Champions of Geiis

by Demon of Zero

Ashford Academy was, oftentimes, a rather hectic place. Simple events often got blown out of proportion. But, really, what could possibly go wrong with something as inconsequential as a board game? As Lelouch was about to learn, the answer to that question was a rather simple "everything." (Rewrite of the previous Gods of Geiis.)

1. Chapter 1

So. This is a rewritten version of Gods of Geiss, as many may guess by the title. Some things will change, others will remain the same, however I DO expect a significant increase to the quality of the story itself. Whether or not it'll be amazing has yet to be seen, but it's going to be better than last time I assure you. Please feel free to point out any issues you see, as I am highly critical of this work in particular as I'm such a fan of the idea. Ah, and really quickly allow me to give a brief rundown of the concept for those of us that aren't familiar with the idea.

This particular idea began, in a sense, with Kyugan here on FF. He has a story that is essentially a list of plot bunnies, one of which contained "Lelouch of the Natural Twenty" in which Lelouch and company are sucked into a boardgame, a fantasy roleplaying board game. Having never seen this idea before for a Code Geass story, I was excited for any continuation... but none came. So in my infinite wisdom, I tried to write it.

I. Failed. Horribly.

The rewrite of my original pile of steaming garbage was marginally better. Enough so that I felt confident in the ideas at play, not the execution. Thus, I've rewritten chapter one from the ground up and am giving this another attempt, as this is a highly unique idea that I genuinely want to write.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Thanathos for all the helpful advice and other contributions he has made in this endeavor. If not for him, I doubt I would have gotten around to this.

Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass in any way shape or form.

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Ashford Academy, one of the most famous educational institutions in Area Eleven, was known for a few key things.

Firstly, it was established by Reuben Ashford, a nobleman who had lost much of his standing upon the death of Marianne vi Britannia, an Imperial Consort known across the world as "Marianne the Flash", a frighteningly skilled soldier who's ability in a Knightmare frame had been the stuff of legends. The "Commoner Empress" who had risen from her status as a simple soldier to become the wife of the 98th Emperor of Britannia, and the very same woman who was later killed in her own home under mysterious circumstances.

Before her passing, the Ashford Foundation had been the pinnacle of technological advancement in Britannia, having created the Ganymede that the late Empress had used as her weapon of choice.

With the passing of the Empress, their status had been almost entirely ruined. In the end, the man who had such close history with the Royal Family had simply gone on to open a school.

Secondly, Ashford Academy was well known for the excellent performance of it's students. Oftentimes Ashford was regarded as the best educational institution in the Area, with extremely well-qualified teaching staff and a solid curriculum with numerous electives and after-school activities encouraged. Graduates of the fairly new academy oftentimes went on to do exceptional things quite quickly, which gained some of it's noteworthiness.

And the third and final major contributor to Ashford Academy's notoriety was simple;

Reuben Ashford loved a good party. Ashford Academy had the highest frequency of festivals and other events of any educational institution in Britannia. These events were typically large enough to warrant an entire day off from schooling, mystifying those who tried to explain how the school could keep their students well learned in such an environment. Surely such things would detract from their education, and should instead be moderated.

Anyone who brought this concern to the Headmaster of the academy would be met with an incredulous stare and copies of test scores to prove their point invalid.

It was for these three key points that Ashford Academy was so well recognized.

And for that reason, it would normally come as no surprise to any observer to see just how ridiculous a typical day in the lives of Ashford Academy's student council was.

But considering the group's ranks consisted of three Knights of the Round, young prodigies who had been inducted into the highest military organization within Britannia despite still being in school, it was certainly an interesting group. Of course, one could easily think that the inclusion of such high ranking military members would lead to a rather efficient and organized council...

But as Lelouch watched the antics of the Knight of Three, Gino Weinberg, as he harassed the blue-haired treasurer of their council, the Vice President of the student council couldn't help but sigh at how ludicrous such expectations would be if the people making them had even met these Knights. Out of the trio, the only one who even remotely lived up to that expectation would be Suzaku... but the brunette was not even remotely good at work of this sort.

As of now, the council was simply gathered up within their council room awaiting the arrival of their President, who had called them all together for an announcement. Luckily, despite their military background the trio of Knights had been able to attend due to clear schedules.

Thus, the council as of now had assembled within a single room and they were now occupying themselves until the arrival of the student council President.

"So any idea what Milly called us out for today anyway?" Gino asked casually, despite keeping Rivalz captured in a playful headlock. The blonde knight's eyes sparkled mischievously at his question, knowing his familiarity with the buxom blonde girl would antagonize the bluenette even further.

Grunting in annoyance, the boy in question replied. "It's Madame President to you, pretty boy." Despite being held so easily, Rivalz was unimpressed by the fact that Gino could restrain him like this. Considering the guy was a member of the military, and even further that he was one of the Knights of the Round, it really was no surprise. Rivalz was, after all, just a regular civilian. "But yeah, I've got no idea what she has planned either." Their President could be quite whimsical at times, and so sudden meetings like this weren't unusual... but the contents of the meetings tended to be odd in some fashion or another. That was just her way, though.

Seated on a couch near the television in the room, Shirley chimed in as she turned to regard the rest of the council for the first time in a little while, having been off in her own world. "She told me it was a surprise for us, but didn't say anything more. I think I heard something about her going to the airport to pick someone up, though." The bubbly orangette blinked at the situation Rivalz was in, before shrugging it off as just another oddity of their group.

"Oh, surprises? I love surprises!" Gino cheered, throwing his arms into the air and releasing Rivalz unintentionally, allowing the bluenette to drop lackadaisically to the ground, much like a puppet with it's strings cut.

Another annoyed grunt made it's way from the treasurer's throat. "Of course you do." He mumbled, picking himself off the ground and dusting himself off lightly.

"Recorded." A monotone voice cut in, drawing attention the the youngest member of the council. Anya Alstreim, Knight of Six, was not a very emotive girl. As a matter of fact, no one there could even claim to remember seeing her smile without any sort of coercion from Gino. And those smiles were quite obviously forced just to appease the blonde.

It was honestly really unnerving to try and imagine what made someone that way, especially a girl so young.

At the moment, the girl had just snapped a picture of the scene Gino had made, managing to catch an image of Rivalz mid-fall as Gino threw his arms up in the air.

According to Anya, these pictures were her memories. No further explanation was given to anyone who asked. She was often left alone in her own little corner of the council room, unmolested by anyone except the occasional fancy of Gino's that drew him over to bother her. The girl didn't seem to mind the isolation.

Of all the Knights in the room, Lelouch could plainly say she unnerved him the most. As a Britannian citizen perhaps it would seem strange that he was unnerved at all by these Knights, but it was easy to see why if one knew just what the dark haired vice president did outside of school.

'They really did come here just to play, didn't they?' The part-time rebel thought to himself as his cool gaze swept over the council members, settling on Anya for a few moments longer than the others. 'And there's still those concerns about that picture.' He pondered idly, drawing his gaze away from the lackadaisical girl before she could realize he was looking at her.

One of Anya's many "memories" had drawn a lot of her curiosity towards him. A single picture, taken long ago. A young boy holding a rose, garbed in fine whites and golds, smiling a warm, charming smile towards the camera and, presumably, the girl behind the camera. A boy with dark hair and eyes of amethyst, surrounded by a beautiful garden that was well kept and hauntingly familiar.

The title of the picture was simple; a single word. A name.

His name. Lelouch. How had that picture come into her hands? No, that much had been obvious from the start; clearly, the girl had taken that picture while they were both younger. The real question wasn't how, but rather why? Why did Anya Alstreim have a picture of him on her little pink phone, the thing she almost religiously updated with new pictures, constantly looked over and managed, where her "memories" resided? At what point had she taken that picture, and why couldn't he remember it? Judging by his age in the photo, he would've been around ten. That would have been during his time in the Aries Villa, when he went by the name vi Britannia.

Lelouch Lamprouge was more than a simple schoolboy. He was, in truth, a prince of Britannia exiled nearly a decade prior for standing against the Emperor's decision to call off investigations on his mother's assassination. On that day, he had demanded answers from that man. Why was his mother dead? Marianne vi Britannia, the Flash herself, was gunned down within her own home? Why would such a thing have happened? Such a bold assassination was unheard of within the Royal Family. How had the culprit escaped from such a thing unhindered, and what possible reason could there be for him to call off the investigation? Didn't he care about them?

The answer to that question had come as a resounding "no" as the Emperor of Britannia, Charles zi Britannia himself, had declared his son nothing more than a corpse living off the merit of others, and sent the boy and his freshly crippled sister to Japan to serve as political hostages. Nunnally, his beloved sister who had been blinded and robbed of her ability to walk, was forced to separate from everyone she had ever known immediately after losing her mother and freedom to move.

But before such harsh times had fallen upon them, the siblings had lived a lavish life within a beautiful home, the Aries Villa. They had a loving mother, helpful servants at every turn, and a wide garden to play in and explore to their heart's content. In the early years of their lives, the two siblings had been in an idyllic fantasy-land, unconcerned about the troubles of the world beyond the walls of their home.

And besides the two siblings and their mother, there had been one other permanent resident of their home. A young girl who had been accepted into their household in order to receive etiquette lessons from their mother, a shy little thing with pink hair and ruby eyes. Despite the many friendly faces around, the girl had never seemed completely at ease unless directly accompanied by the Empress herself.

Anya Alstreim had been a part of his life during those carefree years, but not close enough to warrant him consenting to posing for a picture. He despised having his picture taken. Loathed it, even. His distaste for the idea of having his image captured had only grown after he'd gone into hiding, but it had always been present. For her to have taken a picture of him, a picture he had knowingly posed for, she would have had to be closer to him than what his memories implied.

And the thought of that genuinely scared him, because he had a strong suspicion as to how such a thing could happen.

Charles zi Britannia was in possession of Geass, a mystical power that manifested in different ways for each user. It was a power that Lelouch also held, one that had served as both a blessing and a curse. Where his power was that of absolute obedience, the ability to bend the will of a human being to his own so completely that they couldn't dream of resisting, his father held a power equally as dangerous.

Memories meant nothing to a man who could rewrite them at will. And that power was in the hands of a man who would throw away his children as pawns, a man who had no qualms about stealing away precious memories and replacing them with falsehoods.

Anya kept "memories" on her phone, implying she couldn't trust anything she didn't have concrete proof of. He himself could not remember posing for that picture, despite the fact that he had clearly done so. Such an event should have been memorable to him, because he could keep clear track of every other time he had been photographed with his consent in the last seven years.

And the amount of times that had happened could be counted on both hands.

After thinking things through time and time again, he could see no explanation for that picture's existence. And that pointed to tampering. Perhaps that same tampering could be related to how Anya behaved, because her attitude was not normal. People should not act like that. Even C.C., who had lived many lifetimes and suffered the pain of death hundreds of times without release, was not so... damaged.

It was disturbing, not only because of the way she was, but due to the fact that this condition seemed to have been forced on the girl for some purpose.

"Yeeeeeeow!" A strangled yelp forcefully drew Lelouch's mind back to the world around him. Noticing the cause, Lelouch wasn't able to contain his humor at the sight of Suzaku nursing his injured finger after having it caught between Arthur's jaws.

For whatever reason, Arthur seemed overly antagonistic towards the young man that had first found him. Not in such a way that he didn't like the boy at all, because there were days when Suzaku would go an entire day without any issue... but every so often, Arthur would just take a chance to bite the brunette. Usually his finger ended up being the victim of this attack.

Lelouch couldn't admit it in present company, but he genuinely enjoyed each and every one of those incidents. They brought a warm, fuzzy feeling to his chest.

Long gone were the days that Kururugi Suzaku could be considered his best friend. On both ends of the spectrum, they had hurt one another too much for reconciliation between the two of them.

He had wronged Suzaku greatly; the woman he had fallen in love with, the kind princess who had brought light to the darkness of the world. The idealistic girl who had wanted peace, a real lasting peace, who had fought in her own way to achieve it...

And he had killed her. Gunned her down in cold blood after ordering her with his Geass to commit genocide. Dragged her name through the mud in order to salvage the horrible situation he had caused.

Worst of all, it had all been an accident. A stupid little mistake. And he could never have predicted it; who would have been able to see that coming? He had been warned that Geass could run rampant, that he could lose control... but what were the odds that it would do so at such a horrible time?

But it didn't matter. Not anymore. What's done is done, and nothing he could do would change that. He had murdered Euphemia li Britannia in cold blood, taken the love of Suzaku's life from him.

