OK Number 79 - Jouska

Lelouch sighed as he sat down at his desk, placing his left hand on the arch of the seat as he lowered himself into it. Once seated, the left hand busied again moving his walking stick down to the slot down by the leg of the table.

It was the thirty first of December, and almost everyone was gone. Lelouch was nearly alone, with staffers at home celebrating the new year. Nunnally was attending a party with her friends from secondary school, while Rolo was exploring Paris with his friends. The engineers and media specialists, Lloyd, Cecile, all of them were at home. The whole factory was nearly empty, but for Lelouch himself.

As he settled into the seat, he sighed. Kallen had won. Moreover, beyond merely Kallen winning, Lelouch had lost. Lloyd had finally been able to perfect his design, meaning Schwarzenritter had been able to end the season with the best car, but it had been for nothing.

Rolo had done everything right. He had done everything he could in Brazil, but Camelot had won the drivers championship with Kallen, and in conjunction with Gino, who had been in title contention himself, they had taken the constructors crown as well.

But this was almost a pittance. Lelouch doubted anyone, had they been asked the previous January, would have been of the belief that it were possible that the team would ever turn a wheel again, let alone be in contention for a title. Indeed it was a compliment to every single employee that they had not only survived, but thrived under the new management.

And yet, Lelouch was left feeling bitter, and hollow. As much as shifted expectations could be said to be an indicator of success, Lelouch was perhaps the master of appreciating the possible as against the ideal, and deep in his soul he knew that they could have won this championship.

There was no way, no conceivable scenario in which he could have won in 2018, and so his loss of that had not weighed on him very deeply- at least, in the six minutes before he got his face bashed in, at which point he had more significant concerns. Still, he had never been under such delusions. This year was different, if he had been more on the ball with strategy, if, if…

But of course this could only lead on to Lelouch's most fundamental mistake, one that he had regretted every day since he had visited the Schwarzenritter factory in Nagasaki.

If Lelouch had committed to Suzaku from the start, he could be a two time world champion, and Schwarzenritter could have been champions in their debut season. That it was entirely possible for the team to have gone from bankruptcy to championships, for the employees had been brought from the unemployment lines to laudatory awards, and Lelouch was the sole reason that had not been the case, ate at him like acid.

It had been an incredibly good year. But Lelouch's personal failings, his personal foibles, his own emotional shortcomings, his inability to separate his instinct to protect his family from his duty to the team, had stopped it from being a great one. He, not anyone else, he, had allowed perhaps the best driver of the modern era to slip through his grasp.

And, moreover, he had lost a friend. No matter what Suzaku said, too much of Lelouch's inner ugliness had been exposed to the unkind sun for their relationship to ever be repaired. Suzaku knew where he stood in Lelouch's priorities, and knew how much Lelouch was willing to disregard Suzaku's needs and boundaries to benefit people higher up on Lelouch's personal chain.

And Lelouch had nothing to say in his own defence. Suzaku had been entirely right to leave; Lelouch had absolutely let him down, personally, and let everyone down. They could have been champions, and the fact they were not was Lelouch's own doing.

He had a responsibility to this team to see it succeed, and he had been derelict. He had been hands off with the team, and focused his energy on punishing the reigning champion. This mistake would not be repeated.

On the domestic front, Lelouch had performed a minor reshuffle of staff, as well as given new directives going into 2020. The autonomy of the departments, their ability to make decisions without needing to clear it by a committee, had been one of the reasons they were able to adapt and improve so quickly, and was so not to be compromised. People like Lloyd, if the financial decisions were taken out of his hands, knew exactly what is needed to make a world-class race car and win races, but layers upon layers of executives would demand every small change trying to earn some level of credit for victory. To combat rule by committee, Lelouch had attempted to integrate himself into as much of the work as possible, so that a cohesive vision of the car could be maintained. He could do nothing about his shortcomings in talent, but he could readily make up for this in workload.

Lelouch would drag this team to a championship if he had to do it with his teeth. Having come so close to achieving it, a fire had been lit under the Frenchman in a way that hadn't in 2018.

