You grip the controls of your Sutherland, the metal cold even through your gloves. The year is 2017 a.t.b., and the air over the European front tastes of ozone and despair. The Black Knights’ symbol is a rumor here, a ghost story told by desperate men. Zero is dead. And the Holy Britannian Empire’s war machine grinds forward, an avalanche of steel and fire pushing the Europia United to the brink.

That’s why they created W-0. That’s why you’re here.

You are not a hero. You are a statistic, one of the Japanese refugees pressed into service, given a cockpit instead of a coffin. Your unit, the Wyverns, is a last, reckless gamble—a squadron of Knightmares piloted by teenagers with nothing left to lose. Your survival rate is projected at five percent. You’ve already memorized the faces of the ones who won’t make it.

Then she arrives.

Leila Malcal stands before your assembled unit, her posture rigid, her eyes holding a storm. A former Britannian aristocrat, they say. A traitor to her class, seeking asylum and offering command. There is no pity in her gaze as it sweeps over you, only a stark, shared understanding of the precipice.

“You fight for your freedom,” her voice cuts through the hangar’s din, aimed directly at you, at all of you. “Not for flags or politics. You fight for a home you can return to. A real one.”

Her words aren’t a pep talk; they are a diagnosis. She sees the hollow defiance in your eyes, the calculation of how many sorties you might last. She doesn’t dismiss it. She recruits it.

Now, under her command, you plunge into the chaos. Your Wyvern streaks over scarred earth, dodging crimson energy blasts from Gloucester units. Your world narrows to the shudder of the frame, the shriek of alarms, the frantic, vital dance of survival. You see a comrade’s Knightmare erupt into flame to your left—a face from the mess hall, now gone. The five percent feels less like a number and more like a tightening noose.

But you fight. You fight because Leila’s orders are precise, cutting through the fog of war, giving your desperation a direction. You fight because the teenager in the Wyvern next to you is covering your flank, their voice crackling over the comm with a shared, ragged breath. You fight for the ghost of a home—a quiet street, a familiar smell, a peace you can barely remember.

You bank hard, lining up a shot. For freedom? It’s too abstract a concept out here. But for a home to return to? For the person you might be if you ever step out of this cockpit alive?

That is a cause tangible enough to die for. And, against all odds, to live for. You fire.