Aries Villa – The hall in which Marienne vi Britannia was murdered.

Lelouch

It… just hurts you know? I knew.. I always knew that the life I went by was fake somehow. That the peace I feel within the Palace or anywhere was fake.

I was born a Prince. I held the title of a Prince. I have all the abilities a Prince would need. I have the intelligence. I have my family. I have a life.

It's.. weird. I think this is the first time I don't even know how to describe something. We were just standing there. We were just talking, planning on what to we should bring for our next picnic when gun fires.

Can you imagine talking to your sister or mother or brother or father in the living room poking your little sister's cheeks and saw a hole appeared in her leg?

I was a Prince. I'm not a soldier. I was sheltered. My innocence was kept well. I don't have the strength to push the sudden fear of seeing so much blood all at once from my sister's body.

Then Mother pushed us down. We were talking on the stairs when it happened. She pushed me aside and me, weak in every physical terms, thrown aside and fell on my rear while Mother shielded my little sister.

I was still sitting up you know? I saw everything on the stairs. I saw breaches and cracks cropped up on the light purplish mauve walls. I saw the windows broke and sharp pieces of glistening silvers spread on the red carpet.

I don't know how. But I saw the shiny, metallic yellow bullets used for sniper-type of weapons punctured my Mother's body. I saw the pattern. They were randomized but locked only through the half bottom of the front wall. They tore through everything and stopped barely by the waste of my Mother with my little sister beneath her.

My sister fainted. And it was different. It was unlike her usual unconscious state after my and Euphy's teasings. She was so peaceful she looked like someone who would never open their eyes in the mornings, or evenings, or nights, or centuries.

I swallowed everything. I swallowed my fear, my weakness, even my love. I requested my sister to be checked. But I have no faith that my mother is still alive. I saw a bullet pierced her neck before she shielded my sister. I saw the blood exploded like a pressured water hose being released behind that small yellow metal that passed my head.

I asked my servant, who was gaping upstairs to tend my Mother's body. I walked downstairs. I passed the areas which were pulverized. I closed my Mother's eyes and marched away from the hall.

As a Prince.

Not as a ten years old who had just lost his mother and his little sister possibly crippled.

I had to be strong.

Gone was the grief stricken boy, and emerged a furious Prince who will get justice for his mother.

WARNING : This is where I'm gonna make Lelouch act and think like… well I suppose we agree on the matter that Lelouch possess an otherworldly intellect, so I say "Fuck Facts" to whoever'll complain about his thoughts from now on.

Imperial Throne Room

Lelouch vi Brittania

Lelouch has always been proved very difficult to predict. He kept his thoughts to himself and everything he did was for a reason or more. He calculated every little thing he say and only ever loosen up around Nunnally and a selective few of his family.

In this sense, he was often talked for his similarities to the Deputy Prime Minister of Britannia, his older half-brother Schneizel el Britannia. Both have an otherworldly intelligence that was proven to outsmart their every sibling. Both love chess to a point where they believed the strategy mind based game as a literal metaphor of war.

The only difference between them is the way they behave and express themselves to the public eye.

Whereas Schneizel is similar to a fox, a cunning White King with the wisdom of a Bishop who is a terrible, long distance threat that expects his pawns to move as perfectly as he explicitly wanted through his manipulations of words and make sure they will cripple the enemy. Before engaging in a battle he pulled every string he possessed to break every façade of his target, and after intently understanding them, he predicted every possible reaction and manipulated them to do the one option he wanted them to take.

But Lelouch is an Alpha lioness. He doesn't laze around protecting his little sister from danger and ordering his pawns to do his bidding. No, he was the Black Queen with a role that was equal to a king. He doesn't manipulate them only to just expect them to obey him. He studied them. He let them make the first move and came up with various possibilities and predicted their every possible reaction from their first action and every word he would need to mention to them, and demanded to be obeyed without question.

With great confidence and anger salted with grief in his heart, the 11th Prince of Britannia walked across the hall of the place where the 98th Emperor of Britannia resided. The Heart of the Empire on which the sun never set its light without cause. To his left and right and every side were the congregation of aristocrats at the Royal Court.

Lelouch despised them. Not because of their stupidity, though it was a given reason, but from their ignorance of their own hypocritical ways of thinking and the way they take their lavish life for granted but depended on it at the same time. Their ignorance and stupidity was proven by the notion of them thinking the little Prince doesn't have the ability to hear their mockery and amusement through their sideways glances and their murmured whispers of their happiness at the demise of his mother to court and steal the Emperor's attention.

