Risks and Sacrifices

Chapter One

a/n This is the sequel to Your Past, My Future. If you haven't read it already, don't read this one. If you read the other one first, this will make slightly more sense.

Lelouch caught up to Kallen before she got out the door, but not before Suzaku saw him. His old friend looked away quickly. Being on opposite ends of a war could strain any friendship, and Suzaku was pitifully transparent. The fact that they were in the middle of a tentative peace and had been since Euphemia's Special Administration Zone became official a few months ago meant little. Zero was still Britannia's most wanted for murder, treason, inciting rebellion, and several others, and Suzaku was still a Britannian soldier. His loyalties, however, were split between his friend, his princess, and his empire, which was why they were both still alive.

That didn't mean that they were chummy, though. It just meant that they didn't try to kill each other all the time.

Kallen had been avoiding him as well. She never left him in the same room as Suzaku as would be expected of a bodyguard, but whenever she spoke to Lelouch, she had become snappish in a way that she probably thought of as subtle.

"I missed you at the meeting last night," Lelouch said as they exited the doors of Ashford Academy.

"I was busy," she replied. "Finals. Studying. You know. Oghi always tells me it's important, so, yeah."

"Of course," Lelouch said. He didn't say that her greatest talents lay in the cockpit of a Knightmare and that she'd be bored out of her mind at any desk job. He didn't need to.

"You know," she said after a moment, "I used to think that I'd be a Knightmare pilot for the rest of my life, that I'd be a part of a war that would shake the world. But it's not going to be like that, is it?"

"It could be," he said. "If you get killed doing it, then you will be a pilot for the rest of your life. Of course, that's something I'd like to avoid."

"Is that why you stopped?" She looked at him intently, looking for some sign that the rumors were wrong. You've heard what they're saying. Has Zero lost his nerve? Have the miracles ceased? Have you become a coward?

Lelouch knew what cowardice was. Cowardice was martyring yourself to stop someone else from winning your war. "No," he said instead. "I stopped because that's how it works. My only enemy is the emperor, and I can't defeat him until he joins the game." He didn't mention that he was playing a game of patience with a man within arm's reach of immortality.

"And if you're wrong?"

Then he'd have lost nothing besides initiative. "Have you ever known me to be wrong before?"

Kallen rolled her eyes. "I have to go. Let me know when you plan on doing something substantial."

He watched her go. Out of all the Black Knights, Kallen was the most loyal. Orange was absolutely loyal to his person, but Kallen was absolutely loyal to his cause and Zero's position as commander. If she was like this, then Todoh, Oghi, and the others…he could end up with a mutiny very soon. And Euphemia was getting impatient for Cornelia's release. She knew everything about him, and if she turned on him, he would fall. He couldn't keep on stalling for much longer, but the Black Knights would not be keen on losing their royal captive.

Shall it finally be peace that destroys me? Conflict had a way of bringing people together. Peace had the opposite effect. Ideally, the Black Knights would dissipate when they were no longer needed, but he wasn't done with them yet.

Putting his faith in the emperor's cruel brutality was the greatest risk he had taken in his life. He needed it to pay off.

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Kallen took the bus home. Her father's house had not felt like home since her brother died, and now all it had was her step-mother. They never liked each other, which was why they got along as well as they did. Whenever Kallen had to be absent to work with the Black Knights, her step-mother was more than willing to tell the school she was sick. She always assumed that her mongrel step-daughter was part of a gang due to her half-breed nature, and was happy to encourage any behavior that could get her killed.

No, her Britannian residence was good for her cover story, but it was not a place she stayed when she could help it. Her bus took her to the Special Administration Zone. Special Administration Zone—that was a mouthful by anyone's standards. What it meant as a place where her people could be treated like humans instead of dogs and be called Japanese instead of Elevens, that was incredible, but Princess Euphemia just didn't have Zero's dramatic flair for names. People had started started calling it the SAZ, but it sounded too much like the ill-fated JLF. Eventually, they came up with a name that fit.

Kallen smiled as the bus passed under a large sign that read, "Welcome to Utopia."

A lot of people in the Black Knights and the ghettoes looked down on the people who had accepted Euphemia's offer, calling them cowards and sellouts. And yet, there was something beautiful about Utopia. It wasn't as dismal as the ghettoes, but neither was it as wasteful and extravagant as the settlements. It had the air of a free people that knew better than to take it for granted.

