Suzaku watches as what appears to be C2 leads Kallen into a cage.
He hadn't seen C2 for years, and now, here she was, shoving Kallen into a cell owned by his enemies.
He had never liked C2. They hardly knew each other, only meeting during the final stages of the Zero requiem. Even then the only talked about tactics, never discussing personal matters.
This only makes his choice easier.
He lets go of his hold on the ceiling dropping onto C2.
She widens her eyes and opens her mouth to speak, but Suzaku way-lays her with his leg before she can utter a word.
"Quick, Kallen. See will probably wake up soon!"
Kallen stands in her half open cell, jaw on the floor.
Suzaku looks behind himself, looking for some other person Kallen might be staring at, but he appears to be the only one in the cell area. "What? We need to hurry!"
"You just knocked Nunnally out!" Kallen keeps her voice even, possibly due to the sheer weirdness of the past week making this seem like a normal occurrence in comparison.
Suzaku mimics Kallen's slack jawed expression. "Wait, that's Nunnally?"
As he points, C2 dissolves into the slightly smaller frame of Nunnally.
"Oh crap." Suzaku looks up.
"Yeah, I was trying to get Lady Kaguya out of her cell, but the only way I could see how was to bring Kallen in as a prisoner."
"Wait, so how come C2 was allowed into the cell area?"
"Long story, involving a Geass user, a pipe, and a radio."
"Tell me later. Meantime, let's get both of them out of here."
An alarm klaxon starts blaring, and a voice rises above the din. "We have intruders inside the prisoner detainment area! Capture or kill them at all costs."
"Yeah maybe that might have to wait a bit." Nunnally snarks as they both drop into a fighting stance.
o-o-o-o
Refusal starts to sweat under the twin grins the two standing behind him are giving. They hadn't answered a single one of his questions, just kept a pistol next to his head while he nervously scans his monitors.
"Ok, so, how about you please answer me this? Why haven't you killed me yet?"
The woman answers. "We need you alive. You have certain information we need to complete the next phase of our work."
"What?" the man looks alarmed. "I have nothing to say to people like you."
"Really?" the woman pulls out a cattle prod and twirls it around. "I'm going to have fun changing your mind."
Refusal bursts out in a fresh bout of sweating.
The man twitches the pistol, gesturing towards the consoles. "Somebody wants your attention. No funny business."
Refusal turns back to his consoles. A plan forms in his head, one involving the pistol under the counter, next to the keyboard. He slowly reaches for it, hand closing around the cold grip.
o-o-o-o
Milly waits in the backstage area for her producer. She sincerely hopes she won't lose her job, due to all the rookie mistakes she had made. She had seen some of the other anchors get fired for much less.
The producer pokes his head around the corner. "Hey Milly, got a sec?"
She stands and enters the office. The producer (She have never learned his name. Nobody called him anything other producer) sits in his chair behind his desk. "I just wanted to congratulate you. We've gotten a ton of ratings thanks to your handling of the situation. Keep up the good work."
He shoos her out of the office, already looking at his papers.
Well, maybe her job was safer than she thought. She punches out to take a bath and forget about the events of the day.
o-o-o-o
Kallen swings her leg around, dislocating the jaw of one of the many guards who are swarming the fighting duo. Suzaku hadn't felt so good in a long time. He was exercising his right to smash heads in, and enjoying every moment of it. His Geass made it five times more enjoyable.
The guards seem to have completely abandoned their search of the building in favor of defending the cells, which incidentally furthered their goal of capturing Suzaku. Not that they were having much luck.
Kallen wrenches a pistol from one of her victims and shoots him through the eye, and turns to fire upon other guards. The guards clear a wide berth once the nearest guards to Kallen all fall dead.
"Why are these guys after you, do you think?"
"I don't know," Suzaku snarks. "Maybe because I'm supposed to be dead, and I'm running around the city? If word that I'm alive gets out, it'll be anarchy."
"Good point."
"We really should get out of here as soon as we can. Is Nunnally alright?"
"She still out. I could carry her. Can you get Lady Kaguya?"
Suzaku dodges a bullet and it hits a guard on the other side of him. "Yes. On my mark?"
Kallen nods as she tosses the now empty gun at one of her attackers, knocking him to the ground. She nods.
"Mark!"
o-o-o-o
The woman flicks the switch on the cattle prod and moves forward. "I'm going to ask you a question. If you don't answer correctly you get zapped."
Refusal's eyes twitch.
The man steps around the man, turn his chair around to face away from the wall of computer screens. Refusal successfully hides the pistol under a fold in his shirt.
"Let's see, looks like you have a fancy operation going on in the local mall. And your guards seem to have found their target, but..."
Refusal tries to look over his shoulder. He stops when his temple hits a ring of steel.
"So now for the question." the woman pauses. "Why did you give Suzaku Kururugi and Nunnally Vi Britannia Geass powers?"
The room is completely silent.
