IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE BOTTOM

As the odd group waited patiently for the tailor, whom Schneizel had summoned, to arrive, Cornelia mused that she loved her family more than anything else in the world.

Really, she did.

Her bonds with Schneizel, Clovis – to an extent; he was kind of uppity – little Euphie, Nunally, and Lelouch – though the lattermost was becoming rather trying – was a true testament to that. In fact, it was her desire to protect her innocent younger siblings – along with a former crush on a certain blonde – that had motivated her into joining the Britannian army.

"Why? Why would you commit such a heinous act? It's a crime against nature!"

"...Miss, it was a pizza. I will not apologize for not apologizing until you apologize for not apologizing."

"Gah! Wrah! You...!"

"Afterwards, we may commence with the actual apologizing and be on with our day."

But there were times when she just wanted to bang her head against a wall.

As it was, a vein threatened to pop out of her forehead. "SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Schneizel was being remarkably unhelpful in the current situation, settling back into his chair with a sort of amused and indulgent smile. The guardsman – Jeremiah, she believed his name was – was understandably reluctant to do anything after the horsey incident, and was also busy trying to reel in little Anya and her rather bizarre behavior.

This, of course, left her to deal with the rampant stupidity that seemed to have infected her younger brother...and this mysterious Catherine Celeste – or C.C. as she preferred to be called.

Cornelia gave a mental sigh. She was a soldier, damn it, not a babysitter!

"But he dropped my pizza!" C.C. whined petulantly, and Cornelia wondered if that serious-faced girl who had barged into her room was another person entirely. "I demand retribution!"

"I didn't drop it," Lelouch scoffed, leaning back in his seat and daintily picking at a stray piece of lint on his shirt. "That was all you and your clumsiness, madam."

"LIES! You lying liar who lies, you tricked me into–"

Cornelia ignored their renewed argument and pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. "I think I'm going to consider never having children. Ever," she muttered to herself.

She thought she heard Schneizel snicker, but when she cast a sharp glance in his direction, he was the absolute picture of innocence, complete with that certain blink that she could never do.

"Oh shut up," she grumbled, seeing right through his ruse, and Schneizel really did chuckle that time. "Anyway, what on earth is taking that tailor so long?"

Schneizel raised an eyebrow. "Sister, it's only been five minutes."

"...Do you really want this to get even more out of hand?" Cornelia deadpanned, gesturing towards the bickering duo and then towards Jeremiah and Anya, the latter of whom was making suggestive hand motions while the guardsman frantically tried to put a stop to it.

Silently, Schneizel reached into his breast pocket and took out his phone. "Please tell the tailor that I asked for to double time it over here," he requested a moment later.

"Thank you," Cornelia said victoriously.

XXXXX-XXXXX

"Oh, fuck a duck."

"I beg your pardon?" The Second Prince recoiled a bit from the usage of such language. "Lelouch, where on earth did you hear such a foul phrase from?"

Lelouch lifted a single shoulder slightly in a shrug so as to not disturb the tailor who was currently altering his newest set of pants. Said foul phrase had been uttered because the tailor had accidentally stuck one of his needles into his leg, but the elderly man hadn't noticed and Lelouch didn't think it that big of a deal.

"I heard it on the telly." He paused, eyes glancing to where Cornelia and C.C stood, the latter just out of the Second Prince's line of vision so it looked like it was just the Second Princess there. Both looked vaguely amused at the conversation thus far, so Lelouch decided to push it a bit further.

"Schneizel, what does 'fuck' mean anyway?" he asked innocently. His eldest brother seemed to freeze, and a small, nearly unnoticeable tick started in his left eye. In his peripheral vision, the two witches were struggling not to laugh. "Can we do it some time? It sounds like fun!"

Opportunities to rile up Schneizel rarely cropped up, so times like this made suffering those previous loops absolutely worthwhile. Besides, if he was going to live through this crap all over again anyway, he might as well do his best to cause a bit a chaos to liven things up.

Both C.C and Cornelia evacuated the premises right then and there. A few seconds later, the faint sound of uproarious laughter was heard.

As the tailor himself fought valiantly to maintain a neutral expression, Schneizel exasperatedly put a hand to his temple. "Lelouch," he started slowly, "I'm afraid that this is a discussion for when you are a bit…no, much older."

Lelouch raised a dubious eyebrow. "Alright, if you say so…"

A/N: Well...damn. It's been a quite a while hasn't it. I haven't been an active author on here in quite some time. Lurking and reading, sure, but not actively writing anything. Blame real life for that, and well... it's been so long I don't really have interest in this fic anymore at this point in time.

"If that's the case, then why the hell did you update this?!" you might ask. The answer is, I'm in an anime-watching group on skype (albeit one with really shitty schedule planning) and one of the people brought up Code Geass in passing and I thought, "Wait a minute...where the hell is my folder for that one story?" Turns out, said folder was on a hard drive that had broken a few years ago. I managed to recover most of the files on the drive, and three drafts for Chapter 6, aka this chapter, happened to be some of those files. Separately the drafts were broken into four segments but I merged them into the two segments up above. I figured a lot of you who might still check up on this dusty ol' thing would want to see it.

Please note however that this does not mean I'm continuing this story at the current time. I've gotten PMs and seen reviews over the past few years asking me to continue this fic, but I'm afraid I can't do that. For one, even though I haven't authored anything on this site in a few years, my writing style has changed a whole lot so continuing would probably require an entire rewrite. I look back on my past writing and I'm just like, "Wow I really wrote this stuff". For another, it's been years since I watched Code Geass in its entirety and it's just not within my interests anymore.

If this angers you, I deeply apologize. Again, I thought it'd be fair to show you readers the last of what had been written out.

And I kind of doubt this is going to be a thing (y'know, considering this fic has been just a bit dead for like three years) buuuut if anybody wants to continue this on their own, feel free to do so. All I ask is for you to credit me and PM me a link. If that's not the case, then good luck with your own works of (fan)fiction!

Although I'm not in a position to finish this story, I'm glad I made people happy with what I wrote.

If you have any questions, or if you want to yell at me for getting your hopes up after three years, feel free to PM me.

Take care, everyone!

-Dante