Zero Total War

by Darridus

This is the story of what would happen if events had spiraled out of control due to a single moment of indecision. Japan goes ahead with it's all of nothing resistance to the last man, and the effects are felt throughout history. This is the story of one man, hell-bent on righting the wrongs of his former homeland, no matter the cost. Rated M for intense violence.

3. Chapter 3 : Web of Deceit

A/N : Sorry for the long wait, readers. Been updating other stories and doing school stuff. In return for your patience, this chapter is a monster. Longest one I've ever written, probably. 18,222 words of Zero Total War, coming right up. My replies to reviews will be at the bottom of the chapter from now on.

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"Zero!" Exclaimed the anchorman. He was sitting at modern aluminum desk facing towards the screen. He wore a pale blue suit with a red tie and horn rimmed glasses. His short blonde hair was combed neatly to one side, and his green eyes were wide and aglow with dignified alarm."That's the name on everyone's mind this morning! As many of our viewers know, an unidentified man appeared on the national emergency broadcast override channel and shockingly murdered the missing Prince Clovis on live television! Such a display of brutality and violence could only be the work of truly depraved individual. According to eyewitness reports, this was the same vile terrorist who kidnapped the prince three days prior to incident while murdering several policemen. Details on just how this madman gained access to the emergency channel have yet to be released by the Area 11 Government, but preliminary statements from General Aleister seem to indicate that the man codenamed 'Zero' had inside help from Number sympathizers…"

The anchorman shuffled his papers around at this point. "After a period of relative peace and stability in the wake of the controversial Proactive Internment Act, this disturbing display of violence has caused serious doubt among even the most ardent supporters of the PIA. Lord Sutler, the Viscount of St. Angelica who had previously been in favor of the PIA, has expressed concern that it may in fact be counterproductive to segregate the Elevens into large congregations of prisons and labor camps if recent events are any indication. General Aleister had this to say in his interview this morning-"

The screen cut to a video of Aleister on the steps of the Viceroy's Palace in Tokyo. He was in the middle of a procession of soldiers and officers, who were presently battering away cameras and microphones and making token attempts at not injuring their fellow Britannians too seriously. One cameraman and reporter duo managed to get past the barricade, and the General found himself facing the panic and scrutiny of the masses. "General Aleister! General! Do you have a statement to make about the pirate broadcast on the emergency channel last evening?!" The enthusiastic reporter got the microphone right in his face, even as the footmen escorting Aleister and his staff tried to pull them back. Aleister was clearly not in control of the situation.

Seeing that he had to make some kind of statement to save face here, Aleister glared into the camera. "The terrorist that appeared on the emergency broadcast override channel will be brought to justice! That was an isolated incident, and there is no indication that our system has been permanently compromised. Technicians have been working around the clock to find the leak that allowed this "Zero" character to access the system in the first place. We are in control of the situation, and security around the camps has been escalated. I repeat, Area 11 is still secure, and still safe for the general population! No more questions!" The footmen finally managed to push back the reporter and his team even as they launched another tirade of questions and pointed queries. The screen cut back to the anchorman at his desk.

He adjusted his glasses and set down his papers. "As you can see, General Aleister assures us here in the homeland that Area 11 is still under control and the Numbers pacified by the system he pushed through the Area Legislature. But we have to wonder as to the reliability of these claims…Is the General being sincere, or is he merely covering for the system he put in place? An ongoing investigation by the BPIA has been launched to determine the truth behind these incidents, and they are currently on their way to Area 11 even as we speak. In the meantime, I think it's best to refer to a local voice. Here's Diethard Reid on-site at Viceroy Prince Clovis' last known location, the scene of what's being called the Grand Opening Memorial Incident."

The screen cut straight to the scene of carnage and wreckage of the Memorial building steps, with Knightpolice and Footmen keeping rubberneckers at a safe distance as Glasgows and military people gathered around the steps, investigating the area. Men in lab-coats and occasionally hazmat gear combed the area for forensic evidence, and a few eyewitnesses had their statements taken by the police.

A man with long blonde hair gathered in a ponytail stood to the left side of the screen. He wore a red turtleneck sweater and a navy-blue suit. His narrow blue eyes gave his face a permanently aloof and condescending visage, and a cleft chin marred his angular jawline."Good morning, Todd. I'm here at the site of what can only be described as a deliberate attack on Britannia by an indeterminate number of violent radicals. Last night's broadcast can add regicide to that list, it seems, as our beloved Viceroy was brutally murdered by a mysterious masked man on live television. The investigation is still ongoing, but Margrave Jeremiah Gottwald has agreed to provide some much needed answers for the situation thus far."

Diethard and the camera panned towards the margrave's imposing figure. He was wearing a typical Knight's gray and maroon uniform, and had dark teal hair and orange eyes. He looked rather unhappy with the situation, but kept it expertly hidden behind a mask of stoic professionalism.

"What can you tell us about what happened here, Lord Jeremiah?" Diethard asked him deferentially. The margrave made no visible response of approval or otherwise, simply answering the question and doing his best to keep his temper in check.

"Obviously we know that a major terrorist attack occurred here on Sunday morning, but our investigation is still in progress." Jeremiah apparently found this fact distasteful, as his face scrunched up in irritation. He continued on after taking a moment to get it together. "I can say that this was a highly organized surprise assault. The Police-" He spat the name out like some kind of poisonous substance "-Were completely unprepared. From what we can gather, the terrorist appeared on some kind of armored helicopter and used experimental weapons to murder the Prince's entire security detail, including four Glasgows and two of the newer Sutherland models." Jeremiah said with a thoughtful look. Doubtlessly, he appreciated the implications of how easily Britannia's supposedly most advanced armored combat unit was neutralized.

The reporter understood as well. "Lord Jeremiah, are we to understand that a weapon capable of going toe-to-toe with our military is in the hands of terrorists?!" If that wasn't a loaded question, Jeremiah didn't know what was. He grimaced in frustration, unable to outright tell the man otherwise without potentially lying on national television. The downside of such publicity was the backlash if you're caught in a lie, especially with all of Britannia sitting on the edge of their seats back in the homeland. The Prince's kidnapping and subsequent assassination had come right out of nowhere, and now it was up to Jeremiah to deal with pesky vultures like these while Aleister covered his ass with the rest of the royal family…

"I…that's inconclusive. The investigation is still underway, and we can't accurately produce any definitive answers or go into detail yet without compromising it." That was obviously a cop out, and this reporter was too determined to just take that and go. Diethard was something of a notable in the journalistic community for his controversial pieces that often go beyond what mainstream media authorities find acceptable. Unfortunately, he was also exceedingly popular both here in Area 11 and back home, so their hands were tied on that front. Unless he did something to really piss off the brass or the OSI, there wasn't any way to remove him without a serious scandal. The intrepid reporter's eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to ask another pointed question on live national broadcast. Fortunately, Jeremiah beat him to the punch. He had just come up with an idea.

Something the general said had come to mind. The Prince was kidnapped by a man in a mask, according to eyewitness testimony. When prompted, almost 81% of them recognized the man on the emergency channel last night as the same terrorist who personally kidnapped Prince Clovis. Perhaps there was a way to spin this without completely stunting his career or making the military look incompetent.

"There is one last statement that I can make." He offered, as if throwing the reporter a bone. Diethard was intrigued, by the look of his raised eyebrow. The reporter said nothing and merely gestured to his cameraman in some kind of baseball-style hand signal. Jeremiah took a deep breath "We believe that the terrorist in question was not, in fact, a number. His possession of technologically advanced equipment and resources, as well as his suspicious access to the emergency channel, support this theory. We believe-" He emphasized this last statement, and he knew from experience that this was what would be burned into the memories of all the millions of people watching "That this was an inside job, not the work of foreign terrorists. We believe the incident in question was perpetrated by radical elements within the Britannian citizenry. Given the rhetoric of the traitorous and illegal broadcast last night, it seems all but certain. There's no credible evidence at all that suggests the numbers are capable of something like this. I cannot stress that fact enough. Whoever did this thing had resources, information, and a raw cunning unlike anything the numbers have ever demonstrated. We are investigating the matter to the utmost intent both here and in the camps, believe me, but all evidence points to a domestic root for these so-called "terrorist" attacks…"

"There is treachery afoot in Area Eleven, and we will bring this murdering rebel to justice. Anyone who aids or abets this criminal will be shot like the dogs they are, be they a Number or a traitor themselves." Jeremiah continued, lightly smacking his fist into his other palm. With that one little statement, a tide of trouble was certain to brew. The cameraman deactivated his recorder and Diethard's eyes were wide in surprise, no doubt at the road Jeremiah had chosen to take. He had almost certainly just stirred up a shit-storm, but he was probably personally safe, for now.

---

"Is it true?" Asked a young man, with fiery red hair and an impeccable uniform. It was the customary garb for a Knight, a cross between the Spartan and the luxurious. It seems contradictory, but the man's nature was surely much more certain. He had schooled features, and narrow green eyes with a focus only a true soldier could possess centered on their target.

Leonhardt Steiner, a distinguished Knight and esteemed member of the Glinda Knights asked his commanding officer.

In turn, Oldrin Zevron, seated at her desk in her office aboard the Granberry Airship, nodded grimly. She didn't take her eyes off the documents before her, seemingly engrossed in her work. Leonhardt patiently waited for her to respond verbally.

"Yes." She affirmed. "The Princess's request has been granted, and Toto's setting a course for Tokyo as we speak." She flattened out the papers uniformly, and turned to regard Leonhardt coolly. The Knight merely stood there, stoically awaiting further elaboration. He had yet to be dismissed, so he assumed there was more to it than that.

"With Chief General Cornelia otherwise occupied mopping up Area 17 and the majority of the army hunkered down in Spain, we're pretty much the only veteran unit ready to deal with this sort of threat. Most of the Knights in Area 11 are just green, jumped-up Squires. They've never had to deal with real terrorists before now. Thanks to Aleister and his damned concentration camps, all his Knights are good for is rattling sabers at the Chinese. Now, when this "Zero" character he's been prattling on about turns up, no one has any idea of what to do." She smiled sardonically for a moment at that. "Well, except call for us, of course. But I suppose that's what we were founded for." Leonhardt nodded.

