Chapter 29: Lucy
Imperial Decree #1: Concerning Diclonii
All children held in the Kamakura Facility will be released following administration of Acute Hereditary Diclonism-Induced Aggression Genetic Therapy and removal of their horns. Aforesaid children to remain wards of the state until such time as homes are found for them…
Imperial Decree #2: Human Experimentation
Under the new regime, experimentation on human beings or individuals with significant portions of human DNA is expressly forbidden. Humanness to be determined by Imperial Mandate, and at the moment is limited to: Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Homo Sapiens Diclonius, C.C., members of the nobility and royal family save for the subject of the V-2 Research Project.
Imperial Decree #3: Citizenship
A five-year phased emancipation of all serfs held by—but not limited to those held by—the Britannian nobility is hereby commenced. Newly emancipated serfs will not be conferred status as "freemen", as this title has been abolished as unnecessary.
All titles of nobility to be eliminated. Numbers and Britannians of various castes to share status as "citizens". But don't address each other as "Citizen Such-and-Such". That's just silly. It's also Jacobin, and we might line you up against a wall for it.
Imperial Decree #4: Governance Reappraisal Order
Whereas democratic government has proved itself incapable of tending to Britannian citizens' general welfare and common weal, it is hereby abolished. All powers, including but not limited to those previously held by Commons, Lords, and the Courts, are concentrated under the Executive until such time as the Britannian and former subject peoples are capable of creating a workable Republic.
That ain't happening for a long time, folks…
We sat in the darkness. The power had gone out thanks to the Spreckels & Harriman Electric Workers' Union, but Lelouch soldiered on, scratching decree after decree onto parchment by candlelight.
He even wrote one for me:
Imperial Decree #5: On Crimes Against Humanity
All individuals involved in the Kamakura Project will be retroactively charged under Imperial Decree #2 with human experimentation and—by dint of their alteration of healthy infants into Diclonii—crimes against humanity. Shoot without trial. Director Kurama is to be turned over to the custody of Diclonius #1.
Have fun, Lucy.
The sound of a bolt being thrown open echoed through the hall. At the room's end, a caped figure stomped through the door. His boots clopped on the marble floor, now dark-gray in the twilight. He nearly tripped over a footstool—an annoyance he repaid by kicking it to splinters.
"What are you doing here?" Suzaku demanded.
Lelouch looked up. His expression seemed almost bored as he rested his head on his hand and chewed at the end of his quill pen. He swept his fingers toward the pile of parchment.
"Writing decrees," he said. "I can deal with that pack of lawyers in the morning."
BANG!
Suzaku slammed his hands against the desk. Lelouch jerked slightly. Automatically, my vectors emerged and hovered millimeters from the Knight of One's throat. Suzaku made his position much, much worse when he grabbed the front of Lelouch's robe and pulled his former friend to eye level.
"Listen," he hissed. "I didn't betray Britannia so you could play around while your coup collapses."
Suzaku flung his hand toward the window.
"You've given Parliament time to organize!" he said. "Why didn't you arrest them as soon as this whole thing started?"
Lelouch chuckled softly, and shrugged.
"Perhaps I'm feeling self-destructive," he said. "I'm sure you can sympathize…"
Suzaku released Lelouch's collar and shoved him into his chair again. It creaked. Unlike its occupant, it was old and unused to abuse.
"The workers are striking, Lelouch! Remember last time?"
For once, I agreed with him. Unfortunately.
Deliberately, Lelouch leaned back and rested his right leg on the desk, crossing his left over it a few seconds later.
"Mmm…Hmmm," he said. "Time for a whiff of grapeshot, methinks…"
"Time for you to get off your ass and honor our deal!" Suzaku shot back. "What d'you think you're doing, anyway? You're not gonna be alive long enough to enforce any of these laws."
Not alive long enough…?
I felt a cold lurch in my stomach.
"Lelouch, what's he talking about?!"
Lelouch steepled his fingers in front of his chest and looked at Suzaku. When the Knight of One didn't answer, Lelouch sighed and replied in a weary voice.
"Suzaku and I made a deal," he said. "I'll stage a coup that puts Parliament in its place. The world's hatred will focus on me, and then Suzaku'll jump in and save the day. He'll kill me."
"No…" I whispered.
"…Yes. I'll be remembered as the guy who almost strangled democracy in its cradle. My death will be the wakeup call that Suzaku needs to push through democratic reforms. It'll be easy since he's the de facto head of the military."