And in return, Suzaku had used Nunnally to try and weasel a confession out of him. His beloved little sister who he hadn't seen in a year, the light of his world and the entire reason he had started to fight for a better tomorrow.

His darling little sister, who he had tried his hardest to protect from the filthy world of politics, who he wanted to live happily unconcerned with such things. His little sister who deserved more than to be used as a tool.

And Suzaku had gone and done just that. The Japanese teen knew, he knew just how important Nunnally was to him. And knowing that, and likely because of that knowledge, he had the gall to use her like a tool to try and determine whether or not his memories had returned.

They had antagonized one another before; Zero had constantly been making the military's life harder, whereas Suzaku had been a constant thorn in the side of the rebellion. But those things, Lelouch was sure they could have forgiven one another for eventually.

This was not something they could ever forgive one another for. But at the very least, Lelouch would allow the boy who had become one of his first friends to go on believing he had mercilessly used Euphemia, intentionally destroyed her reputation and brought her life to an end. Perhaps it seemed cruel, but Lelouch wasn't sure what the truth would do to Suzaku. How would he react when it turned out that his hatred was unjustified, that Lelouch had been just as much of a victim as him? It was cruel to lead him on like this... but at the same time, it would have been crueler to reveal the truth.

It would be easier on the brunette this way. Lelouch would at least allow him that. Though there were days he had considered revealing the truth to Suzaku, the urge had never been so strong as that day he had tried to use Nunnally like a tool.

That was simply unforgivable. Stooping so low as that... it made him furious just thinking about it, but one good thing did come of that situation. He'd been able to speak freely with Nunnally, after so long he had been able to tell her he loved her.

And it was all thanks to Rolo, the cherubic little assassin that had been playing the role of his brother for the past year or so. The boy had proven useful, that much was for sure, but on some level Lelouch was beginning to genuinely appreciate him. Perhaps there was some merit to the lie he had fed him that day.

After all, the year he had spent with his memories altered had been a year he spent side-by-side with Rolo, and those memories were not false.

Seeing genuine emotion light up behind those eyes just because he showed the smallest compassion to the boy made it hard to hate him, especially after learning just how horrible his situation had been.

Rolo was a weapon through and through; he had never gotten the chance to be a human being, never been more than a tool. Even as he masqueraded as Rolo Lamprouge, he was not truly a person. Merely a tool to keep tabs on Lelouch... and a tool that was beginning to dull as time went on.

After his temper had cooled from the initial anger of someone trying to take Nunnally's place in his life, Lelouch had come to the startling realization that Rolo was living the life he desperately fought to keep Nunnally from enduring. Having no value except as a tool, being nothing but an expendable. A pawn that could easily be sacrificed.

No child deserved such a fate, did they? To have the right to choose their future stolen from them?

Hating the boy for something completely outside of his control left an awful taste in Lelouch's mouth when he had finally understood just how unfair such a thing was. Wasn't he trying to build a fair and just world for Nunnally? If that was true, wouldn't that mean Rolo deserved a chance to be more than a simple tool?

Of course, that did not detract in any way from the simple fact that Rolo was dangerous. Incredibly so. Really, the boy was the perfect assassin considering his ability and utter lack of morality, and the sudden introduction of actual protective instinct had done nothing more than make him even more volatile. It was just a matter of time before someone got hurt because Rolo did not value human lives at all, with exception to his big brother's.

Despite the fact that he deserved a chance to become something more than a weapon, that did not mean Lelouch would ignore the fact that he had a murderous sociopath for a little brother.

Steps had been taken to prevent Rolo from harming anyone important. It was pivotal that the boy learn the value of human life. If killing was always his first option, eventually it would lead to someone Lelouch cared about getting hurt. That instinct needed to be stamped out of him as soon as possible before Rolo ended up doing something they would both regret.

Lelouch sighed lightly, propping his cheek against his hand. A small smile came to his lips as his thoughts took a turn back towards the student council as a whole, with everyone just interacting casually. 'It's too bad these days can't go on forever.' Despite the fact that they were enemies, Anya and Gino had both made their own impression on the council. They fit in rather well. Lelouch would admit to himself that he was honestly starting to like the two of them.

Suzaku's smile... was... well, it was bittersweet. On the one hand, there was still a part of him that wished the two of them could remain friends... but at the same time, the realist in him knew such a thing was impossible. Even so, seeing the smile on his old friend's face brought back memories of childhood, happier times... but even those didn't bring much joy to him in the present, seeing as they would remain nothing but memories.

The remaining members of the group were civilians; Rivalz and Shirley. Rivalz, unlike Shirley, had yet to be drawn in to the conflict surrounding him, still living on blissfully ignorant with exception to a single factor.

None of his friends from Ashford Academy had been allowed to retain their memories of him, and their minds had been tampered with by Charles zi Britannia in order to construct this elaborate prison he had been trapped within. Outside of this, Rivalz had not been negatively impacted by his actions.

However, for Shirley... it was better that way. It wasn't the first time her memories had been tampered with, though his own meddling had been with much more blunt force and better intentions.

He had simply ordered her to forget about him. Everything about him, because the things she knew and the things her mind had been filled with were driving her to the brink of sanity. She had forgotten all of their interactions in school, forgotten how fervently she had pursued his affections, forgotten that they were close friends... and forgotten that he had been the one to kill her father. Forgotten how she had been manipulated by Mao, and how close she had come to killing them both in her hysterics.

In a way, Lelouch held some modicum of gratitude towards his father's actions. Shirley's mind had not been repaired by any means, but she was spared from the horrible secrets that Mao had used to drive her to the breaking point. It was unforgivable to tamper with someone's life in such a way, he admitted, and he himself still felt guilt from being the first to do such a thing to the bubbly orangette... but she had needed it. Shirley couldn't go on the way she had been with the knowledge of Zero's identity. At the very least his father had replaced the enormous blank in her memory with false memories that left her less concerned.

He felt his mood drop, though the smiling facade remained. 'I've gone and depressed myself.' Lelouch admonished himself for turning his mind towards such stormy waters. The atmosphere was so jovial within the council, but beneath the brightness and color and joy he could practically see the bubbling darkness, a murky ooze that seeped through the cracks of the 'normal' lives they led. Beneath the joyful exterior, there was a war going on.

Indeed, these days were all around bittersweet. As much as he enjoyed the simple moments like this, it was spoiled by the knowledge that these days were bound to end soon. Soon, he was going to drown the nation in conflict once again and finally remove his father from power, destroy the empire that man had created, and finally rebuild it into a nation worthy of Nunnally.

And from there, he would move on to the world. It wasn't just Britannia that needed to change; the EU and China both needed some serious work. As of right now, the Holy Empire of Britannia was a much better alternative for living than either of those two superpowers. As a matter of fact, if one was a pureblooded Britannian in Britannia there was next to no reason to worry in this world; so long as you were a simple working class, you could eke out your living without much trouble and live a perfectly peaceful life. Britannia's standard of living was the highest in the world for it's citizens.

If that system expanded to the numerous conquered territories, perhaps the destruction of this nation wouldn't have been his priority. But right now there were people suffering under Britannia's rule, he was already in Britannia, and honestly he had a grudge. Lelouch could admit that he had been nursing this hatred for his home country for years, and that it influenced much of his decision making to some degree. But it was well under control, he would not be so weak as to let his own anger consume him.

Movement in his peripheral drew the dark haired teen from his thoughts. A sudden shock of pink appeared in his view as he turned towards the movement, revealing the dull ruby eyes of the Knight of Three as she aimed her phone at him, prepped to take a picture.

Due to her rather surprising appearance at his side, the boy very nearly failed to block the camera with his hand. Thankfully for his personal sanity, however, the camera flash was muted behind his hand, leaving nothing but a blur on her phone's screen after the fact.

"..." Anya stared.

"..." Lelouch returned the stare.

"... huh." Anya released a small sigh in response to his stare. "... you did it again." She mumbled lackadaisically, her monotone never wavering for even a moment.

Lelouch stood his ground under the assault of her deadpan stare. "That should be my line, Anya. I've asked you to stop that." He didn't particularly expect her to, but still it needed to be said.

"..." Her silent stare continued, head tilting slightly to the side. "... oh. That's right." The girl nodded lightly to herself, as if to confirm that statement. "You did."

"Yes." Lelouch grunted in annoyance. "I did."

"I forgot." Anya replied shamelessly and without any change to her expression.

"I'm aware." He noted in a deadpan of his own.

"... sorry?" It should be said that as Knight of Three Anya did not often need to apologize, and was somewhat unfamiliar with the concept. Thus, her apology came as more of a question than anything.

Lelouch released a deep sigh. "We both know you're really not." He accused lightly, having accepted the constant attempts to get a picture of him as just another quirk of this bizarre, broken little girl.

"... huh." Anya blinked. People didn't usually call her on that, but he wasn't wrong. Anya didn't really feel guilt. Or... well... anything. Emotions were not easy to express when one hardly had them to begin with. Nodding again to herself, the girl turned and made her way back to the isolated seat she had chosen in the corner of the room, having gotten all she needed from the interaction with the black haired teen.

That girl had been trying to snap a picture of him ever since she had noticed the picture on her phone matching his appearance and name. He didn't really know what she wanted with a picture of his face, but Lelouch was paranoid and as such he didn't appreciate the gesture. However, after so many times of having to block her shot with his hand or other objects, the dark haired teen was used to her newly found obsession over getting a picture of him.

The interaction between the two of them drew bemused glances from the remainder of the council. "... Gino, no offense, but Anya scares me sometimes." Rivalz announced jokingly to the blonde Knight.

"What? How can you be scared of that? She's adorable." Gino replied with a grin. "Watching her stumble through social interaction is great." She was like a really awkward kitten. She would usually settle off on her own, ignore you unless she needed something from you or had a sudden flight of fancy, and when her attention was on you it was easy to tell because she was blatant about it. However, considering her social skills were practically nonexistent, the times she did decide to interact with someone it was bound to be hysterical.

Briefly dropping the joking tone, Rivalz gave his response in a quieter tone. "No, I mean I'm scared for her." Seriously, that girl wasn't just "not normal". There was legitimately something wrong with her mind and as a relatively upstanding person he was honestly concerned about it. Why was she like that?

Grin falling from his face, the blonde Knight sighed. "Yeah... I know." It wasn't something he could really do anything about though. He had no idea what made her that way, but it really was kind of unsettling to see anyone in such a state. The girl was practically a robot, going through the motions of living without any enthusiasm for it. He'd known her for a fair amount of time by this point and had yet to see her crack a smile. "But it's something I've gotten used to, bud." He was already in way too deep to just walk away now, oh no. Even if Anya would probably end up forgetting him in like a couple weeks he wasn't just going to walk out of her life.

Rivalz blinked. "... I don't think I'll ever get used to it." Anya really did creep him out sometimes. Sometimes he could honestly believe the girl was just a lifeless doll someone had snuck into the room when no one was looking.

"I just wonder how she ended up like that." Shirley chimed in quietly, taking great pains to ensure that the pinkette in question was out of hearing range. "The way she acts is just... weird." A sheepish smile came to her face as she failed to find a word to properly describe Anya's behavior. Recovering admirably, she continued. "People don't just develop that way unless something happens to them." What kind of trauma did someone have to go through to end up as damaged as this girl? Was this the result of her being in the military at such a young age?

Suzaku contributed his own thoughts on the matter. "I don't really know why she ended up like this, but... well, she is that way." He shrugged under the glances he received, a slightly flustered look coming to his face at the scrutiny. "Er, rather... if she's our friend, we should just accept her despite her quirks. Or at least, that's what I think." So she was weird, that much was true. And perhaps there was legitimately something wrong with her head that caused this, but he had no idea what it would be.

... well, actually, no. Suzaku had a very good idea of what could cause her behavior.

But he barely understood that awful power in the first place, so it was hard to just blame Geass for this. Despite that, a feeling in his gut made him feel like that disgusting ability was at fault somehow. As such, he would just move on. In the end, it didn't matter. Anya was Anya and she was how she was. If there was a way to figure out the exact cause of her mental issues, that could be worked out once the world was at peace under Britannia. There would be no shortage of time then.

"That works fine so long as she doesn't end up hurting herself or someone else." Lelouch said, glancing towards the girl who had moved to the far side of the room by herself, out of earshot of their fairly quiet conversation and busying herself with her phone. "However, conditions like this are unsettling in that you can never know just what may cause someone to snap." It was a rather cruel thing to say, but entirely true. Her mental state could not be stable, not if his suspicions were correct and his father's Geass was to blame. Who knows just how much tampering had been done with Anya's mind? Lelouch shuddered to imagine what kind of things that man could learn to do with the power to freely manipulate memories.