It was no secret that everyone were suspecting that Charles zi Britannia was showing actual affection towards Marienne vi Britannia. The other members of His court were fine with the fact that the Emperor only looked at his consorts as mere political treaties. But they were alright with that as long as they have a portion of his authority.

But then Marienne came. What His Majesty sees in that commoner was unknown to them but, somehow, someway, Marienne the Flash actually manages to catch the Emperors attention, which were shown when he courted her after her first public His Majesty's personal Knightmare Frame testing.

When her first born child were born, they ALL expected the boy to be weak just like every commoner out there except His Majesty. And they were proven wrong. Lelouch vi Britannia, while weak in physical, outsmarted them all in intellect. He can beat anyone in any mind based activities. No one but Schneizel had lost to the boy. Even the Emperor was beaten by Marienne's firstborn child's 17th try when he was seven.

(Yes, I noticed the irony)

They know… it hadn't been an hour already and yet, they know about his mother's fate. And Dear Father of mine just sat there, in that stupid, powerful throne like he did everyday with that same glare plastered on his face like he has every freaking day.

The force of his glare were small, but Lelouch noticed it. He just needed to know. He just needed to make sure of what he heavily suspected.

"Lord Emperor," he stated courtly, knowing his father know he was stroking his ego for the sake of public relation, "my mother was murdered."

What will his reaction be?

"And?"

Lelouch expected it. He really, really was sure of it but it still hurt. He knew his father never really cared for anyone other than his mother. He wasn't proud of it, in fact, that little emotion his father felt for his mother was the thing that almost condemned Nunnally to an eternity of silent, cold scorn when she was proven to not having the ability to surpass her older brother's intelligence.

But he had hope. He had hoped that whatever little emotion, that tiny affection Charles zi Britannia felt for Mother would at least earn her some right to have her death to be investigated despite being a former commoner. It was an all known fact that a commoner's death, no matter how high of authority they achieved in their life, would not be treated as a problem but a small annoying breeze.

If they weren't in front of other people, if this had been brought up to him privately, there was a sure chance that Charles would have laughed in amusement at the betrayed flash on his son's eyes.

"You won't even instigate an investigation of her death?! It hadn't even been an hour and yet the terrorist is at blame when WE ALL know that some terrorist wouldn't even have been able to enter the Palace's garden! Or was the security this weak that an Empress was gunned down in the middle of the day?!"

He was stepping over the line here. He knew the consequences but he needed to stay strong and play the part. And he knew from chess just how his father worked. Everything would be at hand if his information had no flaw.

"How dare you question the Empire's strength?!" The Emperor's voice boomed across the hall, destroying the notions of any nobles who dared to even think to question the matter in their own mind, "You came here and wasted my time only for you to simply informing us of a fact we are already aware of? You should be ashamed of your behavior," Charles mercilessly belittle his own son, gauging his reaction. The facts and reasons he spouted is even worse than the childish tantrum he had expected his son would bring when Lelouch suddenly came into his room in his royal garb.

"Yes, I do dare."

The moment Lelouch stated that this little conversation will forever be marked in the history of Britannia.

"I dare and I am questioning the Empire's strength. How can I believe that His Majesty's subjects are safe and protected when the Empress herself was shot in the Aries Villa? I can't even begin to imagine what would have happened if the terrorist had intended for a genocide instead."

His mother's death may have been ignored. But the fact that she was killed right at the Imperial Palace should not and Lelouch will make sure it will not be ignored.

"Her Royal Guard was pulled back right before the scheduled meeting last I heard," He paused to let the mass' insignificant common sense to make a guess of what he implies, "who was she's going to meet?" Lelouch had heard her order, she wasn't exactly discreet about it. Or, she was, but the Royal Guard's dismissal march was not.

"That is none of your concern," Charles was backed in his way to the corner tile of the board. The one who was going to meet her was his brother. But no one knew about V.V., and Marienne had stated to all of her Royal Guards that she will meet someone important at the time. If he set up a scapegoat, well, not many have the privilege of a private meeting with Marienne the Flash in the Aries Villa without at least 1 bodyguard. And if he mention himself, the scandal would feast the media if they knew the Emperor treated one of his court a little bit more than the other, and said court was a mere commoner.

"I doubt we would have been able to conjure up any plan if the terrorist who killed her is still here, in a palace belonged to a traitor."

"A Traitor?!" Everyone failed to guised their surprise at the young Prince's accuse. Charles was mildly shocked, never in his time as an emperor he expected to be so openly detested, by his own son no less. He had no such delusion that they were all loyal to him, he knew they considered treason but to do so publicly. Either way, this will end badly.

