Chapter 23: "Transgression" IX – Geass Hunt

It turns out that the real Lelouch was travelling across a desert with a selected group of members of the Black Knights. He was wearing his Ashford Academy student uniform and sitting on a comfortable chair inside the back cabin of his truck and accompanied by C.C., Jeremiah and Rolo, having a videoconference with Sayako.

"My sincere apology, Master Lelouch," Sayako apologized.

"That's fine. For the body double to work until now is all thanks to you, Sayako," Lelouch replied, "thank you for getting me enough time to be ready to destroy V.V., who set a trap for me."

"Big Brother, I think now is a good timing for us to eliminate Suzaku Kururugi," Rolo suggested with a cheerful tone.

However, Lelouch disagreed with Rolo's suggestion. "Britannia hasn't made any particular moves yet. Also, while I don't know exactly why, Suzaku hasn't reported to his superiors about me being the real Zero yet. It's best to leave it for now."

Rolo frowned. Seeing this, Lelouch added, "If anything out of order happens, you will play the key role to fix the problem. I trust you, Rolo," Lelouch spoke with a soft voice, and Rolo smiled again and nodded.

"Also, this," Lelouch knelt down before Rolo and produced a pink box. He opened it and there was a locket inside the box, "it is a bit early, but this is your birthday present."

Rolo was stunned. No one had ever given a birthday present to him before! "Thank you, Big Brother!" Rolo picked up the locket and said touchingly.

Lelouch showed Rolo a gentle smile.

"I am glad that Lulu was treating Rolo gently, at least much better than how Suzaku treated him," Shirley says as she sees how Lelouch treated Rolo like his real younger brother, although she is at the same time unsettling to see how Rolo had so casually suggested the elimination of Suzaku. After seeing so many moments of Lelouch's heartless actions, Shirley is in desperate need for something to the contrary to restore her confidence in the boy she still loves with all her heart.

"If only Lelouch could have treated us half as good as how he treated this Rolo boy, then everything would have gone by much better," Ohgi says.

Villetta stares at the scene. 'I thought Lelouch somehow geassed Rolo into submission, but it seems that it was because of the brotherly love Lelouch had showered on Rolo that made him had a change of heart. Is this…?'

Nunnally, however, senses something wrong with it. 'Why would Big Brother be so kind to someone who was spying him? It couldn't be…'

Lelouch was issuing orders to the Black Knights, instructing them to start assaulting the underground Geass facility once Rolo had its gates opened. Rolo was piloting his Vincent and took the lead towards the underground Geass facility.

Inside the truck, Lelouch, C.C. and Jeremiah were standing next to a monitor. Lelouch was swiping through several news articles in English, French, Chinese and the Hindu language.

"You are simply straight up evil," C.C. ridiculed Lelouch with a sarcastic tone, "now that Rolo has completely fallen head over heels to you."

"I am only giving someone who wants a sense of belonging just that, and he should thank me for that," Lelouch kept swiping over the news and responded in a cold tone, completely different from the gentle tone he used when speaking with Rolo, "well, at least it was a much smarter approach than to use Villetta's personal relationship to subdue her, don't you agree?"

On the monitor where Lelouch was reading news articles, it showed the photos of Villetta and Ohgi.

'Lulu, how could you…?' Shirley is shocked. Not far from Shirley, Milly and Rivalz don't look good either. Milly and Rivalz are hit especially hard by this revelation since they know Rolo personally and have interacted with him for almost a year before he disappeared from Ashford Academy, thus having personal attachment to the assassin boy. All three of them also feel bad for Villetta for a little despite Villetta had spied on them in the previous year. As Villetta has already openly apologized for what she had done to them a while ago, and that they have all attended Villetta's wedding banquet with Ohgi, further deepening their emotional ties with their swimming coach and P.E. teacher.

Ohgi immediately regrets his previous remark and almost instantly gets angry at what he has just seen. "How dare he…? Chigusa, did Lelouch really threaten you?"

"Yes, he did," Villetta recalls the unpleasant experience she had with Lelouch, "he somehow got to know my relationship with you before the Black Rebellion, and he threatened me to cooperate with him or risk exposing my relationship with you to my superiors, thereby ruining all the hard work I've put into earning my barony. That's why I had been submitting false reports to Kururugi, saying that Lelouch did not show any abnormal behaviour at school."

"What? You were threatened merely because you were afraid of having your meaningless peerage stripped off?" Chiba demands Villetta incredulously, "just how much were you into vain pedigree and empty peerages?"

"I…" Villetta bites her lip and struggles whether she wants to start an argument with the hard-headed Chiba or not, and ultimately decides that she would speak up for herself, "I have been a commoner for my whole life, and I am sick of being stuck at the lower strata of the society. I was capable, I was hard-working, why should I enjoy less than those high and mighty lazy people just because they were born to noble families while I was not? That's why I joined the military and worked my way up from the very bottom, and after risking my life and going through all the troubles, I have finally been granted the title of baroness, breaking the invisible ceiling that prevented me from moving up the social ladder in Britannia. I understand if you despise Britannian nobility and the horrible things I did as a Britannian military officer, but to be ennobled was what I have been working for throughout my entire professional life in the Britannian Army, and to have it ruined just because of my relationship with Kaname was… was not something I could have swallowed easily back then, not before I finally realized how important Kaname is to me after Her Highness has so graciously enlightened me with her words of wisdom, that 'peerage is not the only thing that matters in life.' "

"Even so…!" Chiba is going to retort, but Tohdoh stops her from doing so. "Nagisa, let's leave it there," the stern Japanese man says to his wife.

"But Kyoshirou, it was wrong for her to be so concerned about being a Britannian noble…" Chiba is still adamant to her views, staying true to her reputation as a hard-headed woman.

"What Villetta went through would be similar to, say, Kusakabe threatened you to either leave me for good, or abandoned your career in the JLF," Tohdoh explains to his wife. Chiba growls at Tohdoh's explanation, but says nothing more on Villetta's case out of deference to her beloved husband. Deep down, though, Chiba is still not convinced: how can a glorious position within the ranks of JLF be compared to a greasy Britannian peerage?

In the front row, Cornelia and Guilford are discussing the scene as well. "Lelouch was playing fire here," Cornelia comments as a veteran military leader, "he should have either interrogated the assassin boy, extracted useful information from him and finished him off quickly, or stayed true to the boy and treated him as a real ally in the rare occasion that the boy was proven to be truly loyal to him. Playing with the assassin boy's emotion was dangerous and may cause unforeseen and undesirable repercussions."

"Big Sister…" Nunnally says worriedly, "I understand the second part, but the first part that you have just said…"

"Nunnally, this assassin boy was an enemy of Lelouch sent to him by father," Cornelia explains, "I know this sounds harsh, but I think it's fair to say that from a strategic standpoint, one cannot rule out that this Rolo boy's a danger to Lelouch until proven otherwise."

