Chapter 8: Nunnally


JETALOT PROJECT IN PERIL?

As Nunnally vi Britannia could tell you, the top is a lonely place. With Jetalot days away from entering service officially, questions have emerged about the young princess's leadership abilities. Most come from Guinevere su Britannia, Britannia's First Princess and Odysseus's most ardent supporter. Yet her brother didn't want Jetalot in the first place—a detail that Guinevere seems to have ignored in her campaign to remove her younger sister from the project.

"Nunnally vi Britannia has displayed her incompetence on numerous occasions," the First Princess opined in an interview, yesterday. "If rumors from Jetalot's all-too-rare social functions are any indication, my sister is coming apart at the seams. Some people just aren't cut out for leadership roles."

But, she adds, "People like that should step aside for those who are prepared to lead. My brother, for instance."

Sour grapes? The gossip columnists think so, but this writer isn't so sure. Palace insiders point to several changes in the Eleventh Princess's behavior since the Angels reappeared. Only time will tell.

The HERALD wishes her well.



'Horrible,' I had called it.

'Necessary,' Cornelia had replied.

…And I suppose it was, or I wouldn't have come along. Avalon's air conditioning kept us comfortable despite Saitama's winter heat wave. Our troops showed up as triangles on a neon checkerboard. They might as well have been noughts and crosses. To play with people that way…like a game…

Something within me rebelled at the idea.


Third Impact is over. My problems are just beginning.

Bodies sprawl in the streets. On the left, they wear imitations of clothing from Areas Four or Five. On the right, Area Twelve. They have been dead several hours, and much of their blood has dried. Their deaths are still written on them: bullet holes, crushed skulls from clubs, sliced muscles from knives and broken glass.

Another riot.

Jeremiah's voice calls me into the future with a gentle "ahem…"

"Yes?" I say.

"This cannot continue, Your Majesty."

I wring my hands and feel sick…then actually vomit. I'm shivering more than I did in the winter before Second Impact.

Lloyd speaks. His voice is languid, and I do not know him well enough yet to recognize his undertone of concern.

"Hem…Your Majesty knows that I wouldn't presume, b-u-u-u-u-t…"

"What?" I say.

He pushes his glasses up. Hands behind his back, he paces in front of me. Stops. Looks back.

"If you don't put a stop to this soon, the warlords will take NERV Boston," he says.

"And civilization," Jeremiah adds.

"…And civilization," Lloyd says. "Or what's left of it…"

I don't like the way that one of the bodies is staring at me. It seems like an accusation. He's seventeen or thereabouts; blond, though his hair is greasy. Hazel eyes. A knot-work cross hangs around his neck, marking him as one of our former Scandinavian subjects. I try to throw my own accusation back at him: Why won't you get along? CAN'T you get along?! How hard is it—

Jeremiah's voice grows louder.

"Your Majesty knows that I'm perfectly willing to die for you," he says. "If you wish to commit suicide by letting this go unchecked, I cannot contradict—"

My fingers tighten on his shoulder. All at once, my body slumps when it feels the extra support. Jeremiah holds me up. I turn and look at our waiting knightmare, trying to focus every crumb of awareness on it. I tell myself how interesting its contours are, how enthralling they are, and how they're in the other direction from…

"You have my authorization to use force," I say. "Take—take me home, please…"

I'm fifteen, if you're curious.



I felt something warm on my shoulder, and looked up. Euphie's cool blue eyes greeted me. As was becoming increasingly common these days, they were wide with concern.

"Nunnally? Are you—"

I looked around. Technicians scampered from the control panel to the map on the far wall. Was I still solid enough to…? Yes. I was still resting on the silk-blend cushion on the back of my chair—a rotating one, so I could spin in it if I felt like it. That's what I told them, anyway, and maybe it was true.

"I'm…fine," I said.

Euphie nodded, but chewed on her lip.

"Really," I said. "I'm fine. Just ducky. Fine…"

Our troops were moving. Narita's hills had dried out in Second Impact's eternal summer. A few clumps of grass straggled along the hillside, but they might as well have been clumps of moss on sand. Britannian knightmares kicked up clouds of dust that covered the battlefield in a brown haze.

Far away, Britannian hostages were being held in a skyscraper. Tohdoh had taken them as a diversion—dishonorable, perhaps, but he was desperate. He needed to pull his forces out of Narita quickly. Unfortunately, I knew that Tohdoh wouldn't kill them. And because I knew, so did Cornelia.