But Kallen didn't come to Utopia for the atmosphere. She came because it was her home. Her real mother used to work at her father's house as a maid, until she got caught up in refrain. Then she ended up in Britannia's legal system, which, as everyone knew, was a whore to be sold to the highest bidder. All it took was her father's credit card number and her grandmother's maiden name, and fifteen years in prison became fifteen weeks.

Kallen found it irritating, really, that what her father discounted as his teenaged daughter's shopping spree was worth another woman's freedom, but such is life.

She got out of the bus near the apartment that she had moved her mother into. Rent and groceries came, in part out of the money her mother had saved up over the years, and partly from Kallen's own allowance. The fact that she got paid more for doing nothing than her mother did for working was another thing that irritated her.

She raised her hand to the doorbell, but stopped. Why should she ring? Why couldn't she just walk in? You don't knock to be admitted to your own home, right? She shouldn't have to feel this awkward.

She opened the door and stepped inside. "Mom! I'm home!"

They were a free, happy people in Utopia, more than they had been for eight years. At headquarters, the Black Knights had started wondering why Zero had become so uncharacteristically unimpressive, asking if he would land a crushing blow against the enemy instead of when. Kallen had been one of them more often than she liked to admit, but in Utopia, she felt that she understood Zero a little more. He never wore his emotions out in the open, so it was easy to think that he cared for nothing but victory, but this was a victory. They could make grandiose plans to shake the world, but this little spec of light and freedom was worth protecting all by itself.

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Gino was born to fly. All his life, he'd been no more than a decent Knightmare pilot, but ever since the eighth generation, Knightmares had been taking off, and Gino took off with them. In his Tristan, he managed to impress the Emperor himself, and he had just recently been promoted to his personal Knights. He just wished that he had a different first mission.

"Alright, this is a simple mission, so I'll have the polished skull as a pencil holder of anyone who screws up today."

That was Luciano, the Knight of Nine. He outranked Gino by just one number, but that was enough. "You can come up with the most charming images, you know," Gino said. He used the private intercom between the two Knightmares, not wanting to undermine Luciano in front of the fleet. And it was a fleet. Five hundred Vincents, all capable of flight and equipped with the state-of-the-art weaponry. It was enough to take on an entire country.

"Hey, lordling," Luciano responded from the Percival. "I didn't ask to babysit you, and with a mission like this, I really don't need your help at all. But you're stuck with me, so just follow my lead and don't make a fool of yourself, and we'll get along just fine."

Gino doubted that. They hadn't gotten along since they first met. If Gino was born to fly, Luciano was born to kill. You didn't get a nickname like the Vampire of Britannia through pacifism.

They organized the fleet to surround the…what was it? It wasn't a ghetto, and it wasn't a settlement. It was something in between. "It just seems like there must be a better way of doing this." They were looking for a masked terrorist who called himself Zero, probably in defiance of the way his people were called Elevens. He had managed to capture the previous viceroy and kill the one before that, and the current viceroy hadn't done much to stop him. Maybe she was scared, or maybe she was comfortable in the position Zero had landed her. Either way, the Emperor was bothered enough to send in the Knights of the Round.

"It's worked so far," Luciano replied. "Weren't you awake during the briefing? The first time he showed up was just like this when a ghetto was attacked, and he was drawn out again when Cornelia reenacted it."

And he ended up being pronounced dead. "Yeah, but I don't think he was so outnumbered those times. He'd be crazy to show up if we had a hundred Knightmares." Gino didn't mention that slaughtering civilians until someone got the courage to stand up to them made him feel ill. He didn't think Luciano would understand.

Luciano actually paused in consideration. "I'll tell you what," he said finally. "If he doesn't show up, then the next place we raze, I'll bring less."

They stopped in front of a sign over one of the major entrances to the city. It read, "Welcome to Utopia."

Luciano started laughing.

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Princess Euphemia was going to change the world someday. The world needed changing very much. Eventually, people would start taking her seriously. When that happened, her job would get harder. An entire fleet had been sent to attack the Special Administration Zone that she had personally fought through the political cesspool to establish, and no one had bothered to tell her until the day of. It may have been because people were worried she'd try to do something about it, but she suspected that it was because no one thought she needed to know.

Euphie pushed open the door to Schneizel's office and stormed inside. "Did you know about this?"

