Entropy 3: (R1;2) The White Knight Awakens
The screen lingered for a moment on Lelouch's face, filled with bloodthirst and exultation, then went black.
"So..." Rivalz looked to the others around him uncertainly. "Is that it? Is that the big truth we were supposed to-"
Piled upon the floor of the warehouse were a dozen bodies of slaughtered Elevens.
"-oh, nevermind."
"I don't understand," Lelouch monologue to the 'dead' girl on the ground before him, "what it is you wanted me to do. Why did you give me this bizarre power?"
There was a rumble and Lelouch spun to come face to face with a Sutherland in the colours of the Purist Faction. Within its metal walls was Villetta, and she gawked at him, or more specifically, at the bodies of Clovis' Royal Guard.
Tamaki snickered loudly, earning a consternated frown from the woman who was currently onscreen.
"What? What's so funny?"
"Nothing, nothing!" he laughed back, louder still. "It's just, I can't believe that was your uniform! If I'da known women Britannians had to wear tiny miniskirts, hell, I would'a become an Honourary Citizen and joined up just like Kururugi did!"
The ladies in the room, all but Anya, instinctively scootched away. Instead of trying to escape Tamaki's lecherous gaze, the once emotionless girl let a mischievous smirk onto her face.
"Speaking of Suzaku, I had a cute uniform too, and his face would always get red when he looked at it."
With that said, the idea that Suzaku had been a pervert and had only joined Britannia to look at scantily clad female soldiers was planted in the audience's minds, and it took a tremendous effort on Zero's part to refrain from denying it. He got lucky though, as just before he broke down and made a comment that maybe Suzaku was only concerned about his fellow knight getting cold, Villetta once again spoke up.
"That's a standard issue G-Suit, you simpleton, not a miniskirt. Does it look like I'm wearing a skirt?"
She pointed to the screen, but Tamaki interpreted her words differently and leaned over in his seat, turning his head to stare at her bottom half.
"Yes. It's very flowy. Nice catch, Ohgi."
"Eeah!?" Villetta jumped from her theatre chair, both hands covering herself as Tamaki continued to stare, an approving grin on his face. She walked to the back and sat herself down several rows behind him, near Rakshata and out of his sight. Ohgi glared at his friend then dutifully followed his wife to sit with her again.
"Answer me, or I'll...!"
Villetta fired off a few warning shots from her Sutherland's assault rifle, the rush of air from the bullets ruffling Lelouch's hair but otherwise leaving him completely unphased.
"Well, well," Gino marveled. "So he faces down a knightmare on foot and doesn't even flinch. His balls? Solid brass."
Sitting right next to him, Nina flushed at the remark, but Gino clarified, not quite sure what her problem was.
"Well, I don't mean literally, obviously."
"I order you to come out." Lelouch's Geass flared. "At once."
The watchers tensed at the sight of his power, but contrary to what they expected, nothing happened.
'I see. It only works with direct eye-contact.'
Raising his hands in surrender and uttering a simple lie, Lelouch easily convinced the Villetta onscreen to get out of her knightmare, the one watching her former self getting duped having to hold back a snarl at what happened next.
Cornelia slapped a palm across her brow and slowly shook her head, actually embarrassed for her late brother Clovis. Was this really the calibre of his best agents? She could excuse the Royal Guard getting themselves killed en masse by an unarmed schoolboy. After all, they didn't know he was about to receive an eldritch and overall unfair ability from a dead girl. It was a fairly safe assumption on their part that something like that was unlikely to happen. Villetta getting tricked and briefly turned into a mindslave though was entirely her fault and was humiliatingly stupid. Not only did she get out of her KMF in the middle of an ongoing battle, she also bothered to confront a suspicious person (surrounded by scores of bodies) rather than just shooting him. Maybe it was the right thing to do, but 'the right thing' rarely factored into Cornelia's decisions. Her typical response to most problems was to simply carpet bomb them until they were no longer a problem.
Again Lelouch's Geass flashed, and in an instant Villetta was subdued, rings of orange around her irises. She handed him her pistol and knightmare ignition key, then stood completely still.
The scene may have been a distant memory to her, but seeing herself being manipulated so easily, knowing how it could have all ended right there if Lelouch had decided to shoot her, made Villetta's skin crawl. She felt violated.
Still sitting a few rows in front of her, Tamaki shook his head in awe.
"So that's Geass," he hummed. "It's really real, huh?"
Gino scratched his head.
"Uh, so it's like magic, then?"
Tamaki nodded.
