Foreword:
This story is written based on Episode 9 of R1 titled "Refrain", but to fit it into the "Truth within the Trilogy" universe that was written based on the Movie Trilogy version, several parts of the original episode have been left out due to one or more of the following reasons:
1. The omitted part of the episode is derived from events that did not happen in the Movie Trilogy version, e.g. Kallen's bath scene;
2. The omitted part of the episode is derived from events mentioned in the Movie Trilogy version, but the details of which are not spelt out in detail, leaving no way to ascertain whether the event went exactly the same way as in the TV anime version, e.g. the Kawaguchi hostage incident; and
3. The omitted part of the episode has been incorporated into the Movie Trilogy version and has already been reacted upon by the cast in "Truth within the Trilogy".
Chapter 9.5: "Initiation" VIIS – The Refrained Kinship
The scene shows a big room inside what was apparently an opulent mansion in Area 11. There was a grand piano next to the glass wall of the room, but underneath it were two dumbbells and a barbell. Various pieces of female clothing were scattered on the floor, from the TV set, which was left turned on and let the news running, all the way to a comfortable-looking bed. On top of the bed lay an almost naked girl with red hair facing downward, with only a pair of panties on to cover all the most crucial part of the female anatomy. It was Kallen, sleeping.
The present day Kallen is aghast. Why is the footage showing her naked on bed? "Don't look!" she quickly yells as she shoots up from her seat in shock.
Guilford immediately turns away, as expected from an upright knight of Cornelia; Gino actually really wants to appreciate Kallen's naked body from a purely artistic viewpoint, but ultimately decides against it out of respect. Tohdoh also turns away from the screen for the same reason.
"Wow, Kallen, I didn't know you've such good parts here and there… ow!" Tamaki, as tactless as ever, starts to comment on Kallen's figure, only to have his head pulled away by a stern Ohgi to prevent him from further looking at the screen and saying senseless comments about Kallen's figure.
"Hey! Why do you hit me?" Tamaki yells. However, Ohgi simply fixes the red-haired Japanese man with a stern stare to silence him. Tamaki may be his good friend, but that doesn't mean he can say whatever he wants about the younger sister of Ohgi's best friend!
Similar to Gino, Rivalz, being a perfectly healthy young man, actually really wants to appreciate Kallen's nice body, but ultimately decides against it because he treasures his friendship with Kallen more. It turns out that Lloyd that is the big problem in the auditorium.
"AHA! What is there to see, anyway? All the crucial parts are covered… ouch!" Lloyd casually comments before having his right ear pulled by Cecile.
"Stop being insensitive, Lloyd!" Cecile scolds, "have some decency!"
Meanwhile, Milly is once again in her female body connoisseuse mode. "Hmm… that's a 10, just like Shirley's."
"Madam President!" "Milly!" Shirley and Kallen both shout as they blush hard, to which Milly laughs at mischievously. It seems that there is indeed a dirty old man residing inside Milly's mind.
Suddenly, there was a loud crashing sound coming from outside of Kallen's room. Kallen woke up, put on her sleeping gown and went out of her room to see what happened – it turned out to be a Japanese maid breaking a lighting ornament.
"Kallen, that's…!" Ohgi exclaims as he turns back and looks at the red-haired girl in utter shock. The red-haired girl in question simply bites her lip and keeps looking at the screen – she really doesn't want to let others to know about this quiet secret of hers, but alas, it seems this in the course of revealing Lelouch's overly well-kept secret to the audience, there is bound to be collateral disclosure of well-kept secrets among the audience themselves as well…
The Japanese maid was fidgeting at the broken lighting, but she then noticed Kallen was looking at her. "Ah… Kallen… I mean, mistress," the maid stuttered, "Forgive me. I didn't wish to wake you."
Kallen was annoyed by the blunder and instructed the maid to hurry and tidy up the mess, since she was going to go to school very soon. However, the maid took an interest in Kallen's school life. "Mistress, you've been attending school quite a bit lately. Making any friends there?" she asked while smiling.
However, Kallen immediately scowled. "I don't see how that's any of your business!" she then went back to her room and shut the door. The maid kept smiling after Kallen went back into her room, but behind the door, Kallen murmured in pain as she held her sleeping gown near her chest tightly, "Just… go, will you?"
The screen then cuts and focuses on a photo showing what seems like a family of three standing in front of Mt Fuji. However, a rabbit sticker was used to cover the face of the woman who stood in the middle of the photo, between a young man and a little girl.
"Kallen, how could you…?" Ohgi cannot believe how Kallen treated her mother. "She's…!"
"I know!" Kallen exclaims before Ohgi continues to say what he wants to say, "I know that was wrong, and I regret about that… I just can't change the past, that's all."
This piques Rivalz' interest. "Kallen, what's so special about that maid?"
Kallen doesn't know what to say, but Milly immediately intervenes by tapping on Rivalz's shoulder, "Let's keep watching instead of keep asking questions that will eventually be answered by the footage, shall we?"
It was a quiet night at a container terminal, and two oleaginous men were discussing something sinister inside a warehouse.
"Princess Cornelia is a soldier. This sort of thing doesn't interest her all that much," a taller man said.
Suddenly, all the lights went out and the two men were shock as they heard gunshots outside the warehouse. "Turn on the light!" the taller man exclaimed, and the shorter man complied, turning the lights back on. Then, they looked up and saw a group of people in black clothes stood on the balcony of the warehouse.
"You… you are…!" the taller man can't believe what he saw.
"…the Black Knights!" suddenly, the screen shows Kallen, who seemed to be just woke up and in Ashford Academy School uniform, exclaimed while standing up from her seat, shocking the whole class before they burst into laughter. It turned out that Kallen was sleeping in class and dreamt about the Black Knights' operation against some bad guys.
"Lady Kouzuki, I think you might have got the wrong idea about Her Highness…" Guilford is the first to sound out opposition on how the taller man in Kallen's dream viewed Cornelia.
"But I have no control on how my dream went!" Kallen vehemently defends herself.
"Dreams represent one's subconscious thoughts, you know," Rakshata chimes in the conversation, which is totally not helping Kallen.
"Your Highness, I mean no offence! That's really just a random dream I had…" Kallen inwardly curses Rakshata as she tries to make it clear to Cornelia that it was just her dream and she has no control over its contents. Why does the Indian scientist jump in to make things even more difficult for her?
"It's alright, I don't mind," Cornelia waves off Kallen's worries nonchalantly, "we were enemies back then, so it was inevitable that you may have some negative views about me."
After class, Shirley and Rivalz came to Kallen's seat and chatted with her. "That's not like you, dozing off in class like that," Shirley said curiously. She would never have thought a straight-A student like Kallen would fall asleep in class.
