can't let them slaughter our comrades like that! They're killing everyone! EVERYONE!"

"Our remaining MBTs are starting to counterattack!" A soldier pointed frantically toward the smoke-shrouded battlefield, where the five surviving M61A5s were rumbling forward. "Look! They're charging! They're actually charging!"

"Those crazy bastards," someone whispered, half in awe, half in horror. "They're going to die."

"Then we make sure they don't die for nothing!" Katsuki snarled, slamming a fresh rocket into his tube. "Reload! RELOAD! Ugoke, move!"

---

The lead M61A5 fired its remaining armor-piercing rounds at the nearest Zaku, the twin 155mm cannons roaring. The shell struck the Mobile Suit's shoulder shield and ricocheted, but the impact made the Zaku turn. It raised its machine gun and fired, scoring a direct hit on the lead tank. The M61A5's turret blew apart, the commander-gunner vaporized before he could scream.

But the suicidal charge did not stop.

"We're not stopping! AVENGE THEM!" The tank commander's voice crackled through the radio, and the four remaining M61A5s surged forward, their tracks throwing up walls of frozen mud. They fired in unison, and this time the rounds found the Zaku's cockpit. The Mobile Suit crumpled, its pilot reduced to paste, and the tanks rolled past its corpse toward the last remaining Zaku.

"Yatta! They got him! They got—"

The last Zaku met them with its heat axe. The blade, still glowing from its earlier butchery, carved through the first tank's glacis plate like a knife through tin. The M61A5 split open, its ammunition cooking off in a secondary explosion that lifted the wreckage off the ground. The Zaku stepped through the fire and swung again. A second tank died. A third.

One by one, the remaining M61A5s were destroyed, their sacrifices buying seconds, not minutes.

But the seconds were enough.

"Surround it! Surround the bastard!" The surviving soldiers of the First Japan Regiment, the men who had held the southwestern border through hell itself, began to move. They scrambled from the communication trenches, from the shell craters, from behind the burning wrecks of their own armor. They fired their rifles at the Zaku's joints. They threw grenades at its feet. And the remaining Anti-MS squads, the ones who had dragged their Reginas through the retreat, set up their launchers and took aim.

"Clear the kill zone! Clear it! FIRE!"

The missiles streaked in from three directions. The Zaku's pilot, overwhelmed, could not dodge them all. One struck its knee joint and the machine stumbled. Another hit its weapon arm and the machine gun fell. The third punched through the cockpit armor and ended it.

"SHINJIMAE!" The cry went up from a dozen throats as the Zaku collapsed, its mono-eye flickering and going dark.

Izuku, Katsuki, and Kirishima had already commandeered a military jeep. Katsuki was at the mounted weapon, Kirishima at the wheel, and Izuku stood in the back, radio in one hand and handgun in the other. They circled the weakened Zaku that had just destroyed the last tank, Katsuki lining up the jeep's heavy machine gun.

"NOW! KATSUKI!"

"FIRE!" Kirishima screamed.

Katsuki pressed the trigger. "SHINJIMAE!"

The heavy rounds ripped through the Zaku's already damaged cockpit, and the pilot died before he could even reach for the ejection handle. The Mobile Suit fell forward, its faceplant shaking the ground one last time.

---

"Yatta! We survived!" Kirishima's scream was half-triumph, half-sob. All around them, other Federation soldiers of Japanese descent were echoing the cry. "We survived! We're alive! Yatta, yatta!"

"Don't be optimistic, you baka!" Katsuki snapped as he vaulted out of the jeep, his boots hitting the frozen mud with a heavy thud. His face was still twisted with fury, but beneath it was something colder—the awareness of a pilot who knew a battle was not over until the last enemy was dead. "Three more Zakus and more of their infantry are about to kill us and take our girl!"

He pointed across the devastated no man's land, the barren stretch of shell-pocked snow and barbed wire that separated the front trench line from the Zeon advance. Through the smoke and falling snow, three fresh Zakus were approaching, their mono-eyes glowing like baleful red stars. Behind them, a tide of Zeon infantry—hundreds of figures in green uniforms—advanced alongside armored cars, their engines growling as they navigated the craters.