"Yep. It makes you do stuff. Evil stuff!"
Kallen scowled at those words. She may not have been an expert on Geass, but she knew Lelouch. Or at least she thought she had. Only at the very end did she realize the inner workings of Lelouch's mind would ever elude her. Even so...
"No, dummy. He could geass you to do good, not just evil."
"Do good with Geass!?" Cornelia was quite insulted by the concept, and she stood in a rage. "Are you on his side? Have you been tainted!?"
"I'm just saying."
"Saying that you're a slave to the Demon!?"
"No, I'm saying you're paranoid!"
"You are under his spell!"
"You wanna go, Witch of Britannia!?"
Zero casually handed Nunnally the remote control and she pressed a button, pausing the show on a close-up of Villetta's bewildered but lucid face and her ample cleavage below. She took a deep breath and shouted.
"ENOUGH!"
The room went silent as the Britannian Empress glared upon her ill-tempered guests. The Gift of Truth was before them, showing them the hidden life of Lelouch vi Britannia, and yet all anyone wanted to do was talk and goof off and start fights. For Nunnally, this was rather a big deal, learning of what her brother did behind closed doors almost entirely for her sake, even giving his life for that goal, and her friends and family, former enemies, and vague acquaintances were not going to screw it up for her. She turned her vision back toward the screen and was about to press PLAY again when Gino ventured a query.
"So, this Geass thing... You guys already knew about it...?"
Chiba spat over her shoulder before answering, a disgusted "OI!" coming from Tamaki sitting right behind her.
"He used it on us - on all the Black Knights to control us!"
"He used Geass..." The blonde knight mulled the thought over, a sinking feeling in his gut. "On you...?"
If he wasn't uncomfortable before, now Gino was downright antsy. This whole situation had reeked of the supernatural from the very start, and now that it was confirmed he cast furtive glances to the former Black Knights in the room. They'd been subjected to a power that made people do 'evil things', and even with Kallen saying otherwise, Gino still couldn't help but shiver at the question of how permanent the effects of Geass happened to be.
"So, are we having a bad day~?"
"Oh look, it's that charming scientist fellow again!" Lloyd applauded. "He has such a cheery personality, doesn't he? I think he's my favourite character so far."
Sitting next to him, Cécile sighed and Milly giggled, the tension draining from them and the rest of the audience almost instantly. Whether he made the comment intentionally for that purpose or just because he wanted to was unclear, but if anyone were to know for sure what was rattling around in Lloyd Asplund's mind, it would be them. Cécile believed he was making an absent-minded observation. Milly was convinced he was more savvy than people gave him credit for.
"What's the latest on the situation?" Suzaku asked as Cécile handed him his pocket watch - his father Genbu's pocket watch.
Lloyd gave a quick "Ah!" of recognition then told him, then did something quite unexpected. He held out a knightmare ignition key.
The setting abruptly shifted to right outside the medical van where a large humanoid form stood, draped with a black sheet. Even covered up though, everyone watching knew exactly what was coming.
"Stupid Lancelot..." Tamaki grumbled to himself, earning mutters of agreement from around the room. "It's so unfair. I bet if I had a super-fighting-robot frame instead of a mass-produced piece of crap I could be invincible too."
Zero cocked his head at the comment, considering it for a moment. Truth be told, he had to agree. A devicer was only ever as skilled as their knightmare allowed them to be. Even if its pilot saw an attack coming, if the frame wasn't fast enough to react then it'd still get hit. Even Tamaki in a frame like the Lancelot would be more than a match against weaker KMFs.
Kaguya had a different interpretation of the Lancelot's debut.
"Poor Suzaku. If he never became the Lancelot pilot he never would've lost his mind. And he still would've been with us today."
"Ha!" Chiba scoffed at the girl's words. "Good riddance, I say!"
Cécile scowled, but Lloyd sitting next to her waggled a finger, reminding her to stay civil, and more importantly to not break character. They weren't sure if Zero Requiem would be revealed over the course of the DVD showings, but until that happened - if that happened - they couldn't let on that Suzaku wasn't an entirely bad guy.
Far from the back lines where Suzaku was blissfully unaware, the massacre of Shinjuku's Eleven inhabitants continued unabated. As a man was shot down by an APC's turret, a slash harken erupted from a nearby pile of rubble, tearing into its hull. It was Kallen in her red Glasgow, and inside her cockpit tears stained her eyes.
"Those damn Britannians!"
