Ashford Academy
7: 50 AM
Thursday
Lelouch blundered his way through Ashford Academy, heavily conscious of his tired self. He had worked himself in a frenzy, staying up all night to discern the identity of the pink haired girl. The four other members in the house had been less then pleased with the returns of hi excursion, but had been a bit more understanding when he explained the situation.
That the gig was up. Any moment now, soldiers could hack through the Ashford's ceramic windows, bearing down on the school's population in an effort to search for the missing prince. Of course there were countermeasures, by way of knockout gas threaded through the entire ventilation system, but it made the threat no less real.
And he couldn't shake the feeling that something was familiar about this girl…..
"Hey Lelouch!" A friendly voice called. Shirley slipped in from behind and gave him a small peck on his cheek. She grabbed his hand and continued to walk with him, side by side. "How you feeling today?"
Lelouch blinked once, before recalling that the two of them were still technically in the field of dating.
He slipped an empty smile that few would recognize.
"Pretty good. Caught some nasty virus over the weekend, but I believe it's out of my system."
"Well, that's good. I was beginning to worry, you know." Shirley stared at him with bright eyes. Lelouch almost laughed at her concern, the unpaired, unrealistic ability of it all, a contrast to the twisted caucavers of reality.
"Thanks, Shirley." He stated simply. Both of them continued towards their respective classrooms, Shirley commenting about all that she had missed, and Lelouch reacting with a few choice words.
He put a hand inside his pocket and found something sticky. His smile and voice didn't wane as he gently lifted it out, and expected the substance out of the corner of his eye.
Pizza. Why, the HELL, is PIZZA IN MY POCKET. He cursed under his breath. Of course there was only one person who would've done it.
C.C.
These days, he didn't know what to make of her. She acted out in a bizarre fashion, more than once showing her emotional side. Just yesterday, she had exploded over the fact that breakfast had been made for the four of them, and not her.
Of course he'd done his best to explain that in the last months HE'D NEVER SEEN HER EAT ANYTHING BUT PIZZA. But she wouldn't take it, and he promptly took another beating from a female.
And just when he had begun to see her differently….
The couple turned the corner and came face to face with Milly. Her arms were crossed as blue eyes bore down on Lelouch, normal flippant expression replaced by one of intensity.
She darted forward and grabbed Lelouch's arm. "Sorry Shirley, gotta talk to your man for a bit." Before he could react, she was already shoving him forward. He was hauled halfway across campus before stopping in the middle of an empty soccer field.
Again, with the being overpowered by girls!
"Geez, what the hell was that for!" Lelouch asked, only to stop when the seriousness of her expression didn't change.
"Lelouch…. are you okay?" She asked. "How are you handling… their deaths?"
It took a second for the words to register.
That's right, Milly would ask that. Of his student friends, she was the only to know of the close relationship that he had with Euphemia and Cornelia. And the fact that he was a prince at all, for that matter.
He slumped his stance in an expected sort of misery. "Well, I'm taking it all right. Nunnally's doing about the same. It really came as a shock, I mean-"
Milly slapped him sharply. He was sent sprawling backwards from the blow, landing haphazardly in the mood.
"You know what, forget it Lelouch." She turned to leave. "I've known you for your entire life. It's fine in public, but don't you work this BS when it's just you and me."
"W-wait! Milly!"
"If you want to talk, you know where to find me."
With that, one Milly Ashford left a shocked Britannian Price midfield, just as the first tardy bell rung.
Britannia Military Compound
9:30 PM
Suzaku sighed as he retired to his room, spent from the day's work. It had been one trial to another, as higher ranking Britannian officers found every slight reason to make his life worse.
After all, that number filth didn't have his guardian Princess looking out for him anymore.
In between all the tasks he'd been assigned, he barely found the time to attend combat practice in the Lancelot. It didn't matter that he was the best pilot in the facility; to everyone but Cecile and Loyd, he was nothing more than mud.
He brought an arm up to his neck and sighted his movements from the stout mirror sitting opposite.
