Chapter 28: "Glorification" III – A Hijacked Coup
It was the next morning after the 2nd Assault on Tokyo Settlement. Monica Kruszewski, the Knight of Twelve and commander of the airship Great Britannia, was reporting what happened in Tokyo Settlement last night to Emperor Charles, who was sitting on his throne.
"We've confirmed that there was a gigantic explosion that took place in Tokyo Settlement, and according to the reports we've received so far, the blast should be due to a F.L.E.I.J.A. warhead," the amber-eyed soft-spoken girl with long blonde hair then turned to Charles and asked worriedly, "wouldn't it be a problem if we still stay here at Kamine Island?"
However, the 98th Emperor of Britannia seemed totally indifferent to what had happened to his subjects in Tokyo Settlement, "No worries. Leave it all to Schneizel," he instructed the Knight of Twelve.
Back in Tokyo Settlement, a visible crater could be seen clearly from the sky. Responsible officers were reporting the damage to the settlement caused by the F.L.E.I.J.A. "At least 10 million inhabitants are believed to be dead from initial impact with the blast," one officer reported.
"Secondary damages might have caused 25 million or more casualties. All rescue facilities were wiped out, so we cannot care for any of them," another officer reported.
"The Tokyo Settlement… is dead," yet another officer reported.
On Schneizel's air unit, Nina was horrified as the list of deceased persons kept rolling like the end credits of a movie on her monitor.
"No… How could this have happened… everyone's… everyone's been…" Nina's eyes were fidgeting with fear as the bespectacled girl was completely flabbergasted by the number of people who lost their lives due to her creation intended to avenge for Euphemia, the kindhearted princess who sacrificed herself in an attempt to help as many people as she could.
Inside the cockpit of a heavily damaged Lancelot, Suzaku was stunned by what he saw as well. "I… I did this…?" he could not believe his eyes.
Gino frowns as he grits his teeth and tightens his fists. 'Your Majesty, how could you abandon your people like that after you have called on them to fight for Britannia? They all died because they have sworn allegiance to you and fight for Britannia till their last breath! Yet, you…' the tall blond knight muses with frustration and anger. While the former Knight of Three's respect towards the Emperor has greatly diminished in the screening event upon learning how the Emperor actually achieved his seemingly impossible feat of building the strongest empire in mankind's history by using a cheating power, he still maintains a small bit of respect out of his duty as his knight, and also the undeniable fact that Britannia did become the strongest nation on Earth that gave Britannians prosperity, regardless of what the Emperor's real goal was. However, to see how the Emperor cared nothing about his subjects is nevertheless too much for Gino to take in.
In the front row, while Cornelia already knew from previous footages that her father did not care about anything besides his secret Geass-related plan, she is still enraged by how nonchalant her father was towards all the deaths in Tokyo Settlement, not to mention that many among them were loyal subjects to the Crown. "How could you abandon your noblesse oblige to your subjects, father? I don't expect you to shed tears for them, and I don't expect you to do the ground work of rescuing and helping those who suffered from the blast. But you should have at least gone inspecting the damages caused by the blast and paying visits to the survivors, especially when you were just on a nearby island after the blast that took place in Tokyo! How could you…!"
Nunnally also frowns. 'Father, did you not care about the welfare of any of your loyal subjects in Tokyo Settlement? How could you, the Emperor, be so cold to those who'd sworn their loyalty to the crown?'
Chiba is about to scold Nina for her hypocrisy again, but she can tell that the Nina on screen was truly horrified about the casualties caused by her invention, and she also recalls what Lloyd and Rakshata have said about Nina's thought process when the bespectacled girl was in the process of creating that abomination. 'Stupid bitch,' the Japanese woman internally curses the still weeping young scientist before turning to the Suzaku on screen, 'so Kururugi didn't want to use that bomb until the very end, even willing to accept death as a result; the bomb only got launched because his will was once again bent by Lelouch's Geass. So it's actually Lelouch's fault that the F.L.E.I.J.A. was unleashed and caused so many of our comrades and the citizens of Tokyo Settlement to die. Plus he refused to listen to what Kururugi said to him just because he thought Kururugi betrayed him. What a demonic brat he was…!'
Back on the Ikaruga, Ohgi was running in the corridor while communicating with an operator. "Is the fugitive on the left lower portion of the deck?" Ohgi asked.
"Hold on! We need to reorganize our forces first!" the operator protested.
"I understand! I'll be back soon…" Ohgi gave a perfunctory reply to the operator as he kept running in the corridor to where the fugitive was reported to be.
"Ohgi…" suddenly, a voice called the Japanese man's name and caused him to stop and looked backwards. It's Villetta hiding behind a door.
"Chigusa…" Ohgi called back her name incredulously. So the fugitive wasn't Villetta? Who's he or she then?
"Prime Minister Ohgi, you'd forgive me for asking you this, but why did you lock up your girlfriend?" Gino is burningly curious to know why.
"Huh? No, I didn't!" Ohgi is taken surprise by Gino's question and quickly explains, "it wasn't my idea to lock her up! It's that damn Diethard who made that decision!"
"Diethard?" Gino is puzzled before he finally recalls the name, "oh, you mean that TV guy?"
"Yes, him," Villetta takes over from Ohgi and continues to explain, "After my reunion with Ohgi in the Chinese Federation was discovered by that ninja maid, I was taken in by her and locked into a room on the Ikaruga. I found out afterwards that it was a decision made by Diethard alone and without Zero's permission, which you've all seen in a previous footage already."
Meanwhile, Kaguya scowls at the scene. 'Ohgi ignored the operator's plead and prioritized something else over the reorganization of the Black Knights after the F.L.E.I.J.A. explosion? This was… unacceptable,' the young Japanese girl, who had devoted her entire self to the Japanese people, hisses in her mind upon seeing how Ohgi prioritized things in his mind.
Cornelia, having broken out of her cell in the Ikaruga, was running on the left lower portion of the deck. As she reached the edge of it, someone shouted from behind, causing her to turn back. It was Diethard and his henchmen pointing their guns at the purple princess.
However, Cornelia wasn't the only one surprised; Diethard was surprised to see Cornelia onboard the Ikaruga as well. 'Cornelia? I thought it was Villetta who escaped…' he narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the 2nd Princess of Britannia.
"Well, long time no see, my dear TV producer in turned coat," Cornelia sneered as she stared back at Diethard.
'Was she captured by Zero? He should have trusted me a bit more…' Diethard kept pondering. He then ordered his henchmen to aim at Cornelia's legs to take her in alive, only to be stopped by a loud siren coming from above: It was a Britannian aircraft.
"Attention! We are a Britannian special envoy. Repeat! We are a Birtannian special envoy," the pilot of the Britannian aircraft announced through the open channel, causing both Cornelia and Diethard and his henchmen to look at it incredulously, "We have no hostile intentions!"
This surprised Diethard. "Special envoy?" he enquired the operator on whether this "Special envoy" had cleared with them to land, only to be further surprised by who was walking down the stairs from the air unit.
"Big Brother!" Cornelia exclaimed with excitement as a smiling tall, blond man walked down the stairs of the aircraft and turned to face Diethard with a harmless smile.
"That's impossible…" Diethard was utterly shocked, "Schneizel himself steps right into the midst of his enemies?"
The present day Cornelia frowns at her own excitement of seeing Schneizel, as well as her quick decision to join him. 'I escaped from a wolf lair and then got myself into a tiger den. What a fool I was to believe that Schneizel's any better than Lelouch…'
As the Tokyo Settlement was obliterated by the F.L.E.I.J.A., both the Black Knights and Britannia had called for a temporary ceasefire, which confused and infuriated Xingke, the General Commander of the Black Knights, who had been leading the Black Knights' assault at the Kagoshima Settlement, Kyushu Block. Without knowing what exactly happened in Tokyo Settlement, he was also confused as to why Bismarck, the Knight of One, withdrew his forces as well.