If Rolo, who had been broken in and trained to be nothing more than a weapon, could express his genuine emotions while Anya seemed entirely incapable of emotion... what in the world had been done to her?

"... that's a harsh thing to say, Lelouch." Suzaku mumbled weakly. Even with his memories sealed, Lelouch could be such a downer.

Lelouch shrugged lightly. "It's not unfair, though." Seeing the gazes of the other teens on him, the dark haired youth explained further. "She's a sixteen year old girl with some sort of severe emotional disorder who has been in the military for much longer than either Gino or Suzaku." Which was terrifying in it's own right. Anya's life up to this point had consisted of her childhood before meeting his mother, her childhood during that time, and then an undisclosed amount of time being groomed for a position in the military after his mother's death. "Can no one see how that could be an issue?"

Both Gino and Suzaku grimaced, clearly realizing the point he was making. They both remembered quite clearly just how easily Anya had blasted an allied ship out of the sky to save a second ship from a collision. While it was a sound decision tactically speaking, her complete disregard for human life and lack of any hesitation had been unsettling.

"Big brother is always worrying about someone." Rolo piped up lightly, smiling towards the older boy. "Trying to figure out everyone's problems and the ways to fix them, you wear yourself out thinking of all the bad stuff that could happen if you can't fix it." The smile became teasing as he continued on. "It's probably why you're so grouchy, big brother."

An amused snort came from the teen in question. "Maybe so." He replied idly, musing on Rolo's words as he let the conversation drop. While it was a jest from the point of view of the council, it did have some truth to it. Though he tended to worry about these things in relation to how they would later affect him, he did dedicate quite some thought to various attempted solutions and his mind always did draw to the worst conclusions.

The somber mood dissipated fairly quickly after Rolo's little jibe at his brother, drawing the social members of the council away from the fairly depressing topic of Anya's issues.

It couldn't have come at a better time, Lelouch noted in amusement, because Milly would have felt really awkward with her flashy entrance if she had jumped into the middle of that atmosphere.

"BEHOLD, MY LOYAL SUBJECTS!" The boisterous blonde shouted, stepping through the door with a flourish. Her hand flew out before her, holding a fairly old looking suitcase. "I come before thee bearing gifts!"

Everyone blinked with the exception of Anya, who had been entirely unconcerned after a brief glance upwards at the entrance.

"... what's in the suitcase?" Rivalz asked, seeing as how no one else seemed to be saying anything. More likely than not Lelouch just didn't want anything to do with it, but the others just seemed to be caught up in the moment.

"Not just yet, oh master of the treasury!" Milly shouted, pointing a finger towards the bluenette chidingly. "For this is the second surprise I bring," after this she dropped the rather flowery and flamboyant speech and switched back to he usual way of speaking. "And these things are meant to be done in order, you know."

Ignoring the fact that she had been the one to draw attention to the damn case in the first place, Lelouch went against his better judgement and asked the question she was clearly prompting. "If that's the case, Milly, then what's the first surprise?" He spoke as though he were speaking to a child... and in a lot of ways, Milly was like a child. She was bossy, whimsical, and at times adorable... while still being capable of making dread rise in his chest with a mere facial expression.

Throwing her arms up at the question she had wanted to hear, Milly turned and walked back into the hallway, clearly intending to get something. Or someone, judging by the startled squeak they heard from the hall.

Shortly after leaving the room, Milly returned half-shoving another person into the room enthusiastically. The original members of the council gasped in surprise at the sight of the figure, who had clearly been hurried into the room in a manner different than their original expectations.

"... h-hello again everyone." Nina Einstein mumbled out, her shy side evident once again as she had been paraded into the room like some sort of trophy. "Prince Schneizel gave me some t-time off, so I decided I would come visit... if it's not a bother?" At the end of her statement, she had begun idly playing with the string of the hoodie she had chosen as her casual clothing for the day.

"Nina!" Shirley recovered from her surprise quickly, rushing over towards the green haired girl with surprising speed and unsurprising energy, clearing half of the room in what seemed like less than a second.

"E-Eep!" The scientist girl squeaked at the sudden movement, having a very strong suspicion of what was going to happen next. A moment later her suspicions were confirmed as a pair of arms snaked around her shoulders, and another body knocked the wind out of her with a sudden impact.

"We missed you so much!" Shirley cried happily, forgetting the rather frail constitution of the other girl and squeezing her tightly. "Of course you're welcome to stay as long as you like!" She announced happily.

"... Shirley I think you're smothering her." Milly noted in a deadpan tone, as Shirley's boundless enthusiasm had resulted in what was half a tackle and half a hug, leaving Nina's face buried in the orangette's chest, with the bubbly girl too happy to notice or care. "Not that it'd be a bad way to go, of course." A lecherous smirk found it's way to the blonde's face. "But still. People need air a bit more than they need boobs."

At that rather blunt declaration, Shirley finally realized that she had been pressing Nina into her bust quite tightly and released the girl with a squeak. "A-ah, I'm so sorry Nina!" The girl apologized frantically, noticing the rather wobbly stance of the smaller girl she had just released from her embrace.

"N-no, it's f-fine Shirley. I-I'm g-glad to see you t-too." Nina stumbled through her sentence, a heavy flush across her cheeks as she steadied herself. She had not been prepared for such a fierce hug and, really, that was just poor planning on her part. She really should have seen that coming, knowing Shirley as well as she did. But goodness did Shirley have a nice pair of- no, no, bad thoughts.

"Anyhoo!" Milly announced, drawing attention back to her and away from the blushing scientist. "So I'm fairly certain everyone here knows each-other in some way shape of form, but for reference sake Nina was a member of our council back before Prince Schneizel snatched her away for his science things." She shrugged at that, releasing an exasperated sigh. "Which, of course, doubled the workload of our poor Vice President since none of us can be trusted with paperwork."

"... you tried to fill it out in crayon, Milly." Lelouch interrupted dryly. "Multiple colors of crayon, actually. Each letter was a different color of the rainbow, cycling from one end of the spectrum to the other." The dedication would have been admirable if it hadn't been something that caused more trouble for him.

"Regardless!" The student council president blatantly ignored her second-in-command's complaints. "Nina was a member of our merry band back when we first assembled this council. Introductions are now finished because anyone who's hanging around a prince probably knows who our newest members are, and I don't want to introduce anyone else." She waved a hand in the air cheerfully, as if to say "that's all folks."

Whimsical. Bossy. And at times, adorable. This was not one of those times, Lelouch noted as he took stock of Nina's reaction.

Something had caught his interest. The girl's expression remained fairly normal up until her gaze passed over him... no, wait, not just him. She was looking beside him now, at Rolo. Confusion came to her face for a brief moment before it was hidden away with a fair amount of expertise.

'Could it be that... no, surely he wouldn't have.' Had his father truly managed to miss Nina? Were her memories really still intact? Dear lord that could be hideously problematic, but at the same time there may be some sort of potential...

No, actually, there was nothing he could make use of. Nina despised him, even if she didn't know it yet. Zero had taken Princess Euphemia away from the world, and right now there were three people in the room who were deeply affected by that loss, one of them being her killer. It stood to reason that the other two would never be anything but enemies from this point forward.

'Something needs to be done about that.' Lelouch decided after a moment's consideration, using the distraction caused by Milly's final announcement to give Rolo a warning glance.

The "something" that needed to be done about Nina's memory would not include murdering her and hiding the body, and his brief glance towards the cherubic assassin made him aware of that fact. He knew full well that Nina would hate him after learning just who he was, especially considering she had already tried to stab him once... but he wasn't going to kill her for that. She was a friend, a friend he had wronged. And unlike Suzaku, she hadn't knowingly done anything to him considering the fact that she had no idea who was behind Zero's mask.

This was going to be something he needed to deal with very carefully, because Nina knew a lot more about him than he was comfortable with. After all, if Nunnally vi Britannia was a princess of Britannia, wouldn't that make her big brother prince Lelouch vi Britannia? It was good that the girl had kept quiet, though he could tell from the occasional glance in his direction that it was running through her head.

"Soooo..." Rivalz drawled, catching the attention of everyone but Anya. "What's in the suitcase?"

Milly blinked. "Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Too busy replaying the image of Shirley's hug in my head." Ignoring the glare from said girl, she walked over to the table and set the case down with a hearty thump. "This, my dear minions, is how we're going to spend the afternoon." And possibly the evening if this game ran on as long as she suspected it could.

Finally seeing the other side of the case, which had been hidden from them by Milly up until that point, the members of the council were surprised at what they saw as the blonde opened the case, revealing a myriad of different items. An old looking leatherbound book, a large stack of paper that appeared to be character sheets, and a folded gameboard. Off to the side there seemed to be a few small figures, perhaps two and a half inches tall at most, sectioned away where they wouldn't be damaged by any potential jostling of the case.

"... is this what I think it is, Milly?" Lelouch questioned, catching sight of nameplate on the front of the case. "Geiss: Godsrealm, this is one of those old tabletop roleplaying games isn't it?" Where in the world did she find one of these things? They weren't particularly common in this day and age, and moreover he didn't really know why Milly would even have any interest in them.

"Yep!" Milly chirped, clapping her hands together happily. "And since we're all here with nothing to do for the rest of the night," which was partially due to her asking them to clear their schedules in preparation for this, but still. ", we're all going to play it!" She announced this in such a tone that it was clear she assumed it to be an undisputed fact.

"Sure, I'm in." Rivalz chimed in, unsurprisingly in agreement with the plan. Their resident treasurer was also something of a fantasy fan, and he was genuinely into the idea.

Gino grinned widely. "This sounds great. I've always wanted to mess around with one of these." As the son of a military man, his upbringing did not include such things. If it wasn't sports or academics, it wasn't something his parents wanted him having any part of. And when he'd later gone on to become a Knight, it didn't really open any avenues for such party-oriented play. He did, however, play the hell out of several different video games he'd never gotten the chance to indulge in. "How 'bout you, bud?" He turned towards Suzaku, the brunette blinking at the question.

"Ah... yeah, sure." He replied somewhat unsurely. "I've never really played one of these before, but I guess I'm sort of familiar with what they are." He nodded to himself after a moment of thought. "Yeah, as long as we have a rulebook I can manage." A small smile slipped onto his lips.

Nina and Shirley both seemed interested, though they weren't terribly excited it did seem like it would be an amusing way to spend some time.

Seeing everyone happily going along with her plans made Milly's smile grow wider. She turned her gaze towards Lelouch and Rolo, who had yet to speak.

"... No." Lelouch replied dully. "I'd rather not." It was a board game. He had other things that he could be doing right now. As a matter of fact, many of those things were work related to the council in the first place. She had plenty of people for it, though, so that was fine.

This took the wind out of Milly's sails. "What!? Why not?" She stomped her foot at him petulantly. "I know you don't have anything else to be doing." She accused.

Lelouch gave her a look. "Do you mean to tell me that the paperwork required for next week's event has already been filled out?" Pretty much everything had been finished and finalized with exception to the paperwork, but there was enough of that to take one person a few hours to finish. He'd have it done in around an hour, but that was time he'd need to dedicate to it.

A devilish smile found it's way to the buxom blonde's lips. "Yes, actually, considering I went ahead and did that yesterday." She announced smugly, taking a deep satisfaction from the gobsmacked expression this put on Lelouch's face.

"You... you can't be serious." He mumbled, fixing a serious gaze on the girl's expression. "Milly, I swear to God if you are messing with me I'm going to get you back for this." He growled. Lelouch could get that kind of busywork done in an hour, but it would be something he did actually have to put effort into doing to achieve that time. For Milly, alone, it would have taken at least two or three hours because there was no way she would finish it in a single sitting.

It was around that point that he realized Milly could very well have taken three hours of her day yesterday, as there was no council meeting. As a matter of fact, he hadn't actually heard from her at all.

Her grin dropped. "I'm dead serious. You have no idea how tediou- oh wait." She gained a sheepish look as she realized just who she had been ready to say that to. "No, actually, you'd be the only one to know that wouldn't you?" Milly chuckled at the dull look this got her. "But yeah no, you're playing this damn game." She was not taking no for an answer at this point. "I did not sit around doing paperwork for several hours just to have you weasel your way out of this somehow. So sit down, shut up, and spend some time enjoying yourself instead of working." She punctuated that announcement by slamming a hand onto the table.

