86 -Eighty Six- Ep. 9: Goodbye

Voices of the dead can be heard as the five remaining Spearhead Squadron members sit in their Juggernaut cockpits, with hundreds of Legion units in the area before them. Raiden says they must be dealing with every Legion in the area. Shin senses his brother and smiles. Moments later Rei’s voice, calling out for Shin, echoes across the battlefield. Shin puts Raiden in charge, telling him to keep going and use the forest to his advantage. Neither he nor his brother will let the other get away. Raiden initially wants Shin to stay with them but relents and tells him he’ll catch up once they’ve defeated the others. The Legion units start firing into the sky and artillery hits around the Juggernauts shortly afterwards. Shin has an excited look on his face as he approaches his brother’s unit, the Dinosauria. Within, Rei senses Shin coming. The Legion units continue to fire on the others; Anju thinks something is strange and that they are trying to pull them away from Shin. Raiden says its orders from the Shepherd. Shin dodges attacks from the Dinosauria but is unable to penetrate its armor with his own attacks. Another Legion unit from which he hears the words “help me” gets in the way and is blasted by the Dinosauria. Shin thinks that his brother wants to kill him with his own hands and says he feels the same. Elsewhere Theo runs out of ammo and asks for resupply; they haven’t been paying attention to their ammo usage. Anju says its okay, they just need to lower their numbers a bit more, but many more Legion soon appear on her screen and she says they’re not interested in retreating. Suddenly the clouds light up in the sky above them. Lena synchronizes into their Para-RAID and tells Raiden she’s going to borrow his eye. A large number of mortars hit the Legion from above. Lena apologizes for being late and Raiden yells at her for risking the use of visual perception. Lena says she simply needed to confirm the impact. He tells her doing this can cause blindness, and she surely hasn’t gotten permission for the mortars she just used. Lena doesn’t care and the clouds light up again. She says any blindness won’t immediately set in and breaking orders won’t kill her. The Republic doesn’t play by sane rules so she has no reason to either. She continues to strike at the Legion from above and says she should’ve done this a long time ago. Raiden calls her an idiot. Lena says she’s not just doing this for them; if the Legion breaks through the front lines then the whole Republic is in danger. She says she’s doing this because she doesn’t want to die, causing Raiden to laugh. Lena says she’ll handle the reinforcements and they should focus on the nearby enemies. Raiden says that’s fine and to leave it to them. He tells her Shin is fighting his brother after she asks. Shin charges towards the Dinosauria and uses the nearby trees for cover so he can slash at a vent on it. He fires upon the slashed vent, but suddenly liquid metal hands appear, first absorbing the attack then reaching out for his Juggernaut. They grab the Juggernaut and toss it aside. Meanwhile, Lena senses the enemy withdrawing. Raiden and the others are happy at this, but still concerned for Shin and yell out for him upon seeing his Juggernaut in the distance. Lena tells Kurena to determine the enemy’s position and send it to her. Theo asks if she’ll be hitting it with the artillery and Anju says it’s too close; she’ll hit Shin. Lena says she has a plan and she doesn’t want him to die either. The liquid metal hands from the Dinosauria reach out to Shin’s Juggernaut. Rei says he may have hurt him, but he’ll apologize for that and the rest later after they are together again. We see shots of Shin as a boy and Rei says he’ll read to him after getting rid of his human body. Blasts from the other Juggernauts interrupt Rei. Rei calls them little insects and that they are wasting his time. He is caught off guard by mortar fired above from Lena. Rei says he’ll protect Shin and we see a shot of him from when he was human, with a child Lena. Rei claims he’ll protect his brother and that he loves him. She asks if to protect him he’s going to kill him again. Rei sees Shin’s body laid out before him with his Juggernaut. Lena slaps him and things go back to reality as the mortar blasts hit the Dinosauria but are revealed to be duds.