"Yeah, I suppose so. I just hope Marrybell isn't to broken up over this…I mean, she's lost family to scum like this before…" Their countenances turned dark at the mention of the mel Britannia family's fate. It had been many years ago, but it still stung to think of the way their friend's family was taken from her.

Oldrin dispelled his concerns with a dismissive wave of her wrist a moment later. She, too, had been momentarily drifting in memoriam of the lives lost, but the moment passed. "I... wouldn't worry about that. Royals tend to be rather distant with their siblings in most cases if they were raised apart. I don't think Mary will be that upset over Clovis. At least...not like before. Still…" She considered for a moment, setting down her paperwork with a lost look on her face. "This is the third half-sibling Area 11 has taken from her. Perhaps that's why she pushed so hard to get us transferred there."

It was true. Area Eleven had been by far the bloodiest conquest the Empire had taken in recent memory. Even with a well-entrenched bullwark against the Chinese and the richest supply of Sakuradite in the world to show for it, the Second Pacific War could only be called a Pyrrhic victory at best. The natives had forced Britannia to pay for every beachhead, hill, mountain, and city in the blood of their soldiers. With their steadfast refusal to surrender in favor of inflicting the maximum amount of bloodshed on both sides, the Elevens had taken much from Britannia. Billions of pounds in hardware and damages, millions of injured, and thousands dead. Three of those deaths had been from the Royal Family itself, counting the most recent development with this 'Zero' person. Whether they were a number or a traitor was beside the point; Clovis' blood now ran through the rivers of Area Eleven along with his half-siblings from almost three years ago. From what Leonhardt had heard, Prince and Princess vi Britannia had been brutally murdered as hostages by the Elevens when the Emperor ordered the invasion.

Even today, those islands were known as 'Bloody Eleven' by some of Britannia's most hardened military veterans. Leonhardt personally knew more than one man who still woke up screaming at night, muttering incoherently about monsters who hid in the trees. Having never served there himself, Leonhardt had no perspective on how bad the conditions were, but the raw numbers spoke for themselves. Even in the Knightmare Corps, almost everyone who'd been around back then knew someone who'd been killed fighting the Elevens.

"Maybe you're right…" Leonhardt agreed. The two noble Knights of the Glinda Knights concluded their business and Leonhardt went to go check on his Knightmare. Oldrin got back to her papers in preparation for their impending trip abroad.

---

"What do you make of this, little brother?" A small child asked the bulky old man standing before him. He looked away from the child, out into a sea of orange clouds and light below. They stood upon a platform of polished obsidian, seemingly floating up above in space. An endless staircase led down from the platform, which held a multitude of obelisks for some forgotten god.

Emperor Charles vi Britannia turned back upon his brother dispassionately. "…I believe this Zero character is cleverer than he appears." He allowed. It was true enough, he supposed, when the man made such a fool of himself with that ridiculous speech.

It had been a populist, anarchist, revolutionary abomination. It made no sense upon examination by an analytical mind; it twisted and turned with no clear goal or purpose. The reference to that 17th Century catholic extremist was mildly amusing, but ultimately pointless. He doubted whether that spiel about meeting on a predetermined date and time was genuine. If it was, then Charles was seriously overestimating the man. Either way, he'd have Schneizel set the Home Guard on the lookout next November.

Getting back to the speech...It was confusing at best, asserting itself with a fiery passion that belied the intelligence and precision implied by the speaker's diction. But it never capitalizing on it's position with demands. It was a masterfully crafted little essay on why Britannians were all bad, bad people, but in the end that was all it was. It did nothing but make itself flashy and memorable, with a side-serving of regicide for flavor. It would not make a government, forge a nation, or even replace one. All it could do was fire up the hellish passions of the repressed violent and rebellious instincts of the numbers. To Britannia, it was a vague menace, a boogeyman. Worse, all the words came from the mouth of someone positively oozing Britannian cultural eccentricities. He was almost like a caricature of the worst aspects of the aristocracy; arrogant, garish, over-entitled, and violent. To Charles, it was all just the ramblings of some petulant child, likely a dangerously naive or impressively manipulative lordling or some such. But to the common masses, it was different – The threat was all the more potent because it came from within. It woke up something animal, primal even, in the entire body of the Britannian psyche.

A dark grin came to the emperor's face. That consequence served Zero's apparent intentions, of course. One thing-and only one thing, really- was clear about the man. He and his were against Britannia. They sought to kill Britannian soldiers, murder Britannia's leaders, and strike terror into the hearts of the Britannian people. With this farce of his, Zero could check all three of those off his to-do list, at least on the scale he was working on for now.

Aside from that fact, though, Zero was an enigma. Even to someone like Charles, who enjoyed had decidedly supernatural methods of intelligence gathering. It was all for naught. No one in his employ, alive or dead – Clovis included – had any idea who Zero was besides the man himself. That bespoke of a meticulousness and care that could only be called dangerous. Still, nothing was certain.

Charles didn't believe for one second that Zero was acting alone. No…he was probably just a mouthpiece. A figurehead…a symbol. The mask made sense, then. It wasn't the man underneath that mattered, that could be anyone. No. It was the mask itself that captivated the people's fear and hope and awe all at once. A murky facade to hide all of the lies afoot underneath. To keep their true intentions shrouded in the veil of some extremist drivel while the people they claimed to fight for suffered all the more for it. Hideous, as all masks ultimately were.

Why hide behind a mask, after all, unless you were ashamed of what was hidden underneath? Mask's could be broken, true. But they could also be rebuilt, remade. Perhaps reforged to be even stronger than the original. So even if this Zero was quietly killed by his most skilled assassins, there was a high probability that someone else-possibly someone even more dangerous- would don the mask of rebellion. Charles ground his teeth in annoyance. When a man becomes a symbol-of rebellion, of war, of peace, of anything, really- he metaphorically sheds his mortality. And that was something that Charles could not allow.

"Clever, brother? From what I can tell he's just the same as any other terrorist…albeit one with a certain absurd flare." V.V. shrugged his shoulders and rolled magenta eyes. He proceeded to mock the terrorist leader further. "I mean…killing your son on live television like that. Not only did he inflame the people against his cause, he threw away a powerful bargaining chip." V.V. smiled lackadaisically. "What a simple man.

The ancient boy turned around then, beginning the long trek back down the stairs of the Thought Elevator. Before leaving, though, he had a parting shot to send.

"Give Clovis my regards, by the way."

---

Classrooms, while under ordinary circumstances one of the most banal locations Lelouch was forced to waste his time in, did serve one purpose. They were an excellent resource for the determination of public sentiment in the immediate wake of a major disaster or change. A social petri dish, if you will.

To understand this, one must understand the basics of Britannian academic culture. In most of the world's schools, discipline was strictly enforced in the classroom and students would be expected to maintain the silence and composure demanded by an orderly educational system. Not so in Britannia or her colonies.

It was practically a madhouse, to take a page from the common vernacular. While Lelouch didn't risk a grin that might ruin literally every moment of careful planning up to this point, he did nonchalantly sweep his gaze across the room while the professor was preoccupied attempting to gently cajole the students into order.

Ashford Academy was especially notorious for this sort of thing. The problem with Britannian education, you see, is that it gives the professor virtually no power over the students. Most of academia was strictly in the field of 'commoner work' (The notable exceptions being a few prestigious fields held in high regard by the royal family and the aristocracy in general for military purposes, such as military engineering or theoretical physics). Even in those few areas of study deemed 'worthy' by the blue bloods, it was still unseemly for a 'noble' of any sort to get his hands dirty by actually participating in them. Rather, they simply kept small cadres of skilled scientists and designers in their employ, taking credit for their achievements on the basis of patronization. The Royal Family in particular was notorious for this; if the official reports were to be believed, Guinevere was not only a particle physicist, but an expert mathematician. Impressive, considering that the few times she had interacted with Lelouch, she came off as a brainless hedonist. Even back then, he had found the woman deplorable.

Needless to say, there were those in the 'lowlier' fields of study who were not pleased with the situation. Unlike, common laborers or Numbers, however, Britannia's intelligentsia actually had leverage to better their position if given the opportunity. Therefore, like all commoner-controlled institutions, the aristocracy was always finding new ways to keep Academia under their thumb. It didn't help that teaching had never been a high-income occupation, and therefore professors found it difficult to acquire wealth. Combine all this together with 'elite' schools like the Academy, and you had poor commoners teaching the sons and daughters of the upper class, some of whom were the heirs to noble titles or lands. It came as no surprise to Lelouch, then, that Mr. Brotch was always very sparing in his discipline, especially to those children whose parents could have him sacked from his position, blacklisted from every institution of learning in the Empire, and summarily executed by hanging. All with a single telephone conversation. The same was true for every other teacher in the academy, thus fostering an atmosphere with a distinct lack of proper academic discipline of any kind.

Unsurprisingly, practically no one was properly seated, save for Lelouch himself. He had a book raised up to his face, as he always did. It was a text on advanced Special Effects and cinematic illusion that had been quite useful the other night. But he wasn't really reading it, for once. Instead, he focused his attention on his schoolmates, for once.

Chaos. He barely resisted the urge to indulge in a satisfied smirk. Students were up out of their desks and either huddled in tightly knit circles or wandering around the room, gossiping and loudly blathering their opinions on a single topic that dominated all of the conversation in the room. The man the authorities were calling "Zero".

It was a clever name he had invented for himself, and he let a tiny surge of pride burst out before he mercilessly quashed it. It wouldn't do to let emotions like that get in the way of his goals. But there was nothing wrong with re-examining past accomplishments to draw inspiration for future plans.

Zero had been the name he had chosen for his rebel persona. Or, more precisely, it was the name that he had given to the death-mask that he would wear when he fought Britannia. A symbol, to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies and draw followers to his cause. That was the next phase of the plan, anyways. His observations in this classroom would help him determine the best way to go about it. So he listened to the lordlings as they bleated about what was on the telly this morning.

"…And he was wearing this really scary black mask!" Exclaimed Rivalz Cardemonde, the 'class clown'. He had been elected to the student council mostly for his social connections to the other members, and willingness to have all of the actual work heaped upon him. A small group of students were gathered around Rivalz, in order to discuss the recent happenings. Lelouch wouldn't actually observe them visually to avoid attracting unwelcome interest, but he could hear them just fine from where he sat off to the side.