Milly and Nina winced at what they saw. They glanced to each other from their seats in different rows of the theatre, and they shared a look of revulsion, almost disbelieving at what deeds were committed by their own people.
"I... I-I would never...!" Nina attempted through trembling lips. "Even if they were Elevens, they didn't... They didn't do anything!"
At Ashford, quite a jarring change of scene from the carnage of the Shinjuku Massacre, Shirley was getting on her swimsuit as a jingle came from her phone. It was Lelouch, calling from the inside of Villetta's knightmare, and just before ending the call he smiled.
"By the way, tell my little sister that I'm going to be home late tonight, would you? Thanks."
'Oh, Brother...' A tear threatened at the corner of Nunnally's eye as a wave of emotion overcame her. 'You were always thinking of me, but when it really mattered I couldn't do the same.'
As Kallen desperately evaded Jeremiah chasing after her, a voice came through on her comm.
"The west entrance."
Kallen glared over at Jeremiah, sitting quietly with Sayoko and Anya.
"Hey, Orange-boy," she called to him rudely, though for some reason the taunt didn't upset him like it once did. "You used to be a racist prick. What changed?"
The noble cyborg merely shrugged.
"A lot changed."
Anya continued for him, bobbing her head in his direction.
"He met some people; learned some things. No biggie."
"Riiight..." Kallen didn't believe it was that simple. Not a chance. But why would Anya be covering for him? How were they even related to each other in this grand web of lies that was slowly unravelling onscreen?
A broad smile formed on Rivalz's face and he cried out in delight, completely disrupting the Red Queen's thoughts.
"That's some funky harpsichord! This is so cool, our lives have a soundtrack!"
Jeremiah and another Pureblood chased after Kallen in their Sutherlands, easily catching up to her outdated Glasgow. But as she approached Shinjuku's west entrance she hopped onto a set of tracks and on top of an incoming train, anxious to put some space between herself and her pursuers. Lelouch came to the rescue, opening fire from a nearby building with his stolen Sutherland's slash harkens and then his rifle, destroying the first opponent then crippling Jeremiah's frame.
"You son of a...!" the Margrave cursed in reply, raising his own weapon to return fire.
Before he could though, Kallen turned around, seeing the tide changing in her favour, and she lunged her frame at the Britannian, forcing him to eject.
"Wow," Milly gasped, thankful Kallen returned to the fray and saved Lelouch from Jeremiah's wrath. "You're pretty brave, Kallen. Much more than how you acted when you were at school!"
Kallen grinned wide, pleased that her days of pretending to be sick were over.
"Thanks, Madam President."
Disconcertingly, Milly shook her head in mild disappointment, earning a questioning look from the younger girl. She narrowed her eyes and threw on a tight smirk, then shrugged.
"If only I'd known, we could have done so many things together..."
"Uh..." Kallen didn't want to know. "Yeah. That's... That's too bad."
As Lelouch gave more orders to Ohgi and his crew, hope began to rise in them, and they followed his instructions to the letter.
"What was a train of Sutherlands even doing there in the first place?" Milly slowly shook her head in disbelief as she changed the subject. "That seems a bit convenient."
Cornelia huffed at the observation.
"Lelouch said it clearly, didn't he? Clovis couldn't bring in more units because it would reveal his operation to the public. He was obviously shipping fresh knightmares by train so he could reinforce his perimeter without making a scene."
"Oh, that makes sense. It seemed like a plot hole at first."
"A plot hole? This isn't some badly written sci-fi, you know. It's real life!"
Gino interjected with a short laugh.
"Well, real life's pretty epic, then!"
While the others joked amongst themselves at Cornelia's expense, Xingke watched the unfolding battle closely.
"He treated the battle as a free-flowing game of chess..." he muttered to himself, nodding along at the Black Prince's every move. "He had some skill at a board game and translated it to be useful in real combat. I see. Lelouch truly was a genius beyond any of us."
"Yep!" Rivalz unintentionally gave Tianzi a start as he chirped in agreement with the Chinese soldier. "He was a chessmaster, ol' Lelouch. Jeez, look at him go!"
The Chinese Empress furrowed her brow cutely, considering what she was seeing.
"Why wouldn't he just tell everyone he was a prince though? Wouldn't that be better than fighting?"
"Bugger if I know," the schoolboy replied, then snapped his jaw shut in embarrassment at his crude language in front of royalty. Luckily, Tianzi didn't appear to recognize the English slang and returned her attention to the show.
"My plan worked, didn't it? I can do it. I can! I can defeat Britannia!"