"We need to reinforce the front line trench, or just retreat to the reserve line?!" Izuku questioned, his mind already racing through tactical options. The front trench was a slaughterhouse. The support trench was barely holding. The reserve trench was the last line before the Siberian interior lay open.

"They're almost at the front line!"

"Kami-sama, there's so many of them! Look at all that infantry!"

"We can't hold against that! We can't!"

"We have to! Retreat means everyone behind us dies! Oretachi ga mamoranakya—we have to protect them!"

The argument was still tearing through the trench when Katsuki's head snapped up. His eyes, the eyes of a former ace pilot, recognized a sound before anyone else could process it. A high, screaming whine, growing louder.

"Five FF-6 TIN Cods!"

The aircraft screamed overhead a moment later, their rocket launchers blazing. The interceptors, scrambled from Manchuria as Aizawa had ordered, dropped their payloads across the advancing Zeon formation. Missiles streaked down in white contrails, and one of the three Zakus took a direct hit to its backpack. The Mobile Suit's reactor went critical, and the explosion erased the machine and its pilot from existence. The other two Zakus survived, scattering, their pilots jinking to avoid the inaccurate fire of the outdated TIN Cods.

But the missiles did not discriminate. The advancing Zeon infantry took the brunt of the barrage. Men in green uniforms were flung into the air. Armored cars flipped and burned. The snow turned red again, a fresh coat of carnage painted over the old.

"Hit them! HIT THEM!" a soldier screamed at the sky, shaking his fist at the departing fighters. "Come back! Come back and hit them again!"

Izuku's specialized phone crackled with a new transmission. Monoma's voice, shrill and desperate, cut through the static. "This is Neito Monoma! Everyone, take shelter! Take shelter now! I ordered Colonel Aizawa to bomb our position and no man's land! Repeat, we are bombing our own position! Get to cover! GET TO COVER!"

"Everyone take cover in respective bunkers and rooms!" Izuku shouted, his voice carrying across the support trench. "Artillery incoming! Move, move, MOVE!"

"Bombing us?! They're bombing US?!"

"Just get down! Shut up and get DOWN!"

Right on cue, Izuku saw them. The Fly Mantas, distant specks in the gray sky, releasing their payloads. And the artillery shells from the 240mm howitzer M1 "Black Dragons," their trails arcing across the sky like the fingers of an angry god. The first shells hit the no man's land and the forward trench line simultaneously, and the world became sound and light and pressure.

The explosions were immense. They walked across the battlefield in a steady, methodical rhythm, erasing everything they touched. The Zeon infantry who had survived the TIN Cods' missiles now found themselves at the center of a firestorm. Men ceased to exist. Armored cars became shrapnel. The remaining two Zakus were battered by concussive force, their pilots struggling to keep their machines upright as the ground beneath them churned.

Izuku, Katsuki, Kirishima, and the remaining Federation troops dove into the nearest concrete bunker, pressing themselves against the walls as the bombardment shook the earth. Dust rained from the ceiling. A man was praying, his voice a frantic whisper: "Tasukete... tasukete kudasai... please, please, please..." Another soldier had his hands over his ears, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth open in a silent scream. Katsuki just stood against the wall, arms crossed, his expression unreadable but his jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood out like cords.

And they waited. The bombardment went on for what felt like hours but was likely only minutes. The bunker shook with each impact, the concussion waves rattling teeth and bones. No one spoke. No one could.

---

When the bombardment finally stopped, the silence was almost worse.

Izuku was the first to move. He pushed open the bunker's heavy door and stepped out into a world transformed. The trench line was unrecognizable. Craters overlapped craters. The snow had been blasted away, leaving only blackened earth and the smoldering remains of what had once been fortifications. The no man's land was a moonscape of ash and twisted metal. Bodies—Zeon bodies, most of them—lay scattered like broken dolls.

"Is this the end for today?" Izuku asked himself, his voice barely a whisper.

But there was no time to dwell. He turned back to the bunker and began helping the injured, applying pressure to a bleeding wound here, offering a canteen there. His hands moved automatically, the motions of care a refuge from the weight of what he had just witnessed.

Then the screaming started again.

"The Zeon infantry! They're still coming! They're charging!"

"Kuso! Kuso! They survived the barrage! How did they survive?!"