"You think it might just be…y'know, a hoax, or something?" Asked one asinine student. Conner Hopkins. Lelouch had overheard one of the teachers mentioning that he received average marks in most of the more cerebral subjects, but excelled at athletics. He liked to think of himself as one of the 'in' crowd, but the reality of it was that Lelouch had only ever seen him engaging in conversation with Cardemonde and two or three other students, who from what Lelouch could gather was more of a 'take-all-comers' sort of person. As evidenced by his inane query, he wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

"No way." Gerald Kent, another boy in their class replied. "Were you even watching it? That was definitely the real Prince Clovis, no mistake. And he got shot, too…That's way too much for a practical joke." His reasoning was sound, but irrelevant. No useful data from that one.

"Yeah, but what was he even talking about? I mean…He was saying bad things about the Emperor, man. I didn't think anyone could get away with that, even on Live Television!" The fourth and final contributor to that particular circle of discussion was Ernest Feldman, a junior and the oldest boy in the class. He had been forced to repeat English 2, for remedial purposes.

"And he shot the Viceroy!" Cardemonde reminded them all emphatically. "There'd be hell to pay just for what he was saying alone… But to assassinate a member of the royal family on TV takes some serious stones." He concluded.

"You sound almost like you admire this traitor." A girl from across the room seethed, and the four boys turned to look at her. Ah, yes, here it came.

Hilda Parkinson was the daughter of an officer in the Britannian military. She would obviously have anti-Zero opinions, given her family's background. Lelouch understood that she came from a long line of soldiers, and planned to attend a prestigious military academy in the homeland when she graduated from Ashford. He hadn't actually done any research into her background, of course; such information was only marginally relevant to his purposes. Her father was unlikely to be of a suitably high rank to make kidnapping her worthwhile, so Parkinson was more or less off his radar unless she was being particularly pedantic as she sang praises to the military. No, he knew about her background due to her tendency to boast whenever the oppurtunity arose. Parkinson was a very vindictive and prideful girl, in other words well suited for the Britannian military.

"It's not like that!" Cardemonde said defensively. His tone of voice indicated that Cardemonde seemed to think that he was in hot water, for some reason. It wasn't as if Parkinson actually had the authority to arrest someone, family connections or no.

The nature of Britannian surveillance was different from traditional police state controls – They monitored things from the top down. Noblemen and the like generally had much more to fear from the OSI than mere commoners like Cardemonde. If someone at court so much as looked at a Royal funnily, they could expect to have their affairs audited and likely be brought up on charges for a slap or two on the wrist. More serious offenses would likely lead to extrajudicial incarceration, interrogation, and execution. All in the name of 'National Security' and 'Britannian Honor'. However, a commoner could get away with much more due to the simple fact that the OSI was unlikely to bother with them unless they made a scene. Writing an anti-nationalist blog or saying the wrong thing on Television could get you secretly killed no matter who you were, but bitching out the government or even the aristocracy wouldn't automatically set the hounds on a commoner unless they did it in a very public setting.

"Jeez, we were just talking about last night's news. No need to get worked up over it. Everyone must've seen it by now, right?" He swept his gaze around the room hastily, looking this way and that. Sure enough, their group was far from the only one engaged in conversation about the enigmatic 'Zero.'

"What do you think he meant by 'New World Order'?" Kent asked, after Cardemonde finished placating Parkinson and their conversation resumed beside Lelouch's desk. Ernest scratched his head in thought, while Connor replied.

"No clue. It sounds like he's planning a…a revolution, or something. Like he wants to overthrow the government and take over the country. And it really sounded like he wanted everyone to...to...I dunno, pick a side, or something? Like we're gonna suddenly turn into terrorists and join his team to help fight Britannia? Heh…the guy must be nuts!" Hopkins tried to laugh it off nervously at the end, wary of drawing Parkinson's ire any further. But Lelouch's curiosity was sated. He had hit the nail on the head, more or less. He supposed that must have made the boy uncomfortable when he came to that realization.

"Was that ever really in doubt?" Rivalz asked thoughtfully. "I mean, he must know there's no way he's gonna survive this. I give him maybe a month before the OSI or the BPIA or some kind of super secret spec-ops Knights tracks him down, and that's being pretty generous! He must be the most wanted man in the Empire by now. I heard on the 'net that Acting Governor Aleister is clamping down hard on the whole Tokyo area…" The discussion then branched off into the realm of wild speculation and unconfirmed theories about Zero's potential whereabouts and what responses the 'Acting Governor' should take in regards to this new terrorist threat. Lelouch tuned this out, as it wasn't really important enough to warrant his attention; He already knew where the real Zero was, and Aleister had proven to be quite predictable.

From the various opinions of his classmates, Lelouch deduced that most of the students were wary of this 'Zero' character. And rightfully so. They had seen him kill a man on a 'hijacked' broadcast, after all, and the third prince of Britannia no less. His extremely divisive rhetoric had also served it's intended purpose of pressurizing the populace; None of them were jumping at the chance to join his cause quite yet, of course; from their point of view, he had just gotten a lucky shot in on a seemingly invincible adversary. But the seeds had been planted by his open offer. Now all that was left to do was tip the odds a little further in his favor.

It had also been made clear that the terrorist was not a Number. When Lelouch recorded his little speech (In English), he made certain to exaggerate his Pendragon accent and pepper his diction with distinctly Britannian linguistic idioms and phrases. He'd briefly thought of holding a cup of tea while he spoke, but had decided that it would be overkill and would've looked idiotic while wearing a mask like that anyways. The (entirely fabricated) root of his ideological motive seemed to be the injustices perpetrated against the Britannian people, not the liberation of the Numbers. This served to confuse (and therefore, frighten) average Britannians who were far more accustomed to a sort of us-versus-them 'siege mentality' against the 'foreign hordes' that had been instilled in them by all the propaganda and skewed history courses.

Obviously, Lelouch cared nothing for the 'plight' of the commoners. A Britannian was a Britannian, whether they were a lowborn retiree or aristocratic toddler. Each and every one of them was a small cog in the vicious machine that was the Britannian 'civilization', if it could even be called that. Lelouch felt no sympathy for those who enabled the wickedness of their superiors through their inaction. If they refused to be enlightened by Zero, Lelouch would exterminate them without hesitation.

The Britannian commoners were afraid, yes. That had been what he was going for. But they were also intrigued. Perhaps some of them could be brought to see reason, and (more importantly) make themselves useful to his cause. The reasons for their confusion was simple; Zero was strange.

Most terrorists didn't bother concealing their identities as carefully as he had. Majid Sadiq, the unhinged radical who bombed a Pendragon municipal office a few years back, had been all the justification the Empire needed to invade the Middle-Eastern Federation. They were still embroiled in desert warfare over there in Arabia, and even the infamously optimistic war-correspondent reports didn't seem to indicate that the fighting would be over with anytime soon. With the Spanish conflict in full-swing and the Empire's near constant naval warfare with the EU Coalition in the Atlantic, the Britannian war machine was stretched thin.

Zero, on the other hand, wore a mask. It was more of a helmet, really, and it covered his entire head. Therefore, computer facial recognition technology was utterly useless, unlike if he had just worn a balaclava. His voice was also lowered in pitch by an octave by the mask's built-in microphone, which served the dual function of amplifying his voice by several decibels. The cut of his cape even disguised his build; The Britannian's simply had no idea what he looked or sounded like out of his costume. His country of origin was obviously Britannia, and they could hardly go to war with themselves. The whole setup served to severely limit Britannia's available courses of action, in order to make their next move easier to predict.

The commoners had gotten a show out of it, though. The sheer oddity of Zero's appearance granted him a sense of uniqueness and memorability. His costume was designed to be functional, yet also stylish and iconic. Add to that Zero's greater degree of success than virtually any other terrorist in this decade, and you had a recipe for some prime-time entertainment material. He had, after all, kidnapped the Third Prince of Britannia, and then murdered for everyone in the world to see after having 'hijacked' Britannia's own emergency system to get out his 'message'. The dramatic manner in which Lelouch committed his first televised murder (of many more to come, he was sure) ensured that Zero was scorched into the history books, his name written in royal blood.

He had seen it in the classroom as he observed the students; Zero was the subject of every conversation, and it continued on like that for the rest of the day. He had captured the public's imagination, and their nightmares as well. After Milly Ashford arrived and finally got the class under control, Mr. Brotch proceeded to resume his lesson on Shakespeare. No one was really paying attention to the hapless professor, preferring instead to converse amongst themselves and at least make an attempt at being covert for the sheer novelty of it. Lelouch simply resumed his research on the book in front of him, and read for the rest of class.

Second period was much the same, with students quietly or not-so-quietly ignoring the professor in favor of gossiping and theorizing about the identity or motivations of Zero. Lunch and Gym class proceeded mostly as usual, with all of the students socializing and talking. The real difference this time was that they all shared a common topic of conversation. Rather than the eclectic noise that normally polluted the school, each and every student seemed to have something to say about Zero.

By the time lessons were concluded for the day, Lelouch was able to slip away to his Lair in the ghettos without incident. Milly and the student council had their hands full trying to contain the uproar that had overtaken the school, and were thus unable to accost him with their vain attempts at inclusion in their juvenile antics.

On the way there, Lelouch used the transitional time to do some research on what the adult members of society had to say about Zero. Of course, thanks to the government's stranglehold on the press back in the homeland, all of the major news outlets said more or less the same thing about him. These opinions were more skewed and obviously manipulated by the Britannian Media Authority, universally condemning Zero as a cowardly terrorist and a race-traitor. He found Diethard Reid's interview with Margrave Gottwald to be particularly useful. If the soldier's word was anything to go by, the military had fallen for his reformatory nonsense hook, line, and sinker.

The BMA was, essentially, the Holy Britannian Empire's propaganda machine. It took a lot of justification to convince the population that all of this expensive and unpleasant war, big government, and surveillance was necessary, after all. It had blanket authority over virtually all media under Britannian control, censoring anything that didn't paint the government, the military-industrial complex, the aristocracy, or the royal family in a positive light.

