Chapter Two

The night was dark, stormy and boiling hot. Lelouch raced down the controls of his nightmare with nimble fingers, moving in an iron suit of metal like it was his second skin. He did not do it as gracefully as Kallen, as deftly as Oghi, nor as quick on the sly as Tamaki, but his genius made him a good pilot nonetheless and he trained, he fought, he bled. But not often.

If a king does not lead, will his men follow?

He had asked Nunally that once, when he tried to teach her chess. She never understood chess, why one needed to fight. Why not just get along? She had asked. He answered, I don't know, and he really didn't know.

But he wanted to know, wanted Nunally to live in a world where the question of fighting never arose in the first place. That was his goal, his quest and he would do anything to have it so if it meant learning a few moves or putting himself in a position of low to moderate risk in pursuit of a glorious image of himself as a mysterious masked hero to the Japanese, then so be it.

Besides, his mask ensured that nobody knew he was having fun piloting the knightmare. "K2 to the right, and bottom crunch, attack at a forty two degree angle with your Missile Booster." The yellow knightmare in question attacked one of the vertices of a government building, it collapsed in on itself, being as it was the weak spot. Lelouch was glad he read the architecture of Paris and London book last night, even though he had to skip on a dinner date with Shirley and Nunally (who kept trying to coax the two together, not that Lelouch minded, after all Shirley was quite pretty, but he just had better things to do). "K2, retreat three meters, Q1 fire your Ultimate." Kallen's knightmare frame was made in India, and had a secret weapon, quite experimental and never used on the battle field, a nuclear deshielder, which was basically a missile that fired extremely harmful gamma rays at a target, which if it were a nuclear missile shield (made from a net of radiowaves) would get deshielded. But if fired at an object, like a car or a truck, then the object would turn to dust.

And an object in question came down at them – a knightmare frame, a police guard – that turned to dust right before it touched them.

"How did you know he was there?" Kallen asked. Lelouch could have told her he knew because he had scouted the place a week ago in his school uniform posing as a harmless Britannian student on a field trip, but he didn't. He just kept his silence, and Kallen gave an annoyed but expecting sigh.

"C6, C7, C8, attack the three police cars with your missiles and K1 to K10, you ten go with Oghi's tank to location delta."

The raid of the Gaslow clone shipment was underway, and going well, as well it could be when the resistance they were expecting was an underestimate. There were at least twice that number. Lelouch hastily changed his strategy and hoped it would work, not as good as his old one, but good enough if the enemy commander was an idiot, or better yet a Britannian noble. He knew how nobles thought, and they were worse than idiots because they followed textbook predictable patterns of war making, while idiots sometimes came up with something original.

Lelouch had thirty knightmares under his command, as well as an old military tank – at least 200 years old if not more, refitted with the newest armor and battery charges, as well as a missile launcher that actually used gunpowder. Lelouch made it in his chemistry laboratory, a big pile of gunpowder and shells that would take down any metal, or at least put a dent in it. He wanted to use it on Prince Clovis's tower, but he decided the shipment of Gaslow Clones, which was basically a big ship filled with a hundred and ten old but useful knightmare frames, enough to form an army, might be a trap and if so he needed some heavy artillery.

The cop cars turned to molted metal as the Triple C team as they liked to be called fired away with no reluctance or regret. People were awakening; it was the dead of night. But that was okay. Zero ordered the ten Ks to escort Oghi and the tank he was driving to the ocean port of Britannia. They met heavy resistance.

"Zero, we're being fired upon by a coastal guard unit of fourteen knightmares," Oghi said in a tense voice, "We're surrounded, they seem to have formed a triangle formation around us with three knightmares as the point covering our retreat. I would say we are in the middle of the formation, and they were expecting us."

"This is a trap then," Zero said calmly, "But I shall unravel it. I was expecting this."

"What?" Tamaki said, being one of the Ks. "You don't know what you are doing! You're going to get us killed! We're surrounded by Britannia's best pilots and we're operating shoddy machinery."

"Yet you were all fitted with the G missiles, were you not? These will take down the buildings surrounding you, which have defective construction errors," Lelouch explained. "Hold your ground and attack the vertices coordinate with your G missiles, you are all within range."

The coordinates were given, targeted and fired with deadly accuracy. A huge red building made of dying bricks fell in a pile of rubble on the group's main front, and half their force was wiped out. The others were able to dodge the falling buildings, having calculated the trajectories of the missiles and their effects. These are good fucking pilots, Lelouch thought; to escape my perfectly executed trap is nothing short of amazing. But he had another trick up his sleeve, "Oghi, fire your cannon at the Sakuradite Warehouse, thirty degrees north, forty one degrees above horizontal."

