Happy Wednesday everyone!
Karasu, yeah, it's a darkrai. Guess who it belongs to?
Greifen, I can't remember anymore. And nope, no original knights in this story. I just didn't like them.
As for everyone else, it shall all make sense soon.
-}+{-
No one currently knows, that aside from the young Britannian's, Lelouch's, ambitions, there exist many desires and fluctuations of emotions.
Then, Lelouch must face his other enemy.
But… his enemy… the one he must fix his eyes attentively on… will be the conglomerate of all the sins of mankind…
Hope and Atonement.
Freedom and Solitude.
However, the entity known as The World, regardless of what individual wills exists, just keeps continuing on its own…
Ashford laughed as he heard his brother gasp in horror on the other end of the line.
_\_ "You stay right where you are,"_\_ Lelouch said, suddenly deathly calm. _\_ "I'm going to kill you. I don't care if Schniezel himself is hiding you, I'm going to find you and kill you." _\_
Ashford chuckled. "Aw, I didn't know you cared so much, Lellow. That's really touching."
_\_ "You think this is funny?" _\_ Lelouch's voice snarled.
"I think it's bleeding hilarious." Ash told his brother. "Come on, as if I would get eaten by Deoxys. Give me some credit."
_\_ "Wait… you're not..?" _\_
"Nah, I'm fine mate." Ash said with a smile. "Better than fine actually, I'm feeling great. Especially for a guy that was shot in the head and thrown from a sky dragon."
Lelouch cottoned on. _\_ "Where are you now?" _\_
"I'm in the Bahamut's morgue." Red explained. "Cynthia didn't bother searching a corpse for weapons, so she kindly lent me her pokétch."
_\_ "How the hell did you survive? I saw you die!" _\_ Lelouch asked, beginning to pace the room.
"I just took a leaf out of Auntie's book, I guess," Ashford replied, shrugging.
Lelouch realised what he meant instantly. _\_ "You became immortal? How?" _\_
"Bugger if I know." Red sighed. "Don't think I've got any of Auntie C.C.'s tricks though, other than Not Dying."
Lelouch let out a sigh. _\_ "So, when you said you weren't human…" _\_
"Yeah, figure of speech." Red snickered. "Man, if I could only see your face…"
_\_ "No-one will be able to recognise yours once I get my hands on you." _\_ Lelouch growled threateningly. _\_ "When I said I'd kill you, it still applies now. Do you have any idea how—" _\_
"Sorry." Ashford apologized quickly. "Really. You know what I'm like, I don't really think about…"
_\_ "Don't worry about it. I'm… I'm glad you're alive…" _\_ Lelouch sighed. _\_ "However, now we have a bigger problem." _\_
"Getting this handsome mug back to Zero City?" Red joked.
_\_ "We need to regroup, of course, but first we need to destroy the house." _\_ Lelouch explained. _\_ "If you've been captured, no matter how long ago or what you've done, Britannia knows. The house has traces of data that could expose weaknesses in Zero City. We need to destroy it." _\_
Red nodded. "Meet me in the Ruins of Alph in three days." He suggested. "Deal with everything in China, deal with whatever in Cerulean, and I'll see you there."
_\_ "Good plan." _\_ Lelouch nodded, hanging up.
Red then handed the pokétch back to its owner. "Thanks beautiful." Ashford told Cynthia with a smile, his gun still pressed to her back. "So how's about we treat this civilly, woman and zombie?"
She glared over her shoulder in disgust.
"Not bad, but someone like yourself can't hide your interest from someone like me." Ash smirked, sliding off the table and pocketing his weapon. "So, Geass, where shall I start?"
The crowd turned to look at Zero striding into the wasteland of where the battle had been fought, where discussions between the Black Knights and the new Chinese Government were taking place. "I wished to give you the liberation of your country to you as a wedding present, but it appears that your fiancée dumped you at the altar. How sad…"
Zero mocked wiping a tear from his mask and then clamped a hand onto Xingke's shoulder. "This is your fault, so you have to take responsibility. May you build China into the nation it deserves to be! " he announced, placing a Kings Rock into the shoulders hand. "And I would recommend considering joining our United States Alliance." He added, striding to the ocean. "I'll leave you in the capable hands of Silver, but I'm afraid that Britannia has taken something from me, and I need to retrieve it."
C.C. was sitting on Ryujin as Zero jumped onto it. "Ashford's alive." She told him.
"I know." Lelouch told her. "We're meeting up with him in three days, but I need to deal with some things back in Kanto, so I'll see you then."
She smirked. "You've grown up, demon boy."
