The Kings Cometh 8: Codebreaker-I

At Lelouch's suggestion shortly after the war, Rakshata Chawla began contruction of a new Guren to replace the one destroyed during the Siege of Pendragon. She even would have been fine with him breathing down her neck about it if only he hadn't insisted she include "energy wings." Apparently, he'd given the idea to Lloyd to invent such a thing, and the mad scientist made it happen in almost no time at all. The first pair of energy wings were installed onto his own new knightmare, the Lancelot Albion, and they were a tremendous theoretical success, (the pudding addict still hadn't bothered to test if they actually worked). It was a blow to Rakshata's ego that she'd been outdone, but worse even than that, the ASEEC director hadn't seen fit to pass on his findings to her. Rather, he decided he would just make a pair of energy wings for the new Guren himself, keeping the secrets behind his most brilliant creation, ("yet," he was sure to remind everyone), secret. When she found out he'd been tampering with her work, she was furious, but somehow they managed to patch things up between each other and agreed to play nice like they used to.

Lloyd gave Rakshata all the info she needed, but she had to come up with the materials to build her Guren's energy wings herself.

For any normal person, this wouldn't be an issue, but Rakshata was hardly what most people would consider normal. What they would say, if they were being particularly polite, was that Rakshata Chawla was very eccentric; almost as much or even more than Lloyd, her eternal rival. To most sane people looking in, it seemed the two were in a neverending contest with each other to be stranger and more out of touch with reality than the other at all times. Of course, as a married man perhaps Lloyd was finally coming down to earth, if only a little. Regardless of who was winning that contest, it could not be argued that Rakshata was a very picky woman. As such, she would only get parts for her mechanical masterpieces straight from the Militarized District of India.

"It's the only place I can trust to supply me with premium pieces," she once said.

When time and circumstance allowed, she would even go personally to inspect the quality of the metal and machinery she was going to use in her creations. With the Guren SEITEN in the final stages of building, she planned to go back to India for just that purpose, which gave Lelouch the excuse he needed to send his Codehunters to accompany her.

There were eight Thought Elevators in the world. That was now certain. Over the previous few months, Lelouch and those loyal to him had journeyed far and wide, and visited all but one of them. C.C. and her team had successfully found their way to the Geass relic of Iran, and found both its Code-Bearer and the location of the next Thought Elevator. The next site of Geass for them to find was in southern Africa, and as that was part of the EU's territory, there were almost no problems in getting access to it and locating its Code-Bearer as well. With his map of Geass now almost completely filled in, Lelouch and his teams could move in, bringing Operation Codebreaker to a swift end.

At the turn of noon, on the side of a bustling Delhi street, Rakshata walked quickly, unbothered by such trivial and fleeting things as nostalgia for the land she used to call home. Behind her, garnering a great many interested stares from passersby, was Zero and some of his subordinates, pleasant Gino Weinberg, serious Mitchell Perry, reserved Miguel Andrews, and the constantly depressed Masashi Kuroda. Behind them was Rolo Lamperouge, curiously looking at the buildings around them, searching the rooftops for something, or someone, unseen. Sayoko Shinozaki stayed hidden, moving silently along the rooftops, performing a search of her own.

As far as Rakshata knew, they were only there to pick up an order of electrical impulse wires for the energy wings of her new pet project. Rolo and that woman Sayoko, who seemed to come and go without warning, were emissaries for Lelouch, to make sure she got what she needed and wasn't hassled. The new knightmare was for Kallen, and since the redhead had more or less retired from the Black Knights, Lelouch, and not Zero, was footing the bill for it to be built. Knowing the Black King, Rakshata wasn't at all surprised he would send agents to make sure there wasn't any trouble getting what they came for. He was cautious, never leaving anything up to chance. She could respect that, to a degree, but on a more personal level Rakshata thought he should just lighten up.

