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Code Geass R3 - Chapter Two

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Chapter Two
The Sunday sun rose brightly, waking Neko once more with its warmth. She groaned in irritation, turning over in her bed, stuffing her face into her pillow to hide from the scarlet light that filtered through her sleepy eyelids.
And then she was knocked clear from her bed by a flying body. She cried out in shock, twisting around, still half-conscious, to grab at her attacker's hair. She pulled, hard. And then she flinched.
The scream was definitely Cassie's.
She sighed, pushing herself into an upright position as she released the silky curls from her grasp. Cassie had curled into a ball in her lap, sobbing softly. Gentle, Neko brushed through her curls, searching for blood.
"Idiot." She muttered, "I was asleep."
"I… thought you were…" Cassie didn't continue.
Neko brushed a hand through her own tussled brown hair, and then reached forwards and picked Cassie off the ground. She laid the breathless girl on the bed from which they had just fallen, and moved over to the dresser. There was no need for uniforms today.
Cassandra's soft sobs echoed around her as she pulled on a pair of boot-cut jeans and a slim v-neck. She was in the midst of tying back her streaming hair with a silk ribbon when she realized something sounded odd about Cassandra's apparent pain. She paused.
"You're not fooling me, Cassie." She said darkly. As she had expected, Cassie jerked upright, her face glowing with humor. Neko closed her eyes and shook her head. In truth, Cassie had almost fooled her. She was useless when she locked up her Geass, "If you're coming on the shopping trip, you'd better get dressed. It's already nine thirty. We have half an hour to get to the subway."
In an instant, the girl had leapt off of Neko's bed and bounded out the door.
"You can't go in your nightgown!" Neko shouted after her. There was no response.
Sighing in exasperation, she turned to her bedside table and snatched up the belt lying there. She strapped it around her slim hips, her hands lingering on the halter attached to the left side. It was just a thin cylinder of leather, holding what appeared to be a ten inch metal rod. But Neko knew the feel of the weapon, knew exactly where the switch was which would extend the three foot blades on each end. She never left the Academy's commons without it.
She started out the door, but something caught her eye, and she stopped. Whirling around, one hand on her rod, she stared at the window. A small frown crossed her face. She had been certain of it… certain that someone had been there…
Shaking her head briskly, she turned and hurried on, hoping that her insanity wouldn't take too much of a hold before they got to the mall.  
She didn't bother with breakfast, instead heading straight off the commons and into the city. She brought nothing with her; except the weapon on her belt and the wallet in her hand. She didn't own much to begin with.
The station was noisy; nothing like the chatter of the Ashford dining hall, but enough to irritate Neko. She hated noise that had no point. Hated anything that had no point. Like her life. She had no purpose; no memory of what she might have been doing for twelve years. Only the basic knowledge one gains in their first five years of school had remained in her memory, and since then she had gained only what she could learn from her new school.
The thoughts made her heart race, her blood boil. She closed her ears, closed her eyes, trying to cut the noise and the crowds out of her mind and maintain her calm. What am I doing here?! She caught herself getting ready to scream, and choked it back.
"Neko-chan?"
She froze, slowly opening her mismatched eyes to find Rachel peering anxiously at her. Neko was relieved to find that her face was still, somehow, composed.
"Good morning, President." She greeted Rachel, trying not to let her voice shake.
"You alright? You looked kinda… pissed…"
"Fine." Neko whispered, glancing around, "Did Cassie show up?"
Rachel pointed calmly to a bench on the station wall. The girl was sitting on it, slumped over, fast asleep. Neko sighed.
"She always tires herself out."
"She'll be fine, as soon as we get out of the station." Rachel giggled, starting to lead the way over to their sleeping friend. Neko knew she was right; subways always made Cassandra sleepy.
"Do you have the tickets?" Neko asked even as she lifted her roommate's tiny frame into her arms.
"Yup, got them before you even arrived."
"How did you know I would bring her?" Neko asked, not really surprised.
"You two never go anywhere alone!" Rachel giggled, passing Neko two slips of paper, "Don't loose them!"
They stepped up to the edge of the tracks and waited in silence. As the train screeched away around the corner, the station fell suddenly quiet. The stench of fuel faded away, and left the faint smell of water streaming down the mold-slicked stone walls. Discarded trash fluttered to the ground around them, and they waited in the sudden peace, almost alone in the tunnels. Alone, except for a mother and her two small children.