"Who cares how! Get your weapons! GET YOUR WEAPONS!"

The remnants of the Zeon infantry, the men who had been far enough back to survive the bombardment, had rallied. They came across the ruined no man's land in a suicide charge, their officers screaming orders in the guttural language of Side 3. They poured into the shattered front trench and began slaughtering the shell-shocked Federation soldiers who were still emerging from their shelters, still dazed from the bombardment.

"Tachiagare! Get up! They're in the trench! THEY'RE IN THE TRENCH!"

A Federation soldier, barely conscious, was bayoneted where he lay. Another, trying to help a wounded comrade, took a burst of automatic fire to the chest. The Zeon infantry were not here to take prisoners. They were here to die and take as many Earthnoids with them as they could.

Izuku saw it happen. He saw the men he had been fighting alongside all day—the ones who had survived the Zakus, the tanks, the bombardment—fall to this final, desperate assault. Something inside him snapped.

"No more," he said, and then he was screaming it. "NO MORE! Everyone who can still fight, with me! We drive them back! We drive them out! IMA DA! NOW!"

Katsuki was already moving, a rifle in his hands now, no time for anything heavier. Kirishima was beside him, his machine gun reloaded, his teeth bared. And behind them, the survivors of the First Japan Regiment—the men who had held the southwestern border through everything Zeon had thrown at them—rose from the mud and the blood and followed.

"BANZAI!" someone screamed, and the cry was taken up by a dozen voices, raw and furious and desperate. "BANZAI! BANZAI!"

The counter-charge hit the Zeon infantry at the junction of the communication trench and the front line. It was not clean. It was not tactical. It was bayonets and rifle butts and fists and teeth in the frozen mud, men killing each other at arm's length while the snow began to fall again, as if the sky was trying to bury what was left of them all.

Izuku and the other Federation soldiers would have one more day of fighting before they could rest. If they survived that long.

---

The frontline was a charnel house. Bodies in Federation Khaki and Zeon green lay tangled together in the frozen mud, their blood mixing into a dark slush that refroze even as it spread. The trench walls, what remained of them, were painted in red abstract. The snow had stopped falling, as if the sky itself had turned away.

Izuku drove his combat knife into a Zeon soldier's chest, feeling the blade scrape against a rib before sinking deep. The man gurgled and dropped. Before the body hit the ground, Izuku had already drawn the salvaged revolver from his belt—a heavy, old-fashioned thing taken from a dead Federation sergeant—and put a round through the head of another Zeon soldier charging at him with a bayonet. The man's helmet flew off, and he crumpled backwards into the slush.

"Kisama!" A third Zeon soldier swung his rifle butt at Izuku's skull. Izuku's reaction was instantaneous, his body moving before his mind could process the threat. He ducked under the swing, felt the wind of it pass over his hair, and drove his knife into the man's shoulder. The Zeon screamed, high and animal, and Izuku wrenched the blade free.

A fourth soldier came at him with a knife of his own, the blade glinting in the gray light. They circled each other for a half-second, two men reduced to the oldest form of killing. The Zeon lunged. Izuku parried with his forearm, felt the blade slice through his sleeve but not his skin, and countered with a slash across the throat that opened the man's neck in a single clean motion. The Zeon dropped to his knees, hands clutching at the wound, and then fell face-first into the mud.

"Holy—Midoriya, that was insane!" someone shouted from further down the trench, but Izuku barely heard it.

He looked up and saw the rest of his comrades fighting for their lives. Katsuki Bakugo had discarded his firearm and was swinging a combat axe, the blade embedding itself in a Zeon soldier's helmet with a wet crunch. He wrenched it free with a roar. "Shinjimae! Who's next?! WHO'S NEXT?!"

Nearby, Eijiro Kirishima had tackled a Zeon soldier to the frozen ground. They wrestled in the mud, slipping and clawing, until Kirishima gained the upper position. He delivered a hard punch to the man's face, then another, then a third, his knuckles splitting against bone. When the Zeon stopped moving, Kirishima drew his knife and plunged it into the soldier's face anyway, a final, brutal punctuation. "That's for my squad, you bastard! That's for everyone!"

"Kirishima! Behind you!" Izuku shouted, but another Federation soldier intercepted the threat, bayoneting the Zeon before he could strike.

