Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass. It belongs to its rightful owners.

For: Tpolich (who suggested Countryside and Train) and Anonymous (who suggested Milly)


Chapter 7 - Slice of Train


Milly Ashford was a pretty girl. Lovely blonde hair, feminine features, legs that go on forever, confident and originates from a wealthy family. Yes, very attractive indeed.

It was no surprise then that men stared when she walked past, sashaying like some model on a catwalk, hair bouncing softly on her shoulders and surrounded with her girl friends.

It was also no surprise that the minute Milly said goodbye to her friends, she was dragged unwillingly into an unknown alleyway with a knife on her throat.

"My, my." Her attacker sneered as his friend rummaged through her handbag. "We caught a pretty Britannian this time."

Milly's blue eyes widened, "Elevens…"

"You Britannians always think you're so fine and rich up there in their little estates and fancy housing but drag you into an alleyway somewhere and you'll all beg for your life the same way a slave would." The man sneered. He ran a finger on her cheek and she shuddered.

"You touch me and I'll have the police on your…" she started but stopped when the man's face loomed near.

"Police? Honey, we'll be well and away by the time the police even get here." He laughed and Milly silently scolded herself for picking such a flimsy skirt today as she felt his hand on her thigh.

"You just want money, right?" she tried and watched as the man's partner pull out a wad of cash from her purse.

Her cell phone rang and the man grimaced before fishing it out of her pocket and chucking it against a wall where it promptly smash into bits of plastic and metal.

The knife was removed from her throat and she was about to let out a sigh in relief had a hand not clamp onto her mouth.

"It's a pity to leave such a pretty toy to the hands of the Britannians, right?" the man chuckled and his hands were all over her in an instant.

CLANG

Suddenly there was a cry of pain and the man that was on her was on the ground nursing his head with a strange girl above him holding a bin lid like a weapon.

"Are you alright?" the strange girl asked, ignoring the man's furious screaming.

Wordless, Milly nodded and watched as her saviour chucked the bin lid like a Frisbee at her attacker's friend.

DOOF. It connected straight with his gut.

"You little wench!" Milly's attacker shouted in fury and out came the knife again. The strange girl wasn't having any of it though. She plucked another bin lid off a nearby rubbish can and ram it into the guy's face before he could even get close to her. There was a sickening crack that could have been the man's nose breaking but the girls didn't stay to check.

"This way." The girl simply said as she scooped up Milly's handbag with one and caught the Britannian's wrist in the other. The girl pulled her into a run as they heard her attackers getting up again.

"They're chasing us!" Milly had screamed as they ran through the alleyways.

"Aa, they are," was her saviour's simple reply as she pulled her around another corner to yet another alleyway.

Left. Right. Left. Someway. Stairs. Fences. Gates. Left. And…

Milly lost count of the amount of back streets they ran through but by the time they couldn't hear her attackers anymore, her feet were numb with pain from running in heels, her mind was dizzy from the twists and turns and her saviour had lost her cap somewhere in the run.

When they finally reached a more public street though, it was nowhere near where Milly was doing her shopping and definitely far from home.

The strange girl dropped her hand and reached up to touch her mane of thick green hair. "I liked that cap…"

Milly plonked herself down on a nearby bench and gasped for breath. "Thank you."

The girl shrugged and continued to tug forlornly on her now hatless hair.

"Where are we?" Milly asked as she looked about their surroundings. It was a quiet street with only a handful of shops but no landscape features that the blonde could recognise.

The green haired girl shrugged again before dropping Milly's bag into her lap. "You should be safe here." She said and then turned to leave.


C.C. was expecting just a normal day - wake up, eat pizza and sleep. However, apparently her definition of a normal day wasn't the same as Lelouch's.

The Lamperouge boy promptly dragged her out of the house and declared that she may as well help him get the groceries again.

She had every intention to abandon the poor boy for the pizza buffet that's happening in Pizza Hut but her eyes spotted something else and before Lelouch knew could turn around; C.C. was already down the street and deep in the complex labyrinth called the back alleys.

Ten minutes later she saved that blonde president of Lelouch's and running down the streets like they were chased by speeding bullets. She lost count of the minutes after that though but it didn't matter because she herself was lost anyway.

"Wait!" The blonde shouted after her as she turned to leave.

Curious, C.C. turned back and the blonde smiled. "Where are we?"

"You already asked that," C.C. commented then looked about the sky as if it would give them a clue as to their whereabouts. "I don't know."

The blonde rummaged her pockets, "They smashed my phone. Do you have a cell phone I could borrow?"

"No, he wouldn't let me have one," Was CC.'s monotonous reply.

"He?"