The woman prods Refusal with the cattle prod. His body convulses and he lets out a small moan of pain.
Once he can speak again, he raises his hands and pleads "Wait! I didn't know or authorize them to get contracts!"
"Contracts?" the woman frowns.
"Yeah, to get a Geass, you need to make a contract with a Geass user."
"Already knew that. Keep talking." the man readjusts his grip on his weapon.
"To get a Geass like Lelouch Vi Brittania, you have to make a contract specifically about gaining Geass, like he did with C2. But my organization discovered another way someone can get Geass."
"And that is is?" the woman brings the prod close to Refusals eye.
"If someone is exposed to Geass enought times, I- I mean, hundreds of times, like Suzaku was under Lelouch's Geass, and he makes a contract, and I mean any contract, with a Geass user without reservation, he or she gets a Geass."
The man and woman stand frozen like statues. The man is the first to move. "Suzaku was constantly under the influence of his Geass. If he made some kind of deal to get Nunnally out-"
The woman interrupts. "But what about Nunnally?"
Refusal grins despite himself. "I may have employed more interesting methods to get information from Nunnally."
The man's eyes bulge slightly. The gun shakes in his hand.
The woman notes this and turns back to the man. "If anything you said has been a lie-"
"Why the hell would I lie to you? I want to survive this encounter."
"Then I suggest you drop the pistol from your lap."
Refusal's eyes widen and he fumbles for the gun in a panic.
The man squeezes the trigger, sending a metal slug straight through his mind.
"Time to stop this charade." the man growls.
o-o-o-o
At an orange farm in the outskirts of a prominent city of Britannia, a pink haired girl with a blank expression pulls a plump orange of a tree.
"Huh. Looks like the crop is going to be good this season."
She peels the fruit as she walks back to the house.
As she enters the house, the phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hello. I wish to speak with Orange Boy."
She remembers the code. She takes the phone to the man with the cyborg eye.
"Hello?"
"I have need of your services. You'll find you have a reservation on a plane to Japan from you nearest airport."
"Understood."
His eye twitches, giving the stoic girl a good view of his anti-Geass.
o-o-o-o
The man puts down the phone. "He's coming."
"Good. Let's get going."
They move down the hallway, the man wiping as much blood off of his clothes as he could.
"You face!" the woman tugs at something on the corner of his face. "Your mask, rather, is coming off!"
He touches the latex tab and sighs. "I guess I'll have to take it off."
He strips the mask off, revealing a sharp face, clean shaven.
They walk out the door, the man ducking down to hide his face.
"It might be time to reveal our final hand."
"Yes, it might."
They walk in silence for a mile.
"You know, we're probably going to be forced to use our master plan."
"If it comes to that, there may be war."
"If we don't, there will be a war."
"I know." the man kicks a rock out of frustration.
o-o-o-o
"Mark!"
Kallen scoops up Nunnally and runs at the thinnest line of guards, who scatter. Suzaku roundhouses a few of the burlier men before scanning the tables for the keys. He spots them about twenty feet away, with about five guards between the two.
He activates his Geass and ducks around their punches, seeming effortlessly gliding through a hail of meaty fists.
If the matrix had been made in this universe, several of the guards would have thought he was Neo.
Suzaku lifts the keys off the table and stabs the guard attacking him in the eye. Unfortunately, Suzaku had just noticed the side effect of using his Geass too much. He started to sense muscle movements where there were none, thoughts of heading right when the target was actually moving to the left.
His blows start to miss more and more, and he was still so far from Lady Kaguya's cell.
The entire time this decidedly one sided battle had been going on, Lady Kaguya had watched from behind her bars. She had been bound and gagged, and so hadn't even been able to cry out a warning as the men surprised Suzaku from behind.
The keys slide across the floor and bump against the bars. Seeing what might be her only opportunity to escape, she slides up to the bars and scrabbled behind her back for the keys.
It takes her a few seconds, during which Suzaku's involuntary yelps of pain slowly die down to nothing.
Her hands clasp around the key. She stands up, using the bars of her cage to support her. She notes in the back of her mind that one of the keys is pretty sticky, but she refuses to think about that. She reaches the lock and turns her hands to face it, once again scrabbling blindly to find something with her bound hands.
A few of the guards notice her escape attempt. They start climbing off of Suzaku and heading for the cage, seeing she was tripping to unlock it.
Lady Kaguya doesn't notice this, as she has her back turned. Once she maneuvers the key into position, turns it, and unlock the door, she spins around in triumph.
She finds a whole lot of angry guards looking at her.
Thank you for the reviews! This is my first ever story, so it means a lot to have feedback. An anonymous user pointed out that Clovis is dead, and so shouldn't be able to rule Brittania. Good point. I meant to write Schneizel, but I must have gotten the characters confused. My bad. I'll fix it once I have the time. Thanks again for the wonderful reviews, and constructive criticism is always a big help!