The BMA was technically a subdivision of the Ministry of Information, and therefore had loose connections to half a dozen other shady organizations. They certainly had no concept of journalistic integrity, so it was safe to assume that any data they provided would almost certainly be patently false. The Ministry of Information was infamous for falsifying facts and altering records to support the BMA's official position on a number of issues, and the worst part of it was that the entire process was mostly above board. The whole institution had already been corrupt from the moment of its conception, and as such it had quite a bit of room for 'discretion' written into it's charter from Parliament.

Rumors on the net abounded about Zero's 'secret identity'. Crackpot theories and unverifiable assumptions were a dime a dozen, but a few key facts were more or less agreed upon on all of the message boards Lelouch checked. Firstly, Zero was an ethnic Britannian. Secondly, he had access to advanced, possibly experimental weaponry. Lastly, he had enough influence to publicly execute a prince without interruption. It was the last bit that really got people talking. There were only a few people who could access the Emergency Broadcasting Channel without clearance from Parliament, after all. Three, to be precise.

One was General Aleister, the man currently in charge of Area 11 and the actual culprit. Second was Lord Radford Billingsley, Chairman of the Britannian Media Authority. Last but not least was, of course, was the Emperor himself. Every possibility served Lelouch's purpose in one way or another. Because the Emperor almost certainly wouldn't allow himself or his affairs to be investigated in any meaningful way, there would always be a sliver of doubt. Nothing serious, or even significant, but every advantage helped. Maybe one of Clovis' mistresses (of which there were many) would spread a nasty rumor about the Emperor at Court. Maybe one of Clovis' old friends in the business or art world wouldn't be quite so eager to work with the Emperor in the future. It was barely anything…But it was a start.

The impact on General Aleister and Lord Billingsley was much more substantial. Virtually every other eye was cast on the two men with suspicion and paranoia. Aleister had the likeliest means, being the current acting-viceroy of Area 11…But Lord Billingsley had all the motive, given his ties to the arms manufacturing industries and the personal benefit he was sure to receive from the big media circus thanks to his chair on the BMA. Of course, he was hardly alone in that regard amongst nobility. Many of them hoarded economic assets and capital to sustain their decadent lifestyles. Why, even Lelouch's benefactor, Lord Ashford, had once been deeply embroiled in the production of military technology.

Lelouch was certain that those two would be in hot water for quite some time, and Aleister at least would be scrambling to do something about it. Lelouch smirked at the idea. The manner in which he conducted his opening salvo against Britannia had allowed him to keep the initiative perpetually. He left no paper trail, as all of his supplies were scavenged, stolen, or borrowed discreetly. His base of operations was in an extremely remote location, and his identity was perfectly concealed. Aleister had almost nothing to go on, and so was left with little to do but sit on his thumb and wait for Lelouch to make another move. Sure, he could up security across the board and sift through the camps all he wanted. But that was nothing; Just him going through the motions of 'Acting Governor-Militant Aleister'. Everything had been arranged so that no matter what Aleister did, there was almost no credible situation in which he could trace anything back to the identity of Lelouch Lamperouge.

And that brought Lelouch to the next stage of his plan. After making his way through the ruined and partially sunken-through sub-basement of a fallen skyscraper, Lelouch donned his disguise and got to work.

Entering his workshop again was a strange experience. Rather than the usual musk of oil and stale air, he was greeted with the harsh, biting scent of disinfectant and fermaldehyde. He'd needed to clean up after the rather unceremonious execution of the Viceroy in his impromptu recording studio he had set up with some thick curtains, a desk, and a video camera. The body, he'd simply dumped into the now-stagnant sewer system that ran beneath the Ghetto. If the rats didn't take care of it, the dangerously high level of bacteria lurking down there certainly would. The clothes would disintegrate in the partially sulfurous water in about a week or so, and the body itself would be skeletonized in approximately half that time. Clovis' remains would not receive a royal treatment. They would simply stay down in the hell his homeland had created in this country, another anonymous corpse for the Shinjuku Ghetto to devour. A testament to his country's sins. Not the end he probably expected, but more than likely the one he had deserved.

Once, he had called that man his brother. Once, a very long time ago, in a little Villa just around the outskirts of Pendragon, they had been family. Lelouch could still imagine the way they had sat in the warm sun on the terrace over the yard, playing with his mother's crystal chess set. They would laugh and make jokes, and challenge each other to one game after another…

Lelouch quickly pushed such thoughts out of his mind. That life was over. Gone. Everyone from that time was dead now, and he could not allow himself to be encumbered by the memories of a dead man. Everything that did not work towards the progress of his mission must be purged, from both within and without. He had work to do, after all. Britannia would not destroy itself.

The decision to kill Clovis had come to him in a sudden bout of inspiration. At first, he had planned to spare the simpering fop, if only to keep Britannia on it's toes a little longer. But as time wore on, Lelouch found the sight of his pampered former kinsman all the more sickening. He couldn't stand the sight of the man, sitting there in that chair, squirming like the vile cretin he was. He was cowardly. He was weak. He was disgusting, soft, and most of all a Britannian Prince to the core. His pasty skin spoke of a life spent in the lath of luxury, while better men worked or fought. His soft hands had never known any form of honest labor. Worst of all was his small mind and black little heart, always focused on himself and only that.

Clovis had offered Lelouch every ounce of wealth and influence at his disposal, if only he would release him. He had made angry threats and condescending offers, before rapidly devolving into obviously insincere promises and finally pathetic begging. Like a dog. Lelouch kept his silence all the while, only speaking a word to Clovis when it was necessary. Even so, his mind couldn't help but simmer with contempt. It built up and up, as Clovis proved once and for all what Lelouch had come to expect from royalty.

Before, Lelouch had planned to release Clovis, at some point. Perhaps as some ploy to knock Aleister off balance before Lelouch made an attempt on his life. Clovis was an inept Viceroy at best, and 'Area 11's defenses could only be worsened by his re-installation as Viceroy.

But as the hours went by in the gloomy but clean workspace, Clovis proved to be a constant grate on his nerves. He had offered everything from the release of all political prisoners and the repealing of the Proactive Internment Act to the total withdrawal of Britannia from Japan, even going so far as to use the country's proper name for once. Lelouch would have rolled his eyes at the falsehoods had it not been a waste of both time and attention, and had the sheer lunacy of Clovis to think that he would even accept an offer that didn't involve maximal Britannian casualties not severely irritated him.

There was just some kind of lingering subconscious familiarity between Clovis and the old Lelouch. The one from before the war. Before everything changed, almost three years ago. He could hear the desperation and quiet sobs that tarnished the jovial and affable tones he still remembered. The sounds began to blend together with the cries and pleas of someone else from that time, too. It was too much. He tried and tried to block it all out, to forget about everything but the task at hand. He failed every time. Over and over, that last string of humanity clung to the vestigial pustule that he used to call a heart. no matter how he ripped and tore at it, it endured and festered, threatening to metastasize into doubts and second thoughts.

There had only been once solution. He had to silence the voices, once and for all. Clovis...needed to die. It was a change in plans, but it couldn't be helped. Lelouch couldn't let anything get in the way of his goal. If a certain avenue of attack (For that was all Clovis was to him, now. Nothing more.) needed to be closed and redundant memories reburied, then so be it.

Almost immediately after the deed, he had felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. As Clovis' mortal shell slumped in the fancy chair lifelessly, Lelouch felt the burdensome memories begin to fade one by one. His shaking grip on the pistol steadied, and the voices of the past disappeared along with the Viceroy's death cry. That phase of his plan was complete, and he could proceed onto current matters.

Lelouch had watched the broadcast in the Guest House at the Academy rather than his Lair, as Ruben was liable to take note if he didn't at least spend most of his nights there. The last thing he needed was for his benefactor to get curious about his new found reason to exist.

After making sure that everything was in order in the Lair, Lelouch approached the part of the room he had dedicated to one of his more indirect methods for sabotaging Britannian power.

Situated in front of him was a high metal table he had found that suited his needs. It was elevated enough from the ground that he could work at it comfortably while standing up, but low enough that a tall chair could be pulled up as well if he needed to work for several hours uninterrupted.

On the table was his latest invention, a project he had begun about three months ago. As with any war that hoped to escalate beyond petty tribal skirmishes or animalistic lynchings, Lelouch's crusade against Brittania would require a constant stream of newer and better weapons. As satisfied as he was with the performance of his Drones the other day, he would be kidding himself if he thought the Britannians would never develop countermeasures of their own. He was certain that, even now, entire legions of technicians and scientists were examining the evidence of his attack to search for any weaknesses to exploit. The Drones, while impressive in their offensive capabilities, were hardly invincible. They were as vulnerable as any lightly armored machine, and even something like a well-aimed RPG or a Recoilless Rifle posed a serious risk of putting them out of commission.

Shock and awe had been his friend that day at the Memorial Opening. The next time, the Brittanians would be looking out for him and his fleet of 'Helicopter' Drones. That was why he was always working on new projects. Devising and scheming up new ways to destroy the Brittanians.

The tiny robots before him were just one example of his more substantial efforts to create weapons with which to fight the Empire.

They were small – No larger than a shoebox, really. But in that little package was the potential to change a crushing defeat into a flawless victory. The Robot resembled his helmet in it's design, just as the Drones did. Unlike the drones, however, the back scales that wrapped around the back of his head were elongated slightly, making room for the electronic components within. Eight spindly, quadruple-jointed metal legs were installed on the sides, with three on either side and two coming out of the back. They were attached to a small but powerful motor on the underside of the machine. In summary, it resembled the stereotypical robotic spider from the cartoons and comic books the commoners were so enamored with.

That was where the similarities ended, however. Unlike those fantastical monstrosities, Lelouch's spiders served a very clear and definitive purpose in his personal war. Whereas the Drones were his current frontline soldiers, the spiders would be his eyes and ears, as well as saboteurs.

The spiders were each created from a high definition camera, a computer motherboard, a processor, some memory sticks, an electric motor, a high-performance water coolant package designed for laptops, a miniature energy-filler more commonly used in so-called "Green" Electric scooters (ignoring that the Sakuradite was only so cheaply available due to Britannia's conquest of Japan and subjugation of it's people, as well as the destruction of a large portion of it's natural environment due to deliberate deforestation campaigns and the sheer carnage of modern warfare), two custom-built weapons systems, a miniaturized digital transmitter, and various metal components Lelouch had forged and designed himself from scavenged scraps.