"Fine." Lelouch relented with a wry smile. "If you went to the trouble of actually doing your job for once I should at least make it worth your effort." It had to be emphasized; this was the first time in a very, very long time he had actually seen Milly put effort into the things that were, for all intents and purposes, her responsibility as the council president.

And it was done in order to leave him without a convenient excuse to skip out on one of her plans. That really put it into perspective just how Milly worked.

"Ooph!" Lelouch wheezed out as a heavy book landed in his lap suddenly, having been tossed expertly by the blonde she-demon herself. "Woman, what the hell was that for!?" He groused, directing an annoyed glare her way.

Milly's response came with her tongue being stuck out at him. "You're going to read the rules and explain how we play, smarty-pants."

"... you didn't read the rulebook?" Rivalz mumbled in surprise. "How long ago did you find this game again?"

The blonde blushed slightly at the scrutiny this drew. "H-hey! I had to rush to get everything set up so this could even happen, don't judge me!" Hmph! As if they had any idea how frantically she'd been dashing about trying to sort everything out, or how much effort she'd put in to making sure the paperwork had all been completed without any errors, making certain it was up to Lelouch's rather lofty standards so that he wouldn't have something else to hold over her head later. Even if she'd found the game a week ago and these plans were well on their way to becoming reality by the day after, they couldn't blame her for not finding the time to read the book.

Lelouch chuckled lightly, flipping the book open. "Despite the weight of this thing, it's not that long of a read it seems." Most of the weight of the book came from various pages regarding races and classes, the amount of chapters regarding gameplay didn't even make up a fourth of the book. So that was fine, since you could just flip through the race and class sections until something caught your eye. They were separated from the important gameplay and inventory chapters quite clearly.

"How much time do you think it'll take, big brother?" Rolo asked, leaning over the older boy's chair to glance at the book as his older brother quickly took in the information on the pages. Judging by how fast he'd turned the first page, Rolo could assume it wasn't going to take too long.

Noting Rolo's obvious attempt to get a reaction from Nina, which had resulted in a stunned blink from the girl, Lelouch replied. "Give me around ten minutes. Perhaps fifteen if I need to double check anything."

Nodding happily, Rolo stepped away. "Then I'll leave you to that, big brother." He said cheerfully, stepping towards the rest of the council with a smile. Pulling something from his pocket nearly caused Suzaku to have a heart attack, but seeing the rather innocent deck of cards the teen quickly calmed down. "Would anyone like to play Go Fish until big brother is done?" The boy asked with a positively angelic smile.

Lelouch had to restrain himself from showing how amused he was by the far too innocent looking killer. 'Rolo, that was beautiful.' He noted to himself, turning another page, hiding his wide smile behind the book. 'But at the same time, you're being a bit too aggressive with your attempts to get under his skin. Doubtful he'll really notice,' Suzaku was never the sharpest tool in the shed, not to say he was particularly stupid but he was fairly dense, 'but it is still worth keeping in mind. I'll have to make sure he's more careful in the future.' Antagonizing Suzaku in subtle ways had become something of a hobby for Rolo once he'd really grasped how much Lelouch disliked the Japanese Knight.

The fact that Lelouch himself hadn't discouraged this behavior too harshly was probably why Rolo enjoyed it so much.

---

About fifteen minutes later, Lelouch closed the book. The noise from this was just loud enough to draw everyone's attention. During the time it had taken for him to read the book, the group had been through a single game. Surprisingly enough, Gino had managed to convince Anya, who had previously been uninterested, to play the game.

Lelouch was unsure as to whether or not that was a good thing. Regardless, he made his announcement. "Right. I'm done. So, really, this whole game is quite simple." Of all the games he knew from this particular genre, this one was easily the simplest. It was clearly meant for a more casual experience. "First and foremost, you choose a race from the book. Once you've chosen your race, you move on to select a class. There are no restrictions as to what race can be what class, however keep in mind some are more suited to certain classes than others." He shrugged. "Once everyone has done that, we'll move on to then next step. So, volunteers?"

"Oh, oh, I wanna I wanna!" Rivalz exclaimed eagerly, dropping his hand on the table and accepting the book from the vice president. "Thanks, bud. I'll be done in a jiffy." After saying that, he blinked as he realized just how many pages there were. "... Uh. Well I mean I pretty much know what I wanna be classwise, so it'll be faster than otherwise..." Good grief, how many races were in this game? Man.

"I did spot one I think you would like, Rivalz." Lelouch noted idly, holding his hand out for the book again.

Rivalz shrugged, before handing the item back to the other teen. "What makes you say that?" He asked curiously. Rather than a legitimate answer, Lelouch just smirked and turned to a specific page before handing the leatherbound tome back to him. "Oh. Yeah, I can see why." Rivalz said as he looked over the page.

Satyrs, a humanoid race with hooves rather than feet. From their hooves up to around knee level, they had a layer of fur. Variation did exist, some were more heavily furred while others were slightly less. They had tails, usually around three feet long though again it differed from individual to individual. Horns of various shapes and sizes sprouted from their heads, and their ears were longer, ending in points that typically had just a bit of fur at the tip.

The racial overview made it fairly obvious why Lelouch thought this particular race suited him. "Most Satyr are easygoing and jovial, with a good sense of humor and the capacity to take a joke. Lighthearted pranks are commonplace within their communities, and any disputes one has with another can typically be settled by a drinking contest... which will, more often than not, turn into a party regardless of who won the argument."

Yeah, Lelouch picked a pretty good one. This was kind of interesting. Quickly skimming through the various bits on their more favored classes, Rivalz smirked when he spotted what he'd been looking for. "Satyrs, in addition to their innate proficiency communing with the natural world and spirits, make excellent Warriors. Satyr leg muscles are notably stronger than many other races, and their land speed is surprisingly high naturally. One could compare fighting a powerful Satyr Warrior to battling an entire stampede. While more form fitting armor may need to be custom make in order to provide full range of movement and coverage, many settlements have wares catered towards Satyr as the demand for such things grew."

That sounded neat. One of the things he'd been sort of concerned about as a heavy armor class was speed, but the bonuses of this race offset that pretty heavily with no major drawback. Of course, there was no major bonus towards tanking like the Half-Orc race he'd glanced at, but that shouldn't be too important. Tanks were tanks, and he would gladly trade some bulk for speed.

"Right. Yeah, I got what I wanted." A piece of paper was pushed into his hand by Lelouch. "Oh. Write my choices down here?"

Lelouch nodded, taking the book back. "Yes, for now we just have races and classes chosen, but we'll do this one or two at a time while everyone gets familiar with things." He wasn't going to just shove the whole creation process down their throats at once, because that would be too much information for a new player to face at once. Race and class would be first, the rest would follow after. "Next up?"

Rolo, having gathered the cards up, slipped them back into his pocket as he made his way over to Lelouch. "I'll go next, big brother."

Lelouch passed the book over to the younger boy with a small smile. "Any idea what you're looking for? I could offer some advice."

"I think I have a good idea what I want." Rolo replied cheerfully. "Ah! Here it is, Rogue." He smiled widely as he showed the page depicting the Rogue class to his older brother.

With a quirked eyebrow, Lelouch replied. "You know you need a race too, right?" His little brother was far too good at acting like a ditz.

The young boy gave his response easily. "I think I'll just be a human. They're usually all-arounders for these games, right?" Rolo asked.

Shrugging at that, Lelouch took the book back and passed the character sheet to Rolo. "Yes, they are. One of their passive traits is a boost to every stat." A small boost, added on after one rolled for their stats, but it scaled with level so that did become rather useful. It was the only real standout trait they had, however. "So you're a Human Rogue, then." Of course Rolo would choose to be an assassin of some sort. Because really, it was too obvious. It was also probably making Suzaku uncomfortable, so that was a plus.

"Yep. Thanks big brother." Rolo replied, accepting the sheet gratefully as he began to jot down his choices. "Who wants to go next?" He asked, looking up from his paper after he'd finished.

"I-I'll go." Nina surprised most of them by volunteering next, though none were more surprised than Lelouch as the girl made her way up to him. "M-May I?" She asked, extending a hand for the book.

Giving the girl a smile, Lelouch passed the book to her. "I didn't get the chance to say so earlier, but I'm glad to see you again Nina." And on much better terms than their previous meeting, thankfully. Otherwise she would have probably tried to shank him with that pen.

Flushing slightly, the bespectacled girl offered him a small smile but said nothing more, looking over the book. If she had any suspicions regarding him, they were well hidden at this point. More likely than not she would find a chance to confront him over the next few days, and that was where the difficult part would begin.

It was quite likely, Lelouch realized with an internal grimace, he would need to use his Geass on her in order to keep the situation under control.

"Hm... this l-looks interesting..." Nina mumbled quietly, looking over the page she had just turned to. On this page it detailed Beastfolk, a race of humans who bond from birth with animal spirits that roam their homeland. At birth the spirit joined the human, influencing their body as they grew, giving animalistic features to them and enhancing their senses. And at death, the spirit separated from them and returned to the Field of Ancients, the great expanse these spirits called home.

They were somewhat like humans in that they were well suited for nearly any class, though the variations in their individual traits was quite large. Based upon what animal spirit one had, they could find themselves less effective at certain roles another would excel at.

Reading on further, she nodded to herself lightly. "Yes, I think I like this one." They were interesting, more than some of the other races she'd come across. "Now, a class..." A small sigh slipped from her lips at that. She really had no idea what to choose here. These sort of games were never really her forte.

"Need some help deciding?" Lelouch asked, leaning forward to read the book over her shoulder. "I've skimmed through most of the book at this point, so I may be able to give some advice." He'd sort of taken a liking to this game. It was fairly entertaining just making a character.

Nina let out a small squeak, having been caught off guard by Lelouch's statement. "A-ah, yes... that would be nice." She conceded the book to him, allowing him to look over the page she had been reviewing.

Glancing at the race she'd chosen, Lelouch nodded. "Well, there are a few different classes you could go for. First of all, which animal did you choose?" There were several different choices, each with their own pros and cons all being listed at length. Beastfolk took up more pages than any other race in this book, because there were far more choices than anyone could ever need.

"S-snake." Nina replied quietly, flushing slightly at the quirked eyebrow. "I-I always liked them... but I never really liked the thought of f-feeding them l-live food, s-so I never owned one." She thought they could be quite cute, honestly, but the live feeding was just too much for her.

Shrugging at that, Lelouch pointed towards one of the many recommended classes. "Well, snake-folk have an aptitude for poison and a boost to their dexterity stat, which makes them well suited as rogues or archers."

"... archer, hm?" Nina mumbled to herself, as the purple eyed teen quickly flipped pages towards the page titled "Hunter", his proximity to her not going unnoticed by the other members of the council as they watched the two of them. "Oh, I see. That's interesting." She noted, quickly skimming the various class traits.

Hunters seemed to have a rather powerful combination of stealth and long range attacks, as well as having access to a fair amount of mid ranged skirmishing abilities. Close range seemed to be rather nonexistent for them, however. Any skill that had much use up close was typically something meant to get the Hunter further away from whatever it was used on. Traps seemed fun, as well.

The bespectacled girl nodded to herself, turning to face Lelouch with a small smile... only to squeak as she finally realized just how close the two of them had been for the past few minutes, scurrying away with a blush on her cheeks. "W-who's next?" She held the book out, burying her face in her hood as it occurred to her that the others had been staring.

Letting out a small snicker, Gino pranced up next and happily took the book from her hands. "I'll go next." He announced cheerfully, quickly skimming the book. "Oh, I like this one." He announced almost immediately, holding the book open towards Lelouch, pointing excitedly at the race detailed on the pages.

"Fallen?" The dark haired teen mumbled, mulling over the choice in his head. It didn't really seem fitting to Gino's personality, but it wasn't like he knew the blonde very well. "That's an interesting choice from you, Gino." He admitted easily.

The Fallen were essentially a race comprised of humans who had fallen to the dark manipulations of a demon lord, with only their strongest warrior keeping her mind free from his control. That warrior had eventually gone on to become the demon lord's mistress... and then killed him in his sleep, because he had been too confident in his control over them. This left the Fallen free of the great demon's control, and they were able to meld themselves back into regular society without much issue. Of course, they were not universally trusted, but more often than not racial bias didn't affect them too heavily.

