Chapter 24: "Transgression" X – The C's World

Back in the underground Geass facility, Lelouch has finally pinpointed V.V.'s location. However, the heavily injured V.V. simply smiled at Lelouch just as some electrical wavelength came out of the half-opened Geass gate in front of V.V., drawing Lelouch and his Shinkirou into a strange dimension with eternal dusk. All of a sudden, Lelouch found himself standing at the bottom of a staircase of a floating temple in the strange dimension, his Shinkirou parked right behind him.

Lelouch looked around this strange dimension with eternal dusk. "When did I get myself out of the Shinkirou…?" Lelouch muttered to himself, "and where is this place? This doesn't look like hologram…"

"That is correct!" Before Lelouch could have finished his train of thought, a bass and majestic voice bellowed at full volume and resonated in the strange dimension. Lelouch quickly narrowed his eyes and turned his attention to the source of the voice.

"And how can you bring forth such inelegant things as a Knightmare Frame before this system, the Sword of Akasha?" a towering old man was standing right at the top of the staircase of the floating temple.

"It's you…!" Lelouch bellowed at full voice with full contempt as he saw who was standing at the top of the staircase: Charles zi Britannia, the 98th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire and Lelouch's father.

However, Charles simply ignored his son's fury and continued, "Lelouch, my son. The time has come!" the Emperor then raised his eyebrows, staring at his son intently and with a smirk, "the time for your redemption to take place!"

"Redemption? What the hell was he talking about?" Kallen snorts at the Emperor's words, "shouldn't he redeem his countless sins first?"

"That's right!" Tamaki yells, though no one pays any attention to him as usual.

Cornelia frowns at the sight of her father. 'The time for Lelouch's redemption to take place? So father did want Lelouch to pay for his crimes against Euphy, Clovis and all other loyal subjects of the Empire after all? But why at that moment of all times, when Lelouch was still commanding an army against Britannia and had his full memory back and Geass active? That didn't make any tactical sense at all! Unless this is part of his scheme to lure out C.C. as mentioned previously, but if that's the case, shouldn't father have brought Lord Waldstein with him in order to put Lelouch into enough danger, so as to lure C.C. out to protect him?'

Nunnally notices something else. 'When father talked to me in that strange dimension, he spoke in a distant yet gentle voice; when father was talking to Mr V.V. when Mr V.V was crawling on the ground, he spoke with such a soft tone; yet, he's blasting his emperor voice fully at Big Brother. I wonder why he did that. Father didn't seem anger a bit that Big Brother was rebelling against him, so there wasn't a strong reason why father had to speak with Big Brother in that way, knowing that doing so would simply infuriate Big Brother even more. Also, why did father stand in front of Big Brother with little protective measures against his Geass, knowing that Big Brother would not hesitate to unleash his power against him? What was going on?'

Lelouch rushed and hid himself behind his Shinkirou. "Answer my question about what happened eight years ago! Why didn't you try to protect mother? You knew the other members of the Imperial Family were distancing her!" Lelouch demanded.

However, Charles did not bulge and keep staring at his son. "Humans are not created equal," he recited the thesis of his eulogy at Clovis' funeral service.

"What?" Lelouch was confused. Why did his father repeat his well-known mantra here and now?

"You have Geass, a unique power that other people do not possess. Just use it to get the answer from me," Charles elaborated.

Lelouch narrowed his eyes. 'He's baiting me to use my Geass. However…!'

Charles kept challenging his son. "What's the matter? Are you not my son, are you not a Prince of Britannia?"

'This is not the time for half-ass orders!' Lelouch made up his mind, pulled away the contact lens from his left eye and pulled out a remote controller from his pocket.

"Why was His Majesty so confident in letting Lelouch using his absolute obedience Geass on him?" Gino is confused, "I'm pretty sure Lelouch would have ordered His Majesty to die, just like how he ordered Prince Clovis' Imperial Guards to die back in Shinjuku!"

"That's probably because the Emperor was also a Geass user," Rakshata reasons, "by the principle of the reversibility of light, when Lelouch looked into the Emperor's eyes, the Emperor would also be looking into Lelouch's eyes, making it a contest of who could cast his Geass on the other person first. Since the Emperor was a lot older than Lelouch, it can be assumed that he was a lot more experienced in using his Geass, so when their eyes met, the Emperor should enjoy an advantage in casting his Geass on Lelouch first before Lelouch could do the same."

Rakshata's deduction wins general approval from the audience with a few exceptions, Cornelia being one of them. 'Dr Chawla's reasoning does sound right, but it is still not a foolproof strategy: there was no 100% guarantee that father would trump Lelouch in the usage of Geass even if he's the more experienced one. Father must still have a trump card up his sleeve that guaranteed his victory over Lelouch even if he lost this Geass battle!'

Meanwhile, Rolo was faithfully coordinating the work of the Black Knights. "That's right, those are Zero's orders. Search through all facilities and bring all corpses to the designated area. We must identify any of the experimental soldiers among them."

Members of the Black Knights stared at all the dead bodies lying around the underground Geass facility. "This is… massacre," one member realized what he had done and muttered in fear.

On the other hand, Jeremiah knelt down before the deceased Bartley, wiping away the blood on the late general's face. "General Asprius, I loathed you for rigging my body, but your loyalty to the Imperial Family was genuine," Jeremiah said as he narrowed his eyes, "So be it. I have made my decision – I shall respect you."

Guilford feels that all the questions he has for Jeremiah answered at this very moment. 'The man really puts the loyalty to the Imperial Family, particular to Lady Marianne, over everything else, be it his own career, his honour and his dignity. Such unwavering loyalty… then so be it. I have also made my own decision – I shall respect you as well, Lord Gottwald.'

Tohdoh also nods inwardly to Jeremiah's unwavering sense of loyalty and duty. 'Such an honourable man. It's regrettable to the such respectable loyalty was sworn to the most treacherous ruler ever walked on Earth as a result of transferring his original loyalty to the deceased Consort Marianne to her eldest child, but such contrast only further exhibited how venerable the Margrave was. You have my respect, Lord Gottwald.'

"Xingke…" Jeremiah's sense of loyalty reminds Tianzi of her deceased loyal general, and her tears start to fall as she keeps calling the general's name, "Xingke… Xingke…"

"Tianzi…" Kaguya immediately hugs the young Chinese girl into her chest, patting her gently.

"…recorded," Anya takes photos of the various things happening in the auditorium right now.

Back in the strange dimension with eternal dusk, Lelouch pressed the button of his remote controller. The Shinkirou then shot a little box up in the air.

"Hmph?" Charles was taken by surprise, looking at the box. The box went quite up in air and then suddenly exploded, releasing a pile of hexagonal mirrors that scattered randomly mid-air, falling back down to the ground due to gravity.