The Chassis, composing of the helmet-frame and the motorized legs, was made mostly of aluminum to give it a light weight. It wouldn't hold up even to small arms, but it wasn't really meant for overt combat anyways. If it ever did run in to trouble, it had two built-in weapons it could deploy against the enemy.

The first and primary weapon was an electromagnetic dart gun, mounted just above the camera behind the opaque 'mask' faceplate of the machine's core. The Dartgun was just a stripped down pistol that used the same electromagnetic propellant system typical of all modern firearms – The barrel was still there, but it lacked compact gas piston that generally accompanied the sakuradite-powered rail-action, which somewhat reduced it's stopping power. On the other hand, this and the use of darts rather than actual bullets also made the weapon very quiet, even more so than a regular pistol equipped with a suppressor. Obviously, since the Dartgun was wired directly to the motherboard and mounted atop the camera, there was no need for a grip, a trigger, or sights. The entire weapon was little more than an angular barrel with a small box-magazine attached to the back and sat on the rear of the camera. It could carry a maximum of ten darts.

Each individual dart had been crafted in Lelouch's workshop using a mold he had built. They were 10mm each in diameter, but curved up into a point, making the Dart resemble a spike of about two and a half centimeters in length. They were made from cast steel, and could easily kill a man if they hit a vital spot.

The problem was that the spiders didn't have the necessary hardware to support a proper automated targeting system. Any usage of the Dartgun would have to be aimed remotely on an encypted signal, which would leave a second of two of lag between issuing the command and the actual firing of the weapon.

The second onboard weapon was a last resort - a self-destruct mechanism. Inside the chassis, next to the processor underneath the motherboard and above the motor system, a thin ceramic package of thermite was mounted on a frame attached to the CPU. If at any point the unit was compromised beyond retrieval, a signal would be sent to the tiny hydraulics attached to the motherboard via wires to let go of the frame, causing the packet to fall apart.

The Particular CPU Lelouch had chosen was vaunted for it's high-performance specs...As well as it's tendency to overheat in overclock mode. A nitrogen gel-based cooling system was highly recommended by the manufacturer, but it had been much cheaper to procure one of the older water-based systems.

The heat was therefore kept at an acceptable level that wouldn't damage the circuitry...So long as the thing was kept out of overclock mode. But if at any time Lelouch wanted to initiate the 'Self-Destruct' sequence, he could simply signal the CPU to go into overclock mode, at which point the exposed circuits would likely ignite the cheap paper strips wrapped around the naked copper wires. With the termite exposed and dumped all over the inside of the machine, it would only be seconds before the whole thing was engulfed in high temperature flames, likely melting into whatever (or whoever) the spider had been sitting on at the moment. Lelouch had not yet been able to program them to approach and attach themselves to people with their pointy legs, which meant that he would have to have them do so remotely, like an RC Car toy. Lelouch had screwed a wifi stick in to a port he had modded in to the motherboard, allowing him to control it remotely from his laptop. He was confident that it would take the Britannians far longer to crack the code he had written for the encryption on the signal than the spiders would be active in the field, which would prevent them from tracing it back to him.

They were an adequate answer to his need for a weapon of subterfuge, for the time being. Tonight was going to be their blooding. He had tested them extensively throughout the abandoned building that housed his Lair, but tonight would be their first time on a real mission.

This was the second phase of Lelouch's plan. He had hashed out the general idea many months ago, but it was only now that he had observed Aleister's reactions to the first phase that he had been able to really hammer out the details.

So far, he had constructed a 'Brood' of eight spider robots, each of them wirelessly connected to his laptop over the encrypted signal through two proxy servers. Both of them were temporary set-ups, hidden in the different parts of the Shinjuku Ghetto. He had built them himself using parts lifted from the Guest House storage basement at Ashford, although there was little chance of them being traced back there even in the event that they were discovered.

The first phase of the mission would be a test in and of itself; simply reaching the objective. After booting up his laptop where it was set up on his work table, he clicked on the icon for the control app- a pixellated black widow spider he'd found on Google Images, with the hourglass colored purple rather than red. The Drone Control icon was similar, but was a pixellated image of his helmet with two stylized VTOL wings sticking to the sides. It was just something he'd made in an Image Editor so that he could open it without taking the time to read the words under the shortcut; Making the symbol had taken three minutes. He would save collectively dozens of minutes by memorizing images rather than reading letters and numbers as he added more and more programs to the taskbar.

The program opened very quickly, since he had made his personally optimized OS with rapid response as a priority in its design. It displayed a grid of eight different real-time video streams from each of the spider's high definition cameras, and he could issue commands to them using the keyboard.

The control software was both highly sophisticated and extremely user-unfriendly. It would likely take years for a normal person to master. However, Lelouch was no ordinary fourteen year old boy.

He had both written the code for both the control software and the spider robots himself. He was subconsciously aware of every line of code and exchanging of data that went on between the two machines. He had to be, in order to maintain complete control over the entire process. His eidetic memory was to great advantage with this particular juncture, as the program was far too complex for anyone without it to hope to use with any real degree of proficiency.

Controlling the machines through the keyboard was like trying to type a different essay with all four of your appendages simultaneously...multiplied by a factor of two. In order to even use the software, he needed to plug a peripheral keyboard into the a port on the back of the laptop. Otherwise, he wouldn't have had enough keys.

With one hand on either keyboard, he would remotely control all eight robots at the same time. In order to really understand how complex the task he was about to undertake was, you'd need to know just how precisely each robot would be controlled. Every individual unit had nine keys for two-dimensional movement, with sharp barbs on the ends of it's legs allowing it to scale many obstacles. Lelouch had applied a chemical coating to the tips of the robot's legs, which when dried and run through with a direct electrical current from the miniaturized energy filler that served as the machine's power supply would form covalent bonds with the molecules of whatever surface the robot was scaling, creating a Van Der Waals Force effect. This chemical coating wasn't waterproof, though, so the devices had severely reduced functionality in the rain. Very high temperatures would also cause it to reliquify and lose it's ability to hold a charge, so it was likely that the spider would fall from wherever it happened to be clinging when the overclock or self-destruct process began.

Aside from the nine keys dedicated for movement, there were five keys related to the Camera and two keys dedicated to the Dartgun and self-destruct system. In total, just to control the basic functionality of the spiders, Every one of Lelouch's fingers would be responsible for sixteen keys. This wasn't even getting in to the more advanced functions of the spiders, like cutting the power to everything but the camera for "stealth mode" or establishing a secure connection between itself and a hostile computer, serving as a sort of mobile proxy Lelouch could use to hack into databases out of his reach. The signal could be infinitely bounced back and forth between the eight spiders to further jumble any investigators from triangulating it's point of origin.

It was a serious challenge, at first. Just learning to control every robot without a single lapse in movement was an almost absurdly complicated affair. Lelouch was sure that even the most accomplished Knight or even mundane Pilot's from the Imperial Air Force or Army would fail miserably if presented with a similar challenge. Not Lelouch, though. He had something they did not.

He was possessed of an inner focus that others could barely even comprehend, much less hope to emulate. It was the same driving impulse that inspired him to control and regulate every waking moment of his life for the last two and three fourths of a year... That urge he felt to the core of his being. It was more than a mere thirst or hunger for simple revenge. It was past that. Far past.

It was as if one day he woke up, and suddenly he had the power to free himself of every distraction, every stray thought that always plagued the minds of ordinary people. The meager and petty needs for 'fulfillment' and 'happiness' that lesser men had to sate went ignored; Lelouch wasted no time on such petty diversions. He went without entertainment, without joy, without any of the things that the hedonistic masses lived for. Every weakness and interference that most considered endemic to the human condition had been systematically eliminated from every corner of his psyche, until only one thing was left. He could dedicate every neuron in that thick little skull of his to a singular purpose; The complete and utter ruination of Britannia.

As with any lengthy and complex task, he simply broke down the larger goal into smaller, concentrated efforts. Through this system, he kept his mind consistently laser-focused on whatever he had decided was the best course of action to further the overall mission. Sometimes, he even forgot why he was so driven. He forgot who the man behind the mask was, and never looked back. As soon as he put on that helmet, he became something different. Something deadly. His mind was like a knife sharpened to a razor's edge, ready to slice into the throat of the Britannian nation.

It should come as no surprise, then, that something mere mortals would find impossibly taxing on their feeble and dissolute brains was almost childishly easy for the being Lelouch had become. With practiced and precise, but no less swift twitches of his fingers across the keyboards, each of the spiders jerked to life. The spindly legs mirrored the jerky and quick motions of his appendages, dancing across the table as Lelouch's hands danced across the keyboards. They were like extensions of his own body, despite the relative crudeness of the medium through which he commanded them. They creeped and scurried down the edge of the table , their chemical-coated legs sticking to the bottom side of the wall-mounted work-station with an almost supernatural strength. Down and down they marched, until they reached the edge of the wall and began their descent. When they all reached the floor, they marched in a perfectly formed single-file line. Their deceptively slender limbs pried open the workshop door with surprising strength as the first four worked together, breaking the lock out of the rotten wood frame using a macro Lelouch had input from the keyboard.

Out they ventured, until they reached the truck. It was a faded, off-beige Shibaru model, once common in Japan before the war. It had been in good condition, so Lelouch salvaged it just for this mission. It wouldn't be winning any competitions in either appearance or performance, but it ran reliably for the moment. More importantly, it wouldn't lead back to him. Lelouch had never owned a car, and he suspected that if the owner of this one was even still alive, it was fairly likely that they were being slowly starved to death in the horrible conditions of a Britannian prison camp somewhere out in the mountains. If so, they could rest assured that their vehicle would be put to good use against their oppressors.

The spiders crawled up into the flatbed before coming to a halt. Lelouch closed the control program on his computer and unplugged the extra keyboard, picking up both pieces of equipment before sidestepping the broken door and jumping into the Shibaru's driver's seat. He keyed the ignition and felt the vehicle tremble as the combustion process breathed new life into the dormant machine. Driving cautiously, Lelouch began the long drive out of the only safe route from the partially collapsed parking garage.

---

Today was not Paul's day. It had been a nightmare right from the beginning, and thing's didn't seem likely to improve.

