Lulu's Bizarre Rebellion

by Ezit Meti

Lelouch Lamperouge was a boy with an ambition; To one day bring down the corrupt nation of Britannia and create a peaceful world for his sister. However, a single arrow gifted him a power that will help him reach his ambition. Stands... Ripple... A feud between two bloodlines that transcends time... And that's only the beginning of this bizarre rebellion!

36. The World of C

Disclaimer: Neither Jojo's Bizarre Adventure of Code Geass belong to me. Please support the official releases.

Chapter 34 The World of C

====Cornelia====

If one sought to explain Cornelia's philosophy of war succinctly, then they would say that she saw war as a struggle between pride and life. She had seen it time and time again from both sides of the battlefield: Skilled warriors charging headlong into the enemy, confident in their skills. Too confident to think. Too cocky to plan. Arrogant enough to think they were invincible and too proud to realise that no, they were not.

It was a delicate balance. Much like the same manner in which Cornelia balanced Bors atop these trees. Stay proud and stay confident in yourself, for to lack confidence is to invite hesitation, yet always remember to keep it tempered. Therein lay the struggle.

This might be why she took the seemingly suicidal move of rushing in to confront the Stand user in the red Knightmare, where others might have kept their distance. Cornelia was a relentless fighter in the end, who held nothing back and made every move deliberately. True, she was rushing headlong into battle against a physically superior opponent. But she was doing so while thinking, in particular thinking that it was entirely possible this enemy might kill her.

The Guren, too, rushed in headlong without hesitation. Its speed was astonishing enough that Cornelia barely even realised she'd raised the lance to block one of the more solid kicks she'd ever endured until it was already done. Suddenly, and just as Cornelia was reaching to trigger the lance's sonic attack, Bors warned her the machine was shifting its weight as if it was about to -

She ducked under the spinning backhand and lunged forward with the intention of tackling the Guren all the way down to the ground if need be. It felt as though the instant she did so the Guren lifted its knee to strike at her, forcing Cornelia to try and shift momentum to disengage. The kneelift was blocked and she lunged with the lance, which the Guren easily dodged around and lifted its arm mounted cannon for a point blank blast.

Which was the moment Cornelia activated the lance's sonic pulse right next to the Guren's cockpit, disorienting the pilot sufficiently that she was able to safely disengage and catch her breath. The part of her that struggled against the pride was desperately trying telling her something during those scant ten seconds of battle, but now she could listen to it clearly.

And what it said to her inspired her very next move.

"Even aside from your Stand and your Knightmare," Cornelia announced while in front of her, information scanned and analysed by Bors flickered across her screen indicating possible movements the machine might make based on all available data. By itself this wasn't enough to safely predict her opponent's every move. However, for a skilled pilot like herself… "You are an astonishing pilot. I can see it in the way you move. The only thing you lack is proper training and experience, which is to be expected from an Eleven."

"A compliment from a Britannian Princess?" the enemy pilot said. The Guren suddenly leaped clear across the trees, its pilot's Stand manifesting just underneath it as it arced across. It made her wonder. A reckless attack under the circumstances. "Well, that just made my day! Don't talk like you know me, your highness."

What had more of an edge to it, then? That sarcastic tone, or the knife she'd just dropped rather obviously into her Stand's grip? No matter. Rather than raising her lance to meet the incoming attacker, Cornelia instead lowered it. And threw it directly into the ground beneath her. For the tree she was standing on was also the tree the Guren would be landing on momentarily.

The Guren reacted with remarkable speed, firing a slash harken into a nearby tree and pulling itself to a safer location while Bors stayed exactly where it was. Remarkable! Cornelia had to concede that this pilot did deserve their confidence in themselves. Confident enough to confront her without hesitation, not flinching or pulling her punches. She believed she could win, and that was the very first step towards victory!

"Oh, but I do know you," Cornelia said. "You're hotheaded, impulsive, fighting for what you think is right… And I dare say that you feel a family member died at the hands of the Holy Empire. How am I doing so far?"

"You've not impressed me yet," the enemy pilot yelled back. "And you're not going to if you think that tree felling trick will work again! Except… Why are you still standing on that tree. You were bluffing?"

"No," Cornelia said, and then the tree the Guren was standing on began to creak ominously. This was the difference between confidence and arrogance. One gives you the means by which you may reach for success. The other leads you to your own failure. "I simply aimed my lance at a rock at the bottom of this tree. It bounced off and struck a different target. Just as Bors calculated. Just as I predicted."

The Guren wasn't hanging around, and nor was Bors. The two of them leaped to a new treetop, and Cornelia's very first move was to block the dagger being wielded by the Stand using her lance. Her next was to lash out a desperate-seeming palm to push aside the Guren's silver claw, then radiate her own supersonic blast to repel the enemy.

"You blame Britannia for all your ills, and yet your own kind remain blameless," Cornelia continued. She struck the lance in among the leaves of the tree, blasted some of them off and then with precise movements and small sonic impulses she lifted them up and flung them at the Guren while dashing quickly forward. "Even though you engage in sabotage and terrorism? Even though some of you take the lives of Britannians and Elevens, forcing us to enact even harsher policies in the name of security! How convenient for you!"

The Guren swiped its silver claw around, seeming to catch all of the leaves in a single sweeping gesture. They drifted slightly on the wind right in front of it, and then a moment later it looked like the Guren was holding a substantial fireball.

The light of the fire illuminated the bright red Knightmare, making it seem positively demonic. Yet at the same time, it completely illuminated her opponent for Cornelia. She had been struggling with her own pride in this battle, keeping it balanced so that she may go towards victory without being lead from the path. Yet at the same time she had been trying to assess her opponent's level of pride: Was she merely confident in her ability, or arrogant?

The fire made her realise that she had been asking herself the wrong question all this time. This was not an opponent who was merely confident in their own ability. It was not that she were too proud to conceive of her own defeat. For all that Bors was able to help her predict her opponent's next move, the one thing it couldn't have told her was such a vital strategic element.

It wasn't confidence or pride that was driving her into reckless action. Nor was it anger. It was purely, simply, passion that was driving her onwards. To victory, or defeat. A perfect, effortless balance between life and pride.

"How dare you," the pilot said. "What do you know about it? What do you know about how injustice tastes when it's never happened to you?!"

"Three of my siblings have died in Area Eleven!" Cornelia yelled. The Guren launched the fireball forward and followed it through with the radiant wave surger, forcing Cornelia to retaliate with her lance by projecting the most powerful sonic output she could manage. If her opponent today was passion, then she would meet it in kind! "Two of them merely children! And yet because of the circumstances, I may never know who killed them! Never be able to bring them to justice!"

The coil-armed Stand suddenly tried to rush her from behind using that oversized knife. Cornelia sneered. So she was planning to trap her like this, was she? Trying to force Cornelia to expend all her energy resisting the enemy Knightmare's attack while the Stand attacked from another direction? Passion tempered by intelligence. Not bad. But not quite good enough either.

All that she had to do was a simple trick shot with her slash harken. Normally they would fire right over the Guren's shoulders from this angle, but by firing them into the direction of the combined microwave emissions and supersonic blast, the cable would drastically alter direction due to the heat and vibrations. Therefore, instead of firing off uselessly into the distance the slash harken should, according to Bors's calculations, strike that tree down there and - Got it!

From this point all that she had to do was pull herself down and out of the way of both attacks. However, even Cornelia wasn't able to anticipate the Guren's rapid reaction time as it dealt a single, sickening kick directly to the back even as Bors pulled itself quickly away!

Now that she was hidden among the trees, Cornelia quickly leaped to another tree branch and partially powered Bors down. Once safely hidden she performed a rapid system analysis. Damn! That kick damaged Bors's own in-built supersonic pulse ability. Now she could maybe get it to work one more time before it would need repairs.

"You call that injustice?" the enemy pilot asked. "You Britannians, you've taken everything from us! All our wealth, all our resources, all of our dignity and yes, our lives as well! How dare you try to judge me - Judge us for fighting back!"

Even a Goddess of Victory can be pushed into a corner. This level of skill, and the output of that Knightmare - Cornelia would have to use her brains in order to survive. When was the last time she'd had such a clearly uphill struggle? Against an enemy of Britannia? Never.

With her power output reduced the Guren should not be able to see her position very clearly. Which gave Cornelia a rather interesting idea. It would require some quick rewiring… Attach her external microphone to this device instead, and the results should speak for themselves. Or rather, speak on her behalf.

That is to say, she would throw her lance into a nearby tree. Not to make the tree fall over: Instead, she had connected the lance's sonic output into her microphone. This meant that, from the perspective of the enemy pilot, Cornelia's position would surely be where the lance was instead of where she was actually waiting for an opportunity to ambush her Stand!

"I don't judge you for fighting back," Cornelia said. "I judge you for not thinking it through."

A blast came down from the trees above. Cornelia tsked and quickly moved Bors to a new position, hurled her lance into another try, then tried speaking again.

"This is what led to your defeat in the end. You Elevens lacked the imagination and the drive. You relied on abstract ideas to keep you safe, instead of relying on the only thing that matters: The power to keep yourself safe."

Another shot came down, and Cornelia internally growled. Come on, she thought. Use your Stand! Stop messing around and use your Stand! She moved again to a new position and tried a third time. If it didn't work this time she would have to do something else.

"You're not really angry at us. You are angry at yourselves for being so weak! You are angry at the Elevens who do not object to being stepped on. You are angry that they lack your courage. You are angry that they lack your skill. You are better than them, were better before you had a Stand, and it infuriates you that you are still just an Eleven. And nothing else."