Lelouch immediately looked at one of the falling mirrors and timed as the mirrors are falling in random direction, "Lelouch vi Britannia orders you…" once he saw the image of his father appearing on the mirror in front of himself, "DIE!"

Right at that instant, the red sigil flew out of Lelouch's left eye, going through multiple reflection and eventually flew into the Emperor's eyes.

As all the hexagonal mirrors finally reached the floor, the Emperor said, "very well."

Lelouch pulled out a mirror to watch what was going to happen to the Emperor as he kept hiding behind the Shinkirou. On the mirror, it showed that the Emperor pulled out his own gun, pointing at his own heart and pulled the trigger, blood oozing out of his left chest; the Emperor then fell backwards and collapsed heavily, his gun slid away on the ground as he died. Although Lelouch knew what would happen after his Geass had taken effect, he was nevertheless shocked by what he had just witnessed; he turned and came out from Shinkirou's leg.

"I won… I won…" Lelouch murmured, "Nunnally… Mother… I… I…" Lelouch then let his emotion erupted and screamed at the fullest voice he could while looking up to the sky, "AHHHHHHH!"

Rivalz is amazed by what Lelouch did with the mirrors. "Man… that's cool."

Nina is aghast at what she sees. "He utilized the reversibility of light perfectly…"

"AHA! His Majesty has good knowledge in optics!" Lloyd is impressed at how Lelouch was well-versed in physics. Perhaps he should have enlisted Lelouch's help in his research before the execution of the Zero Requiem!

"Well, he did one good thing for Japan and the world, I would give him that!" Chiba acknowledges what Lelouch did here was good to the world, although visibly unwillingly.

Nunnally frowns. 'Big Brother, I don't feel particularly happy because father's dead. You've really misjudged what I really desire,' seeing her father dead also made her sad over the fact that she would never hear what her father wanted to tell her back when she briefly reunited with him in that strange dimension with eternal dusk.

Cornelia, however, is thinking something different. 'It was as I expected, father's challenge to Lelouch was not foolproof. However, father did shoot a bullet through his heart, so Lelouch's clearly won this duel… but why my instinct keeps telling me that there was no way Lelouch could have won that easily?'

Tohdoh also feels that something was not right. 'Hold on. Lelouch did proclaim on the throne that he killed Emperor Charles, but this… this scene happened before the formation of the UFN! Then what was that public announcement Emperor Charles had made to the world? Was that a recording? That made no sense whatsoever… what exactly happened?'

Outside the Geass gate, C.C. stood right in front of a frail V.V. and stared at the blond boy, who sat on a stair step. "How many years have passed since we last met face to face, V.V.?" C.C. asked with a tint of nostalgia before she continued, "In the end, I couldn't get away from my curse."

"The burden of the curse… I shall bear it…" V.V. muttered as he slightly inclined forward. C.C. was perplexed for one moment, but quickly realized that V.V. wasn't speaking to her, but to someone else, "the curse of immortality…" the boy continued.

C.C. hurried to V.V.'s side and took a quick look at the back of his neck. "What? V.V., you…?" C.C. was surprised.

"So… Charles…" V.V. paid no attention to C.C. and simply continued to utter broken and incoherent short phrases, "that's because… I am… your Big Brother…"

"Huh? What was happening? I don't understand!" Chiba barks incredulously. Once again, the V.V. boy seemed to be talking nonsense: how could a mere boy be the elder brother of an aging Emperor?

"Wait, did he say 'the curse of immortality'?" Tohdoh observes, "And considering how C.C. came back to life after being shot dead in Shinjuku, does that mean V.V. was immortal as well?"

Guilford clicks on the information upon Tohdoh's observation. "We have seen previously that C.C. was probably born a long time ago, at least before trench warfare was a thing. Putting two and two together, it can be surmised that when C.C. and V.V. attained immortality, they both stopped aging. This would explain why they both looked young, and how could this V.V. be His Majesty's elder brother."

"What the hell?" Tamaki is stunned by Guilford's deduction. How is that possible?

The scene cuts back into the strange dimension with eternal dusk, where Lelouch was standing next to his father's dead body. "I killed him, with such ease… I still had questions for him and people that I wanted him to apologize to, but…" Lelouch muttered as he had a downcast expression on his face, now that vengeance was no longer part of his emotion.

"Oh? To who?" suddenly, a voice that should exist no more boomed in the strange dimension with eternal dusk once more, shocking Lelouch.

"Such an impudent child you are, Lelouch!" The supposedly dead Emperor gradually opened his eyes as he rose up once more onto his feet.

Everyone except Zero were utterly shocked by the scene. "What happened?" Kallen yells. "How was it possible for the Emperor to survive a bullet through his heart?"

"Did he fake the shooting?" Cecile suggests, but immediately rejects the suggestion herself, "no, His Majesty's Geass order was absolute and cannot be disobeyed. Therefore Emperor Charles must have obeyed that 'die' order and shot a bullet through his heart with precision."

"Is he… a zombie?" Tamaki's teeth are gnashing in fear. What the hell was wrong with all these members of the Britannian Imperial Family?

Tohdoh is surprised as well, but his previous question gets answered. 'I see, so Emperor Charles wasn't dead yet… but how come?'

"You're still alive? That's impossible…" Lelouch was as shocked as the present audience are, and walked back a few steps, "that bullet had pierced through your heart…?"

However, the emperor ignored Lelouch's shock and continued, "Strategies, schemes, surprised attacks… did you seriously think such trivial tricks could defeat me?" the Emperor took a step forward, towering over Lelouch and looked down at him with a stern face, "you want to succeed the power of the king? Then come at me like a king!"

Lelouch was infuriated by his father's words, and shouted "die!" while casting his Geass. However, it didn't work.

"Is that what you think a king does?" Charles demanded at his renegade son.

"Geass… is not working?" Lelouch, for the first time since eight years ago when he appeared before his father in the throne room, was scared. He took a step back, fidgeting in fear. Suddenly, Lelouch dashed behind Charles and picked up the gun on the floor, shooting at him. Charles merely gazed at his son with a know-all smirk and didn't even flinch one bit.

"Do you still not understand, Lelouch?" Charles' voice boomed in the dimension as Lelouch kept shooting at him, "Swords, guns, any other means… they are useless against me!" Charles took off his right white glove and showed his right palm to Lelouch: it was a Geass Sigil.

At the same time, C.C. knelt down before the short-statured V.V. as some wind blew C.C.'s lime hair away from her forehead, revealing the same Geass Sigil Charles had on his right palm. "Charles, why did you take away V.V.'s Code at this juncture of time? Why did you kill the elder brother you so respected and loved?" C.C. said, before gazing back at V.V. with a gentle smile, "V.V., you had once loved Marianne as a woman, hadn't you?"

