Chapter 32.5 – The Emperor's Problems Multiply
Study, The Emperor's Private Suite, Imperial Palace, Pendragon, Britannian Homeland.
"We have a very serious problem on our hands, Charles." V.V. spoke up the second he passed through the secret entrance that connected the Emperor's private study to the thought elevator. The fact that it had been hidden in this room was one of the reasons Charles had made it a rule on threat of immediate execution that only those to whom he gave express permission (currently only the Knights of One and Six had that honour) could even attempt to disturb him while he was locked within.
"What seems to be the problem, brother mine?" Looking up from his paperwork, Charles quickly noted the grim look his brother was wearing; it was quite at odds with the childlike 11-year-old frame. A prepubescent's face simply wasn't built to convey that level of seriousness.
"First up, Desmond utterly failed to eliminate Lelouch, and, even worse, I fear the incompetent didn't even manage to kill himself before he was captured. I felt his Geass deactivate and go silent for at least a few days before he actually died. After that happened, Code-R's operations in Fukuoka were compromised. On their own, either of those issues would be a middling concern at best, but now I've received a report stating that Agent Valefar went rogue on us after completing a mission. That particular agent is one of the ones I've made a Geass Contract with, but I don't have much information on it, since I was a bit preoccupied with the far more interesting Geass I'd made with the Baroness of Gold Peak a few days beforehand. Valefar knows too much about the Directorate's operations to be allowed to live, so as soon as Rollo is recovered from Desmond's annoying Geass, I shall send him to silence Valefar." The Immortal preteen ranted.
Charles himself was thinking deeply on the matter, focusing on the most pressing concern first. His wayward son managing to possibly capture a relatively low-level agent and the fall of a low-priority base were, as his brother had said, middling concerns compared to one of his brother's elite agents going rogue. "I don't even know anything about this rogue agent aside from their codename. What more can you tell me about them?"
"Not nearly as much as I might like." V.V. answered sourly, kicking a foot petulantly. "Valefar has always been an enigma. They are mentally gender fluid, so even during the mind touch when we formed a Geass Contract I couldn't be sure if they were male or female, and their choice of clothing has always tended to be gender-ambiguous. Just about the only thing that I can count on is that Valefar's Geass, the Ward of Absolute Slowness, has a rather...unique weakness: whenever it's being used, Valefar becomes lethargic and physically weak so long as it is active for longer than five minutes. Because of that weakness, they have to be quick and efficient with how they use it."
Charles considered this. The Geass Directorate was a Black-Black Operation that even most of the Office of Secret Intelligence were unaware of, and it had numerous operatives scouring the lands for orphans to take back to the Directorate to begin brainwashing them into serving Charles and V.V. loyally, the younger the better.
At the Directorate, many such children had a Geass granted to them by his brother. Some were useless, such as the Baroness of Gold Peak's would have been, the Power of Absolute Plant Empathy. Others came with too severe a drawback to be operationally effective, such as a boy who had the Power of Absolute Vision, allowing him to see up to a hundred kilometres away…at the cost of giving him a brain aneurism whenever he used it.
Of the ones who were useful, and survived their training, there were precious few, never more than eighty at a time, and because of that, his brother granted them codenames from the Ars Goetia, better known as the Lesser Key of Solomon. Rollo was known as Number 24, Naberius and Desmond had been known as Number 45, Viné. The numbers meant nothing aside from the first ten. That this rogue agent was Number 6, Valefar, was worrying.
"How could you not know anything about Valefar aside from his Geass, brother?" the Emperor asked in exasperation as he rubbed his forehead tiredly. "You granted them a Geass, so you should have examined his memories when you were making the contract."
"Charles, in the last year alone, I have made over forty contracts." His twin explained tersely. "And this has been a fairly poor recruiting year. The average usually tends to run closer to seventy to eighty. I granted Valefar their Geass over a decade ago and, as I mentioned before, I was a bit distracted at the time with another project. Even the mind of an immortal can only process so much information at once, and with such a limited Geass, I expected Valefar to die quickly enough that they weren't worth remembering. I practically forgot about the worthless brattling after I sent them out on their first mission."
"And you didn't record it." The dry words were not a question. The Emperor's hand moved down to pinch the bridge of his nose when his brother merely glared recalcitrantly at him in response, before throwing it to the side and absently waving it through the air. "Fine. That explains why you had no information on them before the end of their first mission. What about the after-mission report or debriefings? Once they returned to the Directorate…"
"Agent Valefar…hasn't been back at the Directorate since leaving on their first mission." V.V. managed to say, looking as if he'd just been forced to swallow a particularly virulent lemon. "They have been something of a trouble-shooter for especially difficult missions and supporting the missions of other agents since I first sent them out six years ago. They earned their position as Number 6 mostly through seniority and an ability to survive some particularly nasty encounters."
"And their training while with the Directorate?" Charles was honestly not sure if he wanted to know.
"You know we don't keep any written records on our operative's training." V.V. snapped back in annoyance. "The two of us agreed on that policy when we first started the Directorate. The less paper trail connecting our agents to the Directorate the better! The information is memorized by their assigned handler after their training is complete before being destroyed. Unfortunately, Valefar's handler was the one killed when Agent Sabenock's Geass went out of control last year."