"Your Majesty, Her Highness couldn't be more right," Guilford adds in as well, "and we cannot overlook the fact that that assassin boy was a Geass user who could stop other's sense of time as well, according to an earlier scene when Kururugi asked about it."

"…recorded," Anya takes photos of the various reactions to the scene in the auditorium.

"Personal relationship…" Jeremiah suddenly sighed with a smile.

"What about that?" Lelouch was curious why Jeremiah suddenly sighed.

"Nothing really, but in my case, had I been enlightened of your true identity, I am sure I would have be the first to charge when you decided to start your rebellion."

"Getting into situations where one's identity remained unclear is a fairly common one," C.C. adds as she smiled, before turning to Lelouch and switched to using a more serious tone, "However, you have to be careful, Lelouch. I can't always protect you – it was almost mission impossible to protect your memory."

Lelouch, however, didn't seem to appreciate what C.C. had done for him. "Actually, I am deeply troubled that you had to kiss me to do just that," he then took off his contact lens from his left eye, revealing the ever-glowing Geass Sigil and gazed at C.C. intently, "and you didn't even tell me about the Emperor's Geass."

"I see, so it was C.C. who recovered Lelouch's memory," Villetta finally gets to know the answer of a question she has always wanted to know. She then glances at the Ashford group and, surprisingly, Shirley doesn't react to the information that C.C. recovered Lelouch's memory by kissing him. 'This is not good…' Villetta is worried about the well-being of her student.

"So Ms C.C. has formed a very strong bond with Big Brother," Nunnally says as she finally gets to know how her elder brother lost his memory and then regained it. She then recalls her one and only interaction with C.C. back in her house at Ashford Academy. 'So my guess was not all wrong and C.C. did not lie when she said something about she and Big Brother were going to have a future together. Ms C.C. was indeed Big Brother's…' the young Empress muses.

Cornelia, however, is thinking from an elder sister and guardian perspective. 'Just what did this C.C. want from Lelouch? She seemed to stay by Lelouch's side for no apparent reason. She seemed to have feelings for Lelouch, but at the same time she never revealed what her contract with Lelouch was and what she wanted from Lelouch, so she was most likely not genuinely wanting to help Lelouch for nothing in return. Just what was she after?' Cornelia muses. She may still resent the fact that Lelouch exploited Euphemia and humiliated Darlton's honour, but her elder sisterly instincts prevails over her hatred against her estranged younger brother when it comes to such familial matters as accepting a mysterious girl with unknown intention as a possible sister-in-law, especially when the elder princess has seemingly picked her favourite one for this hypothetical situation already a while ago.

Kallen is not happy to hear what C.C. has just said on screen either. 'C.C., you…!' it irritates Kallen to no end whenever C.C. tries to hint that she has the upper hand when it comes to being close to Lelouch throughout the three discs. 'Is this the real reason why you gave me these discs?' the red-haired girl silently hisses at the lime-haired girl whose whereabouts is unknown at the moment.

"Well, it seems that His Majesty's plan to lure C.C. out had not only failed, but the memory seal that His Majesty had put on Zero was also lifted," Gino comments. This looks strange to the former Knight of Three, though: his liege was known for his cautiousness, and such blunder and upset to his plan looks pretty unthinkable. 'Did His Majesty actually intend the outcome of his plan to be like that?' the tall blond man muses, 'but if that's the case, what for?'

C.C. turned away and smirked, replying in a mischievous tone, "That's because you'd never asked." She then gazed back at Lelouch, "also, the one who gave Charles his Geass was not me, but V.V."

"Although V.V.'s true intention is still unclear, it seems that he considers your presence as an obstacle, no, as if something that needs to be alienated. If that's the case, then…" Jeremiah interjected.

"Right, it is likely that he has been staying on guard against our assault," Lelouch concluded. After learning from C.C. that it was V.V. who kidnapped Nunnally and arranged Suzaku and Jeremiah to chase after him at Kamine Island during the Black Rebellion, there was no way that Lelouch would not attempt to take this mysterious V.V. off the chessboard in order to protect Nunnally from danger, as well as to revenge for what the small, blond boy did to the leader of the Black Knights during the Black Rebellion. Also resenting the fact that Rolo dared to impersonate Nunnally, his one and only full-blooded sister that he loved with all his heart, Lelouch had decided to kill two birds with one stone by using Rolo's previous connections with the underground Geass facility to capture V.V. and wipe and the facility out once and for all, while throwing the imposter boy away like a piece of garbage as he had originally planned the moment he had successfully sweet-talked the brown-haired assassin boy to switch to his side by convincing the naive young boy that his future was with Lelouch, not Britannia.

"I see, this segment has answered several of our previous questions, Guilford," Cornelia says.

"Indeed, Your Highness," Guilford replies, "Lord Gottwald was indeed a loyal man, transferring his loyalty originally to Lady Marianne to Lelouch. Also, it is now clear that His Majesty obtained his Geass from V.V. instead of C.C."

"The only big question left is Kururugi's deduction that my father has a different objective than V.V.," Cornelia continues, "I still don't see why that's the case given all the evidence presented to us so far."

Inside a specially designed prison space of the Area 11 Government Palace, Kallen was confined in an isolated glass-walled cell, though she was sitting on a comfy chair and wearing a piece of beautiful yellow dress.

"I see… to think that you are a princess…" Kallen said.

"I am sorry I hid the truth away from you," Nunnally apologized, her wheelchair was some distance away from the glass-walled cell.

"Same here," Kallen replied in an understanding tone.

"It's so nostalgic to talk about Ashford Academy," the blind and crippled girl said in a regrettable tone, "they told me I mustn't see Milly and others, and so Suzaku is the only one I've been able to talk to. They also said my brother has vanished…"

"Tell me, what sort of elder brother was Lelouch to you?" Kallen decided to switch the topic, as well as to pry into understanding the enigmatic raven-haired boy more from the closest person to him in existence.

"Huh?" Nunnally was surprised by Kallen's question. Why would she be interested to know?

"I also have an elder brother, so…" Kallen explained.

"I am delighted that we can talk about things about my Big Brother," Nunnally said.

Kallen recalls that conversation with Nunnally while in prison, learning so many things about Lelouch for the first time from possibly the only person who Lelouch did not consider to be a pawn. 'According to Nunnally, Lelouch was a caring and doting brother, always attending to her needs with a tendency to go overboard and overdoing it. The Lelouch in Nunnally's eyes sounded too good to be true, it would be impossible to consider Lelouch to be the same person as the ruthless Lelouch that has been shown on the screen so far. I am still perplexed: what did I really mean to you, Lelouch? Every time I was to believe you to be a caring person, you always showed how merciless and callous you could be; every time I was to be convinced you to be an egoistic and self-centred asshole, you suddenly showed incredible kindness out of nowhere. I am really confused and torn about that, you bastard…' she then realizes that it was this critical conversation with Nunnally that had finally propelled her to take one firm step forward ever since she discovered from Suzaku's words that Lelouch had a special power that can control people's minds, and that Lelouch admitted to her that he was exploiting her and the Japanese as Zero inside the cave on Kamine Island.