A hollow ghost stared back. A man with deep bags under tired eyes. Hair tussled and matted in elaborate knots, black uniform, smudged and sullied. The man's posture was slumped in defeated persecution.
Maybe… maybe I should've taken up his offer. He thought silently, dully thinking back to yesterday's events.
Suzaku had been given a day off, more as a forgotten detail then an act of kindness.
He had spent it at a black table, eyes piercing the emptiness of the chair opposite of him.
Small Corner Coffee. It was a quaint coffee shop, a small amenity of peace in the bustling Tokyo Settlement. Hour after hour, Suzaku had ordered coffee, over and over again. He poured it into the flowerbox when no one was looking.
Because this coffee shop was of a greater whole, the day he first meet Euphemia li Britannia. Back then it was easy, he was an aspiring soldier, and she, the beautiful girl who fell from the sky. They had come here after he'd shown her the Settlement's shopping and working district, both laughing at her wild antics.
"Hey Suzaku? What do you call a sheep with no legs?"
His hands tightened on the cup.
"A cloud!"
It shattered in his hand, raining coffee-mixed shards of glass to the ground. He stared at his bloody hands with a sense of stagnant numbness. Drops of red joined the smudged brown on the floor.
"What's your problem? You dumb or some'tin?" A waitress of sizable proportions walked up to the table, scowling profusely. She had set her hands wide on her hips, and was glaring steadily.
"All you been doing is sitting here all day and dumpin' your coffee to the flowers. Yeah, I've watched you do it. All day, in fact. And I finally understand who you are-"
She bent to make level eye contact with Suzaku. "You're a deadbeat, Eleven! SO IF YOU CAN'T PAY-" The waiter raised a fist. "GET THE HELL OUT OF-"
A pale hand grabbed the waiter's hand. "Hey, Suzaku. Sorry I'm late, traffic and the such." Suzaku blinked momentarily at the golden haired boy in front of him. The kid was about his age, and was wearing a white shirt with pink green swim trunks. Following him was an air of high nobility.
He handed a green card to the waiter. "Here, this should pay for all the drinks my friends been having." As the waiter left, swearing something obscene about Elevens, the blond promptly took the seat opposite of Suzaku.
They both sat in silence. The blond lazily slurped up the new coffee placed on the table.
"Who.. are you? How do you know my name" Suzaku asked, hesitantly. The other boy simply smiled. The hesitance turned to icy fire. "Fine then. I didn't need your help. That seat's taken. So get fuck out."
The maddening smile only increased. Suzaku felt his fists ball at his sides in anger.
He gets the hell out of here, or else. I'm not taking this crap, not today.
Just as Suzaku reached the peak of his anger, the boy spoke. "Fine, Kururugi. Allow me to introduce myself." The blond stood up and bowed low in an extravagant fashion.
"Gino Weinberg, Knight of 3, at your service." He burped loudly, distorting the effect of his words. "Sorry, just had some beans for dinner-"
Suzaku was already out of the door, hood drawn over his head.
"Bloody hell, he left me with the check!" Gino spun out of the chair and made a dash for the door.
"Stop man!" He burped again. "I don't need this exercise today!"
Suzaku didn't turn in his response. "Don't both asking, my answer is no!"
"How do you know what I'm going to ask? What if I'm offering you a billion dollars? A beach house with babes? If you don't stop then-"
"MY ANSWER IS NO!"
Suzaku turned once and felt rain splatter against his neck. The individual splotches turned into a plate of coolness as the tempo increased.
"I JUST WANT TO TALK!"
This guy just won't give up! Suzaku spared a glance behind him, annoyed that the distance between the two hadn't seemed to have increased or decreased in the slightest.
He ran headlong into a stranger, accidentally sending them sprawling. Under normal conditions, he would have stooped to offer assistance, a helping hand even if the Britannian didn't want it. But now, nothing was normal.
"Suzaku?" His world stopped at the sound of his name, spoken in a voice that he knew all too well.
