Chapter 3: "Initiation" I – Where All Begins
-Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion-
-"Initiation"-
"Hey, the movie title looks like crappy handwriting! I can write better than that!" exclaims Tamaki.
"Oh shut up Tamaki, we are just getting started and you are already making insignificant comments?" hisses Kallen.
"Hey! I am not insignificant!" Tamaki insists.
Kallen realizes that it does more harm than good to keep arguing with Tamaki, and hence decides to ignore him altogether.
The scene begins with the showing of what appeared to be the Imperial Palace at Pendragon, and as the gate opened and the doorman announcing the seventeenth in line to the Britannian throne to the court, a young Lelouch with a stern and angry look strode through the hall and walked towards Charles zi Britannia, his father and the 98th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire.
"Is that…" asks Kallen.
"Yes, that's Lelouch," answers Cornelia, as most people in the room, Britannians or not, look towards the princess with a hint of surprise in their faces. Apparently, Emperor Charles had 108 wives and more than a hundred children, and so it would be difficult for people who are not from the Imperial Family to actually know the identity of each imperial child sired by the stallion emperor.
"Wow, he was still a kid but had such a scary look on his face already," comments Gino.
"No wonder he has turned into a demon eventually," chides Chiba, but is immediately disagreed by the orange-haired girl in the room.
"No! Lulu is not a demon! He is a kind and helpful person!"
"Lulu? You call that man with such a nickname?" Rakshata asks incredulously, but with a hint of amusement in her tone.
"Uhm… I mean, Lulu must have a reason to look that way there!" Shirley insists, red-faced.
"…recorded." Anya takes a photo of the red-faced Shirley.
"Alright, let's calm down and keep watching, shall we?" offers Zero, who is also intrigued by how Lelouch looked on the screen, but is calm enough to stop the increasingly off-topic exchanges among the audience.
With that, the audience turns their attention back to the screen.
"I heard that Consort Marianne was killed inside the Palace," whispered a nobleman.
"There is no way terrorists could have got in the Palace to begin with," whispered another nobleman.
"Which means that the real assassins must have been…"
"Frightful thoughts… I don't even dare to think about this."
"Kudos to the prince nonetheless, for maintaining his cool even after his mother got killed…"
"But Prince Lelouch has no more hope in the race for the throne, and the Ashford family behind the vi Britannias is also finished."
Milly frowns. For some reason, her memory does not agree with what the nobleman said on screen. 'Have I known Lelouch back then? I thought we first met at the Academy when he was enrolled… and we lost our nobility title because we failed to produce a new generation of Knightmare Frames as requested by Emperor Charles, wasn't it?' Milly wants to question the truthfulness of the so-called "truth", but suppresses the urge and decides to watch for a bit longer before raising such question.
"How about his sister, the princess?"
"Her legs were shot, and her eyes were blinded. Useless politically." A brunette young girl with her legs and eyes bandaged was shown lying on a highly sophisticated scanning machine.
"Is that you, Nunnally?" asks Tianzi in horror.
"Yes… that's me," answers Nunnally with a sad tone, "My memories about the incident is not as clear as I want it to be, but I remember being sent to the ICU ward and the next thing I know, I could neither see nor walk."
Cornelia grits her teeth. 'That night… I still can't believe I let that happened, despite it was under Lady Marianne's orders that I withdrew the security detail for Aries Villa.' "Guilford," whispers Cornelia, "It seems that I am right to stay to find out who was behind the death of Lady Marianne".
"Indeed, Your Highness," answers Guilford in a lowered voice. "I wonder who took the video footage though, I don't recall cameras being allowed in the palace other than when the Emperor is making a public announcement."
"No matter how the footage was taken, as long as it is the truth, I am fine with it," says the purple princess.
The young prince ignored the whispering noblemen and noblewomen and finally reached in front of his father, the Emperor.
"Hail, Your Majesty," Lelouch greeted, "My mother, the imperial consort, is dead."
"Old news. What of it?" the Emperor asked in a bored tone.
"What of it?" Lelouch was astonished at the Emperor's nonchalant attitude to his mother's death, asking once again to make sure he wasn't getting it wrong.