Meanwhile, C.C. was dusting the bookshelves in Lelouch's room with a pink brush. Suddenly, the doorway behind her opened and she heard the sound.
"Master…! Huh?" the lime-haired girl cheerfully greeted her "master", but immediately realized that something was wrong with him: he was handed into the room by Rolo slowly as if he had lost his ability to walk.
"Big Brother, cheer up!" Rolo said. However, Lelouch heard nothing of it. "Nunnally has…" he murmured.
"You have me by your side!" Rolo helped Lelouch to sit down on the bench and placed his mask onto the table, speaking with an upbeat tone because Nunnally, his rival, was gone once and for all. "We've been doing fine with just the two of us, haven't we?"
Then, Rolo's phone rang, and he picked up the phone. Lelouch was staring in front of him with a pair of empty eyes. As Rolo was speaking to Jeremiah, Lelouch's attention was drawn to the locket attached to Rolo's phone.
"…right. It may not mean much, though. After all, my Big Brother has me with him…" Rolo said on the phone.
The downcast Lelouch was triggered by the word "Big Brother", and his eyes suddenly sharpened and filled with hatred. He stood up as he grabbed Rolo's phone, staring at the locket. "Why… did I give this to someone like you?" he bellowed furiously.
"Huh?" Rolo was puzzled. What was his Big Brother talking about?
"This…! This is intended for Nunnally! For Nunnally!" Lelouch continued to yell furiously, "Don't even think you can replace Nunnally, you fraud!" he then threw Rolo's phone onto the floor forcefully, scaring both Rolo and C.C.
"Haven't you noticed already?" Lelouch finally lowered his force, though still charged with hatred and fury, "I hate you! I loathe you! I've been trying to kill you, but I just keep missing the chance!"
"Big Brother…" Rolo looked up at Lelouch's eyes with disbelief. What nonsense was his Big Brother talking about?
"Get lost! Don't appear in front of me ever again!" Lelouch shouted as his right hand pointed at the doorway, "you fraud!"
Rolo's heart was utterly shattered into pieces.
The entire audience watches this scene with apparent disapproval. "Didn't Lelouch give that locket to Rolo right before his operation at that underground Geass facility in the desert?" Gino observes, "no one forced him to give that locket to Rolo, and he gave Rolo the locket with his full memory intact, his objective being, and I quote, 'giving someone who wants a sense of belonging exactly that'. How could he claim that the locket was originally intended for Her Majesty?"
The Ashford group is especially upset with what they have just seen. "How could he treat Rolo like that?" Shirley's tears start to swell in her eyes again, "Rolo fought so hard for him, even if he's not his real brother, how could he…" behind her, Milly and Rivalz also face-palmed at the scene, utterly disappointed at how Lelouch treated Rolo who, despite his intention to kill Nunnally, was otherwise a faithful little brother who always put Lelouch's interest before everything else, and it is just upsetting to see Rolo's loyalty and affection was reciprocated with nothing but cold-heartedness and malevolence. 'The PTSD had really ruined Lelouch in significant ways...' Milly muses with sadness.
Guilford also frowns and once again compare Lelouch with Cornelia. 'Even during the darkest hours of losing Princess Euphemia, Her Highness only locked herself up in her room for a period of time, never throwing her tantrum to us. She then stood back up on her feet all by herself, even made sure that we were able to hold ourselves against the Black Knights during the First Assault on Tokyo Settlement before she arranged a one-on-one battle opportunity with Zero to unleash her rage and frustration. Even after further devastated by the fact that the murderer of Princess Euphemia was her long-lost half-brother, she still didn't lash out on us, but instead took it onto herself and found her way to that underground Geass facility all by herself. In contrast, Lelouch randomly lashed out his fury at this Rolo boy, who actually served him with true loyalty, even blaming the boy for something that was ultimately a scheme of his for milking out every last drop from the poor boy… well, I must be too harsh to Lelouch by comparing him with Her Highness.'
Rakshata observes Lelouch's emotional lashing out and asks Cecile, "Do you think that in addition to PTSD, Lelouch actually suffered from some sort of mental disorder due to his unusual obsession with Her Majesty?"
"I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not 100% sure," Cecile replies after a brief moment of pause, "what I can say is that His Majesty's actions were all revolving around Her Majesty's welfare, and it seems to me that because he had been too focused on that, he reserved no emotional capacity for anyone else, with the notable exception of Suzaku before their relationship turned sour, and Lady C.C., whose memory was lost."
Nunnally listens to the ongoing conversation intently, especially Cecile's analysis. 'I see, so I was the real reason why Big Brother showed no affection or attachment to anyone other than myself. I am truly responsible for at least half of the sins he's committed…' the young Empress thinks with a sadden expression on her beautiful face.
Inside the military dock housing a severely damaged Lancelot, Nina was still confused about the meaning of the destruction caused by the F.L.E.I.J.A. as it had always been numbers to her until she actually saw that rolling list of deceased people lost to the blast.
"Nina, you must make a choice: do you throw away science to preserve your humanity, or do you sacrifice your humanity for the sake of science," Lloyd stood with his back facing Nina, mentoring the young, bespectacled girl.
"Such difficult choice…" Nina murmured before raising her voice once again, "Dr Asplund, did you have to choose between the two as well?"
Lloyd smiled and looked back at Nina, "I was born with a broken heart – that I am aware of, at the very least."
That didn't really comfort the devastated Nina. "The F.L.E.I.J.A. that I created… it's me who killed everyone…" tears started to rush out of Nina's eyes as she covered her face with both of her hands, knees kneeling down onto the ground, "everyone… everyone…"
"I'd never imagined you being a half-decent mentor to someone else," Rakshata observes. While Lloyd failed to comfort Nina, he had indeed told her the truth about being a scientist, and that was what mentors are supposed to do.
"Well, I did what I needed to do," Lloyd casually replied, "I was the one who discovered and recommended this young lady to His Highness, after all. It therefore falls onto me to guide this lost little lamb out of darkness and lead her towards the great pantheon of science."
"…and I will fill in whatever Lloyd has glossed over," Cecile adds.
"AHA! As expected from my all-rounded assistant!" Lloyd says cheerfully.
"Dr Asplund, Ms Croomy…" Nina is touched and glad that she has got Lloyd and Cecile as her mentors to guide her along the way.
Back on the Ikaruga, Chiba was trying to contact Zero but to no avail. Seeing that, Diethard decided that the senior brass of the Black Knights would have to meet Schneizel without Zero.
"Diethard, why didn't you take Schneizel captive immediately?" Chiba demanded the media specialist, "He's only got one Knightmare Frame accompanying him, right? We could've avenged Asahina!"
"Because his aircraft was equipped with the F.L.E.I.J.A., the cause of the gigantic blast that annihilated Tokyo Settlement. If they unleash it, it will kill us and Zero in a blink of an eye," Diethard explained as Chiba was perplexed by the unheard term.
Tohdoh then decided that it would be himself, Chiba, Diethard and Ohgi to meet Schneizel. However, an entering Tamaki informed the stoic Japanese man that Ohgi was nowhere to be found.
Kaguya scowls at the scene once again. 'I was right, Ohgi had abdicated his responsibility as the Commander of the Ikaruga. How irresponsible he was to the organization who entrusted him to a leadership position!'
At the same time, Kallen finally returned to the place she belonged to as she was descending from the cockpit of the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N. Eight Elements onto the Ikaruga, after a prolonged period of being imprisoned in a Britannian cell. She was enthusiastically greeted by two of the senior members of the Black Knights, but the first thing she thought of was Zero, to which the senior members of the Black Knights informed her that the masked leader was in his room and was reportedly injured.
On the deck of the Ikaruga, the Mordred parked next to the aircraft that carried Schneizel and the F.L.E.I.J.A. A downcast Anya was seen sitting in the cockpit, apparently disappointed at her own performance in her battle with Zero.