No shot came this time. Instead, all was quiet for a moment… Until Bors suddenly read a massive and sudden increase in temperature that was spreading up above her. Cornelia looked up. A second later and she wouldn't have had to. Because up above her had transformed into a bright and radiant crimson.

It reminded Cornelia about the report she had read summarising Nu and Kururugi's battle against Man on Fire. If the heat didn't get to her, the oxygen deprivation very well might! The ground. The clearing! It was probably the only safe place from the forest fire at the moment, so she made her descent as smoothly and quickly as possible with assistance from Bors in finding the most efficient, safe path.

"You've got that wrong, your highness," the enemy pilot yelled, leaping down in, quite literally, hot pursuit. "My hatred for Britannia is a blazing inferno! And you are about to burn in it."

====Kallen====

You know, it probably wasn't psychologically healthy to be so thoroughly pissed off all the time. Then again. Was it really her fault when Britannia kept on pioneering new and inventive manners in which to jump up and down on all of her buttons?

"Do you believe that killing me will bring you the satisfaction you desire?" Cornelia yelled at her while piloting her Knightmare quickly down towards ground level. Who knew she was so good at multitasking? Fighting evasively, lecturing, and providing a perfect new way to piss Kallen off all at the same time. "Your enemy is an Empire!"

"So we should roll over and play dead?" Kallen angrily retorted. She raised the cannon arm of her Guren and fired out a branch her highness was about to land on. "Aren't Britannians supposed to thrive on struggle? Except you don't seem to like it when you're the ones losing!"

"So close to the mark," Cornelia said, thrusting her lance into the side of the tree while firing her slash harkens out into another nearby pair. The branch beneath her was hit by Kallen's shot, but Bors was in a stable position already! The only thing its feet did was flick backwards to send that branch flying in Kallen's direction, and then she was off again, being pulled along by her harkens. "But not nearly close enough! The weak allow themselves to be ground underfoot while the strong strive to overcome! In the end, Miss Stand user, you cannot avoid this truth:

"That you would not be as strong as you are today if Britannia had not pushed you this far."

"Am I supposed to be grateful?" Up ahead of her, JJF swung the knife, cutting through the hefty tree branch and knocking it aside at the same time. "If I had to choose between power and freedom, I would take freedom any time!"

Bors landed safely in the clearing and quickly whirled around to face Kallen as she drove the Guren out of the burning forest. Flat land. Neutral territory. No backup, no tricks, no places to hide. Just the two of them on an equal playing field. Which was exactly what Kallen wanted in the first place! Ahead of her Bors's lance grew four prongs, perpendicular to one another.

"Foolish Eleven!" Cornelia sneered back. "In this world, you cannot have freedom without the power to defend it." While in its other, empty, hand Bors made a simple gesture. A beckon for Kallen to come and prove her power. "Or the resolve to take it from those keeping it from you!"

"If all you wanted was an ass kicking, you could have said it in less words!"

The Guren closed distance in the blink of an eye and delivered a kick to the Bors's right side. It managed to block the kick with its arm, but this didn't seem to matter as much as it might have. The arm was left with a nasty dent, and now Kallen had plenty of opportunity to use her own faster reaction time to whip around with the radiant wave surger, extending it to it full length and reaching out for the factsphere.

Unfortunately Cornelia seemed to anticipate her intention and had tilted the lance so that it was directly in front of the factsphere. Kallen tsked and changed the angle of the radiant wave surger, then at the moment the sonic pulse was activated from the lance, it pushed down from an upward angle, enabling her to push herself up and the lance down. The Guren's other hand was freely able to grab hold of Bors's head.

"You'll be seeing your siblings soon enough," Kallen said. A quick pull forward, and momentum allowed her to drag Bors's decorative head right into the Guren's knee.

Cornelia backed off, but like hell was Kallen going to give her the chance to regain her footing! Bors continued in reverse and fired a slash harken, which the Guren easily dodged around. Child's play when she could see it coming.

"Running out of steam now that you're out in the open?"

"Not at all," Cornelia replied. "I'm impressed that you are finally beginning to understand the Britannian way of thinking!"

What the hell was that supposed to - Then the lance touched the slash harken cable, and all of a sudden it began to vibrate wildly, coiling around and around like a wild snake. A sonic pulse through the cable? It whipped out wildly, forcing Kallen to dodge around it while speedily continuing her advance. All the while Cornelia continued to talk. And talk. And talk.

"Strength is the only factor that matters in the end," she pointlessly lectured. "Those that win set the terms for the world's future state. They have that responsibility and that privilege." Damn, but these cables were sticking to her position. Not quite fast enough to catch her, but fast enough to repeatedly get in her way. It was as if Cornelia knew in advance where she was going to try to move to! Damn her! It almost felt like the cables themselves were echoing those lecturing, taunting words all around her with no escape!

"Your strength serves the Empire well by fighting us and forcing us to adapt! We grow stronger, mightier and more enduring thanks to your vaunted struggle for freedom, while you in turn grow stronger from us holding you down! Not that you will live past this day, because neither you nor your Stand will pass by Bors's all seeing eye!"

All seeing eye, huh? Alright then. Cornelia had insisted on jumping on Kallen's buttons, and she was long since tired of this lecturing Princess. She wanted to challenge her Stand now? Fine then! Jumpin' Jack Flash flew in from below, bringing the knife behind it wrapped in its coil arms. Cornelia lunged for it reflexively, no doubt thinking herself the target of the Stand. Nope!

Instead Kallen used that chance to her fullest advantage and sliced through the cable before Cornelia could send any further sonic pulses through it.

"All seeing eye?" Kallen sneered in triumph while JJF flew back towards her. "Then that means you can't not see this! Sayonara!"

JJF suddenly shifted position, preparing its arms to lash out and strike directly ahead - but instead its head snapped sharply back, colliding with the Guren's own head! That was enough. A strike like that was entirely sufficient to activate the effect! Blindness for five seconds!

And not just Kallen or Cornelia either. Anything that relied upon visual sensors of any kind would be completely in the dark for five whole seconds. They had tested this recently with Rakshata. That woman was rather eager to try and understand this strange new supernatural power, and one of her discoveries was that JJF could "render a video feed jet black" even if nobody was looking at it over the time of impact!

Five seconds. It doesn't' sound like much time does it? No? Well then. How far and how fast could the Guren travel in that sort of time, do you think? Not that Kallen was stupid enough to travel in a straight line towards her target, no point in making it easy for her.

It was clear what Cornelia was doing so far. She must have been using that stupidly big factsphere to perform analysis to detect where the Guren was shifting its weight to predict likely future movements. That was the only way anyone could keep up with her enhanced reaction time and the Guren's amazing speed. Now that she was blinded Cornelia wouldn't be able -

To strike the Guren near the centre of mass with a slash harken. What? That was impossible! How the hell did that - How could she possibly?! The Bors shouldn't be able to see her at all! Neither it nor Cornelia should be able to identify her location, especially with that level of erratic movement so how -

"I see you Eleven!"

Kallen's thoughts were interrupted by those words and a high pitched whine cutting right into the cockpit, as if Cornelia was somehow sitting next to her in this cramped space. The words repeated again and again. A sonic attack! Her stomach heaved, and when her vision resumed the first thing Kallen saw was an unfortunate reminder of her lunch.

The next thing she saw was Bors coming in lance first, so Kallen fought down the queasiness and leaped to the side. Ugh! This headache was not what she needed right now!

"You impress me again," Cornelia admitted. "I expected you to fall unconscious before you could escape that attack. Why, if other Elevens had your resolve, you might have lasted two months instead of one."

That cocky bitch thought she could - Kallen fought past the pain, discomfort and humiliation and sent the Guren in once again. An attack composed of fury rather than strategy that pushed Bors back and back under a flurry of close range blows.

"Except that they do not have your skill," Cornelia said in that same mocking tone. If she wanted to talk so much, she should do a touring circuit instead of fighting. "They do not have your courage. They do not have your passion. They do not have your fighting spirit."

"Shut up!" Kallen yelled. JJF flew in for a more direct attack, while Kallen lunged forwards with the radiant wave surger ready to activate at a moment's notice. "Or would you rather I shut you up?"

"To be honest, I think you would prefer the latter whatever I said."

JJF hit a wall of noise that also repelled the Guren. Damn! That attack again? Why the hell wasn't she using that all the time? Unless it had a charge up period… Otherwise Cornelia could easily have used that any time Kallen tried to get close!

She could win. She could win in that sort of time easily enough. All she had to do was move in quickly, landing a kick that sent Bors sliding backwards across the ground. Which she managed easily enough. Bors slid to a stop a short distance away, and swept its cape over its shoulders.

"Whichever of us wins this fight will only prove Britannian philosophy correct!"

"Pathetic," Kallen retorted. She sent JJF in to fly in on Cornelia's right, while rushing in from her left. "Justifying a philosophy to bully and harass however you please! Take this!"

Her thinking was straightforward: Cornelia couldn't defend herself from two attacks while that Knightmare-based pulse was charging up. That meant this was her best chance to finish this. Cornelia would be able to block one attack, but not both!

As expected, Cornelia turned her lance so that it would face exactly one of those threats directly. To Kallen's surprise, it wasn't the against the radiant wave surger. The lance jabbed out at JJF, forcing her to pull the Stand back before the sonic wave overwhelmed her senses again. But in so doing, she left her back wide open for Kallen to grab.

"Got you!" Kallen triumphantly said, enjoying the feeling of the radiant wave surger grasping onto Cornelia's back.

"You're fast," Cornelia said. "But also rather hasty!"