He had saved the team. But now it was time to lead it, and if Lelouch was going to lead a team, it was going to be the best damn team in the sport. Money had been the death of their forebears, Rosenberg, and had long been an obstacle for drivers such as Lelouch or Kallen. It would not, if Lelouch could still draw a breath, become the death of Schwarzenritter.

Rebellion, Camelot, Geely would not beat them. The great industrial powers would not snuff them out. The garagistas, as they had disparagingly been labelled in the sixties and seventies, had been put on the backfoot as the emphasis was put more and more on a teams ability to spend their way out of problems, however their day had not passed. This team was Lelouch's responsibility now, to fight against the rising tide, and he would not let it down.

He had previously allowed his own emotions and insecurities impede performance. While Schwarzenritter was brought from bankruptcy to P3 in the constructors championship, and tied for the drivers championship, Lelouch knew they could have gotten better. He would not repeat his mistakes in 2020. He had seen the potential of this team, and Lelouch knew he could bring it to victory.

Especially now that he was out of the car, no longer having to make decisions while cocooned inside of a cockpit having to think as he drove without as much time or mental energy to take in the broader context, he could engage with how to improve the positioning of his cars through the pack with strategy. He had messed up the tyre strategy in Japan, but he had been otherwise on point when it came to working out what tyre to be on, even if it was to make sure that one of his drivers unfairly got a leg up over the other.

He had the ability. Now it was time to use it for something that wasn't promoting his brother.

God, Brazil had been frustrating. Rolo had won the race, had done everything right, but forces outside of Lelouch's control had seized the title away from him. If there was anything Lelouch could be described as fundamentally despising, it was this; a loss of control, a situation where there was nothing, no trick or manoeuvre Lelouch could do, to escape his situation. He had felt it after Kallen had beaten him, and he was living with his injuries.

The irony did not escape Lelouch that this was exactly the same complaint Suzaku had had. Lelouch silently nodded. Suzaku had been dead right to leave.

Christmas Dinner had been incredibly awkward that year, with neither Lelouch or Rolo speaking a word, and Nunnally's attempts to encourage conversation stiffly rebuffed. Neither were at all in the mood for small talk, as Lelouch quietly acknowledge Rolo's sharing of what seemed to be Lelouch's deep seated personality defect, perfectly diagnosed by Suzaku at Nagasaki.

Indeed, it was the same personality defect, the same Thompsonian flaw in the pineal gland that saw him intensely scribbling away at notes for sponsors, organising who he should put pressure on, who was worth pursuing, and who should be left to ponder for a while, to avoid flooding their inboxes, in the dead of office night, on New Years Eve. This was just after a fierce three hours downstairs, similarly alone, as he furiously examined the roster of pit staff and engineers, trying to use any method of empirical analysis he could, shave down the time raiding the car by rotating in the people with the highest peak jacking at the more critical pit stops, where overtaking was hard and stop times were key, like Monaco. Cut a hundredth of a second off the time spent removing a tyre, focus on engineers who grabbed the wheel lower, and integrate that into the practice in the meantime. Putting it back on, maybe a thousandth could be gained there if some of the pit engineers could be sniped from other teams.

Lelouch had come so desperately close, and would not be denied again. He would assemble the greatest coalition, with Lloyd, now with more time and less administrative stress, being able to design his best car yet. By the time February came, Lelouch would have whipped any slack out of the pit mechanics, and he would not stop until every square inch of the car had some sponsor or another showing its colours, to fund what had since Brazil become Lelouch's dream.

Lelouch did not often have dreams. Certainly, he had things he enjoyed, and would prefer to pursue, however those were generally self-interested visions of a comfortable future, that he now acknowledged sat at some odds with his true self, which could not be any more clearly demonstrated than with his reaction in the hospital, leaping out of his comfortable bed, paid for by damages arising from the assault suit, and straight back into the madness of the world of motorsports.

