OK5 - Fail To Prepare

After Japan, the calendar moved to the Principality of Monaco, nestled between the long mountain ranges and Mediterranean coasts of the French Riviera. Which, for one man, meant only one thing.

"Bouillabaisse! Rivalz! Viens ici et vois ce!"

Lelouch Lamperouge was home, or near as damn it, and always made sure to indulge himself during his yearly weekend in the Côte d'Azur where he grew up, whether in culture, recreation, or food. He remembered introducing Suzaku to the wonders of Daube when they visited together for the GP2 event back in the day. To him, there was something truly glorious in introducing the uninitiated to the glories of the worlds finest cuisine.

As it was Rivalz's first season in the sport, Lelouch took it upon himself to educate his colleague on gastronomical affairs, as, if he was being honest, his racing was beyond helping.

Not that, in his heart of hearts, Lelouch minded; If Rivalz did badly, it made him look more attractive to other teams in comparison, and Rivalz was the image of a happy amateur, just pleased to be a part of the circus for even as brief a time as he was, and willing to be played.

Tucking into the fish stew, Lelouch again waved over to Rivalz to get over to the food stall to try it out, however his beleaguered colleagues reply was drowned by the noise of a six cylinder turbocharged engine rushing past across the street, its hoarse bellow demanding all aural attention.

The Grand Prix in Monte Carlo was a complete anachronism, Lelouch reflected, as Rivalz came rushing over through the crowded pavement. The race was held entirely on cordoned off streets, with narrow roadways completing the tight, tricky horror show that felt like ice skating in a bathtub for how close you always were to a collision with the barrier at any given moment. So, of course, Suzaku was out there at the moment, pounding as many laps into that Rosenberg as he could get away with. It was entirely typical of him to spend every available moment practising to perfect his lines and his pace.

At the end of the day however, fish stew was too good to pass up, and so Lelouch, and eventually Rivalz began to eat in earnest, with the mother of all soundtracks whizzing about in the background.

While some might have described this style as lazy, Lelouch preferred to consider it wary; the cash strapped Ashford team couldn't afford a rebuild out of the overall budget, and so it would come out of his wages if he crashed the car, something that was prone to happen at the tightest track in circulation. In any event, he knew the track extremely well, having been born nearby and having began his career in carting at this track, before the excrement hit the ventilator, as it were.

Lelouch tuned in his ear to Suzaku's sound, resonating through the streets of the Principality, to prove his point. Squeals and grinding, high pitched scraping indicated a heavy braking zone, likely turn one at Sainte Devote. This was confirmed by Suzaku's rapid acceleration as he audibly flew up the gears towards Massanet, a fleety high speed section that unbalanced the car and flew it into Casino Square. Subconsciously, Lelouch felt his right hand curl up, and forcefully jerk down as he imagined himself, alongside Suzaku, cresting through Mirebeau before it returned to an upright position, the steering wheel opening up as they ran down towards the Loews hairpin. Here, Suzaku's noise dampened, as he tried to fully lock his steering to wrap the car around the tight corner at walking pace. Lelouch waited for Suzaku to pick up the throttle out of the hairpin, noting it was a little earlier than he would have done by instinct. Perhaps he could try that approach once he got out in the car.

The car continued quickly through Portier, with an ambiguous, yet audible lift off the throttle that intrigued Lelouch. Was he slow through that corner? Interesting.

The volume really picked up as the Rosenberg wound itself up through the tunnel section. Lelouch, now fully invested in the faraway lap, mimicked the gear changes with his fingers up and up through fifth, sixth, seventh, noting that Suzaku didn't quite reach eighth before slamming onto the brakes and going back down to second, bang bang bang bang bang, each gearchange indicated with an airy whoosh and mechanical clang in between the whirring of the forced induction motor. Satisfied, Lelouch rolled his imaginary car through the first part of the Nouvelle chicane, before following Suzaku's noise through the high speed Tabac corner, not lifting, the Swimming Pool left-right, then down into Rascasse, and away back onto the front straight.

And, right on cue, the Doppler Effect beckoned the arrival of Suzaku, who rushed past Lelouch's cafe view of the pit straight before continuing for another lap. Satisfied, Lelouch zoned back in to realise Rivalz was not talking.