I couldn't breathe. I needed air, and somebody to hold me and say everything would be okay. My arms wrapped protectively around my chest. I felt my shoulders shaking.
"And—and then…?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "I'm not going through with it."
Suzaku's eyes bugged out. Before I could react, he launched himself over the desk, aiming a weird spinning kick at the Lelouch head. I barely—barely—recovered quickly enough to stop him. My vectors caught Suzaku's foot in midair and threw him across the room. I heard a crunch as he collided with the wall. His arm bent in a direction that it shouldn't go.
Lelouch stood up. Hands behind his back, he walked over to his fallen friend. For all his feigned indifference, I heard him exhale with relief when Suzaku moved and groaned. He leaned over and whispered into Suzaku's ear.
"Stupid sort of promise when you think about it, Kururugi. Humanity's problems won't go away just because one tyrant dies…"
"Then…then what—" Suzaku gasped.
Lelouch smiled. His eyes took on a far-off look as he stared at the silver-and-black tapestry on the wall.
"Isn't it obvious?" he said. "I'll take V.V.'s code and rule as an immortal emperor until a real democracy sprouts under me. And then…well, let's just say the Requiem will come late rather than never."
Suzaku tried to laugh—a sick, wheezy snarl.
"So after all the death you caused, you'll wait to reincarnate and spend eternity fooling around with that green-haired slut, huh?"
Something caught Lelouch's eye—a pink paper crane hidden by the lamp like an Easter egg. He picked it up and spun it between his thumb and forefinger. It crinkled as he unfolded it, but nothing was written there.
"Well?" Suzaku said.
Lelouch seemed to snap out of a dream.
"Eh? Oh…I'll play my part, no worries. Fair play all around: I'll give my code to some other poor fool before I dance the hempen jig."
"Dance the what?" Suzaku said.
Lelouch rolled his eyes.
"Before they hang me," he said.
"And not a moment too soon," Suzaku replied.
Lelouch turned to me and waved his hand at Suzaku.
"Take him away—unharmed—and confiscate his Lancelot activation key. I want you airborne and threatening protesters in half an hour. You know what to do with my memoirs if this collapses."
I bowed, wrapping vectors around Suzaku's arms and legs.
"Yes, Lelouch," I said.
"And Lucy?"
"Yes?"
I thought I saw the faintest smile on his lips, though his voice stayed deadpan. I blushed just the same.
"Be safe."
"Yes, Lelouch."
I dragged Suzaku out and closed the door behind me. Okay, I could have carried him out, but it was much more fun to hear his head thump against the furniture. Clumsy me.
It became much worse for the Knight of One when I got him alone. The hallway was deserted. Its purple carpets looked black in the darkness, and I'd done enough research to know that its walls absorbed sound. All the better to muffle screams.
"Why do you obey Lelouch?" Suzaku asked.
His voice would have sounded weak except for the undercurrent of hatred that kept it steady. I looked back. Friction from the carpet had frayed his uniform and rubbed his face raw.
"Let me guess," I said. "You want to win me over."
"Because what you're doing is wrong," he said.
My vectors pinched his shoulders and hauled him up until we were face to face. He looked like he was hanging from a pair of meathooks. (I'll let you figure out which stage of my life gave me that little metaphor).
"You have no idea how lucky you are that Lelouch wants you alive," I said. "I know what you did to him. You think I of all people wouldn't notice, you sanctimonious son of a bitch? Do you know what it's like to see the worst part of your life reflected in the eyes of the person you love? DO YOU?!"
You will, I thought.
I tightened a vector around his broken rib and squeezed. He screamed. His body writhed deliciously in the air, but I couldn't bring myself to smile. I pulled him close so that I didn't have to shout. His face contorted in pain as I dug my vectors deeper. Good. Pain concentrates the mind wonderfully.
"Let me tell you a secret," I said. "I…killed…Euphie. Planned it all. I chopped the stupid bitch into mincemeat because I wanted to make Lelouch emperor."
His eyes widened. Oh, he heard me all right.
"And you know something, Suzaku? You'll never get revenge for it. That's the best part: I killed your fiancé and made you betray your best friend….and now you've got nothing."
I let go and dropped him in a heap. He breathed in sobbing gasps as he tried to pump air into his lungs and retch onto the carpet at the same time. I grabbed his hands and dragged him to his cell.