Oghi did so, and a resounding boom resonated in the night air despite the storm. Then a bigger boom and another and another after that. It started a chain reaction that took down an approaching army of helicopters. Zero continued to explain in a clinical voice (he was practicing sounding like a professor as he had agreed to take a job at the University of Britannia - Location: Area Eleven, within capitol, so Lelouch could get closer to Prince Clovis), "The Sakuradite Warehouse is a long chain of explosive Sakuradite sources that have not yet been chemically treated with radium and argon nuclear emmisions yet to stabilize the nasty proton fluctuations. This makes the sakuradite very volatile in the presence of a high temperature and a catalyst, carbon dioxide, which was released upon the impact of the tank's missile. That was why I needed such an old and inefficient cave man weapon like gunpowder."

As the explosion of sakuradite filled the air with hot flame and boiling weather, it created a gust of wind that drove two knightmares off their aim and allowed the Ks to fire them down quickly. Another three Ks were gone in a rush of missile fire, focally targeted at the weakest point in the K defense of the tank. Perhaps they thought the tank was a transport vehicle, they probably hadn't seen a real life tank since the resistance of Japan. And that was a long time ago.

But when they realized the explosive capabilities of the tank, not taking into account the sakuradite fuel that was responsible for the explosion, they immediately fell into Lelouch's trap. Lelouch predicted their move of targeting the tank by taking out the weakest points in the line and rapidly shouted orders for the Ks to leave the tank and surround the knightmares closing in on the weakest point. They did so, leaving Oghi unprotected. The weak point of the previous defense broke and the Knightmares fired away, the tank took the brunt of the impact. The Ks quickly decimated the enemy knightmares from behind. The tank was a pile of junk.

Oghi was dead.

Kallen screamed.

And Zero, in private, laughed.

Zero could not have petty resistance causing chaos in his rebellion. He would stamp it down. They would not take revenge; they would follow like meek lamb because they would be dazzled by tonight's success, an army of Knightmare frames, ready to fit eager rebellious souls with a talent for piloting. There were a lot of those maggots and Lelouch planned to use every one.

Later, Kallen had a beer. She had the beer warm, and finished it quickly but had to wait for the rest to drink their alcoholic beverages. She had once heard from her brother on a rare occasion say, "Alcohol is a liquid courage, you drink it before battles and your cold trembling fear is replaced by a warm dullness. It clouds your judgement and your senses but at the same time it warms you, so drink it with care Kallen." Then he had handed the ten year old Kallen a sip of his beer and she spat it out. He had looked at her then, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in another and just smiled at her, a warm smile that had made her smile back and nod her head, tell her older brother she would never drink, never smoke and that she loved him despite his vices.

He had laughed. She wished, as she drank her beer after the hard battle, that she could hear his laugh again. But he was dead and Oghi got the leadership position and from then on they listened to Oghi, acted cautiously and thought small. Then Zero came along and changed all that, suddenly they had lots of knightmares – more than ever, but no pilots to spare – and lots of money pouring in from unlikely sources, like the JLF. They were still small perhaps, but they possessed a brilliant strategic leader who used them to their fullest potential. "He's using us," Kallen said aloud and Tamaki agreed. "What do you think is his goal? Liberation of Japan, I doubt it."

"Of course he doesn't care about us and our duties, guys like that always think we're beneath them, just dirty fighters and nothing more." Tamaki growled in anger, "Dammit, Oghi wasn't like that, he was one of us and Zero… Zero…" he couldn't say it because he knew once he did there was no going back. Oghi's death would be avenged, one way or another. Tamaki would do it himself. Oghi was like a brother to him, and to Kallen, and to the whole group. He wasn't brilliant, but he was no shod either. Zero said he needed someone responsible to drive the tank. Oghi volunteered. "There's no proof," he dully said without meaning it, of course there wasn't proof, a brilliant guy like Zero wouldn't leave proof. Apparently someone agreed and they had an argument. After that it was up to K8, a hot brunette by the name of Soyachi who put an end to the argument by snapping her fingers, "I'm going to go ask him," she said.

Tamaki stopped talking and halted in perfect, shocked silence. This was… he couldn't think of anything to compare it with but he knew – instinct told him – that going upfront was a bad idea. "Don't do this," he yelled at her, "You'll ruin everything."

"So you care more about success than Oghi's life?" Soyachi said, her brown eyes glittering with barely restrained rage. "If we don't have honour we are no better than Britannians, if we don't believe in justice we are hypocrites and don't deserve victory."

Tamaki felt himself nodding, she was right, Soyachi was a true rebel, a true Japanese because she had honour. Tamaki uncomfortably wondered if he also had honour. The thought that he did not made him feel nervous. Dammit, he thought tightening his fists over a cup of vodka. The smell of it made him sick. He gulped the drink down anyways and made a face at the disgustingly bitter taste and at the hot feeling in his stomach right after. "Alright, so you ask him, either he'll deny it or he will admit it and where does that leave us? Think about this practically, so may be Zero isn't the man we think he should be but doesn't he get us results? And all this is probably justice in his mind too, like Oghi questioned him the other day about the mask and his identity he probably got threatened so he struck back. He maybe vicious, but maybe that's the kind of leader we need to get Japan back, to free our nation."