He knew he was cornered now as he looked at his son's eyes. The triumph in those perfect clone of his own purplish violet eyes reminded him of himself, and the slight crook of his smile is just waiting to whisper his trademark 'Check'.

"You, may be an Emperor. You may be the most powerful man in a world where more than half of its resources you conquered. You may be the ruler of the Britannia Emperor but YOU are a traitor to your own family now that WE ALL know you would so much as to ignore an Empress' assassination. Frankly, I am questioning my, and my siblings and my family's safety in the Imperial Palace. What if it was Schneizel who was killed? Or Odysseus?"

Pinning two of his favorable brothers was cruel of him, but he needed some eyes to be casted on their movements. Schneizel is the only one my plans need to be 100% perfect before executing them. Odysseus was purely for political reasons, what with him being the First in line to the throne.

Blocking their rode by a few stones would give a slim path for the Third in line, Cornelia. She would be the best Empress there is… for a military. Not for a nation, which no matter how depended they are to the military's prowess, its primary need is the people. Brother Schneizel always reminded him after his win in their chess match that a nation is made of its people. If they lose the people, the nation will crumble no matter how powerful their leader and technology is. And if Cornelia became the Empress, it would take 5 or more years for the commoners and nobles would get sick of being ignored in favor of the army.

"Then I shall let their death investigation to the ones I will assign. I am not ignoring Marienne vi Britannia's death, I am merely following the rules. And despite her achievements, she was born a commoner."

"And if the Empire's Emperor himself was born a commoner, would his death be ignored to?"

Well that's a bomb.

"What?" Charles hissed.

"Pardon me?" Lelouch smirked, and his grin scared the assembly of nobles shitless. They were already afraid of what His Majesty would do and that grin of his reminded them all to Marienne vi Britannia's reaction when she won a small nation by herself in the war with the barbarian Jamaica (no offense).

If Schneizel was witnessing Lelouch's betrayal, he would definitely have an unreadable expression on his face, unlike Cornelia's which Lelouch believed would be a death glare. The others… well, they may have a slight fear but, probably for fear that the Emperor would turn his rage on them. Maybe Euphy would cry for him, at least he hoped so.

Charles? Charles thought Lelouch is a miniature version of himself.

"Hypothetically, if you were dead, and if you were born a commoner, are you alright with the fact that your own death would be ignored if, say, Bismark suddenly plunged his sword thro-"

"You are dead."

Lelouch couldn't help but flinched at his father's unexpected cut.

"You… have died the moment you were born. You are weak. And your sister is even weaker. Britannia only house strong people so the nation will grow. Who gave you your clothes, your food, your life? And you pay me by disrespecting me in such a humiliating way? This is what it means to be a King, to be an Emperor. I do not need weak people."

Lelouch almost wanted to cry. He stumbled a couple of steps, though he was dangerously close to falling on his rear down the short number of fixed steps. He never got scolded by his father this harsh. The eyes spoke every time, but he never experience verbal lashing.

But it was too late to back down..

"If that is what it means… Then I refuse to be one! I revoke my claim to the royal throne!"

… even Charles' eyes widened for a small, tiny fraction.

"Bismark.. Punish this traitor"

It's all in your decision now. I'm entrusting you.

"As your wish, Your Highness-"

"STOP!"

Good work, Jeremiah.

The sound of metal clash was heard across the hall as the Emperor's Knight of One's sword was intercepted with Jeremiah Gottwald's.

Lelouch's previous inner nervousness disappeared. With Gottwald here, and he trusted his higher than normal high acumen.

Gottwald was an orphan. When he was little he was saved from collapsing with a building by Mother. And he was proven time to time to genuinely care for the Vi Britannia line. He may be one of the low ranks in Mother's Royal Guard, but Nunnally even started calling him 'Uncle' for he often visits her and him. Gottwald is a man of honor. To have Marienne's firstborn assassinated for only talking back to the Emperor right after the Empress' death would be unacceptable for him. He wouldn't want the guilt and the burden of laying the news, no matter how gentle he'd make it out to be to Nunnally who was the closest to him.

Lelouch knew he shouldn't be toying with the man's near obsession of his loyalty to his mother, but his and Nunnally's future depended on his devotion.

With his blatant act of treason, Gottwald would have no choice but to request that, for it was the only option to spare his and Nunnally's lives.

Questioning his father's origin would give the media some juice, and they'd waste their time looking up history rather than Lelouch and Nunnally punishment which he was sure they would be so. Of course, he had done his own personal research and his father is 100% nobility, but with this scandal and reference to interview, or rather 'subtle' interrogation to the First and Second Princes and about the Emperor's way of thinking would cause secret rebellions to occur more actively.