Morning.
Lelouch took a breath. We stood outside the Britannian Gallery of Art, a massive building they'd modeled on the Louvre; right down the glass pyramid. A robin twittered from a copse of trees a few meters to our right. Three regiments of police waited behind us, flicking used cigarettes onto the grass. Beyond them, Purist troops from the Household Guard occupied the rolling hills.
If this scene sounds unfamiliar, you were probably born after the Revolution. When I tell people about the coup of 15th Ventôse, they imagine it occurring in the stuffy concrete slum that surrounds the Gallery today. Thirty years ago, it was different. Lelouch's ancestors had built the place as a sanctuary. It was their last bastion against the cities, a place where they relaxed in antiseptic comfort while the masses rotted. Air pollution? Traffic? The royal family laughed at these while they surveyed their Rembrandts and Picassos. The Empress Nunnally Thoroughfare hadn't yet gouged through the Gallery's fields and woods.
Today graffiti has replaced the Rembrandts, and tarmac smothers the field. The heady days when people believed that democracy would solve all their problems have vanished just as completely, like smoke on the wind.
But I'm getting maudlin. I have a coup to narrate.
Britannia had democratized unevenly. As it turns out, the place wasn't a paradise of racial harmony. Anglo-Norman-Britannians—thirty million of them, give or take—sat at the apex of the social pyramid. Here resided your Ashfords and Darltons, Bradleys and Guilfords. Germano-Britannians, fifteen million strong, sat a little below them. A few came from illustrious houses like Weinberg and Gottwald; most didn't. And below them, the remainder of Britannia's Western European population divided itself into Poles, Magyars, French, Scandinavians, Irish, and the rest—so painstakingly filtered and insular that they might as well have lived in separate ghettoes. Their ancestors had come to Britannia looking for opportunity. They'd been disappointed.
Under the new Constitution non-citizen Numbers couldn't vote. And since Britannians meant "Western European Descent" when they said "Citizen", their piece of paper disenfranchised almost a billion people. Anglo-Norman-Britannians supported the Purists. Germano-Britannians supported the Moderates. The twenty million non-German, non-Anglo Britannians just wanted to keep the Numbers in their place. Everybody else didn't care.
So much for democracy.
Here's the problem, though: the Purists controlled the House of Lords, but they didn't control Commons. Lelouch's choice of Prime Minister represented everything that the lower house loathed: Kalaris was a pompous fool whose pedigree stretched further than his trains of thought.
Coincidentally, anarchists chose that moment to threaten to blow up Parliament. Rumors flew that the Numbers had planned it all. Everyone sniffed a second revolution, and the House of Commons fled to a prearranged spot: the Britannian Gallery of Art. The Emperor's last son was waiting for them.
…which brings me back to Lelouch, standing on the front step. C.C. waited at his elbow, resting her head on his shoulder. She tilted her gaze up.
"Pendragon's suburbs are getting restless," she said. "Arrest them now and get it over with."
Lelouch shook his head. His black bangs fell over his eyes, but he brushed them away.
"We need to make this look legal," he said.
The prince's witch raised an eyebrow.
"A legal coup?" she said.
"Precisely."
I was afraid he'd say that.
Lelouch's face betrayed no apprehension, and I didn't blame him. Everything about him seemed so calm and regal that morning. The ruby studs on his stole and belt glittered bright red in the sunlight. His cloak seemed to float over the ground, untouched by the morning dew. It was white and gold, like a Pope's funeral robe…or an Emperor's.
I coughed.
"L-Lelouch?"
"Mmm?"
"Maybe…um…it's just…I don't think we should narrow our options," I said.
He laughed.
"Oh, dear…" he said. "Haven't you heard? I'm just a humble prince offering his services to Parliament in the wake of a revolutionary plot."
"Lelouch…"
He held up his hand and nodded to the men standing at either side of the Gallery doors.
"Shush," he said. "I know what I'm doing."
The doors opened. We walked through cream-colored galleries with vaulted ceilings and checkerboard floors, illuminated by yellow lamps. Statues of centaurs and huntresses running with stags on their heels glared at us. Carved stone vines wound around arches and columns—some of which were statues themselves. They're all smashed now.
C.C. walked by Lelouch's side, whispering.
"We lost the most troublesome MPs in transit, so you'll have the floor," she said.