Tamaki waited for response, expecting to be insulted and shot down on the spot for declaring Oghi's death as justice – and that hurt, hurt him deep right to his bones - but none came. They stared at him silently, deep in their thoughts and Tamaki drifted off to an uneasy sleep after a while. He awoke to an empty room and went to the fridge, got out a carton of milk and drank the cold liquid down. The fridge was empty after that save for a single beer, which he thought he might save for a rainy day and his stomach growled. He felt better than he had in a while, drinking cold milk on a perfectly normal morning. But today they had gaslow clones, today they had machines, worth millions perhaps, junk machines but their machines and enough weaponry to fit an army that could take down Britannia. Zero used a combination of brilliant strategies and well placed traps to lure the Britannian soldiers into a rigged area that exploded, taking the lives of almost all the soldiers on the ground in one fell blow. The rest of the knightmares that hung back were outnumbered, and the battle ended with a getaway ship taking the knightmares to their own docks, half way across Japan. And here they were, in headquarters with the knightmares hundreds of miles away being refitted with new weaponry as well as dejammed for annoying tracking devices and radars.

Today was a good day. He remembered Oghi's death suddenly when he walked outside to be greeted with a flash of sunlight. It reminded him of the explosion of Sakuradite. Isn't that what it's all about, he thought bitterly, Sakuradite, or money. That's what it comes down to, why this goddamn war started. Damn Britannians.

Damn Zero. He wanted to express his anger, to fight, to hurt and hunt and use his fists but he didn't, he couldn't. Oghi died for a reason, Tamaki had to believe that.

If he didn't, he would go insane.

Their next meeting was a week hence, supposedly about the discussion on what to do with their knightmare frames that they acquired and how best to recruit more members to the black knights. They met at an old warehouse in the Ghetto district. The warehouse had the faded image of a chicken on a billboard on the front of the building, thirty meters high and hanging on a pole that stood horizontally erect against the building. The chicken was smiling and hatching an egg and written with a deep black pensmanship was a quote by peace leader Zhao of Malaysia, who had been taken political prisoner by Britannia, along with the words, "Go Chick!" written on a hatching egg.

The quote did not make any sense and always confused Tamaki when he read it. He didn't look at it this time but knew it was there, the picture and the eyes on the chicken in the picture's middle. Those eyes, Tamaki imagined, might be the eyes of Zero, cold and merciless and totally alien, utterly incomprehensible by human standards. Those eyes, black beads of cruelty, might be the eyes of a man who has tried all avenues and failed and decided that the only way to succeed was to eat your neighbors. Those were the eyes of bank robbers and rapists, liars and murderers, mad men grasping at straws.

Those are Zero's eyes, Tamaki said to himself. He didn't look. He wanted to look, but he didn't. The quote ran across his mind like claws, ripping at his heart and his mind. He thought he understood it when he saw Oghi's melted tank, and knew with certainty of his best friend's death, but he would not fully understand the true depth of the quote until after the Witch with Green Hair gave him the Geass.

He knew if he looked at the chicken he would lose it. He was close to losing it, on the break point between insanity and hysteria. He was stretched and tense enough to shatter like glass thrown across the room. He had found shards on his living room floor, and he did not want to find shards of himself in a grave yard, rotting on ground that was once known as Japan.

That meeting, they entered the room quickly, one at a time. There were thirty of them, members of the Black Knights, and they all knew each other, had grown up with them, gone to Eleven School with them, had learnt hate together and learned how to fight together, bleed together. They were a team.

And one of them was dead. The murderer walked in, and the crowd's hackles rose. If the crowd was one beast, it would be growling and frothing at the mouth. If the crowd was one man, it would be holding a gun, cocked and loaded and trigger finger tWitching. This crowd had their hands very close to their hand guns and their eyes narrowed for murder, hackles in the air and growling in the brain. Tamaki wanted to pull out his pistol and put some lead balls into Zero's chest. He had an insane urge to scratch his armpit and the only thing that made him stop – on both accounts – was Zero, the imposing masked man had a sense of power around him, as if he was born to lead, born to rule. Tamaki could no more be rude and disobedient in front of Zero than a child could be rude and disobedient to a father who was happy to swing the birch and punish with a swift punch to the face. Tamaki was frozen with fear.

Tamaki wanted to tell them to be quiet, to listen to what Zero had to say and act out of the benefit of the group. He was impulsive and brash and often acted like an idiot but he had a good head on his shoulders and knew what was really important, what Oghi would have wanted. In the end Tamaki was a true patriot and loved Japan, and in the end that would be what made Zero kill him. But that was for later, because now, Tamaki had no idea that by shushing the crowd, by raising his support for Zero he had doomed himself to a very short life.