First, his alarm clock ran out of batteries on the one day when he had to get up early. Sergeant Hemingway had been pissed, and the whole squad was assigned latrine duty for the week as a direct result. Everyone else had shown up bright and early for the Colonel's inspection, so blame was laid squarely at Paul's feet. His own buddies were giving him dirty looks all day, and no one would take the time to let him explain that it was their CO's call, not his. It wasn't fair. The only thing superior about Paul's superior officer was what a prick he was.

So frustrated was Paul that he did not notice how tightly he was gripping the old and rotten mop until it was too late. It snapped in his hands, and since he had been partially leaning on it as he shirked his latrine-washing duties, he lost his balance.

He fell face-first into the still-wet floor, covered in dirty, soapy water. He scrambled to his feet and spat out the disgusting fluid that had gotten into his mouth when he shouted in suprise at his fall. This ended up exacerbating the situation, as his uniform was sullied by the splashing of the puddle and throughly soaked in the front.

"Ughhh..." he groaned. "Fuuucck..." This was his only clean uniform. The rest were back in the Barracks' Laundromat. He would have to borrow someone else's spare, and since his friends were all still giving him the stink-eye, he'd probably end up having to ask the quartermaster for another one...the cost of which would likely be deducted from this month's paycheck.

Paul was struck by indecision. Obviously, staying to clean up the latrines and fix his mess was the last thing he wanted to do now that he was all soaked. But he couldn't afford another demerit on his record, and he was living on a tight budget as it was. A private's salary was nothing to brag about at the best of times, but Paul also sent some of it home to support his mom and brothers. That left him with precious little to spend on himself, and if he wasn't careful he'd go over-budget again.

These and other concern's troubled Paul, who was considered something of a loser by his so-called 'friends' in the squad. But as distracted as he was, he couldn't help but notice movement out of the corner of his eye. It was over there- just under the airvent mounted on the wall.

It was some...thing. Some kind of thing...

The thing creeped down the wall with mechanical precision, each spindly limb moving in perfect harmony with all of the others. It was like a giant spider, but...made out of metal!

Paul dropped the broken handles of the mop and let his arm go limp due to the sheer weirdness of the situation. What the hell was a...a...robot spider doing in the bathrooms?

As he stood there gawking at the oddity before him, more of the arachnoid robots crawled out of the vent, following the first spider's path exactly. They fell into a row-just like Paul and his squadmates were trained to whenever the sergeant came by for inspection. Shit, the spider had buddies.

It occurred to Paul then that he had better inform someone of this development. Insects of all kinds had always given Paul the creeps, but these things...they didn't move like insects at all. Each of them moved in synchronization with one another, side by side. They began to advance on Paul, and he backed away nervously.

Shit! He thought. He must've pissed them off somehow! Right now would be a really good time to have his side-arm...If he hadn't left it in his footlocker because of the rush he was in this morning. Goddamnit!

Turning on his heel, Paul began to make a break for it. He didn't know what the hell these things were, but he wasn't about to take any chances while he was unarmed. He wasn't stupid. He ran for the door as fast as his legs would carry him.

But, as it turned out, that was not quite fast enough. Paul felt himself fall to the ground, as a searing pain flared up in both of his knees. His face hit the floor for the second time in five minutes, and he screamed out in pain. His knees! Oh, god, they felt like they were on fire! He...he...he couldn't feel his legs!

Paul struggled to get up, but the pain was too much. His arms fell out from under him, and he fell back to the soapy floors. His legs were beginning to feel unnaturally cold, even accounting for his wet pants. Covered in filthy latrine grime and suds...Not a very dignified way to go. Those were his last thoughts, the rankling on his honor. He might have imagined his mom's face one last time, smiling with joy whenever one of his infrequent and brief leave trips back to the homeland saw him return to their house in St. Angelica. For maybe the smallest of moments, he held that image in his mind, before a sharp pain struck the back of his head. Then there was nothing.

---

As the polarized visor slid back down on Spider Unit #4, Lelouch impassively surveyed the live video feed of the corpse he had just created on his laptop's monitor. No trace of the self-satisfaction he felt over the mission's progress was evident on his face, although even someone as disciplined and controlled as he was had to acknowledge that the feelings were there. Normally, he preferred to forego such self-congratulatory antics; They offered no tangible benefits to his plans, after all. But his long months of hard work had paid off considerably in the last hour or so, to the point that even his critical eyes had to strain themselves to find any flaws in the little machines' performance.

They were small things, it was true. But they had proven their worth several times over already, and the night was yet young. Sneaking into the Britannian facility through the air-conditioning system was almost trivially easy. The air-vent network spread across the facility were too small for humans-even children-to crawl through, so the Britannians had failed to predict an attack from that route. All of the motion sensors, security cameras, and metal detectors were set up around the obvious entrances. The front doors, windows, the roof...They hadn't bothered with the air vents, thinking that they were safe when all they really were was complacent.

This had allowed Lelouch to park the Shibaru a few blocks away while his brood discreetly crept towards the Britannian base under the cover of darkness. He had cut the engine and set up his laptop and peripheral keyboard in the back, as well as a mobile transmitter to boost the signal. It's not like the vehicle's body was lined with lead or anything, so there was no need to conspicuously mount the dish on the exterior. From here, Lelouch could control all eight of his spiders with only a slight delay in their responsiveness. Considering the relatively meagre resources that gone in to their development, they were the best results he would get.

And now they blooded themselves by handily dispatching one of Britannia's soldiers. Although he had been stuck cleaning up a bathroom, so his abilities were likely not up to the standards of Britannia's actual combat personal. But at least Lelouch knew for a fact that the Dartgun's were deadly at close range, and the software was reasonably accurate. As with his earlier tests in the workshop, however, he noticed that the recoil was rather jarring. This was due to the comparatively light weight of the spiders, even for their size. All three of the units that had fired their Dartgun's had been pushed back out of formation by about two and a half feet. This meant that, since aiming took a few seconds accounting for lag and the relatively weak commercial-grade servos motors that controlled the cameras (and thus the Dartguns mounted on top of them), sustained fire of any kind would be inaccurate at best. If they didn't kill or disable with the first few shots, it was likely that the return fire from whoever they were attacking would make quick work of the fragile machines.

They were in the clear so far, though. Stealth was the name of the game for this operation. Lelouch was not the type of man who lauded his own creations with unearned praise out of some misguided sense of pride; He had quashed that useless emotion with all of the others long ago. Everything he made was measured and calculated in it's performance in advance of sending it out to do his bidding – Only when he was sure that Victory was possible (If not gauranteed, or even likely) would it be judged worthy of graduation to field work. He understood the limitations of his inventions quite well. He was aware that the spiders would not be able to hold up in a firefight even against the lightly armed foes they might encounter on this mission.

That just made caution all the more important. After exiting the lavatory, Lelouch had his spiders proceed carefully down the brightly lit hallways of the facility. It wouldn't due to be caught at this stage in his plans. The base was sparsely populated at the moment, as Lelouch had covertly determined by observing the goings-on from within the vents. He had dedicated the bases layout to memory with his usual meticulousness, and even constructed a simple three-dimensional model of his understanding of the base in Google SketchUp. He could quickly minimize and maximize either the control program for his spiders and the map he'd drawn up, allowing him a clear picture of the mission zone without distracting him from controlling the spiders. He could've likely done without the map, but his brain was stretched just controlling all eight of his robots without also having to keep a large three-dimensional model in his head the whole time. He wasn't about to risk any screw ups. He'd only have one shot at this.

The spiders encountered minimal resistance to their target near the center of the facility. They encountered two night guards on the way, but like the first neither wore full body armor. They were eliminated easily enough, each with a neat shot to the back of the head. His spiders hid the corpses as they went along, hiding them in a supply closet and under a small office desk. Some Britannian bureaucrat and a janitor would be in for an unpleasant suprise come the morrow.

According to the comprehensive notes had taken during the observation period as his spiders hid in the vents, that left only four more watchmen to worry about.

For all of Aleister and his ilk's bluster on the news, Security was still lax compared to what you might expect in a warzone. Given, it had only been a few days and this was hardly what the Britannians probably considered a priority target, but there was no excuse for sloppiness. If the Britannians couldn't be bothered to protect this place properly, it only made Lelouch's mission that much easier.

Within another few minutes, the spiders reached their destination. Lelouch hadn't bothered to have them stay out of the security camera's sight once they were inside. One of the guards they had taken down was the one tasked with manning the security booth, and since Lelouch's robots had ambushed them while he was on a coffee break, there would be no one to monitor the cameras until morning. Doubtlessly there would be an investigation, but Lelouch wasn't worried. He would be long gone by then. Besides, he wanted the Britannians to know who was responsible for this. Once they saw the CCTV footage of his distinct spider robots, there would be no question as to who was behind this attack.

The target of this operation was, at first glance, insignificant. This facility was just one of many spread out across Japan. It was a small Municipal Data Center, located smack dab in the middle of the Tokyo Settlement. There were hundreds of them all throughout the city, responsible for the coordination of the colony's administration and logistics.

The Tokyo Settlement was, like many of the newer Britannian colonies, a highly advanced city. Since the Settlement had been constructed virtually from scratch over the broken remains of the old city, almost all of the buildings and infrastructure was less than four years old. Lelouch had studied the construction of the concession extensively, and was forced to admit that it was a legitimately impressive work of engineering. The ill-gotten nature of the resources used to create the city soured any potential admiration he may have had for its architects, though, even without taking into consideration the rich thousand-year history the Britannians had obliterated in the construction process.

The entire settlement was contained within a single coherent megastructure. Occupying only a fraction of the old capital, standing on three enormous platforms dozens of stories high and a hundred kilometers wide. Each platform was several stories thick, supported by 324 support beams the size of skyscrapers. In a way, the whole thing resembled a massive, high-tech parking garage. Each of the sublevels contained a city unto-itself, where the common classes of Britannians were forced to live in a rigid, almost class-like order.

At the literal top of the arcology lived the ruling classes. They alone were considered priveleged enough within the Settlement's society to enjoy the benefits nature allowed all men and women. They alone could enjoy a pleasant stroll in the park on a sunny afternoon, and only the children of blue-bloods and executives were allowed to play in the snow on a beautiful winter morning.