"Well, I…" Kallen kept her sickly appearance and stuttered at the blunder she made during class.
"You could learn a thing or two from Lelouch! He's an expert at sleeping in class," Rivalz advised, and the three of them all turned their heads and gazed at Lelouch, who sat in his seat, looking away from the three while resting his head on his right hand supported by the elbow that pressed against the table. As the camera switches to his side, it is revealed that he was actually sleeping.
"He's not sleeping now, is he?" Kallen was surprised.
"I don't know what he's up to night after night," Rivalz sighed, "But he sleeps through about half of them these days."
Kallen seemed curious about that.
'I should have realized that… how come I didn't even suspect him as Zero back then?' Kallen, now watching it from a third-person perspective, finds it awfully obvious that Lelouch should have at least been seen as a suspect of the masked hero Zero.
"I see, that's why Lelouch kept sleeping through about half of the class," the present day Rivalz realizes, "Back then, I thought he snuck into the bingo hall without me at night."
"Lulu…" Shirley, while not happy to see once again her dear Lulu dozed off at class, is nevertheless mesmerized by his rather handsome sleeping face.
"Ha! He should have tried my quadruple espresso shot with jalapeños and chili powder! That'd keep him from falling asleep at class," on the other side of the auditorium, Tamaki comments with the authority of an established cafe owner.
"Well, you haven't had your store running yet back then, though," Rakshata chips in, "and you have never brew any coffee for us back then. How would we know that you're good at brewing mixed coffee when the thing we knew about you the most was keep losing Knightmare Frame battles the quickest among the senior brass of the Black Knights?"
"Hey! I was just being unlucky!" Tamaki immediately fights back, "you really have not seen how great this Shinichirou Tamaki…"
"I still have the statistics of who retired from the battlefield the quickest on average in my computer at the lab," Rakshata interjects and ignores Tamaki's unfinished sentence, "should I pull that up and we take a look at the data?"
Just as Rakshata and Tamaki are bickering, Ohgi feels sad to see two students sacrificing their school life to throw themselves into the dangerous work of the Black Knights. As a former teacher, he, like any other responsible teachers, does not approve of students sleeping through classes and not learn anything from class, let alone plunging themselves into the dangerous business of subverting the strongest nation on Earth. 'I was kind of forced to accept Kallen's participation because she was simply the best Knightmare Frame pilot we had back then and all the way until the end… in any case, this is probably not something Naoto would be happy about if he learned that I have caused Kallen to sleep through classes like that…' he muses in an apologetic tone to his prematurely deceased leader, comrade and close personal friend.
Meanwhile, in the front row, Cornelia frowns at how Lelouch slept through classes as well, but for a slightly different reason. As Lelouch's elder sister and his enemy on the battlefield, Cornelia knows full well that Lelouch was smart enough to learn everything in the curriculum by himself. What irks the purple princess is how Lelouch did not fulfill his duties as a student at school: to Cornelia, as long as Lelouch was a student of Ashford Academy, then he had the duty to attend and behave in class appropriately, regardless of whether he had the ability to study the entire curriculum on his own or his other duties in the Black Knights. In short, What Lelouch failed to do was not how he did not learn the things taught at school, but how he did not respect the teachers and fellow students by not putting all his effort into participating the classes he took.
The scene switches to a military train platform that serviced the Area 11 Government Palace. Cornelia was seen briefing a nervous Euphemia about what to do when she was out for an operation outside Tokyo Settlement.
"The EU is starting an offensive along the El Alamein front, and we can't go on dragging our feet around here," Cornelia began, "We need to solidify our internal governance and have this Area upgraded to Satellite Status. To achieve that, aside from stomping down terrorism, we also need to address the rampant abuse of this Refrain drug among the Elevens that has caused the productivity to plummet. We'll have to cut the drug's supply route coming from the Chinese Federation."
"From my country?" Tianzi is aghast to learn, for the first time, that her country was producing a drug, "Refrain" or whatever the name was, and trafficking it to Japan and causing problems to Kaguya's people. "I'm sorry, Kaguya!" the young Chinese girl apologizes to her best friend, "I didn't know…"
"That's not your fault at all, Tianzi," Kaguya quickly assures her friend that the rampaging Refrain drug was not Tianzi's fault, "it was General Cao of the Liaodong Military Region who was letting people to traffic the drug from the Chinese Federation to Japan, so that he could have some extra income going into his pocket."
"Where's this Cao bastard now, anyway?" Chiba hisses in contempt. How dare Cao did that to her fellow countrymen for his own pocket?
"Well, he went missing during the reorganization of the Chinese Federation into the United States of China," Kaguya shrugs, "I guess he had come to the conclusion that he would not be able to continue doing his shady business after the formation of the UFN, and chose to run away with his money."
"Kaguya-sama, we should put him on the UFN wanted list," Tohdoh suggests with fury, "General Cao should answer to his crimes of corrupting our people and his own country's finances."
"I believe a Red Notice has been put up a few months ago already, but apparently General Cao had taken advantage of the scrambling of organizational building of the UFN right after the end of Lelouch's reign. However, now that we are gradually getting a grip on things, he won't be able to stay out there for long," Kaguya replies.
"I understand. Big Sister, please be careful with your operation too," Euphemia said.
Cornelia smiled and cupped Euphemia's right cheek with her right palm. "Once I've cleaned up this Area, I'm entrusting it to you. Try to stay out of harm's way from now on. Alright, Euphy?" the purple princess said gently.
"A sound strategy," Gino comments as he turns to Cornelia, "Your Highness, I was a bit surprise that you were planning to hand the entire Area to Princess Euphemia, though. I thought you would never let Her Highness to be far away from you for an indefinite period?"
"Lord Weinberg, I know I may seem protective of Euphy, but even I know that she would one day be on her own," Cornelia rolls her eyes and explains to the curious former Knight of Three, "I simply wanted to clear as many problems as I could while I was still there to make sure that she would have a good start the day she assumes the post of Viceroy of Area 11."
Zero, meanwhile, is shocked to learn about this as he wasn't there at that moment. 'Does that mean Area 11 would eventually be in Euphy's hand anyway? If that's the case, they what's the meaning of Euphy's sacrifice in establishing the SAZ…' he tightens his fists as he realizes that had the problem of terrorism been wiped out sooner, Euphy might not need to die because she would be able to use her authority as Viceroy to directly amend policies, or at the very least influence the upper strata of the Britannian society in Area 11 to improve the living conditions of the Japanese, just like how Nunnally did it when she was Viceroy – without the SAZ massacre and the ensuing Black Rebellion, there would be a lot more trust and goodwill from both sides for Euphemia and Suzaku to court, and it would be much easier for Euphemia, as the Viceroy of Area 11, to push through her policies than when Nunnally took over the helm back then. 'Euphy…' Zero grits his teeth as he once again sinks into regretful sadness, thinking about his eternally lost liege and one true love he had sworn his loyalty to.
