Episode One – From the Ashes
Kallen flinched back behind the cover of the crumpled, unresponsive Guren. Her gun snapped vertical next to her head so she could load it without moving into sight. Bullets screamed little more than two inches over her head, stirring a wind in their passing that lifted the disobedient strands of her flaming hair. Beside her, Ohgi rose and set his gun against the ridge formed by a bit of crumbled wall. An instant later, the clatter of his bullets could be heard, useless on the enemy shields barely twenty meters away. And they were coming closer.
"We've got to get out of here!" Kallen shouted over the gunfire, her voice hoarse from nearly two hours of giving orders to troops who seemed to grow further and further away.
Yes, it had been only two hours. But it felt more like a week had passed since the remnants of the Black Knights had arrived at the besieged imperial palace. With the Guren functioning, they might have made a better fight. But the falling palace wall had spelled its end; it had almost been beyond Kallen's ability to eject before the slabs of stone collided with her beloved Knightmare. And now there were more dead troops than living; more blood covering the survivors than sweat. They were fighting outside the palace walls now; the enemy commander had already taken up residence.
"We can't!" Ohgi responded, dropping back behind the wall to reload. Moving almost instinctively, Kallen snapped up again and resumed fire, "We have to wait for Zero-"
"And what if he doesn't find the Empress?" Kallen screamed over the rapid fire of her own gun, "What if he's already dead? Are we just going to sit here and get shot, waiting for some corpse in there to get up and start walk-"
She broke off. She couldn't say any more, couldn't finish the thought. Zero; she had always been loyal to him. Even after she had learned the truth; that Lelouch vi Britannia was Zero; she had obeyed his every command. Even after Lelouch had died… she had served the new Zero, the one only she knew was a fake, with every loyalty.
She had no idea who this Zero was, and still she served him…
But the loyalty did not run as deep.
She had realized, over time, that she truly loved Lelouch. That her faith in Zero did not spring entirely from the brilliance with which he constantly saved their lives, constantly brought them victory, but also from the incredible kindness that seemed to overlay his every move. Though many times he had shocked the others with his complete lack of care for the lives of innocents, and for the lives of his own soldiers, Kallen, the only one who knew his identity, had been privy to the displays of horror and regret which had followed every unnecessary death. She had watched the utter adoration with which he cared for his little sister; now the Empress of Britannia. She watched the torture it had caused him to fight with his old friend, the late Suzaku Kururugi. And she had fallen in love with that… she had realized she had fallen in love with him just before he died.
Now, this Zero lacked not only Lelouch's utter strategic brilliance, but he lacked her love as well. He lacked identity for her; lacked compassion. He seemed focused completely on the safety and will of Empress Nunnally. He had too much the servant's mindset to replace Lelouch's superior attitude; the one which had annoyed and enthralled her all at the same time.
And so she found that her only regret in leaving Zero behind to save her own life would be the death of Empress Nunnally, whom had once been the focus of Lelouch's very life.
"He isn't dead." Ohgi growled, displaying once again his impossible faith that this Zero was the real one. That Lelouch vi Britannia had been the farce, "He'll make it out. He always does."
That, Kallen had to admit. Though he was not Zero, though he never produced the shining plots that Lelouch had once spun, this imposter seemed to find himself in much fewer tight spots than Lelouch had. He was hurt less often, he vanished less often. Caught by accident in the middle of a high-intensity blast from Kallen's Guren, he had come out with barely a scorch mark on his cloak. She had no doubt that he would survive the center of F.L.E.I.J.A. This new Zero just didn't seem capable of death.
"Look," Kallen snarled, ducking behind the wall once more so that Ohgi could take her place, "If he's alive, he can escape on his own. We're no use to him dead."
"Kallen, he-"
"If he's alive, he won't need our help to escape." Kallen cut him off.
Ohgi dropped into cover and stared into her confident eyes, and knew it was the truth. They were both utterly useless to Zero without their Knightmares.
"Then let's run." He sighed, slinging his gun up over his shoulder.
Without really thinking about it, Kallen gripped the speaker on her headset, pressing it closer to her lips.
"Retreat!" She shouted, so loudly that it would probably blast the ears off any surviving Black Knights, "Let's get out of here alive!"
A chorus of concern for Zero and Nunnally assailed her, but she overrode them.
"This order comes directly from Zero!" Ohgi gave her a look of alarm, but she shook her head forcibly. They both knew this was the only way the Black Knights would leave now, "Back off! Return to base! Give him some room to work!"