Anya frowns slightly on the scene where she was downcast, now understanding fully why she was suddenly hit by an extrasensory interference. Gino, arguably her closest Knight of the Round colleague, quickly notices her discomfort at the scene, but he wrongly assumes that her discomfort is due to her serious nature. "Come on, Anya, being serious is a good thing, but being too serious is not," the tall blond boy smiles brightly to the pink-haired girl with a poker face, "you worked hard that night and did a great job fighting against Zero. No need to be too concerned about being hit by fatigue or tiredness – that happens to everyone."
"Yes, Gino's right. Cheer up, Anya!" the energetic Shirley also cheers her friend up.
"…thank you," Anya replies succinctly, still trying hard to refrain herself from speaking out the truth – which is to be revealed very soon.
"Hey, why did His Highness bring with him the F.L.E.I.J.A.?" Rivalz asks incredulously, "if he really unleashed the F.L.E.I.J.A. there, wouldn't he be killed as well?"
"That's a bluff that His Highness was using, Mr Cardemonde," Guilford explains to the young, blue-haired boy, "as you could see what Reid said on screen, it was precisely because His Highness' aircraft had equipped with the F.L.E.I.J.A. that the Black Knights refrained from taking him captive, but instead entering into negotiations with him. It's actually quite similar to that Sakuradite bomb Lelouch had attached to his chest when he was threatening Kururugi and Lady Kouzuki into cooperating with him in that cave on Kamine Island."
"I see," Rivalz starts to understand, "but still, for His Highness to bring such a destructive weapon with him… that's scary."
Cornelia listens to the conversation between Guilford and Rivalz and muses, 'that's because Schneizel's emotion is dead, and everything's chess to him. He's as emotionally empty as one could ever get as a human being.'
Meanwhile, Kallen is looking at her past self and muses with regret, 'I was so concerned about Lelouch that I didn't even ask whether my other comrades were fine…'
Meanwhile, Suzaku and Jeremiah were standing side by side, right before some water fell from a flowing river intercepted by the crater and accumulated at the centre of the crater created due to the F.L.E.I.J.A. blast.
"In the past, I wanted to use you to consolidate my power. What a dirty thought that was, I deeply apologize for that," Jeremiah said, "we should have worked together originally, but… what an interesting relationship we have."
Suzaku simply stared at the water in front of him with a pair of narrowed eyes and said nothing in return.
"I'll take my leave now, for I must go search for Her Highness Princess Nunnally," Jeremiah bade Suzaku farewell as he turned back and walked towards his Sutherland Sieg. Suzaku gazed back at Jeremiah for a brief moment before turning back at the water, muttered with sadness in his tone, "Nunnally is already…"
"I forgot to ask you about this, but how did you escape from the F.L.E.I.J.A. blast, Nunnally?" Kaguya asks the Britannian Empress curiously.
"I was told afterwards that members of the Glinda Knights got my escape craft out of the blast radius at the last minute, saving Sayako and myself," Nunnally recalls, "we were then transferred to Kagoshima Settlement to meet with Lady Nonette Enneagram, the Knight of Nine, before heading to the Toromo Agency in Cambodia."
"That was close!" Tianzi exclaims, hearing how Nunnally narrowly escaped the blast.
Ashford Academy was one of the few significant places within the Tokyo Settlement that was not engulfed by the F.L.E.I.J.A. blast. In fact, it was just barely outside of the blast radius. The Area 11 Government sent officials to the school, helping with registering survivors of the disaster. The school hall on the ground floor and the outside school ground were packed with survivors, while a TV crew was standing on the balcony on the first floor, exhausted from their run last night from the missiles showered down during the fight between the Lancelot and the Sutherland Sieg. Milly was seen leaning on a large glass wall, gazing outside with a pair of empty eyes.
"Prez…!" Rivalz was dashing at full speed from the other side towards Milly, while an excited Shirley grabbed Milly from the back.
"You're still alive!" Rivalz exclaimed.
"Yes! I'm still alive! I'm still alive and well!" Milly's empty-eyed expression was turned into a cheerful one, happy to see that her close friends were all alive and well.
"We're just as excited back then as we're just now," Milly smiles at the footage, seeing how excited Rivalz was.
"Yea, I thought I would never be able to see you again, Prez!" Rivalz exclaims.
"Good that we're still all here!" Shirley smiles brightly as well, once again feeling great to see that her friends are alive and well after the horrible disaster that struck Tokyo Settlement.
In the conference room inside the Ikaruga, the senior members of the Black Knights led by Diethard was meeting with the Britannian delegation led by Schneizel. The two parties sat on each side of the table with a full chess board placed in between them, black chess pieces on the Black Knights' side and white chess pieces on the Briannian side.
"Where's Zero?" Kanon asked.
"Zero would not be attending this meeting," Diethard replied, "We need to confirm what is to be discussed first before he joins."
"Of course. I didn't expect him to show up anyway," Schneizel spoke, "Under situations such as this, he tends to keep things to himself and holds people at a distance."
"You talk about him as if you know him well," Diethard asked with a tint of interest.
"More than any of you," Schneizel said, causing the members of the Black Knights frowned. How could a Britannian prince know about the leader of the Black Knights better than the members of the Black Knights know about their own leader?
However, Schneizel paid no mind to the frowned faces and continued, "Zero is our younger brother. Cornelia and my own," he said. This shocked the black knights: their leader is a younger brother of a Britannian prince and princess? But wouldn't that mean…
"He's the former 11th Prince of the Holy Britannian Empire, Lelouch vi Britannia," Schneizel went on, "the man I both deeply love and fear at the same time."
"It can't be…!" "Zero's a Britannian prince?" Tohdoh and Tamaki both exclaimed in disbelief.
"I still can't believe that!" Tamaki exclaimed upon seeing himself on the screen.
"Oh, he's back," Kallen casually remarks at Tamaki's revival after a rather prolonged period of no-reaction.
"Hey! Don't take me lightly!" Tamaki yells, "See how important I was in that meeting? I was so important, I even sat right opposite to that prince!" However, nobody pays him any mind; everyone keeps focusing on the screen to see what is going to happen next.
"Reid, there's no way you have not yet noticed about that," Cornelia said sternly, "after all, you're an abled man to collect such information." Cornelia's words caused Tohdoh, Tamaki and Chiba to all stare at the renegade Britannian media specialist.
"It's useless to mention that in order to cause chaos here," Diethard tried to switch gears to shake off the doubt Cornelia had cast on him that he long knew the true identity of Zero, "we followed Zero not because of his lineage, but because of the miracles he performed for us."
"What if I put to you that those miracles were nothing but tricks?" Schneizel said, stunning the Black Knights once again. "Zero has obtained a supernatural power called 'Geass' from Code-R, a woman who named herself 'C.C.'. Such power allows Lelouch to issue irresistible orders to any target, which can be thought of as a form of strong hypnosis."
"You're saying that his miracles come from that power?" Tohdoh asked intently.
"Don't diss my man Zero!" Tamaki stood up and exclaimed as he slammed the table with his hands, "He's got brains and guts and he kicks Britannians' butt! A prince? Geass power? Where is the proof, huh?"
However, what happened next was completely out of Tamaki's expectation. "The proof is here," a tall Japanese man entered the conference room with an ebony Britannian woman, shocking Tamaki. "Ohgi?" the rash red-haired Japanese man turned to Ohgi from his chair.
"Nu as well," Chiba noticed the presence of Villetta Nu, the prisoner of the Black Knights ever since Ohgi returned from the Chinese Federation.
"His Highness' right," Ohgi continued, "Zero is Lelouch, a former Britannian prince who possessed the power of Geass."
The scene then switched to show a despaired Lelouch staring emptily at the table in front of him while sitting on the bench in his room, while a despaired Rolo was seen sitting near the Shinkirou inside a military dock inside the Ikaruga, staring at the locket Lelouch had given to him as his birthday present.
"I see, so that's what happened in the meeting," Rakshata comments, "too bad I really needed to check on my child to make sure he's still okay after the Earl of Pudding and Cecile had molested him, otherwise I'd have joined the meeting as well."