"We shall discuss the most important thing first," Zero's loud booming and mechanical voice resonated in the hall and the group drifted into utter stillness. "It is not the Knightmares we acquired, although that is the marking of the crucial victory that will be the first of many in the swift defeat of Britannian occupation on Japan. It is not the recent alliance issued by the Japanese Liberation Front that I have recently received. No, it is something that weighs on my conscience far more: the death of our comrade, Oghi."

Tamaki laughed, and glared at the same time. His reflection glinted on the glass that made up Zero's mask, black as night and twice as dangerous. He felt fear. Then he felt nothing. And shivering cold rising up in his spine made him tremble. "You asshole, you planned it didn't you?" Tamaki hissed, "I saw you, heard you say to everyone on the radio, mumbled under your breath: I was expecting this. You used the tank, used the explosion to draw a trap around Oghi."

Zero was silent for a moment and then he laughed as well, a mockery of a laugh. "No, Oghi was not the center of the trap. I was the center of the trap. I told Oghi of what my plan was and asked for a volunteer. Oghi said he would find one. I doubt he asked anybody now that I think about it. He volunteered himself and the plan continued, we gained an important piece of the puzzle – the puzzle that is the evident fact of Britannia's power, and can any of you deny its strength?"

The silence was hot. At any time a single spark would make the whole world explode. Tamaki was tense on the balls of his feet. He felt his crotch as tight as a twisted towel. He wanted to piss and have a drink of cold water. He was sweating down his shirt. Was it the heat or was it the rage? Was it the anger or was it the sadness that they were reduced to accepting the help of a murderer, the leadership of a man as cold as a Britannian noble.

"Can any of you deny that you need my help?" Zero whispered. His words carried and sent goosebumps down Tamaki's arms. He wanted to say no but his mind said yes, and so did his heart.

"Make your decision, and make it quick. If you wish to kill me then take your gun and do it now," Zero said somberly, "But you will never see Japan a free nation."

"Can you offer proof so we have no choice but to trust your word?" Sayachi asked Zero, her voice cracking. Her face was wet and she looked mournful. Perhaps she loved Oghi, perhaps she was simply shook up by her first battle. She was new and not used to the life of a rebel but she was a damn good pilot, almost as good as Kallen. Not as good though, nobody was as good as Kallen, not even Zero.

"No," Zero said, "But I can show you the proof and it is up to you to take it for truth or lie. Proof doesn't prove anything, it is belief that does." Silence for a long moment that seemed to drag on. He took out a tape recorder and played a tape of the aforementioned conversation between him and Oghi.

Tamaki thought it could be faked by a good computer hacker. But he didn't think so. He could hear Oghi, but also feel him, because he knew him so well.

"This is real," he said bitterly and it cost him everything to do it. He gave his support for Zero and told him he would follow him and that he was feeling a little ill right now so please may he be excused? He felt like a little kid asking the teacher if he could go pee, or even poo, number one, number two, what to do? "Where you go, I'll follow," Tamaki said, and walked out, peace out Cub Scout, he said to Oghi, the Oghi that was all around him, the Oghi that would never leave him, that would remain in his heart for a long while: the Oghi that was his best friend. The Oghi that had been murdered. Maybe. Tamaki just did not know and he was too bothered to care, wanted to go home and sleep and not be bothered, just go home and drink and sleep like a baby, alcohol sleep.

"So this is it then," Sayachi asked the group and most of them said yes, this was it, just how the way the world worked and how the dance was done, just the tune the devil played and how the mice all followed to their doom. Devil and the mice, Zero and his knights. Goddamn it all, we're just a bunch of rats to him.

He sipped the bottle of vodka he had bought on his way home. One of a case of four bottles, holding enough concentrated alcohol to sedate an elephant. He was supposed to dilute every three teaspoons with a glass of water but he did not.

Tamaki laughed hysterically as he felt the rush of heat that marked the beginning of darkness and oblivion, he would lose consciousness now. He knew that. So he drank some more anyways because he just wanted to feel fucking good after the terrible day he had. If I'm not careful he'll try to squish me like a bug and suck out all my blood. Fuuuhhh… the rest of his thoughts were drowned in oblivion as alcohol poisoning set in.

He died because of his confusion. Died of alcohol poisoning. Drank so much that he puked and swallowed his tongue, suffocated on his own puke, he died in his sleep, and he was buried with Oghi, the fool and the idiot, the one who saved and the one who just bumbled and made mistakes. But he was buried alongside nonetheless and just as honoured, if not more, as there was a considerable amount of behind the counter, back of the hand, in the basement laughter at Tamaki's untimely death, mostly by those who did not like him.

Tamaki wondered if he would live when he drowned, when he felt himself dying. Do you want to live, the Witch whispered. Yes, I do want to live, I want to live so goddamn bad, I don't want to die. I don't want to end up like Oghi. I love that guy but still, Oghi died and I want to live, I want to be better than him for once. He was like family but he died and fuck it all, I just don't wanna end up rotting in the mud, not until Japan is free, not until I have a family of my own, a house and a cushy job as an account with a secretary for nookie on the side.