As Kallen in a revealing bunny girl outfit reunited with Lelouch inside the Babel Tower a year after what had happened in the cave on Kamine Island, she held Lelouch at gunpoint and demanded to know whether he had used his Geass to twist her mind and her heart to make her following him, but the raven-haired boy simply laughed it off and told straight into her face that her mind and heart were hers alone, declaring that she should be proud of her decision and choice of choosing Zero as he walked towards her and eventually had the gun pointing directly at his chest. Later, he was even nice enough to take off his school jacket and put it on her, covering the rather revealing bunny girl outfit up. Furthermore, when Kallen was apprehended by Xingke in the Chinese Federation and was about to give up, Lelouch frantically contacted her and demanded her not to give up and not to make any rash moves, promising that he would definitely rescue her. That gave immense assurance to Kallen's mind and it was that promise that kept her calm even when being held captive in Britannia.

The contrast between the extreme ruthlessness and considerable kindness the raven-haired boy had shown to Kallen was too great, it utterly confused her. Which one was the real Lelouch? Which one was the facade? It was Nunnally who finally tipped the balance in Kallen's mind, leading her to believe that the real Lelouch was the kind and gentle person that Nunnally had so enthusiastically spoken about. Kallen had her confidence in Lelouch restored once again, and that was what propelled her to rush and protect Lelouch from the death strike from Luciano Bradley, the Knight of Ten, during the 2nd Assault on Tokyo Settlement. This remained to be the case until during the confrontation between the Black Knights and Lelouch on the Ikaruga right after the Second Assault of Tokyo Settlement, Lelouch once again rocked the boat inside her mind when he laughed evilly and opening telling her and the Black Knights that she was the best of his pawns, hitting Kallen's restored confidence so hard that she once again felt betrayed by the enigmatic boy she had fallen in love with. The ensuing confusion that Lelouch murmured her to live but maintained a stone-cold expression on his face when she finally mustered up enough courage to kiss him on the staircase inside the Ashford Academy clubhouse had further stirred up her mind and led her to lose every confidence in her ability to judge what she really meant to Lelouch. This ultimately leads to Kallen's unsettling mind after Zero Requiem, where while she has realized Lelouch's real intention to the world, she is still unable to be 120% sure about his real feelings towards her due to the countless times of vastly contrasted flip-flopping in how he treated her throughout. 'I shall find out the truth from this screening event,' Kallen muses with determination.

Just as Nunnally was chatting with Kallen about Lelouch, Suzaku was walking along a corridor in the Area 11 Government Palace. 'Was it C.C. who lifted the Geass seal cast on Lelouch? To not seal that cursed absolute obedience power and let it run wild in the world… that's simply unacceptable!' Suzaku was in a bad mood and was thinking furiously, 'And Lelouch, you lied to me again! No, this time, you even lied to Nunnally as well! Lelouch…!'

"Just what made Kururugi to think that it's fine to let the Britannian Emperor's memory-altering Geass to 'run wild in the world'?" Chiba spats, "why was he ignoring the evil deeds the Britannians were doing all this time and only focused on Lelouch, who at least had somewhat helped us with rising up against Britannian tyranny?" Next to her, Tohdoh frowns as he sees how lack of honour Suzaku had become.

"Double standard was the name of his game," Rakshata ridicules with a sarcastic tone.

In the front row, Cornelia is having her own thoughts on Suzaku's apparent double standard in how he saw Lelouch's Geass versus Charles' Geass. 'I see, Kururugi wasn't judging things based on whether Geass was evil or not; he was judging things based on which Geass killed Euphy and which one punished the culprit responsible for killing Euphy. This shows that Kururugi was still loyal to Euphy at that moment of time… Kururugi, just why did you decide to defect to Lelouch's side at last?' she muses in frustration and confusion, not understanding the apparent contradiction between what is shown on screen here and what turned out to be happening eventually.

The operation started as Rolo had opened the gate to the underground Geass facility. The Black Knights rushed into the facility and started shooting down anyone they saw on the way. However, as they progress, they felt something was off: the enemies they had encountered were simply running away and did not fight back at all, making the entire situation a one-sided massacre instigated by the Black Knights, a supposedly justice-seeking group.

"Use extreme prejudice!" Zero ordered in a cold voice, seeing an increasing number of soldiers of the Black Knights were having doubts regarding the operation, "Britannia has been colluding with illegal organizations to research on immortal warriors to fight us. Such violation of the sanctity of life must not be allowed. The researchers and their data are to be wiped out. We don't know where the subjects of the immortality research are hidden, and therefore we encircle point alpha-7 and destroy everything. Burn it to the ground! Any experimental subjects found are to be sealed inside of high pressure casing. I shall investigate each one of them personally!"

As the Black Knights continued with their leave-no-one-alive operation inside the underground Geass facility, Bartley was instructing his aides to find Cornelia at all cost. "Have you found where Princess Cornelia is yet?" the portly general demanded, "We must rescue her at all cost…"

However, before Bartley could have finished his sentence, an Akatsuki Knightmare Frame approached and shot him and his aides down. Seeing the targets being shot down, the Akatsuki moved on to continue its assault elsewhere. Behind the leaving Akatsuki, a pink Akatsuki Command Model Zikisan with an open cockpit appeared, and its pilot was a lime-haired girl with a pair of golden pupils.

"That man… he was the one with Clovis, wasn't he?" C.C. saw the shot down general and vaguely recalled who he was, before someone yelled behind her, causing her to turn her head back.

"Director C.C.!" an old researcher called C.C.'s name as he was standing with some other old researchers.

"Please save us, Direct C.C.!" another old researcher begged. However, before C.C. could even respond, a missile was launched at the group of old researchers, killing them all with one explosion. C.C. looked back and realized the missile was fired by another Akatsuki.

Meanwhile, the dying Bartley stared at C.C. and murmured with his last breath, "Your Highness, Prince Clovis… The eternally young immortal woman you wished to present to His Majesty… It would seem that His Majesty was already aware of her existence… Please, forgive me, Your Highness. We never should've involved ourselves… with that witch…"

C.C. paid no attention to the dying general, only staring blankly at where the group of old researchers once stood on.

Guilford salutes to the last image of Bartley. "General Asprius was indeed a loyal servant to the Imperial Family," he comments.

Behind Guilford's row, Tohdoh, Chiba, Ohgi and Tamaki seem to be struggling with what to make of the scene. On the one hand, similar to the members of the Black Knights on the screen, they don't feel right to slaughter these non-combatant personnel even though they were enemies; but unlike the members of the Black Knights on the screen, they now know that these non-combatant personnel was the source of power of the Britannian Emperor who used the evil power of Geass, hence making this operation of wiping the underground Geass facility a sensible and necessary move that greatly benefited the Black Knights' cause.