Behind the mask, Lelouch smiled. "Shut up, witch." He laughed, watching her step from the storm dragon. Ryujin rose, letting Lelouch give a final wave to the crowd before diving into the ocean.
"And you had no idea…" Suzaku sighed, clutching his head once Wattson's corpse had been moved.
"I didn't want more people to die than were necessary…" Euphie replied, hunched forward on the bed with her hands linked together under her nose. "Though it appears that he was under the influence of the Geass…"
"Dammit…" Suzaku sighed. "To think Lelouch would even order his own men to die…"
"I don't think he was ordered to kill himself." Euphie replied, shaking her head. "I think he did it out of fear."
"Euphie?" Suzaku asked as his lover began shaking. "Hey, it's alright!"
"No… it isn't…" she replied, sobbing. "I killed them… I… killed the Eunuch Generals…"
"No, you didn't—" Suzaku started, before getting slapped.
"LISTEN TO ME!" Euphie screeched. "I did it! I wanted it… and… I made it happen…"
Suzaku made the wise decision of going silent, realising how disturbed and upset Euphie was. Rather than jumping to conclusions, he started trying to understand instead. "Alright." He nodded. "Tell me what happened."
Shirley snuck out of the school around three in the morning. She just needed a break.
So she wandered the city, and her feet led her to the one place where she thought she wouldn't find any comfort.
Because Lelouch wasn't home.
Except the lights were on.
She took a deep intake of breath in hope, and rushed towards the house as the lights turned off and Lelouch stepped outside.
"Lulu!" she almost shouted, before stopping dead in her tracks.
Lelouch had a lighter.
He tossed it into a puddle on the front doorstep.
And the Lamperouge household went up in flames.
'I see… he knows that Britannia is able to recover data from documents destroyed from pokémon attacks, even fire and flood, so he manually poured gasoline throughout his house and burnt it without the use of pokémon, so a celebi couldn't be used to restore them…'
Jeremiah chuckled and stepped into the crowd, letting a faint orange glow surround him for a few metres to protect himself as the nightlife crowd began to notice the flames.
So when the young girl he just passed collapsed to her knees in horror, he didn't think anything of it.
Lelouch stepped into the all-night Indian takeaway, where a couple of Britannians were haggling the owner over a kebab.
"I'm sorry sirs, but you're disturbing the other customers." Lelouch advised them, getting into the cue behind the two hooligans.
"What other customers!" one young lad snarled, swaggering into Lelouch's personal space as the other turned to face him with a sneer.
"Me." Lelouch told them. "Go home and rethink your life, both of you."
"Tch." The other lad grunted as he walked out. "I was gunna do that anyways."
"Um, thank you sir." The tired shopkeeper replied.
"No, it's fine." Lelouch sighed, silencing his new Geass as he walked up to the counter. "Actually, do you mind if I can crash on one of these tables for the night?"
"Should be okay, so long as you buy something…" the man replied, scratching his neck. "Dad's asleep, so…"
Lelouch smiled. "I'll have a mareep kebab then." He ordered.
"Hey, how's it going with you and Lelouch?" Misty asked Shirley in the locker room. "I mean, are you or aren't you?"
"Eh?" Shirley asked in shock. "N-no, no we aren't-"
"There's nothing to be blushing about." Villetta told Shirley. "We all know you luuurrve him."
"Miss Villetta!" Shirley shouted as the other girls giggled.
"You like him though, don't you?" Villetta asked. "So much so that you even stabbed me to save him."
"Eh?" Shirley asked as Villetta's hands started shaking.
"It was so painful…" the tanned teacher told her. "To live peacefully every day with the woman who tried to kill me… but I had no choice." She said, her face turning into a blank white mask and falling to the floor. "But to don the mask of a teacher… Shirley Fenette…" she growled, forming into the clothes she wore that night, blood seeping from her ribs. "How dare you stab me?"
Shirley backed off in shock, and ran into the corridor.
She ran past Olivia, who turned to reveal the blank, white mask covering her face which dropped to reveal a black abyss inside her head.
She ran past Rolo and Ashford, whose masks fell to reveal inky blackness.
She ran past Mr. Bill, her science teacher, whose mask dropped to reveal blackness behind that wavy hair that Milly had always admired.
Everyone… their masks… all falling… with only darkness behind them…
Only one other person had a face…
"LULU!" Shirley shouted, sprinting at full speed towards the man she loved.
He turned around with a smile. "What is it, Shirley?" he asked politely, his face morphing into a white mask that fell to the ground, revealing the black visor of Zero, which cracked open into the horrific roar Zero had shown the Knights of the Round, no, the whole world.
Shirley screamed.
Then she opened her eyes.