Back in Ashford Academy, Kallen stood right in front of the Student Council room and yawned as she complained about how tiring her double life had been. Suddenly, Milly's voice came out from behind the door. "Come on, Suzaku, hold him down!" the blonde girl instructed.
"Damn it, Suzaku, cut it out!" a terrified voice that sounded like Lelouch's came out from behind the door as well, "Stop it! I'm not kidding!"
Kallen opened the door and entered the room, only to see a group of students in cat costume surrounded a Lelouch being tied up to a chair.
"Sorry, Lelouch," Suzaku apologized, but he didn't stop what he was doing, "it's the president's orders."
"But you are smiling! You're definitely smiling!" Lelouch kept struggling, but to no avail.
"Stop struggling!" Shirley ordered Lelouch as she tried to put some make up on his face.
Milly noticed Kallen coming in and greeted her, "Good Meowning!"
"Good… good morning…" Kallen was shocked at what she saw. Milly was in a sexy black cat outfit with a tail attached to her back; Shirley was in a red, two-piece feline outfit; Rivalz dressed in a yellowish costume with brown patches here and there; Suzaku was in a goofy blue outfit that covered his entire body; even Nina was wearing a tiger headwear as she sat at her usual spot and concentrated on typing stuff on her computer. Suzaku, Shirley and Rivalz were working hard to force Lelouch to succumb to them, letting them dressed him up as yet another "cat" as well.
"What's this?" Kallen asked incredulously while still in her sickly persona. What the hell is going on?
"Huh? Haven't we told you already?" Rivalz asked, "It's our welcome party for Arthur." On the other side of the room, a black cat named Arthur was yawning. It was the same cat that Euphemia picked up during her "date" with Suzaku earlier.
"Well, classes are postponed, so we might as well have some fun, right?" Milly chimed in.
"I set some stuff aside for you, over there," Shirley pointed at an assortment of costumes next to the window, "Take your pick!"
"Ehh? Me too?" Kallen is shocked. She didn't expect she had to play along with the Britannians when she joined the Student Council!
"You people organized a party for a cat?" Chiba can't believe how wasteful the Brtiannian students were, "you may just normal students who had no say in how the country was run, but don't you think it's grossly overboard?"
"Mrs Tohdoh, I understand where you're coming at, but as the president of the Student Council, it was my duty to see that the budget was used in a way that would enable students to enjoy their student life to the utmost," Milly defends her decision to host a welcoming party for Arthur, "I think you would agree that there was nothing wrong for students to pursue a memorable and fun student life."
Chiba wants to retort, but alas, as a military woman, she may be good at sparring with a sword, but fighting with words is certainly not her forte. "…Fine," she hisses and says nothing more on the subject.
"Geez, Prez really knows how to defend her ridiculous decisions well," Rivalz leans forward and whispers into Shirley's ear, "the truth was that Prez just wanted an opportunity to force Lelouch to dress in something ridiculous and silly…"
"Well, we did have fun though, didn't we?" Shirley whispers back. On top of enjoying some fun time with her friends in the Student Council, it was also a treat to Shirley to be able to see her dear Lulu to wear something goofy and funny.
In the first row, Nunnally is watching the scene with great interest. "Too bad I couldn't see that back then. Big Brother looked cute in that cat outfit!"
"I agree!" Tianzi cheerfully joins in the conversation, "Do you agree too, Kaguya?"
"Of course!" Kaguya smiles at her younger friend. It is indeed refreshing to see another side of the otherwise cold and callous Lelouch that she has been so used to seeing.
Meanwhile, Cornelia is gratified to see that Milly was able to make Lelouch to at least enjoy some fun time at school. Cornelia may be a stoic and strict person herself, but after seeing how her exiled brother did not truly enjoy his life at Ashford besides spending time with Nunnally, Cornelia is glad to see that even though Lelouch might not have opened himself to his friends wholeheartedly, he was at least able to share some fun moments with them.
It was another sunny day, and someone was visiting the Stadtfeld Mansion.
"Mistress Kallen! Mistress Kallen!" the Japanese maid serving the Stadtfeld family called Kallen to come downstairs to receive her guest.
"Madam President?" Kallen was surprised to see Milly at the doorsteps. Why would the tall blond girl showed up at her house?
"I just dropped by to hand you something," Milly replied. Kallen was perturbed. What did Milly want to hand to her?
Seeing an awkward silence, the Japanese maid decided to step in. "Where would you like me to show her to?" she asked Kallen, "The parlor perhaps. Or maybe…"
"We'll be in my room," Kallen interjected with clear disdain on her face.
"As you wish," the Japanese maid replied, seemingly ignoring the dismay shown on Kallen's face.
"Oh, I heard you had a friend down here, I was sure it would be a boy," suddenly, a rather annoying voice came from the top of the staircase, and both Kallen and Milly looked up towards the source of that voice: it was a blonde woman with light blue eyes, an exaggerating hairstyle in a purple dress. "Out all night and missing school. Not to mention all your visits to the ghettos. You're lucky your father's back in the Homeland…" the woman scolded Kallen before shooting a glance at the Japanese maid and snorted, "…no fighting one's blood, is there?"
The Japanese maid looked away from the blonde woman's gaze and took a small step back just as Milly was gazing at her.
"You're the one who's enjoying dad not being around here, aren't you?" Kallen immediately shot back to the high-and-mighty blonde woman, completely out of her sickly character right in front of Milly. The blonde woman scowled immediately upon being hit back hard by the rebellious Kallen.
Suddenly, a crashing sound interrupted that confrontation, shocking the two. It turned out to be the Japanese maid shattering a big vase onto the ground.
"Oh dear, what have I done…" the Japanese maid panicked.
"What's wrong with you!" the blonde woman scolded, "Can't you do anything right? Besides selling your body, that is."
"Forgive me, milady, forgive me…" the Japanese maid knelt down before the broken vase to figure a way to clean it up.
"Damn that Britannian woman!" Chiba scowls, "What the hell was wrong with her? Not only did she cheat on her husband, but also acting all high and mighty and bullying us Japanese!"
"That's a terrible bitch right there!" Tamaki yells as well, "What kind of real man would marry such a bitch?"
"Political marriage probably," Rakshata interjects, "the upper echelon of the Britannian society marries not for love, but for wealth, power and prestige. Am I right, Earl of Pudding?"
