Guest – Hmmm…

Unknown – "I'm tripping BALLS right now!"

Otaku – Could start with "What the hell was that?"

Republic – Same here, buddy.

It's back, everyone.

[*****]

Lelouch woke up in a cold sweat.

And then he fell back asleep, because it was five in the morning, an ungodly hour to get up at. He wasn't sure how the rest of the student body did it.

Maybe it's because they don't have a part-time job as a terrorist.

Unfortunately, Lelouch's attempt to get some well-deserved sleep and drift off to Dreamland was thwarted by his ringtone, mercilessly blaring into his eardrums. It was so loud, so grating, it could only be described as unadulterated musical terrorism.

DA-DA-DA…DAAAAAAAAA-DADADADA! DA! DA-DA! DA-DADAD-ADA-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

"OH MY GOD, I'M ANSWERING, HOLD ON," Lelouch screamed, to nobody in particular.

He groggily reached for his cellphone, managing to knock it off his nightstand. Furious, Lelouch got out of his bed, walked up to the phone, and pressed the little green "Answer" button.

"Yes, hello?" he answered. He sounded drunk.

"Oh my god, Lelouch, come to Choir. Right now. Right now. Oh man. RIGHT NOW, MAN. CHOIR."

Now Lelouch was awake. "Rivalz? Everything okay?"

"I don't know how to explain it Lelouch, but I think I MIGHT BE ZERO."

Lelouch paused, a bemused expression on his face. He wasn't expecting that one, for sure. "Run that by me one more time?"

"Dude I swear to god I'm Zero. And YOU'RE…"

Lelouch's stomach dropped. Please no.

"…gonna have to help me!"

Shakily, Lelouch sighed and gave an imperceptible nod. "I'll be over in ten—"

Pause.

A sense of déjà vu.

Then realization.

"…Actually, no, go fuck yourself, Rivalz," Lelouch said, hanging up before Rivalz could get another word in.

Lelouch sat down at the foot of his bed, dropping his hands into his lap and staring at them for what felt like an eternity. The sun was slowly starting to rise, casting a faint, pink-grey light across the bedroom.

How many times have I been through this?

Lelouch got up and looked at himself in the mirror.

Lelouch Lamperouge, 18 years old. How long have I been 18 for? Feels like forever. I feel old. Really old. Wrinkly and old… wrold.

Lelouch reached up to take out his contacts, before subconsciously realizing he didn't have them. His Geass hadn't gone haywire, not yet. He stared at the man in the mirror for a good minute or so, his mind racing even though the room was as quiet as could be.

I need answers.

Lelouch threw a shirt on, not caring which one it was, and walked out into the hallway, finding the guest room door. Not bothering to knock, he opened it and walked inside. C.C.'s slim form was sprawled across the bed, her hair everywhere. She looked peaceful, and Lelouch almost didn't want to disturb her.

Almost. Lelouch roughly shook her awake.

"Nngnghghgggghha…" C.C. murmured intelligently, her golden eyes slowly opening.

"Get up and get dressed, witch. We're going to go get breakfast."

"Nnnnnnnnnoooo…" she turned onto her side, facing away from Lelouch. Lelouch responded by yanking the covers off and dragging them elsewhere, not giving a shit that C.C. was bare from the waist down. The green-haired witch shivered and ruefully sat up after a moment of inactivity.

"Cover your hair or something. We have things to discuss."

[*****]

SHIBUYA DISTRICT

The daytime café Hoshino was one of Lelouch's favorites. It was small and compact, but warm and simple, the smell of breakfast and coffee perpetually wafting through the air long after the breakfast rush had passed. It was a very sterile place, too – everything about it spoke "cleanliness", as if not even the most infinitesimal of stains escaped the stern, falcon gaze of the janitor's mop.

But mostly, the bagels were really fucking good. And that's what kept Lelouch coming back.

Lelouch and C.C. were idly playing a game of chess. Tic-Tac-Toe had gotten boring, and C.C. forgot to bring cards, so chess it was. C.C. was losing, naturally, but she didn't seem to care – all she did was move her pieces around carelessly. She'd already torn through her tomato basil and kept glancing at the windows, which made Lelouch a little jumpy.

Lelouch moved his Rook forward, knocking C.C.'s King down. "Checkmate. Did you even try?"

"You're the maven. You tell me."

Lelouch idly picked at his bagel. It was toasted to perfection, and it smelled so good, but the butterflies in Lelouch's stomach forbade him from taking more than a few bites at a time.

"How much do you weigh?" C.C. asked, glancing at her nails, then again at the window.

"Not sure. Last I checked, about 120. Maybe less."

"Have you always been a poor eater?"

"I either eat a lot, or barely anything at all. It's how I've always been."

"It shows. In the way you orchestrate battles."

Lelouch hacked off a chunk of his bagel, chewed, and swallowed. It was delicious but he felt like vomiting anyway. He steepled his hands and looked at C.C., who responded with a serious look of her own.

"I didn't take you here to talk about my weight."

"I know."

"You know, don't you? About the time travel."

"Yeah."

"Have you been taking notes? I keep reminding myself to, but by the next timeline, I've already forgotten."

"Do you have your chemistry notebook?"

Lelouch reached into his backpack and handed her the notebook in question. "Why?"

"I want to play dots and boxes." C.C. tore out a sheet and started drawing little black dots.

Lelouch hummed and watched as she drew an 8x8 grid on the paper, constructed entirely of dots. She handed Lelouch his pen, pulling out one of her own. They started playing, just drawing lines, trying their best to avoid making boxes, but the game's mechanics had a way of biting players in the ass. In no time at all, the grid was full of squares, some of which had "LL" plastered on the center, some of which had "CC" on them.