Le…Lelouch! The word was almost enough to make him turn around, to double back and help up his best friend. But he couldn't face him.
Because he had failed.
FAILED to stop the Black Knights before the Massacre. FAILED to prevent the deaths of thousands of Japanese. FAILED to protect Euphemia and Cornelia, the only family besides Nunnally, in the world, that Lelouch had ever expressed love towards.
Suzaku knew Lelouch wouldn't blame him for happened, but the shame weighed heavily on his chest.
So he continued along his tumultuous path, not casting a backwards look towards his oldest friend.
Three blocks later, he took a sparing glance across his shoulder.
Did I lose him? Where'd he-
Two Knight Policemen sprung out of the shadows and tackled him to the ground. They fastened a pair of handcuffs past his wrist, holding him face down in the accumulating mud.
"HEY! You can take those off, I just told you to stop him! Not brutalize the man!" Suzaku turned towards the sound of Gino's voice. The pressure lessened off of his back, though both officers remained in close proximity to Suzaku. He sat in an upright position and wiped the mud off his face.
Gino took a seat next to him, leaning against the wall. "Sorry about that. Still getting used to this 'prejudice against Elevens' thing."
"Anyway, the point is that I want to ask you-"
"NO."
"See, this is the shit that gets me angry. You don't even KNOW what I'm trying to offer here! This is a chance of a LIFETIME!" He stated, exasperated. "I mean, why not just hear me out?"
Suzaku waited a bit, then sighed. "You're going to ask me if I'll join the Knight of the Rounds, to replace the recently deceased Knight of 9."
"….."
" Well fine, maybe you do know what I'm going to ask. But how is this a bad thing? You'd be moving up in the world, having nearly all the advantages of the highest nobility. And if you don't think you deserve it, think again. I've seen you and the Lancelot in combat, and you're already tenfold better than Luciano!"
Suzaku adjusted his position to tuck in a single leg. He thought a bit before responding.
"No, that's not it. As a Knight of the Rounds, your duty is not subject to a single area. Rather, you monitor the entirety of the Britannian Empire. I can't afford that, not now. Before I rise to that level, I first need to resolve things in Japan."
Gino stared at Suzaku incredulously. "You thing you can CHANGE the system like this? With your current rank and how you're treated, I'd consider SURVIVING the year to be an accomplishment."
"Nevertheless, that is my path. It's the very least I can do for Euphemia."
Gino was slightly taken aback by the final statement. Ah, that makes sense now. Rumor had it that the Princess and her knight shared a rather close bond.
Suzaku Kururugi is staying in this hell, for her..
He nodded and stood, beckoning for the guards to leave.
"Very well, I can see that your mind had been made up." A hand reached into a pocket and took out a crumpled sheet of paper. He handed it off to Suzaku. "But should you ever change your mind, you can call this line….."
"I could be…. a Knight of the Round." He whispered. For a second, he let his mind wander along the paths of that future. Outfitted in white, cape flowing behind him. Being respected as a member of the greatest-
No
I have to bring an end to this madness in Japan, BEFORE I move on to wider prospects.
The door suddenly swung open, making Suzaku jump up to attention instantly..
"At ease, Kururugi." The officer stated open naturally, without any spite or malice. Obviously one of the few people who disregarded ethnicity in soldiers. "You have a video call, waiting for you. Some higher up general confirmed it for you. Follow me to the room."
A video call…. from who? He racked his mind, but still could not find anyone who would want to contact him.
Suzaku stepped forward, right behind the officer. They walked for several minutes, twisting down a multitude of hallways and then backtracking a different direction. The pair finally arrived at a solid steel door, etched with the number one.
"Sorry for the delay, but I was given explicit orders to make sure we weren't followed." He tapped in a code on the keyboard to the left. "This is the highest level communications room. Soundproofed, bug swept, and a ton of extra junk to encrypt the signal. It was even used by Viceroy Cornelia a couple times."
The officer stood aside as the door swung open with a swish. "The call should connect automatically after your identity is confirmed."