V.V. didn't answer; his eyes were shut, and he died with a smile on his face.

"AHA! So His Majesty Emperor Charles had obtained this 'Code' thing from V.V., and hence became immortal?" Lloyd observes.

"It seems that Lady C.C. had known V.V. for a long time," Cecile adds, "coupling with the fact that some older researchers called C.C. 'Director' before they were killed, it may be that V.V. was Lady C.C.'s direct successor of that underground Geass facility."

"You mean C.C. was working for the Emperor in the past?" Ohgi is shocked by the deduction Cecile comes up with following her own reasoning. How could the mysterious lime-haired girl be working for the Emperor?

"Well, but then she was in the capsule we stole from Clovis back in Shinjuku," Kallen recalls, "that means for whatever reason, she had left the Emperor and that underground Geass facility at least before she was being captured by Clovis as his subject for human experimentation."

"Things are so messed up…" Tamaki says frustratingly, "I don't understand what's happening anymore!"

Just as the discussion is going on, Cornelia is thinking something else. 'Just as I thought, father would not have done things in such sloppy ways to allow Lelouch to win that easily. Anyway, to think that V.V. also fell for Lady Marianne… Her Highness was indeed superb, both as a warrior and as a woman.'

Nunnally, being the kind girl she is, feels sad seeing V.V. dying, 'Mr V.V. sacrificed himself for father's sake, just like how Big Brother sacrificed himself for my sake…'

Anya is watching the scene with her perfect poker face throughout, but inwardly she is seething even more at the vile woman who had robbed much of her life until very recently, 'not only did you ruin my life and those of many others, you also caused His Majesty and His Highness V.V.'s brotherhood to crack… damn you to the depths of hell, you bitch!'

Back in the strange dimension with eternal dusk, Lelouch was being thrown back next to his Shinkirou, lying on the floor. 'That man has become immortal? I can't win… I have no way to win!' Lelouch stared at the sky and thought in despair.

Charles once again stood atop of the staircase, his towering presence exerted to the fullest. "In place of Geass, I have obtained a new power. And so Lelouch, behold," Charles said as a control panel gradually emerged on his right hand side that he placed his right hand above it, "the true nature of this world!"

Suddenly, the eternal dusk of the strange dimension transformed into one with numerous slowly rotating gears, and numerous masks appeared before them. Lelouch looked around the masks appeared before his eyes incredulously and was confused. Then, Charles emerged right before Lelouch.

"What is this? What are you scheming?" Lelouch demanded.

However, Charles ignored his question and challenged his son instead, "How strange! A child who's wrapped himself in lies would desire the truth from others?"

"What?" Lelouch was enraged. How dare Charles said that to him?

"There is no need to lie," Charles continued, as if he was teaching his son how to walk, "because this world only needs one person. If there is only one person…"

"What are you saying?" Lelouch didn't understand what Charles was talking about. His father was speaking in riddles!

"What the hell was that old fart saying?" Tamaki yells in frustration. The short-tempered Japanese man can't understand a word the Emperor had said on screen!

"If someone as smart as Lelouch couldn't understand what the Emperor had said, then there is no point to expect you to understand what was being said, right?" Rakshata chuckles.

"His Majesty was right on one thing, though," Gino comments, "that it was indeed strange for Lelouch, who lied to everyone around him, to be the one who's demanding the truth. I mean, I don't dispute the fact that His Majesty had been harsh on Lelouch, but who was Lelouch to expect other people to tell him the truth when all he had been doing was lying to everyone else?"

"Big Sister, this…" Nunnally feels uncomfortable seeing the confrontation between her father and her brother.

"…" for once, Cornelia doesn't know what to say or do besides holding Nunnally's hand gently. What is happening on the screen has already surpassed what Cornelia can comprehend, and she is just as confused as her younger sister on what their father, the 98th Emperor of Britannia, really wanted to do to Lelouch with all those seemingly contradictory schemes he had used on Lelouch ever since the end of the Black Rebellion.

Just as father and son were confronting each other, a familiar female voice chimed in. "Charles, play time is over," the two giant gears right next to Charles and Lelouch slowly parted ways, revealing a young girl with long lime hair, attracting both men's attention, "to me, that thing over there is now useless," the lime-haired girl glanced over Lelouch.

"C.C.?" Lelouch was stunned to see C.C. to be also in this strange dimension.

However, C.C. ignored Lelouch and continued to speak to Charles, "You don't have to cajole him like this to get me here, since I already am."

"Very well, C.C.," Charles spoke uncharacteristically gently, "and I shall grant your wish."

This shocked Lelouch. He immediately looked back at his father and asked incredulously, "You know what C.C.'s wish is?"

"Lelouch, I shall now reveal to you our contractual terms… and my wish," C.C. spoke hesitantly, putting a brief pause before finally gathering the resolve and looked right into Lelouch's purple eyes, "I desire death, an eternal termination of my existence."

"What? C.C. wanted to die?" Kallen can't believe what she's just heard, "but… but how…"

"Wasn't she immortal?" Rivalz says as he recalls all the scenes he has seen so far, "not even crashing into the sea could have killed her!"

"AHA! I think I know how to do it," Lloyd says cheerfully, connecting the dots that he has seen so far. Cecile, Rakshata and Nina all nod as well.

"Wait! How?" Tamaki demands. Why do these science freaks always get to know the answer quicker than he can?

"Well, let's continue to watch to see the answer, shall we?" Zero says, turning everyone's attention back to the screen.

Same as the present audience, Lelouch was staring at C.C. with eyes fidgeting, perplexed by the possibility of fulfilling C.C.'s wish as well: C.C. was immortal, how could she be killed?

"In the final stage of Geass, the user shall succeed the position of the one who granted the user the power. In other words, the user will obtain the power to kill me," C.C. explained.

Lelouch couldn't believe what C.C. had just said. "Kill C.C…?" he muttered.

"Of all those I have made contracts with, none had ever reached this final stage," C.C. continued, "however, there is one here right now. Charles has reached that point."

Lelouch still refused to believe what he'd just heard. "Impossible… you offered me the contract just so that you can die?"

"That's correct," C.C. answered with no hesitation.

"You have lived until now… to die?" Lelouch asked in a saddened tone.

"That's so sad!" Tianzi exclaims. She is still a young girl and doesn't understand much about the meaning of life, but even she finds the notion of "having lived to die" too sad of a thing to live by.

Shirley is relieved yet scared at the same time. The orange-haired beauty is relieved because it finally becomes clear to her that C.C. was not after Lelouch's body or soul, but she is also scared because of C.C.'s rather pessimistic desire in exchange for giving Lelouch such a demonic supernatural power. 'Why? Ms C.C., why would you want to die?' Shirley muses in sorrow.