Why Zero came along was beyond her, though. He said he wanted to know just where the weapons of the Black Knights were manufactured, and invited himself and his socially unadjusted cronies along. His excuse was probably a lie, but Rakshata didn't really care. They were along for the ride so they were fair game to verbally overwhelm with techno-babble. That suited her just fine.

The real reason they were all present was to find the Iranian Thought Elevator's Code-Bearer, who supposedly was hiding out here in Delhi. They didn't really have much to go on other than a few maps of the city with notes from C.C. sent via email, but they did have Sayoko, so that made things much easier. Her Geass allowed her to keep track of everyone, and their perceived threat level, within a certain distance of her person; a notable exception to the much more common, unethical powers of coercion. Whenever she wished, she could use her Geass and simply know where everyone was, as if her brain was temporarily rewired to work as a radar with an attached IFF. Of course, she couldn't pick up the presence of Code-Bearers with her power, so she improvised.

By making use of the varying heights of the rooftops around her, Sayoko could get a bird's eye perspective of the many throngs of people walking, biking and driving to wherever they needed to be on the city streets below. With her Geass active, she made mental checklists, making sure every one of the hundreds of civilians minding their own business down below were accounted for by her Geass. Then, every once and a while, she would move on to a different roof to avoid being seen or to catch up with the rest of the Codehunters and their unknowing excuse for being there, Rakshata.

It was a slow-going process, but after many hours of on-and-off searches in the areas of the city C.C. had mentioned to look specifically, Sayoko finally saw someone who she couldn't keep track of with her Geass. It had to be the person they were looking for.

The apparent target was a young-looking woman, small and demure, wearing an unobtrustive tan dress and shuffling along slowly on the other side of the street. She was Indian, the Hindu bindi on her forehead a clear giveaway. Long, combed brown hair, parted down the middle, framed a round face and ended in a braid slung over her right shoulder. Small rimless glasses sat lightly against a tiny nose, hiding sad brown eyes.

"Target in sight," Sayoko whispered. "Across the street, less than 50 meters from your position."

Though it went unnoticed, Sayoko and the rest of her companions, minus Zero, whose helmet could seemingly do anything, wore a tiny personal radio to keep in contact with each other. A cord with an earbud and attached microphone came up from the folds of their casual clothes, the only sign there was anything out of the ordinary.

"Roger that," Zero whispered back, his natural voice coming through on everyone's comm. He nodded to Gino who took the cue and sleazed his way closer to Rakshata.

"Say, Rakshata, did I ever tell you why I wanted to be Knight of Zero?"

Rakshata shrugged, never slowing her pace.

"Well, ever since I turned 12 I've really like the ladies - I guess Prince Clovis and I have that in common - so I was thinking since we're here..."

Gino moved in to occupy the scientist's attention, both of them continuing on their route even while Zero and the rest of his team fell behind.

"All units take cover," Zero had turned the speakers in his helmet off so no one but his radio-equipped teammates could hear him. Before he even finished his order, Mitchell, Miguel, and Masashi began running in different directions, but staying within sight and on the same side of the road. Zero took off as well, leaving Rolo standing alone, with simple folk streaming around him, trying to move on with their business.

Rolo closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held it. As he opened his eyes once more, the colour in the right was replaced with red. Everyone within a huge radius simply stopped moving. Despite their attempt to stay out of range, even Zero and his companions were frozen in time. Rolo wasn't sure what he expected to happen when he used his Geass, but it was causing a real mess. The road, so crowded and chaotic with human traffic before, ground to an eerie halt, with cars sliding into each other and people falling off their bicycles. Luckily it didn't seem anyone was too hurt by the abrupt stop, but then again, nobody was conscious and wailing in pain just yet.

On the other side of the street there was movement. A woman was looking frantically at the traffic accidents and the people all around her who'd stopped in their tracks. She was unaffected by Geass? Then this was indeed their target.