He was in a misty place of utter silence, on a mountain and the Witch stood beside him dressed in a completely white cloak. Her green hair glowed in the sun with an eiree fearful light and her eyes were dead, deader than Tamaki was dead and he knew he had died, had gone to heaven with this beautiful babe except for the green hair, that was the anchor that pulled him to a semblance of reality. He was dead and he was alive. The Witch with dead eyes – eyes like those beady chicken eyes that he thought might have been like Zero's eyes – glanced at him. Then looked away to stare at a simple wooden hut before them.

They went in, she made tea and he drank it all in perfect silence. There was nothing to say, they understood perfectly. Tamaki, the silly little rugrat who was also a rebel, asked her what her name was. She did not reply. She gave him a power instead, and that was reply enough. She would always be just, "the Witch," to Tamaki, even after he attained the Geass and used it quite mercilessly.

The Geass did not come that day, or the next. Tamaki felt like she was observing him, watching him, peeling away at all his layers and learning everything there was to know about Tamaki, things that he did not know about himself brought to light as she observed him. It made him uncomfortable because he started to observe himself as well.

There was not much to observe about the Witch, she had practice at this game. She let nothing away, as cold as a rock. Just like Zero perhaps, except not. She was better than Zero at this game, at hiding and deception. Tamaki was not bad himself, he remembered stealing toys from his brother, from his brother's friend, money from his father's wallet and change from his mother's purse. He could be sneaky too, just not with his brain but with his hands. He thought she might have been better than Zero, despite the latter's black mask, because she simply did not care: cold, old (though she did not look it but Tamaki knew anyways) and dead to the world and always observant. Her eyes took in everything, her voice was hoarse with disuse, but her eyes told him everything. They talked only of the necessities of living in the hut. In the mornings Tamaki developed a routine, get up, bathe, shave, go out for catching some fish by the pond, go to the village nearby to trade, come back home, have tea (and sometimes pizza if she would be willing to share, she loved pizza) and go to sleep. The days passed endlessly, and try as Tamaki might he did not know where he was. The natives didn't speak his language and there was no technology here in this village.

If he didn't know any better he would think he was in the past, perhaps the French past, dirty and hard, a life of toil. He lived. He forgot.

He forgot everything. He was as blank as a paper unwritten. He woke up one day and the Witch looked at him, really looked at him with all the noise that clouded his soul stripped away and she told him he would do, he was worthy. He was simple, not smart, but simple, and sometimes simple was best, sometimes the heart was enough, bravery would suffice and courage and love, those too would suffice. So she gave him power, a Geass, and he felt the Geass in his brain, always watching. He was chained to it, but he had accepted the power, mostly to please the Witch.

He was falling in love with the Witch. He thought the Witch knew that, but he could never be sure. One day he approached her and she gazed at him and said, "We can't do this. We are separate creatures."

"It doesn't matter," he said, "I don't care about the distinction between us. I care about you."

She nodded, and they made love that night. It was slow and sweet. She was happy, content, after. Her body was warm and soft. Tamaki gazed at her naked body, at the green hair draped across her chest and at her slow breathing. He did not say anything, to speak words about this experience would spoil it, he thought. But he also knew, even before she told him, that this was the last night, the only night she would allow herself to do this. So he enjoyed it, when they were done the first time he went and got a cigarette and smoked it, just enjoying the breeze on his naked body as he stood outside the hut. He saw a shooting star and thought about Japan, made a wish, went back inside and made love to the Witch once more. After it was done, he kissed the nape of her neck, and she kissed him on the lips. He felt a rush of heat rise up his spine and then a net of brilliant multicoloured light surrounded his mind. He was lost, but the Witch guided him and became his north star. He followed the Witch through an endless white space and came to the "Geass", his Geass. The power of kings, the power that would change the world.

He could change his face, change his body. The power of kings, his Geass, was the ultimate disguise, the power of a spy, a sneak: A rat or a weasel, as was his name: Tamaki.

Morning came with the crack of sunlight piercing through Tamaki's eyes. He woke up, and he was not at home anymore. The hut was gone. The mountain was gone, and so was the Witch. He was back in his apartment, empty and alone, and somehow he knew he could not continue his life here anymore, his old life with Zero was dead and gone. He was a new man. The Witch had brought him to life, had given him his heart back. The events that had occasioned his demise were in the past. He was not sure of the date or the time for the pair of them had lived in the mountains for so long, living beside the village. He remembered the days from the time he first made love to the Witch. He had counted the days, marked the days. It was two weeks since that blissful night, the best time of his life. He would never get that time again, never. It made him sad. It made him happy, confused and angry. He wanted to throw a party and at the same time wanted to kill something. He got out a beer from the fridge – there was only one left, the rest of the fridge was stark empty, and sat down in front of the TV, turned on the news.

