Disclaimer: I own nothing of Code Geass, nor of Guilty Gear, nor to a lesser extent, BlazBlue and Rewrite. I do own this story, and all the inspirations along with it. And of course, the brain where the ideas came from.
She followed him, despite her burning feet, the bleeding arm and the wounded skin. Over and under the hills she walked, knowing not why she did so.
He seemed a misplaced thing in this desolation. On the outside he appeared like some sinister, dark-cloaked cultist with grotesque wings and an odd, swinging tail. But to Kallen, especially to her, he was the single brightest thing to grace the dull and desolate Zones.
Before she knew it, she had lost him, disappearing into a mass of warped buildings that resembled a forest of concrete and steel. They'd been heading into a dead city away from the Preserve, perhaps to his secret base in the Zone. She looked left and right, thinking it impossible to have lost a beacon that strong and bright, and as she was about to run forward, a voice stopped her, echoing from a fallen ramen bowl sign to her right.
"Why are you following me?" There he was, not as tall as he was standing on that rock, but imposing all the same. Nudging thoughts on how he was able to disappear from her senses so quickly aside, she gazed into the amethyst glow of his mask's eyeholes. They emanated a faint curiosity, along with something more forlorn.
"Call it curiosity," she said lightly, unheedful of the way her body seemed to want to quake at his sheer presence, now much closer than before. "Mind, I'm still mad about being used, but when I heard it had been a Gear, a Gear like you, I went to thinking. I mean, I would've been pissed if I found out I was working for a Gaia roob."
"And now that I come to you," drawled the stranger, "is your curiosity satisfied? Or- my pardons, but what exactly are you curious about?"
There was a maddening silence, and she thought she could sense his raised eyebrows behind the mask. "Is it my tail?" he demanded. Her eyes were quickly tugged towards the twitching appendage. "It's my tail isn't it? I knew this thing was weird. Damn thing only comes out in the only form that's important..."
"No no!" she said, covering up a stupid squeak in her voice with her hand. "I meant...your wings."
"What about them?" he flapped them absently.
"I mean, it's the first time I've seen someone of the Brethren with them."
"Is it now?" The feathered wings never stopped being battered by the winds. "Well I know nothing more to these myself. It was there when I first came into this. They're not usable to fly, and I'm not sure what their function would then be." He looked back at her from glancing at his wings. "Will that be all? You must head back to your group." He turned to walk away.
"Wait!"
The stranger seemed to grumble at her interruption. "What is it now?"
"You mentioned...Is it true you were just 'normal' before you became that?" she asked the only question that came to mind as the violet stare bored into her.
"Yes. But isn't that true for the rest of us? To an extent, we're supposed to be as normal as them. It is only in these cases that we are differentiated." He flapped his wings for emphasis, then turned away with an air of finality. "Answer my question then in turn. Did you take that form because you are truly Japanese or only because you would hopefully be left alone if you took the guise of one?"
Kallen's lips set into a thin line. "I'm really Japanese, human, Britannian. But I am a Gear. I can't ever let go of that now."
"I see. May you find your purpose, Kouzuki Kallen. Fare you well."
"Eh?" Before she could get over the surprise of him calling her by a name no one else should know, he had vanished with the sound of ripping cloth.
"You can't just run away like that, you bastard! How the hell did you know that?" It was a risk she was not willing to let go so easily. Fortunately he had reappeared not too far from the limit of her senses, and with a tug at her already taxed body, her Gear signature seeped out from her chest and then she leaped right after him.
Strangely enough, the stranger had waited, and when she reached the center of a town square littered with unrecognizable debris, he stood imperiously at the center, the violet glow of his eyes piercing through the sands.
"How'd you know my name?" she demanded, raising her hand threateningly. "Who are you? Is this part of your powers? Mind reading as well as mind control? Now I'm really pissed!"
"Calm down, girl." The inflection in that last word set her hackles on edge, and she was about to charge when he spread his arms wide, and his power literally flooded her consciousness, nearly overcoming her angry exterior.
When she looked again, he had changed. Gone was the tail, the mask, the hood. In its place was a draconian head with a blank, faded indigo circle for a face, and wider, longer wings. An bizarre, inky darkness seemed to pool at and shroud his feet and the signature circle that had been small and insignificant had flared and grew. "I am Zero. That is all I am, nothing more, nothing else," he said, holding out a gaunt hand with a flourish.