'That's right…' she thought, sitting up in her bed, devoid of energy or happiness. 'Lulu is Zero… the monster who destroyed my father…'
Lelouch was shaken awake. "Huh, wha~?"
"It's morning." The shopkeeper from last night told him, handing him a coffee. "You really shouldn't sleep with your laptop open, Zero."
That woke Lelouch up. "Don't worry!" the young man laughed. "Your secret's safe with me. I had no idea you were still a student."
Lelouch shut the laptop. "Well, I suppose that is the case."
The Indian man smiled and offered his hand to shake. "Jamil Zamahn." He offered.
"Lelouch Lamperouge." Lelouch replied, sipping his coffee.
He could afford a conversation with this young man, find out how people thought of Zero.
He could always Geass him to forget about it afterwards.
'Lulu is Zero…' Shirley thought to herself on the train to Goldenrod city. 'Miss Villetta is a soldier, Kallen and Rivalz are members of the Black Knights…' Since the magnet train had been destroyed during the Black Rebellion, she was using the Celadon train which, while fast, gave her much more time to think. 'What about Nina? President? Ashford? Is school the only messed up place?'
The slower train also made it easier for Shirley to spot the billboard advertising Area Eleven's new governor.
'Why is Nunnally the Governor?' Shirley asked. 'What's real and what's not?'
"It's good." Lelouch told Captain Stern in the Goldenrod train yard.
"Then we shall incorporate this design into all the trains and ships." The boat designer nodded.
"Though, I must ask;" Lelouch managed. "Why is a ship builder like yourself designing trains?"
"I wish to make the best of my abilities." The scientist replied. "Which is why your design shall be incorporated."
Lelouch smirked. 'Geass makes everything so much easier.' He thought.
"Shirley!" Suzaku shouted, striding up to her outside Goldenrod Gym. "What's the matter? Calling me out so suddenly like this? My girlfriend's gonna get the wrong idea!"
"Ah, sorry…" Shirley replied, hesitating.
"Shirley?" Lelouch asked, spotting the pair and jogging up to them.
Two armed guards fell to the ground, electricity sparking around their paralysed limbs.
"Just asking for Lelouch's location and they draw their guns…" Jeremiah Gottswald spat. "Most suspicious."
"LORD JEREMIAH!"
He turned around to see his old comrade. "Villetta…" he said.
"Lelouch is in Goldenrod City." She reported. "Please, just release me from here."
Jeremiah nodded. "Thank you." He said. "I accept your request."
'What should I do..?' Shirley thought to herself as the two boys walked beside her atop the Goldenrod Department store rooftop. 'I called Suzaku out here, but what should I say..? Lulu's here too…'
'Shirley, what is the meaning of this?' Lelouch pondered. 'No, what if Suzaku was the one who called her out?'
'Ashfords report has stated that he was been with Lelouch all this time.' Suzaku contemplated. 'The MI5 can't exactly track them through the jungle, but we didn't receive information that Lelouch had returned to Area Eleven, so I can't bring myself to believe it.'
'I need to tell Suzaku that Lulu is Zero and robbed my father of his memories...' Shirley decided. 'Wait… what if these two are accomplices! To get back Area Eleven… to get back Japan… that's right… these two were best friends to begin with…'
She turned around in fear as two masks in her mind fell to the ground.
"What's the matter?" Lelouch asked her, taking a step forwards. "Shirley?"
He stepped on an imaginary mask, shattering it under his boots. "NO!" Shirley shouted, running to the ledge of the rooftop and climbing onto it.
"Shirley!" Suzaku shouted, running towards her with Lelouch.
"DON'T COME NEAR ME!" she shouted.
"Shirley…" Lelouch told her, trying to calm her down.
"Liars…" she gasped, taking a step backwards. "Everyone is fake… I-AAAGGH!" She screamed, tumbling off the skyscraper.
Lelouch sprinted forward and dove. He caught her wrist as she fell, and was thankful that Suzaku was there to grab his ankle.
Lelouch grunted, grabbing Shirley's wrist with both hands as they both dangled precariously over the ledge.
Shirley realised the drop, and gulped before looking up to see Lelouch grasping onto his wrist for dear life. "NO!" she shouted as one of Lelouch's pokéballs fell past her face as she struggled. "Let go! LET GO!"
"I CAN'T!" Lelouch shouted. "I WON'T!"
Shirley looked at him in shock. "I don't… I don't want to lose anything anymore…" Lelouch growled. "I don't want to lose… a single thing… Shirley…"
She nodded. "Okay…" she whispered, turning around in his grip and reaching out for his wrist.
