AN: Here we go, Part 2!

To anon, nice work picking that up! That was intentional, actually; a lot of what I wrote in that paragraph was inspired by the political extremism that occurred as a result of the economic instability of the Weimar Republic.

To Alucard-sama, I don't speak Spanish but if the account google translate gave me is correct, then I hope this lives up to your expectations!

Peace Through Hatred

Part 2

xXx

(West Coast of Honshu Island, Japan)

Jialiu Yao absently rubbed her eyes tiredly, barely stifling a yawn. Catching herself in the act, the 35-year old assistant glanced around nervously, making sure that no one had noticed her momentary lapse in discipline.

The eve of war was not a time to be seen showing personal weakness, especially while surrounded by some of the most powerful figures in the USC.

The Taures-Class Battleship hovered in the sky above Akatsuki Valley, its presence mirrored by a similarly sized Japanese flagship several kilometers away. Below, two great armies of Knightmares silently faced off with eachother. Even from such extreme distance, Jialiu could see individual people on each side moving around, tiny specks buzzing frantically around the unmoving rows of great metal war machines.

Between the two sides lay an area of low scrubland, relatively untouched by human hands. An area that was about to become a battleground, stained by the blood of thousands.

Stranding around her on the bridge of the SS Shengli were the cream of China's military. Standing several meters to her left, surrounded by an honour guard even now, was Prime Minister Huang Xiao himself. The man was unnaturally thin, unhealthily so even, with long black hair and a cultured, handsome face. His steel-grey eyes belied his somewhat sickly appearance, burning with a a furious passion.

Despite herself, Jialiu couldn't suppress the treasonous thoughts which bubbled up from the crevices of her mind. This war seemed... she mulled over the correct word for a moment... pointless. Their invasion of Japan could very well draw the ire of the world upon them, and all for four tiny islands? No matter which was she put it, it wasn't worth the thousands of Chinese lives that would be spent in the process.

Still, the die had been cast. The demands that Minister Xiao had made of Japan were completely untenable, and nothing but a flimsy excuse to mount an invasion. And here they were, in Japanese territory, about to engage in the first battle of a war that could throw the whole world into chaos. And... Wait...

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Jialiu noticed that the people around her were talking. Loudly.

"Is that a transport?"

"It looks unarmoured, is it one of ours?"

"What's it doing?"

Looking around for a second, Jialiu saw that people were pointing to an area in the middle of what was about to become a battlefield. Driving down a dirt track that ran through the scrub, seemingly without a care in the world, was a large, white truck. The transport was unadorned with any sigil and looked about large enough to carry maybe a half-dozen Knightmare frames.

Jialiu shook her head in utter bewilderment. Was it some sort of enemy attack? Was it some sort of last-ditch peace attempt? Even if it were filled with civilians, neither side was likely to call off their attack long enough for it to get out of the danger zone.

As she watched, the truck ground to a halt, on a grassy hill situated directly between the two sides. A hatch in the roof opened, and two specks climbed out, unidentifiable at the extreme range. One of the figures might have been carrying something large and bulky, but she couldn't tell for sure.

And then a voice began echoing from every speaker in the ship, a voice that chilled her to her very bones.

"Greetings, world. The time for my return has come."

No.

Oh God, No.

Please, not him. Anything but him.

Every screen flickered and died, to be replaced by the face of the devil.

"I am the 99th Emperor of Brittania, Lelouch vi Brittania, and I have come to take this world back for my own!"

The occupants of the SS Shengli stood frozen in shock, each in their own way remembering the terror of the rule of the Demon Emperor. Lelouch was dressed in clothes identical to those he had been dressed in when he had died, a resplendent white coat trimmed with gold. His arms were outstretched, as if to receive applause from an imaginary crowd.

The Emperor grinned viciously, "I hope you have enjoyed this demonstration of my absolute power. I am the Demon Emperor! Harbinger of Chaos! With a mere thought, I can turn countries against eachother!"

Jialiu began shaking. She wasn't the only one. Many of the men and women around her were quivering involuntarily with rage and hatred, consumed by memories of the cruelty and humiliation that the Demon Emperor had put their proud country through.