It was about the latest terrorist attack on Shinjuku ghetto, and how terrorists had escaped with a poisoned gas capsule and were very dangerous, likely armed, led by a mysterious masked leader who had been sighted at the scene of other terrorist attacks but had never made a scene himself. He was hidden, a ghost, a shadow. He was Zero. Tamaki thought about Oghi, because Zero had caused Oghi his life, and he thought about Japan. Weighing the scales was hard enough, but to return to serve a leader who would throw him away like a chess piece was not his idea of how to go about business.

"I have the power of kings, Geass," he whispered to the television. The news caster, Milly Ashford smiled back and discussed the weather, her blond hair reflecting the dancing sun of summer. The future forecast for the next week read hot, hotter, and hottest. Tamaki had never tried his power before this time, honestly there was no need, and he was sort of afraid of trying it too. What if the power killed him? He knew he could do it, the knowledge was as simple and available to him as breathing, an instinctive animal thing.

Now he did it, tried to change his face to the hot news caster: somewhat succeeded. His arms felt like pins needles stabbing sharp pains and his whole body felt like it was melting, changing. The experience was painful and the clothes on his chest were too tight. He looked down to see a pair of breasts under his shirt. He gasped, hastily changed back, but not before looking in the mirror where he had an insatiable urge to apply red lipstick on his lips. He resisted that urge, drowned the rest of his beer after he was back in his original form.

He wondered what the Witch wanted him to do with this power, but she had not specified any clauses beside fulfilling a mysterious contract, details available at a later date, thank ya, come again. Fuck sales, they always screwed with you, Tamaki thought, there's probably a catch to this power, to that night. No way do things liked that come free.

He decided to use the power to restore Japan to its former glory, but how? How… the picture of Prince Clovis on live television brought an idea to his mind. He could do something, would do something.

"Nippon Banzai!" He shouted and threw the glass bottle of beer on the floor. It joined the shards from a past night, when he had mourned Oghi's death by throwing all his beer at the wall. Liquid seeped into the floor; mostly dried, the stink of it convinced Tamaki to get a new apartment first before he did the impossible.

I can do this, I can be a Zero too, or maybe a rebel leader with a secret power, like a super hero. Tamaki chuckled to himself as he cleaned up the shards on the floor. One of them pierced his hand. He tried to close the wound with his new found power but could not. When he changed into Oghi's form on a whim later that night, he discovered that the wound remained an ugly mark on soft brown skin, hurting when he touched it. I can change my appearance but not my physical properties, Tamaki said to himself, this is useful information.

The night came suddenly; a cold chill pervaded the air as Tamaki strode out of his apartment, leaving it behind for ever. He was changed, and he did not – could not – go back to his old life, could not go back to being a simple Tamaki: now he was a Geass Powered Tamaki and that changed everything. "Geass, the power of kings," Tamaki whispered in the night, "Does that make me a king, too? It should. King of Japan has a nice ring to it, a certain…"

"Adventure, a certain sense of adventure," said a familiar voice from behind him. He turned and gazed into the beautiful eyes of the Witch with Green Hair. She was beautiful, dressed in her white gowns and holding a doll from a pizza store Tamaki vaguely recognized. Yes, she liked pizza, the home made ones in the village we lived in, and she used to bake them herself from time to time, and share them with me. The sight of the doll brought back an ocean of nostalgia and intense feeling. For one second, Tamaki wondered if he would hug her, he wanted to, wanted to kiss her and touch her.

"You have always thirsted for adventure, Tamaki," she said, "And I have given you the ability to seek that adventure of yours, the one you have always lusted after." She leaned forward and her eyes flashed dangerously, as if she would kill him without pause or hesitance if it achieved her goals. Tamaki thought she was a bitch, then, but he didn't say anything aloud, because he was suddenly scared of her.

"Don't forget our contract," she hissed at him, her eyes narrowed, her grip on the doll tightening before she threw the object at Tamaki's feet.

Then she walked away and vanished. Tamaki stood there for a long time, staring at the doll she had left behind on the ground. He picked it up, stared at it, and then threw it away again.

And then he picked it up and walked away.

The quote by Zhao was a simple one, just a sentence long and seemed to be layered with multiple meanings. Tamaki had heard things about Zhao the peace maker from Malaysia, strange things, strange stories and incidents because Zhao had always been a strange man. To understand the quote of Zhao that rested on a faded billboard in front of a warehouse used by the Black Knights as a home base was to understand the man himself. And the man was larger than life.

One of his stories, one that Tamaki particularly enjoyed since it was Oghi who had told it to him, and Oghi had heard it from Kallen's brother, the original leader and founder of the Senjuki rebels, as they had called themselves way back when they were high schoolers who used to think they were tough guys and better than any Britannian could ever hope to be, resonated in his mind. The story was strange, almost psychedelic to the listener. It discussed Zhao's trip to Japan, when he wanted to form an alliance with Malaysia, a tiny country that rested between China and the extremely large territory of Britannia. Since those days, Britannia's territory had grown ever larger, while Malaysia's had decreased significantly. It was an important country to China because it acted as a buffer between Britannia on the front, EU to the side, and China dead center surrounded – on the back of it was Japan and India, both conquered by Britannia ten years later.