Rolo stepped around the numerous human obstacles, making his way across the street to the woman who was hesitantly examining the people frozen around her. She stopped as she noticed him coming. She became still and her face turned from concerned bewilderment to outright, terrified panic.

"Excuse me!" Rolo called to her amid the dead silence of the once bustling street. "Do you understand English?"

Rolo slowly released the breath he'd been holding as he spoke. His heart hurt. One day, when his Geass became permanent, everything around Rolo would stop, then his heart would almost certainly give out and he would stop too. Once, he wouldn't have minded such an end. Knowing it was his inevitable fate wouldn't stop it from coming, and fearing it would only make his short time until then miserable. Besides, he didn't have anything to live for anyway.

But then he was assigned that failed mission to kill Zero.

As a price for his failure, Rolo's enemies threw him in a cell and left him to rot. Rolo wasn't surprised, nor did he mind. It was only right for failure to be punished. V.V. would have done worse anyway.

Lelouch came to him though, had spoken with him, treated him like a human being. It felt strange for Rolo to speak so openly with another person, especially someone who was allied to his target.

Then Nunnally came to see him. She visited him in the dungeon regularly and was cheerful to him every time. She asked him his name and he told her. After all, what was there to lose by that point? She wasn't satisfied with that, though. She asked him for his last name and he replied that he didn't have one. She thought for a moment before deciding.

"Then you can share my last name with me and Lelouch!" She giggled and half-seriously made a motion with her hand, as if to knight the boy even though they were separated by a wall of iron bars. "I, Princess Nunnally vi Britannia, dub thee Rolo Lamperouge."

Upon hearing those words that meant so much more to him than he could have ever imagined, his eyes betrayed him and he wept for joy.

Nunnally was kind, even nicer to him than Lelouch had been. And what's more, she meant it. She wasn't nice to get information out of him, she was friendly because it came from some place deep within her, and Rolo reveled in it. He adored the attention, the care, the promises of family and friends. For the first time, he felt bad that his Geass would eventually kill him and take him away from the beautiful blind angel that had made him feel human for the first time in his life.

Later, after Rolo was finally released from his prison, Lelouch gave a hand-written sheet of instructions to the boy, detailing excercises and habits to keep, to strengthen the heart and hopefully prevent his death whenever his Geass became too powerful for him to control. It wasn't a guarantee. Lelouch never said that it was, nor did he say anything else about the sheet of instructions he'd given Rolo. Still, there was some hope to be had, and now that he had something to live for, someone to live for, he realized he actually wanted to keep living.

"Breathe in, breathe out," Rolo coached himself as he continued approaching the small woman on the other side of the street.

"W-who are you?" the woman asked quietly. She looked into Rolo's eyes and shook with fear at the red of his right iris and the winged sigil emblazoned across it.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I only want to talk."

She placed a hand against her left shoulder, took a step back, and gulped.

"Arē nahīṁ."

She ran.

Rolo watched her go, pushing people frozen in time aside, not taking a single look back even as their bodies thumped to the ground.

"Well, shit," was all Rolo could think to say. He released his Geass and fell to his knees, taking rapid deep breaths and clutching his chest. The scene in the street, quiet and unmoving until now, instantly returned to life. Groans of pain could be heard everywhere, but they were mere pindrops compared to the outbursts of confusion and rage. There were maybe a hundred collisions of cars and buggies in the street, and nobody could tell why.

"Target... Fleeing..." Rolo gasped out the words for his comrades to hear over their comms.

"Confirmed. Sayoko, give us directions!" Zero placed a hand against the side of his helmet as he spoke, the spell of Geass no longer affecting him or his men. Finding what he was looking for, he pushed a sequence of buttons on his helmet then shoved his way through a horde of people, rubbernecking at the chaos in the street. Behind him, Miguel, Mitchell, and Masashi came too, moving in separate arcs through the confusion to get to the other side of the road.