"AHA! Not exactly, I almost did one for the sake of science," Lloyd responds casually as he thinks back his own arranged marriage with Milly, "too bad I didn't get a hold of the Ganymede… ouch!"
"Stop it, Lloyd!" Cecile quickly pulls Lloyd's ear hard to stop him from keep babbling disrespectful remarks as the blue-haired assistant to the eccentric scientist turns to Milly and apologizes on her boss' behalf, "Lady Ashford, apologies for the unwarranted affront, he didn't mean that at all…"
"That's alright!" Milly responds lightheartedly, "we all know who he was back during the Ashford Academy School Festival, right?"
Meanwhile, Ohgi frowns. 'To think that Ms Kouzuki had to endure such painful times… I'm sorry, Naoto. I didn't know…'
Kallen and Milly were sitting around a table inside Kallen's room.
"Quite a complicated home life you have, isn't it?" Milly started, trying to chit-chat her way into a smooth conversation with a student who, while excelled in her grades, kept skipping school for health reasons.
"So what was it you wanted to give me?" Kallen, however, cut the chit-chat short and went straight to the point.
Milly was totally unfazed to Kallen's straightforwardness, though, as she took out a folder that her grandfather gave it to her. "Your transcripts since middle school. I thought I'd better give them to you off of school grounds," Milly said as she handed over a blue envelope to the red-haired girl.
Kallen was shocked at seeing her middle school transcript, but quickly regained her composure. "So my secret's out then, isn't it? That I'm actually an Eleven and Britannian half-breed," she said.
"Prez, you knew about Kallen's identity that long ago already?" Rivalz asks in disbelief. According to his memory, Milly has never once mentioned it to any of the Student Council members that Kallen is a mixed girl, "I thought you would have told everyone once you got to know that!"
"Even I can keep a secret or two if I want to," Milly winks to her blue-haired friend.
On the other hand, Kallen is thankful to her friends at the Ashford Student Council. None of them seem to care that she is of mixed Britannian and Japanese heritage after she publicly switched her last name from Stadtfeld to Kouzuki; they still treat her in the same way they've always treated her before she revealed her true identity. 'This just showed how biased and prejudice I once was against all Britannians,' the red-haired girl muses, 'and this is a mistake that I shall never commit again.'
"That was my stepmother down there," Kallen explains to Milly, "My real mother was that clod of a maid who knocked over the vase."
"What?" everyone in the auditorium, except Milly, are surprised.
"Kallen, that maid was your mother?" Shirley asks incredulously, "but… but how could you treat her like that?" The orange-haired girl simply cannot imagine any daughter could have instigate passive violence against her mother – that's simply absurd!
"Kallen…" Nunnally is also shocked. She might not know Kallen as well as the Black Knights group or the Ashford Student Council group, but from her limited interaction with Kallen at the Ashford Academy Student Council and during her short tenure as the Viceroy of Area 11, she can tell that Kallen, while fiery, is a gentle person at the core. To see how the red-haired girl maltreated her mother in such a horrid way is simply as shocking as seeing a docile sheep tearing off meat from a ferocious wolf.
"Kouzuki, how could you treat your own mother like that?" next to a scowling Tohdoh, Chiba scolds the red-haired girl, "this is not even a Britannian-Japanese issue anymore, but about the basic decency of being a daughter. Had you been corrupted by that bitch of a Britannian woman?"
"…I was wrong in doing that," contrary to her fiery personality, Kallen straightly owns up her mistake, "I mistreated my mother because I misunderstood her. I regret what I did back then."
Kallen's straight up admission of her mistake both shocks Shirley and takes the wind right out of Chiba's sails. However, a well-known hardheaded woman such as Chiba is not going to give up anytime soon as she quickly musters something else in her mind in order to pursue the matter, only to be stopped by Milly who steps in to help her friend. "I recall I had a conversation with Kallen right after this. Why don't we keep watching to find out the truth instead of keep questioning Kallen?"
"…fine," Chiba acquiesces, however unwillingly, "but you better have a damn good explanation, Kouzuki," she chides at Kallen.
"And your father… is he the head of the Stadtfeld family?" Milly asked.
However, Kallen didn't answer, but started talking about her real mother instead. "My mother is such a fool. In the end, she wound up a servant. She doesn't have any real skills. Also, no matter who's ridiculing her, all she can do is laugh like it's nothing," Kallen sighed before getting angry, "She didn't have to choose to stay in this house, you know? She's just clinging some old lover who jilted her!"
"You really hate your mother, don't you?" Milly asked concernedly. Milly may be facing a different set of problems in her own family, but that didn't mean she cannot feel the pain and agony Kallen was having with hers.
"I just find her depressing," Kallen smiled hollowly as she picked up the teapot to pour some tea for herself and Milly.
"Well, this is getting a little heavy," Milly tried to lift the heavy mood up a bit, "Imagine, the wife and the daughter and the other woman, all living together."
"Ah, it could be worse. Three square meals and a roof, right? I mean, it's not unbearable," Kallen said resignedly, "Most of the time, anyway."
"That's good," Milly smiled to Kallen, but then looked to the window and said with a worried tone, "Still, somethings in life we can bear on our own, but when you add them all up, they eventually break you."
Kallen moved her gaze from her tea up to the blonde girl sitting in front of her, showing a wary expression on her face. Is Milly going to spill her secret?
"Oh, don't worry!" Milly was perceptive as always and quickly assured the doubtful red-haired girl, "I won't lie, I'm always hungry for secrets, but I'd never talk about this." She then picked up her tea cup and had a sip.
Unbeknownst to both of them, Ms Kouzuki was sitting on her bed in her own small room with a depressed facial expression. On the two sides of the room, there were graffiti that read "We will kill you!", "Get lost!", "Moron", "You Rubbish", "Idiot", "Never come back", "Brainless", etc. Ms Kouzuki sighed as she used her shaky hand to hold the key, opening her locked drawer and pulled it out. Inside, there were the flasks of the Refrain drug.
Kallen bites her lip with immense regret. 'Mother… I'm sorry I didn't understand you earlier and unknowingly cornered you to rely on Refrain…'
'Tsch, such a weak woman,' Chiba scowls, 'not only did she rely on a Britannian man, she was also relying on drugs and never fought back. How can she be so shameless about it? Kallen's right here, she should have just moved out and lived as a Japanese with dignity and honour!'