Her brother was sitting at his desk conversing with some official, an ensign, or an envoy, or something—Euphie didn't care. "If you'll pardon me, we'll have to deal with this another time," he said, dismissing the man. The official bowed and left the room. "Please, sit," Schneizel said to her.

"Did—you—know about this?" she said, still standing.

Schneizel sighed and leaned back in his chair, not meeting her eyes. He had a lavish and extremely well decorated office. Some of Clovis's paintings had ended up here. "There is little that goes on that I do not know about."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" she asked. "Why didn't you do something about it?"

"I didn't tell you because I feared that it would inspire you to do something foolish. You are a kind-hearted individual, Euphie, and a good person. I would not see you die in a hopeless conflict if I can avoid it. I didn't do anything about it because there was nothing I could do. The men under me are loyal to the empire, not to individual princes. I could trade my life for a chance to negligibly annoy our father, but I do not fight battles I cannot win, Euphie, and you shouldn't either."

"So, that's it?" she sputtered. "The SAZ was my project, but you approved of it!"

"Yes, but it's not worth dying for!" Schneizel said, rising from his chair. "I thought it would weaken the Black Knights, that's all. Maybe the Knights of the Round will be able to finish them off. We already lost Clovis to that man." He paused to gaze at one of their brother's paintings. "And if Cornelia is still alive, I'd rather end this before we lose her too."

He was trying to manipulate her. Schneizel knew how sentimental she could be. But what Euphie just realized was that their father's knights weren't there to demolish the Special Administration Zone, they were there to kill Lelouch. Schneizel thought he could influence her because of how much she loved her siblings, but it hurt too much to lose them once, and she wasn't going to lose any of them twice.

"I will not lose myself to save my sister's life," she said slowly. Schneizel cocked his head at the comment. "And neither will I lose myself to save my own." She closed her eyes and pressed the intercom button on Schneizel's desk.

"Yes, your Highness?" his secretary answered.

"Send in my knight Suzaku immediately," she said.

"Yes, your Highness."

Schneizel looked at her in confusion and dismay. "What are you doing?"

There was the courage of the mighty, and there was the courage of the meek. "Those people left their homes because they trusted me. I will protect them in any way I can."

"But you can't protect them! You may die with them, if your life means nothing to you, but if the Emperor wants those people dead, then they are already lost."

She turned form him and faced a painting on the wall. It was one of her favorites, painted by Clovis shortly after they received news of Lelouch's and Nunnally's deaths. It had the two of them together with their mother, smiling.

"I had a brother once," she said softly. "He wasn't afraid to stand up to people stronger than he was, even when he knew he couldn't win. He's not here anymore, and I sometimes I thought that you were almost as good as him. But if you won't do anything, then I will." She turned and left him to sit alone in his office.

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Kallen was trying to study for her finals when it happened. She had tried to make small talk with her mother as she prepared dinner, but what could she say? I'm sorry I treated you like dirt all those years you've been working for me? Also, Naoto got killed after becoming a terrorist, and guess what I'm doing every night. There are some things that you should never, ever tell your mother.

She had almost managed to focus on the number of joules that were added to the system when five moles of methane combusted when she saw a Knightmare floating outside her window. She put her books down to look at it. The only Knightmare she knew about that could fly was Zero's Gawain, but this Knightmare was different. It was smaller and red and gold instead of the Gawain's black and gold design. An identical one hovered in the distance. Looking around, she could see at least a hundred of those things, floating exactly the same way bricks don't.

What are you planning, princess?

"What's going on, Kallen?" her mother asked. She joined her next to the window and paled. "Dear? Step away from the window. It could be dangerous."

Kallen wanted to tell her that she worried too much, but she had a point. While Knightmares appeared in parades and the like, their primary function was war. If this is a show of force, pretty soon their going to announce some horrible new—

The Knightmares open-fired, and the building across the street collapsed into rubble.

"Look out!" The two of them ducked under the window, as though half a foot of wood and plaster would protect them more than half an inch of glass.

"We have to get underground somewhere," Kallen decided. Had the princess gone nuts, or was this her plan all along? This place had a cellar, right? Her mother would be safe there until Zero arrived. She led her downstairs.

Outside, engines roared and people screamed.

"Wait," her mother said. "Where is Naoto? Naoto should be here."