"AHA! You must have found that my upgrades on the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N. Eight Elements were top-notched!" Lloyd claps his hands cheerfully. This causes Rakshata to grit her teeth.
"Oh stop, you two!" Cecile immediately intervened, not wanting the bickering between the two scientists to once again become the centre of attention.
In the front row, as Ohgi and Villetta are reminiscing their reunion on the Ikaruga, Kaguya frowns at the scene inwardly. 'Now I see what happened back then… however, how could Ohgi openly admit that Prince Schneizel's right, when Britannia was still the biggest enemy of the Black Knights? He should have at least called for a recess and spoke privately with General Tohdoh, Diethard, Mrs Tohdoh and Tamaki on his discovery, not opening admitting to it in front of the enemy of the Black Knights and even endorsed their claims! Such a total lack of political acumen and a lack of awareness of the priorities of things as a leader… he's not fit to be a Minister of the Government, let alone the Prime Minister of a nation. Japan may really need a new and more capable leader...'
Back in Lelouch's room, C.C. tried to comfort her completely deflated master. "Master, please take off your clothes," the lime-haired girl said timidly.
"…huh?" Lelouch gradually regained his sense from his deep despair, looking at C.C.
"Do you feel hurt somewhere?" C.C. asked worriedly, "if your hands can't reach it, then let me…" she then showed a box of bandages on her hands to Lelouch.
"…ah… yes, it is a pain that I can't reach with my own hands…" Lelouch answered before sinking back into despair.
"Zero, can I come in?" suddenly, a female voice came through the doorway, stunning the timid C.C. She ran to hide herself behind the bookshelves.
"Kallen…" Lelouch looked at the doorway as Kallen entered the room in her battle suit.
"Ohgi-san said that he would like you to go to Warehouse no.4," Kallen reported.
"Why?" Lelouch demanded.
"I don't know the details of it either," Kallen shrugged.
"Master," C.C. suddenly voiced out from behind the bookshelves despite her fear of the woman who suddenly barged into the room, "please… please take off your clothes. I will try my best!"
This shocked Kallen, and her face reddened quickly. "What… what the hell have you two been doing here? While I've been rotting in a cell, you…" she demanded.
"No, you've got it wrong! She was…" Lelouch frantically tried to explain, but then got downcast again before continuing, "She lost her memory… because of my fault. Therefore, the C.C. you've come to know is no more."
"Wha…!" Kallen was shocked again. C.C. lost her memory? She then turned to look at C.C., who once again hid herself behind the bookshelves upon meeting Kallen's sapphire eyes.
"Ms Fenette, aren't you going to say something? Like how C.C. seduced your 'Lulu' again," Rakshata teases the orange-haired girl.
"I… I…" Shirley stutters. It feels strange to her: normally, when she sees something like what has just been shown on the screen, she feels jealous; but now, for some reason, she just feels bad for Lelouch and C.C.
"That's not very kind of you to tease Shirley like that, Dr Chawla," Gino steps in, "we've all just found out how callous Lelouch had been to Suzaku and Rolo, and Shirley needs some time to recover from knowing all these horrible things from the footages we have seen so far."
Rakshata simply shrugs her shoulders and says nothing more on the subject.
Shirley inwardly thinks, 'Lulu thought Nunna's killed, and now that Ms C.C. had lost her memory, there was no one he could confide to anymore. He must have been in a perilous state of mind on top of his PTSD that was left untreated since that day he walked past that piece of wasteland filled with dead bodies…'
Lelouch put back his Zero outfit and took the lift with Kallen to go up to Warehouse no.4. Both remained silent at first, and Kallen looked downcast upon knowing that Lelouch had basically lost everything he held dear to his heart. Suddenly, Lelouch spoke with a tint of relief in his tone, "Kallen, I'm glad you're alright. I apologize for being so late in rescuing you."
This shocked Kallen for a brief moment, and she then decided to tell Lelouch what happened during her imprisonment in Britannia, "Lelouch, I have spoken to Nunnally when being imprisoned by Britannia. She's been concerned about my well-being," the red-haired girl tried to talk about the person Lelouch cared about the most to cheer him up.
"I see…" Lelouch muttered as the lift arrived at the floor where Warehouse no.4 was, and both walked out of it.
"Uhm…" Kallen smiled a bit and tried to keep cheering Lelouch up, "Saying this at this moment may be a bit strange, but I also have an elder brother… huh?"
Suddenly, beams of strong light were shone on both of them from above, stunning both to pause their steps and looked up. It turned out to be Ohgi, Tohdoh, Chiba, Tamaki and two other senior members of the Black Knights standing on the balcony, holding submachine guns on their hands. Tohdoh and Chiba's submachine guns were pointing at Zero, Ohgi's half-raised, and Tamaki's pointing down towards the floor.
"The Black Knights rebelled against Zero?" Rivalz is shocked, "I thought the news said that he died due to severe injury from the Second Assault on Tokyo Settlement… oh!" He then realizes one thing: Lelouch was Zero, and he later appeared as the 99th Emperor of Britannia. Therefore, the news that Zero died after the battle in Tokyo was a lie!
'Halfway through these footages, I thought it was Lelouch who betrayed the Black Knights to pursue the throne. It seems that I was wrong: it was the Black Knights who first rebelled against him,' Milly muses.
Kallen bites her lip at the scene as she tightens her fists as well. 'If the footage also shows people's inner thoughts, then…'
"Zero, I want to confirm one thing with you," Tohdoh spoke.
"Are you Lelouch?" Ohgi asked intently.
"Did you use your Geass power to fool us?" Chiba demanded.
Chiba's mentioning of Geass shocked Lelouch. How did she know? Then Lelouch quickly noticed someone was holding a camera recording the whole thing: it was none other than Diethard.
"Zero, the legendary hero, died in battle before he could triumph. But his gallant life and daring deeds will continue to live on in myths and legends," the cameraman spelled out the synopsis of the footage he was taking.
"Is that the script you've written for this, Diethard?" Lelouch demanded.
"Actually, I wanted to film your brilliant campaign and glorious victory over Britannia," Diethard shook his head with disappointment before continuing, "But I'm afraid that show's been cancelled."
'What should I do? It seems that they don't know the conditions about casting Geass on them,' Lelouch's brain was operating at full speed, 'but I don't want to use it on them right here!'
"What? No way!" Chiba exclaims in disbelief. For the longest of times, the hard-headed woman has been sceptical at Lelouch at best, and once she has learnt that Lelouch was a Britannian Prince that possessed a strange supernatural power that seemed to enable him to perform "a strong form of hypnosis" on other people, she suspected that Lelouch had forcibly bent their will with that supernatural power.
'He didn't want to use his Geass on the Black Knights?' Villetta is surprised by Lelouch's inner thoughts at that moment as well: she has spent a large amount of time studying Lelouch's action pattern since his debut, and according to all the OSI files she had read, her own personal experience with Lelouch and the footage she has watched in this screening event so far, the only logical thing to expect to happen next was for Lelouch to immediately cast his Geass on all rebelling members of the Black Knights to protect himself from harm and danger. For such a merciless person who treated everyone except Nunnally as disposable pawns to say that he didn't want to cast his Geass on people rebelling him was a total shock to the former OSI Captain at Ashford Academy responsible for monitoring the raven-haired boy.
It isn't only Chiba and Villetta who are utterly surprised: basically everyone in the audience is surprised. Throughout the screening, it has been shown to them that barring from Suzaku and Nunnally, Lelouch had hesitated nothing at using his Geass power to make things to work in his favour: not even Euphemia, his second favourite sister, was initially off his list of geass-able people until she did something as drastic as giving up her family name and claim to the Britannian throne that had eventually caused Lelouch to reconsider, finally deciding to change his plans with a view to cooperate with her. Adding the fact that he had been adamant about how the ends would always justify the means, it was extremely shocking to the audience to learn, for the first time, that Lelouch did not want to use Geass on people other than Suzaku and Nunnally, the only two people he cared about after being plagued by PTSD as he walked past that piece of wasteland filled with dead bodies almost nine years ago.