"Heh." Gino snickered lightly, moving towards his class of choice. Flipping rapidly through the pages, he came across a picture that drew his attention fairly quickly. "Ooooh!" His face lit up in a bright grin as he saw the picture of a man wielding a twin-headed polearm, one that looked almost exactly like his Knightmare's weapon of choice. "Monk. I'm a Fallen Monk." Gino announced with a sense of finality. "Anya, you go next." The knight offered the book in the pinkette's direction, which resulted in a dull blink as the girl noticed she was being spoken to.

Tilting her head, seemingly trying to remember what was going on, the girl nodded to herself after a moment of thought. "Ah. Right." She stated dully, moving to take the book from Gino. Once it was in her hands, the girl blinked again, this time as she looked at the book.

For some reason, she could tell something was strange about this book. But, Anya being Anya, she didn't care. As such, rather than informing anyone, the girl just flipped the book open and began scanning through the races mechanically. Each page had around five seconds or less dedicated to it before the girl simply flipped to another, leaving many of them wondering if she would actually find something she liked.

This went on for around five minutes straight before the girl stopped on a single page, looking over it intently. Due to the way she was holding the book, no one else could see what held her interest. After a few seconds, she nodded slightly. "I want this one." The girl mumbled to herself, before turning further on into the book without explaining what she had chosen in the slightest.

Another several minutes passed in silence, as no one felt comfortable talking while Anya was reading, as though it may disrupt her concentration and end up making her take longer.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by a soft little noise. "Oh." Anya's voice cut the silence like a knife. "Engineers... they make robots." Of course they weren't actually called robots, and their construction was a mixture of arcana and machinery which earned the class the official name of "Arcane Engineer", which was typically abbreviated to Engineer.

None of that mattered, though, because they were robots.

"So... an Engineer." Lelouch cut in, lest the girl change her decision. "And what race did you pick?" Rather than saying anything, the girl simply flipped back to the page and showed it to the vice president, who's expression took on an incredulous tilt. "... you can't be serious." He mumbled, leveling a deadpan look towards the girl.

It was returned with the same dull look that was always on her face. "I am." She replied.

"Well." Lelouch muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. "I expected someone to do something like this. Why not you?" He chuckled. "You've managed to choose a race that does absolutely nothing for your chosen class."

Unwilling to be left out of the loop, Milly cut in. "And just what did she pick, Lelouch?"

"Fae. She chose to be a fairy." The teen replied dully, shaking his head in exasperation. "A Fae Engineer. That class clashes so horribly thematically with the race that I didn't expect anyone to get the idea in their head mix them, but lo and behold." He shrugged. In truth, there was no innate disadvantage Fae had as Engineers... it's just that the race provided literally no benefit to that specific class. Some general traits were useful, but those would have been useful no matter what class she chose.

Fae were nature spirits that had taken on bodies of flesh and blood as opposed to simply living as what essentially amounted to being a ghost. Spirits of that sort were born in a forest and roamed the woods until something caught their interest, which could sometimes take decades or centuries. These spirits lived in a sort of abstract, dream-like state and as such did not do much in the way of communication. Fae were born from those spirits when something made them wish to roam further, to do more, to see something new, to follow whatever had caught their interest. In those cases, the spirit would form into a Fae.

It just was not a race that screamed "Engineer", to be frank.

Regardless of the criticism her choices drew, Anya didn't so much as flinch under the scrutiny. She chose what she wanted to do. With that done, she walked over and pressed the book into Shirley's hands, which drew a fairly uncomfortable smile from the redhead as the complete void of emotion in Anya's eyes was made apparent to her again.

"Thanks." She said to the girl, struggling to keep her smile genuine. Anya always made her so... antsy. Shirley had a lot of trouble looking her in the eye, because it gave her chills. Much like everyone else had, she began flipping through the book curiously. "Oh wow, the pictures are really detailed." She said, smiling as she inspected the images of each race. They weren't just detailed, they were rather pretty as well. And there were so many of them! Sure, some were rather small to fit on the somewhat limited page space, but they weren't hard to make out. Just from the pictures alone it was easy to get a feel for each and every one of the races available, and they still had text to explain finer points about them.

Eventually she stumbled upon the page detailing Wood Elves, and the girl's eyes lit up. They were so pretty. Not just the people, but the pictures detailing their culture showed buildings, weapons and armor, statues, wooden carvings... and all of it was just so beautiful. Buildings that incorporated trees, hanging gardens, all kinds of interesting things. They had a very pleasing aesthetic.

"I think I want to be a Wood Elf." Shirley announced happily. "Oh, uh." She had no idea whatsoever what class she should choose. Elves could be just about anything and excel at it.

"Well." Rivalz chimed in, looking at the others. "We literally have no healer." He noted, glancing around at the assembled group with a smirk.

Lelouch nodded. "You're right. We have yourself as a Warrior, Gino as a Monk, and Rolo as a Rogue." For obvious reasons, none of them would be the healer. Monks did have some healing skills, but Gino was clearly going to focus more on a fighter build than a healer. "Nina is a Hunter, and Anya is an Engineer; both of them are ranged classes with no healing ability."

"Healing is important, right?" Shirley asked, having no real idea about game mechanics. "I mean I guess the healer is what keeps everyone alive, right?"

Rivalz nodded fervently. "Yeah, it's one of the most important roles in these games; if we don't have a healer, we're gonna have a tough time accomplishing much." It was hard to fight when you were dead, after all. Healers had a pretty big hand in keeping you from being dead.

The orangette smiled. "Then I'll be a healer. Er... which class does that?" The smile turned sheepish as she turned to Lelouch for assistance, holding the book out to him demurely.

A warm smile slipped onto the teen's face as he accepted the book. "I think I have one you'll enjoy." He chuckled at the excited look that crossed her face. "A Priest, a long ranged caster. They focus primarily on healing and buffing allies. Buffs are basically bonuses to your stats." He explained, seeing the confusion beginning to settle as he brought up buffing. Shirley had pretty much no idea how these things worked.

"So... you think this will be good?" She asked, leaning forward to look over the class page. "Oh, that's pretty!" The girl exclaimed, looking at the design of one of the Priest staves.

"Yeah, this will be a good fit. We needed a healer and you chose a good race for it." Wood Elves had a large boost to healing, both themselves and allies, when in a forest. It wasn't as though one would always be in a forest, of course, but it wasn't exactly an uncommon landscape. On top of that, they had bonuses to intelligence which would benefit the healing output of Shirley's spells.

Nodding, the bubbly girl accepted a card from Lelouch and began to jot down her choice. "Wood Elf Priest for me, then." She announced, quite pleased with herself, as she held the book up. "Who's next?" It was down to Suzaku and Milly now.

Seeing that, the blonde girl turned to the Japanese Knight and held a hand out. "Rock paper scissors shoot!" Milly announced, quickly going through the motions of the game and landing on scissors.

Confused, Suzaku held up one hand. "Wait, what?" Without thinking much on it his hand had fallen into the traditional "paper" position, which was quickly cut by Milly's scissors.

"I win!" The girl shouted, prancing away from the befuddled Knight who was staring down at his hand incredulously. "Pass me the book, Shirley!"

Doing so with a sigh, the redhead commented on her actions a second before. "You could have just said you wanted to go next. Suzaku has been patiently waiting for everyone." It's not like he would have minded waiting for just one more person.

Milly's response was to, predictably, ignore the other girl's concerns. "So!" She exclaimed, flipping pages with an ease that suggested familiarity. "I'm gonna be a..." Pages continued to flip rapidly, as though the girl was waiting for a specific page and had yet to see it flip by. "Here it is, I'm going to be a High Elf Spellsword."

Lelouch quirked an eyebrow. "And didn't you say you hadn't had a chance to read the book?" He asked skeptically. That was a rather fast selection for someone who had never even opened the damn book before.

"I glanced at it." The blonde admitted shamelessly, prancing towards Suzaku and practically shoving the book into his arms. "C'mon, your turn Suzaku! We're almost through the first step!" This was getting exciting!

The brunette flushed somewhat at the rather forceful way the girl had passed the book to him, but opened the book nonetheless. "So... hm." The boy mumbled as he leafed through the pages. "Uhm, give me a few minutes." Suzaku asked sheepishly, looking over the pages himself. "I've got a vague idea what I want, I guess..."

Shrugging, Lelouch spoke up. "If you need help, just ask." It'd be out of character if he didn't at least offer to assist the boy, though he was happy Suzaku seemed just as adverse to asking for that aid in the first place.

"Oh, no, no I'll be fine. Thanks, though." Suzaku replied with a small smile, and the others could only assume it was his own stubborn streak keeping him from accepting help on this.

Of course, the two boys knew one another better. Their friendship now was nothing more than a lie built to trap C.C., with Lelouch acting as bait.

After a few minutes of looking through the book, Suzaku finally seemed to find something that caught his eye. "Ah, that looks good." He noted to himself, glancing further down the page, likely at the recommended classes for his race. After a moment, he quickly flipped through several pages until he reached another one. "Yeah, this is good." He nodded, closing the book. "I'll be an Ascended Paladin."

Lelouch had to hold in a derisive snort, but he managed to cover it with feigned amusement. "A Paladin, hm? Of course our resident White Knight went for that." He joked.

Suzaku allowed himself a small grin. "Heh, yeah... It's just, they looked like they would have a good mix of fighting power and healing." In a way, he wanted to try and lighten the load that had been placed on Shirley as the group's only healer. One person taking care of a whole group without help seemed kind of straining, but at the same time he did still want to be a fighting class.

Paladins were pretty much up in the middle of the fray, so he would almost always be close enough to heal up an ally melee fighter that needed it. It would help a bit, and not to mention a Paladin was a good tank as well, so they could limit damage done to their allies. And, also, he just liked the aesthetic of a champion of light and good.

Nodding lightly, Lelouch conceded the point. "You're right, that is actually fairly helpful." It was a fair enough reason, but he was fairly certain the teen had done it just for the sake of being a good and virtuous knight for "good". "But what makes you think I won't pick a healer?" He continued jokingly.

A knowing glance was cast his way. "I know you well enough to know that you're going to be some kind of magic class, Lelouch." Suzaku couldn't see Lelouch just sitting back and keeping his allies alive with heals, he'd be more focused on blowing them to bits with some kind of spell.

"Got me there." Lelouch admitted shamelessly. "I've already got my class and race in mind, and you're not wrong." To be fair, it wasn't as though anyone in the room really expected him to pick a healing class.

"Oh?" Rivalz cut into the conversation with a grin. "What's your pick then bud? I'm dyin' to know." Lelouch was something of an oddball sometimes, so he was excited to know what choices he'd made for this. It was probably a magic class of some sort... but that really didn't narrow it down much at all. There were so many classes in this game that it was ridiculous.

Milly raised her hand up with a grin. "I bet I know." She chuckled at the quirked eyebrow this drew from the dark haired teen. "You're going to be a Dark Elf Necromancer, aren't you?" The girl stuck her tongue out at the blinks that drew from the council, and the sigh from Lelouch especially amused her.

"... you were close, yes." He admitted, shocking the girl slightly that she wasn't entirely correct. "I did choose Necromancer, however I went with Snow Elf instead."

"Snow Elf?" The girl questioned oddly. "Why in the world would you pick that race?" She asked curiously, thrown for a loop by the decision. Snow Elves were quite frail in general constitution, with the exception of a very high tolerance to cold which was made obvious by their various living places in the high peaks, where temperatures rarely went above freezing. They had a significant weakness to fire and flame spells that was traded for a powerful resistance to ice based magic and cold in general, and their bodies were also capable of handling the thinner air of high altitudes without much strain. As each race had quite a few passive abilities, it wasn't impossible that she had missed one in her rather brief scan of the book's races that would catch Lelouch's fancy... but she really had expected him to go for Dark Elves, because he was just like that.

The dark haired teen smiled at her, briefly closing his eyes losing himself in memory. A content sigh slipped from his lips as he opened them again, taking on the look of someone who had just relived a fond moment in their lives. "I like snow." Lelouch answered cheerfully.

Everyone but Anya and Rolo found themselves practically twitching in annoyance at the rather noncommittal answer. They had clearly expected more of a story to explain the rather random choice.

"So we've all chosen our race and class, correct?" Lelouch, who's reasoning would go unexplained to the council for quite some time, carried on without any issue. Seeing the collective affirmative from everyone, the boy grinned widely. "Then next we roll for stats."

"Stats?" Shirley asked. "You used the term before, and I think I sort of get it, but what exactly do they do?" She blushed under the scrutiny her question drew. "I-I-I've never played one of these before, don't look at me like that..." The girl pouted.