Rivalz, as well as backing Lelouch in most everything, had a second role on the team. He was Lelouch's canary. He would talk and talk until the cows had gone home, retired, and died of some manner of age related illness, unless something was very much amiss.

And he wasn't talking.

Lelouch gingerly looked up from his fantasy lap and fish stew to face Mildred Ashford, Team Principal and daughter of lead engineer Reuben, who was very much unamused at the teams two drivers. It wasn't a grimace she greeted them with, Lelouch noted, as it was not her way to be so blunt; she buried displeasure within layers of sarcasm and irony, smiling sadistically as she undoubtedly complemented just how to discipline her drivers.

Hoping to preempt what could quickly turn into another Nürburgring-in-drag incident if mismanaged, Rivalz, with impressive initiative, found his voice again.

"Oh hello Milly! Lelouch was just showing me around. He thought we should grab a bite to eat before Reuben sets up the car for FP1. Can't race on an empty stomach, eh?"

Mouth full, Lelouch could only nod at the incredulous Milly, whose crossed arms did not budge. Indeed, the only response their efforts received was a raised eyebrow and a harshened smirk, as if to give a pitying acknowledgment of Rivalz's efforts, and a similarly pseudo-sympathetic reply.

"A spirited defence, but the car has been ready for fifteen minutes. Moreover, if you're interested in some culture, I can arrange-"

"What was that about the car being ready?" Lelouch swallowed, suddenly attentive. Milly was as close to him as Suzaku, albeit in different way, and yet she always managed to put him on edge with her threats. Such was the nature of their relationship, but it was appreciated more at some times than others.

"Fantastic. I'll have Shirley escort you down to pit lane."

Rivalz, who seemed to be enjoying his introduction to Gallic gastronomy, nodded, picking up his bowl and moving to follow Millie's direction, however Lelouch, irked, stood into her ear and commented "I'm glad you're happy, but keep your pranks to the off-season."

"Just like your misadventures with Kozūki?" Milly retorted jovially, knowing just how to wind him up, inferring that his advising of and collision with the new driver implied a deeper connection.

Lelouch, displeased, responded harshly "Kozūki is a just a means to an end."

It was perhaps reductionist, but nonetheless true. The Ashford cars performance was less than optimal, and so, if he was to score good points, he had to sow chaos among the cars further up the field, and thread the needle when they faltered. Kallen, as a new driver, was the ideal flashpoint to shake up the front of the grid, and allow Lelouch to sneak his way into podium finishes. However, Milly pushed the point, focusing on his cold rhetoric.

"A means to an end? And I'm not? All of us here at Ashford? Let's be honest, you've always had that sort of view of things."

Lelouch backed off slightly, and reverted to frowning across the cafe table rather than over it. Unsure how to proceed, he simply asked "I'm afraid I don't know exactly what you mean."

Milly smirked, and continued "Nunnally is the goal, everything else is tertiary to you, even me, or Suzaku. You're fixated on a drive with another team, on points, and so on, simply for that."

"Bold assertion. You should have gone into tabloid journalism." Lelouch deflected, not finding much substance to be offended by. To show anger was to admit victory to Milly.

"Your agent hasn't renewed your contract."

"C.C is the laziest human alive, you know that as well as I do."

"A contract for next season is on my desk, ready to sign, whenever you want."

This was more of a problem, as Millies assertion had to be addressed on the spot, and couldn't be put off. After some squirming, he explained vaguely "I don't want to be tied down to a contract until I have all my stuff together. Once everything falls into place, I'll sign."

"In other words, once all the other teams decline to negotiate with you. Don't worry, I'm well aware you dislike contracts. It's why our relationship is only professional, right? You didn't want to be tied down."

Lelouch was now thoroughly annoyed, replying "No, our relationship is professional because when it wasn't, you seemed to take it upon yourself to try ruin my career for your own personal amusement. That is tantamount to messing with Nunnally, and I think I've made my opinions on that matter very clear."

He grabbed his coat, hung over the chair, as if to emphasise the finality of his statement, before marching off after Rivalz.

Suzaku, thoroughly exhausted by the morning's practise session, stepped out from his survival cell as it was swarmed by mechanics who crawled over the carbon tub, attending to the vehicles every need, protecting the tyres with blankets and extracting all manner of fluids and data from areas of the car which, to the untrained eye, would seem inert.