In the front row, Cornelia and Nunnally are both perplexed at C.C.'s wish as well. Ever since the scene right before the start of the Ashford Academy School Festival, they have been thinking what might C.C. want from her contract with Lelouch, but never in a million years would they have thought that C.C.'s wish was to die.

"That's the truth of this world. Only when it's finite can we call it life," C.C. explained.

"That's wrong!" Lelouch shouted, "We call it life because we feel it!"

"That's essentially the same thing," C.C. chuckled a bit, "there is no life unless there is death."

"That's just word play! There is a reason and meaning one's born on this world! Living just to die is simply pathetic!" Lelouch immediately rejected C.C.'s words. Why was the stubborn witch so set on dying?

C.C. smiled somewhat emptily. "You know full well that is just an illusion! Without death, all we have are random events, the accumulation of experience. You can't call it life."

That stunned Lelouch: wasn't that what he had gone through since he was exiled? Living a false life under a false name, sick of the world that couldn't be changed…

"If you have a reason to live, then kill me. Do that and you'll be Charles' equal, finally standing on equal terms," C.C. said gently as she made Lelouch her final offer.

Lelouch hesitated, and that hesitation was shown on his face.

C.C.'s gentleness faded from her face and was swiftly replaced by disappointment. "Farewell, Lelouch. You are too gentle to fulfill my contract." A control panel suddenly came up from the ground, and C.C. placed her hand on it, sending Lelouch free-falling to another dimension.

"Wait! Ahhh…!" Lelouch screamed as he fell into that other dimension. C.C.'s Geass Sigil on her forehead shone red and she looked at Lelouch with a saddened face; Charles looked at his son with a smile, arguably a gentle one.

Everyone in the audience, this time Zero included, are speechless. The conversation between C.C. and Lelouch was packed with so much information, a lot has left to be desired.

"First, why would C.C. want to die?" Villetta asks, "she has what every woman had ever wanted: eternal youth and beauty! Why would she want to throw them away?"

Shirley, Kallen, Nina and even Chiba agree: C.C.'s eternal youth and beauty are simply the greatest gifts a woman could ever hope for. How could those be bad things?

However, Milly knows better. "Ms C.C.'s eternal youth and beauty are indeed enviable, but then what about the others who mattered to her? Friends, family, and other important people? They will age and eventually die, leaving her alone by herself. Isn't that too sad?"

"AHA! But she would have unlimited time to do various things!" Lloyd joins in the discussion, "she will have all the time to do various types of research impossible to be completed in a normal life time, explore places that someone born in the Middle Ages did not have the means to explore, and in the far future, she may even be able to go to Space and explore other planets in the universe! How exciting is that?" To his right, Rakshata nods to Lloyd's argument, agreeing with the "Earl of Pudding"; Cecile seems to be torn between her researcher side and her human side, the latter being something that neither Lloyd nor Rakshata seem to possess; Nina is also torn between the two sides of the argument, excited by the prospect of being able to conduct longitudinal studies across a superhuman period of time, yet scared by the prospect of losing all her Ashford friends to the passage of time.

"I'd prefer a limited yet meaningful life," Tohdoh says, "instead of being a tree that lives over a thousand years that does nothing but stand still in the same position throughout, I'd rather be a lion running freely in the wild for 10 years."

"I'm of the same opinion as General Tohdoh," Guilford says.

'It's really a matter of opinion. However, in C.C.'s case, she didn't choose to die eventually and showed up to hand Lady Kouzuki these three discs we are watching right now. Considering how adamant she was to die in the scene just now, even trumping Lelouch in her arguments, I wonder what made her to ultimately change her mind?' Cornelia muses.

The gears-filled background faded, and the eternal dusk once again returned to the strange dimension. C.C. slowly walked behind Charles to his right hand side, who was standing at the top of the staircase once again, while asking him, "Charles, why did you take away V.V.'s Code?"

"Is there any meaning for you to ask that question?" Charles simply replied, "After all, you are about to die."

"I suppose you are right," C.C. smiled, saying in a melancholic tone.

The audience is aghast once again by the scene. Everything just doesn't sound right.

"It's just strange that His Majesty spoke such cruel things with a gentle tone," Gino scratches his head, not sure how to describe what he has just seen in a better way.

"That old fart was heartless!" Tamaki yells, "what I don't understand is why did that witch smile to that? That's scary as hell!"

"I agree. I don't understand why C.C. accepted it so effortlessly, but the Emperor was definitely a maniac that had no heart," Chiba spats at the culprit ultimately responsible for the eight-year suffering the Japanese had endured.

In the front row, Guilford is discussing with Cornelia as well. "Your Highness, I still don't understand why His Majesty killed V.V., if, according to C.C. and how V.V. acted during his last moments, His Majesty had always respected and loved his elder brother," Guilford says.

Cornelia thinks for a brief moment before she responds, "I am confused as well. The last scene where father accused V.V. of lying to him again, he didn't say it with fury; he said it with softness and gazed at him gently. It doesn't seem to me that father killed V.V. out of malice or vengeance; he did it for something else. Perhaps that's why Kururugi said that father and V.V. had different objectives, which led to father killing V.V. in order to get what he wanted."

"This is sad!" Tianzi once again voiced out her agony at the scene. Seeing C.C. so comfortable with the concept of dying chills the young girl's spine. Why did the lime-haired girl want to throw her life away?

Kaguya, the elder and wiser friend of Tianzi, tries to comfort her traumatized friend while pondering something else. 'It seems that C.C. was so set and ready to die at that moment, but then she is still around now and even gave these discs to Kallen. I wonder what changed her mind eventually?'

The screen then switches and shows Lelouch rematerializing in a black-and-white place that looks like a rustic village after he was being thrown into yet another dimension by C.C.

"This place is…" he looked around and felt confused. Where did C.C. send him to?

Lelouch then looked forward and saw a young girl suffering from malnutrition and in a set of worn and frayed clothes walking weakly towards him on bare feet, with a metal ankle strap attached to her right ankle. The girl was so weak, she eventually stopped walking and started to fall to the ground as she fainted from hunger right in front of Lelouch.

"Huh? Hey!" Lelouch looked at the falling young girl concernedly and immediately rushed to the falling girl and tried to hold her. However, the girl somehow fell through his hands, and Lelouch was shocked that he couldn't actually touch the girl.

"What the hell?" Tamaki is shocked again. The recent scenes contain so much difficult stuff for his nut-size brain, he simply doesn't understand anything anymore.