"There he goes again," Gino sighed at Lelouch's declaration of triumph. "If he really had some evil eye power he could have just gone back to the Royal Family and used it to take over."
"He ended up doing that anyway though, right?" Ohgi attempted a clever answer.
"Right, but why take so long to do it?"
Rivalz entered the conversation.
"And why fight against his own nation in the meantime?"
"I know, right?" Gino shook his head, a flummoxed grin on his face. "Still, what a badass. Did you hear that evil laugh? That's Grade-A stuff right there - not forced or anything! Demon or not, I'm starting to like this guy."
Nunnally didn't address the questions of the rabble, a vague sense of the truth already, magically impressed upon her. A longing for her brother began to fill her mind, and regardless her qualms with him, she reached out a hand to Zero who took it and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
'Their understanding of you is so limited,' the Empress thought to herself dolefully. 'But that's how you wanted it, isn't it Lelouch?'
The worse things became for Clovis' troops the more the prince began to panic, and as his options dwindled he at last called upon Lloyd Asplund.
"Oh, OH! Here comes my darling Lancelot!"
Tamaki's grumbling at the white knightmare only grew as it appeared onscreen and defeated him.
"Why's that always happen!? Why do I always gotta be the one who goes down first!?"
Instead of replying, Chiba simply laughed at him.
Jeremiah didn't even bother addressing him, instead focusing on what was shown onscreen. With a short "hm!" he sat back in his seat and smiled. He was impressed with Suzaku. It was the boy's first time in a knightmare and he was still at Ace level. If only things had been different, he would have made a fine Knight of One to a universally loved Emperor Lelouch.
The Lancelot barreled into the fray, demolishing every opponent before it with ease.
'Useless so-called terrorists.'
While other Black Knights took offence to Lelouch's condescension, Rakshata gave a rolling, whinnying laugh.
"That's not an insult, it's a compliment! Clearly, he thought you were competent enough to handle a single enemy. A pity he overestimated so greatly."
Ohgi and Tamaki and Kallen, the only ones present who'd actually been in that fight against the Lancelot, began to protest, but they stopped as the knightmare engineer levelled her pipe at them. She pointed with it to Kallen.
"Not you though, of course. You always went above and beyond Lelouch's expectations. He always liked you the best, you know."
Kallen blushed at the thought and leaned back against her seat in a huff. She'd wanted to know - what did she mean to Lelouch? Coming from her and not Lelouch himself, Kallen couldn't be sure Rakshata was correct. Still, the words were dually comforting and saddening, giving Kallen hope that Lelouch really did feel something for her, yet also reminding her that he was gone and it wouldn't matter even if he did. Not that she'd ever know for certain.
"For heaven's sake," Clovis said, almost disappointed Suzaku was winning the battle single-handed. "Now I'll owe my older brother a debt I don't mean to incur."
"His older brother?" Sayoko wondered. "Which one?"
Cécile offered the Japanese woman a swift explanation.
"He means Schneizel el Britannia. The Prince was funding the Lancelot Project that Lloyd and I worked on."
"Speaking of which," Lloyd added unhelpfully. "Where is that snazzy schnitzel? Wasn't he invited to see this too?"
Nunnally shook her head, not taking her eyes from the screen.
"No. I didn't tell my brother about this meeting or the DVDs. In the interest of complete honesty, I don't trust him anymore."
Cornelia harrumphed in agreement, remembering the mad prince's plan to rule the world. It certainly hadn't improved her opinion of him that he shot her in the legs. It was only through sheer luck she hadn't been crippled from the treachery just like Nunnally.
"Whoa, whoa," Gino frowned as Lelouch and Suzaku came knightmare to knightmare onscreen. "They didn't realize they were fighting each other!"
Zero held back a sad laugh at his friend's realization. No, they didn't know they were fighting against their best friend at that point. Perhaps if they had, the end result wouldn't have been such a mess. Maybe Lelouch and Suzaku would both still be alive, watching their shared history together as friends rather than being dead or replaced with the cold lack of identity that was Zero. After all, there was nothing those two couldn't do when they worked together.
Suzaku forced the Lancelot into a jump as a woman fell from a ruined building, plucking her from the air and lowering her to safety.
The fact that Suzaku would completely halt his pursuit of Lelouch, the one coordinating the rebels and, to his perspective at the time, a villainous terrorist, was a point of particular interest to the audience.
Tohdoh shut his eyes and let out a gravelly sigh, the slightest twitch of a frown at the corner of his mouth.