The JLF met our first wave as it clambered up the hillside. The new Japanese cannons shredded us—our soldiers' first taste of the weapons their comrades would face in a few hours when they stormed the hotel. Knightmares exploded. The smoke from their burning fuel mixed with dust. Under the hail of fire, our attack wavered.

Cornelia clicked the button on her microphone.

"Dorothea, Gino: hit them at E-6."

Strange. Even in battle, we used chess terminology—a relic of the winnowing process when we were children. Chess was supposed to reveal strategic skills and coolness under pressure, with the added bonus that our statisticians could measure it. Two numbers had dominated our early lives: our IQs and our ELO ratings.

The game had also constricted our ability to improvise. I have often wondered what would have happened if one of us had developed his talents outside of the 64-square world of Britannian education. He could have probably defeated all of us. Too late now...

Inside-the-box thinking worked well enough for Narita. In Jominian style, Cornelia had sensed their weakest point and thrown our best against it. Gino and Dorothea cut, shot, and burned their way through the JLF. Gino's MVS sawed the few Japanese knightmares in half, and their pilots with them. Fin-stabilized discarding sabot rounds clanged off of his armor. In response, Gino's rifle blew holes through Narita's ramparts, reaching the knightmares behind them.

And then, one by one, the blue dots around Gino blinked out of existence.

"What's happening?" my sister yelled.

Gino was too busy to respond. He appeared on our screen moments later, measuring up an opponent in a black Guren: Tohdoh. The Guren stood upright with its legs close together, moving in short steps. Tohdoh's sword hung low at his waist, pointed at Gino but relaxed. By comparison, the Knight of Three stalked Tohdoh from a crouch. He held his sword high, shoulders tight, with most of his weight on his front leg.

Cornelia's eyes widened.

"Where did Tohdoh get that knightmare?!"

"China," I said. "Via Le Xingke acting on Gendo's orders, but that's not important right now."

Gino circled to Tohdoh's right with long steps that crossed and uncrossed his legs. Both feinted—Tohdoh with subtle flicks of his wrist, Gino with half-lunges that stopped short.

Gino attacked. Their blades tangled for a moment. Tohdoh lost leverage, and his sword barely made a dent in the Tristan's shoulder armor. Gino's luck wasn't much better. His blade moved upward and dug into Tohdoh's neck with a drawing cut. It would have killed a human being. The Guren shrugged it off.

When they separated, Tohdoh struck back. Gino ducked a moment too soon and landed a half-hearted cut on Tohdoh's chest that dented the armor but didn't break it. Tohdoh's sword smashed into the Tristan's head.

Finis.

An escape pod blasted off from Gino's knightmare. Tohdoh let him go.

"Time for Plan B," I said.

I hit the intercom.

"Suzaku?"

"Yes, Princess Nunnally?"

I sighed.

"It's your turn," I said. "And I'm just 'Nunnally', if you don't mind."

"Right," he said.

A giant rose behind us. Its segmented arms swung like an ape's. Inside, though nobody could hear it, Lloyd's scaled-up Yggdrasil drive hummed as it sent power throughout Jetalot's body. Clad in chobham and depleted uranium armor and standing two hundred feet tall, Euphie's knight thudded toward Narita.

Everything stopped.

That was a mistake on the JLF's part. The screen on Jetalot's head shimmered. It raised its hand as bars on a spiral energy gauge flashed up to maximum. The indicator light switched from red to green with a bell tone.

"Fire," I said.

Beams shot from both hands, sweeping the redoubts. Wherever the white light passed, it left bubbling pools of metal—tanks, planes, knightmares and guns reduced to sludge.

Knightmares fired from a low ridge to Suzaku's right. He melted them.

"Ve—ry good," said Cornelia, turning away. "Jetalot's first combat test is a success. Continue the—"

A frustrated growl sounded over the loudspeakers. Cornelia's eyes snapped to the screen, where Jetalot was frantically clawing at its body as if trying to brush off ants.

"Pilot Kururugi!" Cornelia said. "What's going on?"

Euphie's hands clasped over her mouth.

"There," she said.

A red Guren swung from Jetalot's arm, to its leg, to its arm again like a gibbon. Wherever it landed, it plunged its hand into one of the segmented joints. The metal fizzed. Then the Guren would swing to the next joint, leaving a welded mess behind.

Jetalot's swings became jerky, slow. Tohdoh's forces used the opportunity to withdraw. And still, the remaining Knights of the Round hung back.