Shin’s eyes are closed and he is bleeding as he lies in his cockpit. Lena says she hit the target but Theo claims even that won’t slow him down and they have to do something now. Shin’s signal comes back online and the other yell at him to wake up. Shin has a vision of being strangled by his brother again, who continues to blame him for everything. Shin resists the strangling; actually being done by the liquid hands from the Dinosauria and pilots his Juggernaut forward. He aims at the vent he struck before and says goodbye to his brother. We see a vision of Rei who says he gets it now as he holds a younger Shin. He says Shin doesn’t need him to hold his hand. Shin becomes older. Back in reality the liquid metal hands fall away from Shin’s Juggernaut and the Dinosauria blows up. Shin thinks back to his brother in happier times and starts crying. The other four Spearhead Squadron members watch from nearby, having gotten out of their Juggernauts. All five of them stand by their Juggernauts as the sun rises. Things change to Lena’s perspective. She holds her drawing of Shin in her hand, listening to him crying out. Raiden tells her to cut the connection; he wouldn’t want anyone to hear that. She says he’s right and does so. Saying its over, Lena looks behind her, revealing Annette is in the room with her. The scene flashes back to an earlier time with Lena standing before Annette at her door. Annette tells her she said never to let her see her again. Lena says she heard her, but didn’t say she’d go along with it. She says she needs to get into the mortar control system as well as the ability to sync vision. Annette says she won’t help her, it’s not her problem. Lena brings up her neighbor she abandoned and asks if his name is Shin. A surprised Annette asks how she knew his name. Lena claims there weren’t a lot of Eighty Six in District 1 their age and with an older brother. She tells Annette she knows Shin well and talks to him all the time as he’s in her unit. Annette asks if he still hates her. Lena asks why she should care; she has claimed it’s not her problem. If that’s not the case she needs to help her. Lena tells Annette she abandoned Shin twice and asks if she’ll do it a third time. Annette calls Lena the devil and Lena says she is it, but that Annette is as well. Back in the present Lena tells Annette that Shin is safe thanks to her. Annette says it’s not her who saved him and leaves the room. Lena briefly dozes off but is woken by a signal from Raiden, who tells her Shin can talk now. Shin says he thought he heard her voice and if she was there. She tells him of course, she’s their handler. She tells him and the others good work and Shin thanks her. Theo asks what became of her and Raiden claims she’s turned into a bad girl. Kurena says she thought she was going to blow them up along with the Legion and they tease her. Shin says he was finally able to let his brother rest. Lena says it was just a coincidence that it worked out. Raiden says he can’t believe she fired rounds with deactivated fuses to delay them. Theo says that’s pretty clever. Lena says half the rounds were duds so she got the idea and they laugh about it. She says she’ll do even better next time. Raiden says they will decide on a place to sleep and then worry about repairs. It isn’t good that they have used so much ammo on the first day, although Theo doesn’t think it is as big a deal given how many Legion they took out. Raiden says they’ll talk to Lena later and hopes she can do this with the next ones too. Given Lena’s attack the nearby area is akin to a minefield and Anju asks Shin to find them another route. He claims this is Legion territory but there isn’t any Legion here and they can take any route they want. Lena says to wait and not leave her. Raiden says he likes it; they’re going to go on their own as far as they can go. Lena gets up and runs down the stairs and outside as the Spearhead Squadron members joke around about doing something special as well as Shin and Kurena’s bad cooking. Lena drops her hat and runs across a road, nearly being struck by a car. The Spearhead Squadron members talk about an approaching building and how beautiful the red flowers around it look. Kurena says it feels wrong to step on them and Anju says they are pretty but kind of sad. Lena stops to catch her breath as Raiden says they’re right up against the limits of the Republic’s control area, the barrier of District 86. Shin says they’ve finally arrived, outside of the district and the battlefield where they lived. Lena starts crying. Shin tells Lena they’re going on ahead. Their signals disappear from the Para-RAID. Lena falls to her knees and continues to cry and we see the red flowers being talked about. In Lena’s command room the signals for the last five Juggernaut units go out.