"…well, who cares, they were just some Brits," Tamaki eventually decides to give himself an easy enough reason to justify the operation.

"They supported the Emperor to develop the evil power of Geass in order to oppress us," Chiba nods to Tamaki's justification, "they were all guilty, and they deserved to be damned." Next to her, Tohdoh simply stays silent.

"I don't like what is happening on the screen," Ohgi adds, "but… I guess that's necessary, however regrettable the operation was."

"No!" unlike the battlefield-experienced Guilford and the Black Knights Group, Tianzi can't stand to see the slaughtering scenes. She screams and throws herself into Kaguya's embrace, while her older Japanese friend hugs her tightly to soothe her.

Shirley turns her head away as she can't stand to see how merciless the operation was. While she understands logically that such is the nature of war, she still cannot look straight into the eyes of a cold Lelouch on an emotional level. Behind her, Rivalz and Milly both frown at the rather bloody scene. 'This operation was just as bad as how Prince Clovis slaughtered the Japanese in the Shinjuku ghetto…' Milly quietly muses.

"Such a waste! Those researchers could have been recruited to aid my own research," Rakshata shakes her head as she sees how the researchers, who were apparently non-combatant units, were slaughtered so easily under Lelouch's orders. To the Indian Scientist, that was a complete waste of brain power, and she believes it would be better if Lelouch would just try to convert all those people and let her recruited them.

Nina cringes at the sight of the slaughtering of researchers, not only because she feels certain kindred spirit to them as fellow seekers of the scientific truth, but also because of the lack of violent reaction from the Black Knights Group in the audience: they seem to be fine with the whole slaughtering scene.

"What's wrong, Nina?" Cecile senses something's wrong with Nina and asks her quietly.

"Ms Croomy, I…" Nina stutters to find the right words, "I don't understand…"

"Yes?" Cecile is confused.

"…I mean, why are those people," Nina covertly points to the Black Knights Group in the auditorium, "why are they so comfortable with this scene, when they have been condemning what Lelouch did during the SAZ massacre? Didn't Mrs Tohdoh and Mr Tamaki both denounce what Lelouch had done during the Black Rebellion?"

"Hmm…" Cecile thinks for a moment before continuing quietly, "I think there are four reasons for that. First, it is precisely because they have seen the scenes during the SAZ massacre already that the threshold of their tolerance for violent scenes has been raised high enough, a similar level of cruelty being shown on the screen just now would not provoke the same level of response they had first time around; second, the recent scenes that showed the… rather… undesirable facets of Suzaku have caused the Black Knights to become more tolerant of His Majesty due to the one-on-one comparison between the two; third, the people dying in this scene were Britannian researchers working for the enemy of the Black Knights, not Japanese civilians and certainly not their comrades; and fourth, what Lelouch did here was to the benefit of the Black Knights' cause. The last reason is also why Mr Tamaki and Mrs Tohdoh were only ridiculing His Majesty's use of Geass behind the scenes in causing the Tokyo Settlement to collapse during the Black Rebellion, but never denouncing His Majesty's operation itself even after learning the truth behind it."

Nina is shocked. The Black Knights Group doesn't feel bad for the death of the Britannian researchers who died in this operation just because they weren't Japanese? "But… isn't that… racism?" Having been a racist once herself, Nina is now even more aware of the traits of racism after she had been hard-hit and forced to reconsider her world view by the 25 million deaths in Tokyo Settlement due to the F.L.E.I.J.A. she created, "to only care about the deaths of their own people and not feeling anything to similar sufferings of other people, that's… hypocritical…"

"Well, I mean, they are combatants, and they certainly don't have the same affinity to those fallen Britannian researchers like we do," Cecile tries to answer Nina in the nicest way possible. The beautiful and capable blue-haired assistant to Lloyd actually feels bad at the sight of her fellow researchers being killed mercilessly as well, but she simply doesn't think it would be wise to wage a verbal feud with the Black Knights over their blatant double standard on things, knowing how hard-headed the vocal Japanese woman could be in refuting her by citing the Britannian oppression against the Japanese during the Area 11 era, arguing that it was the Britannians who were at fault first, and any violent actions against the Britannians by the Japanese were righteous self-defence only.

"Aha! That's why I like to work with machine more," Lloyd chimes in quietly with his trademark smile and a toned down version of "AHA", "they are perfectly standardized, and are easy to work with. Even if they aren't perfectly standardized, all one needs to do is to do the relevant calculation on a calculator or computer. Simple and straightforward, don't you think?"

"But…" Nina hesitates for a brief moment before continuing quietly, "…but would that mean that Lelouch's effort has gone wasted…? His sacrifice…"

"Even if His Majesty sacrificed himself for the sake of the world, it could only bring away old hatred but not ingrained human nature such as the tendency to discriminate against others," Cecile quietly explains to Nina before giving a comforting touch to soothe the bespectacled dark green-haired girl down, "and His Majesty's effort did just that: it brought the old hatred the Black Knights had towards Britannians away, making it possible for people like Mrs Tohdoh to be able to sit in the same auditorium as Her Highness and Lord Guilford, and actually accepted Lady Ohgi as her friend."

As members of the Science Group are quietly exchanging views on the apparent double standard the members of the Black Knights have displayed to the current scene and the SAZ Massacre scene, on the other side of the auditorium, Kallen notices something else. "Those elder researchers called C.C. the Director. Does that mean C.C. was also related to what had been happening in that underground Geass facility?"

"That means C.C. was also involved in the research of Geass at some point of time prior to joining Lelouch," Gino observes.

Cornelia frowns. 'That must be the reason why V.V. wanted to know the whereabouts of C.C. Does that also mean that C.C. knew about father's plans to "slay the God" from the start?'

Suddenly, something burst through the wall and came before the Shinkirou, shocking Lelouch. It turns out to be the Siegfried, the one-of-a-kind Knightmare Giga Fortress.

"The Siegfried?" C.C. was surprised to see the machine that she had pushed to the depths of the ocean to appear before her once again.

"Impossible!" Jeremiah exclaimed, "That machine only works on direct bio-connect, so the only one who can pilot it besides myself would be…"

"It's V.V.?" Lelouch barked.

Inside the Siegfried, V.V. smirked sadistically and shot a giant green spike-like slash harken towards the Shinkirou, pushing the latter out of the underground Geass facility into the open area of the desert.

"I am surprised, for the observer becomes a perpetrator!" Lelouch bellowed as he was typing in a series of commands on the keyboard control panel quickly to open its absolute defense system, which is an array of pink-coloured hexagonal energy shields, to prevent the Siegfried's giant green slash harken to pierce through his Knightmare Frame.