"Suzaku had honour. Once. But knowing this can only bring my heart even greater sorrow. That he would throw away what little noble spirit he had for power makes him ever more deplorable in my eyes."
"And that's only with what little we actually know," Kallen scoffed in agreement. "How much do you want to bet we haven't heard half the crap he was up to?"
"This history of events will show us. We can only pray it leaves nothing out."
As they spoke their words of hate against the presumed deceased Suzaku, Cécile couldn't help but frown, becoming more flustered the longer she listened. They didn't know. They had no damn idea! Suzaku had only been a kid, so how could they expect him to make the right choices? He'd had offers of power whispered in his ear by Britannia, all in return for the simple act of bending the knee. What stupid teenager wouldn't take that deal, even if it meant selling their own dignity away?
"I remember that happening," she said a little louder than necessary, indicating the saving of the falling woman and trying to recoup some respect for Suzaku. "I was really proud of Suzaku for doing that."
Zero heard Cécile's declaration, and despite agreeing with the vitriol of the others, a bad habit of self-deprecation he'd developed since seeing all his efforts literally blow up in his face during the Second Battle for Tokyo, he felt a small amount of warmth rise in his breast. With everyone in the world hating him, by design of the Zero Requiem, it was unexpectedly touching to hear a kind word, even if it wasn't directly meant for him. He couldn't forget. Suzaku was dead. There was only Zero.
"He shouldn't have bothered." Cornelia had her arms crossed and a sour look on her face, and as she received a dozen overlapping outbursts of disgust, she continued. "If Kururugi had just let that woman fall and gone after Lelouch, the Demon Emperor would never have existed. Euphemia would still be alive too. It would've been a small price to pay."
A glazed expression came over Nina's face, sitting next to the warrior woman.
"Princess..."
While others grumbled in protest at the callousness of Cornelia's words, Kaguya shook her head.
"Maybe you're right, but if that were the case none of us would be sitting together right now. In the end, Lelouch the Demon brought... " She stopped in the middle of her sentence as the importance of her next words struck her. Kaguya's jaw dropped and her eyes bulged, the sheer magnitude of her realization physically affecting her. Could it be possible they were wrong about Lelouch's character after all? Could it be that...? "He brought the world together."
Tamaki only huffed, hypothetical scenarios not really appealing to his more refined mental palate.
"I still think Kururugi was a goody two-shoes who didn't know justice from his ass. It might explain why he had his head up there so damn much."
As for Zero, shutting himself off from everyone's conversations, he closed his eyes and attempted to retrieve his thoughts from the time featured onscreen. Back then, he truly believed the means were more important than the ends, and that results gained through contemptible methods were worthless. Oh, how his views had changed! Recalling his outlook on the world from back then, he could only feel shame.
Saving that woman and her child may have been the only unequivocally honourable deed he'd ever done. After that, every action he took was grey with ambiguity, no matter how much he tried to rationalize it as good and just. He'd had plenty of time to consider things since taking up the mask, and his overall conclusion was that he'd lost himself to self-righteous arrogance. He used to think he was never wrong no matter what he did, but that was only because he never considered anything from anyone else's perspective.
To the Suzaku onscreen, Zero's past self, the right choice always seemed so incredibly clear - explicitly so, like a line from a textbook. Fighting was 'wrong', regardless why it was done, so those who rebelled against Britannia, the suzerain overlord of Area 11, were automatically wrong for doing so and deserving of whatever punishment they received. Even if he understood the rebels and their plight, they were wrong to oppose the system that made them rebels in the first place. In theory, they could have achieved what they wanted by working through the system, nevermind the fact that 'in theory' had no bearing on the way the world actually worked.
Suzaku had been blind to it before, so absorbed by his own stunted morality that he'd looked down upon Kallen and her friends for doing the only thing they could in a society that denied them the mere peace to live without fear. He was always right. That's what he must have believed somewhere deep in his subconscious. And as a result, anyone who didn't conform to his views was wrong by default.
Such a mindset was the height of childish thinking, and seeing himself onscreen, not experiencing the events firsthand but witnessing them as an outsider, caused Zero to reflect on all that had transpired since that day he was given the Lancelot. Going over each individual event in his mind, events that no doubt would soon be shown to the entire audience around him, Zero descended deeper and deeper into regret.
The terrorists were surrounded and about to be killed by Britannian soldiers when Clovis called them off. At gunpoint was he forced to comply, ordering his men to stand down and withdraw, the one holding the weapon being none other than the smooth-voiced schoolboy, Lelouch Lamperouge.
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