Chapter 2

Character Creation

"All forces, cease fire," Clovis commanded through his radio. "I, prince Clovis, viceroy of area eleven, hereby command all my forces to ceasefire. I will not permit any further destruction." He deactivated the radio, raising an eyebrow. "Is this what you wanted?"

The attempt at confidence didn't fool Lelouch.

"It will do for a start," he allowed, "but now there are a few questions I need answered."

"Who are you to demand answers from a prince of Britannia?"

In response Lelouch removed his borrowed hat. "Another prince of Britannia. Lelouch Vi Britannia, at your service, brother."

Clovis, for all his skill at concealing his emotions, couldn't stop his eyes widening. "Lelouch, you're alive? All this time, we thought you were dead. Nunnally, is she alive?"

"It is my questions that matter here. First, my mother. I know she wasn't killed by mere terrorists. What do you know of those behind her murder?"

Charisma check: Passed

"It wasn't me. Schneizel and Cornelia, they would know. They investigated the incident, even more so than the knights. But please, brother, come back to the homeland with me. It isn't too late."

"Why have you tried so hard to destroy the history of Japan?"

Charisma check: Failed

"They took you from us, at least," Clovis clearly thought about what he was saying, "that's what we were told. Who else could I blame? It was all to avenge you."

It seemed reasonable, and Lelouch might have been fooled if it wasn't for the Gamer telling him that a check failed.

"I'm giving you a chance to convince me to leave you alive. Lying to me won't help your case," he coldly stated. He didn't want to kill his brother, but he knew it was too risky to leave him alive with the knowledge of his survival.

Intimidate check: Passed

Lelouch had to resist a frown. Throughout this conversation he had been aiming a gun at Clovis, so why was this the first intimidate check rather than charisma?

"We won," Clovis stated in a quiet voice. "We were the stronger, we have the power to control the country, why shouldn't we use it?" His shoulders started to shake, and a laugh burst from him. "The strong do as we will, the weak fit only to be controlled. That is the nature of this world."

Lelouch could no longer consider this broken shell his brother. "Not while I live," he promised, and pulled the trigger.

As blood splattered the throne the world darkened.

Quest Created

Justice for the Weak

It was the philosophy of prince Clovis that the strong can do as they wish while the weak exist only to be controlled. This is in line with the views of the empire as a whole. You have chosen to stand in the way of this view and change the world for the better.

Again the quest had no reward written, and appeared to be a long term mission.

He dismissed the notice, to see a new notice appear.

Quest success

Clearing the Ghetto

If time hadn't paused his eyes would have widened as he saw the amount of sp awarded. Either this was a serious amount and would allow him his choice of new skills or skills were a lot more expensive than he thought.

The window also informed him of improved relationships with Kallen and a number of unknown people.

Curiously enough there was n sign of any penalties from killing Clovis.

He let time resume. "Thats that," he muttered to himself. "Time to get back to school."

[Ψ]

Lelouch definitely felt he had mixed luck about getting back.

Sure, he returned to school soon enough not to get in trouble, but also in time to be stuck in the student council meeting rather than getting time to plan how to use his new power.

Granted, he could probably use it to pause time and come up with a plan, but that might be considered abusing the power and until he knew whether there would be a consequence for what he did in the battle with the unknown knightmare he wasn't about to risk it.

So instead he suffered through Millys usual shenanigans in the council meeting before being stuck heading to class again.

There he stopped as he recognised the girl from the lorry the terrorists had been using.

He had thought she looked familiar at the time, but the different context, plus how little she attended the academy, had delayed his recognition.

There was one question raised, however.

He could recall the names of each student in his class, and she was down as 'Kallen Stadtfield', while the log his power had produced had stated 'Kallen Koizuki'.

There were three possibilities: the academy was wrong, his power was wrong or this was a different but identical Kallen.

With a flexing of his power that he had done his best to practise he summoned her information window (at the same time pondering how much more useful this mental control was compared to if he needed to say something to use the abilities or even interact with the windows physically).

Name: Kallen Koizuki

That was all.

He frowned as he found his seat, carefully avoiding staring at Kallen (it hadn't escaped his notice how popular he was among the girls at the academy, and knew that staring at a girl could give the wrong impression).

There had to be a reason that the status screen had so little to say.

It kept him distracted all lesson.

[Ψ]

Lunch was a welcome break.

It also gave him an obvious choice: plan how to use his power or investigate Kallen.

At first glance she was too weak to be one of the terrorists he had seen, but her response to a bee that seemed interested in her gave that the lie.