"Lulu...!" Shirley is sad to see the weak girl on the screen collapsed, but she is at the same time brightened at the sight of how her dear Lulu showed concern to a complete stranger not due to detailed calculation from his brain, but due to reflex kindness from his heart. This is exactly what Shirley has been looking for ever since seeing Lelouch being so callous and merciless from the SAZ Massacre – the proof that Lelouch was still a fundamentally kind person. Behind her, Milly and Rivalz both nod with content as well, happy to see that Lelouch was still a fundamentally kind person despite all the horrible things he had done throughout.

The Black Knights Group, however, is not so kind. "Tsch, such petty random kindness," Chiba spats before she reluctantly concedes, "but I guess I have to admit that compared to the heartless Emperor and the hypocritical Kururugi, Lelouch was still the better one, and by far."

"…" Ohgi is having a conflict in his mind. Although his instinct is telling him that the scene has shown that Lelouch was a person who was fundamentally kind to others, he simply refuses to accept that because the Prime Minister of Japan is still seething at how Lelouch dared to threaten his beloved then-girlfriend and now wife. Similar reaction is also shown by Tohdoh, who is still seething at the fact that Lelouch ruthlessly killed Major General Katase, Tohdoh's real liege, and then tricked Tohdoh into working for the murderer of Tohdoh's liege and tarnished the esteemed Japanese general's honour.

In the front row, the Britannia sisters watch the scene with different feelings: Nunnally is relieved that she finally gets to see a scene where her elder brother showed kindness to others instead of malice, while Cornelia is experiencing some complicated feelings. 'This clearly shows that Lelouch was still kind to the core, but… just why did he become the most treacherous man ever walked the Earth at last?' she then thinks of Euphemia and Darlton, who both died because of Lelouch, while trying to comprehend the confrontation scene between her father and Lelouch shown just now. '…it's really father's fault that things ended up like this. Lelouch had to bear his share of responsibility, but it's really father who pushed him into becoming a monster…!' the elder princess seethes at the once-again realization that her merciless father had caused so much tragedy to her and the people she so cared about.

"There is no use," suddenly, a familiar but colder-than-usual voice came behind the stunned Lelouch, whose left eye still showed a shining Geass Sigil. Lelouch looked and turned back immediately as he noticed a C.C. in a blue version of the straightjacket she usually wore standing right behind him.

"This is my memory, and you cannot interfere with it," the colder-than-usual spiritual C.C. spoke as the scene turns back to colour.

"C.C…? No, you are…?" Lelouch quickly realized that the spiritual C.C. standing in front of him was not the C.C. he'd got used to.

"So this is C.C.'s memory…" Kallen finally makes some sense of this strange dimension, "but why C.C. was also in that dimension when she was talking to the Emperor in that strange dimension with eternal dusk? That doesn't make sense!"

"AHA! A strange phenomenon that not even science can explain!" Lloyd exclaims cheerfully at the apparent strange scene with intense interest. Anything unknown to the man is by definition something intriguing enough for the eccentric scientist to study on.

"Well this is not science at all but metaphysics, and this Lady C.C. could be the personification of her subconscious?" Cecile suggests.

"Ha! I know that!" Tamaki interjects, "physics is a branch of science, so you are wrong!"

"Uhm, I was talking about metaphysics…" Cecile tries to clarify, thinking that Tamaki may have misheard her.

"Same thing! I know that!" the red-haired Japanese man has his nose up high. He is able to spot the error of the blue-haired scientist. Just how smart is he?

"Hahahaha…" Rakshata laughs at how Tamaki keeps making himself a fool while everyone else in the room looks at the cafe owner like staring at an idiot before the Indian Scientist continues, "well, this is not my expertise either, but Cecile does have a point."

"So we are finally going to learn some back story of Ms C.C.?" Shirley is excited.

"Well, let's continue to find out, shan't we?" Zero suggests and brings everyone's attention back to the screen.

"Who are you?" spiritual C.C. asked.

"…I am Lelouch, your…" Lelouch tried to organize his words as the background switches rapidly from the rustic village to a forest, a damaged building structure, some mountains with their peaks covered by snow, a vast grassland, a corridor of a palace, blue sky, and finally a church.

"Do you have a reason to live?" suddenly, a familiar line was spoken by an unknown woman. Lelouch was shocked and looked to the source of the voice, and it turns out that voice belonged to someone who seemed to be a nun. She was speaking to the weak girl who fell down on the road earlier, and it turned out that the girl has lime hair.

"I don't know… but… I don't want to die!" the weak girl with lime-coloured hair pleaded to the nun as she struggled to raise her head up with her body collapsed on the floor right in front of the altar of a church.

"Then let's make a contract," the nun said in a gentle voice, "I will give you a special power so you can survive. And in return, one day you will grant me a special wish. Do you swear that you'll do it?" the camera panned upwards slowly, revealing the beautiful face of the nun… and a large Geass Sigil on her forehead.

"Is that…" Lelouch muttered as he and spiritual C.C. observed the conversation from behind the weak, young lime-haired girl who looked at the nun confusedly.

"That's right, I swore to uphold a contract with her," spiritual C.C. answered in a cold voice.

"Hey! Isn't that the nun we have seen in the previous disc, when Ms C.C. was feeding Suzaku with some shock images during the Battle of Narita?" Rivalz points out quickly.

This brings in everyone's attention. Guilford recalls that scene upon Rivalz pointing it out, and he whispers into Cornelia's ear, "Princess, it seems that this nun was crucial to how C.C. came to be."

"Indeed," Cornelia agrees with her knight, "and did you notice this nun, whoever she was, asked the same question that C.C. asked Lelouch when he was on the verge of being killed by Clovis' men back in Shinjuku?"

"I see… so this was how Geass contracts were offered," Guilford agrees with his princess' observation before offering his view on the matter, "though I'd have to say, these were really coerced contracts that were only offered when the potential recipient was in a live-or-die situation that didn't really allow them not to accept the offer."

The scene then showed the child C.C. showing a Geass Sigil in her left eye as the spiritual C.C. kept explaining what happened to Lelouch. "The Geass that manifested in me was to make people love me," she said.

"To love you?" Lelouch asked, intrigued. So the always aloof and sarcastic C.C.'s original Geass power was to make people to love her?

"…to love me from the bottom of their hearts. I desire someone to love me, and my wish was granted. Thanks to Geass, I was loved by everyone," "C.C." continued as the scene shows the various instances where people gave the child C.C. bread, washed her body, started to talk with her and surrounded her as if she was the most important princess in the world, and for the very first time, the child C.C. was wearing nice clothes as she smiled happily on all the love showered on her.