"You have indeed recovered your memory, Lelouch," V.V. said to his renegade nephew as he controlled the Siegfried to pull back its giant green slash harken, "you and Marianne are really alike."

As the Siegfried was chasing after the Shinkirou, C.C.'s pink Akatsuki also got airborne with its float system in the open space of the desert, "to think that the Siegfried is here…!" the lime-haired immortal girl exclaimed. Apparently, it hadn't been factored into the original assault plan. What should the Black Knights do now?

"Get out of here! You're the one he's after!" Lelouch shouted through the internal communication system, stunning C.C.

"Oh?" as V.V. was piloting his machine to chase the Shinkirou, a few ammos hit the Siegfried and piqued V.V.'s interest to whoever shot those ammos.

"Hold it right there, V.V.," Jeremiah demanded as he was piloting his airborne Sutherland with a floating device.

"Please just surrender already!" Rolo shouted from his airborne Vincent as well.

That amused V.V. "What are you traitors saying?"

"V.V., I am dragging you out from that machine," Lelouch seethed at the culprit who led to his failure during the Black Rebellion. The raven-haired boy ordered the Black Knights, "All units, attack!"

"Yes, Your Majesty!" Jeremiah replied as he took aim at the Siegfried.

"It seems that Orange has already taken Lelouch as the Emperor of Britannia at that point," Rakshata observes.

Guilford is once again surprised by how loyal Jeremiah was to Marianne's first child. 'The man's loyalty to his liege and thus to the liege's first child after his liege's death knew no bounds,' Guilford muses.

All units of the Black Knights started to attack the Siegfried, including Lelouch's Shinkirou itself, shooting its hadron cannon at V.V.'s machine. However, V.V. just laughed the attack off and piloted his Knightmare Giga Fortress to start spinning at high speed, deflecting all the attacks from the Black Knights. "For Marianne's son to get so full of himself…" the blond boy sneered as he piloted the Siegfried to knock down two Akatsuki Knightmare Frames and pushed the Vincent and the Shinkirou away.

"That was a machine made to show my loyalty!" Jeremiah bellowed as he saw V.V. used the Siegfried to attack the loyal man's current comrades.

"Jeremiah, I thought you have loathed Zero for the longest time, no?" V.V. was curious about Jeremiah's sudden change in heart.

"That is correct," Jeremiah replied, "had he been someone who prevented me from showing my loyalty to the Imperial Family. However, if the one that I should swear my loyalty to was Zero…" he then raised his voice and declared, "if this is the way for me to serve Lady Marianne…!"

The screen then showed an image of a young Marianne standing regally on the palm of the Ganymede, wearing a white Knight of the Round uniform.

"Lady Marianne…" Cornelia is mesmerized by the image of the young and regal Marianne. Cornelia may be the "Goddess of Victory" now, but in her own mind, it was Marianne "the Flash" who was the one and only "Goddess of Victory" of Britannia.

"Mother…" Nunnally also gazes at Marianne's image with great fondness. She still remembers how she was shielded from certain death by her mother on the staircase inside the Aries Villa, although she is also confused about the confrontation between Marianne and Lelouch in one of the memory snippets she saw during Lelouch's last moments.

"That was Lelouch's mother…" Kallen and Shirley's breath were taken away by Marianne's beauty. To the red-haired girl, the fact that Marianne was also an ace Knightmare Frame pilot has allowed Kallen to draw comparison between herself and Lelouch's mother, thus establishing some kind of closeness between the two who had never met in person before.

"Hey! She looked exactly like how Lelouch was during the gender role reversal festival!" Rivalz observes.

"Well, they are mother and son after all," Milly giggles as she recalls how beautiful Lelouch was when dressed as a girl.

"…Lady Ashford, do you still have with you the photos of Lelouch cross-dressing?" Cornelia suddenly asks. Next to the purple princess, Nunnally also looks at Milly expectantly.

Milly is shocked at first but quickly understands and regains her composure, "Yes, Your Highness. If you'd like, I could go retrieve them and send you a copy."

"By all means," Cornelia immediately says. Next to her, Nunnally's eyes are shining. She is finally getting to see the photos of her Big Brother that she has wanted to see for so long! It was such sadness when she couldn't see how beautiful her Big Brother was during the gender role reversal festival, when she was blind back then.

Milly smirks.

Unbeknownst to everyone in the auditorium, Anya inwardly scowls upon seeing the image of the woman who robbed her life and forced Lelouch to become a monster. 'Damn you to hell, bitch!' she screams inwardly.

Unlike the excitement that the present audience are having at the sight of Marianne's image, V.V. was visibly enraged at the mentioning of his sister-in-law. "You dare to speak that name to me?" he narrowed his eyes and yelled, before shooting Siegfried's giant green slash harken to knock out all accompanying Sutherland Knightmare Frames of Jeremiah's team.

Back in the underground Geass facility, a few damaged Akatsuki Knightmare Frames were lying around, and their still-function communication system were blasting S.O.S. requests made by the Black Knights to their comrades as they were gradually being destroyed by the Siegfried. The screen then zoomed into one particular damaged Akatsuki, where a purple-haired woman was silently working on rigging the damaged Knightmare Frame's system with a number of weapons gathered from a few other damaged Akatsuki units.

"Your Highness, you knew how to work with the systems used by the Akatsuki?" Rakshata is pleasantly surprised to see that Cornelia was rigging the system on a damaged Akatsuki on screen.

"Back at the military academy, I have taken classes on how to build and repair Knightmare Frames, and I passed that course with distinction," Cornelia answers with pride, "the system the Akatsuki model used may be slightly different, but it didn't take too long for me to figure that out."

"Your Highness, you are truly an all-rounded expert of Knightmare Frames," Cecile salutes to Cornelia, her admiration to the Princess' talents clearly shown on her face. Villetta also shows her admiration to the warrior princess as well.

Cornelia nods back with a confident smile.

"Tsch…!" Lelouch found himself outgunned by the Siegfried, and he decided to utilize his last weapon available that may be able to destroy the Knightmare Giga Fortress. "Rolo, can you get to the Siegfried somehow?" he switched to his doting brother tone as he spoke with his "younger brother".

"My Geass doesn't work on V.V. though…" Rolo appeared on Lelouch's screen, trying to warn his elder brother that his most powerful weapon was useless against V.V.

"You just need to grab onto that machine. I have a plan after that," Lelouch spoke softly and gently.

"Alright, I will give it a try!" Rolo decided to do his best for the sake of his elder brother, and the communication ended.

'Rolo, you laughable phony little brother… it's time to say goodbye,' Lelouch narrowed his eyes and mused callously as he was finally able to throw this detestable imposter of his dearest little sister away like a piece of garbage once and for all, 'with the bomb I planted on your Vincent, it'll…!'

Rolo started to dive his Vincent from above towards the Siegfried as he dodged the giant green slash harkens fired by the Knightmare Giga Fortress. "I have to do it, for my Big Brother!" Rolo exclaimed.