"…he may be lying to himself," Ohgi suddenly says, "after all, we gave him the chance to explain himself, but he sneered at us, declared that we were all his chess pieces on his chessboard and went on to conquer the world while trying to execute us on that fateful day…"
"No! Lulu was not lying!" Shirley suddenly asserts, taking the audience by surprise.
"Shirley…" Milly is worried. Even though the tall blonde girl disagrees with Ohgi, she is worried that the Black Knights would not take Shirley's rather impolite way of talking to the Prime Minister of Japan kindly. Next to Milly, Rivalz is looking at Shirley worriedly as well.
Luckily, Ohgi is not a man who is obsessed with prestige and power. He turns to Shirley and tries to persuade her, "Ms Fenette, I understand that you may not like it, but as we have just watched throughout the screening event, Lelouch did lie a lot, and there is a high possibility that he's lying to himself at that instant…"
"But that doesn't make sense!" Tamaki shouts, interjecting his long-time friend, "why would he lie to himself? I don't understand! Damn! Nothing makes sense to me anymore!"
"Look, Tamaki, I know you may have once thought of Zero as your 'best bud', but we need to see the facts here…" Ohgi is still trying his best to come up with reasons to persuade people that Lelouch was probably lying to himself.
"Was he, though?" Tohdoh also speaks up, stunning the tall Japanese man before continuing, "I don't see any good strategic reasons for him to lie to himself there, Prime Minister Ohgi."
"General Tohdoh, uhm, well…" Ohgi starts to stutter. The Prime Minister of Japan is pretty sure that Lelouch was the bad guy and Schneizel was the good guy, and he is more than willing to reiterate the simple fact that Lelouch tricked Villetta into submission and Schneizel told him about Lelouch's evil power out of the goodness of his heart are straightforward enough reasons to prove that Lelouch was probably lying there; he just doesn't know how to put those simple reasons in militaristic terms to make the stoic military man to see them.
Just as Ohgi is trying hard to find the right military vocabulary to translate his reasoning into Tohdoh's vernacular, Guilford is quietly discussing the rather unbelievable scene with Cornelia as well. "Princess, I find it hard to believe that Lelouch really thought not to use his Geass on the Black Knights," the upright knight muses as he recalls how he was being tricked by Lelouch into mistaking him as Cornelia and nearly lost his life to the F.L.E.I.J.A. blast.
"I… really don't know, Guilford," Cornelia hesitates in giving her answer. She actually shares Guilford's view: for someone who would abandon the Black Knights to their own fate so easily during the Black Rebellion, geassing all the members of the Black Knights should not have been something that difficult for Lelouch's extremely limited conscience to do. Why would Lelouch say that to himself?
"Let's continue to watch the footage to see whether Lelouch was telling the truth or not, shall we?" Zero steps in and catches everyone's attention, forcing everyone to halt their speculations and focuses back onto the screen.
"Everybody trusted you, Zero," a tall, bespectacled, purple-haired senior member said in a sad tone.
"What did you take Inoue and Yoshida's sacrifice for?" another teal-haired senior member demanded, referring to that time when the female member with long, blue hair that he admired vanished right in front of him during the Black Rebellion some moments after Zero ceased directing them during the Black Rebellion.
"Wait a minute. This is all one-sided!" Kallen immediately jumped in front of Zero and shielded him while shouting at her comrades, "It's all thanks to Zero that we've all come so far, isn't it?"
"Get the hell out of the way, Kallen!" Tamaki yelled, though there was a tint of sadness in his tone.
"Kallen, it couldn't be that you have been geassed by him?" the purple-haired bespectacled senior member of the Black Knights questioned.
Kallen was in a dilemma: on the one hand, she wanted to protect Lelouch from harm; on the other hand, she didn't want to go against her comrades whom she had fought with for such long time. She lowered her head and muttered, "Answer me, Lelouch. What do I mean to you? As long as I can be with you, then…"
Almost everyone is surprised by what Kallen muttered to Lelouch back then.
"Kallen, how could you say that to him?" Chiba is shocked, "he abandoned you in that cave on Kamine Island, and yet you…"
"Tell me that's not true, Kallen! That's made up footage by that lime-haired witch, right?" Tamaki yells as well, still can't believe Kallen actually wanted to sacrifice herself for Lelouch.
"Look, Kallen, I know you might have felt close to Lelouch, but he's…" Ohgi is still trying to persuade everyone in the audience to see the truth that the tall Japanese man sees, which is that Lelouch was a bad person because he threatened Villetta into submission.
"Well, despite his horrible personality, Lelouch was indeed popular with the ladies," Rakshata chuckles.
"Kallen, so you were indeed in love with Lulu…" Shirley exclaims.
However, Kallen pays no mind to any of them, but instead focuses herself entirely on the screen. The moment of truth that the red-haired girl has longed for is finally here: what did she mean to Lelouch?
Surprisingly, behind the mask, Lelouch paid no attention to Kallen's question at all. Instead, he gazed at the upper corner of the warehouse, spotting Schneizel and Kanon standing there and silently gazed at the fiasco. 'I see, so this is your "check" on me, isn't it?' Lelouch narrowed his eyes as he hissed inwardly, 'Then I suppose I have no way to get out of this!'
Kallen was growing impatient to Lelouch's silence. "Hey, please, answer me!" she turned back and demanded.
Suddenly, Lelouch let out a sinister laugh, perplexing Kallen. He reached his mask and took it off, revealing his face to the senior brass of the Black Knights on the balcony for the first time, staring at them and said callously, "You fools! You haven't realized that you have all been used until now? You're nothing but chess pieces to me!"
"Zero, it's not like you to talk like that!" Ohgi exclaimed with a saddened expression, "Please, speak the truth!"
"Zero!" Tamaki exclaimed as well.
"Lelouch…" Kallen gazed at Lelouch with disbelief. How could he call her comrades his chess pieces?
At the same time, Schneizel and Kanon gazed at Lelouch. Both didn't seem to be particularly surprised about Lelouch's choice of actions.
Lelouch then moved his gaze back to Kallen. "Kallen, you are an especially good chess piece among these guys here," he said with a sinister smile, before switching his gaze back up to the senior members of the Black Knights, "that's right, everything's moving on a chess board, it's simply a chess game!"
"See, that's the truth," Ohgi enters his teaching mode as he tries to enlighten the audience with the truth that he has seen the moment he learned about Lelouch threatening Villetta into submission, "we pleaded him to tell the truth and we had given him ample time to do so, and that's what he said back then. There is no doubt that what he said to himself at first was probably a lie. See how he's not even thinking about Kallen and just for himself, despite the fact that Kallen pleaded to him? That's shining proof that he's a selfish person."
"But that still doesn't make any sense though!" Tamaki yells, frustrated by the strangeness of events.
"Well, perhaps he…" Ohgi has thought that Lelouch paying no attention to Kallen's pleading was clear enough proof to support his observation already, but somehow the intellectually-challenged Tamaki still doesn't get it. The tall Japanese man desperately tries to come up with another reason to persuade his friend, "Perhaps… he was just trying to soothe his conscience."
Ohgi's words have earned him scowls from most of the audience, albeit covertly in deference to his high position as Prime Minister of Japan. They still cannot comprehend why Lelouch said to himself that he didn't want to geass the Black Knights in such dire situation, but they all realize how illogical Ohgi's reasoning for Lelouch not to geass the Black Knights is: if Lelouch was really such a heartless person, why would he need to soothe his conscience in the first place? It is just as Tamaki has been saying all this time: it doesn't make sense at all!
Kallen turned back, her heart deeply hurt by Lelouch's merciless words. "I see," tears started to swell in her eyes as her voice was trembling, "goodbye then, Lelouch," the red-haired girl then started to slowly walk away.