"What? Naoto is…" The side effects of refrain could last for ages. Kallen winced. She didn't have time to deal with this right now.

"He should be here right now."

She led her into the cellar. "I'll, I'll go look for him," she said brightly.

"What? Don't go, you should stay here."

"I'll be right back," she said, closing the door with her mother on the other side. "Stay here. I love you."

She had to go get help. No, only one man could help them now, and he might need her help. And that meant that she'd need to get to her Guren, and that meant that she'd need to get out of Utopia. She barged into the home of her next-door neighbor.

"Old-man Tengu, I need to borrow your bike.

Old-man Tengu was a short, balding man with leathery skin. He had worked his whole life to be able to retire comfortably, and had lived for too long before the invasion to become accustomed to Britannian rule. After he retired, though, he found a comfortable retirement to be incredibly dull, so he bought a motorcycle.

"My…what? Oh, no, child. If you try to run, they'll see you. No, no, you can only hide and hope they don't notice you're alive or until help comes."

"Who's going to help us?" she demanded. "The Brits? They're busy killing us. The only people strong enough to stand up to them are the Black Knights!"

"Then wait until they come!"

"I am a Black Knight!"

Tengu stopped dead, and for a moment forgot about the havoc outside. "You are?"

She nodded. "I've been fighting alongside Zero since Shinjuku. I even helped capture Cornelia at Narita."

"You've met him?" he asked incredulously. "You've actually met Zero? Is it true what they say about him?"

"What they say doesn't even come close."

"And he'll come for us?"

"He'll come," she said with a grin. "Being outnumbered and outmatched never stopped him before."

Tengu fished out his keys and tossed them to her. "You're a Black Knight," he muttered to himself. "I don't believe it."

"Thanks," she said, heading out the door. "Don't tell my mom."

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Suzaku approached his princess and bowed formally. "I am at your command."

Euphie bit her lip. "I cannot command you, Suzaku," she said. "Not in this."

"What happened?"

"Something horrible. It's worse than anything I could have imagined."

Suzaku tensed. "Is it Zero?"

"What? No, no, it's worse. Much worse. Suzaku, my father has sent his armies to assault the Special Administration Zone."

"The Emperor is attacking Utopia?"

Is that what they're calling it? "Yes. If I order you to stop them, I'll be committing treason, and if you go, you will too."

"I swore to you my life, your Highness," he said, looking up at her. "I will go wherever you send me." He rose and turned.

"I'll send help as soon as I can find it," she said. As if there were more people loyal enough to her to betray the empire. She felt like she was sending her friend into the jaws of death. "Just promise me…promise me that you'll come back alive."

He turned and smiled at her without fear. "I'll come back for you," he said. "I promise."

He left, and Euphemia had only one more call to make. "Lelouch?" she said after dialing her cell phone. "I need your help."

"Sure, Euphie," he said easily. "What can I do for you?"

"They're attacking it, Lelouch!" she said. "They're attacking the Special Administration Zone!"

"Who is?"

"Our father! He sent a huge invasion force, and he's going to destroy it for no reason!"

Lelouch paused. He should have felt concerned for the innocent people who were about to be killed, but instead he wanted to laugh. Finally! "That monster!" he said with an inaudible grin.

"I already sent Suzaku ahead to stop them, but without backup he won't last long."

"Wait, you sent him against the imperial army alone?" It would have been better to have him wait until they could coordinate an attack, but this could work out as well. "Fine. I'll get my men together, and be there as soon as I can."

He hung up, and let out the laughter he'd been holding in. But not for too long. He had a war to fight, after all. A war that had finally begun.

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a/n And you thought that I'd take forever writing this, didn't you? Well, don't get used to it. This is just because school's out and I have no friends, and I can only read Les Misérables for so long before I have to do something else. Personally, I'd feel nervous about living in a place called Utopia. I mean, it just screams "Too good to be true," but what else would you call it? And now, if it gets destroyed later, I can have someone say, "My Utopia lies in ruins!" That's a terrible reason to destroy a city, but oh well. By the way, in case you didn't catch it, this is slightly before R2 began, so Gino just recently started being a part of the Knights of the Round. He's Ten and Luciano's Nine. Come to think of it, without Suzaku as Seven, Luciano should be Eight, but let's just say that there was another Knight of the Round who died shortly before R2 began.