"This time it's Rolo?" V.V. smirked sarcastically, "you know that your Geass doesn't work on me, right?" However, Rolo ignored V.V.'s words and blasted through one of Siegfried's giant green slash harkens, impressing the young, blond immortal boy.

"If I can grab it…!" Rolo hissed as he was trying his best to pilot his Vincent towards the Siegfried.

"You know, you are a failure," V.V. said to Rolo as his Siegfried destroyed the Vincent's legs, "Your heart stops every time you use your Geass. That means you're defective. You could clog your heart up at any moment."

"Not yet! If I eject them…!" Rolo exclaimed.

"Hmph…" V.V. was amused by how hard Rolo was trying to get his Vincent close to the Siegfried.

At last, Rolo got his half-damaged Vincent's right arm grabbing on the Siegfried. "Big Brother! I've done it…! Ahh…!" he exclaimed before he screamed in pain as Siegfried started to electrify the Vincent with high voltage, inflicting great pain on the brown-haired assassin boy.

"Well done, Rolo," however, Rolo's excruciating suffering was of no concern to Lelouch, as he only cared about having the Vincent to attach itself onto the Siegfried. The raven-haired boy pulled out a remote controller that controlled the bomb planted on the Vincent, narrowed his eyes and said coldly, "now is the time to say goodbye…"

"Is it just me or do any of you feel the same way? I see no difference between Lelouch and that sadistic little blond boy," Gino observes, "both of them were treating that poor little brown-haired boy like garbage."

Shirley can't take it any longer. "Lulu, How could you…? Rolo worked so hard for you! How could you exploit him like that?" Tears start to come out of the gentle orange-haired girl's eyes.

"Shirley…" Milly opens her arms and hugs Shirley tight into her chest while stroking her orange hair.

"Madam President!" Shirley finally let go of her emotion and cries in Milly's embrace.

Rivalz also feels unsettling at the scene, not only because he had spent a good one year with Rolo and saw him as the younger brother of his best friend to look after, but also because the blue-haired boy is getting increasingly worried about Lelouch's true thoughts about Rivalz himself. 'Was I merely a driver to him? Did he ever consider me as his friend?'

On the other side of the auditorium, Ohgi, Tamaki and Chiba all frown slightly at the sight of seeing how Rolo's unwavering loyalty was rewarded by being treated so lightly. All of them had no close feelings for the young assassin Britannian boy and do not object to Lelouch using him as a disposable tool in principle since Rolo was not Japanese and not really one of them, but to witness how the boy's goodwill was taken so lightly and be rewarded with such ill and malicious intent by the leader of the Black Knights is still unsettling to witness on an emotional level nonetheless.

'Nebiros…' Villetta also feels a tint of sadness for her not-so-close colleague for a split second.

"Man, perhaps we should be a bit nicer to him," Tamaki sighs.

"I disagree," Tohdoh says suddenly, taking the rest of the audience by surprise.

"What do you mean, General Tohdoh?" Ohgi asks, "That Rolo boy…"

"The way I see it," Tohdoh interjects Ohgi, "the only controversial thing here was that Lelouch played with the assassin boy's emotions. Other than that, it was a sound and logical plan to use the boy up since he was our enemy with a Geass ability, we didn't know much about him and he's simply a time bomb too dangerous to us."

A row before Tohdoh's, Cornelia and Guilford both nod in agreement, but a row behind Tohdoh's, Nina is covertly cringing both at Tohdoh's words and the Black Knights' reactions to what is happening on screen, something she considers to be an exemplary display of double standard when compared to their reactions to similar scenes previously; as well as seeing her past self from the Black Knights' reactions to the scene. 'I was such a horribly prejudice and narrow-minded person back then… please forgive me, Your Highness,' she muses with regret and silently apologizes to her one and true Goddess who, quite to the contrary of the Black Knights and Nina's past self, was an exemplary display of kindness, grace and magnanimity.

Meanwhile, Nunnally is getting even more distressed to see the other side of her Big Brother. The young Empress is not militaristic enough to adopt Cornelia's logic on how Lelouch dealt with Rolo even though she understands what her elder sister was saying earlier. 'I am so glad I am not a wartime leader… and for that, I need to thank Big Brother and Suzaku for bringing final peace to all of us after years of never-ending military campaigns father had initiated across the globe…'

BANG!

Suddenly, a few powerful shots were fired from the ground, hitting the Siegfried and knocking Vincent off the Knightmare Giga Fortress in the process. This took V.V. by surprise.

"Tsch!" Lelouch snorted as he saw Vincent falling onto the ground, making it pointless for him to blow up the Vincent.

"Who could know the Siegfried's only weak point?" V.V. asked incredulously, seeing his Siegfried's only weak point being precisely targeted by a strange unit on the ground. He zoomed his monitor closer to the unit, finally realizing that it was a damaged Akatsuki unit seriously rigged with numerous weapons. At its pilot seat stood Cornelia li Britannia, 2nd Princess of Britannia.

"Your name is V.V.? It seems that you are the head of this organization," Cornelia stared sternly at the Knightmare Giga Fortress. She didn't get to see how V.V. looked like, but she overheard from the conversation through the communication system and got to know the blond boy's name.

Meanwhile, Rolo regained his conscious after the damaged Vincent landed on the sand. "I am sorry, Big Brother!" he apologized to Lelouch for failing his mission.

"Never mind," Lelouch replied half-heartedly, instead focusing his attention on his elder half-sister, 'I'd never expect Cornelia to be here as well…' he mused before ordering the Black Knights, "The Siegfried's shields are all down. Now that all it leaves is to attack it directly…!" Shinkirou's chest-mounted Diffusion Structure Phase Transition Cannon was promptly opened and aimed at the Siegfried as Lelouch spoke.

V.V. was visibly distressed, now that his Siegfried has been aimed by both the Shinkirou and the rigged Akatsuki.

"You shall vanish here and now, the one who made Euphy suffered!" Cornelia bellowed as she put her finger on the button that controlled all the weapons rigged onto the Akatsuki.

"The source… of Geass!" in a rare coincidence, the adversarial Britannian half-siblings both murmured the same thing as they pressed the button to fire their respective weapons at the Siegfried, severely damaging it.

"Damn, this Siegfried is no more…!" V.V. hissed as he piloted it to spin once again to attack Shinkirou, only to be stopped and further damaged by yet another shot from Shinkirou's Diffusion Structure Phase Transition Cannon.

"Lelouch, you damned cursed Prince!" a bleeding V.V. bellowed as the Siegfried started to fall onto the ground, appearing to be crashing onto the rigged Akatsuki unit carrying Cornelia.

"No! Princess!" Guilford screamed as he sees the Siegfried was about to crash onto his princess.

