Upon the Sword of Akasha, Lelouch asks the Emperor about his mother's death. The Emperor tells Lelouch to use his Geass to get his answer. Lelouch thinks the Emperor is trying to bait him into making eye contact with him, so he can use his own Geass to rewrite his memories again. To that end, he deploys a cluster of mirrors from the Shinkiro, looking into one of them as it reflects his father and using his Geass to compel him to die. It seems to work, as the Emperor draws his gun and shoots himself in the heart...
Back in Area 11, Suzaku is moments away from injecting Kallen with Refrain. He then remembers Lelouch's Geass, and vows to not be like him, tossing the Refrain aside. At the same time, in the ruins of the Order's base, V.V. laments to C.C. that he bears the burden of immortality...
Back at the Sword of Akasha, Lelouch ponders on his victory over Emperor Charles, and how it seemed so easy, almost anticlimactic. To his horror, however, the Emperor still lives: neither Geass nor bullets work on him, for he now bears the mark of Geass on his hand, having taken it and immortality from V.V. as punishment for lying to him! He declares that he will show Lelouch the "true" nature of the world around him...
Elsewhere, Villetta confronts Ohgi, determined to kill him in order to erase the shame of having loved an Eleven. Her sword drawn on him, she demands to know why a terrorist saved her. Ohgi admits he did so, not knowing who she was, because he thought he could learn about Zero from her. In the end, however, he fell in love with her, and still loves her now. They are then confronted by Sayoko, acting on Diethard's orders...
In the other world, Charles calls Lelouch out on his shrouding himself in lies. Lelouch claims he had to lie to survive, but those lies costed him Euphemia, Suzaku, and Nunnally. C.C. then appears with them, and reveals to him the conditions of the contract they forged when he accepted the power of Geass: in exchange for that power, Lelouch was to help the immortal C.C. die. When one accepts the power of Geass, one gains power until they can end the life of they who gave them their power. None had reached that point for C.C., until Charles. Killing C.C. would grant Lelouch the power he needed to stand on equal footing with Charles, but he cannot go through with it, so C.C. sends him away.
Back in Area 11, Suzaku decides the only way to get the truth about Zero is to wrest it from Lelouch himself. The OSI hidden on campus can't find him, however: they are all under Lelouch's spell. He is also forced to face Nunnally with the truth about the night she called Lelouch over the phone. All the while, Villetta and Sayoko fight it out. When Sayoko throws daggers at her, Ohgi intercepts them, wounding himself and falling from a cliff. Villetta dives in after him, the two of them falling towards a river...
Lelouch sees a vision of a distant past: C.C.'s memories. As a child, the girl who would become C.C. was an escaped slave who was rescued by a nun from the brink of death. That nun granted her the power of Geass, and with that power, C.C. made others love her. In time, however, love without limit became boring to her. The only person she truly believed in was the nun who granted her the power of Geass, the one person who was immune to her power. Little did C.C. know, the nun simply used her as a means to end her own eternity, her own life.
Lelouch's presence in the visions of C.C.'s past suggest him to be someone very important to her, however...
Back at the Sword of Akasha, Charles perpares to take C.C.'s "Code", thus ending her immortality. Lelouch, however, calls out to C.C., having opened the "Thought Elevator" and returned to the Sword of Akasha, within the Shinkiro's cockpit. Lelouch begs C.C. not to die, and promises her happiness. This convinces C.C. to abandon her plan with Charles. Lelouch then attacks the Sword of Akasha and reaches for C.C., realizing her true wish...
As Nina completes the first working Sakuradite-powered superweapon, the "FLEIJA", in Dallas, Lelouch and C.C. return to the real world. To his horror, however, her memories are gone: she believes herself to be the slave she was in her youth, and remembers nothing of Lelouch!