Suzaku stepped into the dark room. The steel barricade closed behind him, plunging the room into a pitch black darkness. One by one, the surrounding lights blinked on, casting pale rays onto the forward console. The screens surrounding him remained blank, save for a green lit screen with a single phrased question on it;
"WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE COFFEE SHOP?"
Suzaku froze his movements.
Euphemia fidgeted in her seat nervously, eyes anchored to the screen in front of her. The display showed a mirror version of what Suzaku was seeing, if Cornelia's message had gone through properly. When Suzaku began typing the passcode, she'd know instantly.
Her eyes occasionally flicked to Cornelia and Lelouch, who were standing to the side, just out of sight from the camera.
It had been Lelouch's idea to get her into touch with Suzaku, though she had originally been planning the call since the second night after the SAZ. But she had selfishly shoved off the call, day after day, because of her own anxiety and fear.
Because, I'll have to tell him that I'm now a Black Knight. She thought nervously. The ones that HE thinks are solely responsible, for ALL of this death.
Beyond her thoughts, another voice edged in. But why should YOU care what Mr. Goody Two Shoes thinks? It won't matter, anyway, whether he accepts you or not!
But… it's Suzaku! The first person, ever, to truly believe in my dreams!
So WHAT. Does a MASS MURDERER really care about what others think of her? Euphemia winced at that proclamation, earning her a concerned look from Cornelia. Euphemia waved it off and gave a smile, turning her attention back towards the screen.
"Try to convince him to see, once and for all, that Britannia CAN'T be changed from within…"
Those had been Lelouch's instructions. Though she could see the strategic use of a pilot of Suzaku's magnitude, she mostly took note of the tremor in Lelouch's voice, the underlaying fear of the eventual confrontation between him and his best friend
So she'd try her best, for both of their sakes.
Who CARES? War is war, emotion doesn't factor-
The light indicator blinked green. As letters began scrolling across the screen, typed by an invisible hand.
"SMALL CORNER-"
"-COFFEE." Suzaku finished. His right index finger hovered over the enter switch, hesitant over the next course of action. Inside, a blaze of acrid smog tipped and rolled, spewing nonsense and disjoined words. But a single thought prevailed over the rest.
Is Euphemia alive? Do I dare to hope? I….
"-I have to know." He depressed the key. The screen flashed blue twice before fading to black. Gradually, a new image replaced the nothing.
Euphemia.
The soft face and pink hair. Bright eyes and open posture. It was her, and she was ALIVE.
"Hey, Suzaku." She said brightly. The tone, was hers. Two simple words that erased all doubt from his mind that indeed, this was Euphemia.
Suzaku felt a wave of cool, blessed relief mount his variegated thoughts as he broke out the first honest smile in days.
With her alive, he could afford to dream again.
"Hey…. Hey Euphy."
They sat quiet for another minute. Suddenly, Suzaku's mind scrambled to the consequences of her livelihood.
If Britannia said they were assassinated, yet they're still alive….
If she's alive, but not returning to Britannia…...
If she's not returning to Britannia, is it possible that they aren't safe in the Empire?
He chose his next words carefully. "Euphemia, what happened at the SAZ?"
She dumped her smile instantly at the mention. Pink eyes took on a hard, cool look.
"The SAZ was carried out with two objectives. The crippling of the Black Knights, and the genocide of Japanaese. Britannia tried to have me assassinated, as a further initiative. They then took the moment to single handedly wipe out all the Japanese present in the area-"
IMPOSSIBLE! That can't be true…
"- as well as blaming the Black Knights for the entire event. This would cut off their support and resources, while also turning the people against them. At the end of the day, only the objective of crippling the Black Knights was accomplished. The actions of my sister resulted in over 40% of the Japanese making it out alive."
Suzaku felt a frigid wave extrapolate from his center, rolling outwards in waves of ice. She said 40% were saved, so that's 60% killed. But I SAW the bodys, I WAS THERE WHEN THEY COUNTED THE CORPSES. The number was at least 95%, of everyone present.