Lelouch chuckled. "It's fine, I was just about to go over it. There are four stats in this game; Health, Dexterity, Strength, and Intelligence." He held up one finger for each of the stats, before moving on to explain them one by one. "Health is, essentially, the amount of damage your character can take before being knocked out or killed. If your health reaches zero, you are knocked unconscious and need to be revived by an ally. If you are attacked at zero health and brought down to a negative that is equal to your maximum health, your character is killed and you're out of the game." Seeing the general consensus of understanding, Lelouch lowered one finger before ticking off the next with his other hand. "Secondly, we have Dexterity. Dexterity is going to be primarily for the more fragile classes such as Hunter and Rogue, and Engineer to some degree. It will raise your ranged and melee attack damage, increase your movement speed and critical strike chance, and increase your ability to dodge and prevent damage in the first place."

"So, do we just pick one stat and focus on it? Cuz' I assume Strength and Intelligence give damage too, so you could really just put all your points into HP and main stat." Gino chimed in curiously, wondering what benefit there was to even having the other stats as a class that didn't make use of them. He blinked, before elaborating on a term for Shirley's benefit. "HP means Hit Points, and it's basically another name for Health." He directed a small smile to the girl, who returned it gratefully.

Nodding at the question, Lelouch explained. "Well, it's actually fairly simple. You'll probably find yourself split between three stats as opposed to two, more often than not. HP, your primary stat, and a secondary stat that you choose based on personal preference." Saying this, he came up with a brief example. "For instance, Milly's class is Spellsword. They use magic and a blade in conjunction with one another. As such, she has the option to choose a Strength and Intelligence build that focuses solely on heavy hitting power, probably using a large, two-handed blade. More strength means more damage on a melee strike, and adding extra damage on the physical end augments the magical power more. Alternatively," he held up his hands as if to show a scale, weighing the Strength build against his other hand, "a Dexterity and Intelligence build is available that will provide much higher survive-ability due to your exceptional ability to avoid damage, as well as giving you a more stealth-capable character. And, of course..."

He shrugged, dropping the scales. "You could always just put everything into Intelligence and rely on your base physical attributes being higher than that of other casters, which will allow you to have significantly more magic damage at the expense of being only slightly more capable in a close range fight than a typical caster." Seeing understanding among the crowd, he finished his example. "So you will almost always level your main attribute, but pouring all of your points into it is not necessary."

Rival raised his hand, as though they were in class and he was asking the teacher to clarify. "But Milly is a hybrid type class anyway." He noted, explaining the concept briefly. "Basically, her class is built to mix physical and magical; it's really what the whole thing is about." Everyone seemed to get the concept, a few scattered nods arriving. "But wouldn't that make the example kind of biased towards hybrid classes?"

"You've got a valid point." Lelouch conceded. "I'll try another example, then, using a physical class. Warrior, specifically." This got a nod from Rivalz, as the example would be particularly valuable to him since he was the one asking the question. "While it will be a bit more generalized due to the class itself, there are still options. For instance, the rather obvious being a Dexterity and Strength build that provides an excellent mix of damage output and defenses." This being the build Rivalz was most likely to use, Lelouch explained it a bit further. "Essentially, dividing points between HP, Dexterity, and Strength provides you a good damage output as both Dexterity and Strength provide physical damage improvement, with Dexterity also boosting your ability to avoid damage in general. As a Warrior, you are already good at shrugging off damage, but it only gets better if enemies have a hard time hitting you at all."

"So Intelligence isn't worth it as a warrior at all, then, is it?" Rivalz asked. "I'm not trying to nitpick, just curious." He quickly defended, not wanting people to think he was trying to be an ass about it.

Lelouch shrugged. "It's a fair question. Intelligence isn't as useful in a traditional Warrior build, however there are reasons to put points into it. Basically it increases your proficiency with magical weaponry, such as enchanted swords and whatnot. If you wanted to try a Magic Warrior build then you would put points into Intelligence and Strength, but I'll admit that this is a niche decision one would need to pretty much build around from the ground up." It could work, and it would probably work quite well once it got off the ground, but it did require one to know exactly what they were getting into beforehand as magical weaponry was rare enough that you wouldn't often find it.

So building an entire class build around it seemed fairly silly, but again it could work and it wasn't impossible to do. "So the three major options do exist, with two mixed builds and a pair of focused builds, because Warriors could just as easily choose stats for Dexterity as opposed to Strength and see success." So if one discounted the rather convoluted Magic Warrior build, there were still three viable options to choose from for a standard Warrior.

Rivalz settled back down. "Alright, makes sense to me. Continue." He ceded the floor back to Lelouch with a stage bow.

Rolling his eyes, the teen continued his original explanation. "Right. So we covered Dexterity and Health, let's move to Intelligence next." He tapped his temple. "Basically this is going to determine your aptitude with anything magical. The most easily outline benefits are a direct increase to the effectiveness of any spell, be it a healing or damaging spell, as well as an increased mana pool to use abilities from. Every class has Mana, but not all of them use it for their abilities."

"Why would they have it, then?" Shirley asked curiously. What good was it if they wouldn't use it?

A small smirk came to Lelouch's lips. "I figured someone would ask that." He chuckled at the petulant look that crossed the girl's face. "While some classes have no abilities that use their mana, Enchanted and Magical weaponry do use mana in order to function. So, say you have a sword that is enchanted so it will catch fire on command; that takes your mana, because something needs to fuel that enchantment." After letting that sink in, he made one amendment to the statement. "There are, however, some exceptions. Some weapons are created with enchantments that take mana from the world around them, or they steal it from enemies they strike, or they have large amounts of mana stored in them and just need to be charged every so often, and so on."

"So... if Rivalz has a sword that catches on fire, his mana gets used to do it. So that's why the Magic Warrior thing you mentioned can work? Since they can use their enchanted weapons longer?" The girl asked, seemingly grasping the concept.

Lelouch nodded. "That and the fact that Intelligence just makes Enchanted weapons stronger in general, yes." Seeing her nod, he continued with the explanation. "Each stat does several different things, but that is somewhat different based on your class. But every stat does have it's uses on your class, even if you're not putting points into it." Holding up a single finger, he moved on to the final stat. "So, last of all is Strength. It's fairly simple; increased damage, carrying weight, and so on. Strength gives a higher bonus to damage than Dexterity, a much higher bonus actually. However, it provides no real defensive increase; strong flesh is still flesh, and it still bleeds the same as any other. However, high Strength means heavier armor is more viable since you can move freely. So Strength doesn't directly influence your resistance to damage, but it allows you to use better armor that will do that."

"... y'know, this system seems kinda simple." Gino pointed out, somewhat surprised. "I mean yeah you're using a lot of big words and detailed explanations, but it kind of comes down to some simple key stuff." He was under the impression that these games tended to have very complex rules. Maybe that would come later, but for now this seemed pretty easy to grasp. Even those who were new to the concept entirely could figure it out without much fuss. "Int for magic and magic related things, dex for speed, dodging, and damage, and strength for smashing stuff, carrying stuff, and putting on heavy armor without being a turtle. HP for not dying. Put points wherever you want, you get something out of everything. That the gist of it?" Gino summarized.

Shrugging, the teen who had gone through a rather lengthy explanation process nodded. "Yes, essentially." It was a rather simple system, but that was a benefit in this case as they had several people who had no idea what this kind of game even was before today. "That's a rather simplified and half-assed explanation of it, but you're not wrong."

"Cool! So lets roll, then." The blond giggled at his little pun. "Heh. Roll." Gino blinked as he caught a die that had been tossed at his head. The die itself was a six-sider that had fancy, bold print for all of the numbers as opposed to dots. It was a solid black with gold ink, and each face had a silvery white outline to it that gathered at the corners to form a sort of point. "Oh. Neat looking dice. So we just roll the one?"

Lelouch nodded. "Roll it once, write down your score. Roll it again, write down the score. Repeat this until you have four scores, and then double each score. After that, pass on the die and allocate your points. Oh, and for those of us with horrible luck, don't worry too much. If your score is two or under you take a five in that score." Meaning that one could not possibly roll beneath a five in any given stat, which was slightly less than half of the maximum. "If you roll two fives, you're allowed to add two to one of them to bring it up to seven. Roll three fives, and you can add three to one and two to another so you get an eight and a seven. And if you manage to somehow have the worst luck in the world and roll all fives," He snickered at the thought of that, "you can add four to one, three to another, and two to the last one, leaving you with a score of nine, eight, seven, and five."

Nine, eight, seven, five. That was not a good stat pool, but it was workable. Your highest priority would be a nine, which was a fairly average score. Your secondary focus is an eight, with the seven and five pooling into the tertiary choice and the least used stat respectively. Considering the maximum score was twelve across the board, it was a fair enough score to at least play the game.

"Ah. Well here's to hoping I don't need to do that." Gino muttered, rolling his die once. A wide grin broke out across his lips as he rolled exactly what he'd been hoping for. "Neat. Got a six on my first go." So that was one maxed starting stat. Nice way to start out the game. Another roll pulled up a five, which was also great. He had a twelve and a ten ready to go from the start. The third roll wasn't as spectacular, as he managed to get a three. So twelve, six, and ten. "Well, last roll. Let's see what we get." Letting the final roll go, he nodded contentedly as it was another ten. A very solid score across the board, providing him with a maxed out starting stat, two that were just below it, and a third that was not as bad as it could have been.

Writing the scores down, Gino began pondering to himself on how to allocate them. As the blonde thought on his decisions, the die was passed to Rivalz.

---

Roughly ten minutes later, everyone but Lelouch had made their rolls and those who had yet to decided on where to allocate their points were relying on the dark haired teen for advice.

Currently, Shirley was looking over her scorecard with an intent expression as Lelouch stood to her side and inspected her stat rolls. "Well, the obvious choice is to put the ten into your Intelligence stat for better healing. One Eight is probably going to be to your health, so that leaves you with another eight and a six to put somewhere. It's basically down to whether you want to go for Strength or Dexterity as a secondary." Dexterity for a Priest was going to primarily increase their ability to get in and out of battle with ease, while Strength was going to mainly be for the sake of getting to heavy armor so you could wade deeper into the fight without as much issue. Honestly, he saw Shirley as more along the lines of the first as picturing the bubbly girl wearing heavy armor was such a departure from reality that it made him snicker.

"Why are you laughing? This is a hard choice Lulu." The girl pouted, looking over the remaining numbers as if they held the secrets of life.

"... honestly? I thought of you wearing a giant suit of armor and carrying a staff into battle." Lelouch admitted shamelessly, still highly amused by the idea. "Just for that I want to recommend you stat for Dexterity so I don't end up laughing to death in the middle of the game."

The girl gave him a dry look, before shaking her head with a sigh. "I don't really think I want heavy armor either. So I'll put the other eight into Dexterity and the six into Strength."

"That works well enough." Lelouch chuckled. "So, then. Anyone else need any advice?" He was actually having a pretty good time with this despite his earlier misgivings. It was fun to set the whole thing up. He wasn't even really sure if the game was going to be more entertaining than creating a character, but if it was even half as amusing then he would call it a worthwhile waste of his time.

Someone tugged lightly on his sleeve, drawing Lelouch's attention to the expressionless visage of Anya Alstreim. "... does this work?" She asked, showing the card she had written her scores on and the stats they were allocated to.

Engineers were kind of tricky to stat, as they benefited rather heavily from any stat. Intelligence increased their construct's abilities and damage, as they were after all magic infused constructs, while also boosting the mana pool they used to activate their special weaponry which worked similarly to Enchanted items. On the other hand, the Engineer was proficient with firearms and Dexterity supported that quite well, a Dexterity built Engineer could function very well as a primary ranged DPS class by using their raw damage from the firearm along with their other gadgets and tricks to avoid damage. And finally, Engineers got a benefit from Strength as that increased their carrying weight for one, which allowed them to hold more of their weapons, as well as benefiting them once they began to construct their power armors.

Power armors being, essentially, a construct that functioned as a heavy suit of armor. An Engineer had to have a rather high Strength stat in order to use the larger, more powerful power armor. An Intelligence or Dexterity focused build would have access only to the much more limited light armors. The larger armors tended to be incredibly strong, but they required a lot of Strength to move around.