The commoner's lived a level under them. High, but not at the top. It instilled in them an urge to grasp and climb up the social ladder. Commoners were always trying to better themselves...but always for the wrong reasons. No matter how many material gains their exploitative overseas conquests won them, they were always hungry for more. These people wholeheartedly embraced Britannia's consumer culture, always hankering for the latest fashions, appliances, vehicles, and gadgets. They were like a rotten, spoiled child who was given everything they wanted for Christmas but always wanted more. Their noble paymasters kept them distracted from Britannia's real problems-the oppression, the violence, the dog-eat-dog philosophy- with a near endless stream of hedonistic and shallow distractions. Petty noblemen and nouveau riche businessmen who worked Japanese chain-gangs to death in the camps were seen a paragons and pillars of the community as long as they occasionally opened a new shopping mall or overpriced for-profit hospital. The commoners drank it all up, reveling in the sweet taste of ignorance and obedience. Never mind that the wine was poisoned. Never mind that the noblemen kept all of the power, all of the freedom of choice for themselves. Never mind that even as they dangled money and goods in front of the commoner's noses like a proverbial carrot on a stick, the nobles jeered and laughed at the 'unwashed masses'. Britannia's commoners had long accepted their place in the pecking order, bowing down to Knights and Noblemen. Accepting them as their betters. It was disgusting.

But even this decadence was nowhere near as offensive as the conditions that existed just one level below. The noblemen and the rich looked down on the common multitudes from above, and the commoners in turn looked down on the Elevens below. The third and bottom level of the Britannian Tokyo Settlement was occupied by the leftover dregs of the former city- Those too poor or too proud to leave before the Britannians set up shop, and not brave or resourceful enough to take their chances in the Ghettos.

The Squalor and Poverty of Tokyo Sub-City were hardly preferable to the relative peace (and more importantly, anonymity) of the ghost-town-like Ghettos. As long as you were smart enough to check the buildings for signs of structural damage to the buildings before you started squatting, you were unlikely to be the victim of a collapse. Meanwhile, residents of the sub-city were subjected to cramped quarters, ludicrous crime-rates, virtually ubiquitous poverty, and suffrage under the constant bootheel of their Britannian masters. The Ghettos were in ruins and mostly abandoned, yes, but even that must've been better than living in the filth and misery that could only be found in the Sub-City.

It was through this hierarchical system, put in place by the highest echelons of Britannian authority, that the foreign invaders kept both their own people and the subjugated natives in line. The Commoners oppressed the Elevens while the Nobles and the affluent oppressed the commoners. A constant and enormous police and military presence served as a constant reminder of the upper-classes authority, while bored teenagers or drunken thugs could go into the Ghettos and murder, steal and rape as they pleased. If the Japanese tried to fight back, the Britannians would respond with a rebuke easily twice as vicious, going into the offending neighborhood and massacring whoever they came upon until their blood thirst was satisfied.

Of course, such a divisive and conflict-encouraging system was hardly kept stable all on it's own. No. The whole thing would likely fall apart in mere weeks, were it not deliberately propped-up and encouraged by the powers that be. Shady conglomerates, aristocratic families and guilds, even the local government that was allegedly tasked to keep order...They all had an interest in keeping the state of affairs as they were.

The status quo was forcefully perpetuated by these groups via a highly sophisticated and very corrupt network of law-enforcement, bureaucracy, and even criminal enterprises. It was entirely possible that a portion of the proceeds from the legions of Refrain dealers who commuted to the Sub-City from one level up eventually made it's way into the Viceroy's pocket...after extensive laundering, of course. Lelouch supposed that it would be going to the Acting Governor-Militant, now, but that was beside the point.

This entire system required extensive support to function as it did, and Lelouch's spiders had successfully infiltrated one such facility that night. The Data Centers were responsible for providing the necessary processing power and storage space for all of the tasks the Settlement's administrators were expected to undertake, from keeping the monorails running on time to illicit dealings with the Britannian Mob. And Lelouch had successfully gained access to one of their servers.

His spiders were in range, now. He hid them within the natural alleys between the servers, in case any curious watchmen came looking. Once he sent the command to open the faceplate, it was a simple matter to get them to access a direct port with the plugs he'd attached to their motherboards before the mission.

In just another minute or so, he established a secure connection. First between Spider Unit #6, and then to his laptop. He was careful to bounce the signal off of the entire spider 'Brood Network' before rerouting to the two servers in the ghettos and back to his laptop. In total, the process used ten different encryption cyphers he had devised, spread between ten machines over a closed connection. Lelouch was confident that by the time (if ever) the Britannian's cyptologists decoded these ciphers (which he would likely never re-use, just to be sure.) he would be long gone from this location, which was little more than a back alley a few blocks away from the base anyways. He imagined the look on Aleister's face when he traced the signal days from now after concerted effort only to be led right back to where he started would be quite amusing, had he not given up such useless distractions.

Now that all the preparations and precautions were out of the way, his spiders could proceed to deliver Lelouch's digital payload. Through a steady stream of electronic signals down from their circuitry and through the connecting wires, the spider's uploaded one of Lelouch's more devious creations directly into the the Settlement's virtual circulatory system. Through this network came and went thousands upon thousands of exabytes of data every day, and Lelouch planned on compromising the whole thing.

The Data Center, while theoretically on a secure network inaccesible from the outside, was not quite so well protected from within. It was a trivial matter for Lelouch to remotely bypass the server's built in Intrusion Countermeasures across the connection from his laptop by running a few scripts he'd written for that purpose. With just a few minutes of hacking, Lelouch was a fully authorized network administrator, with all of the powers and privileges that entailed.

But this was just one Data Center. It didn't contain anything useful on it's own...certainly no classified military documents or top secret reports. No, what it provided was a gateway. A backdoor into the Settlement's entire municipal network.

Lelouch grinned savagely, the anticipation causing him to momentarily forget himself and his usual detached professionalism. With one depression of the 'ENTER' key, his long-awaited plan was set in motion.

The malware package he was uploading to the city's network was neither a virus nor a worm in the traditional sense of the words. Rather, it was a combination of the two that Lelouch had painstakingly hand-coded over the course of many months. It was something that had occurred to him when he first started getting into computers, actually. Obviously if you were going to engage in information warfare over a computer, viruses and such were the method of choice. But because of this fact, a multi-billion pound security software industry had sprouted up like a weed alongside the advent of the digital age. Giant conglomerate corporations competed savagely for the rights to be Britannia's sole supplier for all their computing needs, both in the civilian market and the military. Britannia's Darwinian philosophy extended to economic policy as a matter of course, allowing for huge monopolies to dominate the industry while competitors were mercilessly crushed under the corporate juggernaut's heel.

This was not necessarily to the benefit of Britannia's development, particularly in the field of digital defense. Competition encouraged growth, while complacency went hand in hand with stagnation. It was one of the reasons that the E.U had been able to hold up for as long as it had against the Empire; While they lacked the raw resources Britannia could extract from it's colonies and slave-governments, the European's enjoyed a near-constant edge in high-tech fields that weren't necessarily integrated with the military-industrial complex thanks to their less stringently regulated economy. Britannia had to make sure that they kept enough of their key industries in the hands of the aristocracy, after all, or else the wealthier commoners might start getting ideas.

But Lelouch was a step ahead of either party. He wasn't content to merely use the latest malicious codes and malware programs developed by European or Chinese hackers, or any of the other myriad black hat communities out there. A mere script kiddie stood no chance against the Holy Britannian Empire and it's armies of corporate network security specialists, eager to make a buck off of technically-illiterate aristocrats.

In fact, Lelouch's 'Zero' handle was a byproduct of his dealings on the DarkNet. Whenever he needed to get his hands on a particular segment of code or piece or piece of software he wanted to examine but couldn't get his hands on without taking unecessary risks, he would occaisonally trade some of his earlier, obsolete programs on the Black Market. There was big money in malicious programming, of course, but Lelouch never engaged in that sort of thing unless he felt like the risk was worth it. Certainly never for something as common as pounds. There were far less risky ways to secure funding, so he visited the DarkNets only sparingly, if he hit a hurdle in his programming he couldn't overcome without further study.

As a result, Zero was likely just as well known in the hacker circles as he was to the public at the moment. His programming was top-notch, and he suspected that the only reason he wasn't being bombarded with queries as to whether he and the Zero on the news were the same man was because he had ensured that no one had any way to contact him. He would always approach potential buyers himself using temporary setups, before vanishing off the net until he required something else.

In any case, all of this effort and research had eventually led him down another avenue of study. Generally, those investing themselves in computer science shied away from other fields, which likely contributed to their relative lack of progress in recent times. It was certainly nothing like the explosion of innovation that had occurred in the early 2000s, back when Lelouch had yet to wisen to the ways of this cruel world. But such matters were behind him now.

Instead of crying about the past like a petulant toddler, Lelouch devoted himself to the aquistion of future recompense. So when he hit a hurdle in his research into the 'Ultimate Computer Virus' a year back, he was not discouraged. He evolved. Adapted. He changed his approach, and instead began his foray into the fascinating world of biology.

Biology was interesting under it's own merits, but Lelouch was especially stimulated by the inspiration he drew from the entire natural process to influence his own designs. All science was, after all, a product of nature. And Science was the sole method that man had to interact with the world – the source of all his power. Even basic sentient thought and muscular locomotion relied on scientific processes. Through an understanding of biology, mankind had increased it's longevity and durability, culminating in the advent of modern medicine triumphing over the religious hocus-pocus of the previous century.

And through this particular scientific discipline, Lelouch drew forth one of the most inspired breakthroughs of his young life. It was simple, really – Computer viruses were only called as such because their behavior was similar to the their pseudo-biological namesake – Viruses.

A Virus was, essentially, nature's own little war-machines. They were tiny little microscopic objects that bypassed the cellular filtration system, thus allowing them to interact with organisms on a cellular level. What Lelouch found fascinating about viruses was that they were not truly alive as such, despite what uninformed persons might think. Every virion had genetic information, like living cells. But the virion had no capacity for independent reproduction or metabolism. It was simply a collection of tiny amounts of chemicals and substances assembled in such a manner that it formed some semblance of what humans might consider simple life-like functions. It even had the capacity to reproduce by deconstructing a living cell and manufacturing additional copies of itself, with minute errors that allowed it to take advantage of the natural selection process to evolve into a better virus.