Lelouch turned to look above him. "Suzaku!" he ordered.
The Knight nodded, planting his feet against the ledge and dragging the two people back onto the rooftop.
"Hey…" Kallen asked Rivalz as she bit into her pizza. "What do you think Lelouch is up to right now?"
"Eh, he's probably just hanging around or something."
Lemonade burst from C.C.'s nose as she exploded into laughter.
Lelouch, Suzaku and Shirley were all panting for breath atop the tower.
Being the one who didn't have to do any pulling, Shirley recovered first, despite the experience. "Suzaku's always pulling you up, isn't he Lulu?" she asked.
"If Lelouch was on top, we'd both be dead." Suzaku told her.
"If you're gonna say that, then save me before I fall, you psycho meathead." Lelouch told his old friend with a smirk.
"That's asking way too much." Suzaku laughed, before remembering himself. 'Why am I smiling?' Suzaku thought. 'No matter what Euphie says, Lelouch is still a monster…'
Lelouch saw Suzaku's internal snarl, and looked away.
'No, Lulu's working alone.' Shirley thought as a pokénav began ringing. 'Suzaku's not involved.'
"Ah, that's mine." Lelouch told everyone, standing up to answer it. 'Villetta?'
He flicked it open. "It's me." He said, walking a distance away from the others.
_\_ "Jeremiah's coming for you." _\_ Villetta explained. _\_ "The MI5 members at school have been taken out by him already, so there's no one I can send for you." _\_
"He's alive?" Lelouch asked.
_\_ "Yes, and what's more, he's much more in-tune with Rotom now." _\_ Villetta continued. _\_ "One of his eyes showed an inverted Geass- he may be able to negate the effects of yours and other people's Geass. The men you ordered to guard your secret seemed very disorientated before Jeremiah defeated them." _\_
"What happened?" Suzaku asked as Lelouch hung up. "That didn't seem like a call from a friend."
'Could Jeremiah have restored Shirley's memories?' Lelouch thought. 'This isn't good, with Suzaku here…'
Shirley slapped Suzaku on the back of the head. "Hey, my business with you comes first." She laughed.
"Ah, that's right." Lelouch nodded. "You two had a date, didn't you?"
"Jealous?" Shirley asked playfully.
Lelouch shrugged with a smile.
"Could it wait?" Suzaku asked as Shirley grabbed his wrist and dragged him along. "I need to—"
"Nope." Shirley laughed. "Come along now!"
'This place is about to become a battlefield.' Lelouch thought as they left him. 'Shirley isn't about to tell Suzaku anything, not with eyes like that, so its best if she stays with Suzaku. He'll keep her safe and she'll keep him out of my way.'
Lelouch watched as Jeremiah removed the Geass from the two guards Lelouch had ordered to kill Jeremiah, then beat them down bare-handed.
'So he has the power to neutralise Geass…' Lelouch nodded. 'He's mostly likely immune to its effects too.' Then a thought clicked. 'This would explain Euphemia's recovery, and if Shirley has truly remembered everything, then this would explain it too.'
He pushed a switch which activated the anti-terrorist smoke systems, and waited on the balcony until he caught Jeremiah's eye. 'Come up and see me, Dunsparce.' Lelouch taunted silently.
"What's this important thing you wanted to ask me about?" Suzaku asked Shirley as they ate ice-cream, walking on the beach south of Goldenrod.
"I… I like Lulu." Shirley told him, sitting down in the sand. "Suzaku… do you hate him?"
"I… liked him… once." Suzaku told her, sitting beside her.
"And now?" Shirley asked, waiting a full ten seconds for an answer that didn't come. "I thought it was weird." She said. "You guys bonded so well before. Did you two have a fight?"
"I can't forgive him." Suzaku told her darkly.
"Nothings unforgivable." Shirley told him, mirroring the words that Euphemia had been telling him for the past few weeks. "It must be that you're the one who won't forgive him. You just don't want to forgive him."
Suzaku gasped. Euphie had told him all this already, but Shirley was being stricter with her words. "I've forgiven him long ago." Shirley continued, again mirroring Euphie's words.
"Shirley…" Suzaku said slight surprise. Speaking with her, he was slowly beginning to understand what Euphie had been saying… but his thoughts were interrupted as he heard the explosion, followed by the screams of those fleeing the Celadon Department Store.
Abandoning Shirley, Suzaku sprinted towards the police faster than humans should, then flashed his badge. "Knight of Five, Suzaku Kururugi." He introduced himself.
"My Lord!" they saluted.
"There's a possibility that this is terrorism." Suzaku explained as smoke billowed out of the doors and windows. "At this point on, all police and firemen in the area are under my command."