There was no murmur of assent. There was no reply at all; only shouting and running as Black Knights turned tail and fled. She peaked up over the mound of rubble which was her only cover, and winced. There was barely anyone left of the hastily-gathered forces to run.
"Let's go," She hissed to Ohgi, even as she turned and took off into the flaming night.
The Knightmare ground to a halt, collapsing on its knee as ordered and lowering the helpless girl to the damp floor. It settled her gently into place against a pillar of rough, water-hewn stone, and then its over-exerted engines wheezed to a stop. Within its chambers, Suzaku made a similar sound and clutched at the gaping wound in his chest. Peering out the hole in the makeshift Lancelot's cabin, through which the slender lance had thrust to jab him much too close to the heart, he knew that this Knightmare would never move again.
He felt no emotion as he slipped out of the Knightmare's back. This had not been the real Lancelot; the model he had loved, and that Kallen had destroyed so many years ago. This had been a rag-tag combination of the best parts Lloyd could throw together to resemble the Lancelot in the hour Suzaku gave him before the Black Knights ran off to battle. This Lancelot-mimic had possessed none of the speed, strength, armor, or weapons of his old model. Once he had escaped the broken palace with Nunnally, its only purpose had been to get them as far away on its decrepit float-unit as possible.
And it had landed them well, on an island off the coast of the greater island of Japan. An island riddled with caves for shelter, animals for game, fruit for nourishment, and clear springs for water.
Yes, it had landed them well. Unfortunately, Suzaku would be unable to make use of these resources.
His vision tunneled as the blood flowing from his chest got ever darker. The last thing he felt was the mask of Zero slipping from his face as he toppled out of his seat in the Knightmare and fell through what seemed like an endless space towards the slick cave floor below.
Anastasia was roused abruptly from the world of her own mind as her teacher's notebook slammed down across the wood of her desk. She jerked her head upright to stare at the angry, creased face of Mr. Kanegawa. By the time she met his bloodshot blue eyes, her green eyes were already bored.
"Sir?" She murmured, her voice nothing more than a dull whisper. Her tone made Mr. Kanegawa, if that was possible, even angrier; to the point where he was unable to form a coherent thought. He sputtered and flushed purple.
Anastasia ignored his furious, inarticulate raging, turning in silence back to the window beside her desk. Uncomfortable, she pulled on the gold rim of the black collar of her uniform, trying to let some air in against her skin. Mr. Kanegawa kept his room too hot, and she was damp with sweat.
Flecks of the teacher's spit splattered across her desk, and she swiped them away with a careless hand. He was speaking in a coherent tongue, now, but she had no reason to listen. Her father was too rich, too powerful. There was nothing Mr. Kanegawa could do to her that would not get him in trouble with the entirety of Britannian nobility.
He slammed his book down on her desk again, and she heard him storm off. She sighed into the oppressive silence that followed, still staring out the window, not meeting the shocked eyes of her fellow students. Surely, they must be used to this by now…
It hadn't changed. Nothing had changed; in Britannia, in Japan, in the world that Lelouch vi Britannia had left behind in his death. Everything was almost exactly the same as it had been when Zero had risen to free the people from the tyranny of Charles di Britannia.
It was true, for ten years there had been a lull in the affairs of the world. A time of peace; no open wars, no terrorism, no overbearing government. Freedom and prosperity for all, on the surface.
But it would take more than Zero for human nature to change.
In Britannia, in Japan, in the world, the strong still preyed on the weak. The nobility still enslaved the working class, the Britannians still beat the Japanese into submission. It was done less openly now, in the shadows of dark allies where few people dared to look. But Anastasia walked the darker streets of Tokyo, where her fellow students did not dare venture. And she had seen the signs. She had seen the signs long before anyone else.
The bell rang, and she turned to sling her bag over her shoulder, stuffed with the books that she had never opened. The notebooks that were blank, the pens still uncapped. A calculator still in its box, pencils unsharpened, a sharpener with a blade still as keen as it had been the day she had purchased it. Six months into the school year, and she had yet to use any of her supplies. She had no need of it; notes were unnecessary when one remembered everything with the clarity of a photograph, of a video.
The rest of the class had already gone from the classroom by the time she slipped her seat back and stood. Absentminded, she pulled the hem of her black jacket straight, tightening the belt slightly around her slender waist to keep it in place. This uniform; another mark of her uniqueness, of her refusal to comply with the formal system. She was the only girl at Ashford Academy who wore the boy's uniform.