"It's alright, I am here, alive and well," Cornelia puts her hand on Guilford's, calming her knight down.

"Your Highness!" seconds before the Knightmare Giga Fortress crashed Cornelia, Jeremiah jumped onto the Aakatsuki and picked up Cornelia before jumping to the opposite direction, saving the Princess' life.

The Siegfried exploded and destroyed a good portion of the entrance to the underground Geass facility.

"Thank goodness you were saved…" Guilford lets out his breath. "I will need to thank Lord Gottwald when he's here."

'I'm not too sure about that, after you have seen what he did to me after that,' Cornelia thinks inwardly, but didn't say it out loud so not to spoil the fun of watching how her knight and lover will display his care for her.

A heavily injured and bleeding V.V. was crawling on the floor in the underground facility. "Lelouch, how dare you…" V.V. panted before he realized something and looked up, "Huh?"

In front of V.V. was a slightly opened gate, with a Geass Sigil crafted on it.

"I see you've come, Charles," V.V. said as he saw his brother stood right behind the gate, staring at him intently. "It's at times like this that one can tell only siblings are the most reliable."

Nevertheless, Charles didn't seem to care much about how injured V.V. was. Instead, he asked V.V. directly, "Big Brother, was it true that you wilfully adjusted Gottwald's settings?"

"What are you talking about?" V.V. didn't understand why Charles was concerned about Jeremiah, and instead changed the topic, "anyway, I found out that Lelouch has been Zero all this time. That boy was devious…"

Once again, Charles paid no attention to what V.V. had said. "Big Brother, you lied again," Charles spoke and gazed at his elder brother softly.

The audience, except Zero, are perplexed by the conversation between V.V. and Charles. Why did the Emperor say that V.V. had "lied again"?

"I don't understand. Did V.V. lie to His Majesty before?" Gino asks.

"Who knows, maybe V.V. had snatched the Emperor's favourite snack and lied about it?" Tamaki speaks with the authority of a cafe owner, which means not much authority, if at all.

"Big Sister, what do you think?" Nunnally decides to ask her elder sister for her views.

"Hmm… father did ask whether V.V. had wilfully adjusted Gottwald's settings. We know that V.V. had installed that Geass Canceller onto Gottwald's left eye socket. Perhaps V.V. had done that behind father's back and never told him about it?" Cornelia deduces before turning to her knight. "What do you think, Guilford?"

"I am afraid I don't have much of a clue either, Your Majesty and Your Highness," Guilford responds, "I guess we will have to keep watching to find out what exactly did His Majesty mean when he said V.V. had lied to him again."

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the Chinese Federation, Ohgi was sitting on a rock, wearing a purple jacket with a large hexagram printed on the left chest side. Suddenly, he stood up and greeted, "Chigusa…"

A silver-haired, ebony woman slowly emerged from the forest. "That was my name when I have lost my memory," the woman said with contempt as she finally stopped in front of Ohgi and pointed her gun at him, "my real name is…"

"Villetta," Ohgi said with a calm voice while staring at the amber eyes of the ebony woman, "but to me, you're…"

"AHA! More tough love for Prime Minister Ohgi I see!" Lloyd laughs cheerfully.

"Stop it, Lloyd! This is the second time already!" Cecile immediately pulls Lloyd's right ear, stopping her eccentric boss from further embarrassing the First Couple of Japan.

"Oh no… not again!" Villetta blushes hard at the scene, knowing what is going to be shown on the screen next.

The confrontation between Ohgi and Villetta continued on the screen.

"I'm a Baroness of Britannia. If I don't erase the blot of me falling in love with an Eleven, it would only become materials for others to threaten my position and standing," Villetta bellowed.

"I suppose so," Ohgi said as he turned and looked away from Villetta, "if possible, I'd like to die in Japan instead."

"You came here even though you knew you would be killed?" Villetta demanded. Was this worthless Eleven nuts?

"…that's because I wish to be at least able to choose when I would die," Ohgi frowned deeply as he answered Villetta's question.

"You have the option to kill me instead!" Villetta bellowed, finally unable to hold back her anger towards the damned Eleven any longer and raised her voice, demanding, "Tell me, why a terrorist like you saved a Britannian in the first place?"

"I am curious too. Why did Prime Minister Ohgi save a Britannian?" Nina asks curiously, especially now knowing how double standard the Black Knights Group can be from their rather different reactions to the two massacre scenes simply because one involved the death of Japanese while the other did not.

"At first, I wanted to learn more about Zero from you, so I tricked you, kept you under surveillance… But while we lived together, I… I have developed feelings to you…" Ohgi explained in a low voice, and the screen started to show a series of flashback scenes, from Ohgi discovering an injured and unconscious Villetta laying within the bulwark at the coastline of Port Yokosuka; Ohgi questioning a memory-lost, naked Villetta in his apartment; to Villetta happily preparing a bento for Ohgi.

This further infuriated Villetta. "I'm your sworn enemy!" she shouted at the top of her alto voice, staring at Ohgi angrily.

"…but I have fallen in love with you!" Ohgi exclaimed, stunning Villetta, but she quickly yelled back with frustration and anger, "Are you insane?"

"I must be… You are my enemy," Ohgi continued in a low voice while looking aside, but then he stared back at Villetta's amber eyes and raised his voice, "But I can't stop myself from loving you!"

This stunned Villetta yet again, and she felt losing to Ohgi's stare and didn't know what to say or do next. Villetta had always had contradictory feelings towards the tall Japanese man: on the one hand, she hated the fact that her otherwise perfect military résumé was blotted by a lowly Japanese commoner who was a member of the Black Knights; on the other hand, she did develop feelings for the tall Japanese man for the good and peaceful time she had spent with him in his small apartment in the ghettos in Area 11. "…I should never have set eyes on you…!" Villetta yelled in a sobbing tone, raising her gun a bit but still pointing at Ohgi.

Suddenly, there was some rustling sound coming from behind Villetta. Villetta turned and saw a woman standing on the branch of a tree behind her. Ohgi stared at the woman surprisingly as well, muttering, "That's someone from intelligence…?"

On the tree, Sayako was staring sternly at both Villetta and Ohgi.

"Phwwwwwhht!" Gino whistles and grins at Villetta brightly, "That's some star-crossed episode we are watching now!"

Both Villetta and Ohgi's face are reddened. They didn't feel much except sadness during the confrontation, but now looking at it from a third-person perspective and knowing that they have ended up together as one family with a beautiful son, they find this confrontation extremely cheesy and overly-dramatic, not to mention having an entire audience to watch it together with them – it is simply too embarrassing to them.

"Ohgi, you certainly knew when to man up, didn't you?" Tamaki teases Ohgi in an "I understand you, bro" tone while smirking and winking at the tall Japanese man.

"Nice one, Ohgi-san!" Kallen also winks at Ohgi and smiles mischievously, making the Prime Minister of Japan blushes even harder.

