"Planning a public massacre and still daring to say you are an honest person" Shiho mocked.
"You sure have a sharp tongue" Kaito replied.
"And yet you tried to win me over, what strange tastes you have."
"No, I thought it was clear that I only need to please you. I never tried to conquer you, I have a girlfriend" Kaito replied.
"Fine, honest person, answer me one thing. Do you have a girlfriend?" Shiho said, looking him in the eyes.
"Yes" Kaito nodded without understanding.
"Are you sure?"
"I am."
"Do you have a girlfriend?" she repeated, emphasizing "one."
"...Fine, I have four, you win" Kaito admitted.
"Heh, there is your honest person" Shiho smiled.
"YOU! YOU TWO THERE, THE COUPLE!"
While Kaito and Shiho were talking, they were suddenly interrupted by a loud voice.
Kaito turned around in annoyance, wondering who could be so rude as to interrupt by shouting. However, he soon realized that the rude ones were actually them.
At some point he had not noticed, everyone around him, the thousands of people, had knelt toward the emperor, making Kaito and Shiho, the only ones still standing and talking to each other, naturally stand out.
"Did you see what you caused?"
"You are the one who kept talking."
"DO YOU DARE TO CONTINUE DISRESPECTING HIS MAJESTY?!" the voice echoed again. "FACE THE JUDGMENT OF THE ENTIRE HOLY BRITANNIAN EMPIRE AND ITS EMPEROR!" it declared furiously.
"How exaggerated" Kaito muttered as he pulled Shiho closer to his side, wrapping an arm around her waist. Then he spread his wings and began flying toward the emperor.
The entire scene was taking place in front of the castle. While the crowd remained outside, the emperor was on a balcony more than one hundred meters high, watching from above along with his personal guard.
However, Kaito flew until he was even higher than the balcony before responding.
"Here I am. Where is your judgment?" he said with a smile.
"He is flying!"
"It is magic!"
"No, look at those wings, he is a demon."
"He must be the devil!"
"The devil came to punish us for our sins!"
"N-no, that is impossible, it has to be."
Kaito observed the crowd's reactions and smiled. Then he looked toward the cameras. All of them were pointed at him.
"Charles zi Britannia. Did you think you could play emperor forever with objects that do not belong to this world?
Today, death has come to reclaim what is his. And while at it, your soul" he declared loudly.
Suddenly, he felt Shiho curl up against his chest, trembling. He was surprised, but when he saw her expression, he understood.
"Can you stop laughing? I have to act like this so they believe it" he whispered.
Ignoring the girl, he turned his gaze back to the emperor.
His heart began to beat faster. Fear took hold of him and his right hand trembled slightly. Even so, he maintained a firm attitude, refusing to be intimidated.
"I do not know who you are or what you are talking about, but since you disrespected Britannia, only death awaits you.
Kill him!" he declared solemnly, without hesitation, despite the fear that Kaito knew he was hiding.
Although the guards advanced and more soldiers appeared from inside the castle, none of them attacked.
After all, Kaito was in the air. And for some reason, they were all carrying swords instead of guns.
"How exactly do they plan to kill me with those?" he thought, confused.
"With those" Shiho replied, reading his mind, pointing behind him.
Kaito turned around.
There was an army of dozens of flying mechas. Most of them were identical, in purple tones. However, some at the front had different designs, with unique colors, like important characters from an anime.
"How strange. Why didn't I notice them?" Kaito murmured.
He decided to test them first.
He threw a medium sized fireball toward the front mecha, one with a strangely feminine design.
The ball did not explode on impact, it was not an attack, it was fire itself.
The flames spread across the entire machine at full speed, melting it instantly. In a few seconds, it was completely deformed, with parts melting and separating before falling straight down.
"Aaaaaaaarghhh!" a female voice full of pain screamed from inside the mecha.
"That is why I didn't notice them. They are too weak" Kaito thought.
At the same time, he heard a faint whisper.
"...Cornelia."
The voice sounded slightly sad but not too much, closer to resignation.
Noticing that it was the emperor who had spoken, Kaito exclaimed without thinking.
"Ah! Was that your daughter?"
He was genuinely surprised. Cornelia was one of his targets if he wanted to prevent Britannia from staying the same. He had not expected to eliminate her without realizing it.
However, to the emperor, Kaito's surprise sounded like mockery.
For the first time, Kaito saw anger on his face.
"Kill him!" he repeated.
All the mechas charged at him at once.
Kaito did not flinch at the sight. He created an eastern fire dragon, copied from Kushina, and sent it through them one after another in a chain.
The flames ran through their structures. They did not melt as quickly as Cornelia's since it was not a concentrated attack, but it was still enough to make their systems and limbs fail and begin to fall all at once.
After all, they had to be at least that weak for Kaito's detection to ignore them.
They could not even say anything before losing.
Or maybe they did, but their voices were trapped between tons of metal.
"Ah!"
"Watch out!"
"Move!"
On the ground, the crowd began to run in panic.
Kaito flew back toward them, this time creating a shadow shield that rose from the ground and engulfed all the people in a large dark dome, protecting them from the rain of mechas.
The mechas kept falling and crashing against the shield, but it did not receive even a scratch. Instead, each impact sent ripples across it, followed by an echo.
It was somehow harmonious.
Once that was done, he flew toward the emperor and landed on the balcony. This time, the guards opened a path in fear, none of them daring to attack, some even falling to the ground and crawling backward.