"Miss Holcomb," Mr. Kanegawa started, but she twirled around, turning her back on him, and drifted for the door. She heard his heavy-footed pursuit, and considered it with the same proud distance that she considered everything that happened around her, "Miss Holcomb, I must speak with you!"
But she had already slipped through the door and down the hall.
She knew it would catch up with her when she returned to school the next week. She slept weeks in the dormitories, and so the teachers generally knew where to find her. But it didn't matter all that much, in her eyes. He would not beat her, and words had no more affect on her than low grades or detentions. In fact, they were more likely to destroy Mr. Kanegawa. As a member of the working class, he was subject to the disappointment of Joseph Holcomb; the Britannian nobleman who had adopted her after her parents' unfortunate deaths.
It was her parents' deaths that had made Anastasia so aware of the way the world moved around her, of the way people interacted, of the differences between classes. It was her parents' deaths which had so irrevocably altered her view of the world, and of its people.
As long as Anastasia could remember, she had been deeply involved in Zero's revolution. Her parents; Yukimi and Tsubako; had both been Black Knights. And Sato Akemi, as she had been called then, had been their strongest supporter. And Zero's.
She had admired him. Looked up to him. She had worshiped and repeated his words as those of a god. On days when her parents were home, they had played together in the yard behind the shabby Shinjuku apartment they had called home. Her father had played the role of Zero, and she of Kallen Kouzuki, his most loyal Black Knight. His bodyguard.
The day Zero had betrayed the world; had come out as Lelouch vi Britannia, the Demon Emperor; had been the end of the only truly happy life that Anastasia had ever known. Yukimi and Tsubako had turned on Zero, shattering her faith in them, as she still believed in the man they had once called their leader. Two weeks later, both of them were dead, and she was a seven-year-old orphan, wandering the streets of Tokyo, finding news of Zero on the streets whenever she could.
She remembered, all too clearly, the day that Joseph Holcomb had found her and taken her as his own. But she remembered it for a different reason; a heart-breaking, life-changing reason.
Zero, Lelouch vi Britannia, the man she had idolized, and still idolized, died. He was killed, by another man calling himself Zero.
Anastasia knew the public story. They all remembered the horrible time when Zero had disappeared, and the world seemed as though it would fall to Britannia after all. The Black Knights claimed that Zero had been captured, and that Lelouch vi Britannia had been holding him hostage, while using his mask to take over the world for himself.
And for a time, Anastasia had believed that story. She let her heart; the heart of the child Akemi; to glow with the hope that the man she had idolized was still alive. That he was still there to fight for justice.
But in the ten years since Lelouch vi Britannia's death, Anastasia had come to understand the truth.
If the real Zero had returned, he would not have let things go the way they had gone. He would have been able to keep things in check.
Crime, oppression, prejudice, all of them still ran rampant. Zero; the real Zero, who had fought for the people, and not at the word of a paralyzed, useless empress; was dead.
Anastasia crossed the quiet grounds long after all the other students had retreated to the air-conditioned confines of their dorms. The sun beat blindingly down on her back, and without really thinking about it she stripped off the black jacket to reveal the white blouse; transparent with her sweat; she wore below. She shoved the jacket into her bag and hoisted it further onto her shoulder, fixing her eyes on the school gate. The students were not meant to leave the grounds after classes; not until dinner time. But Anastasia was not one to be confined. She broke into an easy, loping jog.
One long leap brought her hands to the top of the wrought-iron gate. Grunting with the effort, she heaved herself up, over the wall, and dropped onto the other side. She glanced back once, over her shoulder, at the serene grounds of Ashford Academy. And then she was gone, pacing off down the street. At the school, away from her classes, she was little more than a ghost. She would not be missed.
There was no reaction as Anastasia closed the door behind her. The house was dark and quiet, as though abandoned. She knew that her parents would be somewhere within the many rooms of the Holcomb mansion, but they would be too far away to realize that she had come home early. They always were. The vast expanse of their home was one of the reasons that her parents did not know she lacked a social life.
She dropped her pack carelessly next to the wall in the entrance hall, swinging her uniform coat off of her shoulders as she headed into the next room and up the great, curving marble staircase. Her footsteps echoed in the vaulted ceiling, ricocheting off the delicate golden imagery which decorated the edges of the rich wood. An empty sound for an empty beauty, she knew, for there was little worth to such material things. True value could be found only in one's self, and she had yet to discover it.