Vastly different from Chiba's "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" way of seeing things, Shirley, a kind girl as she always has been, is heartbroken to see how Ms Kouzuki suffered from brutal discrimination and mental abuses from all directions. Coming from a modest Britannian commoner family, Shirley has a small but happy and tight-knitted family with her parents, both of which love her very much. She knows that there were marriages that were unsuccessful, but she automatically assumes that the worst case scenario would be for the parents to divorce that would cause the child to have a broken family. Never had she imagined that there would be mothers who were subjugated and abused by the new wife of her ex-lover who basically abandoned her in the most humiliating way. 'Poor Ms Kouzuki… I didn't know there were families like that among the nobles. I thought Lulu's case was an outlier since that's the Imperial Family we are talking about, but this…'
The other person who could relate to this would be Cornelia, whose father had over 100 wives. 'Ms Kouzuki's case was similar to some of the Imperial Consorts who either voluntarily or involuntarily wedded to father for pure political reasons and were ignored, neglected or discarded by father after he had got what he wanted from that particular political union,' the 2nd Princess of Britannia thinks inwardly, 'In Ms Kouzuki's case, though, it was due to father's discrimination policy against non-Britannians. Perhaps Lord Stadtfeld had once loved Ms Kouzuki, but was forced to split with her and married a Britannian noblewoman instead to be in compliance with the general expectation placed on a Britannian noble. Or perhaps Lord Stadtfeld was just messing with Ms Kouzuki and not treated her seriously. Either way, he did not manage his family well.'
It was another day, and Kallen was seen standing on a staircase at some shopping arcade. "Refrain?" Kallen asked as she was having a phone conversation with Ohgi.
"It's a psychotropic that makes you think you've gone back to the past," Ohgi replied.
"Must be all the rage here in Japan, then," Kallen deduced.
"Yeah, well… Who doesn't long for the days before the occupation?" Ohgi said, causing Kallen to frown, and her hatred towards Britannia further deepened. "This stuff was specifically targeted at the Japanese so we can't very well ignore it. As soon as the Burais are stocked, we move."
"Supplies keep rolling in, and I hear lots of people are ready to join us," Kallen commented, "The Black Knights sure are popular."
"Well, we are the heroic knights for justice," Ohgi said inside a dark base, "I'll call you when the ammos get here."
Kaguya frowns as she listens to the conversation between Kallen and Ohgi about the popularity of the Refrain drug among the Japanese. 'Just as Princess Cornelia mentioned earlier in the footage, our own investigations back then also indicated that the drugs were supplied to Japan by the drug lords in the Chinese Federation. In that sense, Princess Cornelia's intention of cutting the drug supply route from the Chinese Federation, if implemented correctly, would actually help the Japanese. Perhaps on the matter of Refrain drug, it was the same situation as the murdering of Prince Clovis: our resistance seemed to be doing something that, if succeeded, would further endanger our own people in terms of an immediate problem we're trying to solve. Nevertheless, for the bigger good of Japanese Independence, we have no other choice but to do it.'
Just as Kallen finished her call, someone was yelling from behind. Kallen turned around and saw a group of five Britannian thugs surrounding a Japanese hotdog stall owner.
"Come on, Eleven, say something!" one of the thugs yelled as he stepped on the shoulder of the stall owner who was sitting on the ground.
"Bowing your heads is what you Elevens do best, right?" Another thug yelled. However, despite seeing the Japanese stall owner being bullied, other Japanese working in the shopping arcade area all turned away as if nothing happened.
'Eleven…' Kallen was infuriated. How dare these arrogant thugs insult her countrymen like that? Just as she was about to take action to stop the bullying, someone tapped on her shoulder forcefully and stopped her before she acted. Kallen turned around.
"Lelouch!" she was surprised.
"There're five of them. You wouldn't stand a chance at all," Lelouch warned as he withdrew his hand from Kallen's shoulder.
"So you think I should just ignore it?" Kallen demanded, still somewhat in her sickly persona.
"Take a good look at that Eleven being bullied," Lelouch turned and gazed at the heavily beaten up hotdog stall owner, to which Kallen also turned her gaze to, "If we intervene and help him to prevail against those thugs, he wouldn't be able to sell a thing tomorrow," Lelouch analyzed levelheadedly, "It was his choice to become a Britannian slave. That's just the price you pay for working in the settlement."
"Even so…!" Kallen was appalled by what Lelouch had just said. Was he seriously suggesting to ignore the plight of that Japanese who was suffering from such unfair abuses?
"You got a problem over there?" Kallen's voice attracted the attention of the Britannian thugs, and they slowly approached Lelouch and Kallen, "feeling sorry for this Eleven, are ya?" one thug said.
"Nah, they feel the same way we do, don't you guys?" another thug jested.
"Not quite," Lelouch closed his eyes and smirked. Then, he activated his Geass and stared at the five thugs, "But you're tired of beating up Elevens, aren't you?"
The Geass Sigils flew into the thugs' eyes and rewired their neural network immediately.
"Yeah, it's boring," one thug said.
"You guys wanna hit the arcade?" another thug suggested.
"I've got no cash, dude," another thug laughed off the suggestion as they all started to walk away.
'I see… that's why those thugs so readily gave up beating that hotdog stall owner!' Kallen realizes. She has mostly shelved this particular episode in her memory already due to other more shocking things that have happened in the past two years, but it is still good to solve a mystery that she has once pondered about.
"AHA! So His Majesty's Geass orders also work in the form of a question?" Lloyd observes.
"Interesting, though I wonder how long did that command last," Rakshata comments.
"It seems that the effect will be permanent, like that one that was cast on that blue-haired girl who kept carving a mark on the wall at Ashford Academy every day," Cecile deduces.
"Well, that's a welcomed permanent order I guess, not to beat up other people," Rivalz comments, to which both Milly and Shirley agree.
The way the thugs actually listened to Lelouch's "advice" shocked Kallen and she gazed at Lelouch in disbelief, but Lelouch shrugged it off and ridiculed the thugs as being quick to lose interest in what they were doing. Kallen then rushed to the beaten hotdog stall owner and helped him to get back on his feet. "Are you alright?" Kallen asked gently.
However, as the hotdog owner saw Kallen's Britannian school uniform, he immediately switched the topic, "What can I get for you? Oh, how about a nice California hot dog, Miss?"
Kallen was shocked and confused by the sudden change of mood of, and topic by the stall owner, as if he didn't get beat up just now. However, the stall owner continued as he saw Lelouch approaching, "Is this your boyfriend? I can get him something too. I have ice cream, if you'd like?"
"…" Shirley is unhappy to see the scene not only because she is jealous of how her Lulu was being seen as Kallen's boyfriend, but also how bad the hotdog stall owner was being beaten up, yet he just shrugged it off like nothing. Why was he so nonchalant about that?
"Tsch… what a spineless man!" Chiba spats, "he's just been beaten up by some Britannians, yet he still stayed there to do his pathetic business? He should have joined the resistance right away to fight against Britannian tyranny!"