Almost oblivious to Cassie's weight in her arms, Neko found herself watching the girls as they played around their watchful escort. She couldn't help but wonder if she had once been like that; small, carefree, with a family that cared for her. She knew she would never remember. She would never know. And that made her heart ache.
She was so absorbed in watching the playful twins, she didn't notice the others that had come pouring down into the tunnels. Not until it was too late; they were already surrounded.
The sound of the train screaming up the tracks could not overwhelm that of hundreds of guns, all being simultaneously set. She whirled at the same moment as Rachel, shaking Cassandra to wake her. But what Neko saw stopped even her mind.
Children. Hundreds and hundreds of children, standing in a semi-circle around them, guns loaded and aimed at Neko. Children with empty eyes burning with the scarlet bird, like the one that rose in her own demonic violet eye, when she pulled her Geass all the way out. Like the eyes of the Demon King, Lelouch Vi Britannia. The eyes of Geass.
In a moment, Neko understood. Someone had found out; about her power, about her existence. Someone wanted her dead.
Without thinking, she turned and shoved Cassie into Rachel's arms.
"Use the tracks." She urged, pushing her friends back towards the edge, "There's a ladder a little ways up. Use it. Get out."
"But… the train!"
"If you hurry you can make it out before it comes!" Neko snapped, shoving her again. This time, Rachel tottered at the edge. Ignoring it, Neko turned to the mother, clutching her terrified children, "Go! Take them and go! Follow my friends up the tracks!"
"What about you, Nek-" Cassie began, suddenly wide awake and struggling out of Rachel's arms.
"Don't worry about me!" Neko snapped, pulling her rod from its halter.
For she knew. The Children of Geass would not pursue her friends; they would only follow her. They were only here to kill her.
Rachel hesitated. The children raised their guns.
"MOVE!" Neko cried, extending the blades on her weapon. Rachel and Cassie obeyed, leaping over the edge and taking off down the tracks as the roar of the train grew louder.
But even the train was drowned out by the sudden shower of bullets.
Neko had always been a good fighter. She had learned at the very beginning that her rod could stop bullets. But not so many; not all at once. The first few, she deflected. And then pain like flames ripped up her spine and down her limbs, exploding in her head. She felt her body jerking with the hail of metal bits. And then she was falling, smashing into the tile floor, her head barely an inch from the ledge.
Even through the pain, she could feel the train scream by. She could hear the continued fire of the children's weapons, the screams of the mother and children who had not escaped the carnage. And her heart ached for them; even as she died, her only regret was that she had not protected the delicate balance of life which she had so envied only moments before.
It seemed like an eternity before the pain tearing through her began to give way to numbness, before the sound of bullets shattering the stone walls ceased, replaced by the thunder of hundreds of feet trudging back up, into the sunlit streets of Tokyo.
Her vision was fading, filling in with cloudy black at the edges. It was disconcerting, to realize that she couldn't quite remember where she was. Who she was. Who she had been with. But it seemed that she had experienced this feeling before; this feeling of forgetting.
She was so lost in the fear of losing all memory, it took her a moment to realize that someone was touching her, leaning over her, peering into her eyes. A child; a small girl, with long golden locks, blood pouring from bullet holes through her chest. Everything came rushing back, everything in that instant, everything since the day she had woken for the first time, lying in the middle of Tokyo, no memories to follow.
The child smiled down at Neko, even as both of them died. And Neko could only smile back, and mouth an apology, that she hadn't been able to save them. Any of them. Mother, children, herself… only Cassie and Rachel had gotten away…
"No," The child's whisper almost broke her heart; high, sweet, forgiving, "You did it. You saved us all."
Neko caught her dying breath as the Geass insignia blazed in the child's right eye, flapping as the power was cast upon her. Neko felt it burn through her, surging into her being, burning through her blood… sealing her wounds?
"I give you this Code, by my Master's word." The girl whispered, the light in her eyes dying as her life force flooded into Neko, "Use it well to defend those who can not defend themselves."
And then she flopped onto the stone, and was dead.
Only a second later, so was Neko.
Okay, fine. I'll bring Lulu in now. Chapter 3, the beginning of the third rebellion. Lulu and C.C., and she's being as bitchy as ever.

Don't you just love Neko? Her rod would be so fun to fight with!

Chapter Three --> [link]
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Devilomsorgar's avatar
Dude, Neko's a BADASS!!!

"burning through her blood… sealing her wounds?"

^is that sposed to be a "!" or a "."?