"Did you seek an audience with the Emperor of Britannia for such trivial matters?" the Emperor then turned his head to the guardsman next to him, "send in the next person. I have no time to play with children."
"Father!" Lelouch ran up the steps to the throne, only to be blocked by two guardsmen standing right next to the Emperor. The Emperor was quick to signal the guardsmen to stand down, seeing no threat coming from the young prince. "Yes, Your Majesty!" answered the guardsmen upon seeing the signal, standing down.
"Why didn't you protect my mother?" demanded Lelouch in a slightly shaken tone, "You are the Emperor, right? The greatest person in this nation, right? You should at least show your face and see Nunnally…"
"…I have no use for weaklings," was the Emperor's reply.
"Weaklings?..." Lelouch was shocked.
"That's what it means to be members of the Imperial Family." The Emperor states.
Lelouch could not believe his ears. How can his father be so cold and not care what happened to his wife and daughter? Lelouch was infuriated and his body started shaking before he exploded, "…then I don't need such thing as the right to inherit the throne! Whether it was being your successor or to be drawn into conflicts and chaos caused by that, I have had enough of them!"
"…you are dead," came the Emperor's low and simmering voice. Lelouch was once again appalled.
"Do you have things that you are willing to bet your life on? The clothes you wear? The place you live? The food you eat? The right to inherit the throne? They are all given to you by me. You simply are not alive. Lelouch!"
The Emperor stood up and his voice boomed, intimidating as he was and forced Lelouch to fall down on his back.
"You are dead and you are entitled to no rights. I am sending you and Nunnally to Japan. As prince and princess, you would both serve well as bargaining chips. I recall the son of the Japanese Prime Minister is around the same age as you – win him over, Lelouch! There are responsibilities only members of the Imperial Family can bear. Go and build the Empire's foundation there with Nunnally. If you fail, you should know that there is no place for you on Earth!"
A younger Andreas Darlton and Jeremiah Gottwald stood at two sides of the ladder of the plane, both saluting with a sad face to Prince Lelouch and Princess Nunnally as they boarded the plane bound for Japan.
The audience is aghast at what they have just seen. They can hardly believe their ears on what the Emperor has told Lelouch.
"What's wrong with that man? Those are his son and daughter, right? How could he treat them like garbage and just tossed them half-a-world away?" Chiba fumes. As much as she dislikes Britannia and hates Lelouch, she could only feel pity for how the boy was being treated by his father.
Nunnally cringes at what she saw on screen. 'Why, Big Brother? Why did you never tell me about what happened before we were being sent to Japan?' But immediately she has the answer: Lelouch was trying his best to shield Nunnally from the harsh reality of the world, seeing that she has suffered enough already with her blindness and broken legs. Nunnally cannot help but to feel angry to both her father and also to herself. 'I had been big brother's burden all along… I am useless.' Her grip tightens, but then a hand is put on her tightened grip.
"It's alright, Nunnally," says Kaguya, encouragingly, "that's all in the past now, and you are doing great things for the people. You are making your contribution to the betterment of the world wronged by Emperor Charles, which just proves to those who wrongly believed you were useless to be wrong."
"Thank you, Kaguya," says Nunnally with a small but still sad smile, "it's just… my father…"
Another hand cups Nunnally's. "Don't worry, Nunnally, I will always be on your side," says the purple-haired princess. "Whatever that father of ours said is in the past; he simply did not have the wisdom to see your potential as a competent royal contributing to her country."
Nunnally silently thanks her half-sister with a smile, and Cornelia is glad that she can soothe the uneasy feelings of her younger sister. However, seeing the scene where her younger self, a young Euphy and several other royal siblings seeing off Nunnally and Lelouch to Japan, she can't help but wonder, 'had I had the courage to step up and found a way to change father's mind, would things turned out differently for Lelouch, Nunnally… and Euphy?' at the thought, Cornelia herself stiffens, only to be comforted by her loyal knight.
"There was nothing you could do, Your Highness. Had you intervened, the Emperor would most likely send you and Princess Euphemia to Japan as well. You were simply acting in the best interest for Princess Euphemia and the li Britannia house, your first and foremost duty and responsibility," says Guilford.
"…I know, it's just… how cruel fate had turned out to be; I suspect Lelouch hated all of us precisely because none of us lent a hand to Nunnally and him when they most needed it, without realizing that we were powerless to do anything against our father," Cornelia says in an angry yet sad tone.