Kallen frowns at Chiba's comment. In the past, Kallen would probably think in a similar fashion, but after learning the true reason behind her mother's forbearance towards all the abuses she had been subject to by Mrs Stadtfeld and the other Britannian maids in the Stadtfeld Mansion, she understands that it is not so black and white in one's choice of whether to fight against or endure the unjust rule of Britannia back then.
After leaving the hotdog stall, Kallen and Lelouch sat down on a bench in a beautiful park.
"In some ways, Area 11 is better off now than the old Japan ever was," Lelouch began his argument, "Being made a colony of the Empire has stabilized its military and economic position in the world. Elevens can even attain full citizenship through the legal process. It's easy to become an honorary Britannian; it's just a question of pride, really, though I can certainly understand why they'd resist."
"And?" Kallen demanded, confusing Lelouch. "Knowing all that, what does Lelouch Lamperouge think about it? What do you wanna do about it?" she elaborated her question.
"Nothing," Lelouch muttered.
Lelouch's answer was disappointing to Kallen. "You know, you've got a lot of brains but you don't seem to be doing much with them. It's all Shirley talks about, saying how intelligent you are but how you barely ever apply yourself," she ridiculed.
"That's why I don't do anything," Lelouch said as he stared at the front, "That Eleven we saw back there could tell you: he could lead a better life as long as he bows his head to Britannia."
This infuriated Kallen as she recalled an image of her mother, who was doing the exact same thing as Lelouch had suggested. Why was everyone so complacent to the unjust Britannian rule? Don't they have some spine to fight back? And what was with the smugness of this cynical raven-haired brat? Kallen temporarily dropped her sickly persona as she stood up, raised her right hand high in the sky and slapped on Lelouch's left cheek hard, causing him to groan in pain.
"You must think you're pretty cool, huh? Just playing the critic and judging the world from the sidelines?" Kallen scolded the cocky Britannian boy, "I was a fool to expect anything more from you. You know, I really thought you were a better man than this," she then turned and left.
Unbeknownst to her, Lelouch took a quick glance at her, covered his left cheek with his right palm, and gave an approving smile.
Kallen is embarrassed by the scene before feeling saddened. 'He smiled after I've slapped him because I passed his test…? Why? Why did you not trust my resolve to fight Britannia and tested me like that…?'
"What the hell?" Tamaki chunters from a sedentary position, "Why did he laugh after being slapped by Kallen? Is he a masochist or something?"
"Maso…kit?" Tianzi is puzzled by the new word she hears. "Kaguya, what does 'Masokit' mean?"
"It's something that you don't really need to know, Tianzi," Kaguya quickly tries to digress the subject while shooting a stern glance at the tactless Japanese man, to which the said tactless Japanese man quickly shuts up and looks away.
"Oh no… Lulu was into that kind of thing…?" Shirley starts to panic. Was her dear Lulu really into those kinds of kinks?
"CALM!" Milly suddenly shouts, casting her "CALM" spell again to calm down her cringing orange-haired friend.
"Geez, Prez, you're really falling in love with this new spell!" Rivalz says.
"Well, as long as it does the trick!" Milly giggles.
Back in Ms Kouzuki's room, Ms Kouzuki was shocked and despaired to find that all her Refrain drug flasks had been emptied.
Kallen bites her lip at the scene. She really regrets that she didn't try to understand her mother sooner before she had to suffer from getting addicted to drugs.
In the front row, Nunnally is saddened to see Ms Kouzuki had suffered like that. As someone who has lost her mother at the mere age of six, Nunnally knows the pain of not having a mother and therefore cherishes family members even more than most people with normal families do. 'Kallen already said that she regretted mistreating her mother at the beginning of the segment of the footage. I wonder what exactly happened that had led to Kallen's realization?'
It was midnight, and the Black Knights were ready to infiltrate another warehouse filled with Refrain. However, some of the members of the Black Knights were confused as to why they were doing this.
"What the hell is Zero thinking?" Tamaki complained in a low voice, "After all his talk about bringing down Britannia, he's just got us running around helping the police."
"Still feels pretty good to have the will of the people behind us, though," Ohgi tried to calm his friend down. Thanks to their recent operations, the Black Knights were now heroes on the internet.
"Are we in the right? I don't know any more," Kallen seemed downcast as she sat on the opened cockpit of her Glasgow.
"Kallen…" Ohgi was worried about his deceased friend's younger sister. However, before he could say anything more, Zero sent a blinking light signal, informing them that it was time to barge into the warehouse.
"I can't believe he actually got in there with such ease," a member of the Black Knights said.
"How the hell did he get pass security so easily every time?" Tamaki hissed, "What sort of magic did he use, really?"
"Tsch! I knew there was something fishy back then!" the present day Tamaki hisses, "No wonder every time he could get pass the security like that!"
"AHA! Such a convenient power to have!" Lloyd observes.
"Well, to be fair, it definitely helped with our operations back then though," Ohgi says, trying to calm the agitated Tamaki down.
"So you are condoning the use of such despicable power, Ohgi-san?" Chiba questions immediately.
"No! No I'm not…!" Ohgi immediately denies, "I'm just saying… well, that it did help us with our operations back then… but I am not condoning the use of such evil power on other people!"
"So are you agreeing or disagreeing with the use of Geass, Prime Minister Ohgi?" Rakshata spares the audience the niceties and heads straight to the crux of the matter.
"I… err… that is, err…" Ohgi stutters. He has just realized that he is in a rabbit hole now.
"…recorded," Anya takes a photo of the embattled Prime Minister of Japan.
Inside the warehouse, the gang members were packing boxes of Refrain flasks carefully.
"Is the shipment for Nagoya ready?" a man asked.
"Nice and safe here in the settlement," another man answered. Suddenly, someone fired their submachine guns through the metal gate and gunned down quite a number of the gang members before the shooters busted in – it was the Black Knights.
"The Black Knights have arrived!" Tamaki announced with pride and excitement as he kept shooting at the gang members, completely different from how he complained about how Zero made them to do "police work" just a short while ago.
"So it turned out that you do like playing hero games, Tamaki?" Rakshata ridicules.
"Hell yea… I mean no!" Tamaki almost answers in the positive reflexively before realizing his contradictory attitude towards the "police work" he had just complained about in the footage and came up with a pretty good explanation for how he acted back then, "I mean, we need to think big and do big things, not just police work! But hey, at least we were doing something good for our own people! Nothing wrong with feeling exciting about that!"
Guilford shakes his head upon hearing Tamaki's words, sighing as he smiles in a rather resigned way. 'How shaky this man is in his conviction of things,' the upright and always loyal knight muses.