"So Ms C.C. desired to be loved…" Shirley feels sad for C.C.: being a care-free high school student and the champion of Milly's "Cupid Day", Shirley has always thought that it is simply a natural thing for maidens to love and to be loved by others. To learn that C.C.'s wish for others to love her was so strong, it manifested as a Geass power in her simply saddens the otherwise cheerful orange-haired girl who is always the bright sun to her friends.

Nunnally also watches the scene with a tint of surprise and sadness. 'I see, so Ms C.C. has never been genuinely loved by others that it became her Geass power,' she once again recalls that time when C.C. barged into her room at Ashford Academy and claimed that she and Lelouch were going to have a future together, 'and now, Big Brother has already…' tears start to fall from the young Empress' eyes.

'I see, so C.C. was yearning for love,' Cornelia thinks she has got a lead to what exactly the mysterious lime-haired girl wanted from her estranged younger half-brother, 'but this makes things even more confusing. If that's the case, why did she desire her own death from Lelouch? Her contract was left open on her side, so she could demand love from Lelouch to fulfill her deepest desire… oh right, the curse of immortality. It's true that Lelouch could only live a finite life, and if that's the case, then…'

"AHA! So that explains why every Geass was different," Lloyd observes keenly, "each Geass user gets the power that he or she desires from the bottom of their heart. Interesting!"

Lloyd's seemingly innocuous observation has sent chills down Gino and the Black Knights' spines.

"You mean His Majesty's deepest desire was to rewrite other people's memories?" Gino exclaims. This has alarmed all Britannians present in the audience.

"No way… what sort of… uhm… strange desire was that?" Rivalz was going to say "twisted", but as a Britannian commoner, he reflexively avoided that in deference to the 98th sovereign of his country.

"Tsch, so deep down Lelouch's heart, he just wanted to have absolute control over everyone," Chiba spats, "what a demonic kid."

"There has to be some reason for that, though," Cecile tries to offer her view on this, "perhaps that was due to the traumatic experience His Majesty had when he was brutally rejected by Emperor Charles to properly investigate the death of his mother…"

This causes the Black Knights to stop and think. Now that they have seen once again how cruel Lelouch's father was in treating him in that strange dimension with eternal dusk and how Geass manifests in different people, even the most hard-headed Chiba understands that they have a lot more factors to take into consideration when evaluating the former leader of the Black Knights.

"…well, fine, I'd accept that his abhorrent crimes committed against us Japanese were stemmed from the mistreatment by his damned father," Chiba finally concedes, albeit visibly unwillingly, "and he at least helped us to rise up against Britannia, which was a lot better than that Kururugi traitor."

"I agree," Tohdoh decides to support his wife, "I still can't forgive him for killing Major General Katase and deceiving me into helping the murderer of my real liege, but I can get behind the idea that Lelouch did help us along the way, unlike how Suzaku-kun kept frustrating us at every step of our fight for the Independence of Japan."

"…" Ohgi wants to say things in the contrary, but ultimately decides not to out of deference to the eminent Japanese general. However, deep in his heart, he disagrees with both Tohdoh and Chiba. 'How could they be so forgiving to the man who exploited Chigusa? Prince Schneizel is definitely the better person, and by far!' the Prime Minister of Japan muses in his mind as he recalls the scene when Schenizel seemingly cared about how Euphemia thought of him back on Shikine Island, versus how Lelouch so coldly shot a bullet through Euphemia's heart and killed her in addition to threatening Villetta into submission.

Cornelia listens to the exchanges between the Black Knights and Cecile on Lelouch's deepest desire. 'Well, it's no surprise that Lelouch's deepest desire was to demand absolute obedience; he did want to control the entire planet by using both his Geass and the F.L.E.I.J.A. warheads. It's father's deepest desire to rewrite other people's memories that is perplexing. That didn't seem compatible with how he treated others or his ideology in ruling Britannia – didn't he always talk about how the strong devours the weak? That seems to have nothing to do with his deepest desire of rewriting other people's memory. I wonder why that was the case?'

"But in the end, it was too much. Love without limit was love without meaning, and I forgot what love really was," spiritual C.C. said as the scene showed a grown up C.C. in a beautiful red dress dancing with a handsome man in a ballroom, utterly confused with the love she received.

"The only one that I can trust was her," spiritual C.C. continued as the scene showed her in the red dress being scolded by the nun, "she was the only person that was not affected by my Geass and would scold me for fooling around. However…"

"That's sad!" Tianzi exclaims. She doesn't really understand half of what is being shown on the screen, but she understands how lonely it could be when there was only one person who C.C. could trust back then because Tianzi had experienced something similar for a pretty long time when being held as a de facto prisoner of the Vermillion Forbidden City, and had only Xingke to trust and talk to.

Next to the Symbol of Unity of the United States of China, Kaguya feels the same as well. For a very long time and despite her cheerful appearance, she could only trust Lord Kirihara while a member of the Six Houses of Kyoto: the other four old men were just some greasy industrialists who were in to seek whatever benefits they could squeeze out from the fallen Japan in order to safeguard their own prestige and personal and family wealth. To see how the mysterious lime-haired girl also didn't have anyone besides one person to trust was so resonant to her, her eyes quickly swell and tears almost fall down from her eyes had her strong emotional discipline not halted it.

Under her poker face, Anya also feels the pain C.C. had. For the longest of time, Anya could only trust Gino, her closest colleague among the ranks of the Knights of the Round. It wasn't until after Zero Requiem that she has gained a new ally, business partner and caretaker who colours her originally monochromatic world by lifting Charles' Geass and returned her memory to her, allowing the pink-haired girl to enjoy a new life without the fear of losing her memory ever again.

"Yes, yes, I gave back all the gifts I received like you told me to," a naked C.C. sat down right in front of the altar of the church where she met the nun, speaking to the nun in a rather frivolous tone, "But it can't be helped, can it? It's because of the Geass." The naked C.C. then opened her eyes, and unlike previously, both of her eyes showed Geass Sigils.

"Two Geass Sigils?" Guilford is surprised, "that's even one more than what Lelouch had… wait, His Majesty had two Geass Sigils on his eyes as well when he geassed Lelouch into amnesia!"

"I see, perhaps as the Geass user uses Geass for longer period of time, they will be able to have the Geass Sigil to appear on both of their eyes?" Rakshata deduces, "Recall that C.C. just had one when she first received the Geass from that nun as a child, and we were shown that she kept using her Geass on many different people as she grew up."

"Big Sister, do you think…" having heard Guilford and Rakshata's analysis and deduction, Nunnally suddenly realized what was going to happen when she also recalls what has been shown earlier on screen.

"It seems so," Cornelia whispers back to her younger sister.

"I'm grateful to you, sister, but this is a pain for me, too," the naked C.C. continued in her frivolous tone, "I'm so tired of all the proposals and flowers. Now some of them are even starting a personality cult around me."