The cape came away from Bors's back, and the knightmare fired its remaining slash harken into the ground to quickly pull itself forward. Now all that was left burning in the claw was a piece of probably expensive ballistic material. Not nearly expensive enough, it seemed, for while the enemy Knightmare quickly turned around, Kallen could see welts bubbling up on the back so she had definitely connected at least a little. But the fight wasn't finished. Not yet!

While Kallen tossed the burning cloth aside, Bors fired a series of rockets that Kallen dodged, then answered with a hail of bullets from the Guren's cannon arm. The lance was able to block some of them, but a few did hit. A shoulder, the hip. Superficial glancing damage. Kallen was winning. Not winning fast enough.

Between Cornelia's off-putting words and the lingering effects of that sonic attack… Not to mention the damage the Guren pointlessly sustained earlier. True, her big pulse attack needed time to recharge but at this rate Kallen wouldn't get the chance to properly exploit that time! Well then. If that was the case there was a way to at least ensure she succeeded in the reason they came to this island in the first place.

"Jumpin' Jack Flash!" Kallen yelled, and her Stand sent out both of its hands to strike Bors, only for the lance to intercept, using a sonic pulse to deflect the Stand's attacks.

"Again, you persist in this basic tactic!" Cornelia yelled. "It won't work! Whatever attack you try is doomed to failure, just like your failure of a resistance and your failure of a former nation!"

"Sorry!" Kallen said. "It's not you I'm intending to attack!"

She delayed only slightly by the doorway into the temple. Had to let Cornelia see her. Or maybe she was starting to get a little too tired to move as effectively as before. Whatever. She was inside. Her thinking was pretty straightforward: Cornelia had come here for a reason. She had specifically hung out near this temple. Which meant it had strategic importance of some sort.

Add up all the little things and it came to one pretty clear picture. This temple was important to her. For some reason she was desperately after something that these "Pillar Men" had. This meant a clear dominant strategy had emerged, with two possible outcomes.

1: Kallen dies, but in the process destroys the Pillar Men and the temple. Britannia and Cornelia don't get whatever they came here for.

2: Kallen lives, uses threat to destroy temple to unbalance Cornelia, granting her the key opportunity she needed for a finishing blow.

"Oh, now this looks breakable!" Kallen said, having the Guren trail a silver finger in a manner some might call outright inappropriate for the battlefield. Note to self, spend less time with Milly. Addendum: If you live through this and have the opportunity. The Guren half turned towards the entrance and placed the palm against the big ominous breakable door. "Would be a shame if something happened to it. I assume you have insurance?"

"Tread lightly, Eleven!" Cornelia said. Funny thing. Her lance was pointing right at the Guren, but she was keeping her distance. Hah! Score one for instinct. "You don't know what you are doing."

"I'm doing something that you don't want me to do," Kallen said. "That makes me want to do it even more! I wonder how fast a microwave emitter can destroy this old ruin. Care to guess?"

"Do not misunderstand what I am about to say," Cornelia said, and this time when she spoke her tone was quite deliberately flat and neutral. "This is not a deal. This is not a plea. This is a warning. Before, I was going to kill you. If you harm this site, then I shall keep you alive and make you watch as I burn Area Eleven to the ground. Do you understand?"

"Completely," Kallen replied. "This isn't just some tactical advantage. There's something personal you want from this. Now I'm curious. Tell me what you're really after!"

"You dare presume to tell me what to -" Cornelia began, but Kallen could almost see the light bulb flickering above her head. The more she talked, the less likely it was that Kallen would do something and the better the chance she'd have to counter. Of course, Kallen could also use this opportunity to catch her breath. Recover her stamina. Figure out a way to use this situation to her absolute advantage!

"Very well, then!" Cornelia announced. "So that you will understand the full extent of my fury should you continue this, I shall tell you! This site is the sole clue I have to discovering the truth. What happened to my mentor? What happened to her children? Take this away from me, Eleven, and I will do so much worse than kill you!"

"I don't respond well to threats."

"Neither do I!" Cornelia replied. "For their sakes… For Clovis! For Marianne! For Lelouch and Nunnally! I shall not back down and I will not surrender. If you push me then I will take my time in picking you apart! Piece by piece!"

"... What did you just say?" Kallen asked. "What was that last thing you -"

You know, Kallen would really have loved to find a good way to articulate what she was trying to ask but she didn't really get much of an opportunity. Cornelia didn't actually do anything herself, mind. She didn't get the chance. Nor did Kallen have time to react to it. In fact, she didn't really even know how to react when it started. The first she knew of it was the feeling of something moving. The door creaking open. A strange white light spilling out into the temple ruins while herself, and the bitch as well, stared into it in confusion, which quickly grew into a terrified awe.

Then the next that either of them knew?

Every.

Thing.

Was.

Bright.

====Lelouch====

The forest was calm and silent. The air had a light breeze about it, making a few leaves flutter and shake. All seemed peaceful. All seemed ordinary. And yet, the birds were avoiding this patch of forest as though their lives depended on it. They could see nothing dangerous. Yet their other senses were warning them of danger. Stay away, those senses whispered. And so they heeded. Staying high in the air, or landing far away from this dangerous place.

Because the most dangerous kind of places to be are places where the danger was not obvious at first glance. You see that it's safe. You lower your guard. Then the unseen danger strikes, and after that…

A Knightmare is crouching just behind a large tree, keeping within its shadow. It's not invisible, but it is a little harder to see than it probably should have been in this location. The metallic exterior does not seem to reflect the light, and it seems to have a greener hue than it did five minutes ago. Now. Others might speculate: Why does Lelouch not make the entire frame invisible? Answer: Maintaining full spectrum invisibility is an arduous process for an object this large. In comparison this was a mere parlour trick, so he could spare his strength for the battle ahead.

"Are you alright?" he asked Shirley, who was sitting in front of him rubbing at her eyes.

"Nnngh! I'll be fine in a minute," Shirley said. "I think. That was really, really bright!"

Indeed it was. That was quite telling of the method Lamorak used to maintain its field of invisibility. The field it projects must deliberately reflect and refract light around the target to create the illusion that they were not there. That was different from Lelouch's own invisibility, and was a fact he would have to be wary of just in case it used any other cunning tricks or had other functions he wasn't aware of quite yet.

Then another part of his brain piped up to say "show some concern for your friend," and another compartment pointed out that concern could wait until he'd gotten them out of this dangerous situation. If he tried to use his Stand to look for the Knightmare, she might do the same thing again. Therefore he needed to find some other way to determine his opponent's location.

There was a flash off to the side, and suddenly the invisible rock that had been in the shade of the tree shattered completely. Ah, Villetta. Your Knightmare isn't the only one that can play tricks with light! The modified Burai moved quickly in the direction the shot had come from, and Lelouch fired among the branches. Yet it was as he anticipated already. Villetta was gone, probably reloading and setting sights on the Burai even as he was thinking about it.

"What's going on?" Shirley asked. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Wait for your eyesight to return, and don't distract me!" Lelouch said. He had no time for that right now! The best thing to do for now was to keep the Burai moving so she couldn't draw a bead on him long enough to open fire. But there was the trouble. The Lamorak could be anywhere, could strike from any angle. He knew exactly how it was to be an invisible opponent fighting a seemingly tougher opponent: You have to wait and pick your spots, try not to let them draw you into attacking so you can control the moment.

In other words…

"I just want to be useful…" Shirley said.

"Then you can also torment her a little," Lelouch said. The gears were turning now. In his mind's eye he could visualise that woman sitting in the cockpit of her Knightmare, sitting patiently and invisibly waiting for the very finest chance…"I would like you to say something like -"

"Is this the vaunted Britannian superiority?" Zero asked through the external speaker a short time later. Again, in his mind's eye Lelouch beheld Villetta's face splitting with a growing smirk. "Cowardice! Hiding away without facing your opponent head on! It is because you are afraid that you will lose, Villetta Nu! Because of that fear you try to stay out of sight. Like a coward!"

That wasn't going to make her react. Not at all. In fact, his intention was a little different than that. If he understood his opponent correctly then she would see through this transparent psychological ploy and hold off on her attack. She would stay hidden while searching for an ideal opportunity that Lelouch did not intend to give her. He kept the Burai moving through the forests, around the trees, keeping the movements unpredictable and using his Stand to see through the trees where he could so that he could predict obstacles that might trip him up.

"Except that there is simply one problem," Zero said. "You think that you cannot be seen… Yet I know exactly where you are!"

The Burai circled the tree and aimed its rifle at a very particular spot while still moving quickly forward, adjusting the aim as it moved to keep on at the same point. A shot struck the ground by the Burai's feet as it zigged and zagged in limited fashion, and then the branches from that location they were aiming at shook and moved. The attentive ear might have heard both a slash harken firing off, and probably an even more discerning ear might have heard an expletive uttered. How crude.

In response the Burai stopped and spun around to a seemingly random new location, and immediately opened fire upon it. This time, it was plain to see a glimpse of a smaller than average Knightmare suddenly flash into existence as it scrambled away from the bullets even as they shredded the branches all around it.

"You might say this is the curse of invisibility," Zero said. "It lets me see right through you!"

Lelouch switched off the external speaker so he could enjoy a good laugh. "I think that pun might have hurt her worse than the bullets," he said.

"Oh, well I couldn't resist!" Shirley said. "By the way, how are you seeing her position? If she's still invisible, then you must be using some sort of trick. Right? Am I right? Am I?"

"Indeed," Lelouch said. "By now she will have landed again. You might say that is the weak point to her invisibility she hasn't noticed yet."