C.C. glanced over the sheet of paper, frowning. "So, the timelines are like these dots. They start out entirely separate from one another, but still similar, at least in appearance."

"Right."

"But certain actions that happen in certain timelines have a tendency to influence, or sometimes cross over, into other timelines," C.C. said, connecting two dots for emphasis.

"And sometimes that causes a chain-reaction," she continued, filling in several boxes with her name on it.

In no time at all, the 8x8 grid had turned into a bunch of boxes all stacked on top of each other.

"Eventually, they all start to look the same. And it's hard to tell which one's which most of the time."

Lelouch exhaled through his nose. The diner felt even smaller now. "I hate this game."

"Someone… or something, with a firm grasp on how these timelines work, is making us go through each one of these timelines," C.C. noted, her pen gliding across each and every one of the boxes. "Until eventually…"

She drew an enormous X across the grid. "We don't even notice," she drawled, looking troubled for once.

"Yeah. My memory of all this is starting to fade. I don't even know how many times I've gone through the dream sequences, or the Zeroes, or the fight with Time Baron. It just all kind of melds together into a kind of… temporal soup."

"I prefer tempura shrimp."

Lelouch took a swig of milk, flicked at some crumbs. "So have you been making notes? Tally marks? Something?"

C.C. shrugged, chewing on the pen she stole from Lelouch. "Occasionally. I'll always know when the timelines shift when I feel this weird ripple through my chest, like a spasm. I actually used that notebook of yours as a counter. Hence why I asked."

C.C. slid the notebook over to Lelouch. "How I keep track of everything is that I put a tiny mark on the upper right corner of your notebook. I started on your first page the first time I noticed a shift in the time-space continuum. The next time I noticed a change, the tally mark on your first page was gone, but I flipped to the second page and made a mark anyway. Rinse and repeat."

Lelouch flipped through his notebook's pages. He finally got to the last page of his 80-page notebook and saw a mark.

"…When was this drawn?"

"About twenty repeats ago."

Lelouch ran a hand through his hair and felt like tearing it out. I have the power of the King… but I'm still powerless.

"Is it the Emperor?" Lelouch managed, clenching his teeth.

"Not sure. Might be."

Somebody walked into the restaurant. Some man in a suit – he didn't look like a soldier. Luckily, he had a to-go order, and was out in no time.

"…I don't want to go to the Homeland, not yet," Lelouch said, drifting his gaze to C.C.'s hair. "If my suspicions are right, and this… thing, controlling our lives knows about our every action, hell, maybe even this very conversation we're having, then this thing will take measures to stop me from ever getting close to the Homeland. And besides, if it turns out to not be the Emperor, then all my precautions would be for nothing."

C.C. shrugged again, gazing at her plate. "It's not like we'll remember any of this."

Lelouch tore off another chunk of his bagel, with more force than necessary. "It's terrible."

C.C. nodded.

"Knowing that something's happening to you, knowing that you're too powerless to stop it." Lelouch dunked the bagel in his cream cheese.

C.C. nodded again.

"Knowing that you've done the same thing over and over again." He took a bite. It was, all in all, a pretty good bagel.

C.C. nodded once more.

"You infuriate me, Witch. But you're the only person I can trust with any of this. You're the only person who gets it."

"Have you tried using your Geass yourself to remember everything?" C.C. offered.

"Once. I t didn't last."

Lelouch finished off his milk and got up to toss his stuff in the trash. Once he returned, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting out a few deep sighs.

"For what it's worth, I apologize," C.C. said, drumming her fingers on the table. "I never meant to get you wrapped up in all of this."

"No, you did," Lelouch countered. "You just didn't know how bad it would get it."

"…Yeah."

"You're forgiven, Witch. 'S not your fault, anyway."

"Thank you."

"Does Kaguya know?"

"She… might," C.C. said. "I mean, the only reason she's part of this mess at all is because she took my Code. I tried to get out of this mess that way. Didn't work. Condemned her, too."

"It feels like all the women in my life are either harboring secrets, insane, or immortal. Or all three, on a good day."

"Yeah, but you like them like that, right?"

"Of course." Lelouch checked his phone. 4 unread messages, all from Rivalz.

[6:13] LL, I'M ZERO, COME 2 SCHOOL PLZ.

[6:13] ALSO DON'T TELL MILLY I SAID THAT.

[6:20] WAIT, NO, SHE'S ZERO.

[6:21] LELOUCH, WHY IS MY HAIR BLUE?

"…I think we may have to go with the Fail-Safe Plan," Lelouch muttered, breaking his flip-phone in half; the two ends came apart with a satisfying snap.

C.C. glanced at him, pursing her lips. "You sure?"

"What do we have to lose? Dignity's gone, sanity's iffy. Not like we can die. So."

"I'll contact him, then. See what he can do."

"Have we tried the Fail-Safe before? Refresh my memory."

"I don't think so. When we came up with it, we weren't so desperate to use it right away. It's called a Fail-Safe for a reason."

"Yeah, well, unless you have a time machine handy, C.C., I think we've exhausted all of our options."

"Agreed."

"I'm going to school. Rivalz needs his ass kicked."

"Can I have your credit card?"

"Left it on the nightstand for you. Be sure to leave the delivery boy a tip."

"Alright."

Lelouch rose and left. C.C. gazed at his phone, or what remained of it. It looked like it was beyond repair, but a skilled repairman or technician could probably fix it.

Besides, knowing Lelouch, he had reserves.