"Well, then let's end it, shan't we?" the nun proposed suddenly, taking the naked C.C. by surprise.

"To end my eternity, there must be someone with a strong enough Geass to take my place," the nun suddenly spoke riddles that the naked C.C. didn't understand, but she nevertheless continued in a pained voice as she closed her eyes, "do you know how painful it is to live in the hell of eternity?"

"Ehm… what are you talking about…?" the naked C.C. asked confusedly, though still in her frivolous tone.

"Too bad! You've been tricked!" suddenly, the nun opened her eyes twistingly and blurted out her words in a sarcastic tone, looking at the naked C.C. like she's the stupidest girl in the world.

"Huh…?" the naked C.C. was shocked by such turn of events. What did the nun want from her?

The scene then showed a flock of crows flying pass the church against a reddened sky before it switches back to inside the church, where the naked C.C. was seen leaning against the altar, sitting on a considerable amount of blood gushing down her neck, devastated. Right in front of the devastated naked C.C., the nun was seen lying on the ground with praying hands in front of her chest, her head bedded on a pool of blood and her eyes closed, showing a face at peace.

"To her, my existence was simply a tool for her to end her eternity, nothing more, nothing less," spiritual C.C. continued to explain to Lelouch as the camera pulled away from the shocking scene, turning the disturbing scene into a giant portrait inside a strange dimension that looks like an art gallery with paintings showing along the corridor, where spiritual C.C. and Lelouch stood.

"AHA! So this proves my theory on how His Majesty Emperor Charles got his Code from V.V.," Lloyd keenly observes and concludes.

"That's cruel!" Shirley is shocked by what happened just now. So the nun was actually using C.C. throughout for her own objective, and all the concern she showed to her was fake? Behind Shirley, Rivalz and Milly are also shocked, seeing how the supposedly holy nun shamelessly tricked an orphan into a trap that is still affecting the said orphan now.

"Wait, so does that mean C.C. still has the power to make people to love her?" Ohgi immediately points out, "if that's the case, then…"

"I don't think so," Kaguya interjects Ohgi.

"Huh? But Kaguya-sama, she…" Ohgi still wants to keep talking.

"Recall what Emperor Charles said when he resurrected from death and threw Lelouch down that staircase in that strange dimension with eternal dusk: 'In place of Geass, I have obtained a new power'," Kaguya ignores Ohgi and continues.

This lights the bulbs of many people in the audience. "You mean… Lady C.C.'s Geass power was replaced by immortality?" Nina ventures to say her deduction out loud.

"Very likely," Kaguya answers in the positive, "at least we haven't seen C.C. using her Geass once on screen until we see this, which was before she attained immortality."

"…recorded," Anya takes a photo of the various facial expressions in the auditorium upon learning C.C.'s secret.

Spritual C.C. turned and gazed at Lelouch for a while before continuing, "You're not here yet. To me, you're not from the past, but someone from the present, right?"

"Who knows?" Lelouch brushed the question off, not wanting to confirm nor deny it to spiritual C.C.

"You must be someone of importance to me," spiritual C.C. continued.

"No way," Lelouch rejected the idea. How could he be important to the lime-haired woman when she heartlessly threw him away in favour of his loathsome father?

"Really?" spiritual C.C. asked with a tint of surprise in her otherwise cold and mechanic tone before continuing, "The fact you were sent here means that I wanted to save you from something or someone."

Lelouch turned and looked at spiritual C.C. incredulously upon hearing what this spiritual C.C. had just said. He was important to her?

"…" Kallen says nothing but holds her fists tight and bites her lip with jealousy oozing out.

"Lulu…" Shirley is both happy and sad at the same time upon learning how C.C. truly cared about her dear Lulu under her indifferent facade.

The scene switches back to the strange dimension with eternal dusk. "Those who loathed me, those who were kind to me, all of them eventually vanished into the passage of time. The endless flow of eternity…" C.C. sighed.

"Nevertheless, such tormenting days shall now…" Charles said in a bellowing yet, strangely, somewhat gentle tone.

"Right, they shall come to an end. My long journey…" C.C. leaned her head on the towering Charles' chest.

'I am confused. In the previous scene, C.C. did show that she genuinely cared for Lelouch by sending him into her subconscious, or whatever it was, to save him from father. But then after seeing how the nun passed her immortality onto C.C. and how C.C. was so comfortable with the idea of dying, I just feel that she was at the same time trying to use Lelouch for her own goal of dying, and now that my father was able to take away V.V.'s Code, she abandoned Lelouch and turned to my father to win her prize…' Cornelia muses in frustration. This mysterious lime-haired woman was so contradictory in her actions, it frustrates the otherwise straightforward warrior princess in determining just what C.C. wanted from Lelouch.

Kallen is aghast to see how C.C. seemed so comfortable leaning on the Emperor's chest. 'C.C., how could you? I now know that you wanted to get rid of your immortality, but the Emperor was our mortal enemy! You're even locked into a capsule and became Clovis' subject for human experimentation! How could you switch sides to the Emperor so effortlessly?' Then, the red-haired ace of the Black Knights recalls how she got the discs from the same lime-haired girl who was prepared to die in the scene being shown just now. 'Wait… so she didn't die after all. What happened? Did the Emperor not kill him in that strange dimension?'

"C.C.!" suddenly, Lelouch's voice screamed through the strange dimension with eternal dusk, shocking C.C., who jerked a step back away from Charles, and Charles, who gazed at the Shinkirou without moving one step from where he was. "So you've opened the Thought Elevator, Lelouch," the towering old man said calmly as Lelouch woke up inside the Shinkirou's cockpit.

"I see, this dimension is itself a system for interfering with thoughts…!" Lelouch said in realization. However, his thought train was interrupted as several giant metallic square pyramid flew and attached onto the Shinkirou, impacting the cockpit.

"Everything will be complete soon," Charles said as he grabbed C.C.'s right arm with his left hand and her back with his right, pulling the lime-haired girl into his embrace. Charles then slowly leaned forward as C.C. leaned back, a scene that is akin to an old gentleman attempting to kiss a young maiden while bathing in dusk, with red light rays glowing behind them. Despite her wish to die, the natural protection mechanism against death that existed in all forms of life had caused C.C. to place her left hand on Charles' chest to resist Charles' advance unconsciously.

"It's kind of awkward to see your own father trying to kiss a young girl," Cornelia hisses in embarrassment. She knows her father was a super womanizer and had 108 consorts, but that doesn't mean that she can get used to seeing such a graphic scene of her own parent doing such things to a teenage girl who looked younger than the princess herself.

Nunnally simply closes her eyes to the scene, while Kaguya also covers Tianzi's eyes up with her hands.