Sabenock had been one of V.V.'s more successful agents, possessing the Power of Absolute Absorption, which allowed her to absorb all of a person's memories by simply touching them once, making her an excellent assassin, infiltrator, and blackmailer. The cost was that she could only keep one set of memories at a time, and keeping them for prolonged periods caused her an intense, building migraine to the point she risked suffering an aneurism if she did not divulge the absorbed memories within two weeks. Unfortunately, it had evolved far faster than any other Geass V.V. had created, causing Sabenock to suffer Runaway Geass a mere two years after acquiring it, evolving to the point that it became the Ward of Absolute Absorption allowing her to absorb the memories of everyone nearby.
Unfortunately the sudden deluge of memories of people who were of the…less than morally sound persuasion drove the girl utterly mad. Sabenock then proceeded to murder several dozen Directorate personnel, including three other agents, before finally being gunned down.
"Anyway, most of the agents who were being supervised by the dead fellow had been recalled and the new one brought up to speed, but since Valefar hadn't been back in nearly five years by then…" V.V. trailed off.
"He was simply forgotten about…" Charles spat out, his hand moving to cover his eyes as he sat back in his chair.
'Lovely. Just bloody lovely. So not only does this rogue have combat training in who knows what, detailed knowledge of the Directorate's operations and operatives thanks to working with and on multiple ones during the past half-decade AND a Geass, but we have absolutely no information on them thanks to my brother's complacency.' The Emperor thought with a grimace. The level of his brother competency had slowly been ticking downward over the years, and Charles couldn't help wondering if having over sixty years of memories poured into the brain of an eleven-year-old had something to do with it. It would certainly explain the spite that V.V. showed to Marianne and her children.
"Where was he last?" he forced himself to ask evenly.
"The Sendai Ghetto, in the Tohoku Region of Area 11." His brother replied. "They were supposed to locate traces of someone who fled from a recruitment operation in the Britannian Sendai Settlement and then eliminate them. I know they went in and I know they left. What they did after that, I have no clue."
"I…see. And exactly how long ago was this?" Charles asked with a frown.
"A few days before that idiot Desmond died. I swear Charles, if I wasn't certain that he was dead, I'd be preparing to use him as target practice for the new recruits." The Immortal Boy snarled.
"I agree." Charles was starting to get a very grim feeling about all of this. He'd never expected the fool boy to be incompetent enough to let himself get captured. Killed, yes, but captured? If his son Lelouch was anything approaching competent, then he'd be increasing the defences on Ashford Academy. "Brother, this is timed most inopportunely. Losing two of your 'Demons' in one stroke is bad enough, but when one was likely tortured for information, by C.C. in all likelihood, and the other has completely unknown objectives, it does not make a pretty picture."
"I am aware, Charles." V.V. grimaced. "And as I said, the Code-R Tertiary site was assaulted mere hours after the most important scientists were reassigned to the Quadra Site at Mount Gassan in Yamagata."
"…by any chance have you warned them of a possible rogue Geass Assassin in the area." The Emperor deadpanned. "If memory serves, Yamagata Prefecture is in the Tohoku Region as well."
A blistering curse emerged from his brother's mouth at that. "No…I have not." V.V. said tensely. "I shall do so once I return to the Directorate, however."
"Very good. Now, I shall have the OSI in the area keep an eye out for Valefar, although how successful they can be, looking for someone with no description to go off, I have no clue." Charles sighed.
"That is all I can ask, Charles." V.V. nodded. "What are you going to do about Lelouch? He has become dangerously competent at this point."
"The Thought Elevator on Kaminejima is too vital to be abandoned, I know." The Emperor nodded. "Cornelia is not nearly weak enough that Lelouch can easily wrest Area 11 from her without exhausting his forces to the point of weakness, however. Even with the invasion from that dotard of a relic Sawasaki and the Chinese Federation, it merely gives me a good excuse to reinforce my daughter with more Knightmares. No brother, we will create a world without lies, I swear it."
A genuine smile graced V.V.'s face, making him look almost cherubic. "I know, brother. I can always count on you. Now, I must away. That dratted boy Desmond did a real number on Rollo…"
With a turn and flap of his billowing cloak, the Immortal was gone. Charles looked after his departing figure before sighing and returning to his paperwork. He worked peacefully for a few minutes before a knock came on his door (his actual door this time) and an Imperial Guard told him that Anya Alstreim, the Knight of Six, wished to see him.
After they went through the (frankly ridiculous) ceremonial pomp needed between an Emperor receiving one of his direct subordinates in view of others, he was able to get rid of the guards by ordering them to not disturb them.
Once they were gone, he watched as Marianne smirked at him using Anya's face. It was always quite a bit of a disconcerting experience, to see the usually expressionless Anya emoting as much as his wife did.
"So, I felt the Thought Elevator move twice, so I can guess that the hobgoblin has been and gone." Marianne said as she stretched. "What did the little bastard want this time?"