"Mmm-hmm…"
"I have a knightmare waiting just in case," she said.
"Mmm-hmm…"
C.C. stopped. She grabbed Lelouch's cheek and turned him until he faced her.
"Pay attention!" she snapped. "And for the sake of all that's holy, don't get carried away and start making speeches. You're not Caesar, and don't want to look like him."
I hadn't seen her angry before.
Is it possible that she cares…?
No, I thought. It's not.
Lelouch tut-tutted her and brushed her hand away. We turned a corner. The MP's waited for us in fold-out metal chairs amid the statues. They wore visors. Lelouch threw out his hands. His voice echoed against the domed ceiling.
"People of Britannia!" he shouted. "My men and I have sworn an oath. What we want is a republic founded upon true liberty, civil liberty, representation of the people—and I swear we shall have it!"
The hostile crowd must have awakened something in Lelouch. He stood taller. Energy seemed to pulse through him, only to release itself in frantic gestures. His words built castles in the air and then blasted Parliament down from those ethereal heights for their sins. As the speech wore on, the MPs grew silent and sullen.
Lelouch paused when a man in a red jacket stood up.
"I'm wondering, Prince: where's the proof of this conspiracy?"
Lelouch smiled like a teacher about to chide a student. He held his hand out to C.C. as if beckoning from something.
"No problem," he said. "I have all the documentation—"
His eyes glazed over for a second as if he'd entered another world. Then they widened. His head snapped toward the witch.
"What do you mean you don't have—"
He clapped his mouth shut and retreated into his mind again. I felt adrenaline pumping through my body and wondered if it was too late to arrest them all. Lelouch shook his head, as if clearing it. I heard laughter in the audience.
"People…er--of Britannia…" he said. "I am the king of the day…The gods of war and fortune—ah—fortune and war back me up. If I'm Caesar, let any among you play the part of Brutus…"
I'd seen him play that gambit before with the Black Knights. I didn't think it would work now. I tugged at his shoulder.
"Lelouch, you don't know what you're saying," I whispered.
C.C.'s eyes locked on mine.
"Get him out of here," she said. "I'll muster the troops."
"No!" Lelouch said. "I can still pull this off. Wait a moment, and I'll—"
"LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY!" someone shrieked.
"Now," C.C. said.
I nodded. Lelouch tried to shake me off—unsuccessfully. The MPs moved forward now, shaking their fists and screaming "outlaw him!" and "death to the tyrant!" A fountain pen struck Lelouch on the shoulder. That was only the beginning. Books and paperweights flew at us from all around. One knocked Lelouch down. Our soldiers shielded us as I dragged him outside.
Lelouch stumbled out on shaky legs, blinking at the sunlight. He looked from me to C.C. to his troops. Blood flowed into his eyes from the cut on his forehead. He wiped it off and then just stood there, looking at it.
"I…er…"
C.C. pushed past him.
"Forward!" she yelled. "Sweep them out!"
The soldiers cheered but didn't move. Then another voice came from Lelouch's personal knightmare above us.
"Noblemen! A bunch of commoners attacked the last of the royal line and you're just going to sit there?"
Excited murmurs passed through the crowd. I thanked the gods that Schneizel had admitted that Lelouch's Diclonism gambit had been a bluff. Otherwise…
"How many of your fathers served the Britannian royal house?" the knightmare boomed. "Grandfathers? Great-grandfathers? How many of you come from families so ancient that you can't remember how many generations it's been?"
Louder murmurs.
"You want to let these people beat you? A bunch of peasants?!"
That clinched it. Murmurs turned into shouts, and the riot police surged through the doors. Books and paperweights met firehoses, tear gas, and clubs…
…and all because of a speech from one of those "peasants".
Well done, Shirley.
C.C. dusted her hands off and curled around Lelouch's neck. He watched the violence with a look of detached resignation.
"Well, that's that," she said.
"Not quite, witch."
We both looked at him.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Lelouch smiled that knowing smile of his and watched the horizon. Grass stains had already rubbed off on his robes.
"Unless I'm mistaken, there's a very pissed off group of Japanese terrorists who won't take kindly to this," he said.
C.C. closed her eyes. A few seconds later, Lelouch laughed again. I remembered for the thousandth time how much I envied her for that telepathic link.
"I can beat Kallen," I said.
Lelouch looked at the Lancelot and then at me.
"I'm not so sure," he said.