Tohdoh, while remain silent, shakes his head internally. 'Such shallow conviction of striving for the liberation of Japan and being easily content with small victories. It's not wrong to stop these Refrain drug dealers from poisoning our people, but Tamaki was getting too full of himself, he's missing the big picture of actually overthrowing the Britannian government and restoring Japan as a proud, independent nation.'
"Intruders!" some other gang members picked up their submachine guns and started to fight back. However, as the Glasgow barged into the warehouse, the gang members knew they were outgunned and started to run away.
"These Knightmare Frames really are amazing," Kallen muttered as she pilot her Glasgow into the warehouse and forced the gang members to flee, "Each one is an army unto itself."
"But that Glasgow was still no match to my Guren MK II," Rakshata remarks with a smirk.
"Heh! Those measly gang dudes! See how cool I was? They were all frightened off by me!" Tamaki continues to brag as he points at the screen. Sadly, no one responds to Tamaki as it was clear that the gang members dispersed because of the Glasgow, not him.
"Kallen, did you go on operations like that every night?" Rivalz is curious, "perhaps that's why you were all sleepy during the day in class."
"Well, yes and no," Kallen explains, "not every day, no, but there were times when we went out at night to clean up gang members quite frequently, and that was the most exhausting period I had to endure."
After dispersing the gang members, Kallen manoeuvred her Glasgow to rush through another gate and barged into the inner part of the dark warehouse with little light. What she saw, however, was a shock to her: a group of Japanese were seemingly under the influence of Refrain, in a state of ecstasy.
"Japan! Japan!" a man chanted with excitement.
"Yes, I'm going to get married next month!" a woman exclaimed in joy.
"I've been promoted! I'm going to the Paris office!" another man exclaimed.
"Leave it to us! Japan is on the vanguard of technology!" yet another man was talking on an imaginary phone.
"I'm studying abroad! I can't believe I got in!" even the hotdog stall owner earlier was there.
"Refrain…" Kallen murmured. She was saddened as she recalled what Milly said to her earlier, 'When you add them all up, they will eventually break you.'
"That's right, which is why I'm here to… huh?" Kallen hardened her expression and determination to end the suffering of the Japanese, only to be shocked when she saw her own mother was also among those Refrain users. "Careful, it's dangerous to run like that… oh!" Ms Kouzuki said as she wandered in the spacious warehouse before she tripped herself.
"Mother!" Kallen exclaimed and quickly manoeuvred her Glasgow to catch her falling mother, picking her up onto the Glasgow's left palm. However, Ms Kouzuki didn't sense that at all and continued to dream on, "Naoto. Please, I need you to keep an eye on your little sister," she said with a motherly voice.
This hurt Kallen's heart. "My God, how weak a woman are you, Mother…" she said in pain, "First you give in to Britannia, then to a man, and now this… Onii-chan is gone forever. Let him go…!"
"Poor people…" Tianzi is saddened to see how the people were suffering, especially now knowing that it was her officials who went behind her back to traffic such horrible drugs to Japan.
'Those High Eunuchs… they drugged our people and robbed our wealth!' Kaguya frowns at the scene and curses the ones who were truly behind the drug deal that was once rampant in her country.
Nunnally frowns at the scene as well. 'I knew the Japanese were suffering because of father's discrimination policy when I took over the role as Viceroy of Area 11, but this is still difficult to watch…'
Suddenly, the right arm of Kallen's Glasgow was under attack and eventually destroyed.
"Knight Police?" Kallen was shock. Hadn't Tamaki scouted the area already beforehand? She quickly piloted her Glasgow to run away, but the Knight Police unit kept chasing her.
Zero, Ohgi, Tamaki and a two more members of the Black Knights came into the dark warehouse and noticed the Knight Police unit.
"Isn't that a police unit?" one member asked.
"They're in on this deal? Tamaki!" Ohgi turned back and questioned the red-haired man.
"Don't look at me!" Tamaki exclaimed, "When I checked it out, there weren't any cops involved!"
"Corrupted filth…" Zero hissed.
"Such corrupted filth… they have ruined our country!" The present day Cornelia also hissed in full agreement with Lelouch. She tried hard to clean up the Area 11 Government when she was Viceroy, but it proved a lot more difficult than she had expected since she is a lot better in fighting a regular warfare on the battlefield than a political warfare within the ranks of her own government – this is the one area that she falls significantly short when compared to Schneizel and Lelouch.
"Your Highness, I'm afraid the corruption problem in Area 11 was deeply rooted since His Highness Prince Clovis' time as Viceroy, so it was not a problem that could be solved easily," Guilford tries to comfort his liege, knowing what his liege is probably thinking right now, "plus your attention was diverged by the Black Knights as well, so it became even more difficult to rid the corrupted officials out of the Government."
"I know, Guilford, but still…" Cornelia sighs, "I don't know whether I should thank Lelouch for helping me to clean up the corrupted officials pro bono, or should I loathe him for tying my hands up in dealing with him and not being able to exert my full force into expunging those corrupted scums."
"I guess it's both?" Gino interjects.
"…perhaps," Cornelia sighs again in response to Gino's rather unhelpful conclusion. If only her father did not send Lelouch and Nunnally to Japan and caused such tragedy to happen to the family…
The chase continued and Kallen tried to shoot back at the Knight Police unit, but her hands were tied due to the Glasgow's left arm holding her drugged mother. Kallen hissed as she gazed at the weak woman her Glasgow was holding and bellowed, "You're in the way!" She then manoeuvred the left arm up and wanted to throw away Ms Kouzuki to free up the Glasgow's battling capacity. However, she somehow just couldn't muster sufficient resolve to push the button.
"Damn it! I don't need you! I don't want you…! Ah!" Kallen exclaimed with a mixture of frustration and sadness.
Just as Kallen was having a vigorous internal struggle in her head, the chasing Knight Police unit shot the Glasgow's landspinners and caused it to crash onto and slide on the ground before coming to a halt a few seconds later.
"Grr… huh?" Kallen gasped in pain upon taking the shock when her Glasgow crashed onto the ground, but then she saw something that burnt on her retina.
"Kallen… Naoto…" Ms Kouzuki whispered as she laid on the floor, still under the effects of the Refrain drug.
Kallen gasped at her mother's whispering, but immediately suffered a barrage of attack from the Knight Police as it started to shoot the Glasgow with its submachine gun.
Meanwhile, Zero and others rushed to a corner behind a large shelf. However, they do not have the ammo strong enough to aid Kallen to fight that Knight Police unit. After the Knight Police exhausted its bullets, it threw away the gun and started to approach the fallen Glasgow.