Neito Monoma moved through the chaos with a katana, the blade an heirloom from a family that had served in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces before the Federation unified everything. He beheaded a Zeon soldier with a single clean stroke, the body taking two more steps before it collapsed. "Filthy Spacenoids! This is our Earth! OUR EARTH!"

Beside him, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu wore reinforced combat gloves, the knuckles studded with metal. He drove his fist into a Zeon soldier's head with the force of a piston. The man's skull caved inward, and Tetsutetsu kicked the body off his hand. "Monoma! Left side!"

"I see him!"

"SHINJIMAE!" The scream rose from a dozen Federation throats at once as the last Zeon soldiers in the immediate trench were cut down.

---

The fighting began to slow. The Zeon soldiers, the ones who had survived the bombardment and the air strike and the desperate suicide charge, were running out of men and running out of will. One by one, they started to throw down their weapons.

"Surrender! We surrender!" A Zeon sergeant raised his hands, his accent thick but his meaning clear. "Nicht mehr! No more!"

"Drop it! Drop the rifle! YUBI O HANASE!"

"I surrender, I surrender! Bitte!"

The remaining Zeon soldiers followed suit. Rifles clattered to the frozen ground. Hands went up. Twenty men, all that was left of the infantry force that had nearly broken through the southwestern sector, knelt in the mud and waited for their fate.

Neito Monoma walked among them, his katana still drawn, his chest heaving. "Round them up. Disarm them completely. I want them searched for grenades."

"Monoma! What are we going to do with them?" Tetsutetsu asked, his gloves still dripping.

"Prisoners," someone said. "We take them as prisoners. The Antarctic Treaty—"

Katsuki Bakugo grabbed a Zeon soldier by the collar and shoved him forward. Then another. Then a third. He pushed them down onto their knees in the hard Siberian dirt, lining them up with the efficiency of a man who had done this before. Other soldiers, men who had watched their friends die minutes earlier, fell into formation behind him. Rifles were raised.

"Wait! Neito! What are you doing?!" Izuku pushed through the crowd, his eyes wide.

Katsuki, standing among the impromptu firing squad, turned to face him. His expression was not rage now, but something colder—the absolute certainty of a man who had long ago stopped pretending that war had rules. "I want to teach these gaijin a lesson about what happens when they mess with Earthnoids like us." He spat into the mud. "Antarctic Treaty be damned."

"Katsuki, you can't—this is a war crime!"

"They dropped a colony on Sydney," Katsuki snarled. "Two hundred million people. Don't talk to me about war crimes, Deku."

"Aim!" Neito Monoma's voice cut through the argument. The soldiers raised their rifles. Izuku stood frozen, his hands at his sides, watching what was about to happen. Around him, other soldiers who were not holding rifles—men who should have been witnesses, should have been voices of restraint—began to secretly take out their phones and cameras. No one spoke up. No one stopped it.

The Zeon prisoners knelt in the snow. Some were weeping. One was praying in German. Another, the youngest of them, barely more than a boy, was calling for his mother. "Mutter... mutter..."

In the name of revenge, Neito Monoma gave the order. "Fire!"

"Shinjimae!" The rifles cracked in unison.

And all twenty Zeon soldiers fell forward into the mud, their blood joining the rest.

Izuku and Kirishima just stood there, watching. Kirishima's fists were still clenched, but his face had gone pale. "Izuku... was that... was that right?"

Izuku didn't answer. He didn't have an answer.

---

The fight was over.

Izuku walked through the trench and the field beyond, stepping over corpses in both colors. Federation and Zeon. Earth and Space. They looked the same in death. The snow had begun to fall again, soft and silent, beginning its slow work of burying what remained.

Izuku, Katsuki, Kirishima, Neito, and Tetsutetsu moved among the bodies, gathering the fallen Federation soldiers for burial. The work was grim and silent at first. Then, quietly, Izuku began to mutter a lullaby—an old Japanese song his mother had sung to him when he was small, when the world was still a place where heroes existed.

"*Nen nen korori yo... okorori yo...*" His voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried across the still air. "*Bōya wa yoi ko da... nenne shina...*"

A soldier nearby paused in his work and joined in, his voice cracking. "*Okasan wa... doko desu ka...*" He could not finish the line. He sank to his knees beside a body—a young man with a face frozen in surprise—and wept openly. "Takahashi... Takahashi, you idiot... you said we'd go home together..."

