Fanfic / Code Geass The Grey Chessmen

Code Geass: The Grey Chessmen is a Code Geass and Xcom crossover by Generatedname.

During a what was supposed to be a routine drug raid leads Zero and the Black Knights to uncover the influence of aliens that have been operating on Earth for an unknown purpose.

As of the 20th of November 2023 the story has 7 chapters to its title which includes an interlude.

This story contains examples of

• Adaptational Villainy: The JLF ends up being subverted by the aliens early on, who decide to prop them up to act as a smokescreen for their plans.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The XCOM side of the crossover includes enemies and mechanics from both the original game (floater design) and the reboot (Thin Men, flash bangs disrupting psionics). Word of God also confirmed that Mutons will have an appearance mixing their original and reboot designs, and has hinted that content from Pirate Z will also appear.
• Adaptation Expansion: Tons - the author enjoys Worldbuilding.
  • The Emblem of Blood is given a few more details, including confirming that it was restricted mostly to the royalty and nobility, causing the commoners to mostly accept it without thought.
  • The subway network that was brought up in the anime as a major issue for Britannia is given more depth and explained as having been expanded following Britannia's conquest, with Cornelia noting that dealing with it would be a campaign of its own.
  • Guinevere su Britannia is practically a non-entity in canon, with even the side materials only indicating that she is Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense. Here, she's head of Britannia's media sphere, giving her roughly equal standing to Schneizel and Cornelia - they might handle, respectively, governing Britannia and leading its armies, but she is the one they go to when selling new laws/military operations to the public.
• Adapted Out: Euro-Britannia doesn’t exist in this universe, as the author felt that it didn’t make any sense.
• Alien Abduction: The aliens uses the Refrain drug trade to round up and abduct drug addicts, which includes Kallen's mother. The Black Knights discovered their operation and tracked them to a facility where they managed to rescue some of the abductees.
• Alternate Universe: The Author has made it clear that his story won’t be following the canon show after the refrain raid.
• Ambiguous Situation: Shirley's father still dies in Narita, but how he died remains uncertain; Lelouch is most troubled on whether the avalanche he caused or the JLF's drone attack was responsible for his death.
• Artificial Limbs: Tamaki loses a hand in the first chapter when trying to use an alien plasma pistol. Lelouch uses his Geass to arrange for a doctor to give him a state-of-the art prosthetic.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: The Ethereals planned on making themselves seen as liberators to the non-Britannian nations by helping and leading them against the tyrannical Britannian Empire.
• Body Backup Drive: The Ethereals has the Resurrection Cylinders that gives the user a new body after death. The Black Lotus Society used one to buy the loyalty of the High Eunuch Gao Hai.
• Broken Pedestal: Tohdoh initially remains devoted to Katase even after the latter is revealed to be a pawn of the aliens, holding on to the hope that the latter is simply a victim of mind control. This goes away when he sacrifices two divisions of trainees during the Battle at Narita, making it clear that even if his former commander is being forced to serve the aliens, he needs to be stopped.
• Defector from Decadence: Once it becomes apparent that the rest of the JLF is being controlled by the aliens, Tohdoh and the Four Holy Swords decide to defect.
• Enemy Mine: During the Battle at Narita, the aliens supporting of the Japan Liberation Front results in the Black Knights and Tohdoh siding with Cornelia to try and oppose them.
• For Want Of A Nail: The divergent point is during one of the Black Knight’s raids on a drug trade where the aliens were using the drug traffickers as cover to gather human test subjects.
• Heroic BSoD: Lelouch grows steadily traumatized in the Black Knights' war against the aliens such as seeing what the aliens did to their abducted human victims and even euthanizing an abductee that couldn't be saved. He also have recurring nightmares of Earth being bombarded by alien ships, and his friends and family being dissected and processed into genetic materials.
• Homing Projectile: The Black Knights uses heat-seeking rocket launchers against Floaters. However, this backfires on them as their missiles goes off target due to hot alien plasma bolts saturating the battlefield.