She was trying to be sneaky, it seemed, by feigning a movement to a new position while retaining her old one. Lelouch took great delight in shattering that particular dream of a tactic with another hail of bullets before she could hope to set her rifle on him. Forcing her to move once again.

"Because Lamorak turns itself invisible by creating a cone of refracted light around itself, that means the one and only place it is visible from… Is directly below! " Lelouch calmly said. "All I must do is send Painted Black into the ground, and from that viewpoint I can render all of her efforts to stay hidden completely… Useless! "

Lamorak was forced to move again.

"Useless!"

And again.

"Useless!"

"Ora!"

Schizoid Man rushed out the back of the Knightmare and punched a tree branch right into the arm of Darlton's Gloucester, interrupting it as it was about to crack a whip right into the Burai's back. It wasn't much of a distraction. It didn't really do any damage. But it was enough time for Lelouch to pull away so he could mentally reevaluate the situation.

"I take it your sight has returned?"

"A little while back," Shirley admitted. "But you seemed to be having fun. I didn't want to interrupt."

"It does not seem that Darlton shares the sentiment. How unfortunate for him."

"Apologies for the late arrival," Darlton politely, yet enthusiastically, said. He flicked the wrists of his Gloucester, causing the whips to snap menacingly while he walked forward, towards the Burai. "I think I am beginning to understand a little better, what it must have been like," Darlton said. "To come face to face with a seemingly indomitable foe, with capabilities beyond anything you have seen before." He cracked the whip forward, and then began to move quickly, leaping forward with one whip trailed in front while the other was lifted back so it could lash heavily down upon their position.

"He's starting to annoy me. Should I catch that whip the next time he cracks it?" Shirley asked while Lelouch pulled barely out of the way.

"Did you have any further plans for using that hand?"

"Yes! For example!" Shirley hastily replied, suddenly leaping up and backwards to pull on the control lever again, pulling the Burai right out of another shot from Villetta, which went right by them and struck a nearby tree. The situation had returned to the same as before. Darlton trying to engage them at close range while Villetta attacked them from an unseen perspective. However. Lelouch did have to give Villetta credit for one thing.

Because that bullet hadn't been intended for the Burai in the first place. It had always been intended to strike the tree on the other side of the Burai. Why might she intend something like that? Easily understood when you realise two facts. The first was, the struck portion of the tree was within Darlton's blind spot: He could not see it from that angle. The second was, the bullet fired was actually one of Lamorak's flashbang bullets.

"You might think it fills me with fear," Darlton said. "You would be wrong. I am not afraid. I am filled with a sense of duty and integrity that your power cannot ever quash."

"A sense of duty?" Zero asked. Schizoid Man grabbed a rock from the ground, an act which startled Darlton into hesitation. After all, they shouldn't be able to see. "Those are the words of a good man fighting on a side he knows to be evil!"

The rock was thrown directly at the Gloucester with all of Schizoid Man's strength. True enough, Lelouch didn't want to risk Schizoid Man getting hurt by those whips. However… Because a whip has much less mass than a sword, it has far less parrying power. A heavy projectile like a rock isn't something you can easily deflect with even a super hot whip.

"You shouldn't be able to see!" Darlton yelled, lashing out a whip at the rock and wrapping it up in a single shot. Then, impressing even Lelouch, this battlefield veteran tugged the rock so it spun around his head and hurled it back at the Burai. "That shot should have blinded you!"

"It would have," Lelouch said to himself. "If you, Shirley, hadn't stood up with your back to the monitor, and also blocked my view for a brief period. Ah, but please don't do that in future."

"S-sorry," Shirley sheepishly said. She tilted her head as Schizoid Man smashed the rock down into the ground, and deflected the debris. "I'm only trying to help."

Help was certainly necessary for a fight like this. Two enemies with superior Knightmares and better piloting ability. New weapons or abilities intended to counteract Stands. Tsk! Even though Schizoid Man and Painted Black gave them the overall advantage in the battle all it would take was a single careless moment to turn the tide. Or a factor he couldn't predict appearing out of nowhere, like - was that a lightning strike he heard in the distance? No, couldn't be.

A whip cracked, regaining his attention. Darlton was moving closer again. "You - You are impossibly infuriating."

"Oh? Was that fear I heard?" Zero said. "Your sense of duty is trembling, Darlton. Could it be? Have my words made you realise Britannia does not deserve the duty of a good man? That the Britannia you serve is a worthless dominion!"

"Not at all," Darlton said. "I will concede that there have been corrupt elements within Area Eleven's politics and nobility. However - "

The Gloucester dove out of the way as Lelouch unleashed a hail of bullets on its position and Schizoid Man gave hot pursuit. However, the dive was with a specific purpose in mind. It cracked a whip upwards, seizing a branch, wrapping around a thick part near the tree.

"We are not content to let this rot lie!" Darlton continued. "That is what it means to have a duty. It means to take responsibility and root out the corruption."

The whip cut through the branch in less than a second because of the heat and vibrations, and then another crack of that same whip sent that branch directly towards the Burai. A trivial obstacle to avoid.

"Even when that corruption takes the form of a girl in a mask, playing at being a superhero."

But the tree was masking Darlton's real attack: The other whip flashed by the branch out of Lelouch's blind spot, and sharply yanked the rifle right out of the Burai's hands. Could this be the difference between a skilled soldier and a relative amateur? Make no mistake. Lelouch was a skilled Knightmare pilot, but that was only compared to how much experience he had. On the other hand… Darlton had a wealth of experience on numerous battlefields.

Schizoid Man moved in to create a little distance. Aside from the slash harkens it was the only really effective weapon they could use against Darlton. However, as soon as the Stand approached Darlton drew the whips closer to the Knightmare, lashing them about at the open air and making the Stand hesitate from the heated weapons and their dreadful effect.

But this wasn't going to subdue the bizarre Stand by a long shot. If it couldn't hit Darlton with its fists, then it would use whatever it could grab from the forest instead! For example. That very same tree branch. Schizoid Man grabbed it and threw it, much like the rock… But this time added a small amount of spin to it.

"He won't be able to grab it like that," Shirley said. "Even if he wraps the whip around it this time, he won't be able to control its flight path. We've got him this time!"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Lelouch said. "It's true that the centrifugal force will keep the branch spinning if he tries to grab it, but by the same token - "

Darlton's whip wrapped cleanly around the branch in mid-flight and then the blazing hot vibrating whip cut it cleanly in two. As Lelouch had expected! Under normal conditions a hurled item being cut like this would continue on its path, meaning two objects would hit instead of one. Because the branch was spinning both halves would go in different directions, allowing a skilled pilot like Darlton to avoid them easily!

"Ah! I didn't think of that!" Shirley gasped. "I'm sorry Lelouch, I shouldn't have wasted our time like that."

"It's alright!" Lelouch replied, seeth internally. His mind was racing. As he feared. Two pilots of this calibre might be beyond their abilities when trying to take them both on at the same time. If he had Schizoid Man commit to a worthwhile attack against Darlton, it would open them up for a hit from Villetta. That was why he wanted to eliminate her first, in the end. Her invisible Knightmare frame -

Was sitting in a tree patiently aiming its scope in the general direction of the Burai, completely visible. Could it be? Had its invisibility cloak drained that much energy already? That was possible. That light trick it used to temporarily blind Shirley could have easily drained the battery, and if so that meant -

"Lelouch!"

"It's alright, I see her!" Lelouch said. He had a plan now. How helpful of you, Villetta! Except… Hrm? Due to the very nature of a sniper's scope, she would only be able to see a small area at a given time. So he backed the Burai off. Keeping it in the shade, and keeping it moving without turning himself invisible. For this plan to work, the Burai had to remain in plain view. "Deflect the shot if it looks like it will hit!"

"But Lelouch, she - "

"I know," he interrupted, nodding in the appropriate direction to indicate understanding. "What I am about to do is very risky." Darlton was now approaching them with whips ready to crack at a moment's notice. "I have to move very carefully. Should I make one wrong move…"

He let the idea hang in the air while Dartlon suddenly moved in much, much faster. His precision and speed was incredible for an ordinary human, and Lelouch was forced to veer sharply to the side to stay away from his attack.

"Tell me, what right does a vigilante have to decry justice while hiding behind a mask?" Darlton asked. He kicked out, catching the Burai's leg and making it stumble. Schizoid Man pushed them up just enough for Lelouch to guide them out of the way of the next incoming attack. "That hardly seems just to my perspective. Those being judged should at least know the face and the name of the one that judges them!"

"Then how would you have us fight evil?" Zero demanded, while Lelouch swung a backfist that Darlton easily blocked and pushed back. "Especially when that evil is the same system you have the duty to protect… What other options do we have, General?"

"None at all."

It was a bad idea to enter close combat with a veteran Knightmare pilot. However. Lelouch was allowing himself a small smile within his cockpit right then. It hadn't been an easy thing, figuring out the best way to move the two of them into this position. Under shade. With Darlton in between him and Villetta. The Burai remaining perfectly still. He could see her now. Over there. The Knightmare's finger pulling down on the trigger to the sniper rifle. A shame that they couldn't continue this conversation with Darlton. They might have him reflect on his philosophy a little.

"Reflect," Lelouch smirked triumphantly. "Much like you're reflecting your position with your detached cloaking device! Oh, Villetta! And you did such a good job hiding your battle damage, even switching the arm you were holding the rifle in. However… Not good enough to deceive Painted Black looking at the battlefield from beneath!"

Lamorak fired, and the bullet came out of a seemingly innocuous bush rather than the location it appeared to be hiding in. However. The bullet didn't strike the Burai. Instead, it struck Darlton's Gloucester, leaving him wide open for the Burai and Schizoid Man to deliver the finishing blow.