"Let it out," Kirishima said quietly, placing a hand on the man's shoulder. "Let it out, brother. There's no shame here."

Further down the trench, another soldier was singing a different song, older and sadder, a folk tune from the mountains of Nagano. "*Sakura sakura... yayoi no sora wa...*" The melody drifted through the ruined fortifications like a ghost.

Katsuki said nothing. He worked apart from the others, hauling bodies with a roughness that bordered on violence, as if he could force the dead to be less dead through sheer fury. But when he thought no one was looking, he reached down and closed the eyes of a young Federation soldier who could not have been older than eighteen. His lips moved, but no sound came out. A curse, maybe. Or a prayer. Or both.

Then the sound of hooves.

A column of horse riders approached from the rear, their mounts picking through the cratered terrain with practiced ease. At their head, unmistakable even in the gray half-light of the Siberian afternoon, was a man on a Mongolian horse.

"Commander Colonel Shota Aizawa!" a sergeant called out, his voice cracking with relief.

Shota Aizawa dismounted with the weariness of a man who had not slept in days. His eyes swept across the carnage, and something in them flickered—the briefest flash of grief before it was swallowed by duty. He walked to where Neito Monoma stood, still holding his bloodied katana.

"Casualty report, Neito."

Neito Monoma was reluctant to speak. His earlier bravado had drained away, leaving behind only a hollow-eyed young man standing in a field of dead men. But he answered nonetheless. "Around two thousand already dead in just one battle, sir Aizawa."

Aizawa's eyes twitched. Two thousand. That was twenty percent of the First Japan Regiment's strength on this section of the Siberian border. In a single engagement. The numbers would need to be verified, the bodies counted properly, but the exact figure did not matter. What mattered was that twenty percent was what it had cost to hold the line for one day. And the war was not over. It was barely beginning.

But Aizawa was not a heartless monster. He walked among the bodies until he found a young Federation soldier—a boy, really, his face still soft with youth—and crouched beside him. From his coat, he produced a small flower, a dried edelweiss he had carried since Manchuria. He placed it on the boy's chest and closed the boy's eyes with two fingers.

"I will bring you back to our ancestral homeland," Aizawa murmured, so quietly that only the dead could hear. "I promise you that."

Nearby, a soldier who had been holding himself together since the bombardment ended finally broke. He fell to his knees and let out a wail that was more animal than human. "Yamamoto! Yamamoto, tachiagare! Get up! Please get up!" His squadmates gathered around him, shielding him from view, their own faces wet with tears.

Aizawa rose. He did not look away from the weeping soldier. He had seen this before. He would see it again. "Grief later," he said, his voice carrying just enough to reach the men around him. "Survive now. We honor the dead by living."

---

Aizawa had not come alone. Behind the horse riders came the medical corps of the First Japan Regiment—women in the pink-trimmed uniforms of the Earth Federation Medical Service, their faces set with the grim determination of those who knew their work would be measured in screams and blood.

They set up a triage tent in what had once been a reserve trench, the canvas walls offering meager shelter from the cold. The wounded were brought in on stretchers, on the backs of comrades, in the arms of anyone strong enough to carry them. The cries of the dying filled the air.

"Tasukete... tasukete kudasai..." A soldier, his legs reduced to shredded meat by a Zaku's machine gun, clutched at the nurse bending over him. "Okasan... I want my okasan... kami-sama forgive my sins... forgive me..."

"Soldier, stay with me!" Momo Yaoyorozu pressed a morphine injector against the man's thigh and depressed the plunger. "You will survive this! Give me more of that morphine! HAYAKU!"

"Yaoyorozu-san! I need you here!" Another nurse, Itsuka Kendo, was frantically trying to stem the bleeding from a soldier's severed arm. "The tourniquet won't hold!"

"Uraraka! I need you here!" Momo called across the tent.

Ochaco Uraraka, her face smeared with blood that was not her own, moved from patient to patient with the efficiency of someone who had learned to triage with her heart closed off. "This one's stable! Move him to the rear! This one needs immediate surgery or he's dead in ten minutes! Kendo, hold that pressure!"