It was unspoken that everyone knew that the Imperial Family is torn by the war for the throne. Knowing one of the youngest Prince had bravely defy the Emperor would cause inactive rebels to start taking action. They'd just mention his name and blatant act of treason and they'll get the courage to stand up to his father's way of thinking. To Britannia's way of ruling the world. Lelouch had no intention of being a ruler to them but people always needed a role model before deciding their ultimate way of life.

For Lelouch? He would take justice for his mother and little sister because he has what the Emperor himself believe, the power to lead people to justice. While he hated his crap about Darwinism, it was everything in Britannia. His mother may have been born a commoner, but he was born as a prince.

For now, he had to play his part.

"Gottwald.." do I sound at least a bit shocked? Is my face correct? I'm not as good of an actor like Clovis. I rarely got caught surprised but, I think this is how I look like when Nunna and Euphy suddenly demanded me to marry them. Which is pretty weird considering we're blood related, even if incest is perfectly fine among royals.

Jeremiah threw away his sword, not too far, but at a safe distance where he can reach it in one leap, and bowed down to show his surrender, "Your Highness, forgive me. I am aware that I have absolutely no right but I humbly request for you to show mercy."

"Mercy? You are also aware that he had committed the highest level of treason. I presume you are also aware of Britannia's rule. Step aside or you will face the consequences."

Even his loyalty to Lady Marienne would allow that disgusting behavior Lelouch sees almost every day, "I am, My Lord. But Prince Lelouch is merely unaware of the consequences of his words. He is a child stricken with grief of his mother's fate. But you are the Emperor, you are our symbol of justice… Surely you would spare his life for he is foolish," Do I get the expression right? I need to act like someone I trust betrayed me.

'Don't think I missed that brief smirk, son,' Charles inwardly warned, slightly impressed at Lelouch's rather convincing expression.

He must admit that he hadn't expected his son to barge in with a plan such as this. He knew Lelouch knew Jeremiah would be here and will try to save his life by bringing up his justice. The boy was never really subtle with the way he commands the blue haired boy to watch over his now crippled and blind little sister from afar and of any threat.

His son was brilliant. So much potential in him no one would doubt his ability to become the next Emperor if he was the First in Line. He himself would have recommended him alongside Schneizel, if he was not planning for the Ragnarok connection.

And he even made sure that Charles cannot kill him without severe consequences. If he killed Lelouch, the foolish nobles with their collective intellect of a concussed cow will bow down to his every whim out of fear, knowing he will not hesitate to punish traitors even if it was his own son. But the numbers would revolt, as they will find a hero in Lelouch.

Charles won't be calling Lelouch a coward any time soon. The boy simply have too much pride.

Lelouch certainly earned a small amount of Charles' respect. But he was constricted. Such a shame. If only he would not devote so much time and thoughts for Nunnally.

Speaking of which…

Charles dramatically stood up, applying a hard pressure he voiced, "Kneel,"

And everyone did so, including Lelouch, though he made sure to look very reluctant. He hid his face beneath the shadow of his person, hiding a victorious smirk.

'Thank you, Gottwald. All task is at hand. Father will have no choice but to banish Nunna and I. This is the only way Nunna will survive. With her being crippled, she wouldn't be much use as a political consort. As harsh as it is, everyone will think of her as nothing but an extra mouth to feed. She'd be lucky to get killed and escape these cruel people, but then her body will be discarded. Even if she gets a grave, no one will visit. Only her and I and a few others ever set foot in the cemetery to pay respect, and they don't respect Nunna. I cursed her by being smart, they respected me, not her. This is the best,' Lelouch thought.

"Lelouch vi Britannia," he could hear his father practically savored and pulverized each letter, "11th Prince and 17th heir to the Holy Empire of Britannia's royal throne, you are hereby banished from the royal family and the land of Britannia. And as punishment, your sister Nunnally vi Britannia, the 4th Princess and 87th in line of succession to the Britannian throne will be sent to Japan. Blind and crippled as she is, a princess is at least good in being a bargaining chip for a nation as important as Japan."

'Wait.. Nunna.. is blind? Blind… and crippled? Both? And.. Father is separating us?! Nunna's handicapped and she's being sent alone to Japan of all places?! Japan is one of the nations Father pressured too hard. They'd kill her at first glance! My plans… Our lives. We're not together… we're separated?'

That was all Lelouch could think about as he sank to his knees with horror written boldly on his face. And when it twisted into a nasty scowl with pure rage waving in his purplish violet eyes, Charles knew he had brought out the dangerous side of Lelouch wholly; by severing his emotional ties to his little sister and family.