"I have driven the countries of China and Japan against eachother! I must thank my loyal slaves, Naoki Fumiya and Huang Xiao, you have served me well! Unfortunately, you are no longer needed." On the screen, the Emperor raised a careless hand and clicked his fingers at the camera.

Huang Xiao span round to the people gathered around him, mouth opening in protest. Then came a shattering of glass, and Xiao's head exploded in a shower of blood. Jialiu screamed.

Lelouch's voice continued to come from every possible direction, "I address my next words to Zero alone. You stole my Empire, my rightful throne, from me! You saved my enemies from their deaths! I had to crawl back from the very precipice of death, all thanks to your actions!"

The Demon Emperor reached down and violently pulled the collar of his clothing down. Many of the people on the ship gasped. The man's otherwise smooth skin was marred by a patchwork of brutal, jagged scars. Directly above where his heart would be was an ugly-looking square of grey metal embedded with blinking lights, obviously some piece of biomechanical technology.

"In return, I am going to take this world from you! You believe that the people of this word can live in peace, in harmony?" Lelouch spat disdainfully. "I will prove you wrong, Zero! I will reveal the true nature of humanity to you!

The Demon Emperor's grin became a feral sneer, flecks of spittle flying out of his mouth as he ranted madly. "I will drive the people of this world into bloody, useless war! I will not stop until father has turned against child, brother against sister! I will tear away this peaceful delusion, and I will draw on the hatred, the racism, the cruelty that permeates every facet of humanity! I will always be in the shadows, manipulating your governments into following the bloody path of the Demon Emperor! And then, when I have revealed that every single human on this planet is nothing but a slave to their own hatred and anger, I will put a bullet in the brain of Empress Nunnally, and I then I will tear you apart!"

Lelouch began laughing, an animalistic howl of ecstatic depravity tearing from his throat into the heavens above.

xxx

From her position inside the Guren, Kallen Kozuki was shivering violently as her entire world collapsed around her.

She'd thought she'd figured it out, that she knew the truth. She had been so sure that Lelouch hadn't been the evil being that he had imitated, that he'd done everything for the good of the world. Only there was no imitation, no pretense. Lelouch had manipulated her once again. He'd driven two countries to the very point of war, sacrificing dozens of lives in the process, merely to display his own power! He really was the villain he pretended to be.

She gnashed her teeth. She would not be fooled by him again!

A voice came over the primary communications channel, a voice she recognized as belonging to Prime Minister Ogi. She could hear the raw anger in his voice. "All units, we are temporarily ceasing hostilities with the United States of China. Chancellor Naoki Fumiya has been murdered. You are instructed to terminate the former Emperor."

Another voice, one she didn't recognize, "But sir, the Chinese..."

A third, that she recognized as belonging to Shinichiro Tamaki, cut in, "Screw the goddamn Chinese! Kill the Demon Emperor! Take his goddamn head!"

The communications channel was filled with voices of support, all pervaded by pure, naked hatred. Kallen almost considered joining them.

Wait... Temporarily cease hostilities?

Realization struck her like a thunderbolt. They were stopping hostilities with the Chinese. The main warmonger in Japan's government, Fumiya had been killed. The hatred was...

Oh god. Oh god no. He wasn't... He couldn't be...

xXx

(Tokyo, Brittanian Embassy)

No! Her brother had already sacrificed himself for the world once!

Nunally sat, frozen in shock, as the people around her burst into a flurry of action. He was doing it again! When she'd touched him in his final moments, she had seen what his plans were, and he had been planning to die! Now the whole world would drive itself into a frenzy of hatred again, and all of it would be once more focused on her brother.

Some cold, rational part of her brain couldn't help but admire the brilliance of Lelouch's stratagem. He was giving the people of the world a common enemy, something which would unite them like nothing else. When he escaped from Akatsuki Valley (as she was sure he would), Japan and China would almost certainly declare a cease-fire in order to hunt him down, the animosity between them melting away in the face of the abhorrence they would feel at Lelouch's very existence.