Meanwhile, the Ashford group is also excited to see the love scene of their swimming coach. "Man, that was some exciting rollercoaster we've just ridden on!" Rivalz says excitedly.

"Coach Villetta! Your love is so dramatic!" Shirley smiles happily at Villetta, making the latter blushes so hard, not even her ebony skin can hide the red colour on her face any more.

"Oh love me, Mister! Oh, Mister…" Kaguya suddenly sings cheerfully, catching everyone's attention.

"What's that song, Kaguya-sama?" Chiba is curious.

"Oh, it's a hit single I've recently received from someone I know," Kaguya answers gleefully, "it's a nicely-written funky little love song sang by a veteran singer who always wears sunglasses when performing, and the scene we've just watched somehow reminds me of its lyrics."

"You two did go wild just on your feelings alone, didn't you?" Tamaki winks at both his long-time friend and the said friend's wife. This forces Villetta to bury her face into Ohgi's embrace to ostrich from the embarrassing situation, while Ohgi himself is experiencing a burning sensation on his face without a cover.

"Well, Villetta did seem to nearly lose to Prime Minister Ohgi's stare," Chiba joins the fun and teases the First Lady of Japan.

"A dangerous game for just you two!" Milly quips with a bright smile as well, referring to the scene where Villetta was holding Ohgi at gunpoint. The tall blonde girl may have organized the "Cupid Day" as her graduation game event that included several dangerous moments such as having seven muscular rugby club hulks to jump at a Sayako-disguised Lelouch and five bespectacled science club nerds to shoot firecrackers at "him", but all those pale in comparison to what Villetta was doing on screen right now.

"Love is war," Kallen suddenly sighs. Seeing how Villetta and Ohgi struggled with each other on their path to love reminds the red-haired girl of her own struggles with Lelouch, as well as her rather misty rivalry with C.C.

"Love is war?" Nunnally and Tianzi both ask curiously and tilt their head to one side. Apparently, they are still too young to understand the intricacies of love.

"Love is war!" Shirley, the champion of Milly's "Cupid Day", affirms the two empresses with a bright and confident smile from her own experience: love is a war that every maiden has to fight, no matter what!

"Let me dance, things are gettin' dramatic from here…" Kaguya continues to sing happily as the First Couple of Japan falls into silence, embarrassed because of their little overly dramatic love episode being watched by so many people.

-Horai Island, Temporary Capital of the United States of Japan-

-On the Ikaruga, Flagship of the Black Knights-

Diethard was sitting in his office on the Ikaruga and listening to Sayako's report via videoconference on what she saw about Ohgi after tailing him and busting his secret meeting with a Britannian woman. "I see, so Deputy Commander Ohgi is indeed…" Diethard said calmly.

"Yes, and I intend to report this to Zero soon after this call…" Sayako said, but she was cut by Diethard. "No, let me handle this. Problems within the organization should be handled by me, so that Zero can focus on dealing with Britannia."

"Diethard…" both Villetta and Ohgi seethe at the sight of the Britannian journalist who had hurt them in so many different ways.

"Man, that guy was such a busybody!" Tamaki spats, "He should've spent the time he used on tailing other people to find himself a proper girlfriend!"

-Dallas Research Institute, Holy Britannian Empire-

Schneizel was walking pass a doorway and entered the control room, where Nina, Kanon and several other researchers had been expecting him. "Please forgive me. I had to speak with Nunnally," he said with his usual warm smile on his face.

"It's alright. We're still getting ready," Nina saluted the prince in her reddish military uniform.

"What happened?" Kanon asked curiously.

"Oh you know the topic," Schneizel answered, "Lloyd's Camelot group and their new Knightmare Frame."

"I meant what happened with the Toromo Agency," Kanon clarified.

"Oh that," Schneizel realized what Kanon was referring to. "Well, that would depend on the result we get today."

Nina cringes at the scene. 'I was so naive to be exploited by Prince Schneizel…'

Suddenly, she feels a gentle pat on her right shoulder. It is Cecile.

"Nina, don't blame yourself too much on that," Cecile smiles at her gently and whispers into Nina's ear, "you must realize that Prince Schneizel is a veteran politician who was able to trump His Majesty on the chessboard, and there was nothing you could have done about it when His Highness was determined to lure you into working for him. Know that you've done your part in rectifying the grave mistake that you've committed already, and that's what it counts."

"Ms Croomy…" Nina puts her face into Cecile's shoulder and weeps, to which Cecile gently pats the dark green-haired girl's head to calm her down.

Back in Area 11, Nunnally was chatting with Suzaku in her office. "Yes, my brother Schneizel has informed me from the Homeland that Area 11 can be upgraded to become a satellite area, as a recognition of the improved public order and productivity," Nunnally told Suzaku cheerfully.

"That's good news!" Suzaku replied gently. However, inwardly he was thinking hard. 'Lelouch must have been Zero all this time. But if I report this to His Majesty, what would happen to Nunnally?'

-Flashback-

Charles was sitting on his throne in a dark throne room, instructing Suzaku, "If Lelouch regains his memory, then Nunnally shall be mine to use."

-End of Flashback-

The awkward silence Suzaku left in the room had caused Nunnally to be suspicious. "Suzaku, are you hiding something from me?" the blind and crippled girl asked with a soft tone.

"Why would I? You are the only person I'd not lie to," Suzaku consoled the young Viceroy of Area 11 in a gentle tone. However, his eyes sharpened as he realized Nunnally was raising her hand to catch his; Suzaku immediately pulled back his hand.

Nunnally became confuse and perplexed. Why wouldn't Suzaku let her to hold his hand?

Nunnally frowns in realization. 'I see, that's why Suzaku didn't let me to hold his hand. Apart from not wanting to let me know that Big Brother was Zero all along, he also didn't want me to know that father was going to use me against Big Brother.'

"Tsch, what a bastard, lying to a blind and crippled girl," Chiba spats at the Suzaku on the scene.

"The moment he betrayed his loyalty to Princess Euphemia and sold his best friend to the Emperor for power and prestige, he had already lost all his honour," Tohdoh scowls. Is this really the same Suzaku who had sworn loyalty to the gentle and upright Princess Euphemia?

Gino frowns as well, both at Suzaku and the former Knight of Three's previous liege. 'Just what was His Majesty planning? Why did he not tell me any of this when he sent me to Ashford Academy? And Suzaku… lying to a lady, a young, blind and crippled Princess no less, is not what a knight should do!'

Next to her, Cornelia is half-angered by what she has just seen on screen, but she is also half-pondering something she can't understand. 'Father had already ruined Euphy and Clovis at that point, and he did not hesitate to ruin Nunnally as well by using her to fight against Lelouch. Damn him to hell…! But why did Kururugi refuse to let Nunnally to hold his hand? Wouldn't not letting Nunnally to hold his hand made it even more suspicious than just to let her to hold his hand?'