"Charles zi Britannia, I came for what belongs to me" Kaito declared from only half a meter away.
"The eye... belongs to me" was all Charles dared to say after a few seconds of silence and shock.
The guards were confused. The citizens below were also confused. And everyone watching through the cameras was even more confused, not knowing who the strange man with special abilities was, nor what object he had come to retrieve from Charles.
But everyone understood that there was a hidden story, and that whatever it was, it was important enough to justify such a scene.
"It never belonged to you. You took the objects without permission" Kaito said, continuing his act.
"Lie!" the emperor roared in anger, unable to move from his throne, which now felt like a punishment chair where he awaited his final judgment. "They fell from the sky. They were a gift from the other world."
"A gift? Just because they accidentally fell into this world does not give you the right to use them. And even if it did, the moment the rightful owner returns, you give them back."
"I..."
Charles did not finish.
Kaito had already attacked.
Just like since he arrived here, he only used fire, turning him into ashes before he could even scream.
Only ashes remained on the throne.
Absolutely no one moved. Whether it was the guards on the scene or the members of the royal family present, they only stared with wide eyes as Kaito finished off the emperor and walked toward the throne as if nothing had happened.
Kaito brushed aside the ashes as if searching for something, and from there he took out a shining crystal eye, completely different from Charles's eyes.
After taking it in his hand, he looked at all the cameras pointing at him.
"I have two now. Eight left. Get ready, because I am coming for my objects."
After saying that, he destroyed all the cameras around in sequence. There was no longer any need to record what followed. The witnesses were enough.
As he had said before, there were some people he had to kill if he wanted a different Britannia. And although he could not know all of them, he could know the worst ones thanks to the anime.
Among them was Schneizel el Britannia. This man was not even truly loyal to Charles. He was simply equal to or worse than him, with the same ideals and thoughts, so he followed him for the results. Unlike most, who followed Charles more than his ideals, or agreed with the ideals because of Charles.
An example of the latter was Bartley Asprius, completely loyal to Charles and his ideals.
Then there were most of the high nobles of the entire empire. Most of the people who had benefited from the system agreed with it and had committed countless evil acts.
Kaito sensed all of it thanks to his ability "Evil," including the very few who did not actually agree with the system. Some even had plans for revolution or defection.
The opposite case also existed. There were many people Kaito did not know from the anime, yet he could still see that they completely agreed with Charles and his methods, and were the same kind of people.
Unless they were normal people without any kind of power, Kaito killed all those in high positions or with power, even if they were not nobles. Of course, he made sure that this mindset was deeply rooted enough that they were not redeemable, and also that they had already done something.
Not because he was kind, but because the empire could deal with the rest later on its own.
Kaito took each of those people to the balcony and killed them one by one in front of everyone watching.
In a tyrannical empire, where that kind of behavior was not only allowed but the norm, most people who thought that way did not hide it by pretending to be good, but showed their true personalities in public.
Thus, as all these people known for that died one by one, even the dumbest person realized what was happening.
Not only had the emperor fallen, but his regime.
When it was over, Kaito approached one of the princesses who was still on the balcony, looking at him with fear and red eyes. She had clearly been crying.
"No, no..."
When she saw Kaito approach, she tried to refuse, but Kaito grabbed her wrist and dragged her to the edge of the balcony.
When she thought she was going to die, she heard Kaito's voice declare to all the people below.
"Euphemia li Britannia. She will be your new empress."
He declared it without leaving any room for discussion in the entire Holy Britannian Empire.
"W-what? M-me? Why?"
Euphemia asked, not understanding the situation. One moment she was convinced she was going to die, and the next they were handing her the empire.
"You realized it, right?" Kaito replied. "Everyone who supported Charles's regime is dead. There is no one left who can restore it by force."
He paused briefly.
"From today on, the regime will change. And it will be just as you always said you wanted."
"I-I... thank you?" she finally murmured, breaking into tears. She had never imagined that her wish to turn her father's empire into something more peaceful would come true like this.
"Do not thank me yet," Kaito interrupted her.
"Not everything is fine. You will be empress, yes. But not out of kindness or by right. You will be because your ideals match mine."
Euphemia looked up, understanding the situation.
"If you fail to change Britannia, or if you allow the old regime to return, I will come back and destroy the entire empire. No exceptions."
"I-I will not let that happen," she said firmly, knowing that Kaito was capable of it. "I promise."
"Words mean nothing," Kaito replied. "You should know that after so many years, right?"
Euphemia's face went pale at his words.
"Your ideal was always right. But you never acted. Maybe even if you had tried, you would have failed. But you did not even dare to take that step from the beginning.
You are a princess. Your chances were greater than anyone else in Britannia. Even so, you chose to do nothing.
Euphemia li Britannia, you are guilty... of doing nothing."
She clenched her fists.
"That is why I will assign someone to you. Someone you must respect as your right hand. He will not be above you, but not below you either.
Someone completely different from you. Someone who, even without having anything, even while being weaker, dares to act when it is necessary."
Kaito stared at her.
"Because he understands that any future he manages to create, no matter how imperfect, is better than this present.
Go to Japan..." he ordered.
"And bring back Lelouch vi Britannia."
________________________________________
If any fan saw how I reduced the entire Code Geass plot to just 2000 words, they'd probably kill me, haha.
But well, the protagonist is already at the point where the original story only serves to obtain private information. He no longer needs to follow it to complete the mission
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)