"Wha- How? But that's not -" Darlton stammered in utter, defeated, disbelief.

"Fool," Lelouch chuckled. "All I did was turn you and the cloaking device invisible, and your own misunderstandings came back to bite you. Do you understand yet, Darlton? Before Stands, duty has no power at all!"

"Zero!" Villetta announced. Darlton was no longer an obstacle, but they weren't finished yet. "You say that you fight for justice? You say that you're fighting against corruption?" From beneath the ground Lelouch could tell that Lamorak was moving to a new position, higher up into the trees. As if that would prevent him from reaching her. "Well then. Let me tell you something. When I look at you, I don't think about justice or mercy."

Lamorak fired again, but this time Schizoid Man didn't bother blocking. The shot went quite badly wide. Hitting the ground. "I see someone full of themselves, just like General West!"

The air in the Burai's cockpit was suddenly a good deal colder. Or at least it felt that way. Perhaps it was merely Lelouch's imagination.

"I see someone playing a longer game," Villetta said. "I see someone trying to advance themselves, that's using the rest of these Elevens as pawns to be sacrificed. Really now. What makes you so different from Stand Out? You're just another bunch of Stand-using terrorists, no matter how you try to mask it!"

"Is that me you are seeing?" Zero replied. Her voice was like a cold, steel edge. Strange. This didn't seem like a performance. It wasn't so much Shirley speaking the words he was feeding her, and more like… Almost as if the character itself was the one playing her. "Or is it yourself? Could it be you can only imagine another's goal is self advancement, because that is all you want? You have said a lot about what you see in me! But instead all you have talked about is your very own soul!" Lelouch nodded, and stopped giving her words to say. "What a satisfying existence, but I can't call it a satisfying life." Did she come up with that herself?

"Finished, Eleven?" Villetta asked. "I warned you earlier. You've not seen what Lamorak can do. Now you'll never get to see anything else again!"

Lamorak flicked its wrist and tossed something up into the air. Something bright and dazzling that caught the light… The cloaking device! "Don't look at it," he warned. "She's trying to use sunlight to blind us, and -" Why is Lamorak aiming its rifle upwards? Towards the cloaking device? There was no reason to do that… Unless…

"We are retreating!" Lelouch announced. "Immediately! Withdraw Schizoid Man, and keep your eyes closed!"

"Retreating?" Shirley asked. "When I could so easily destroy that cloaking device -"

"Don't argue! And don't look, either!"

He heard the gunshot and didn't dare look back. That was the absolute worst thing to do right now. Because there was only one reason Villetta would open fire on her own cloaking device in such a manner. It was because she wasn't firing a regular bullet. She was firing a flashbang into the field affected by the cloaking device!

The cloaking device was capable of magnifying, reflecting and refracting light. So, if the settings were altered appropriately what might happen if something with the power of a flashbang were released within that field? Magnified. Reflected. Magnified again. Then directed outwards towards a single focused point. Intense focused light. Intense heat. Against something like that retreat was the only option available to them.

Painted Black would be no use for obvious reasons: It was too bright to make anything invisible. Schizoid Man couldn't do anything either. It couldn't block the light, and the attack would be so bright that merely gazing upon it could permanently destroy the retina! All he could do was retreat and regroup. Develop a new plan to defeat Villetta.

"Lelouch?" Shirley quietly asked. "Was I useful back there? Was I? Was it my fault we had to retreat? Did I do something wrong?"

"Not at all," Lelouch said. Even now a new plan was forming. "In fact… I have a special role for you to play now. Listen carefully. You must follow my every instruction to the letter. That would be the most useful thing for you to do just now."

====Villetta====

When considering the Britannian philosophy, ambition plays a vital role. Consider society as existing on a series of levels. At the top is the Emperor. At the very bottom, a commoner. Below that, a Number. The ambitious person will strive to push themselves to the next level, and will seek necessary avenues to do so. However. There are only so many people that can be allowed upon any given level. This means that the ambitious people trying to climb to the next level must "struggle against one another".

From this struggle, few victors will prevail. Those that were willing and able to do whatever it took to get there in the first place will thrive. And because they have struggled against one another, those that have survived will learn and grow from it. It means that only the right people will be in that position, at that level. It will force the ambitious to learn numerous vital skills. The ability to choose their allies and stand by them. The ability to defend yourself from a variety of attacks. The ability to attack others. The ability to weather any storm and come through dry.

To Britannia, competition might be its lifeblood but ambition was its pulse.

At least, that is what Villetta used to believe. Now? She wasn't quite so confident in that as she used to be. Good and evil used to be subjective ideas. Then Stand Out appeared. Ambitious. Ravenous. Unquestionably evil.

"General, are you alright?" Villetta asked. "Are you injured?"

"Only my pride," Darlton said. "And this Gloucester has seen better days. You will have to protect her highness by yourself, it seems. This could be a chance for you to get ahead in the world."

Darlton was playing to her ambition to gently motivate her. And what do you know? It was working. She could feel it creeping up her skin. Ambition. Drive. Success. Advancement. An increase in social status. An increase in influence. An increase in authority. She would not become a disgrace like the hotheaded idiot Kewell or lose track of her own goals like Lord Jeremiah. She would remain focused. She would remain driven. She would make herself, make Britannia proud!

Yes, this was the power of "ambition"! She moved quickly through the forest, following the clumsy trail left behind by the enemy Knightmare knockoff while maintaining open communication with Darlton, just to give him that sense of reassurance before she engaged the enemy.

"Then you do not need to worry!" she told him. "I'll bring those rotten Elevens back down to where they belong, and use their corpses to climb higher!"

"I see," Darlton said in a rather solemn tone. "So that is the kind of person you are? I suppose you were a pureblood. It is to be expected that you would see them as numbers, not people."

"Forgive me for saying so General, but this hardly seems the best time to debate ideology. After all. All men are not created equal," Villetta replied.

"Which also means," Darlton said. "That not all Elevens are equal, either. Perhaps it would be best if we did not treat them as though they were."

"I… I don't care…" Suzaku wheezed as he deflected a kick from an enemy Sutherland but then had to force his Lancelot to rise from its knee. "I… I won't let them die like this! Even at the cost of my own life! I won't let them die!"

Well. You might say that was a lesson she'd already learned, even if her pride said otherwise. It might well be that Darlton was right. Hell with it, then! Blind ambition to advance would only get her lost. Then she would instead focus on the path that lay ahead of her!

"I'll cut communication for now," Villetta said. "Just in case they notice additional radio signals and use that knowledge to set an ambush. Sit tight. This shouldn't take long."

It better not. Her cloaking device didn't have much juice left in it after how she'd been using it today. Although… This direction… Wasn't this leading back towards - a familiar clearing opened up ahead of her in the trees. A large rock with water spilling down it into a lake. No sign of the enemy. And how convenient, the trail that led her here came to a stop before even reaching the rocky ground.

"They must think I'm really stupid," Villetta said. Lamorak was invisible. It would only last maybe another two minutes, but that was more than she needed. "Maybe you thought I'd believe you moved on or hid somewhere else. Maybe you thought I'd drained power completely and could attack as soon as I appeared by the water."

Lamorak moved carefully but quickly onto the rocky surface, without making a noise. The sniper rifle braced over its shoulder, aimed precisely into the lake without touching the surface. She checked. Two shots.

"But you made a crucial mistake," Villetta tapped her forehead. "A very basic error. When you went into the lake… You disturbed the surface of the water, making a very large and obvious ripple appear on the surface! With one shot I'll disturb the water to see your position and blind you at the same time, while the second will finish you off completely!"

This was it. This was her chance. She would be rewarded for this. An accomplishment on her own merits. She could regain her pride. Advance her career! Squash this would-be vigilante group with her own two hands! She fired and made quite certain that Lamorak's light filter was set so that she couldn't blind herself with her own shot. And then, seconds later there was a sound of metal striking hard against metal. A dreadful sound! A crushing sound that meant victory!

But not necessarily Villetta's victory.

"A slash harken?!" Villetta gasped. "Into my back - But how?!"

It was an arm. Hovering in the air without an accompanying body. The sheer impossible horror of what she was seeing was enough to distract her from what was in the hand just long enough for the trigger finger to pull.

Could it be…? Lurking in the shadows of the jungle, the enemy Burai became visible as it stepped out into the sun. That same Stand user! They really were working with the Black Knights!

Knowing this made it clear what had happened: Yes, it was so obvious now! She had been lured here specifically to trick her into thinking that they had hidden in the lake, even to the point of knocking a rock into it or perhaps even firing the slash harken to make the surface ripple. Darlton's words came back to her now. She had failed to see the enemy as a person. And now her pride was injured once again.

Villetta tried to make Lamorak invisible - but that attack had damaged the cloaking device! She swung the rifle around to fire at the enemy, but the bullet was knocked aside before it even travelled very far.

"This is where naked ambition leads you," Zero admonished while the Burai moved forward towards her. "Without considering others. Without justice guiding you. Without compassion. Would power make you happy? Would status fulfill your needs?"

Villetta turned and tried to flee, but the enemy Stand was too quick: It threw something into her slash harken's cable when she tried to fire it, pulling it off course and making Lamorak stumble atop the wet rocks so that it lay prone near the lake's edge. To add further insult to injury, that blasted thing hovered in front of her while playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" on a grinder organ. The hell did it even find that?!

"Your drive is drowning you!" Zero warned, and now the Burai was bearing down directly onto her position. "Your motivation misplaced. Britannia is rotten to the core, but you are too corrupt to see it! Too dependent on the corruption to bear witness to the harm it causes! Your selfish desires condemn you!"