Kallen knew she was finished. "Go… away. Run! Get moving, you idiot!" she shouted at Ms Kouzuki, praying that she would escape. However, Ms Kouzuki simply stood up and smiled at the Glasgow. "I'm here for you. I'm here for you, Kallen. I'm here, as I always have been."
This shocked Kallen. She then recalled all the time when Ms Kouzuki served as a maid in the Stadtfeld mansion, tolerating all the bullying and abuses and kept smiling at her. "Then that's… that's why you stayed in his house? You stayed there for me? You fool…!" Kallen exclaimed in sadness.
The Knight Police unit pressed down the Glasgow and pulled out a large knife, ready to stab Kallen to death. However, the saddened Kallen mustered just enough strength to manoeuvre her Glasgow to kick the head of the Knight Police unit, causing it to stumble. Just as the Knight Police unit was trying to reposition itself and trying to stab the cockpit of the Glasgow with its knife once more, Kallen manoeuvred her Knightmare Frame's left arm to block the Knight Police unit's attack.
"The real fool… is me," Kallen muttered in realization.
Tears start to fall down the present day Kallen's cheek. "I'm a fool… I'm the fool who didn't realize mother's love and care for me…" she cries. Milly immediately pulls Kallen into her embrace and hugs her, gently patting the crying red-haired girl's back.
'…!' meanwhile, Chiba is ashamed. Thoroughly ashamed at how shallow she has been just now, not realizing the real motive for Ms Kouzuki to endure all the hardships despite having the option to move away from it. Aside from her hardheadedness, one could surmise that the difference of being a mother and not being one makes a huge difference in how Ms Kouzuki and Chiba see things.
After realizing her mother's true intention of staying at the Stadtfeld Mansion, Kallen toughened herself up and manoeuvred her Glasgow to shoot its slash harken to pin on the wall of a lower cabin of the shelf opposite to where she was at, and then forced the Knight Police unit to stab right at the gap between the Glasgow's head and the cockpit. Kallen then piloted the Glasgow to pull its slash harken back, causing both the Glasgow and the Knight Police unit to slide towards that lower cabin of the shelf. The cockpit of the Knight Police unit was crashed against the supporting board that divides the lower cabin and the one above it, killing the pilot of the Knight Police unit as a result.
"Kallen!" Ohgi shouted as he led all the other members of the Black Knights to rush to the Glasgow.
As Kallen regained her composure, she noticed her mother kept talking under the effects of the Refrain drug. "I'm so happy for you… You can finally become a Britannian now, Kallen," Ms Kouzuki continued as if she was actually talking to her daughter, "Nobody will ever be able to hurt you now, darling. And you're free to travel and use the phone anytime you want."
Zero gazed at Ms Kouzuki from a distance. 'So that… is her mother?' he mused.
On the top of the warehouse, a lime-haired woman in white straightjacket was also gazing at Ms Kouzuki. It was C.C. 'False tears bring pain to those around you, while a false smile brings pain to oneself,' she mused as she saw Kallen got out of the cockpit and rushed to her mother worriedly.
Tears well up in Shirley's eyes. "Ms Kouzuki is a great mother…" she sobs as she sees the real reason for the Japanese woman to endure and insisted on staying in the Stadtfeld Mansion despite being bullied by everyone and not even being understood by her daughter.
Nunnally is touched as well and tears swell in her bluish-violet eyes as she thinks about her own mother who died protecting her. Cornelia notices that and quickly pulls her into a hug, although the elder sister is also holding her emotions together hard upon seeing the greatness of Ms Kouzuki's motherly love.
The next day, Ms Kouzuki was arrested for using drugs illegally and sent to a hospital for treatment. She was seen lying on a bed and stared at the front with a pair of empty eyes, while Kallen, now in her Ashford Academy uniform, sat on a stool next to her bed.
"It's an after-effect of Refrain," a nurse in blue uniform informed Kallen, "She's unable to talk much. She'll recover eventually, but it will take time."
"Mother, your sentence… you've got 20 years," Kallen said with a downcast expression on her face, but she immediately toughened up and said, "But you wait! I'm working to change things when you get out, I swear to you! I'll make a world where you and I can live a normal life again. So please, Mother…" tears started to swell in the red-haired girl's eyes again.
Suddenly, Kallen felt her mother's hand holding hers and took Kallen by surprise.
"Hang in there… Hang in there, Kallen… My little girl…" Ms Kouzuki muttered as if she's responding to what Kallen had just said.
Kallen nodded firmly. "Don't you worry… I will," she held her mother's hand, tears running down her cheeks, but she gave a beautiful smile to her mother, "I promise you!"
"Oh no! Is Ms Kouzuki still under house arrest?" Tianzi asks worriedly.
"No, she lives with me now," Kallen assures the young Chinese leader, "and she's getting better day by day."
"What a great mother," Rivalz sighs as he has just learnt of the plight and, a lot more importantly, bravery of a great mother who, despite having no piloting skills as good as Kallen or sagacious mind like Lelouch and not actively fighting Britannians or doing anything remotely related to the resistance movement against Britannian tyranny, still nevertheless fought in her own way to protect her cherished daughter and ensured she would have the best possible way towards a bright future. The frail and drug-ridden Japanese woman may not be a warrior on the battlefield, but she is definitely a warrior on the domestic and familial front who had never compromised one bit on her daughter's welfare.
In the front row, Nunnally also has tears in her eyes, but for a slight different reason: the story of Kallen's mother has reminded the young Empress of the plight of her own mother, who protected her from deadly gunshot and died on the stairs of Aries Villa. 'Mother…' Nunnally thinks of her deceased mother inwardly as she tries extra hard to hold back her tears. Coming from an Imperial Family, Nunnally knows too well that familial ties are of little importance when compared to power: her mother could have just abandoned her and save herself, and with her unparalleled prestige as a woman warrior and her peerless beauty and fondness from the man who ruled the largest militaristic empire on Earth, she would have been able to wipe out the assassins and their masters hiding in the shadows with relative ease and continues to shine as the Flash of the Empire. The fact that she gave those all up just to protect Nunnally is simply telling Nunnally how overriding maternal instincts and love are.
"Regardless, you've fulfilled your promise, Kallen," meanwhile, Milly says to Kallen as she tries to lighten up the mood in the auditorium. After eight years of endless and fearless struggle against Britannia, Japan is free from foreign oppression at last, and Ms Kouzuki does not need to endure the abusive Mrs Stadtfeld at the Stadtfeld Mansion any longer. "I'm sure your mother is proud of what you've done for her and the Japanese, and now is your time to make sure she will have a good life ahead."
Kallen nods to her blond friend with a beautiful smile. "Yes, I'm sure she is," she says with a beautiful smile, "and I definitely will."
-Happy Mother's Day!-