C.C. pondered for a while before saying, "my room-mate."

"Oh… I guess we're stuck then." The blonde said with a disappointed face. "They took all my money as well."

"I didn't get a chance to bring money. He pulled me out of the house too quickly apparently normal humans do not stay in bedroom all day though I don't know what his problem is when he practically shoves me in there half the time so his sister won't find out about us."

The blonde raised an eyebrow as if wondering what kind of kinky relationship this green-haired girl had with her partner.

"I'm Milly Ashford." The blonde said with an outstretched hand.

C.C. stared at the hand and wondered if Lelouch would be happy if she introduced herself to his friends as C.C. The image of Lelouch's annoyed face came to mind and also the fact that she abandoned him in the supermarket.

"I'm…" She caught the girl's hand and said the first thing that came to mind that she could easily answer to, "I'm Cheese, Cheddar Cheese."

C.C. blinked as she realised that it fit her initials as well and made it something she'll quickly respond to (how could anybody not respond to something pizza-related anyway?). Lelouch would be so proud of her…Not.

Milly looked at her weirdly. "Cheese?"

"Cheddar Cheese," C.C. corrected as if it's very important and maybe it was. After all, mozzarella on pizza is very different from cheddar on pizza.

"Very well, Cheese-san," Milly said with an amused tone, "where do you suggest we go now then?"

C.C. looked about and pointed. "Train station."


How 'Cheese-san' managed to have no money one second to having enough to buy two train tickets the next, Milly had no idea. The green-haired girl just left Milly by the entrance of the station, walked through a dense crowd and came back with a couple of bills barely two seconds later. Perhaps she went to the bank…

Milly also liked how this girl worked – efficient, cool, collected and no complaints. She only needed to say which stop to make and Cheese-san didn't even question her choice before handing the money over.

Finding the platform would have been easy had Cheese-san not got hypnotised by a Pizza Hut poster near the phone boxes but she did and it made them late for the train.

Never had Milly ran so much in her life, not even when she had the entire campus chasing after Arthur for Lelouch's secret. By the time she was on the train with the doors sliding shut behind her, she was near enough keeling over in exhaustion.

First the running from her attackers and now running for the train – where was her personal chauffeur and car when she wanted them most?

Cheese-san stared at her for a little while before moving to take a seat by the window looking calm, collected and not even breathing hard much less sweating as much as Milly did.

Once her feet could finally move again, Milly joined her by the window. Cheese-san only raised an eyebrow before returning to ignoring her and focusing all her attention on the scenery outside.

It was probably the third stop when Milly's eyes drifted close and her head leaned to one side. She briefly remembered Cheese-san blink in surprise when Milly's head landed on the top of her own because green-haired girl's shoulder was too low for her. Cheese-san didn't move away though. In fact, she just dug through her pockets and pulled out a pizza brochure. Two seconds later, Cheese-san was hypnotised again.


When Milly woke up, Cheese-san was still staring at the pizzas in her tiny brochure and a forest of trees was flying past the windows.

"Trees?" Milly whispered as she lifted her head off Cheese-san's.

The trees disappeared from view and fields started rolling by, causing the Ashford to gape like an idiot at the scenery.

Trees, fields, hills, cows, sheeps, farmers… oh dear Britannia! They're in the countryside.

"Why didn't you wake me up?!" Milly instantly shrieked.

Cheese-san blinked at her and shrugged. "You looked tired."

"We missed our stop! We…We're… We're in the countryside!" The blonde panicked.

Her phone was destroyed, she had no money, she was lost and stuck with a girl who was enslaved to pizza and she had no ice cream or chocolate to help the situation!

"Cheese-san!" Milly cried desperately.

"Yes, Ashford?" Cheese-san asked, not even looking up from her pizzas.

Milly wanted to scream at the girl. She really wanted to ignore the rules of social etiquette and shout at the girl in such an unladylike fashion, it will scare away the toughest of men but she didn't.

Taking heaving breaths, Milly tried to keep her temper in check.

Cheese-san finally peeled her eyes from mozzarella and tomatoes to regard the blonde with curious eyes.

The train stopped and without a word, the green-haired pizza-lover dragged Milly off the train so quickly she didn't have time to respond.

The platform they exited onto was empty and it was only then that Milly realised it was cold outside and the sun was setting.

"What did you drag me out here for?" the blonde demanded and then gape in horror as the train started to move away. "No! Wait! Let me back on!"

Cheese-san waited and watched as she chased after the moving transport before slumping to the floor in despair as the train went on in its journey.

Milly turned around and glared at her with fury blazing in her eyes. "Why did you pull me out for?"

Cheese-san shrugged and Milly decided the girl shrugged too much for her liking. "We have to get off to take the train going back anyway."