Inspecting the paper, Lelouch was unsurprised to see Anya had gone for a heavy Strength build. Extremely heavy, as that was where she had allocated her twelve. Dexterity was the lowest of her stats, but an eight wasn't awful at all. And the pair of tens were in Health and Intelligence. So she was clearly going to be focusing on the power armor and other constructs. "Yes, that works." He said, explaining a bit further. "An Engineer's power armor scales off of Strength, which allows them to actually move the thing, and Intelligence that improves the functions of the armor. So what you have is fine."

The girl nodded lackadaisically, before wandering back over to her little character sheet and writing the choices down.

Lelouch sighed. Good grief was that girl peculiar. "Anyone else?"

"Should I put my other twelve into Strength or Health, big brother?" Rolo asked, trying to allocate his last stats. He'd rolled a pair of twelves and had immediately put one into Dexterity, with his eight being put into Intelligence. The remaining two stats were his second twelve and a ten, and he was trying to decide whether it was worth losing two strength to get two health or vice-versa.

Thinking on it briefly, Lelouch replied. "Based on your class, I would say health. A Rogue is probably going to run into more situations where they would want a bit more health than those that require more strength." With a Dexterity stat of twelve, his damage output would already be significant. But so would his evasiveness, and Lelouch's philosophy on that matter was quite simple; just because you would probably dodge a hit doesn't mean they will never hit you, and the one strike that gets through should never be the one that kills you. With high Health and Dexterity, it put Rolo at a very good spot.

"Okay!" Rolo replied happily, quickly jotting the choices down on his own sheet.

Glancing around the assorted council members, Lelouch spotted Nina staring over the scores she'd rolled intently. Curious, he walked over closer to the girl and looked over her shoulder, managing to do so without alerting her. Her rolls were quite solid, the dark haired teen noted. She'd managed three tens and an eight, so her choice should have been fairly easy as all she really needed to do was pick which stat she didn't want as much. Hunters were sort of in the same boat as Warriors, as they were fairly geared towards one or two stat builds and other ones were somewhat niche. A Dexterity and Intelligence hunter would be a good build if the Hunter wanted to use magical weapons, and a Strength and Dexterity build was also viable if one wanted to make use of the few close ranged skills a Hunter had for combat purposes.

Their close ranged skills were somewhat limited, usually focused mainly on disorienting and escaping from the close range in the first place, but some of them were quite powerful with enough Strength. Enough so to serve as finishers, or to severely punish anyone who got too close. As a matter of fact, Nina's race would be even better for that as they had access to a beast form, which would have it's own unique skills that were probably close range focused. So the idea of a Strength and Dexterity build would probably work out rather well for her, while a pure Dexterity build would also have it's merits.

Blinking as he realized the girl had began writing, he noticed that she seemed to have a similar idea to him as she had placed the tens in Health, Dexterity, and Strength while leaving Intelligence at eight.

"Huh, so I was right." Lelouch mumbled lightly, startling the bespectacled girl. "Oh, sorry Nina. I was curious as to what choices you made so I came over, but I didn't really announce my arrival." He wasn't really all that sorry. It was kind of fun to sneak up on Nina because of the reactions she had.

Heart racing, the green haired girl frowned towards him. "... you s-should consider d-doing that next time." She murmured, gathering her wits. She was far too easily startled, but it wasn't something she could really help. It was just how she was.

Laughing lightly, the dark haired teen agreed. "Alright, alright, I'll try to keep from scaring you. Even if it is fun." Immensely fun. More so than it really should have been.

"You e-enjoy it t-too, then?" Nina asked with a pout. "As if I d-didn't get enough of M-Milly trying to startle me." She didn't really need to try too hard, honestly. Nina would admit that she was a bit too jumpy, but again it just wasn't something she could really do much about.

"Only slightly. It's more for nostalgia than anything." He admitted easily. "It's been a year since I've gotten to do it, after all." Lelouch teased with a light-hearted smile.

Nina sighed, a small flush coming to her cheeks. "F-fine. J-just please don't keep d-doing it on purpose." She was going to have enough trouble trying to keep Milly from groping her for the next few days, let alone having to deal with Lelouch getting his jollies by scaring her senseless every five minutes.

"Hey, Lelooooooouch!" Speaking of the devil, there was Milly now. "I've gotta ask you something." The girl pranced up to the dark haired teen and cheerfully presented her stat distribution to him, throwing one arm over his shoulder and holding the card in front of them. "What'cha think?" She asked, allowing him to inspect the card.

Lelouch nodded slightly, reading it over. "So you're going for a quicker build, then?" He asked, noting the rather high Dexterity stat. Milly had chosen to put the twelve she had rolled into Intelligence, but her ten was in Dexterity. Strength was a five, with her Health being eight.

"Yep!" She replied, slicing and stabbing with an imaginary sword as she pushed off of him. "Stabby stabby, shooty shooty." She began making "pew pew" noises as she swung the imaginary blade about, slicing and shooting at various invisible figures.

"... right. You do that." She was so damn weird sometimes, Lelouch noted with a roll of his eyes. "So we've all decided our stats, right?" He asked, looking over the group. A collective chorus of "yes" or words and actions that could be taken as such was the reply. "Good, then I'm going to roll mine now." That said, the tossed the die in the air and caught it with a grin. "Let's see how I do, shall we?"

The rest of the council, sans the ever distracted figure of Anya, watched raptly as the teen made his first roll. Nonchalantly rolling his first die, the teen's grin widened at his first roll. Twelve points for him. A second roll also turned up a six, making him the third person to roll two maxed stats, with Rivalz and Rolo both having rolled a pair of sixes. Without the smirk leaving his face for even a moment, the teen collected the die once more and made another roll.

"I'm calling bullshit." Gino chimed in petulantly, having only rolled a single maxed stat compared to Lelouch's current score of three.

Shrugging at the blonde, Lelouch grabbed the die and rolled it again... landing on yet another six. "Huh. That's odd. My luck isn't usually this good." He noted.

"Oh come on!" The blonde Knight shouted in frustration, waving his hands in front of himself frantically. "Are we all seeing this shit? I'm so not playing poker with this guy." Gino was fairly certain he was cheating, but the sleight of hand skills required to do that didn't seem like something a teenager in a prestigous academy would possess. So more likely than not, he just had the Devil's own luck.

Rather than blaming luck, Lelouch managed to figure out where the high score was coming from rather easily. 'Rolo seems to be having fun.' He thought to himself dryly. He was perhaps the only one in the room who had the perceptive ability to notice that the clock had skipped forward three times, meaning that only one of those twelves was earned fairly. It had been the same as when Rolo had rolled his own die, though the boy had been much more concervative when cheating for his own sake.

But, well, Lelouch wasn't going to say anything to him about it. It wasn't as though he could bring it up in the first place since no one was supposed to know what Rolo could do except for Suzaku, and informing Suzaku would do nothing but blow his cover. And, moreover, he just wasn't really one to play fair in the first place if the option for a better alternative presented itself, as Rolo had done quite handily.

"Wow, Lulu. I guess it doesn't really matter where you put your stats, does it?" Shirley teased good naturedly with a smile, sidling up to the dark haired teen and elbowing him lightly. "Maybe all that gambling you and Rivalz do did come in handy if your luck is this good." The blue haired treasurer had also rolled rather well.

Chuckling lightheartedly, the boy replied. "See, some good came of it. Perhaps now you'll stop harassing us when we go out?" He smirked at the deadpan look this received. "Didn't think so. It was worth asking, though."

"Man, this is silly." Rivalz snickered, looking over towards the final die that had been left. "What are the chances he swapped out the die with a loaded one?" Knowing Lelouch, that wasn't so farfetched. While Gino didn't expect sleight of hand tricks from Lelouch, Rivalz was a bit more well informed on the fact that his buddy was a particularly ruthless gambler who oftentimes bent or broke rules for his own benefit.

"Not too high considering this is a fairly recognizable die." Milly noted, poking the rather fancy cube, having calmed down from her earlier outburst. "See, look at how much detail went into the numbering. It's actually really weird." Why would anyone spend so much time and effort prettying up a die that's only use was for stats? That just seemed ridiculous.

The treasurer shrugged. "Yeah, fair enough." Come to think of it, this game was actually extremely high spec. The pictures in the book and even the design of the book itself were positively top-notch, and the die was extremely fancy for a fairly insignificant part of the game. Where in the world did she find this? "Hey, Prez, where exactly did ya' find this thing anyway?" He went ahead and asked the question.

Milly straightened up from her inspection of the die, smirking. "I found it in a closet in my Grandfather's study." She really did not know why he had such a thing lying around, but he'd been happy to let her take it for a bit to play around. As a matter of fact, he'd actually said it was a memento from an old friend that was no longer with them before he'd sighed and lost himself in reminiscence, recommending she make certain that Lelouch take some time off from his rather hectic work ethic and make time to enjoy himself.

That kind of made her uncomfortable, as she got the unsaid message that this game had once belonged to Lady Marianne. For whatever reason, that woman had something like this and it had found it's way into her Grandfather's hands. Why in the world a renowned soldier and wife of the Emperor would have such a random item, she would never know. But it was currently more important that they put it to good use and enjoy themselves, so she left her explanation rather simple.

"Really, now?" Lelouch mumbled oddly, quirking a brow at that. "Why in the world would the Headmaster have something like this?" Reuben was a party animal, not a board game enthusiast or collector. This probably found it's way to his hands at random.

This question drew a shrug from the granddaughter of the man in question. "Heck if I know." She lied, able to do so well enough to fool Lelouch for the simple fact that she was still baffled as to why the person her Grandfather had received it from would ever own such a thing. "But it's ours to mess with for the moment, so carry on with the character creation."

Everyone blinked, realizing that there was more to do. The obvious exceptions to this were Lelouch, as he was already aware of this, Anya who was self explanatory, and Milly who had brought the topic forth.

"... How much of this book did you read, again?" The dark haired teen groused not for the first time, running a hand through his hair. "Next up is starting inventory; you roll for starting gold and then select inventory based on your money. Make note, your carrying weight is important here. The character sheet explains the formula for it." Because he was not going to explain each and every little thing to them when there was a piece of paper with the explanation written on it. "The gold die is a D-twenty, so keep it in mind." He was also not going to supervise this process too heavily, because everyone was going to buy a lot of items. And if he was right, there were going to be numerous pointless purchases of random things that in no way provided any real benefit. That was just how these things went, he thought to himself as he fished the twenty sided die out of the dice-box located within the suitcase. Not particularly wanting to move much, he just tossed the die towards the group with a smirk and watched as Suzaku scrambled to catch it out of the air, barely succeeding.

The funniest part of that was that Gino had been poised to catch the die without even moving, but he'd been outside of Suzaku's field of view at the time as the Japanese teen had been petting Arthur since the tomcat had calmed down from his earlier outburst. "Good catch, Suzaku." His praise would seem genuine to anyone who looked, but that was just because Lelouch was a man capable of dawning many masks.

Noticing that Gino had been standing where the die was headed, Suzaku flushed sheepishly at the spectacle he had made. "I guess I'll roll first?" He joked, chuckling uncomfortably.

"Go ahead." Gino chimed in, tossing an arm over the smaller boy's shoulder. "You're bound to get a better score than last time." Suzaku's rolls had been the worst of the group, coming quite close to rolling nothing but the bare minimum of stats. If he hadn't managed a six on his final die roll, he would have managed the exact opposite of Lelouch's stat total.

"You say that, Gino, but I just don't know..." Suzaku laughed a bit, internally cringing at how awful his rolls had been. Luck had never been his strong suit, and most of his had probably been used up when he'd survived in Shinjuku. But regardless, he rolled the die and smiled at the result. Eighteen out of twenty, that was a solid roll indeed.

Passing the die to Gino, Suzaku looked towards Lelouch. "So now what?" He asked, wondering where to go from there. The book probably contained items for them to choose.

"Well, first up you choose two perks." Lelouch handed the brunette the book, which he had turned to the perk page. "These will probably influence your choice in equipment so pick them first, then grab your chosen items."

"Perks?" Suzaku asked, looking them over. "Oh, so we just pick two of these?"

"Fallen and Ascended actually get to choose three." Lelouch amended. "It's one of their racial traits." They were altered via the power of Demons and Angels respectively, which gave a few unique perks... but the main draw to either of those races was the third perk slot, usually. Well, outside of thematic preference. "I would honestly recommend you use at least one of them to curb your stat rolls. There's one that will give you a rather large HP benefit if you're wearing heavy armor, and since you're a Strength and Intelligence character that could do you some good." He pointed to the perk in question, Body of Iron.