The Chinese did not want an alliance to be formed between Zhao and Japan, because then they would be surrounded by an ever stronger force, two big countries on their borders lusting for their land was enough, but a Japan Malaysia alliance might be a little too much for the Chinese military, which was still extremely large because of their high population.

Tamaki remembered the way Oghi told the story, when they had gotten their first knighmare. The group was only six in total, and they had just bought a knightmare from money saved up by all six, and a private investor whom only Kallen's brother knew about. He did not discuss it, and the secret identity of the investor who first gave the money to form the Senjuki rebels died with him. They were surrounding a camp fire, deep in a forest near the Okasaga Mountains that would take them – if they traveled far enough and fast enough – right between an important traveling shipment of cloth, one that had been made by Japanese hands and was traveling to Britannia. It was a small thing, just a bit of cloth, but they wanted to do something important, something that mattered, and Oghi had said laughingly, "What matters more than art?" Then he told his story while they ate marshmallows, drank coca cola, and had the great tasting dollar and ten cent chocolates that were really cheap and really filling. Tamaki remembered the chocolates first, and then he remembered the story that went with the quote. The chocolates were juicy, that was hard to find in chocolates. Most were dry and tough to chew, but these ones wrapped in a yellow tin foil paper that had no brands on it whatsoever, just a plain yellow paper wrapped around a chocolate bar as big as Tamaki's hands were the most delicious chocolates he had ever eaten (oh so juicy, said Tamaki once a few months later when they were in a similar position, but that was a story for another day), and he had been the one to buy a whole case – ten bars - for their "pot luck" in the forest, the night before they would do their first attack. Kallen's brother operated the Knightmare for that job, and everyone was fine with that because he had the balls and the skills for it, but Tamaki was the one who brought the chocolate and everybody thought it was great. So he remembered the chocolates and then Oghi told his story while they were eating their chocolates the night before their first attack on Japanese made cloth that would not fall into Britannia's hands if they had something to say about it, and it went something like this.

Zhao was a man of many talents; everyone knew that and everyone admired him for it. He had grown up in a tiny Malaysian village deep center, away from all the war. It was a rural area, where the villagers made oats to be packaged and sent to the soldiers who were fighting Britannia. The Britannians never did make the entire country an Area, but they got a huge chunk of it before backing off – and that was only due to the pressure EU had put on the Britannians backside in Russia. Zhao went to the village school; it was a one room chapel that was also used as the church on Sundays. In the school everyone under the age of thirteen went there, all gathered together early in the morning on wooden creaky seats with their small black chalk boards in their hands – made by North Road Inc., a Britannian company - and a chalk or two with them, as well as a dirty rag for when they needed to erase. Chalk was cheap and everyone was poor.

There were buckets of water too, for when their hands got too dry writing with the chalk and they wanted to wash it. The teacher, Mrs. Wong did not allow them to leave, not even for the washroom, so for the whole four hours they had to spend in the one room village school; they had to hold their piss and poo. That was discipline in itself, but Mrs. Wong also did not allow idle chatter. Zhao went there when Mrs. Wong was old and ailing, dying of cancer of the throat. She still taught but her voice was hoarse and she did not possess the same command as before. But everyone knew she was dying and the students respected her for it, not for anything she did, just for the fact that she was dying.

Mrs. Wong really loved Zhao as a student: mind as quick as a hawk in flight, voice as soft and melodious as a musician and hands nimble and fast. He excelled in mathematics, which was his subject of expertise even after he was hired to be a diplomat, and told everyone he could find that he would be an engineer someday. That did not work out. He left the village school at the age of eleven, having read all the books in the library near the back of the Chapel – only two shelves worth of books on a variety of subjects, but his friends said he had memorized the books and was smarter than Mrs. Wong even. Working at his family fields as a farmer perhaps hardened him to the real facts of life because he did not joke around much after that but he did invent three machines made out of straw, wood and string. One of them was useful for irrigation and helped the entire village make ten percent more produce per quarter after machines of the same type had been installed in all the farming fields. Zhao occupied himself with his machines, and left the farming up to his family. The day came when he was twenty years old, on his birthday that he received an enormous present.

Mrs. Wong had saved up a fortune from her government pay checks for being a teacher and she gave it all to Zhao in her will, told him that he needed to use it to help others, so that's what he did, he used it with the intent of being of service to his country, because he was raised as a patriot by his father and mother and two older brothers, who were farmers through and through. He used the money to buy a government position – because the government was poor and they rarely hired on basis of talent alone, certainly not a farmer boy – and quickly got promoted until he was chief diplomat. Not an engineer like he wanted to be, but a diplomat instead because he had a way with people, could pierce through their souls and give them everything they wanted while giving up nothing important.