Suddenly, several Britannian soldiers emerged from behind the Knightmare Frames parked in the warehouse, pointing their guns at Lelouch.
"Ready," Kanon ordered.
Ohgi and Tamaki were shocked and turned to Kanon. "Hold on, please!" Ohgi pleaded, "Just give him some more time to explain himself…"
"If you do that and give him the time to cast his Geass, do you know what would happen?" Schneizel interjected Ohgi's plead, and Ohgi had no words in return. All he could think of was to turn back to Lelouch, "Zero! Say something!"
'"Timendi causa est nescire"… Schneizel had certainly played with the ignorance and fear of the Black Knights well,' Cornelia muses as she recalls one of the book titles appeared on Lelouch's bookshelves at the start of the "Glorification" disc earlier.
"In hindsight, it's thanks to Prince Schneizel that I didn't commit the mistake of letting Lelouch to use his Geass on us," Ohgi says as he is reflecting on this particular part of his past, "As you have all just seen right now, I really wanted to believe in Lelouch and I even pleaded Prince Schneizel to give more time to him to tell us the truth, but apparently he saw us as nothing more than pawns and sneered at us."
Perhaps due to Ohgi's incredible insistence on his views, the Black Knights Group feels unsure about their doubt against Ohgi. 'Perhaps Ohgi is right on this?' Tohdoh muses, 'but I still don't think what he has just said about Lelouch makes any strategic sense at all… and it would be out of the question for someone as strategic and calculative as Lelouch to not think in the most strategic way possible in situations like this…'
As Kallen slowly walked further away from Lelouch and out of targeting range of the Britannian soldiers, Lelouch whispered in a volume that only Kallen could hear, "Kallen, you have to live."
Kallen was once again surprised and looked back, but it was too late: Kanon had ordered the Britannian soldiers to fire at Lelouch at the exact same moment.
"Did he… just tell Kouzuki to live?" Chiba asks in disbelief, and she immediately turns her head back to Kallen and demands, "Kouzuki, was that true? Did he tell you that 'you have to live'?"
"…yes, he did," Kallen admits, "and this confirms that I wasn't imagining things after all."
"But… why?" Nina is confused, "why did he say those mean words to Kallen right before that? I don't understand…"
Kallen is confused as well. The only additional information she has gained from the footage of what happened that day was that Lelouch did not pay attention to her question at all, instead thinking that there was no way he could have got out of the trap set by Schneizel. The new information still doesn't answer the question: what exactly did she mean to him?
Kaguya, however, is able to put the pieces together with what she knew already plus all the new information the footage has just presented to her. On the one hand, unlike the politically-thick Ohgi, Kaguya could not believe how foolish Ohgi was in handling the matter, essentially endorsing Schneizel's trick, forcing Lelouch to lie and still not aware that it was the tall Japanese man's own fault that things had turned out that way; on the other hand, she pities Kallen for not getting Lelouch's encrypted answer to her question. She decides to kill two birds with one stone by offering her analysis of the whole situation to the audience.
"I think I know Lelouch's answer to Kallen's question," Kaguya announces to the audience, drawing everyone's attention to her, especially Kallen's. The Chairwoman of the UFN Supreme Council continues, "the footage has shown to us that Lelouch concluded that there was no way he could have survived from the trap Prince Schneizel had set for him, which was why he insisted that everyone was his chess piece. That way, he could make sure that Kallen's disappointment at him would drive her away from the targeting range, so that the only one be killed by Schneizel would be Lelouch himself."
"You mean he lied?" Tohdoh asks, "Lied about treating us as his chess pieces?"
"But that's impossible!" Chiba exclaims with frustration, "according to the footages we have watched so far, he did treat us as nothing more but chess pieces on his chessboard!"
"Yes to General Tohdoh, and yes to Mrs Tohdoh as well," Kaguya replies, "but at least during the moment when Lelouch was held at gunpoint, he told a lie, and the proof to that would be his unwillingness to use his Geass on you, even though he had plenty of time and opportunity to do that."
As the current and former members of the Black Knights are still trying to understand what Kaguya has just said, Kallen's mind suddenly clicks, and she seems to have found the last piece of the puzzle to her question in mind. "You mean… you mean he lied to protect me from Schneizel's soldiers?" Kallen asks Kaguya in disbelief, "but if that's the case, that means… that means…"
"That's right, Kallen," Kaguya nods to her with a smile, "Lelouch lied to you about you merely being his chess piece, which means the truth was that he cared about you and wanted you to live instead of dying with him."
Tears start to swell in Kallen's eyes again, but this time, it was not due to sorrow or disappointment, but happiness. "Lelouch… Lelouch cared about me… he cared… about me…" an emotional burden that has troubled Kallen in the past 12 months is finally gone, and tears start to rush out Kallen's eyes due to a sense of great relief. Milly quickly pulls Kallen into her embrace and pats her gently as the red-haired girl is still crying to release all the suppressed emotion in her mind.
"But I still don't understand!" Ohgi asks incredulously, "why didn't Lelouch tell the truth, then? Had he told the truth, I'm sure we could have…"
"If he told the truth," Kaguya interjects Ohgi as she is losing patience to Ohgi's idiocy, "then Kallen would have sprung back in front of Lelouch, and both of them would have been gunned down by those Britannian soldiers."
"But why?" Ohgi still doesn't understand and continues to challenge Kaguya, "His Highness and Lelouch were brothers, right? He even said earlier during the meeting with us that Lelouch was the man he deeply loved, and back at the Kururugi Shrine, he even offered his help to Lelouch by trying to work out a deal with the Emperor in order to spare Lelouch's life. If Lelouch had told the truth back then, then all misunderstandings would be cleared, and no bloodshed would occur…"
"I don't exactly know what went through Prince Schneizel's mind at that moment," Kaguya once again interjects while still smiling brightly, but has inwardly cursed Ohgi's stupidity for the thirtieth time already for allowing the Black Knights' mortal enemy back then to hijack them so effortlessly, "but if I were in His Highness' position, an opportunity to take out the leader and the ace pilot of the mortal enemy of the Holy Britannian Empire would be something that I definitely did not want to miss, especially if my plan to bring armed and ready-to-fire troops into the mortal enemy's base to do exactly that was endorsed by one of the leaders of that mortal enemy," she then turns to Cornelia and asks her with the same smile, "what do you think, Your Highness?"
Cornelia nods, "I wouldn't pass that chance either if I were in Schneizel's position." The purple princess also internally gawks at Ohgi's severe lack of political acumen, but refrains from saying anything about it out of diplomatic courtesy: it would be an international incident if she, a Britannian princess, were to criticize the political acumen of the Prime Minister of Japan in the presence of an audience.
"That's…" Ohgi is speechless. How could that be? That just doesn't make sense to him at all! Why can't everyone in the audience see the simple truth that Lelouch was the bad guy here, when he did not heed to Ohgi's plead for the truth at that instant and had clearly threatened Villetta into submission in the past?
Unlike the staggered Prime Minister of Japan, the rest of the audience are struck by Kaguya and Cornelia's reasoning, finally seeing the truth behind the veil.
'I see, so Lelouch was genuine in not wanting to use Geass on the Black Knights,' Milly muses as she thinks through what Kaguya has just said, 'so it was basically Prince Schneizel's trap all along, and Prime Minister Ohgi…' the tall blonde anchor of K-TV gazes at the tall Japanese man with a tint of undetectable anger.
"Prez, does that mean…" Rivalz quietly asks Milly. He doesn't understand much about the political implications that Kaguya has suggested just now, but he can still sense that the message that the Chairwoman of the UFN Supreme Council wants to convey is that Lelouch was being forced by Schneizel's plan and Ohgi's strange insistence of having Lelouch to speak the truth while being held at Schneizel's gunpoint that had forced Lelouch to lie.