• Human Resources: The aliens captured human victims and processed them into genetic material to create alien hybrids. The Black Knights comes across one such processing facility and fought there to liberate the abductees.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In Chapter 6, Zero/Lelouch revealed the aliens' existence to Cornelia.
  • Lelouch's meeting with Kaguya has Kallen figure out that he's zero because she recognizes his voice during the conversation. Lelouch's speach in Chapter 7 to the assembled heads of Kyoto makes her realize that he's Prince Lelouch because that would be the only Britannian who matches up with the events Lelouch brings up to Kirihara.
• Les Collaborateurs: The Ethereals have various human collaborators from drug pushers to government officials discreetly working for them.
• Mercy Kill: The Black Knights finds an abductee, the hotdog vendor, whose body is too mutilated in the alien's experiments. The man begs them to kill him to which Lelouch very reluctantly complies, right after he used his Geass on the man to make him no longer feel any pain in his last moments.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The story begins with the Black Knights raiding a drug ring in which they soon discovers that it is being run by aliens who are abducting drug addicts as part of their secret invasion of Earth.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Possible example - Inoue seems to be the dedicated engineer among the Black Knights, which would match up with her pilot class in Lost Stories.
  • When Tohdoh and the Four Holy Swords scout out a base for the Black Knights, they explicitly mention areas barracks, manufacturing, research, radar stations, a hangar, and defense systems. While all of these are important facilities, they also happen to be among the construction options for the original XCOM.
  • The Black Knights has a memorial wall for their deceased members similar to the one from Enemy Unknown.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Euphemia manages to get Zero to divert the Black Knights from the Tokyo area, ensuring they won't arrive in time to intervene against Cornelia at Narita. Unfortunately, the Black Knights are opposed to the JLF at this point due to the latter being backed by the aliens (who also gave them a tech-boost), meaning that Euphie cut off allies for the Narita operation that Cornelia could really have used.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The aliens unknowingly help Lelouch avoid multiple pitfalls that destroyed him in canon.
  • Their Psychic Powers give Lelouch a way to hide his own Geass, and cause Kyoto to blame them for Kusakabe's death.
  • Kyoto ends up sending Kaguya to formalize their agreements with Zero, and she demands that he show her his real face. While Lelouch only shows his face to her, the heads of the Black Knights overhear her reaction, and thus now have more incentive to follow him.
  • By using the JLF as proxies, they not only give Lelouch a perfectly acceptable reason to oppose the group, but also cause Tohdoh and the Four Holy Swords to defect.
• Outside-Context Problem: The arrival of the aliens is a problem for all sides, owing to them being a total unknown in the Britannia vs Black Knights conflict.
• Real Robot Genre: Code Geass’s Knightmares. The offer has one seen focused on the logistics for them being a fine example of Description Porn.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Tohdoh tried to talk some of the JLF soldiers the truth of the aliens in order to get them to stand down, but only to be responded with gunfire.
• Taking the Bullet: A nonfatal example. Chiba uses her Burai-kai to push Tohdoh's own from being gunned down by JLF Knightmares, and fortunately she ejects before her KMF is destroyed.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Lampshade by Tohdoh, who offhandedly doubts that the aliens would only focus their interest in Japan rather than the entire planet.
  "In the global scheme of things, the JLF would be next to irrelevant to them. Not unless they were only interested in Japan, and somehow I doubt they would come all this way for a single island chain."
• Wham Episode: Interlude 1 - The aliens from XCOM Terror From The Deep exist in this universe, have already awakened, and are in an alliance with Princess Guinevere. The Ethereals have successfully convinced one of the High Eunuchs to join their cause. Finally, the Black Lotus from The XCOM Files also exists and are bringing Mao into the fold.
  • Chapter 5 - Nunnally is revealed to be a latent psionic.
• Wacky Racing: The "Tokyo Drift" omake (which is non-canon) features an illicit racing circuit hosted in Area 11 by Walter sun Britannia, feature all kinds of weird racers. The local champion is the Blind Banshee of Britannia, or as we better know her, Nunnally. Lelouch is reduced to Inelegant Blubbering when he learns this, and spends most of the race in a state of panic, while Nunnally is clearly enjoying herself.