If she was really as she pretended she wouldn't have struck the bee and killed it in a single blow.

It helped reinforce in Lelouchs mind that she could be a useful ally, but also helped him realise that it wasn't a good idea to approach her. After all he had no way to be certain she wouldn't tell anyone about his questions.

The question crossed his mind about the knightmare pilot he encountered in Shinjuku, Viletta Nu, and whether she would keep his presence secret.

The world shifted and blurred around him, and he found himself in a Britannian facility or rather, as he soon realised, he was just seeing the facility rather than being physically present.

He quickly recognised Viletta walking down the corridor, only to pause and lean against the wall.

What should I do, she seemed to say, despite not moving her mouth. I know I promised not to tell anyone, but what if he was involved? But he was definitely a Britannian student, so why would he be working with a group of Eleven terrorists? I think... I'll investigate him myself and decide later.

The world blurred again, and he was in the courtyard again, stumbling slightly.

"What was that?"

A window appeared in answer.

Cutscenes

At times a different perspective can be useful. Under certain conditions you will receive this from a cutscene, which will show the consequences of your actions upon other people, and how their attitudes to you will change based upon your interactions with them.

Cutscene now available for review.

"Are you alright?"

It took a moment for him to realise they were asking him, and another to realise who it was.

"Just a moments dizziness, Kallen, wasn't it?"

Lelouch tried to ignore the fact that she was one of the terrorists. If she so much as suspected he knew things could go very badly, after all.

"Y-yes," it was hard for Lelouch to be sure if the hesitation was genuine or part of her act, "with how weak I am," a look of anger crossed her face, fast enough that he would have missed it if he hadn't expected her to respond to her own words like that, "I try to look out for anyone else like that."

"Of course, I quite understand," Lelouch told her, you're learning to perfect the act, going unsaid. A thought crossed his mind. "With all your time off school you can't have had much opportunity to join a club, have you?"

It was clear that Kallen had no idea where he was going with this.

"I'm a member of the student council," he explained, "and our president is keen on making sure all students get involved in club activities," he managed to hide a wince at the memories of some of these 'club activities' he'd been roped into, "so you'll probably want to find a club to join. I'd recommend thinking about the student council," which would allow him to keep an eye on her 'out of school activities', to evaluate working with her and her 'friends'. "I'm certain the president will make allowances for you if needed. And she's probably already planning to ask you."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, clearly wondering why he was telling her this. "I'll... think about it."

With a few final pleasantries she headed back to her group of classmates, leaving Lelouch the opportunity to plan how to use his new ability to take down the empire.

The first step was to check what skills he could obtain through spending the sp he had gathered from saving the lives of nearly all the residents of the ghetto.

As expected merely thinking about spending the sp led to the world pausing again, this time with a list of skills and their costs.

If his body hadn't been frozen with the rest of the world his eyelid would have twitched.

There must have been hundreds of skills, at least. And even with all the sp he had obtained he had to limit his selection.

I wonder what Scan/Analyse does, he pondered, partially from the unusual dual name, only for the skill to be highlighted and purchased without so much as a confirmation window.

So even questioning about the skills purchases them? Good thing I didn't ask about one of the more expensive skills, like Active Alter Ego.

He realised his mistake at the last moment, but the skill was already purchased. At least I was already intending to get it, should protect me from discovery better than just wearing a disguise.

Interestingly, with the skill purchased, the list split into two nearly identical lists, one for each identity. A quick glance revealed that the new identity had more skills available, while a second look showed that all the skills that had already been present were now cheaper, but would be more expensive to buy for both identities.

He thought quickly about what skills he would need in order to fight Britannian soldiers.

The obvious next choice was Lead From the Front, which described his philosophy about a leaders role perfectly. Of course it would only be useful with allies of his own, leaving the need for skills to help him fight on his own or gain allies.

As One With the Machine and Silvertongue seemed like good choices, as the first sounded like it would improve his Knightmare piloting skill while the second would make him more convincing to potential allies, enough so that he ended up buying it for both identities.

He was low on sp by this point, but could see little sense in holding on to them when they could be useful, and finished by buying Enhanced Reflexes.

And with that, it was time to resume his life.

For a moment he felt something, and fell to his knees again.

He had no context for just what the sensation was like, but it soon passed, leaving him with a sense of something different.

It must be the skills, he realised, and decided not to buy multiple skills at once again. And that sensation must be- he cut his thoughts off before he could transform or something in the middle of school.

He would need somewhere better to try it out, where his identity couldn't be instantly compromised.