"How?" she asked numbly. This was complete transformation, a stage and form all Gears possessed, but which no free-willing one would shift into willingly, for fear of losing themselves. Ohgi had warned her never to do something similar, or they'd be forced to kill her. Yet there he stood, and she could feel the raw power surging through him, checked supremely within like water in a bottle, held back by some force she could not see. The lullaby crashed into a cresecendo in her mind, screeching madly.
"I don't even know myself," he remarked, folding the outstretched wings over the front of his body. "It is a bothersome thing, intruding itself into my life so quickly. In the end, it might be just a useless thing to possess."
"You mean to say you weren't born like this? You were just a normal human? Or did you have inklings of what you were...?" Like she had, a creeping fear that she had never been able to let go, until she met the group.
"I was a 'normal', under the guise of an illusion that even I had no idea existed. Until...this. Why do you ask? Were you the same?"
"No," she said. "I...always knew I was different. I didn't know to what degree, and later I realized it was beause I am...what I am. Since then, I've been afraid to be exposed, revealed and killed. At other times I just wanted it all to end. I hated that fear that ruled me. That is, until I met them."
"And so you embraced what you are. You accepted the purpose that is to come. You challenged that fear, and won." She stared, a bit defiantly into the face that barely reflected her form, like one's reflection in muddy water.
"Purpose?"
"Yes. Someone told we all had 'purposes'. At first, I thought it was to find out truth. And so, to my shame, I brought the full force of my powers on you lot, starting a foolish chaos that may have consequences even I cannot see. But then, no...I shall not speak more of it. Suffice to say I have lost what purpose I have, come what may."
"But you're powerful!" she exclaimed. "You were able to do this, become like that without consequence? You mean to say a, a rarity, am exemplary like you won't do anything more?" Kallen was flabbergasted.
"Trust me, I've already done enough. If you'll return to the Preserve, you'll find out why exactly. And again, I apologize for my part. It shall not happen again."
"Hell, I'm still mad you had the nerve to get us all involved, but you brought us all back. Save for those three. That tells me something. But now you have to- You're a Gear aren't you? Don't you have a thought for this world? Our brethren?"
"I already have. It shall be darker times for Gears all over the world. That is why I urged you to seek refuge in Gaia. I wager they shall be looking for me, and you have permission to tell them what you know. But beyond that-"
"To hell with Gaia!" Kallen shouted, and Zero seemed to be taken back, shifting the full force of his attention to her. "You have to take responsibility for what you've done! For what you are!"
"Responsibility?" He echoed, inclining his head up. "I don't have the will to take any more of it. I don't have a purpose anymore."
"Then find a purpose!" she screamed, and in that instant her own power flared, a geyser of fire bursting out from the ground beneath her. It appeared for but an instant, bathing her without effect, before it dissipated, leaving charred ground below her. "Or if you won't, I swear I will find you wherever you are and whoever you might be, even if you do know of me, and incinerate you. Pound you, crush you, engulf you and myself in a blaze of ash. I will swear to that, you can be sure of it."
Zero was silent, letting the winds shift his form to and fro. Then he reached out and plucked a feather from his wings. He held it out to her, letting it fall gracefully on the air. She snapped it up with her uninjured hand. He moved forward, pushing his face close to hers, making her draw her head back slightly.
"Your words do not sway me, and I believe I have the power to oppose the foolish you, even if I were caught unprepared. But..." The Gear seemed to exhale a long, deep breath. "Whether or not I find a purpose, I shall find you again and give you my answer. People seem to be demanding them of me lately. You will know it is me when I tell you about the feather. Keep it with you at all times." He turned away from her then, a slight, lean back that affirmed nor disputed a challenge. "But in any case, you are a brave Gear. No, as a living, breathing being, you have great courage, a fire that has yet to find itself quenched. Perhaps that is your purpose... Kallen." He disappeared from her sight again, and this time she could not track him at all. There was only the barest whisper of wind where he'd once stood.
Kallen looked at the sole feather in her hand and clamped her fingers over it. Zero...who are you? Will you save the Gears or be our downfall? And why did I try so hard to save you? To follow you?
)()()()()()()()(
"You are very nearly late," said C.C, having never strayed from her kneeling position near the now unconscious prince. "I'd never thought a baby like you would go into a tantrum so quickly. If you hadn't, there would've been a chance to reverse the damage you did."
"Kuh! There was? Why didn't you go and find me?" demanded Zero, striding up to her. He motioned with his hand, the coils of shadow disappearing from Clovis' body. It fell limply to the ground, unmoving.