Of course, Suzaku made sure to be as educated on the mechanical underpinnings of his car, or at least as much as Lloyd Asplund was able to vocalise without going on a tangent or making a great fuss over protecting the secrecy of his designs from the woman. The woman was never named, and it took Suzaku two months to be told who Lloyd was constantly going on about, and only then in the privacy of a smoke filled German pub. Nevertheless, he took in and appreciated any snippets he could as to the cars operation, as it ensured that he would always have a healthy understanding of how to improve the car over a practice session.

"We're having a lot of understeer on medium speed corners." he explained to Lloyd, who had gradually grown somewhat used to the concept of constructive criticism over the previous year and a half, insofar as it was an apparatus that made his car better than the woman's, even if it meant that he had to accept that his designs were anything other than divinely inspired. He continued "I think if we loosened the suspension, and compensated by stiffening the anti roll bars, we could carry more speed through Portier."

"Oh bother. You're ever so fussy, Suzaku. If you must, then I'll see to it. Hmmph." Lloyd noted, scribbling grumpily into his notepad. "Alright folks, the driver has spoken. Chop chop, let's get the Lancelot all set up to go for our boy wonder. Can't be outdone, now can we?"

The Rosenberg engineer wandered off, likely searching for some low level employee to scorn as he continued to shout in his high pitched, yet distrait speech that wandered back and forth whimsically across the atelier with little rhyme or reason. Such was the world according to Lloyd Asplund, who had renounced a lucrative family business in investment banking to spend fifteen years underneath engine assemblies and refused to dress like a human being even at press events. In spite of this, he had a knack for building exceptional cars that outperformed the teams modest budget, even if they proved somewhat lairy to control.

Grabbing his lap times and diagnostics, he quickly scanned his times and data, noting the laps he went below one minute thirty seconds and seeing what those laps had in common with regards to braking points and lines. Much like Lloyd, he found himself wandering as he pored over the information, guessing at potential gains on the exit of the swimming pool section and the final corner, stepping out into the sunlit pitlane proper. Taking a moment as the mediterranean conditions settled onto him, he watched the garages down the way wake up, just beginning the Friday work of honing their cars for the circuits extraordinarily specific demands. One or two cars pulled out of pitlane, with Suzaku noticing Lelouch's Ashford-RT grumbling its way out onto the track.

For all the stick the outdated car was given, with both Rivalz and Lelouch having to adopt strategies ripped from casinos to compensate for the lacklustre engine, this was arguably the one track where that didn't apply, with short straights meaning that the cars chassis, designed by the godfather of the modern Grand Prix car Reuben Ashford, could impress, if the team came together and delivered a solid weekend.

A pretty significant if, given their patent disunity.

Suzaku, who was still waiting for his car to be adjusted, stepped over to the pit wall overlooking the track, and sipped away at a card cup of coffee. Their main sponsor, Schneizel El. Britannia, was away, and Cecile Croomy was nowhere in sight to pounce on him with offers of sandwiches of dubious origin, and so he could take a moment to relax, a task he was still working out the intricacies of.

Even in his youth, Suzaku had always maintained a strict discipline, particularly in the wake of his father, a prominent politician, spending a majority of the time anywhere but home, and growing up Suzaku realized he would only be able to enforce success onto himself, and ought to do all that was possible of him. This extended to his attitude towards others, however, as Lelouch showed, his shouldering nature didn't always rub off.

The teams psychiatrist, Anya, had had only one recommendation when he began his Grand Prix career with the team; a holiday, to relieve stress. Finding it one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life, he decided to try ease into it a little more gently, one polystyrene coffee at a time.

"Excuse me?"

Suzaku finished his sip and turned to see Kallen, dressed up in her purple-on-red overalls adorned with the plethora of sponsors that kept the circus that was Rebellion-Sakura with a competitive Guren, even if the Type 2 Seiten was down on performance relative to the Camelots Sutherland. She looked a little tired, clearly out of her native time zone. He nodded as he turned to face her, greeting her with a "Morning." in Japanese, before asking, continuing in their mother tongue, "Are you not setting up the car?"

"They want to fettle Tohdoh's car right now, limited staff and so on." Kallen shrugged. "They said come back in ten minutes."