A thought crossed his mind. I should have waited until after school.

[Ψ]

Once school was finally over he made sure to check on his sister first.

He knew he could trust their maid, Sayoko, to look after her, but that didn't change that he worried about Nunnally.

After all, if they were found by the Britannians it would be Nunnally who suffered from it the most, while he could potentially be brought back into the royal family without much problem (not that he would abandon Nunnally like that).

It was only a minor surprise for him to see Nunnally and Sayoko folding origami cranes.

Sayoko was in the unusual position of having the opportunity of being able to keep Japanese culture alive, thanks to the Ashfords granting Lelouch and his sister so much autonomy in their rooms (even if it was technically on campus) and them remembering their time in Japan before the invasion more happily than any in the homeland.

It didn't take much persuasion for them to convince him to help.

Hearing Nunnallys wish for a gentler world only reaffirmed his intention to use the power he was granted to replace the empire.

The only potential issue was the way Nunnally got him to make a promise with her that they would not lie to each other, which created a quest.

Nunnallys Promise

You have promised your sister not to lie to her.

Consequences of failure: loss of reputation/charisma

it wasn't exactly clear how much of an effect the quest failure would have, but he didn't want to take the risk.

Once Nunnally went to bed he had the chance to test his skill.

[Ψ]

Lelouch made sure the door was locked and windows and curtains closed.

There was still the chance of Sayoko checking on him, but he had done his best to be clear that he was not to be disturbed.

It seemed slightly weird that there was no alert of charisma checks, but given that Lelouch was, technically, her employer.

He shook his head.

It was time to see what his Active Alter Ego skill would do.

He twitched in his mind, following the sensation he had noticed earlier, and the world darkened and froze oce again, but this time it wasn't just a window that appeared before him.

Instead there was a representation of himself floating in space before him, with a set of options next to it.

From a brief period of experimentation he determined that the options changed the outfit the representation of him was wearing, suggesting that this was the alter ego the skill created. There was the question of how the clothes would appear, but then he recalled that this mysterious 'Gamer' power had already done things that should have been impossible.

It took him a while to sort out a suitable outfit, but he managed it.

The outfit was mostly purple with gold highlights, not counting the cloak which was crimson on the inside and black on the outside. For some reason the cloak had come with a cravat.

The final touch was a full mask/helmet with indigo facing ringed by gold and otherwise black.

There had been a final set of options that didn't seem to have any effect on the outfit, but did have the sound of a voice when selected. Having guessed that the skill included voice disguise he selected the one that appealed best to him, one somewhat similar to his real voice but different enough to hide his identity, and mentally confirmed his selection.

The world resumed, and Lelouch found himself unchanged.

"Let's try that again," he muttered, and once again flexed his mind again.

This time the outfit slid out of thin air around him, leaving Lelouch replaced with his new alter ego.

He looked over his outfit in person for the first time. "Interesting," he muttered, confirming the difference in his voice. With luck it should be similar enough that the terrorist group would recognise him as the one who helped them, when he got back in contact with them, while making sure Kallen wouldn't recognise his voice from school.

He flexed his mind again and returned to himself, the outfit unravelling into nowhere again.

He would figure out a way to communicate with the group tomorrow; there wasn't enough time to do anything now.

Omake

By wondering what controls there were upon his Gamer power, Lelouch found its Options page.

Most of it was straightforward enough, but he had to wonder what the 'Silly Mode Toggle' did, only for it to instantly activate and close the page.

Before he could start to wonder what he was doing an alert appeared.

New Cutscenes Available

Without questioning things too much he opened the cutscene page to see what this was about.

The world blurred and revealed the empires throne room, as it must have been during the invasion of Japan.

Many of the emperors children were assembled before him and he spoke.

"Where are my favourite children, Lelouch and Nunnally?"

There was a pause. "Um, you banished them to Japan before the invasion."

The emperor froze briefly. "And remember that," he finally announced, "even being my favourite will not protect you if you displease me!"

How did I forget about sending them there? I should never have launched that invasion, he thoughts spoke.

As the world blurred and returned to normal, Lelouch quickly toggled silly mode off again. That was too weird.

AN: I couldn't resist the omake. I just really like the idea of an incompetent Charles who accidently launches an invasion on the country he banished his children to. The omake can be considered canon, but the events in the cutscene are not.

Before anyone questions the high sp and rapid skill purchases, the intention was to have this the stage where Lelouch effectively goes through character creation. I had been intending to do more than just finish setting up character creation for Lelouch, but that can wait.