Tamaki would later wonder if Zhao also had the power of Geass when they would form their own little alliance, but Zhao would never tell him or show him.

The day came when the government sent him to Japan.

And there he found a woman.

She was bright, just as much as him, and certainly as confident and sure. Her name was Yuun and she loved to draw. Her subject of expertise was art, so Zhao and Yuun made a balanced pair, because math and art were opposites. Zhao said they were complimentary (because he had an enginner's mind), but Yuun insisted they were opposites –

"Just get to the point already, Oghi!" Tamaki had shouted then when Oghi was practically boring them with the life story of Zhao, whom he must have admired greatly. Tamaki wished he had not said it as he came toward the same billboard chicken and egg and Zhao's quote. He had walked there and he had not noticed it, lost in his thoughts of the camp fire and the smoke of the pine wood, great tasting chocolates and coca cola and Oghi's story.

A dead man's story needed to be respected.

Tamaki stared at the quote, and read it aloud to himself on that cold dark night as he stood in front of the home base of the Black Knights. Nobody was here right now, that was fine, and it was just a meeting ground anyways.

"Always without desire we must be found,

If the deep mystery we would sound,

But if desire within us be,

Its outer fringe is all we shall see."

Suddenly Tamaki understood, the quote as well as the story of Zhao and Yuun and how they had formed the Japanese Malaysian alliance, Yuun being the Prime Minister Kururugi's sister. They stood against assassins sent by China – though nobody admitted it was, as that would cause an international incident that would be bad for everybody involved – and fire sent by the populations of both countries who were unhappy with the Alliance since it meant sharing their wealth. Zhao had said this quote in his speech to the nation of Japan, how if they wanted to make a better world they would have to give up their own petty desires and work for the greater good, and Yuun had painted a portrait of Japan itself, a multicoloured thing with people in various walks of life living happily, it was decidedly Japanese and good enough to attract the attention of the entire world, living together and holding hands, one earth and one people, and all the other peace stuff that Tamaki had never gotten before, nor was he interested in before… before the Geass happened.

Tamaki understood now.

He had to work for the greater good: no more petty desires. He was a vessel for the universe, not for the Witch like he had assumed before. The Witch was also a tool of the great universe, and he was the one with the power to change things. A tear fell out of his eye. He thought he had lost the ability to cry after Japan was conquered.

"I'm going to help," he said and he said it to the whole world, because that was Tamaki, always thinking big but without anything to back up his words. Now he had something, he had Geass. He could change identities and go places where no other Japanese could.

"If you want to help, buy me a pizza," The Witch with Green Hair said beside him after she caught up with him in her loafing lazy gait.

Tamaki turned toward her and let out a roaring laugh. The Witch looked bemused.


AN: The quote was from tao te ching, a small philosophy booklet written by some Chinese dude in the sixth or fourth century, nobody really knows. I first came across it when I was in grade eleven (when I used to go to a small town high school that was only slightly better than Zhao's village school), an audio recording I downloaded off some website I forget about now, and its always stuck with me. I remember when I used to walk around in this forest near my house, sometimes with a joint in my pocket and a lighter in the other, track recording playing in my ears from a twenty dollar mp3 player (I'm as cheap as they come), and I would think to myself, damn this is some good shit. I may have been talking about the joint or the recording; my memory is a little blurry. My friend always liked hard rock, I didn't, and he said I needed to stop listening to it over and over (the audio book) because it will make me go crazy. Maybe he was right; that was some good shit and I just wanted to recollect it, put it in this story.

I was aiming for this chapter to exceed ten thousand words, like all the chapters for this story but I figure this is a good spot to end it. I know the chapter wasn't entirely focused on Lelouch but that's just the way the wheel rolls (down hill) and Tamaki does play an important role as a Geass user in this story. But I won't be giving further hints about the future of Tamaki and Zhao, cuz I like to hold my cards close to my heart, so no peepers allowed eh. Anyways I have a week off to chill around, read "mah bookz" and hopefully attempt to clean my room, work out, etc: the normal everyday boring stuff that one seems to have to do in order to live a healthy life. And I have to say, writing is one of them, an important part of my identity, my hobby – an extracurricular interest. Of course writing fan fiction is frowned upon, even more than writing itself but I'm just writing for practice anyways and I am really eager to actually do this project right.

NO CODE – I first wanted to write this story because there weren't many Code Geass fics available, at least not many that were lengthy and I've always had problems with sticking to a story and finishing it. The only one I did finish was Accident of Time, a Naruto fic that's about sixty thousand words. I did it by writing 10k word chapters, which really helps I think, maybe it's a psychology thing but it helped me stick to the track, focus and write. So if you're wondering why the chapters are so goddamn long as you're reading, that's probably why. I am not really expecting a lot of reviews – when have I ever? – but it would be nice to have some anyways. Code Geass has a pretty small fan base compared to other fandoms like Harry Potter or Naruto, so if you're reading this then help a guy out and review his story.