Nodding, the Knight took the other teen's advice. "Alright, I'll grab that one for sure then." Maybe he should also offset his low dexterity with that Spry Fortress perk that increased movement speed in heavy armor? But then, there were still other options... oh, this one gave benefits to dual wielding. Ambidextrous, remove the penalty for using two one handed weapons. That sounded nice.

As Suzaku continued to choose his perks, Lelouch couldn't help but sigh as he looked over the assembled group. It was nice to see everyone having fun with something as inconsequential as a board game, but there were still other things that needed to be addressed in the near future. The incident in the Chinese Federation hadn't been fun, and he still had much to do. Kallen was in enemy hands, but for the moment there was nothing to do about it. He would save her, but right now it simply wasn't possible. On top of that, he needed to neutralize the Geass Order. An organization of that strength simply could not be allowed to continue existing against him.

"Oi, Lelouch. It's your turn to roll for starting money." Milly interrupted the dark haired teen's thoughts, whacking him over the head with a rolled up piece of paper. "Snap out of your daydreams."

Taking the die from her, Lelouch sent a dull look towards the blonde. "You didn't have to hit me. Furthermore, is that paper something important? Because it had better not be." Milly had a habit of using any paper she found for whatever purpose she came up with; origami, doodling, and so on. This meant that Lelouch had often found documents that were of great importance in less than stellar condition. Ignoring the blonde's assurances that the paper was nothing special, as he could clearly see the look on her face that told him otherwise, Lelouch sighed and rolled the die.

"Again!?" Gino griped, throwing his hands up in the air exasperatedly. "How do you keep doing this!?" A friggin' twenty? This guy was ridiculous. Gino was never going to challenge him to any sort of luck based game in his life, because it was becoming quite apparent that Lelouch was Lady Luck's favorite. At this point it was becoming questionable whether or not Lelouch could roll anything less than the maximum.

Lelouch shrugged in response. "No clue." And again, the clock had skipped. Rolo seemed to be having fun. At this point he was honestly almost considering to tell him to stop, as it was bad for his health... but of course there wasn't any real way to subtly inform the boy either. "Who all has chosen their perks?" He asked.

"Suzaku, me, Rivalz, Rolo, and Anya." Milly listed off names, counting them on her fingers. "So we still have Gino, Shirley, Nina, and you."

That was actually quite surprising, Lelouch admitted to himself. He'd been expecting them to take longer to choose their perks. Nina was currently looking over the book intently, and he expected her to take a bit of time. He wouldn't really take much time to choose, but that was because he had a fair idea what he wanted in the first place from leafing through the pages earlier. "Well, I'll choose last again then. I don't really need to look too hard since I've read a bit of the book."

"... you chose Shadowcasting as one, I'm sure." Milly grinned at the quirked brow this received. "Please. You and I both know the ability to cast spells silently and without any visual tells is going to be your go-to as a caster." She just knew how he was wired well enough to figure that much.

Lelouch sighed deeply. "I'm not sure how I feel about this." He muttered. "Have you also taken a guess as to my second choice?" The teen asked curiously.

Milly shrugged. "Nope. You've got way too many options for me to narrow it down. I just knew Shadowcasting was too good for you to pass up." He liked being sneaky, and what sneakier ability was there for a mage than to cast their spells without any sort of tell whatsoever? Silent casting and removal of visual tells made surprise attacks much easier, and that was just how Lelouch liked to do things.

By this point, Nina had selected her perks and passed the book to Gino, who was blazing through the book looking for something interesting.

They were getting quite close. Very soon they would select their inventories, and after that they would perform one last role call and then roll the hundred sided die to determine who started where. Lelouch knew he had better things to be doing with his time, but honestly he didn't care. At this point he was having too much fun to be concerned over the other things he could have been doing. Right now, he would just relax for a while and be Lelouch Lamperouge instead of Zero.

It wasn't like taking a few hours to play a board game would have some long reaching consequences.

---

"Alright." Lelouch announced, standing in front of the game board which had been unfolded upon the table. "Time for final role call. Any decisions you made can't be changed after this, but if you want to go back and look over your choices again now is the time." Seeing no one had any intent to change their character, he continued. "Right. Suzaku is an Ascended Paladin?" A nod from the brunette. "Gino is a Fallen Monk?" An enthusiastic bout of nodding came from the blonde, and so Lelouch moved on. "Rolo is a Human Rogue?"

"Yes, big brother." The cherubic assassin replied cheerfully.

"Milly is a High Elf Spellsword?" He turned his gaze onto the girl in question.

"Uh huh!" Came the gleeful reply from the blonde.

"Nina is a Beastfolk Hunter?"

"Y-yes." Nina replied.

"Rivalz, Satyr Warrior?"

"You bet, bud." Rivalz response came with the accompaniment of him flexing nonexistent muscles in a joking manner.

Eyes rolling, Lelouch moved on with the role call. "Anya is a Fae Engineer?" That sounded so damn weird just to say. She was a fairy... with a shotgun, and robots.

"Yes." A monotone answer came from the girl.

"Shirley is a Wood Elf Priest?" Lelouch asked, looking over towards the bubbly girl in question.

"Mhm." She hummed, nodding happily.

"And so that leaves me, a Snow Elf Necromancer." He sighed contentedly. Finally, after the lengthy process of creating characters they would be able to actually play the game. Just one more roll and the real fun could begin. Holding said die in his hands, the teen grinned. "This die determines which of the many zones we begin in." Much like their options for races and classes, there were a lot of areas to begin your game in. On top of that, there were also areas you couldn't start in and would have to reach once the game began. The game board was incredibly large and very detailed, with beautifully drawn scenery to denote which area was which. Whoever designed this game had put their heart and soul into it, for sure. While the systems at play were not terribly complicated, the sheer effort that went into building the world was staggering.

"I'll roll first." Lelouch announced, tossing the die up and down in his hand for a moment. After a few seconds, he rolled the hundred sided die and chuckled at the result. He'd rolled a one. Rolling either a one or a hundred would result in free choice of where to start, but it wasn't all that amazing since he was the first one to choose. Without much thought, he placed himself down in the swampy area in the center of the map. It was the most likely place for others to roll, as there were several different numbers that made one start in the swamp. May as well start somewhere others would probably end up.

Passing the die to Rolo, he was surprised to see the boy land in the Field of the Ancients. It wasn't too far away from his own character, relatively speaking, but the decision was somewhat odd from his little brother. Time didn't seem to have skipped at all, so maybe he'd just let luck run it's course this time?

"Oh, hey! Landed with a buddy!" Gino called triumphantly as he landed in the swamp with Lelouch, setting his own figure down beside the other teen's. "Great luck there, huh Lelouch?"

Rolling his eyes, the dark haired teen replied. "Glad to see you landed next to me instead of the Paladin. I'm sure that meeting would have been awkward." He joked.

"Oh yeah. How is that gonna work anyway? Aren't you like the epitome of what a Paladin would hate as a Necromancer?" Rivalz chimed in as he made his own roll, landing with Rolo in the Field of the Ancients.

"Alignments aren't a thing in this game." Lelouch shrugged. "So Suzaku as a Paladin could, theoretically, have no issue working with me. Or at least be able to hide it well. It's a roleplaying game after all." He found it quite funny how well their game characters fit in with the current situation between the two of them.

"I'm not too keen on the idea of raising the dead to do your bidding." The Japanese teen deadpanned. "Seriously. If this wasn't a game I'd have a serious problem with that." It was disrespecting the dead to the highest degree to use their corpses as mindless puppets. That was just messed up. But for the sake of an entertaining game, he could disregard it. A lot of horrible things happened in games. "But it's not like I'm gonna attack you or anything." Not in the game, at least. He may end up attacking Lelouch later on down the line if his memories did return, but for now he could just pretend they were still friends.

It was... easier than it should have been. Suzaku didn't like how easy it was for him to act like they were still friends, because he was a horrible liar. If he could fool people into believing he and Lelouch weren't bitter enemies, then how much of that was him wishing they could be friends again? Lelouch had, at one point, been his best friend. But now, he'd done things that were just unforgivable. He'd killed Euphy, no, he'd done more than that. He'd used her, that kind and beautiful angel that had done everything she could to help anyone who needed it... and he'd taken her name and dragged it through the mud, by using his disgusting power to bend her mind until she tried to commit genocide with a smile.

Suzaku would never forgive him for that. He couldn't.

A tap on his shoulder drew the teen's attention from his thoughts. "It's your turn." Anya announced dully, handing the teen the die. She had rolled and landed in the swamplands with Gino and Lelouch.

It was around that point that Suzaku realized he'd been staring off into space for a good few minutes by then. "Ah, right. Sorry. Was lost in thought." He rolled the die, blanching at where he'd ended up. All alone in the Cursedwoods, a stretch of land that was positively filled with dark energy and the living dead. It was fairly close to the mountain stronghold of the Ascended's main city, Lighthold. The angel-touched humans built their home just outside of the tainted ground of the Cursedwoods, but close enough that they could cull the undead when the need rose. But instead of being near the city, he was stuck in the middle of what amounted to a barren wasteland with no civilizations whatsoever in it. Quite possibly the worst starting point one could get. Sighing, the teen set his figure down.

"Man. I've got some terrible luck at these games." He lamented, shaking his head at the absurdity. He had sub-par stats as it was, though he'd managed to offset most of the issue with perks, and now he'd been dropped into what was basically a warzone. At least he'd rolled well on money, and didn't have to worry much for supplies.

"So, what's the main objective here?" Milly asked eagerly. "I didn't get to that part."

Lelouch held up a deck of cards. "Essentially, there is some sort of end goal in each game that we work towards. However, that is not revealed until so many Quests are completed." He tapped the quest deck for emphasis. "I draw a card from this deck, which will be the endgame goal, and place it face down on the board." Pointing towards the slot on the board for said card, he continued. "Quests are received rather randomly. At the end of each Phase, which is after every player has made their move, a twenty sided die is rolled. If it's above fifteen, we draw a quest card and then everyone's focus is to complete it. Once the quest is complete, the player who completed the quest rolls a hundred sided die and if the number is above eighty then we reveal the endgame card and focus on completing it." A lot of this game was just going to be spend going around the map to find interesting things to aid you in your quest.

"Makes sense, I guess. We just need to keep Lelouch or Suzaku from doing the rolls, so we can actually have a random chance." Rivalz joked, referring to Lelouch's impossibly high rolls and Suzaku's less than stellar luck with the same rolls.

Chuckling, the dark haired teen drew one of the cards from the deck and placed it down on the board. "I suppose that's a fair concern to..." He trailed off in surprise as the board began to glow brightly. "What the hell?"

A sound like glass breaking erupted through the room, forcing everyone to cover their ears. Forcing himself to continued looking at the light, Lelouch saw something that nearly made his heart stop. In the center of the board, a familiar symbol had appeared, shining with frightening intensity. "Geass?" He murmured, almost in a trance. Just what was going on here?

He hadn't been quiet enough, as even though the glass-shattering sound had continued constantly Suzaku had caught what he said. "You remember!" The boy snarled furiously, preparing to leap over the table and subdue the criminal known as Zero.

And then there was pain. Everyone but Gino and Nina fell to their knees, eyes widening as their bodies were suddenly wracked by pain. Around each of them, a reddish outline of energy appeared briefly before the sensation dissipated, leaving each of the teens in a sort of shock.

The exception was Anya, who's outline darkened further and further until it reached an inky black, the girl's discomfort becoming more and more obvious as she came close to tears... before falling forward like a puppet who'd had it's strings cut.

A red orb extended from the game board, passing through each of the startled teens without any interruption. Through the walls of the clubhouse. Through the people outside. Through the gates of the school. Through the city and it's people.

In a matter of moments, the orb had extended until it covered the entire world in an unearthly reddish hue.

At the origin point of the energy, the game board had disappeared, replaced by a pillar of energy with a crest glowing brightly within. The crest was in the shape of a stylized bird in flight, wings moving in slow motion as though to carry it through the sky.

And each of the teens who had been settling down to play a simple game for the afternoon were gone, as though they had never been there to begin with.

---

AN: And chapter one of the rewritten Gods of Geiss arrives, leaving off on a horrible cliffhanger that I'm going to remedy as soon as motivation allows. Apologies for the super long chapter that really didn't have any action at all. Will attempt to remedy this as soon as possible with random encounters of the fight-y kind.

And I'm FINALLY going to be working with legitimate humanoids in a fight scene for a bit. Writing six legged murder bugs and multi-armed menaces and whatnot is friggin' annoying sometimes.