"Hey, is that Lord Gottwald?" Gino breaks the melancholic atmosphere and points at the screen.
"I think so. It seems that his ties with the Imperial Family, especially to Lelouch, went far beyond than I originally believed it to be," says Kallen. "Is that the reason why he joined Lelouch despite being humiliated as "Orange"?
"Perhaps," answers Gino, "we just need to keep watching."
'In 2009 a.t.b., the Holy Britannian Empire sent Prince Lelouch vi Britannia and Princess Nunnally vi Britannia to the care of Genbu Kururugi, Prime Minister of Japan, under the guise of having the imperial children to study abroad. Both of them have become hostages in a golden cage.'
'That's… C.C.'s voice!' Kallen realizes. 'So she is the one who made these videos?'
A young Lelouch was carrying Nunnally on his back, walking up a long stairway towards the Kururugi Shrine. Standing at the entrance were an old man, a buffed man, a young boy and a young girl. The two men looked down at the imperial children with minimal expression, the young girl was hiding behind the buffed man, while the young boy looked angry upon seeing the royal children. Lelouch panted but endured, determined to carry Nunnally up the stairway without receiving any help from the bodyguards scattered along the two sides of the stairway.
"That's Lord Kirihara!" Ohgi exclaims, "so he had known Lelouch all the way back then?"
"It seems so," says Tohdoh as he looks towards Kaguya, "and if I am not mistaken, that little girl behind Prime Minister Kururugi is Kaguya-sama."
"That's right!" Kaguya replies cheerfully, "so I am finally getting some screen time!"
"Hey when will I get some screen time myself?" Tamaki complains, "for someone as important as myself, it better gives me enough screen time to show how important I am!"
Everyone else shoots their glance towards the self-aggrandizing man with disdain. 'God… I don't know him!' Kallen curses.
'Japan, the self-proclaimed neutral state in the Far East, was embroiled in conflicts with Britannia, the world's only superpower, fighting over matters relating to the distribution of underground resources of Japan. While Japan assumed that Britannia would not declare war on Japan while its prince and princess were held as hostages, the assumption was easily proved wrong as Britannia sent its knightmare frames in for actual battle in Japan for the first time, destroying any defense Japan had mustered up. Japan fell into Britannia's hand, its freedom, name and rights being stripped, and reborn as Britannia's Area 11.'
A young boy with hazel-coloured hair sat next to a pyre with apparent despair on his face, while another raven-haired boy, apparently a young Lelouch, looking at the by with hazel-coloured hair with a determined face.
"I swear, so help me, Suzaku," the young Lelouch vowed, "I will!..."
Just before Lelouch could finish his sentence, the scene was interrupted with what is apparent to be an opening theme song of a movie, complemented with a series of drawings showing Nunnally and Lelouch's time spent with Suzaku at the Kururugi Shrine, as well as a picture showing a healthy Nunnally running and laughing with Lelouch, with their mother Marianne sitting at the back, cheerfully watching her children playing.
"So that's how you and Lelouch got close with Suzaku, Nunnally?" Cornelia asks her sister.
"Yes big sister, at first Lelouch and Suzaku fought against each other, but eventually we all became good friends," says Nunnally with a smile, reminiscing the good old times the three had when they were but children.
"…I am sorry, Nunnally." Cornelia suddenly says with a sad tone, regal none the less.
"…why?" Nunnally asks, surprised by Cornelia's sudden apology.
"I have missed a large portion of Lelouch and your childhood because I… I couldn't protect your mother from harm…" the purple princess says in a regretful tone. However before the elder Britannia says anything more, Nunnally offers a hug to her elder sister, surprising the proud princess.
"That's alright, Big Sister. As you have said so yourself, it was father's decision to send me and big brother to Japan; there was nothing you could have done to change that. What is important is that after all these years, we can become family again and I am happy with that." Nunnally consoles Cornelia.
When the Britannia sisters are deepening their bonds, Anya's face is coloured with a light shade of darkness when she sees Marianne's image on the photo. 'Marianne you bitch… I wonder how would Her Majesty and Her Highness react when they finally get to see your true colours?'