"Yes, My Lord!"
"And I'll need to have someone protect her." Suzaku added, nodding towards Shirley.
Whipping out his pokétch, he began to signal for backup from the other Knights. Glancing back at Shirley, he smiled reassuringly before making his way into the department store.
That's when she decided to wait two minutes before charging in after Suzaku.
'Wait for me Lulu.' She prayed. 'I won't let you be by yourself.'
"A human/hybrid body and a Geass Canceller." Lelouch remarked in the basement of the shopping centre. "Your persistence is just like a dunsparce's after all."
"It is not Persistence." Jeremiah said, approaching Lelouch. "I call it Loyalty."
"I do not like that." He stated as Jeremiah stepped onto the gray strip of ground, becoming paralyzed. "What value does that emperor hold for you to swear loyalty unto him?"
"Wh-what..?" Jeremiah gasped.
"Little known fact for you, Dunsparce," Lelouch said, clapping his hands. "You see, magnetic fields don't affect humans much, but if the flux of the magnetic field emitted is a certain frequency, well, pokémon can't stand that. Locks up their muscles if they're not in their pokéballs. Imagine if someone put that fact to work? Well, there is precedent for it."
Jerimiah found himself pressed down to one leg from the weight of the invisible force pushing down on him.
"These tunnels were created by Team Rocket." Lelouch smirked. "These strips on the ground are electro-magnetized to emit a field of that exact frequency, trapping pokémon onto them. A trainer had to hit the switch or walk around, lest his pokéballs be sealed shut and his pokémon paralysed." Lelouch smirked. "I've been applying this effect into a projectile field, with all the transport in Kanto and Johto carrying it. Once it's completed and activated, these regions will be brought to a standstill- no pokémon that hasn't had the electromagnetic vaccine will be able to be used. You were a wonderful test case."
"You are an assassin sent by the Geass Order, I take it?" Lelouch asked. "Then I'll have you tell me; where is its location, where is Cyrus,
"You shall be the one to tell…" Jeremiah grunted, taking a forced step forward.
"What..?" Lelouch gasped.
"I have my reasons…" Jeremiah snarled, dragging himself forwards. "My readiness to carry out my Loyalty to the very end… and a truth I must find…"
"Impossible…" Lelouch gasped, reaching for his gun. "How the hell are you still moving!"
"Lelouch…" Jeremiah grunted, stepping forward. "Why do you act as Zero..? And turn against your fatherland, Britannia… and your very own father!"
Lelouch calmed down. "Because I am Lelouch Vi Britannia." He explained.
That stopped Jeremiah in his tracks better than any electromagnetic field could.
"My father, the Emperor of Britannia, let my mother die." Lelouch continued. "Because of that, Nunnally lost her eyes and legs… I never saw Ashford for years… together, we lost our futures."
"I know." Jeremiah replied. "I was there too. It was my first mission… to protect Empress Marianne, whom I greatly admired…" he collapsed to his knees. "But I couldn't… I couldn't even carry out my loyalty… Lelouch… you became Zero for Empress Marianne's sake, didn't you?"
"Wait, you didn't come here to kill me, did you..?" Lelouch asked.
"My master isn't Cyrus…" Jeremiah told him with tears running from his eyes. "But Empress Marianne… now… I can die with no regrets…"
"No." Lelouch stated, shutting down the field and rushing up to Jeremiah. "Your loyalty isn't over yet, is it?" he asked. "Will you fight with me?"
"Yes…" Jeremiah answered gratefully. "Your majesty…"
"I knew it."
Lelouch and Jeremiah turned to see Suzaku leading a handcuffed Shirley into the basement, blue flames in his hand. The girl pulled away from him, but she tripped in the gloom of the tunnel. "Shirley!" Lelouch shouted, running towards her to catch her as she fell. "Suzaku…" he snarled.
"That confession will do." Suzaku continued. "Shirley will act as a witness, since she can give her testimony both before and after her memories were erased."
"Lulu!" she shouted. "I swear, I didn't tell him anything!"
"It's alright." He told her, scowling at Suzaku as he towered over him with cold, unforgiving eyes. "I know…"
"Sir, Lord Kururugi and a civilian are still inside!"
"And so is Zero and a rogue assassin~." Tucker told the policeman. "So deploy the damned deoxys already~."
-}+{-
Yeah, next chapter will be all new stuff.
Varanus: Dammit Tucker, things were going great until you came along!
And incase Lelouch's new Geass didn't clue you in, Geass and Code development works differently in this story than canon. Just so you guys know, we're not pulling Red's revival out of our asses. All will be revealed soon…
And it will blow minds.