In a blur of perfectly planned and executed motion, Sayoko appeared from the top of a small building, somersaulting in the air and landing in a low crouch on the hood of a car in the middle of the street. She wasted no time, not letting her momentum stop, leaping up gracefully from her new perch and flipping onto the top of another car, and another. She took one final lunge as she drew near to the buildings on the other side of the traffic catastrophe, and reached out her hand. Sayoko's fingers met with warm metal as she took hold of a small balcony's railing. Sayoko shifted her body and flung herself up, flowing from the guardrail to a window ledge, then to an awning, practically flying up the side until she landed on her feet atop the roof. Without missing a beat, she began running again to the next rooftop, in pursuit of the fleeing Code-Bearer.

"This is Sayoko. Target is turning, she's moving into the alleys."

Zero's squad sped off, following Sayoko's directions and peeling into the alleys. Zero dashed in as well, taking a different course.

Meanwhile, Rolo still laid on his knees, trying to catch his breath. To his left, a man came up to him and tried to help him up. Rolo glared back and reached into his pocket reflexively, his fingers taking hold of his trusty switchblade. He was in a lot of pain from his heart and hadn't gotten the target to come quietly either. His mood, if he'd even been in a good one until now, was shot, and this guy coming up to him was asking for a knife to the throat.

Before he could draw his weapon though, and gouge the unfortunate Good Samaritan, he stopped himself. The image of Princess Nunnally's smiling face flashed through Rolo's mind and he took his hand from his pocket, leaving the knife in its place. Brushing off the bothersome man, he got to his feet, and, chest still heaving, ran into the alleys after the rest of his team.

The woman ran, she bumped into people, pushed past them, she just kept on running. She turned her head to look behind her. Someone was there, running, chasing her. She tried turning into another dark corridor between buildings, but stopped as another man came around the corner and started running toward her. She pressed on and tried turning again, but there was another man coming around that corner too. She kept running as a warcry erupted from somewhere above her. A woman descended onto her from the rooftops, pouncing against her and pushing her head and arm into a hold, forcing her to the ground. With just a thought, she activated her Code, and the woman who'd grabbed her shrieked and released her, falling to the ground herself, shaking in wide-eyed horror.

The woman, the Code-Bearer, ran at a breakneck pace, desperately trying to lose her assailants when the shadows of the alley themselves seemed to reach out and take her roughly about the arm and mouth. She felt cloth on her face and smelled something pungent, then the world went black.

Zero took his hands from the Code-Bearer, removing the chloroform-dipped hankey from her mouth and catching her as she flopped onto the ground. Miguel, Mitchell, and Masashi ran up behind her and stopped to check in with their leader.

"Masashi, it's time to go."

The sullen man nodded to Zero and pulled out his cellphone, pushing the speed dial and walking back out to the road as he gave instructions to the person on the other line.

Zero took off his cape and draped it over the unconscious Indian woman. Mitchell and Miguel took her gently from Zero and grabbed hold of her body from the legs and shoulders. It wasn't an ideal end to the mission with Sayoko as a casualty, but it was a success, so they had that much to be thankful for.

Rolo walked up with a scowl on his face, Sayoko hanging off his shoulder in a daze. Zero tilted his head, as if questioning, and Rolo's irritation waned slightly.

"She's fine. The target just fed her a bad dream."

Zero nodded, knowing all too well what that was like. He motioned for his team to move out and they started their way out of the alley. Masashi was waiting for them as they finally got out to the road, where people were still arguing angrily about hitting each other with their vehicles. A shiney black and silver hummer drove around the continuing chaos and screeched to a halt in front of them and Masashi opened the back door. His teammates shoved the still unconscious Code-Bearer into a seat, sitting her upright, and filed in beside her. Zero got into the front passenger seat while Rolo struggled with Sayoko. Mitchell impatiently reached out and pulled her and him both in roughly. Amidst their own quarrels, not a single person noticed the hummer's coming or its going as the door shut and it accelerated away.

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