It was interesting to consider the separation of self-interested desire, as against dream. He certainly had imagined spinning his accomplishments into further and later schemes as "Monaco Grand Prix winner, Lelouch Lamperouge", or "2018 WDC runner up, Lelouch Lamperouge", but these fantasies, barely a degree separated from the conception of relaxing on a faraway beach with no responsibilities, were not quite the same as what might be called having "a dream." The latter, Lelouch acknowledged, might be described as being less about ones own comfort or standing, and more of a grander, more abstract thing of accomplishment. There was no accomplishment in lounging for years at a time, it was not a dream. There was significant accomplishment in winning the World Drivers Championship, so much so that both Suzaku and Kallen had gone to indescribable lengths to achieve it. There was no endgame to it; the accomplishment was a good unto itself, by contrast with Lelouch's usual modus operandi, wherein tasks were only worth pursuing for the rewards that could be pursuantly reaped.

There was, for the first time, no endgame to what Lelouch was doing. There was, for the first time, no next step if and inevitably when it failed, as for the first time Lelouch had not predetermined his own demise.

He could make it work. It would be hard, it would be a desperately hard fight, but for the first time in a while, Lelouch didn't have the overriding instinct to cut and run with what he could carry out the back door to make it work well for himself. When he was a driver, he had no notions that he was going to stay there; he simply took the ride, intending to milk it for all it was worth in his post-retirement dealings, with no misconceptions or delusions as to his own talents, and no grander ambitions beyond.

That had changed. As Lelouch sat and stewed, he at least had to acknowledge that he had this team, and that they were depending on him. And Lelouch would do good by them. He would see the task through. He would turn this team into a winning force again, expand it, grow it back to its former glory. Back in the nineties, Asplund had balanced a Formula One team, an FR 3.5 team, an Indycar team, an endurance prototype team, and an American stock car team, back when it was logistically feasible to do all of these things as a constructor.

Lelouch would bring the team back to that. They didn't have the industrial backing of Rebellion or the financial might of Camelot, but Lelouch had had no problem taking on more powerful opponents before. He'd beat them, expand the team, and make this facility, the whole team, the most feared name in racing, whether it was a works team or not.

But to do that, they had to build up in F1 first. They needed the perfect engineers, the perfect mechanics, the perfect administration, and, of course, the perfect driver.

A knock, quite timely, rang on his door, four times.

He smiled. He was only nearly alone, with the one other person who had no appreciation for the western New Year.

"Come in, Xingke."

It was late, certainly, but it was the only time the pilot had been available, given Xingke's reluctance to part with his national team on grounds that might lead to any ill-will. However, they had been in talks for a little over a month in various venues, largely dictated by whatever race was happening next.

He had lost Suzaku. He would not miss his chance to lock down the next best talent, no matter what it took.

Fortunately, the Chinese New Year was not for some time into January, and so Xingke was no more inconvenienced than Lelouch himself as he sat across from Lelouch as he placed an assemblage of documents on the table in front of him.

"Thank you for coming, Lǐ sàichēshǒu." Lelouch welcomed, using his limited Mandarin to invite the pilot in. "How are you feeling?"

Xingke's eyes flitted down for a moment, before answering.

"Good, I apologise for keeping you this late."

Lelouch waved his left arm aside, before shaking his head "It is fine. I was working anyway, no stone unturned and all."

Xingke nodded. In their interactions, this was one of the things that he had been eager to impress; he had been incredibly lucky that the tyre change had allowed him to finally display his skills, at least for the first eight races of the year, however the Geely team was infrastructurally not capable of sustaining a year-long campaign for the title, developing and upgrading the car through the season to keep abreast of competitors.

Schwarzenritter, by contrast, had seen in just their first year, a car that had been turned from midfield at best to one that Rolo could take to a dominating victory. Going into 2020 on a level foot with the other teams meant that they could very well seal the title the second time around if they could keep the same accelerated growth curve.

"This is very good, and I thank you." Xingke nodded. "Many of the other teams, while obviously impressed, have very young driver lineups that they have locked in and want to develop in insulation. This is the ideal team."