Izuku moved through the tent with Kirishima, distributing medicine and water to the wounded. "Hold on there," Kirishima said to a soldier whose chest was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. "Hold on, brother. Help is here. We're not leaving you."

"Deku..." The soldier's eyes found Izuku. His voice was a rasp. "The lullaby... that was you, wasn't it? Singing..."

Izuku knelt beside him. "Yes. It was me."

"Sing it again. Please. I don't... I don't want to die listening to screams."

Izuku took the man's hand and began to sing, softly, his voice unsteady but present. "*Nen nen korori yo... okorori yo...*"

The soldier closed his eyes. His grip on Izuku's hand loosened, but he kept breathing.

Outside the tent, Katsuki Bakugo sat on an overturned ammunition crate while Camie Utsushimi, a nurse with a perpetually dreamy expression that belied her steady hands, stitched a gash across his forearm. He watched her work with an expression that was almost calm.

"You know, Bakugo-kun," Camie said, not looking up from her stitching, "most people say thank you when someone fixes them up."

"Most people are extras," Katsuki grumbled. But after a pause, he added, quieter, "...Don't make it too tight."

"That's the closest thing to gratitude I've ever heard from you. I'll take it."

At the edge of the trench, Neito Monoma and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu sat together on a broken sandbag wall, sharing a single cigarette they had scavenged from a dead officer's pocket. They passed it back and forth in silence while Itsuka Kendo, her shift in the tent finally over, sat nearby and cleaned her hands with snow. None of them spoke. There was nothing to say that the silence did not already say for them.

In the command tent, Kaminari Denki was still hunched over his radio, his fingers dancing across the dials. "Northwest Front, this is Siberian Command, report situation, over. Northwest Front, do you copy?" Static hissed back at him. "Kuso. Northwest Front, this is Siberian Command, I repeat, report situation!" He had been at this for hours, his voice growing hoarser with each transmission, but he did not stop. Could not stop.

Tenya Ida stood at the entrance to the command tent, directing the reinforcement columns from Yakutsk and Xinjiang that were beginning to arrive. "Clean-up crews to the southwestern sector! I want Federation bodies recovered first, then Zeon! Separate burial trenches! Move with purpose, soldiers, these men deserve to be laid to rest before the sun sets!"

Rikido Sato, standing beside Aizawa, saluted crisply as the colonel finished issuing new orders. "The artillery is being repositioned, sir. The howitzers will be ready for the next assault. And the air base in Manchuria has confirmed two more squadrons of Fly Mantas on standby."

Aizawa nodded, his eyes still on the field of corpses. "Good. It won't be enough, but it will have to be."

Sato hesitated. "Sir... will there be a next assault?"

"There's always a next assault, Sato. The only question is when."

Izuku, his work in the medical tent finished for the moment, stepped outside and looked up at the sky. The clouds had begun to thin, and through them, faint and distant, he could see the first stars of evening. The same stars that looked down on his mother, wherever she was. The same stars that looked down on Zeon and Earth alike, indifferent to the suffering below.

*Is there still hope in this dark world?* he asked himself, and the question was a weight heavier than any Regina launcher. He thought of the soldier who had asked for the lullaby. He thought of Aizawa placing a flower on a dead boy's chest. He thought of Katsuki closing the eyes of a stranger. He thought of Momo and Ochaco and Itsuka, their hands covered in blood, refusing to stop, refusing to give up.

And he thought of the Zeon prisoners, on their knees in the snow.

Was that justice? he wondered. Or was that just more darkness?

He did not know. He was nineteen years old, and he had killed men today, and he had sung a lullaby while the dead lay all around him. The world was not simple enough for answers.

Behind him, from the medical tent, a soldier began to scream again. In the command tent, Kaminari's voice kept calling into the static. And somewhere in the darkening sky, a lone Fly Manta passed overhead, its engines a distant, fading drone.

Tomorrow, there would be more fighting. But for now, Izuku lowered his eyes from the stars, pulled his coat tighter against the Siberian wind, and went back to work. There were still wounded to tend. Still dead to bury. Still a line to hold.

And somewhere, far away, a mother who might still be alive was waiting for a message that might never arrive.