The green-haired girl looked about before kneeling down in front of Milly. "Besides, you looked like you wanted to scream. There's nobody here. You can scream all you want."

Milly glared some more and looked defiantly away. "I am not going to-"

Miss Cheddar Cheese wasn't having any of it though. She grabbed Milly's chin, "Milly, you wanted to scream. So scream at me. It'll make you feel better."

She was still defiant though and Cheese-san smacked her – hard across the cheek and painful enough to bring tears.

Her temper broke its cage then. She screamed at her. She threw an unladylike tantrum and used equally unladylike words. She called out her frustration and shouted out her annoyance. She called her a fool for not waking her in the train. She blamed her for dragging her off the train and landing them in the middle of nowhere. Then when she realised she ran out of this to scream about Cheese-san, she screamed about something else instead.

She shook with anger as she shouted out her reluctance to marry a noble not for the sake of love but for the sake of her family. She screamed about having no chocolate and ice cream with her at the moment. She screamed about school, marriage, pressure, stress, family and even more about getting lost with a pizza-loving stranger.

When she was finished, Cheese-san had miraculously relocated her to the opposite platform without Milly realising it and the Ashford's throat was hoarse and sore from her ranting.

"You finished?" Cheddar Cheese asked her and Milly scowled.

"When is the next train? This place smells like cow poop."


Milly made sure not to fall asleep this time but she did anyway and Cheese-san generously leant her head as a pillow again.

When Cheese-san woke her up, Milly bolt up in panic, thinking they missed the stop again but they didn't. Her green-haired saviour guided her sleepy and tired body out of the train and out to the streets.

Five minutes later, Cheese-san pulled out some coins and they found a phone box for Milly to call home.

As the blonde waited for the line to connect with Ashford's residence, Cheese-san unbuttoned her own jacket and placed it on Milly's shivering shoulders before pulling out her pizza brochure for another read.

"Cheese-san?" Milly started as she leant against the phone box waiting for her family to pick her up.

The girl was seated on the pavement kerb like child and Milly would not be surprised if she turned around to find a lolly sticking out from between her lips.

"Hm?" The girl said disinterestedly as she stared at a seafood pizza with her eyes like a hungry dinosaur.

"Why do you like pizza so much?"

"It's nice and I like to annoy my room-mate by keeping him up all night with the smell." Cheese-san paused then continued, "He gets awfully annoyed and fussy about it and complains as to why I never wear any pants around the house so I usually shut him up by letting him sleep with me in my bed – he doesn't complain anymore after that."

Milly stared before deciding that this girl has some issues with her boyfriend but she's not one to pry into a stranger's sexual relationship so she quickly changed the subject.

"Thank you for saving me."

"You're welcome."

"And…" Milly paused and wrapped the stranger's jacket closer to her body, "thank you getting me home."

Cheese-san paused in her flipping and then resumed as normal. "You're welcome."

A car horn sounded and Milly looked up to see one of her family's cars coming towards them.

"Would you like lift home?" the blonde asked but her saviour was gone.

The car stopped in front of her and her flustered chauffeur shot out from behind the wheel. "Miss, where had you been?"

Milly smiled and picked up Cheese-san's abandoned pizza brochure, "Out with a friend. Do you mind if we stop by Pizza Hut? I'm awfully hungry."


"What time do you call this, young lady?" Lelouch snapped as he tried to haul C.C. into his bedroom via the window.

"Night time." Was C.C.'s smart reply, "And I'm not so young anymore."

"And you're not a lady either." Lelouch added as he felt his muscles straining to pull her inside before Nunnally gets suspicious as to what was all the noise about. "It's cold at night. You could have at least worn a coat!"

"I did but she was cold."

"She?" Lelouch questioned as with a final tug the pizza girl got onto the window enough for her to climb in by herself.

"You need more muscle," the witch commented once she finally got onto the windowsill of the bedroom.

"I do not." He replied as he helped her up like a gentleman. "Where have you been all day? You left me in the shop, who is this 'she' and… what is that smell?!"

C.C. looked at the brown footprints she have left on Lelouch's carpet then lifted up a foot and stared at the underside of her shoe, "Cow poop."


END OF CHAPTER 7


I am fully prepared for rotten tomatoes to be thrown at me for butchering Milly's character. In fact, Anonymous-san, you can even drown me in the stuff since you wanted Milly and I gave you not-so-Milly.

Anonymous: As usual, you flatter me too much with your kinds words but I'll stop resisting now because I have a feeling that the more I resist, the more you'll insist and the cycle will go on forever. As usual, many thanks for your reviews. They are always a delight to read.

KiKi Hayashi