C.C. ignored his question, instead asking one of her own. "So what will you do now, baby Gear?" Her voice was clear and still like the surface of a frozen lake. "How shall you continue your search for 'the truth'? This 'condition' has failed you."
"Is brother...no, the Prince still alive?"
With a shuffling of clothes, she stood. "For all intents and purposes, your brother is 'dead'. Whatever he had been was obliterated by your carelessness. I counsel a merciful death. What will you do?"
"He should at least be returned to the Family. I shall see to that." A transparent, bluish sphere swallowed the Prince's body. "C.C, you seem wise, and are a Gear. Where might I find my purpose?"
"I thought you'd already found it," she remarked, staring through the barrier at the dead forest outside. "No, you swore it, that you would find 'truth'. It was part of your promise with me."
"I see. I have truly been a disgraceful man-"
"Baby," she interjected without malice.
"-to be forgetting myself in so many crucial moments! Your promise, Clovis, and the Gears I used. Worthless."
She stepped back to look at him fully, at the once regal form of Zero bowed and drained. C.C reached out a hand to pat his face, her white, thin fingers reflected against the indigo circle. "Come what may, you may finally let your illusions to rest." For the first time, Zero, no Lelouch saw the mysterious woman smile, a soft, barely seen glimpse of kindness that quickly faded away. "But as long as you cling to being human, I shall have to be there with you, guiding your young hands to teach you what it means to be Gear. What it means to be utterly different. You've only but started with the massacre you've wrought."
"The madness I've wrought." Zero had gone, leaving behind the boy mired in self-doubt.
"It matters not to me. The just may see it a cruel thing; the justified, a merciful one. I only see the baby playing with his toys, using hands whose use he has not yet fully understood. You're already corrupted, baby Gear. Your soul's been tainted beyond redemption."
"Is it truly beyond me? Surely even this scarred, comatose world carries the hope of recuperation? Surely it can become a world where nobody needs to be hurt?" A world where Nunnally would never have to fear her brother, or the rest of the world she could not see.
C.C cupped his bare, weary and shadowed face with both hands, whispering, "How would you know what the world thinks? The world has never tasted the life of a human. And in any case, wasn't it your vow to-"
AN: Elements discarded during impromptu planning of setting:
() Britannia fulfilling the role of the Librarium of Blazblue. Severely restricting ars to its citizens and using it to subjugate the world as a start. However, it's something that's too narrow for me to pursue, and as mentioned, I've never been a fully appreciative fan (having never played the game and all) of the title. Which is conversely true with the main cross, Guilty Gear. Perhaps this is a seed that will bear fruit in any of your minds instead.
() Straight-up cameos from the other titles I crossed... I've never been comfortable with the idea of several characters appearing within a setting, sometimes they may fill certain character types already present in one side. Or they'll bloat up the roster, making for a very unhealthy fiction of wooden puppets bleating the author's words. Their addition may just be a hassle to characterize. I consider it poor taste on my part to put introduced characters out of attention or worse, killing them off quickly as soon as they've done their parts. Or they just become a name the author can use to give the illusion of not having an OC, when all the while they're written to be too OoC that they may as well be OCs. Or maybe the characters from the two sides aren't really compatible, and you're just crossing for the sake of writing something or the possibility of jotting down a scene in one's mind about two particular writers. Mind, it would look good as comedic or fluffy sketches, but I don't read or write comedy or the latter. I'm firm on the subject of this fic to keep Code Geass as the "base template" of the world I'm crafting, with the crossover being weaved in like patterns on the cloth. The characters from the other titles I deemed too unique in their aspects as "characters" and potential players in Lelouch's bid for the Throne. At the most, they shall only become cameos or off-hand names like a certain Dr. Baldhead a chapter before.
() Mentions of the EU or Chinese Federation fronts. In Anarchy, I made painstaking characterizations to one OC for the EU and Xingke for the Feds to make them the reader eyes for their particular sides. It ended up sometimes consuming majority of chapters or veering focus away from the main action. As such, I decided here to set the rules that would give me the excuse not to focus the spotlight on them so much, keeping it on ground more familiar with readers; i.e. the Britannian front and Japan.
Chapter title is from the track in the official disc that plays in some scenes of the anime. Please expect to see similar chapters in future.
Lastly, I hope readers aren't too put off by future unsubtle hints of "harem-ization". That is my obsession after all, and is one that would've been read in Anarchy. And yes, it would include the males. Sometimes bros really are better than hos.
Thanks for reading!
Merlin Out.