All of this was accomplished through sheer, overly-complex coincidence, as natural processes assembled the first viruses by mixing and shifting around the components of dead cells in the primordial ooze. The pieces were there. All it took was a little gravity, electromagnetic charging, and any number of other physical processes to put them all together into a deadly little package. Whereas other creations died out and failed, dying out forever, viruses survived to this very day, their lineage drawing back billions upon billions of years. Their pedigree far outclassed even the purest bred Britannian noble, and this fact amused Lelouch to no end. Even naturally formed, elegantly simple microscopic organic machines could claim to be a better class of person that those wretched scum.

And there was a certain beauty to those deceptively intricate little masses of proteins and bases that had plagued animals and humans since the dawn of time. More than that was their lethality. Their durability. That stubborness that allowed them to survive even the wonders of recent advances in medical science. Despite virtually every modern human civilization's best efforts, viruses were going approximately nowhere, and there was nothing the Britannians, the E.U., or the Chinese Federation could do about it.

That was real power. Staying power. Those were the qualities that Lelouch hoped to emulate in this monster he had birthed from long, exhausting hours of writing code and working out bugs. Fueled by hate and an intent a thousand times more malicious than any hacker before him, Lelouch had created what he considered to be the first true Computer Virion.

The Virion itself was a little thing. Just a small packet of data, barely twenty gigabytes. The Britannians would never notice it slipping into their network now that he'd worked past their early-warning Intrusion Countermeasures, and was manually uploading it on-site from one of their Data Centers. It was like a bio-virus, small enough to get through the filtration system undetected, so it could do some real damage to the juicy insides of the cell.

In this case it wasn't a cell that was about to find itself devoured, though. It was every computer connected to this particular Data Center that would find itself the victim of the Virion, infecting their systems before moving on and going viral over the entire network.

Lelouch watched with glee as the Virion did it's work. It would forcefully transmit itself to every computer it could access using the government tags it copied from the Data Center, using the Britannians own Orwellian surveillance software against them. All personal computers in Britannia were required by law to allow government programs to install themselves forcefully onto the hard drive in case of a search and seizure, in order to allow for expediency in Britannia's electronic surveillance of its citizens.

And now Lelouch had weaponized that feature against them. It had only been a few minutes, and already thousands of civil, military, and even private consumer electronics all across Japan were already infected.

Once the Virion had wormed it's way onto a computer or a server, it's true potential shined. Unlike traditional viruses, the Virion was not only able to hide itself within individual programs already on the computer, but also employed the worm tactic of copying itself thousands of times to send over the net, either through spamming email contacts or uploading directly to the net. Of the thousands of webservers that dotted Japan, almost 60% were now positive for the Virion, and that statistic was only going to rise with time.

But unlike normal worms, the Virion included slight but significant changes in it's code, using a unique algorithm Lelouch had written into it's programming. The weaker, original Virions would likely be deleted...but it's children, their children, and all of their descdendants would remain, all the stronger for the weeding out. It was based on Britannia's own adage of natural selection ; The strong would thrive as the weak died off. Every time the Britannias tried to purge their systems of the Virion, some would be deleted while the survivors adapted, the code naturally tending towards mutations that allowed it to bypass whatever security software the Britannians tried to employ. This constant software-evolution would only accelerate, as the metamorphic code itself was flagged as a plus in the evolutionary algorithm.

And that wasn't even getting into the Virion's actual functions.

After installing and copying itself, the Virion went to work in the encrypted coding Lelouch had programmed into it as a constant – No matter how it evolved, these functions would remain the same. First, it was to target any security or anti-virus software already installed on the computer, functioning as a sort of computer retrovirus. Once that was infected, it would actually hijack the antivirus functionality to better conceal itself, even after it buried itself in piles of junk data within the other programs on the computer. It would fester and hide, using the information taken from the 'zombie' anti-virus programs to build up an 'immunity'. Any program that used the same methods as the zombified antivirus would be unable to discover the Virion with the same methods...And thanks to the consolidation of Britannia's software companies into a few huge corporations, that was an extremely likely occurrence.

Next, and best of all, it would gradually install a hidden backdoor into the computer, which Lelouch could access at any time on a heavily encrypted signal. Any computer at that stage of infection would be his to control, as the Virion infected and modified the OS itself to allow Lelouch's purpose-built networking programs full access. Even if the backdoor was discovered, there was little the Britannian's could realistically do to remove it. It was inserted and dispersed across the coding of all the programs on the computer equally, and could even rewrite itself according to the Virion's latest template assuming it was reconnected to the network at any time. The only way to completely remove it would be to reformat the hard drive AND the motherboard, as the BIOS itself was infected as soon as the Virion gained full access. And it was ever connected to an infected network, the entire process would start over from the beginning.

Lelouch began the long an arduous process of recalling his drones through the vents and back to the Shibaru undetected. By morning, the Britannians would realize their network had been breached...But by that time, his estimates had every computer, smartphone, and server marked as infected.

Tomorrow morning, Lelouch would have unrestricted and covert access to any piece of digital information in Japan. Everything was connected these days, and his Virion let him control it all. The best part? Even if Aleister or his cronies knew all about the Virion, without Lelouch's completed code cyphers to communicate with and access the Virion's spyware and control functions, there was nothing they could do to stop it.

---

REVIEWS :

cassiermerlin : Thanks. As I mentioned, the Britannians put any Japanese male of military age in the camps when they invaded, but Suzaku's family was given extra priority as they were the leaders of the regime that gave Britannia so much trouble. That's all I can say for now without spoiling. Honestly, I can't answer most of your questions without spoiling major plot points in the story...As for Japan though, it's true that they've taken quite a worse beating in this AU than in canon. And we've all heard the 'vicious cycle' aesop enough times by now to know that what Britannia is doing can only lead to even more extreme violence down the line, particularly with a completely uninhibited and ruthless Lelouch running amok.

wolfblood123 : If there are any pairings, I'm going to try to make them happen naturally. While there is such a thing as polygamy and such in the real world, that doesn't really seem like something Lelouch would go for, especially now that he's decided to destroy any part of himself that doesn't contribute to his quest for revenge. But you never know - Lelouch is still human, and a teenager at that. It's certainly an aspect of his character that will be interesting to explore in this fic.

ChaosGriffin : You would be surprised how much time you have in a day once you've eliminated all distractions. Lelouch obsessively times and schedules every little task using scientific and mathematical principles. He leaves no time for enjoyment, socialization, or any kind of entertainment. Every second of every day is utilized to maximum effect in order to either better himself or his arsenal. You've probably noticed that Lelouch isn't nearly as well acquainted with his canon friends in this fic - All the time that would've gone into building relationships is instead used to weaponize his mind and body for his personal war against Britannia. Also, it's established that he is working on very minimal resources, and has virtually no infrastructure to speak of besides two low-budget hideouts.

Jouaint : It seemed appropriate given Britannia's origins and the overall vibe Lelouch was going for. You'll probably notice that this chapter has more of a Watch_Dogs feel to it.

NIX's WARDEN : Thanks.

raja302 : Ah, sorry about that. I think I know which parts you're talking about now that I re-read them. I was trying out 1st person POVs at the time and must've gotten mixed up. I'm pretty sure this chapter is consistently third person, though. I'll try to avoid that issue in the future.

Lunanite : Lelouch is too far gone at this point to care about anything Clovis has to say, much as in canon but taken to an even more extreme degree. After all, what's the point in questioning Clovis about the identity of his mother's killer when he can simply place collective blame for the crime on ALL Britannians, which he already does for Nunally's death. A super advanced stealth bomber takes an entire society and infrastructure to design, construct, and deploy, after all, and the orderer of the attack would be too impersonal of an adversary for someone as angry as Lelouch.

MM Browsing : As stated above, Lelouch has eliminated all distractions from his life, including friendship and emotions. As far as he's concerned, the only emotion he needs to feel in order to fight Britannia is hatred. Everything else just distracts from that goal and hinders his progress. He gets some money from Ruben Ashford, but most of the parts for his robots are discreetly stolen or scavenged from around the Ghettos or the storage room in the Ashford's guest house basement, which has a lot of obsolete but still functional computers and AV equipment. Lelouch's war so far has been remarkably low budget, as he relies on surgical strikes with a few well-constructed high-tech but scarce inventions, as well as cyberterrorism, which generally requires next to no physical resources and is limited more by skill. As I also said above, it's likely that there will be pairings, although with whom is up in the air. Even a harem isn't completely off the table, but I'll try to handle it seriously either way. Zero is a powerful man, after all, and his influence will reach new heights in this fic that canon!Lelouch could only dream of. That fact alone will likely attract certain women to him, even without taking his leadership abilities and good looks into account. But any actual romance will take place in a realistic manner for Lelouch's character, and will thus likely be slow-paced and difficult considering what a sociopath he's become.

Morli : The problem is that with Clovis dead, it's difficult to introduce CC into the story the very next chapter without it seeming forced. Rome wasn't built in a day and Britannia won't be wrecked in a week. It'll take time for Lelouch to gather resources and - eventually, followers. Right now he's just getting started, using 'subordinates' that he has absolute control over at this critical stage where he can't afford to slip up even slightly. Given Lelouch's life, he has serious trust issues.

thiple : I realize it's a bit of a stretch, but that's a deliberate part of the story. The entire point of this Lelouch's character is that he is amazingly effective and gets more done than you would think possible, but at the cost of sacrificing literally every other part of his life. He has no friends, no loved ones, no interests outside of orchestrating the downfall of Britannia. He's barely spoken three sentences to his canon 'friends' all story, and a notable difference between this Lelouch and canon!Lelouch is that this one does not discriminate between soldiers and innocent Britannians. To him, they're all a small part of the entity that took everything from him, and he intends to take his revenge on them all. That's the definition of Total War ; To seek the utter destruction of your enemy any way you can, even if it means targeting their civilian infrastructure and even the population itself. To mobilize every asset at your disposal for war, or in this case every part of your being, until it begins to define who you are. This will be more or less the central conflict of this story.

Nami Star : Yup.

Lone Gundam : The short answer is that I was busy with other stories and video games.

Styrgwyr : Funny that you should mention that. There was a thread on spacebattles saying the same thing several months ago. I've never read this 'Akumetsu' myself, but a cursory googling seems to imply that you guys might be on to something. Maybe I'll check it out if I have the time.