Anastasia's feet traced their own way through the halls of her Britannian home, guiding her to the gigantic room which had never felt right after her childhood in the tiny Shinjuku apartment. She hung her jacket up on a hook on the door; a sort of flag to let her parents know that she was there; and then she shut it behind her and turned to face the room itself.
It was sparsely decorated; a desk in one corner, bare except for a single pencil and a book left open on the page she had broken off of. A thin mattress lying on the floor, beside a bed stripped of its covers. A vase of flowers on the bed-stand, accompanied by a plain-framed photograph of a happy Japanese family in the uniforms of the Black Knights. All on the same side of the room, leaving the half to her right entirely bare.
Apart from the sword propped on its stand next to the empty wall.
It was a beautiful weapon; a Japanese katana of the finest make. Hand-forged by the most talented of sword-smiths, this weapon had been her grandfather's wedding gift to her father. It had never been used; its blade still shimmered in lethal silver sharpness, the black cloth in which the handle was wrapped still spotless, not yet worn to the shape of a master's familiar hand. It stood in sharp contrast to the wooden practice-sword leaning in the corner behind the desk, whose handle was worn to the point of glistening polish.
Kicking her shoes off as she went, Anastasia crossed her room to lift the wooden weapon in two hands. Instinctively, her hand found the shallow dips where her fingers had worn grips into the carven handle. She let the sword hang at her side, clenched comfortably between her fingers, as she took her seat at the desk and glanced at the open book there.
It was a diary; the one left by her parents when they had turned their backs on Zero. Anastasia had read it many, many times, and with her perfect memory had no need to read it again. She knew precisely what the book said. But sometimes, she simply needed to gaze at it, to touch the scratched, inked paper which was all she really had left of her parents.
Her eyes rested on a line as familiar as if she had said it herself, and as always, she frowned.
Perhaps there is no such thing as true good…
Three knocks at her bedroom door, muffled by the jacket hanging there, broke Anastasia's gaze from the scrawled black ink. She reached up, shutting the diary with a snap and shoving it roughly off of the back of the desk, to rest between wood-panel and wall.
"Yes?" She called, swinging her wooden blade up to rest on the desk.
"Ana?"
Anastasia grimaced at the sweet sound of her mother's voice.
"Ana, are you in there?"
"Yes, Angelina." Anastasia responded, her voice bored. She could almost feel her adoptive mother's disapproval at being addressed by name. It was an argument the two had been having for years; Anastasia simply refused to acknowledge the woman as her mother.
"Come down to dinner, would you?" The woman simpered. Anastasia's face darkened further. She could hardly stand the weak-willed woman who was Joseph Holcomb's wife.
"Actually," Anastasia started, before she could stop herself. It was an instinctive reaction to receiving and order from Angelina; she found she simply could not obey. Her mind raced as she searched for something she could say to get her out of it, "I'm going to dinner with some friends." She announced desperately, "Out in town. I just came home to change."
There was a moment of silence outside; Angelina deciding whether or not this might be true. But the woman had no idea what Anastasia's school life was really like. She did not know that Anastasia had no friends with which to go to dinner. And so there was no way she could really object.
"Take your phone with you." Angelina mumbled reluctantly. Anastasia could hear that she was already turning away from the door, and did not respond. In her mind, she cursed herself for the performance. Believable though it may have been, now she really had to go out, or one of her five siblings would stumble in on her, and she would be forced to join the family for dinner.
She returned her sword carefully to its place against the wall and moved to the small closet door in the back corner. There, she began rooting through what few garments she actually owned, hunting for something which might pass as city dress.
It seemed to take an impossibly long time to collect a simple pair of jeans and a white blouse. Everything she owned was for school, parties, or something else she had no choice in. Any time she was not forced to be elsewhere, Anastasia stayed in her room and thought, or practiced with her swords. The outer world held no interest for her.
She swung a light blue jacket over her shoulders, bound her blue-black hair in a tight bun, and slipped out her open window to drop off the low awning outside. In a matter of moments, she had crossed the mansion gardens and vaulted the fence, and she was free on the streets of Tokyo once more.
Not that she considered this free in any way. In fact, she hated the streets of Tokyo almost as much as she hated her school, almost as much as she hated her house. Almost as much as she hated her own idle life.
Because, out here, there was even less that was beautiful. Out here, in the open, she could see every wrong that authority had ever done to the people.