On the other side of the auditorium, Chiba and Tohdoh don't look good either. They hopped on Ohgi's plan to hold Lelouch at gunpoint to get to know the truth back then because they trusted Ohgi's judgment, but as they now look at the whole incident again from a third person perspective, they feel that they have been doped with fear stirred up by Schneizel's words and Ohgi's untimely endorsement to Schneizel's words, and had they had a chance to think through it calmly, they would not have agreed to such a high risk and illogical plan: it would be unthinkable for them to hold General Katase or any of their JLF comrades at gunpoint in the presence of their Britannian enemy. It's quite clear, at least to Tohdoh, that regardless of whether Lelouch had used his Geass to control them, they have all been tricked by Schneizel with the help of Ohgi's rather simplistic train of thought that it would all be well if they could have forced Lelouch to speak the truth at that instant. The eminent Japanese General and his wife both scowl at the realization, but don't say anything both in deference to the current leader of their own country, and that they realize they are, in fact, at least partially responsible for such an idiotic operation.
However, their silence and deference to the Prime Minister of Japan don't mean that no one is speaking up on this to Ohgi. "Ohgi, I think you might have had it wrong," the red-haired cafe owner says to his old friend.
"Huh? Wait, Tamaki, not you as well…?" Ohgi is shocked. Hasn't Tamaki seen the truth that Lelouch was a horrible person already? Didn't he see how Lelouch threatened Villetta into submission by using her relationship with Ohgi himself and called them chess pieces despite Ohgi and Tamaki's own plead for the truth?
"Well, otherwise, how come you say nothing in response to what Kaguya-sama and Cornelia have just said?" Tamaki questions Ohgi.
"That… uhm…" despite falling silent to Kaguya and Cornelia's argument, the Prime Minister of Japan is still pretty sure that he is the right one, and he is still not convinced by their arguments. 'Prince Schneizel seemed so genuine when he told us about Lelouch's supernatural power, and he even helped us along the way to fight Lelouch when he wanted to take over the world. That just showed how good of a man His Highness was. Otherwise, why would he go through the trouble and told us everything about Geass, especially when this power has such a high military value? There must be some sort of misunderstanding in between that I have missed. Only if I could find them out and show to everyone that I was right…'
'Kaname…' Villetta gazes at her husband worriedly. Logically, she understands that what Kaguya and Cornelia have just said are probably right about how everything was Schneizel's scheme all along, but emotionally, she stands steadfast with the man she loves with all her heart. In such a fix, the silver-haired beauty can only stay silent besides her beloved husband to provide as much emotional support to him as possible without feuding with the others in the audience.
Just as the bullets were about to shower Lelouch, the Shinkirou suddenly jumped down from above and shielded him, shocking the Britannian solders and the Black Knights.
"Are you alright, Big Brother?" Rolo asked concernedly.
"Rolo?" Lelouch was utterly surprised. What was Rolo doing here?
"I shall protect Big Brother!" Rolo said determinedly and activated his Geass. The Shinkirou then took Lelouch and flew out of the Ikaruga as the sense of time of everyone inside it was temporarily frozen.
"Stop it, Rolo!" Lelouch cried out, "That's enough!"
Once the sense of time returned to the people inside the warehouse, Kanon immediately contacted Anya, "Zero's escaped. Could your Mordred chase him back?"
Anya piloted her Mordred to tail the Shinkirou. "If it is… to destroy it," she responded with her monotone as she aimed and fired at the Shinkirou, which was blocked by the Shinkirou's Absolute Defence System.
Back inside the cockpit of the Shinkirou, Rolo was having a hard time to key in the commands on the keyboard based on complicated calculation accurately. "I'd never expect the calculation of the Absolute Defence Field to be this difficult," Rolo said before smiling, "my Big Brother was indeed incredible!"
"Rolo! I don't have any reason to live anymore!" Lelouch shouted from the outside of the cockpit, but Rolo didn't stop his operation inside the cockpit of the Shinkirou.
'I see, so that's the reason why…' Cornelia finally understands why Lelouch didn't want to use his Geass on the Black Knights as well, 'Lelouch losing Nunnally was just like me losing Euphy... the meaning of life was gone. Well, for me, I could still go on because I have the responsibility to clear Euphy's tainted name and avenge her death by taking out Zero, but for Lelouch, it was his own fault that had caused Nunnally's 'death', so he couldn't even go avenge her 'death' because he was the cause of it. And this, however paradoxical it may seem, seemed to have cured at least part of his PTSD he had since he suffered from that day walking past that piece of wasteland filled with dead bodies, finally restoring his empathy to others.'
'Big Brother…' Nunnally is sad to hear what her brother had just shouted out on screen. As much as Nunnally appreciates how much love her full-blooded elder brother had kept showering on her, she is still saddened by how Lelouch seemed to have no purpose of life other than things about her.
Seeing previous attacks ineffective, Anya quickly merged the two shoulder Hadron Cannons to form the Stark Hadron Cannon and fired at Shinkirou. However, Anya quickly noticed that something was wrong: the Shinkirou was moving in an irregular and rather impossible way. "How can it move like that?" Anya was surprised.
It turns out to be Rolo activating his Geass on and off that covered a large spherical area, freezing any sense of time of people within the spherical Geass radius. 'I won't let you kill my Big Brother! Absolutely not!' Rolo exclaimed inwardly.
The cockpit of the Shinkirou then opened, and Lelouch was climbing into the cockpit while fighting the strong air current. "Stop it! If you activate your Geass covering such a large spherical area… your heart would not be able to take it any longer!" Lelouch pleaded Rolo concernedly.
"Did he… did Lelouch just show concern for Rolo?" Rivalz asks incredulously. It is such a stark change to see Lelouch from wanting Rolo dead to caring for his survival!
"Yes, he did," Shirley nods with a beaming smile, happy to once again see the boy who selflessly helped an elderly couple involved in a car accident back in her freshman year, "that's the facial expression and tone Lulu had when he was genuinely caring for others!"
Just as Kallen is still crying joyfully in Milly's embrace because the red-haired girl is finally sure that Lelouch cared about her, the tall blonde TV anchor of K-TV also nods to the scene approvingly. 'It seems that Lelouch's humanity had gradually been restored in him after he'd lost C.C., Her Majesty and the Black Knights. It may be a very painful way for him to get out of his PTSD, but I'm still glad that he's finally treating Rolo as a human instead of another chess piece.'
On the other side of the auditorium, the Black Knights less Ohgi are watching the scene with complicated feelings. They now know that what they have always believed in when it comes to Lelouch is probably wrong: Kaguya's argument is so sound, even the intellectually-challenged Tamaki can see now that Lelouch truly didn't want to geass them at that moment, and how Ohgi might have got it all wrong. However, the realization of that is so contradictory to what they have seen throughout the screening event about Lelouch, they still find it extremely difficult to believe their latest realization of what had actually happened in Lelouch's mind during the confrontation on the Ikaruga. Chiba and Tohdoh both gaze at Ohgi, who arguably is now more hard-headed than Chiba is, musing the shocking realization that Ohgi might have misled them into ousting their ruthless yet nonetheless capable leader for nothing but helping the Britannians to weaken the Black Knights.
'Well, he might have been genuine in not wanting to geass us at that moment, but he still nevertheless stomped the whole world under his foot and tried to execute us in the end,' Tohdoh struggles to achieve peace in his mind by thinking what Lelouch had done to the world after the Black Knights' coup against him, 'there was no doubt about that, yet…'
"Attention to all units: the Shinkirou has been stolen," Diethard made an announcement to the Black Knights, "all able units, search and destroy it! I repeat…" A bunch of Gekkas flew out and shot at the Shinkirou, causing violent movement inside its cockpit and shook Rolo so violently that his phone and locket fell out of his pocket onto the floor.
"That's enough, Rolo!" Lelouch closed his eyes and implored, "I don't have any reason to live anymore!"
"You can't, Big Brother, because…" Rolo replied as he turned on his Geass to freeze the sense of time of the pursuing Black Knights, causing them to crash into the ocean.