Lelouch nodded in return. Xingke was born in 1983, some thirty-seven years ago now. Most careers would be drawing to a close in the early thirties, with very few going past thirty five. Most teams desired long-term stability, and so were not moved by a driver who could well retire within a year or two.

Lelouch didn't mind. As far as he could see, one of the three best drivers on the grid was being hideously undervalued because of his age, and the Frenchman never turned his nose up at a bargain, no matter the product's shelf life.

Indeed, the conversation did indeed move on to pay quite quickly. Xingke's personal sponsors made him quite enticing, as well as his contacts to other potential sponsors who could well be encouraged to migrate from Geely to Schwarzenritter. However, there was an unexpected wrinkle that Xingke introduced when discussing fees for his services rendered.

"With the standard pay outlined… I would have an alternate arrangement." he sighed, contemplatively looking down into the sheet in front of him. "I need to… I need this championship. I came very close, but it was not enough. I do not want any… compensation, to myself."

Lelouch's eye's widened in surprise. He was certainly prepared to give over quite a hefty amount, though like any good negotiator he was hiding that eight ball for as long as he could, however this was an unexpected development, and Lelouch waited for Xingke to elaborate in rapt attention.

"What I do want…" Xingke began, before pausing to cough, and resuming again, "Is for you to build, and run, a junior training academy, in Zhōngguó. You can… retain, you can have contracts, with members, so you will have first pick on those members you feel are incredibly talented prospects, but… to have a facility, accessible, for everyone who sees… and wants to, grow, and pursue talent. I had to… to come, to Europe, to learn, to compete, I had to leave home at twelve years old, to go. I do not want that… loneliness, to be what faces the people that follow. It is… a very inaccessible sport, if I can make it more so… I would be very happy."

Lelouch nodded, finally understanding the final piece. He, as someone who had scraped together a career out of whatever was lying in the scrapyards of southern France, could very much appreciate the difficulty of garnering experience, having to uproot your entire life to chase a fraction of a percentage of a chance, and make your own way, with no formal places dedicated to providing you with the proper facilities.

Xingke in all likelihood was aware of and appreciated Lelouch's background, and the fact that of all the people who would engage with this proposition and keep to this promise, it was unquestionably most likely to be pursued and actualised under the guiding hand of Lelouch. The finance was there, it just needed someone to have the will to go out and do it.

And willpower was not something Lelouch was often described as lacking.

"That can be done." he nodded. "There would be very little issue, if you would drive with us and help us deliver a championship. I will give you all the machinery you need. Anything, at all, that you say can help you, this team will provide you. I can guarantee that, we both have unfinished business."

Lelouch then sighed, before whispering "My entire… lifes work, everything I've scraped together… it all culminates here. Every gamble, nickel, swindle, everything, it's all been for this, it's all been put up for this. I have put everything into this project, and, if you'd be willing, I would commit it to you, so that we might succeed."

Xingke paused, looking down contemplatively. Lelouch patiently stayed silent, seeming to get a sense of someone who was making a deep and conflicted decision, and one that he did not particularly want to intervene in.

Losing Suzaku had changed Lelouch's perspective considerably. If he was able to procure Xingke's services, he did not want it to be on the same fragile and fundamentally warped terms and pretences.

It would be different. Rolo would have to take the hand he was given; he was nearly a grown man, with enough talent to have an equitable crack at it.

But Xingke was arguably the best driver currently racing, and certainly the best driver available. If the team were to be completely geared towards being successful, which all of their partners, investors, sponsors, would naturally expect. Xingke was the best mechanism, the best devicer he could install into the chassis to extract the peak performance out the overall package.

Lelouch looked down as Xingke thought it over. He would not let this second chance go, if Xingke would give it to him.

Please, Lelouch thought. Please. He was not entitled to another chance, but he so desperately wished Xingke would give it to him.

The Luoyang pilot looked up, and met eyes with Lelouch.

"Let's get this championship then."

Qiánjìn Lī!

~G1ll3s