So where did they get the extra bodies? Suzaku bit his lip silently, feeling queasy from the revelation.
"Euphemia, where are you now? Tell me, and I'll go to your location!" He stated.
"Suzaku… you'd come to help me?" She asked, words carefully laid out. Her expression was unreadable.
"Of course, Euphy. You, I'd follow to the ends of the world."
At those words, Euphemia looked back at Suzaku with tear streaked relief. "Suzaku, thank you. Your support means, more than you know." She wiped back the drops. "Currently, I'm in the Black Knights' Submarine."
Suzaku's smile lay plastered to his face, now artificial.
Black Knights.
She's with the Black Knights! His perception slanted, coming to arms with a twisted sort of logic.
Her story, the accusations against Britannia, it all finally makes sense! He stood up urgently, knocking over the chair.
"Euphemia, GET OUT OF THERE NOW!" He shouted. "Zero, and the other Black Knights, THEY ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED!"
"…. what? Suzaku, what do you mean?" She asked, with a quizzical expression. Her eyes briefly twitched to an unseen corner of the room, before back to the monitor.
They're watching her, even now!
"You can't stay with the Black Knights. They are dishonest, cowardly, and will do anything to win! Since they're formation, they've caused nothing but terror and panic. FEAR AND DEATH."
"But… Suzaku, they're trying to do good! They saved-"
"NO EUPHEMIA! YOU CANNOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT THEY ARE TELLING YOU!" He flung his fist against the desktop. His calculated expressions of hidden emotion fractured in the worst way.
"ZERO IS MANIPULATING YOU, HE'S GOING TRYING TO USE YOUR POSITION FOR HIS OWN SELFISH GAIN! WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER, WHEN IT'S ALL SAID AND DONE, HE'LL THROW YOU AWAY LIKE TRASH!"
The words loomed in the air for a solid moment. Euphemia had turned downwards, hiding her expression from sight.
Suzaku rapidly scanned the corners of the room. Are they going to try to cut off the transmission?
But no, that would just seek to turn her against them. He let himself smirk smugly. I'm finally one step in front of Zero.
"But what about Saitama?" The whisper was low and raspy. It took a second for Suzaku to realize that the voice belonged to Euphemia. "What about Shinjuku? Was Zero fully to blame for both of those incidents?"
Suzaku nodded unhesitatingly. "If he had just followed the status quo, decided to LIVE his life like the rest of us-"
"Fuck you, Suzaku."
Suzaku's mind froze, literally caving under the presence of those words. Even after the reached his ears, it took an extra second of comprehension for the full effect.
Did Euphemia, did Euphemia, DID EUPHEMIA JUST SWEAR AT ME?
Eupheia took the opportunity to press her outburst.
"What about the forced requital of Area 7? Five thousand casualties. The Mob Panic in New York? Fifteen thousand. And what of the forced repression of Africa? Eighteen thousand deaths!"
He simply sat there in his shock, letting the numbers roll over his head. Every dark Britannian moment within the last five years, every monstrous action.
"Did Zero decide to murder the SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS that lived in those ghettoes? THE MILLION THAT SHOWED UP TO AT THE SAZ?" She roared.
"DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY JAPANESE ARE STILL LIVING?" Suzaku looked it up at her exclamation. "
"Before the second Great Pacific War, before the invasion of Japan, the forced oppression, there were approximately 130 MILLION JAPANESE." Her voice sunk to a lethal coolness. "Do you know, have you even bothered to look, exactly HOW many of them there are left?"
Suzaku shook his head slowly, an unconscious answer to her prompt.
"20 MILLION!" She roared, jumping up and bearing down on Suzaku with feral anger.
TWENTY MILLION? Good god…. Suzaku mind slipped asunder the horrifying number. "God…. 130 million, to 20 million…. that's over-"
"85 percent." Euphemia finished. "It means that four, out of every five Japanese alive BEFORE the invasion, IS DEAD."