"Nonette!" Cornelia shouted.

No answer.

"Luciano, respond! What are you doing?"

No answer.

"Monica!"

My sister banged the control panel, her voice steadily rising to parade ground level.

"Nonette! Luciano, RESPOND you stupid bastard! Monica! Nonette!"

It was Euphie who realized what was going on.

"No…" she whispered. "Purists. They're all Purists…"

Cornelia's jaw tightened, along with every other muscle in her body. She hit the comm button one more time. Unlike my brothers, Cornelia did not appreciate subtlety during combat.

Jetalot ground to a halt and tipped over. Its fall sounded like an explosion.

"If you sacrifice Jetalot and the only chance to crush the JLF in order to kill Suzaku, I'll have you all flayed alive!" Cornelia shouted. "D'you hear me? You think your judicial immunity'll help you?! Should I tell you exactly how my father's going to deal with you when I report this?!"

So there it was, in the open. The Rounds' communication systems miraculously came back on line.

"Sorry, Your Highness. Electronic interference…"

"EMP blast…"

"Equipment malfunction…most regrettable…"

By now, Kyoshiro Tohdoh's forces were in full retreat. The Rounds arrived in time to save Suzaku, but too late to save Jetalot, and far too late to destroy the JLF. Repairing our robot would take months.

I hate politics. Hate it.


I knock twice. The raps echo on the other side of the door, but there's no answer until I open it. The hinges don't squeal like our old ones at Pendragon Palace. No, NERV wouldn't build squeaky hinges. They were very modern, those NERV engineers.

"C.C.?" I call.

The girl doesn't look up. She runs her hands through green hair that hasn't touched shampoo in months. Around her, childish scrawls are chalked onto the floor—all vaguely resembling Father's hieroglyphs. And a face, repeated on the walls fifty times…sixty…

"I'm…she's…not quite," C.C. says.

I set the tray down in front of her. Steam rises. The scent of tomato sauce, garlic and melted cheese wafts through the air—it has taken me weeks to set up the infrastructure to prepare it to pre-Impact standards.

C.C. doesn't look at it. Instead, her hand brushes across the chalked face. She wrinkles her nose when the chalk smudges, then painstakingly draws over the smudge. And again. And again.

She eyes me suspiciously, as if I'm planning to erase the drawing, then nods toward the pizza.

"From…him?" she asks.

"From me," I say. "He's still in the—"

C.C.'s reply is clipped.

"Food's not needed, then," she says.

C.C. stands up and walks to the far end of the room to retouch another picture.

"Work to do…work to do..." she hums.

"But—"

"He'll want to see it when he comes," she says.

Then she stops, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

"…Wasn't interested before, though…was he? No, not before Impact…It'll rain again tonight …Said that already, though…I--"

Ever so slightly, C.C.'s voice seems to crack…or maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings onto her. I find myself wondering if the half of her soul stuck in Instrumentality is any happier. She breaks off, shaking her head, and retreats behind the curtain that surrounds her bed. I look at the drawing; one of many. It's simple—chalk for the face, charcoal for the eyes and hair, though the edges blur into gray where C.C. has rubbed her hands on it. I can still see the fingerprints.

"Not here to protect me now, are you?" I say. "What was the use of everything if you're just going to sit in that filthy ocean forever?!"

My voice has become high-pitched--too high for an Empress. Or whatever I am. I rub my eyes on my sleeve and close the door behind me. The picture does not respond. Benignly, my brother's face watches me as I go.

I'm twenty-something. Five? Six?



"Nunnally?"

"Fine!" I snapped. "I'm…"

Cornelia and Euphie both looked at each other. We were alone.

"…fine."

A pause.

"Cornelia?" I said.

My sister winced, giving me one of those strained 'understanding' looks that I'd started to resent.

"Yes?" she said.

"When I was young…How did I act?"

Any pretence of a smile vanished from Cornelia's face.

"Like Nunnally," she said.

Who?

Ah, yes. Nunnally: the chipper girl who Cornelia and Lelouch had shielded from the world's nasty realities. I shook my head and rubbed the bridge of my nose, but my head ached just the same.

"And what was she like, exactly?" I asked.

Cornelia opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, then closed it again. Her hand brushed my cheek before she hurried out.

The door slammed.

"You could have handled that better," Euphemia said.

I held out my arm, inviting Euphie's hand to rest in my own. She took it.

"I need…"

"What?" she said.

Sleep?

No. No more of that.

"Sit with me, Euphie. Please."