Oh, but it was more than that. Her brother had, by all accounts, murdered Naoki Fumiya and Huang Xiao, the main initiators of the conflict, and had claimed their actions as his own. When this was found to be true (and she had no doubt it would be), the people of the world would see Lelouch in every corner, in every shadow. He would become a universal scapegoat for every act of war or violence. Any time a leader advocated war, crowds would scream Demon Emperor.

Lelouch had challenged the world to remain peaceful. It really was an audacious move; assuming that people would pursue a path of peace as a means to spite the man who had declared himself a harbinger of conflict. And he had even named both her and Zero personally. By singling them out as his enemies, he had made them the champions of mankind!

A brilliant strategy indeed, but one that would forever come at the cost of her brother's happiness. Now that he had revealed his existence, the world would never stop hunting him.

Looking up at the footage from the battlefield, she saw that the transport had split open to reveal a gigantic Knightmare frame, larger than any she had ever seen before.

Somehow, she wasn't even surprised.

xXx

(Akatsuki Valley)

In all the chaos, no one noticed two helmeted Japanese soldiers slip off the battlefield and into the wilderness.

The ability to transfer memories via touch really was a useful ability. Explain his existence to the slightly-unhinged Nina hadn't been something he had been looking forward to in the least. Transferring certain memories encapsulating his plan and the reason for his existence, however, was a much simpler task.

Lelouch smiled under his mask. He'd been truly lucky that Nina had been working in secret on a prototype Knightmare, although why she had gone into weapon production after the FLEIJA incident was beyond him. The fake scar work had been top notch, too. The Chinese and Japanese forces would discover that they were going to have to work together to bring that Knightmare down. Once they did, they would find a convicted murderer had been operating the controls, and had put a bullet through his own head.

It had been a scramble to meet the conditions for victory in time, but it had turned out to be a success. While he no longer possessed his Geass, during his time as Emperor he had obedience-Geassed enough people to occupy a small nation. His Geass remained active even after his "death", and as a result he had a network of unknowing allies spread across every nation in the world. And considering that the only Geass-canceler in existence belonged to Jeremiah (who was currently en route from his concealed sniping position), that probably wouldn't be changing anytime soon.

The man operating the Knightmare had been one such reluctant ally, a contingency pilot Lelouch had prepared during his reign. The man had been ordered to minimize loss of human life, and instead focus on causing as much flashy, material damage as possible. It would take them a while to destroy the gigantic Knightmare, and by that time he, Cera and Jeremiah would be long gone. Jeremiah's cybernetic enhancements (combined with a hyper-advanced X2-prototype sniper rifle) had allowed him to assasinate Fumiya and Xiao, at a range impossible to any normal human. The inevitable investigations would find a trail of bribery and corruption leading from both back to one of his dozens of personal bank accounts, this one in his own name. Every act of major conflict henceforth would, with a little meddling on his behalf, be attributed to the Demon Emperor.

He looked to the green-haired figure walking casually beside him, who gave him a thumbs-up. She really was being far too cheerful about this for her own good.

Dying had been hard. But apparently simply dying wasn't going to solve the problem. People forgot too easily. Barely four years after his death, and already the countries of the world had been turning against each-other again.

Living was going to be harder still. The world needed an enemy, a common foe that they would band together against.

He was going to need to have Cera get in contact with Suzaku, who was probably having a panic attack right now. Regrettably, neither he nor Cera had had time to conduct a memory-transfer on him, and he didn't want to try explaining his existence to his somewhat reckless friend over conventional communications. He was going to need his help for his next plan, too. A worldwide detonation of FLEIJA missiles on every continent, averted only at the last minute by a combined committee of nations, led by Zero.

Obviously, the world was going to have to be reminded regularly of his existence.

Plus, he got to live. He supposed it wasn't that bad of a deal.

C.C. began whistling. Lelouch joined her.

xXx

Fin.

I could probably continue this story but I feel it works best as a two-shot, as it would start getting repetitive really quickly.

Did I get the characters right? Maybe I'll try writing Code Geass again sometime.

I hope you enjoyed it. Read and Review!