Suzaku, though surprised that a championship winning team only had one setup crew, didn't comment, and suckled at the last dregs of his coffee before coolly asking "So what's the story?"

"Naoto just wanted to say thanks for the laptop. He's only got one hand, but he was getting bored out of his mind just sitting there."

Suzaku chuckled, and replied "There's only so many anime reruns he could gorge on. I'm glad he's enjoying himself. Has he been helping you out at all, with the team?"

"Of course." Kallen nodded,. "He went through the track with me on the computer, explained the car, setup, and so on. He's been a massive help."

"And Tohdoh?"

"Eh, he's kept himself to himself." Kallen replied nonchalantly. "It's not ideal, but it's hardly as if nobody expected that. He's always been reserved."

Suzaku was again concerned, however he didn't want to interfere in any intrateam affairs, instead diplomatically commenting "At least you'll get good practice this weekend, no rain likely until Tuesday week, unlike Japan. The more time on track, the better."

"So you really feel all the extra practice makes a difference?" Kallen asked, clearly interested by Suzaku's focus. He nodded in reply, saying "Every lap improves my consistency, my timings, and my knowledge, dialling it all into muscle memory. The longer you're out on track, the more familiar you become with how to manage it. It's like anything else; you've got to study."

Perhaps it was a little preachy, but Suzaku nonetheless felt that ultimately success came down to how much work you were willing to put into achieving it. Flamboyance, natural pace and so on was all well and good, but its ceiling was far below that of the cool, efficient smoothness that came with practise.

However, Kallen seemed to quirk her head at this analysis, prompting him to ask "What do you make of that?"

Taking a moment to formulate her argument, Kallen eventually murmured "But do you not… feel the car to any extent? The way the wheel shakes, resistance to turning, the shaking in your seat, as transmitting the road surface and tuning you into the circuit in and of itself?"

Suzaku took his turn to shrug, replying "I tend to dial all that out, I find it distracts from what's mathematically optimal. The racing line's the racing line no matter what the road 'feels' like."

"True." Kallen admitted. "But, just in terms of, say, traction zones, different parts of tarmac, the graining on the track, do you not feel these things to any extent, and think 'It's slippy here, I can… sense it from a change in road texture'? By instinct if nothing else?"

"I think anyone who puts a lot of stock in instinct is going about this the wrong way." Suzaku answered, a response which visibly sent a pert curiousity through Kallen. Evidently, she did not share his opinions, a fact she vocalized in the admittedly inconclusive reply "I guess we'll see soon, won't we?"

She looked like she was going to go on extolling the virtues of her doctrine, however she was interrupted by the wandering, airy voice of Chief Engineer Lloyd Asplund announcing in regal English "The car's all ready Suzaku, now if you could…"

His voice, trailing off, reached a croaking end as he looked across the pit lane, and saw who Suzaku was talking to. He stared, and eventually moved to point out of shock, before beginning to voice his protests.

"Suzaku! G...get away! That girl is an agent of the enemy! Back, quickly man, before you spill any secrets to the spy of that… harlot! What on Earth are you thinking, hurry, before she incapacitates you for the race!"

Suzaku, well used to Lloyd's paranoia, could only sigh and mouth an apology to Kallen before hopping back over the railing, taking care to not spill the last of his coffee, and returning to his car. Balaclava, chuck the coffee, HANS, helmet, and into the car, snug as ever. He watched the head surround fall into place above his shoulders, cocooning him within the carbon tub, one with the machine.

"We've fixed up the suspension at your behest. Also, don't frighten me like that ever again young man, we can't allow Chawla to get a glimpse of what we're doing."

Suzaku chuckled, shaking his head, before sliding out the clutch with his ring finger and pulling away. Thirty degrees right, lock in pit limiter. Five degrees right, five left, and throttle up to second. Muscle memory borne of practise, like a third language. Brake at the fifty metre board, eighty degrees right.

Suzaku and Kallen have a really good dynamic that I wish as more explored in canon. They will be our two rivals going forward, and we'll have to see who ahs the advantage going through this race weekend. However, they will both have to get their houses in order before anything else. For now, thank you for reading, and, if it's not too much trouble, please review. See ya!

~Eth0