"You're wrong," Villetta said, swinging around the rifle with one arm to try and hit that Stand again, but now it and the Burai knocked the rifle aside. Without the effective means to fight a Stand, there's only so much even a skilled Knightmare pilot can accomplish, and it very much seemed as though her options were out. "Normally I wouldn't waste breath justifying myself to a criminal, however -"

"You think you can stall for time?" Zero asked. "There are no reinforcements arriving to save you. Do not waste your breath."

"All I was going to say was… I'm not ambitious for my own sake. I'm ambitious because I believe I can help Britannia become even greater than it already is! Why should anyone want power if they don't think they can handle it and hold on to it?" Lamorak threw out a punch, but the enemy Stand caught it and pushed it back, while the Burai loomed over her with a menacing aura. She had nothing to attack with now. She was cornered. None of the weapons on her modified Knightmare would be able to extract her from this situation.

So one must ask: What exactly was it she found so amusing that she would smile like that?

To find the answer one must turn towards the lake itself, and a sleight of hand performed by Villetta just after she had been shot. True enough. Her sniper rifle? Cloaking device? None of these weapons were effective in this situation. So what about a weapon that someone else brought into battle with them? Someone else like Darlton… And something like a superheated whip that had been activated and left trailing into the lake.

Yes, Villetta hadn't stumbled by any sort of accident. What had happened was, she had taken one of Darlton's whips and carefully holstered it. When Lamorak appeared to have fallen over, she had actually been trailing the whip inside the lake and then activated it beneath the surface. By keeping Lamorak turned partly on its side to make it look like that arm was steadying the Knightmare's weight and bracing for the sniper rifle, Villetta was using battlefield presence for an astonishing attack.

The lake began to bubble. The surrounding area quickly filled with steam, thick steam that made it hard to see anything at all. This was her chance!

"You can't escape!" Zero called from the Burai, even as steam enveloped it. "No matter how you run, you can't escape!"

"Escape?" Villetta cried. Lamorak's grip around the whip handled grew firmer and she brought that arm up to lash it into the steam, right into the unaware enemy. "Who needs to escape? I've got you right where I want you!"

"I didn't mean escape from me!" Zero said. "I meant escape from your own empty existence!"

The blazing hot whip brought a small trail of hot water after it when Villetta lashed it it directly towards the Burai's cockpit, wasting no effort for the perfect killing shot. She thought she saw some sort of flash of light within the mist, but she continued her attack regardless. All she hit was steam. So she tried again, lashing out in a random direction - Missing. Again. A miss? Impossible! She backed away, and the sweat pouring down her brow was because of the steam in the air, not because she was nervous.

Any moment now she expected the attack to land. Any second now, the Burai would emerge out of the steam and that strange Stand would try to use its fists to pummel Lamorak into submission. It would be up to Villetta's reaction time. The moment they appeared was the moment she would strike.

Except the hit never came. Before long the steam dissipated and Lamorak was left standing there holding its whip with the sniper's rifle lying at her feet. No sign of the enemy. Nothing but a strange inexplicable scorch mark where the Burai had been standing before.

"I'm really not looking forward to writing this in the report for the debriefing," Villetta said.

====C.C.====

Over the course of her immortality, C.C. had a huge variety and wealth of accumulated experience. She had met people destined for greatness, set foot in every nation on the globe, beheld wonders and horrors that would twist the mind and tease the senses. She had fought vampires, creatures that fed on them and the so called ultimate life form. She had learned an ancient martial art that used breathing to replicate the power of the sun, seen advancements in technology that would have seemed like impossible magic even a hundred years into her immortality.

However. It was in this submarine, discretely built by the Speedwagon Foundation that C.C. had discovered paradise. A feat of modern engineering that surpassed her experience and left her staring in muted wonder at the pinnacle of human ingenuity.

"They injected cheese into the crust," she quietly said, holding aloft the holy slice. "I already thought it was the perfect food. But now it has surpassed perfection!"

Just then, Rakshata did something that should have cost her a finger. She snatched that pizza right out of C.C.'s grip. An unforgivable crime!

"Now, now!" Rakshata admonished. "No pizza for the girl that sunk my specially modified Knightmare."

"You retrieved it," C.C. observed. "Therefore, I should have my pizza back."

"I would prefer it if you took this a little more seriously," said a new voice, Diethard, entering the main room from a side entrance. "Because of your failure, it appears that Gottwald has reached Shikime. The operation is now twenty five percent less likely to succeed, due to your careless attitude."

Oh dear. Trying to shame her? Someone that had lived as long as C.C. was well past petty matters like shame. Still. Diethard's comments did require some manner of response, even if it wouldn't be what he anticipated. The man was so blatantly manipulative, after all.

"Dwelling on the past will not accomplish anything," C.C. said. "We should instead act to increase that chance of success. Surely someone like you can think of a way to do that."

"That could prove to be quite difficult," Diethard said. "When it is obvious you are hiding key variables from us."

"Oh yes, that is correct!" Rakshata agreed. "You have yet to submit yourself to my full examination, haven't you? That strange power of yours is quite different from a Stand, isn't it?"

Aha, so that's what this was about? They would hardly be the first to try and pry into her secrets. Nor would they be the last. Nor would they be the best.

"I don't know what you could possibly mean," C.C. shrugged, nonchalant as always. "Ah, do you think you could discover their secrets by interrogating me? How circumspect, tsk tsk!"

"That's a rather transparent attempt to deflect," Diethard said. "I did not get to be where I am today by accepting that kind of response."

"Standing on board a submarine next to an Indian scientist," C.C. flippantly said. "Before you go further, you should know that I don't care much for stubbornness. For example, I may elect to ignore your questions completely until you leave me be. What will you do then?"

"We could buy you off with pizza…" Rakshata suggested, dangling the edge of that slice just out of arm's reach. "You do seem rather fond of it. Ohoho?"

"Does it have anything to do with this strange breathing technique you use to fight?" Diethard asked. "Does that have anything to do with the power you gave to Ohgi? Or are they two separate issues?"

"Maybe if I took a skin or hair sample..." Rakshata suggested. "It might be interesting to see what you are made of underneath the microscope…"

"Interesting," C.C. sighed. "Two professionals whose job involves seeking the truth. Trying to corner poor, defenseless me into revealing the truth about myself." She adjusted her sitting position and hugged her knees with a world-weary artificial sigh. "Woe is me. My defeat is inevitable. I know this because I have seen Mister Diethard's report regarding the hobbies that have the best chance of improving genetic potential."

"You saw that report?" Diethard asked. Bait set. "Well, I only produced it, in the end…"

"You produced that report?" Rakshata suddenly sharply asked. Bait bitten. "You had a hand in that absolute nonsense they released last year?"

"Nonsense?" Diethard asked. "Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean that those tests were blatantly made using faulty data!" Rakshata replied. "It is reports like that which make the public have unrealistic expectations for what science is capable of. Do you have any idea how much that sort of thing sets us back?"

"Truth is a rather objective idea…" C.C. casually suggested.

"Not at all!" Diethard said. "Sometimes the truth is subjective, and -"

"You journalists are all the same! Twisting the facts to make your own stories more interesting!"

"Well, perhaps if you scientists could produce some more interesting facts in the first place…"

And the fish do wriggle on. While the two of them argued their own viewpoint, C.C. calmly slid off the couch, retrieved her pizza, and enjoyed the show. Honestly now, such hubris. The two of them were a hundred years too early to deal with the likes of her. Just because they were experts in their own related fields…

Did you ever have a moment of absolute existential dread suddenly drop on you out of nowhere? It was sort of like looking up and seeing the moon suddenly a mere ten feet above your head. Even someone like C.C. couldn't shake that sort of feeling off easily.

"C.C. something is happening over here! There's some kind of alarm blaring. I have never heard it before. Nobody here has. Do you know what this is?"

"Yes, I do," she whispered, quickly cutting off the unnecessary psychic connection. "Excuse me! I have somewhere else to be right now."

She could feel it. On her forehead. The sacred symbol was lighting up against her own will. It had been a few short decades since she had felt like this, a significant time for most but a passing blink to her. How terribly irritating!

C.C. rushed into a closet to keep anyone from seeing. This was bound to raise even more questions she didn't feel like answering later on, but to hell with it. If this alarm meant what she thought it did, then they were all in the most terrible danger! But it didn't make sense. Out in the middle of the day? That shouldn't be possible! Unless they were in a Knightmare frame…?

And then the proper parts of her sacred Code activated, leading her out onto the island they had been fighting upon. How petty that battle seemed all of a sudden. Compared to this a mere struggle between Britannia and the Black Knights was positively -

"Hold it right there!" called a voice that she recognised quickly enough. Cornelia's knight, Guilford. Indeed, on turning around C.C. found herself looking up at that ridiculous four armed Knightmare. She raised her own arms. Not because she feared being killed. Just because being shot right now would be an inconvenience until she located the abomination. "Identify yourself."

Ah-ha! There he was. Standing at the feet of Guilford's Knightmare. She could almost smell it. Her Code was screaming it at her. He might look like Ohgi, but it wasn't actually him. Because she could sense Ohgi's presence as well. The real Ohgi was elsewhere on the island. This thing had somehow stolen his appearance. Cellular manipulation at this level was certainly within their capabilities. How disgusting.

Well. The last time she had tried to fight one of these things, it had gone rather badly for her. This time, she was stronger. This time, she was better. This time, she was the one with the terrain advantage.