She paced in stormy silence down the streets, towards the city center. Crowds of people; Japanese and Britannian alike; faded out of her path, as though pushed by her fury. She tried very hard not to see the indecencies of the real world; the problems she wished so deeply that she could fix. But in the end, nothing but the blindness of ignorance, which she lacked, could have kept her from noticing the spots of darkness in a foolishly comfortable world.
They hid themselves away, as the rest of the world wanted them to. They cringed in the deepest shadows they could find, under the shelter of alleyways or awnings, in abandoned doorways or behind dumpsters. Bits of pain and terror that scrambled away as the richer, more fortunate citizens strode by them without seeing them. Children curled up in rags, with nothing to eat. Men and women, sick and tired, lying on the street and waiting for merciful death to claim them. It was not uncommon for Anastasia to notice the occasional corpse lying in the road, which no one else seemed to recognize as a corpse.
No, things had not gotten better since Zero had risen. Things had gotten much worse.
Because now it was not only the Japanese who were in danger.
Something was different tonight, however. On a normal day, Anastasia would have turned towards the darker side of town, gone to walk among her fellow Japanese. The people who, like her, did not believe that Lelouch vi Britannia's death had left behind a virtual paradise, and who had hunkered down in the shadows to wait for that illusion to collapse. Normally, she would have gone to them, because they shared a like mind to hers.
But today, something made her continue in the light. She did not cut into her usual alley shortcut, did not make for the ghettos of Shinjuku. She headed straight for the center of Tokyo.
It was not a long walk. Not for her. She spent most of her time on her feet, moving to escape her own mind. Running from her own useless lifestyle. Never able to escape the world that she simply despised. As such, the walk from her family's mansion to the center of Tokyo left her with too much pent up energy, where it would have exhausted another. She glanced around at the shops and towering skyscrapers. A sense of anxiety, of nervous excitement, came over her. She knew it was going to happen several minutes before it actually did.
She was just crossing a street, and she had reached the center of the intersection when the glass screens built into the walls of the high buildings stopped flashing their ads. All around her, the other citizens froze as the image changed, and a pretty young reporter flashed into twenty-story view. Anastasia rolled to a stop near the edge of the road, staring up the side of a particularly tall building. Nothing moved. Even the people in cars had stopped to stare at the reporter as they waited for her to speak.
"My apologies, citizens of Japan." She started, her voice going sour around the name which was that of the country. Anastasia knew the woman; she had attended several of the reporter's parties growing up. Maribelle Finch, a Britannian noble who had lived through the Black Knight rebellion. One who still thought of Japan as Area Eleven. Anastasia's blood boiled with irritation as the woman continued, "I interrupt your daily proceedings to bring you this most unfortunate report. The Britannian Palace has fallen to the Chinese Federation."
There were shocked whispers throughout the crowd. The reporter's self-assured voice was shaking.
"We know little about the conflict. Word has it that the Empress and her loyal knight, Zero, escaped, but they have not been seen since. The palace guard and the Black Knights held the enemy off long enough for the Empress to escape, before falling under the siege at roughly three in the morn-"
Suddenly, Anastasia could no longer hear the booming voice of the broadcast. She was buffeted roughly away from the towering building she had been watching, and as she looked down she realized the effect that the reporter's words had on the populace.
The Chinese Federation was invading. The Empress and the miracle man were missing.
Tokyo had dissolved into panic.
Anastasia was shoved roughly from one side to the next, thrown in every direction until she had no choice but to join in and follow the flow of the running citizens. She ran at pace with the panicked citizens, feeling strangely calm for the situation. Nothing but irritation at being forced back towards her own home, where she knew her family would be in a similar state.
She fought hard against the current, running straight for a time, and then leaping sideways towards the edge of the road, hoping to find sanctuary in one of the dark alleys only she dared to frequent. She was hurled to the ground, the breath knocked out of her by a foot in her ribs, but she forced herself to keep going, dragging herself to her feet and diving for the sidewalk and safety.
There, she collapsed against the wall, clutching her side and gasping for air. Her eyes traced the wild path of the crowds racing by. People were screaming, running for their lives from a foe which was still more than a thousand miles away. She knew that, when the authorities came back out in the morning, there would be many dead bodies for them to clean up.
As her breathing leveled out, Anastasia pushed away from the wall, starting back up the street in the direction she had come. The crowds were not dying down, the panic not lessening. The authorities had not yet arrived to calm things down. The madness confused her senses; too many things to hear, to see, to feel. When she passed by the alley mouth, she almost missed it.
Perhaps it would have been better if she had.