Suzaku watched, stunned for the third time that day. Four out of five… FOUR OUT OF FIVE DEAD….. numbers like that bordered on genocide!
But Suzaku set his teeth feverously. But of that number, how many of those deaths were indirectly, or directly, linked to the Black Knights?
And who feed her this information?
The obvious answer slapped him in the face. It's from the Black Knights. This information, has assuredly been falsified.
But this explanation, it doesn't explain the change in Euphemia's behavior. He briefly stared at Euphemia's face. Lines drawn, features heavy and laden with lead. The expression, that, only days before, had been filled to the brink with hope, had now become visibly sunken with dank despair.
And the anger of the kind he'd never seen before. A manifestation of devlish fire that flared and snapped with fangs and claws. It leaked out of her eyes and skin, inducing madness. Yet in the pits was something else. A source of toxicity, spewing darkness into her being.
Guilt.
"EUPHEMIA." His tone was low, but encumbered with authority. Euphemia clammed up instantly, despite herself. The voice he had used, it had never been raised against her.
"Do you feel like, you're to blame… for the massacre?"
That got a visible reaction out of the Princess. Her entire frame curved downwards as she brought legs up to her chest. Her arms tightly clutched at her legs. Eyes closed, forcefully shut as tears leaked out of the sides.
Suzaku watched the love of his life inwardly tear at herself. His appearance bereted true sympathy, and shared pain for the girl who fell from the sky.
"Euphemia…. you're not to blame for this. You couldn't know this would have happened, it's simply not possible." He then affixed a hopeful smile. "And you acted out of compassion and sincerity, selflessly, to immediately help those less fortunate then yourself. You put your life and soul on the line for others, no one can fault you for that."
From beneath the swathe of unfurled hair, he saw her eyes raise slightly at his words. Her arms and legs had lost the urgent grip. He quickly continued.
"If it was anyone, it was the Black Knights who-"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Suzaku's blood ran a silvery cold, an inhuman laugh swelling through the room and out the speakers. Had he been paying more attention, he'd would've caught sight of two shadows at the edge of the transmission that jumped at the pronouncement. Euphemia had raised her face to Suzaku, body still tucked into a ball on the chair.
Her features, were of insanity. The pupils were dilated wide, opened to their largest degree. They roamed around the room, seeing nothing. Frenzied. Predatorial. Her grinning mouth was open and spewing delirium.
Her countenance…. just like a mad Harpie of mythology..
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! OH, that's GREAT. My, isn't that just GRAND? Britannia's white knight, keenly passing the blame towards someone else." Euphemia had reached with her arms, cupping her face with mock sincerity. "And all because you, you with your puppy face, can't bear to imagine that they were wrong.
The words hung in the air, and Suzaku felt a spike of anger. "NO! Euphemia, you have NO IDEA what you're talking about-"
"OH, DO I?" She asked, expression leery and off tilter. "Do I have to lay it out for you? Suzaku Kururugi, the man working to change the system from WITHIN. Honroable, so honorable."
She rotated in her chair, until her entire body was upside down. Her head suspended across the chair's legs.
"You've stooped, you've taken the abuse and kissed all the right shoes. And you told yourself that it was ALL done with justification, so your dream could become reality."
She held out two fingers, inverting them to portray a person walking upon the desk. "For years you've played this game, suffered every kind of abuse."
"And then, here comes Zero." Her other hand created another avatar. The two fingers walked up to Suzaku's representative. "The mighty, MIGHTY ZERO. He kills the one responsible for a massive killing, and then he goes out on rant to bring every crooked politician, any corrupt, bureaucrat, to justice."
"Pettitioning for CHANGE, contriving against the norms of the world, and he was SUCCEEDING. In a manner of months, he's inspired purpose in the eyes of a dying people. Helped instill a sense of security that an empire spanning A THIRD OF THE WORLD couldn't achieve. Do you know he's done?" Her eyes cocked to the left curiously.
"He's given people hope."