"In case you did not hear my question the first time, I shall ask it only once more!" Guilford demanded. "Who are you? Furthermore! Why are you on this island?"

"Answering questions is my least favourite thing to do in the world," C.C. said. "I am not here for you, Knight of Britannia. I am here to destroy this abomination." Although… How was it out in the middle of the day? Was it connected to the same trick that let it take Ohgi's appearance? Something was wrong here. Something was very, terribly wrong.

She took a step forward. Guilford expertly shot a bullet into her leg. As if something like that would even slow her down. At the very least aim for the head. A flesh wound like that was healed in no time at all. Still. It might be a good idea to let him know why she was not his enemy.

"Do not be foolish!" Guilford warned. "Next time I will shoot to kill!"

"Behind me is an alarm beacon," C.C. said, carefully controlling her breathing while continuing to step forwards. "It is a warning for people like myself, in case creatures like you or your vampire servants dares to come close. It alerts the nearest and brings them here to fight you."

"Creatures like me?" the Ohgi look-alike asked sneeringly. "I don't think there's ever been a creature like me before."

"Typical arrogance for your kind… Pillar Man!"

"That's enough!" Guilford said. The fool clearly still did not understand the danger he was putting them in by cooperating with this monster. "Do not step forward any further, or my next shot shall be a lethal one."

"Hey now! That might not be necessary…" the Pillar Man said. His head twisted around in an impossible manner, a full one hundred and eighty degrees from looking directly forward. "Let me have a crack at her. I'll have her following obediently in no time at all. Right? Think about it, Guilford… This girl obviously knows even more than I do. Let me show you how much you should trust me!"

"Trust you…" Guilford repeated. "Very well. Bring her in using your special talents."

Ah, so that was how this thing was manipulating Guilford? More dangerous than she thought. It was obvious that the disguise was the reason the Pillar Man was able to walk about in the sun. If that was the case then she had to tear open that fragile duplicate body, and let the sunlight do the rest. In that sense she was the one with the advantage this time! Let him come to attack her!

The monster yelled at her and leaped in a rather brazen manner. Given these things were highly intelligent it might have some sort of plan - or might be resorting to a double bluff. Either way, C.C. stepped deftly to the side with a deep, sharp breath and struck out easily for his back.

Too easily in her opinion. In fact, she was surprised when she felt her palm strike him and the Ripple go through his body. To no apparent effect at all. Impossible...

"Tsk, tsk, tsk!" the Pillar Man cackled. His head turned around again while the rest of his body stayed completely, horrifyingly still. The grin stretched up his face in a distinct, unnatural manner. "Tag, you're it!" Now his eyes were lighting up with the sign of a Geass. What? But that wasn't - A Pillar Man with Geass? That didn't make sense! Even V.V. would never -

"Now you can't attack me anymore!" the creature said, turning the rest of its body around to match its head. Curiously, the person seemed to be shrinking before C.C.'s very eyes, and their face had become much more fluid all of a sudden. "In other words, it's pointless to resist anymore. You're coming with the two of us to answer our questions."

"I told you before," C.C. calmly said. "Answering questions is my least favourite thing to do."

She quickly drew her gun and shot him at point blank range. Right in the forehead. Oh dear, he did rather leave himself wide open, didn't he? That look of utter surprise on his face, even as it twisted and morphed was surprisingly satisfying. However, for a bullet to have that kind of effect… Could it be that he really was not a Pillar Man in the first place?

"How could you... " the Pillar Man asked. Strange. His voice had started to adopt a more feminine tone mid-sentence. "You shouldn't have been able to attack me…"

The thing landed heavily against the beacon that had brought C.C. there in the first place. Pillar Man…? No, that didn't quite fit. Something similar, but not quite. The facts didn't add up. The sunlight. The behaviour. The Ripple having no apparent effect on his body. There was no question that this person was an "abomination", but a Pillar Man? It seemed unlikely.

Even less likely when the beacon suddenly activated. And, according to her Code, created two openings to C's World right here on the island. Two openings that pulled four people inside.

"I have had enough. You are still coming with me," Guilford warned. "We have essential questions about -"

"I do not have the time nor the inclination," C.C. interrupted. "Shoot me if you wish, but I have more important things to do than stand around answering your foolish questions."

Anyone else fleeing from a sudden hail of bullets would probably make an effort to try and dodge them, but C.C. was of the opposite mindset completely. Her own body was functionally indestructible. The beacon, on the other hand… She reached it while willfully allowing herself to be shot in the back to keep it safe. A crude entrance. All it was meant to do was bring a Code Bearer to the island to defend it. Kicking this thing's body away, she could enter C's World from here and then, hopefully, mitigate the damage without anyone asking any more stupid questions.

A bright flash, and all that was left behind was a mystified Guilford, sitting in his Knightmare wondering at what the hell he was going to tell Cornelia about all of this… And then receiving the fright of his life when he saw Kewell sitting sharply up. No longer in the form of an Eleven.

"Kewell?" Guilford said. "But she shot you in the forehead. How could you survive - "

"Good question, Lord Guilford!" Kewell replied. He… She? Brushed aside some green hair and touched the spot where the bullet had struck. "How terribly, terribly interesting."

====Cornelia====

Well. This wasn't quite what she was expecting to happen just now. One minute she was threatening an especially stupid Eleven that had decided to try and figure out as many ways as possible to push her buttons. The next thing she knew, her Knightmare was standing in a familiar looking flower field and she was staring down at two very familiar looking children. One of whom was making a series of unfortunate flowers into a colourful circle, which was then placed quite delicately on the smaller child's head.

"There you go!" the older one said. "I made you a crown! It's not as nice as father's, however…"

"Ah!" the little girl cooed. "It's so pretty! Make one for Nunna when she comes over later on! Please? Please?"

Hey Jude again…? Or something like it? "I won't be tricked by something like this!" Cornelia insisted. "I've seen this trick before, and I won't fall for it! Do you understand me?!"

"Only myself, Euphemia, Lelouch, Nunnally, Schneizel and -"

Before Cornelia could even recognise it, the scenery had changed around her. Now she was in the Ares villa, viewing herself and Jeremiah when they had been attacked by Hey Jude. How tediously recursive. After a signal from her past self, Jeremiah pulled the door open. Lelouch fell through, and then -

The human brain is only supposed to be able to pay attention to a few things at a time. In high stress situations, we don't really think about things that we don't think are important. The Cornelia of this time, talking with Lelouch again, wasn't really paying him all that much attention. She was thinking too much about how to keep herself from changing the past and succumbing to the effects of this powerful Stand. Now that she was actually paying attention…

"He's alive," she said, zooming in on his face and watching all the little tiny changes in expression. "Those are not the eyes of an innocent child. Those are the eyes of a tortured adult! But before his mother perished, that's not the kind of expression he would wear! That must mean that he - "

"Cornelia! Don't tell me you didn't figure it out already? I thought you were smarter than that."

A new figure stepped in through the memory in progress, through the figures like they were ghosts. In a manner, they might as well have been. The new arrival stared up at the Knightmare in absolute disdain, and so Cornelia whirled her lance around without a second thought so the tip was pointed inches away from the new arrival's forehead.

"I want answers!" Cornelia insisted. She had to tread carefully, here. "Where am I? What the hell is going on around here?! What do you know about Lelouch being alive? Where is he?!"

They didn't even flinch. It was as though the lance wasn't even there to begin with. They looked right past it. Right into Bors's enhanced factsphere, and in spite of Cornelia's own will to hold the lance in just that position it suddenly dropped out of Bors's grip.

"None of that matters right now," the person said. "Our trap for C.C. has failed. We worked so hard to bring her here. Putting Kewell on the island to trigger the beacon. Putting the suggestion in your head so your work at the Thought Elevator would attract her attention…"

Cornelia tried to make the Knightmare move, to pick it up. And found that she could not. The Knightmare wouldn't move. In fact, worse than even that: Even her body wouldn't move!

"And then an unknown third party interrupts our systems, making us lose track of her in this boundless world of imagination, memories and dreams. Have no fear, we shall locate them soon enough. No doubt an ally of JOJO interfering with our plans!"

It was as if she was suddenly placed under terrible pressure, emanating from this single seemingly harmless figure. As though, just by being there he exerted an overwhelming natural presence of superiority. She fought it with all her will. Could barely even move a finger.

"How unfortunate for your sister… We shall have to enact Plan B."

"Leave her alone!" Cornelia yelled, putting all of her will and rage into those three words. A glimmer of expression flickered across the other person's face. They were impressed. Impressed that she could even speak. And then her own hands threw themselves tightly around her throat, squeezing like a vice! This wasn't just pressure! As she thought, he was some kind of ability user!

"I'm hurt!" that person said, and almost made it sound sincere. "When I came here for the single purpose of setting you free from this place. I can see that you lack that which humans desire most. Therefore… I shall allow you to remember something that might lead you to it. I shall let you remember that Lelouch is alive. You see? Am I not a kind and generous benefactor?"

"Wh-what do all humans want the most?" Cornelia heard her own voice asking against her own will, while her own hands continued to throttle her.

"What else?" was the prelude to the answer. "Simply… Peace of mind."

====Kallen====

Today made absolutely no sense no matter how you cut it. Cornelia was gone. The broken down temple was gone. She didn't even seem to be on Kamine Island anymore. In fact, as far as the eye could see there was nothing but gears and cogs interconnected with each other in ways that couldn't possibly be useful for any kind of machine, no matter how big.