"Stop it, Rolo! Why do you…" Lelouch cried out, but he too had his sense of time frozen by Rolo as the younger boy activated his Geass again to freeze the sense of time of the pilots of the Britannian land units shooting at them, allowing time for Rolo to destroy them with the Shinkirou's Diffusion Structure Phase Transition Cannon in the process.
"…save someone like me? I…" Lelouch finally got to finish his question once his sense of time had returned, but his sentence was once again halted when Rolo reactivated his Geass to destroy another bunch of Sutherlands on the ground.
"It's true that… I might have been used by you, Big Brother," Rolo was finally feeling the sharp pain caused by his suspended heartbeat, his left hand grasped his chest as he started to sweat, and black shades started to bag under his eyes.
"…have used you…" Lelouch spitted out another small bit of his sentence before Rolo once again turned on his Geass. Sadly, due to the prolonged use of Rolo's defective Geass, the brown-haired boy was suffering from more and more pain as his heartbeat had been suspended for an increasing amount of time.
"…all along…? Rolo!" Lelouch was finally able to finish his sentence, but he quickly realized that Rolo had reached his biological limit due to his overuse of his defective Geass, and the younger boy started to groan and cough violently.
"However…!" despite sweating unnaturally and apparently suffering from great pain, Rolo nonetheless mustered up his last strength to once again activate his Geass.
"Stop it! Don't use your Geass! Do you want to die…?" Lelouch yelled in deep worry, but Rolo's Geass once again froze his sense of time.
"The only one… who's willing to treat me… like a human being… was Big Brother…! Therefore… I must… fight for… Big Brother… as well!" Rolo screamed at the top of his lungs as he pressed the button to fire the Shinkirou's Diffusion Structure Phase Transition Cannon at a Britannian airship to destroy it.
"Oh no…" Tianzi's eyes are filled with tears as she sees how the young brown-haired boy sacrificed himself to save Lelouch. Next to her, Kaguya is also wiping away tears from her eyes as she sees how Rolo was still willing to sacrifice himself for Lelouch even after Lelouch unleashed his fury on the poor boy and threw him away like a piece of tattered rag.
On the other side of the auditorium, the Black Knights are uncharacteristically quiet: they don't know what to say.
"Man… that boy's a man," Tamaki finally says. For as intellectually-challenged of a man Tamaki may be, he is someone who speaks his mind, and what happens right before his eyes is simply a show of loyalty too strong for a real man such as Shinichirou Tamaki to deny.
Chiba and Ohgi both remain silent. They both feel bad and touched by Rolo's last act of loyalty, but they simply cannot praise him out loud because of what Rolo represented: Britannian oppression against the Japanese, as well as a user of the evil Geass power. Chiba's maternal instinct and Ohgi's teacher qualities do scream loud in their minds, though, causing both to bite their lip hard as they try to fight the weird silence they have within themselves.
'Such honourable loyalty…' Tohdoh sighs in his head as he sees how the brown-haired boy, despite being utterly exploited and betrayed by Lelouch, was still willing to sacrifice himself to save him just because Lelouch was the only one who was willing treat the brown-haired boy like a human being. Now that he has seen what had actually happened during their coup against Zero from a third person perspective and having listened to Kaguya's analysis of the situation, he finally realizes that they have been utterly tricked by Schneizel's shrewdness and Ohgi's naivety. 'What shame…' the eminent Japanese General muses.
Anya, however, is displeased at how she was being portrayed in this scene while still showing her poker face outwardly. 'C.C. made me looked like a villain… not fair.'
It was evening time, and the Shinkirou ended up landing in a dense forest after its grand escape from the Ikaruga. Lelouch was kneeling before a dying Rolo, who was still on the pilot seat of an cockpit.
"Rolo, why did you save someone like me…" Lelouch asked in a saddened and perplexed tone, "When I have used you like…"
"That's because… Big Brother… is a liar…" Rolo uttered.
"Huh?" Lelouch's perplexed.
"You're lying… when you said… you wanted… to kill me…" Rolo's voice was getting weaker and weaker, "and that you… loathed me…"
"I see," Lelouch decided to lie once again, but this time with a genuine smile on his face, "you've seen through all of it. You're indeed my younger brother."
"That's… right. I understand… everything… about… Big… Brother…" Rolo drew in his last breath before finally closing his eyes with a peaceful smile on his face.
Lelouch smiled and whispered as he gazed sadly at the now dead Rolo, "You're right, your Big Brother is a liar," he placed Rolo's phone with the locket onto Rolo's left palm.
The audience falls into silence. Many of them weep as they see Rolo meeting his tragic yet heroic end on the screen.
"So Rolo's dead…" Rivalz finally breaks the silence, tears gushing down his eyes, "He died saving Lelouch."
"Rolo…" Shirley can't control herself anymore and cried at the death of Rolo. Meanwhile, Milly, while still patting a sobbing Kallen, also has tears running down her eyes. It is quite a blow to their minds as they witnesses the death of someone they have spent so much time together with in the Ashford Student Council.
Villetta, while not crying like her students do, also feels bad for Rolo. They have been colleagues for almost a year and then worked together under Lelouch for some more time. While they weren't exactly close, to witness her colleague to die in such a self-sacrificial way, especially seeing how Rolo said that Lelouch was the only person who was willing to treat him like a human being, really makes her feel bad for the young assassin. 'May you rest in peace, Rolo Lamperouge,' Villetta quietly muses Rolo's "human name" instead of his code name "Nebiros" as a sign of respect to the dead boy's humanity.
Gino and Guilford both salute to Rolo inwardly. 'That's true loyalty that the young boy had displayed,' Guilford muses, 'you shall have my respect, Mr Rolo Lamperouge. May you rest in peace.'
Next to Guilford, Cornelia is deeply touched by Rolo's words as he piloted the Shinkirou away from the Ikaruga. 'He may not be Lelouch's brother by blood, but what he did for Lelouch was by far better than any other of the many brothers Lelouch had had ever done to him or for him. I see why Lelouch was willing to toss away his prejudice against him and wholeheartedly accepted him as his younger brother at last,' The 2nd Princess of Britannia uses her left index finger to wipe away a few drops of tears swelling in her eyes, her facial expression turns determined as she has made a decision in her mind, 'Very well, if Lelouch had recognized you as his brother, then as Lelouch's sister, I shall recognize you as my brother as well. I, Cornelia li Britannia, hereby recognize you, Rolo vi Britannia… no, Rolo Lamperouge, as my younger brother. We may never have met before, but I pray that you, my dear brother, to have found peace at last.'
Next to Cornelia, Nunnally is watching the whole scene in tears. True, Rolo might have wanted to kill her, but seeing how he sacrificed himself in exchange for Lelouch's survival was simply too touching to her, making her to feel immensely bad for the tragic end Rolo had met. In addition, Nunnally also sees how Rolo's sacrifice had apparently restored the will to live inside Lelouch. 'Since my "death", Big Brother seemed to have lost the will to live, yet Rolo had sacrificed himself to save Big Brother from certain death, giving him a new purpose to live once again. Thank you, Rolo, and for that, you will always be my brother that I have never met.'
Nunnally then also notices how Leouch's empathy to others seemed to have come back to him after her "death", choosing not to geass the Black Knights but instead sacrificing himself to save Kallen from certain death. Then, a realization strikes her mind. 'Back in the first disc, Big Brother only seemed to be genuinely happy when he's with me at the dinner table. Might it be the case that I had monopolized his empathy and the ability to love others, that he'd been treating others so harshly and heartlessly? That would also explain why after my presumed "death", Big Brother seemed to start caring for others again all of a sudden – he had got back the empathy he poured onto me, and was able to give it to others again,' The young Empress tightens her fists, 'I was indeed the main reason why Big Brother did all those horrible things to others because I hijacked the meaning of his life and his reason to live… I am as responsible for his sins as he was. Oh… I'm so sorry that you were the only one bearing all those sins, Big Brother…'
