Arthur Imprisoned

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Code Geass.

A/N: Quick little parody thing going on here . . . Spoilers for episode 16 of the first season, you have been warned.

- -

The main room used for the student council meetings was silent. The seats weren't tucked in and the garbage bags were filled to the brim with Pizza Hut boxes. Everything was silent except for the rustling and occasional mewing of the club's cat, Arthur. Currently, he was curling around a rug inside his large cat castle getting ready to go to sleep. He stretched his front paws out and yawned before lying down and shutting his eyes.

The door to the room slid silently open.

The last thing the cat saw was a shadow hovering over him.

- -

After school, Lelouch entered his house and strolled over to the room where Nunally usually was at the time. He entered the room and smiled at Nunally drawing a picture, surrounded by multicolored origami.

"Big brother, is that you?" she asked as she moved her head towards the sound of his footsteps at the door.

"Yes. I'm home." He smiled and set his bag on the table.

"Big brother . . . s-someone came here earlier," a worried expression marred her face, "I couldn't recognize their voice and they wouldn't tell me who it was," she said, setting down her marker.

Lelouch frowned, fear slowly gripping him at the possibilities.

"They told me to give this to you." She slowly reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded picture and held it in the general direction of where she thought he was standing.

Furrowing his eyebrows, he stepped forward and circumspectly grabbed the picture in her hand.

"What is it, brother?"

". . ."

After unfolding it, he stared down at the picture and instantly one of his eyebrows quirked up. He kept staring with that confused expression.

"I'm . . . not quite. . . sure?" he said, his voice laced with puzzlement.

He looked at Nunally quizzically for a second before walking away to go to his room.

"Don't worry about it. Thanks," he said as he crossed the threshold.

- -

Lelouch hesitantly set down the picture. He stepped back and looked at it intently. The picture was of a tied up cat. It seemed to be blindfolded and all four of its limbs were also tied, with either rope or what appeared to be bed sheets, in messy knots. Chains hung across its neck in a tight gag and his mouth was taped over. He couldn't recognize if the cat was familiar to him or not because of all the materials used in binding it.

Lelouch was extremely addled. What was the meaning of this picture? Why would some anonymous person want to give him this picture?

Could it be...

Could it be that a solicitor is trying to sell me ... cat porn?

Suddenly, his cellphone rang. He started slightly at the sudden vibration in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the caller I.D. It was a private call. He frowned and opened the phone, holding it tentatively towards his right ear. What he heard just disturbed him more.

A mewling cat could be heard on the other end.

He immediately yanked the phone away from his ear in disgust. Right when he was about to hang-up, another voice could be heard when the cat mewling stopped.

"Lelouch, is that you?" said the voice on the other end.

Instantly he brought the phone closer to his ear again. "M-mao??" he asked, his voice in shock and disbelief.

The formerly mentioned guy smirked on the other end of the phone. "Yes, it's me. Surprised? Thought I was dead?" Lelouch could hear the loud and booming chuckle reverberate from the other man's throat. "You've been careless, Zero. You made the soon-to-be fatal mistake of telling the police to shoot me instead of telling them to kill me."

Lelouch's eyes widened in shock. He opened his mouth, trying to formulate words.

"M-mmao. C.C. isn't here right now. She left. You can't talk to her through this phone."

Mao's smirk grew, "I know she's not there, that's the whole reason why I'm doing this." A sigh could be heard on the other end. "It would be troublesome fighting someone unaffected by my geass. Yes, I'll postpone my business with her until I have fully expressed my gratitude to you for what happened the other day."

Mao paused for the traditional suspenseful effect.

"Now, I think if your very vulnerable and unharmed sister did what I asked, you've gotten a certain picture. . ." he trailed off to wait for Lelouch's reply.

Lelouch reared back at the weird implication.

"Y-y-ou have something to do w-with this picture? Why would you—"

"Just a visual for you to see what I've done," Mao chuckled.

Lelouch grabbed the picture again and closely examined it once more. Could it be that he knew who this cat or who it belonged to?

"Mao. . ." he trailed off. There was a very slim possibility that where his thoughts were leading him to was correct, but he continued on hesitantly anyway, "Is this . . . Arthur?"

Mao mistook his incredulity for anxiety and began to laugh loudly. "Yes, I've managed to imprison him. Well, Lelouch, since I was so unhappy at being shot—Ah yes let my first thank Britannia's superb medicine for me being alive—I've decided to repay the favor and blow something up that's precious to you." Mao's excitement grew as he talked, his voice rising higher and higher in his giddiness. "You have five hours, Lulu dear." With that suavely done, Mao hung up the phone.

In his complete shock, Lelouch barely registered the click of the phone on the other end. Slowly, he took the phone away from his ear and looked at it, eyes wide and mouth gaping. He brought his other hand to his left temple and began to rub his finger around it as he closed and opened the phone again, slowly.

He furrowed his brows and shook his head in disbelief, before pounding three numbers on the phone and holding it within hearing distance.

- -

Mao was around 500 meters away from Lelouch when he had made the call. In all honesty he would have preferred hearing Lelouch's scared voice over the phone for a few more minutes but he had more important matters to attend to at the moment. He glanced both ways before sneaking out in the open to search for a bathroom.

He was in the middle of doing his business in the John when he heard his phone ring. Confused, he took the phone out of the pocket and opened it.

"Who's this?" he asked, clearly very surprised.

"Lelouch," said the voice on the other end.

"E-Eh? Lelouch! But how?" Mao took the phone away from his ear to give it a fuddled stare.

"There's a thing called star-sixty-nine, dumbass. Anyway, let me get this straight. You're not dead, and you decided to make cat po– I mean, kidnap a cat?"

Lelouch's voice sounded too cocky for Mao's liking. He ignored the dumbass comment and answered him, "Yes. A cat. Your cat!" He was yelling into the phone at this point. Did Lelouch hit his head or something?!

". . ."

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a while. Mao was at a loss for what Lelouch was trying to pull.

"That cat's not even mine. It's the student council's cat, we've barely had it for a week."

". . ."

Mao tried quickly to pull up his pants. "That cat is your cat. You love it. . .don't you? Yes you do," he said slowly, trying to sound like a magician putting someone else in a trance.

"Are you within 500 meters of me?" asked Lelouch. Annoyingly enough, Mao could practically hear the smirk in Lelouch's voice.

". . ." Mao nervously laughed, "Y-yes?"

Lelouch hung up and the phone line went dead.