"What's this supposed to be, a giant clock for a giant ego?" Kallen demanded. Nobody answered. Not even an echo of her own voice. How did she get here? An enemy ability? There didn't seem to be any kind of entrance, so it had to be something like -

Sudden movement just on the edge of her peripheral vision made her whip around, and only pull the blow when she saw who, or rather what it was. A Knightmare frame certainly, but… A Burai with an enlarged cockpit!

"Well, it's good to see a friendly face. Sort of. You know what I mean."

"What in the world?" Lelouch asked over their internal comms. "Where the hell are we? How did we get here?"

"Damn, I was hoping you guys might know something," Kallen answered. Too much to hope for. "We've got to figure out a way out of here, quickly."

"I could maybe punch down those walls if you like!" Shirley offered. "Or send Schizoid Man to scout up ahead?"

"No, too risky until we know more," Lelouch said. "Instead, I will use Painted Black to turn these gears invisible so that we can see more of this - Nnngh! Aaargh!"

"L-Lelou!" Shirley gasped. "What's wrong? Where does it hurt? Is there anything I can do?"

"D-Don't use your Stand!" Lelouch warned. "When I tried… The pain!"

A place that hurt Stand users when they tried to use their Stands? No question of it. This had to be some kind of trap! Would she be able to tear through these walls of gears using the Guren? Would Lelouch recover in time to figure out a way out of this metal monstrosity? Would she find the chance to ask him if he really was Royalty? Guh! Too much to think about at once! One issue at a time.

Like, say, was that blood pooling on the floor just now? And hadn't the floor been more of a whitish void rather than a regally carpeted design? Come to think of it, the gears were also melting away. Real walls. Real ceiling. A real staircase rising up out of nowhere.

"N-No!" Lelouch gasped through whatever pain he was enduring. "Not this… Not this day! Why must I be tormented like this again?"

There was glass everywhere. The windows into the room were broken. But the most obvious sense of wrongness in the room was a woman lying on the floor. Riddled with bullets. Her body protectively huddled around a very young, wide eyed and terrified girl who was trembling uncontrollably underneath. While a young boy wearing a ridiculous looking white tuxedo and cape looked down in muted horror from the top of the stairs, and -

"So it's true then!" Kallen asked. "Lelouch, you're really -"

"Unconscious," Shirley interrupted. "Whatever you were going to say, it will have to wait until later when he - Oh no! Is that Nunnally? Ah! How awful, I never imagined it would be something like -"

"-There is something wrong here," Shirley suddenly said. Her tone shifted mid sentence. More serious. A touch more dramatic in an exaggerated manner. Almost like the same sort of tone she used when wearing the mask. "This must be some kind of home for these three. There's no security force and no fallen assailants! This is too clean a getaway."

"You're right," Kallen replied. "Now that you mention it… This much firepower didn't get anyone's attention? For a family this rich? Nothing about this seems right. If only you could use your Stand, you might be able to - Your factsphere! Record everything with your factsphere!"

"Ah! G-Good thinking!" Shirley said. "Um… How do I do that?"

"Blue button, upper centre. Got it?"

"A personal lesson in Knightmare piloting from an ace," Shirley said. Her tone had shifted again. It kind of reminded Kallen how her own behaviour at school was a careful act. Was Shirley getting a little too lost in the performance? Or maybe… No, it was probably nothing. "I shall treasure this lesson! Let us investigate this travesty of justice! Launching a surprise attack against a family in their home while they are unguarded… Cowardly, craven and sickening!"

Yeah, it kind of was. Looking at it in this light so soon after learning Lelouch's real identity gave a huge amount of context to his motivations. He'd lost a parent too, huh? An incident that must have left Nunnally in that blind and crippled state had also robbed them both of a mother. No wonder he hated Britannia so much. He would have figured out something was up right away. He must have placed the blame on his family's feet and harboured a grudge for all these years. Every day with his little sister and her warm smile let him keep that hate hot. Plans within plans spinning within that brain of his. Until the day that, by chance, he found a way to have power beyond that of normal men. A power he could use to accomplish vengeance -

Except. If there had been a coverup over the death of an Empress, that would be a high level conspiracy… Potentially another member of the Royal Family? He might suspect Cornelia's involvement. No. Not might. He must suspect her and intended to question her!

Therefore he had reached the wrong conclusion. Far be it from her to put any trust in what Cornelia had to say, but she had no reason to lie about it. The Princess wanted to find out the truth, which meant that she didn't know anything about what happened here. It was almost tragic: Two siblings fighting for the exact same cause and resolution on opposite sides.

Which left Kallen wondering: What might happen if Lelouch discovered this "tragedy" in the making? Would he leave the Black Knights behind? Ally with Cornelia? Abandon the course he had set that would lead to Japan's freedom? When the Black Knights were now the most organised group left to fight Britannia…

"Kallen! It's not like you to be so quiet!" Shirley playfully said. Then, more seriously, "If something concerns you, please air it now."

"It's nothing," Kallen lied. "I was just wondering… I was standing next to Cornelia before I arrived here. Why did I meet up with you two, and not seen any trace of her at all?"

"That is because all three of you are Aberrations."

That voice! A circle of light appeared on the floor, and C.C. seemed to rise up out of it. Man, but Kallen never thought she'd be so happy to see that green haired snark-producing pizza-consuming witch.

"Aberrations attract one another," C.C. said. "Therefore, it is only natural you would be drawn together in here as well." She looked around and winced. "Oh dear. What a traumatic memory."

"Aberrations?" Kallen asked. "You mean Stand users, don't you?"

"That is the name you have chosen for yourselves," C.C. shrugged. "No more questions. Come with me I shall lead you away from the World of C. We have precious little time before we are noticed."

"Noticed?" Shirley asked. "Oh, sorry! That's a question! Um.. Lelouch showed me how to use this thing, just in case. Let me just… There we go!"

World of C, huh? Aberrations? You know more about what's going on than you'd like to tell, don't you? Actually, didn't C.C. also confirm the Speedwagon Foundation's information regarding Kamine Island? Why didn't she mention anything like this? What else was she hiding?

"Allies, huh?" she grunted to herself. "Lies, manipulation, agendas and masks. You might not want to answer questions right now, but you can be damned sure you're gonna give them later!"

Although. It was a strange thing. As they were leaving this weird place in a circle of light, for a moment there Kallen thought she saw something on her monitors. A figure. A person looking directly at her. A person with that Geass symbol shining brightly, terribly in both of their eyes.

Just her imagination playing tricks. She rewound the recording, and there wasn't anything there at all. This place, everything she'd been through today… It must be getting to her. That was all.

====Shirley====

Confusion. Intrigue. Mystery. A tragic past motivating mistrust, suspicion and hatred. It was strangely like something out of a romantic novel and here she was stepping into the role of the protagonist that would wound the Prince's broken heart with her tender, loving - Oh, such naughty thoughts she was thinking! If she was a good girl she should be thinking about poor Nunnally having to endure being trapped beneath her own mother's dead body for goodness knows how long and -

They were on a beach. They had left that strange and confusing place behind. Oh, thank goodness! Shirley turned around in her seat to check on Lelouch. Slumped over. Unconscious. Breathing heavily. She leaned in close. To - To get a better look, make sure he was okay. It - it wasn't because she was going to kiss him or anything. Stealing a kiss under these conditions would be a terrible thing for her to do.

"Zero! Q1!" a serious military voice broke through the silence. "What are you doing here?" Tohdoh asked. "And why is C.C. with you?"

Shirley turned around in her seat and looked around at them all. Lelouch was unconscious. The Guren had sustained damage, and even though Kallen was trying to hide it she sounded like she was breathing heavily. Over there, Ohgi was being carried by Tohdoh's Knightmare, meaning he must have lost his. Even a novice could see the state of the board, and so she gave an audio only reply: "We are retreating," she decisively said. "Call in the submarine, everything will be explained in detail there."

"You make it sound like you know what the hell just happened," Kallen said. "And what about - What about Painted Black? Is he alright?"

"And what about our objective?" Tohdoh asked. "If we allow Britannia to experiment on these long dead Pillar Men - If they were capable of half of what was claimed, it would be disastrous!"

"Then we must lick our wounds and try to stop them in another way!" Zero insisted. This was the best thing to do, right? "And besides. As you shall see during the debriefing, this was not a wasted mission. We have retrieved vital information that will greatly assist future operations."

She was a novice at tactics, especially on this kind of scale. However… She tapped the screen and clasped her hands, not so that she could concentrate but so that her hands might act as a sort of gate to hold back the renewed horror of the scene she was witnessing. So much blood…

"C.C." she asked after a moment. "How accurate would it be? What we saw in that place?"

"Who can say?" C.C. flippantly asked. "However… It should not be possible for a memory to be viewed without the person also being present and conscious. Does that answer your question?"

"Vague… As ever…" Lelouch said. His body was struggling and aching to be awake.

"Sh, sh!" Shirley admonished, having Schizoid Man caress his cheek, while she tried to stay focused on the task at hand. "You'd better rest up and save your energy. Don't worry, Lulu! I'll get you back home in no time at all. Then you can see Nunnally and Suzaku, and everything will be alright."

And as an added bonus, we might be able to use the crime scene to figure out something about whoever killed your mother. Her face flickered between a scowl, a smile and concern with seemingly every breath. Shirley was happy to have the chance to help him. Zero was concerned over what this all might mean. While the Joestar blood within her veins was telling her to prepare for the fights ahead.

But she could ignore that last part. Just get back home, where you can rest and relax without having to worry about any of this. Yes. Back home would be safe. Back home, there would be so much less stress and everything would make sense again. Back home at Ashford Academy, where their goofy friends would cheer them right up.

Right? Right!

[To Be Continued |\|]