"For once, he was admitting to some of his mistakes, Marianne." Charles replied wryly. He then filled her in on his brother's (latest) mistakes. By the end of it, the former Knight of Rounds was fuming.
"That stupid, idiotic, petty, small-minded little hobgoblin!" she growled. "What happens if this Valefar decides to join up with our son? Bad enough that he likely already knows exactly where the Directorate is. Worse would be if he had an actual guide to the place as he invades it! Not to mention him possibly being told by this Valefar character about the Sword of Akasha!"
"Only Brother and some researchers know of the Sword, dear; even he's not fool enough to spread that information to his agents." The Emperor placated his true wife smoothly. He was of the opinion that the old tradition of having no First Wife if you were an Emperor was foolish in the extreme; if all of them had been as stubborn as Marianne was, he would have no chance of controlling them!
'Hah! 'An Emperor must be able to keep his House in an iron grip, even as he holds the Empire in the other hand' my foot!' Charles mentally scoffed.
"Urgh, I suppose, but still..." the deceased Consort grimaced. "He should be smarter than this, Charles. This is the kind of silly mistake I'd expect that airheaded bimbo Guinevere to make, or even that blood fetishist Carine, not Vincent. The petty little bastard was at least competent back when all this started."
"I worry as well. I'll start drawing up plans for if he makes any more silly mistakes." Charles reassured her before grimacing. "Still, he has left us in a very irksome position. Code-R was invaded and went dark yesterday, which was two days after Desmond made his move, so I can guess that at the very least, he told them of its location, if not the defences. We are fortunate that operational security precluded Bartley from telling anyone other than the designated Quadra Site staff of Code-R where the Quadra Site is actually located, so Lelouch has no clues to locate it. That arrogant cowardly ass Humperdinck would sing like a canary if he knew, so it's a good thing General Bartley decided to leave him out of the loop."
"He's a louse." Marianne snorted, and Charles was uncertain if she meant Ezekiel Humperdinck or Bartley Asprius by that. To be fair to Bartley, the man was at least competent at his job. He was simply not extraordinary in any way outside of his being totally loyal to his idiot son Clovis, and continued to work loyally in his memory.
The Emperor grimaced as something else occurred to him that he needed to tell his wife. "Marianne…there's something else."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what now?" the Marianne-possessed Anya looked at him with exasperation.
"I have…felt more Convergences with a Ragnarök Connection." He said with a sigh.
Marianne stilled. "Charles…are you serious?"
"Unfortunately so." the man replied. "Including the one I am certain is Lelouch, there have been three in total. One happened a few hours after when I can assume Lelouch received his Geass, while the other happened on the same day that Desmond attacked Ashford Academy."
"And aside from V.V., C.C. is the only Immortal that is still giving out Geass…" Marianne nodded to herself. "Charles…I am seriously considering that we have your brother dealt with. You never spent much time with C.C. because of how jealous that little troll could get of her, but she once told me that she vastly preferred keeping to one contractor at a time, only abandoning them if they died or became unable/unwilling to grant her wish. The fact that she has made even one additional contract, never mind two, given the fact that Lelouch is still alive is a sure indicator of her anger here. She must be absolutely furious with us because of the hobgoblins actions!"
Charles closed his eyes. "It's that bad?"
"She once told me she'd rather swim through a pool of acid again rather than act like your brother does with contractors." His wife answered dryly. "It's his callous disregard for people that causes all those hiccups in the Geass he gives out. He literally doesn't care about any of them…aside from you. Your Seal of Absolute Consciousness is the only Seal-type Geass he has ever granted to someone, with almost all of the others being Ward-type. That cannot be a coincidence."
Wincing at the thought of swimming through acid, the Emperor opened his eyes again. "We cannot remove him right now, Marianne. There are still over half of the Thought Elevators to connect, and if we eliminate him now, it might cause those idiot researchers who practically worship him to turn their pet Geass users against us. That would take too much time to put down. Not to mention that without V.V. or us to at least partially muzzle them, I doubt the fools would hesitate to reveal Geass to the world in some mad grab for power or revenge. No. We watch, we wait and we strike as soon as Brother has finished connecting the Elevators to the Sword of Akasha. Then he shall know our retribution."
He still loved his brother, even after discovering that V.V. had broken their contract to not lie to one another, which made this harder than it should be. Charles would still pursue a world without lies, even if his brother was gone, as Vincent would be one with C's World. But what the Immortal had done to him, killing his wife and then lying about it, broke their contract and went too far.
"Very well, Charles." Marianne acquiesced after a moment of wrestling with her anger. "Make sure you take his Code when you deal with him though…I want him to die in the same way I did…gunned down from behind and left to bleed out!"
The vindictive expression in his wife's eyes made Charles shudder inside. He silently swore, for what had to be the millionth time, to never, ever, get on Marianne's bad side. It would end badly for him.
"As you wish, my dear." He said.
After Marianne assumed what she called 'Anya's Buddha face' and left him alone, Charles sat back and sighed heavily.
"I'm getting too bloody old for this bullshit." He grumbled.