There was a brief juncture between words. Her smile widened.
"And I think, that this cute wittle dog, turned out to be a snake hiding behind a cute wittle puppy dog mask. And the snake bellied with jealousy and spite, because why should this dragon get the praise and happiness, for wasn't that what the snake was doing for all these years?"
"Stop it." Suzaku whispered.
"And oh no, no one ever thanked the snake! He was left trampled in the mud." She took notice of Suzaku's face and smiled wider. "Hey hey, here me out, here me out."
"I hypothesize that the snake…" She held out one clawed hand. "Would do absolutely ANYTHING, to kill the Dragon." She moved both of her hands by independent minds, imitating a fight between the two titans.
"Stop it, Euphemia!"
"And the SNAKE reared its fangs, and splurged the belly of the beast!" She hacked downwards with her left hand, leaving a jagged red slash behind on her right palm. "The SNAKE jumped on its prey, and wrapped its long torso around the dragon-"
"-And began to squeeze." She grasped her wrist intensively, leaving behind purple bruises. "AND THE SNAKE KNOWS, THAT GIVEN THE CHANCE, HE WOULD KILL AND KILL AND KILL AND KILL NOT JUST BECAUSE OF HIS ANGER-"
"SHUT UP!" Suzaku cried. With a startling forward motion, Suzaku took lifted his chair, and smashed in the screen, though not in time to stop the final words.
"BUT BECAUSE, FRANKLY, IT IS HIS NATURE….." The screen powered down, dropping the transmission automatically.
Suzaku was left panting at the empty monitor. He swayed from side to side, then slumped against the right wall. "God, I didn't want this! I DIDN'T WANT THIS!"
A bloodied fist was raised towards the ceiling. "What she said, those words, IT'S NOT ME! IT'S NOT ME! IT'S NOT ME! IT'S NOT ME! IT'S….. NOT….. me…"
His voice ended in a light flicker. The frayed computer wires blinked solemnly in the gloom as Suzaku sat, legs drawn to his chest.
The Black Knights…. Zero…. Zero….. ZERO! His eyes took on a livid glare or omniscient anger.
"Euphemia…. what… what did Zero do to you?!"
The door swiped open with a small hum, light pooling into the darkened room. A single, short silhouette was barely perceptible.
"Suzaku Kururugi." The voice was child like in its tone, yet frigid in its presence.
"Would you like to know why, Euphemia is acting like that?" Brown eyes bent down to look Suzaku in the eyes.
"Would you like to know….. Zero's power?"
A/N: Heyo! Happy HALLOWEEN WEEK folks!
I apologize, but I will not be uploading a new chapter in the next week, for two reasons. One, last week was so busy and everything, I couldn't finish up the next chapter. Also, I wrote with some BIG MISTAKES in the logical flow. So, I've got to finish that first.
My second reason, is a review I got from one 'Complete Critic', who wrote a small amount of what I should fix, mainly the grammar and the character's personalities. So my goal in the next week, is to fix the errors, and the character flaws, before moving forward. Probably won't be any big fixes, but I do agree that Cornelia and Euphemia's allegiance changed way too fast to be believable. The reasons behind their change is there, but should probably be explored a bit more.
Just a question, are these strong enough reasons for C and E's change in allegiance?
Euphemia - Seeing a massacre of such a caliber up close, being slightly to blame for it (it should be noted that Britannin, in the universe of this story, has never done anything of this scale.)
Cornelia - Seeing Euphemia in danger. Living outside the system, as long as Britannia exists, both she and Euphemia will be in constant danger of being recognized, and then of having assassins sent after them to finish the job. Living inside the system, as long as Britannia exists, they will run the danger of being back stabbed by the Royal Council, who, I just realized, I should also mention more often outside of the first chapter.
Good news is that my highschool is taking pity on us sophmores, and I'm looking at a week with much less homework. So I should have more than enough time to get everything done. Except on Thursday, where I'll have to be on door duty for trick-or-treaters.
Have a haypp Haloween :D