"Stop it! She's my… my…" Lelouch bellowed, but he wasn't sure how to finish his sentence. What was C.C. to him? Stranger? Contractor? Accomplice? Or…

"Answer me, C.C.!" Lelouch decided to employ his best-tried strategy to solve his problem: to answer a question with a question, or in this case, answering a question he could not solve in his mind with a question he was asking C.C. "Why didn't you throw your immortal curse on me and die? You could've forced me into that eternal hell of life and got what you wanted easily! Are you pitying me? C.C.!" Lelouch shouted at his full voice, such voice resonating in the strange dimension in eternal dusk.

C.C.'s right hand was up in the air; tears swollen in her golden eyes.

"Don't die with such a sad face! At least die with a happy face!" Lelouch continued to shout, "I will make you smile, so please…!"

Lelouch's words finally stroke a chord in C.C.'s heart. She pushed herself away from Charles.

"Ugh! What are you doing, C.C.?" the Emperor asked incredulously as C.C. ran to the control panel and placed both of her hands on it, sending away the metallic square pyramids and set Shinkirou free again.

"Like I'll let you take away my things again!" Lelouch bellowed as he typed in a series of command into the flying Shinkirou, shooting a blast at the floating temple.

"What kind of foolishness is this!" the Emperor roared as he stared at the Shinkirou intently.

As the floating temple crumbled, C.C. stared blankly to the eternal dusk and started to freefall, while Lelouch opened the cockpit cover of the flying Shinkirou. "C.C.! We are leaving this dimension! The only one who's left here is the Emperor!" Lelouch shouted at the lime-haired girl, "then I shall ask you about your true wish! Face me!" Lelouch then finally caught C.C.'s right arm after some initial struggle.

"Lelouch's just a boy," Milly shakes her head, "with all the intellect he possessed, he couldn't even accurately describe what C.C. meant to him."

"Huh? What do you mean?" Nina asks, not sure what Milly was saying. The blonde girl simply sighs and shakes her head.

Shirley frowns in sadness upon seeing what Lelouch had said to C.C. 'Lulu really was…' Not far from her, Kallen has a similar facial expression as well while tightening her fists.

Nunnally watches the scene with fondness. 'It seems that I wasn't all wrong when I guessed C.C. to be Big Brother's fiancée. He did like her, and had Big Brother survived, they would have…' a small drop of tear falls out of the young Empress' left eye.

Meanwhile, a gigantic explosion took place at the testing ground of the Dallas Research Institute. Nina, Schneizel and Kanon, all wearing protective sunglasses, were all standing inside the control centre to watch it.

"F.L.E.I.J.A. activation confirmed," a research assistant reported as the ground shook violently due to the explosion.

"I can't believe it…" Kanon took off the protective sunglasses, whispering in disbelief, "such force!"

"Chief, congratulations to you!" another research assistant said to Nina.

"This is the hard-earned result of all members of the In Vogue," Nina replied.

"You should accept the compliment, Nina. You are a genius!" Schneizel took off his protective sunglasses as well, smiling at the young, bespectacled scientist.

"I am honoured, Your Highness," Nina turned back and replied with a tint of pride in her voice, "from now on, the war between mankind will change."

"Right, and now Damocles shall finally be…" Schneizel says in his usual calm voice.

Far from feeling a sense of honour, the present day Nina cringes in fear and regret. 'I should never have brought that abomination to mankind… why did I fall into Prince Schneizel's clutch that easily?'

"Who could have thought the most destructive weapon was invented by an Ashford Academy student?" Gino comments, causing everyone to look at the cringing Nina.

"Damn you bitch, it was because of you that Asahina died without leaving anything behind!" Chiba barks at the cringing scientist, causing her to tremble in fear.

"Please! She's only been used by Prince Schneizel!" Cecile hugs Nina into her arms and defends the dark green-haired girl.

"Tsch! She said it herself, 'from now on, the war between mankind will change'. She knew perfectly well what that bomb would be capable of doing!" Chiba doesn't back down and continues her tirade against the bespectacled girl.

"Schneizel's a snake," Cornelia suddenly chimes in, interjecting Chiba's tirade, "he's a master of words and manners that would make even veteran politicians fall for his schemes unknowingly. I don't think Ms Einstein possesses any special power to resist him when he so acted on her."

"Mrs Tohdoh, please be patient," Zero voices out as well.

"But…" Chiba still doesn't want to let Nina off the hook.

"Ms Einstein might have committed a significant error in helping Prince Schneizel to develop the F.L.E.I.J.A., but she has redeemed herself, at least partially, at a later stage. I suggest we stay focus on the discs to find out the whole truth to the story," Zero says. Chiba grunts for a bit but eventually acquiesces to Zero's suggestion, and everyone's attention is back onto the screen.

Back outside the Geass Gate in the underground Geass facility, Lelouch knelt next to an unconscious C.C. who was lying on the floor.

"Hey! We have returned, C.C. Wake up!" Lelouch called C.C.'s name impatiently. C.C. slowly opened her eyes, but then displayed a shocked expression on her face.

"I have contacted Rolo already, he will come to pick us up soon…" Lelouch explained to his accomplice. However, something's wrong with C.C.

"Ehm… who might you be?" C.C. asked timidly, her right arm was close to her chest in a protective position.

"What are you saying?" Lelouch asked incredulously before continuing, "anyhow, the Emperor and that system…"

However, none of those words reached C.C.'s mind. "Are you… my new master?" C.C. quickly pulled herself away from Lelouch, "I can clean… and help prepare food for cooking. I can also fetch water and tend cows… and sew. I can read a little and count to twenty. Oh, I can even… carry away corpses if you need that…" C.C. said as she trembled in fear, looking down at the floor.

Lelouch stared at the lime-haired girl incredulously. C.C. had lost her memory?

"Huh? What the hell was C.C. talking about?" Tamaki yells as usual.

"So that's when she had lost her memory…" Kallen looks at the timid C.C. and recalls what she had seen on the Ikaruga upon her return from her fight with Suzaku during the Second Assault on Tokyo Settlement.

"C.C. had lost her memory?" Chiba asks incredulously. "How come? Isn't she immortal or what not?"

"I see, that's why she didn't attend the UFN inauguration ceremony," Tohdoh now understands why the lime-haired girl was not present during that important occasion.

'With C.C. losing her memory, Lelouch would have nobody to talk frankly and freely to in confidence. Was that the reason why he gave up the Black Knights after the Second Assault on Tokyo Settlement?' Kaguya muses as she is considering the implications of Lelouch's confidante was no longer available to him, 'this puts Lelouch in the same situation that C.C. faced when she was left with the nun as the only person she could have trusted…'