11: buries the dead with his stare.
When Zechs opened his eyes, he remembered the state of the world. Gleaming countertops and polished steel assaulted his blurred vision, reflecting the harsh white halogen so integral to any medical aesthetic. The cold and the clinical, the machines built to contain his brazen species in a finite entanglement of progress, did not bode well for his constitution.
"Oh," he tested his voice, slightly scratched throat, "hell."
Treize was not at his bedside.
The only reasons his befuddled mind could suggest were painful ones, full of loss and rejection and imminent danger. In fact, no one was at his bedside.
In fact, he didn't know where exactly his bed was.
Sitting upright proved a difficult task once he noticed the numerous wires and electrodes connected to him, and particularly the gaping hole in his chest that had been artfully sealed and salved.
Outside, there was artillery fire.
His view of the sky through the hospital window revealed miraculous bursts of sparks, flame and colour, bright blues and greens that tinted his paled countenance- Green? That couldn't be right...
With much meticulous toiling, Zechs plucked off the small suction cups littering his chest and forehead and stood, careful not to jostle the IV nestled in his forearm, careful to cover his wound and keep his torso straight. A few demented swipes at the heartmonitor stopped that infernal high-pitched bleeeeeeeeeep of protest, and he dragged his IV drip towards the window; where he stood, impassive, to watch the fireworks.
He stood there while explosions of festive light streamed across the night sky, illuminating the excited cityscape below; celebrators crowding nighttime streets, rowdy and gleeful, noise-making and lifting little sparklers of their own aloft in answer to the stars. He stood there as those bright glinting trails danced down his reflected face, marking the ghostpaths of tears he had spent, the frail lines of contemplation this battle had etched into his brow- so easily banished in the wake of a smile, but he did not smile. He did not smile at the merrymaking of citizens and soldiers alike, neither resenting the other in this hour of shared recognition of the home of all humans; no matter that world was uncountable miles away, they kept its time, remembered their lives in the segments of its rotation. Days, seasons, new years. He stood there and saw his reflection in the clear glass, superimposed upon that eternal dark space with no sun to ease its potency; he saw the stars in his eyes and their explosions on his cheeks, fireworks or gunfire, tears of the damned. So few men were damned like him. Blood dripped down his abdomen.
He was still standing there when a nurse entered the room.
She uttered a little gasp and stammered only one of his names, clutching her clipboard for verification.
Zechs watched his lips move in the window, so detached. "Where is he?" Was that voice really mine?
"Sir, you can't be standing right now-"
"Can't?" So this is what my smirk looks like. "I'm already standing. I am the Lightning Baron; do not presume tell me what I can and can't do."
"Please, sir, why don't you get back in bed and I'll check your sutures-"
Zechs' translucent twin pursed his lips, eyes narrowing with a gleam to rival the lights glittering in the black starry backdrop. "I know that nothing short of death, or a fight to it, would keep him from me right now, so why don't you just tell me where he is?" These final syllables were punctuated by a dramatic spin, his unwashed hair whirling in oily strands over his shoulder and waterfalling down his bare chest as he glared bullets into the startled nurse. His IV drip skittered briefly on its pegs and descended with a resounding metallic crash, ripping the needle clean out of his skin when he slammed his palm down onto the bedside table.
The nurse flinched backward with a feminine bark of surprise, the fear inspired by this imposing and impossibly strong man uncurling through her in a cold flush. Even half-nude and injured, Zechs blazed with the aura of ambition. His eyes were not dead. His eyes were pools of meteors.
...
Cape flapping like a flag of honour behind him, Treize sped down the west hall firing through every open door he passed, expertly avoiding his own loyal regiments based on their strategic military cap placement.
Within minutes of the secret command meeting in his captive chambers, Treize's glorious personal battle broke out in all sectors of the Romefeller encampment. His private Gravity feed - so named for both the dire nature of the situation and its ability to draw followers in - was contacting base after base in a linear string much like the lit fire signals across lands of old, preparing for lock-down, waiting to wait it out. Treize had units in the control room monitoring feeds, units in weapons and mech storage cinching off Romefeller resistance, units scattered across the grounds taking hostages and gunning down hostility, and he was quickly slicing his way through Dermail's meagre safeguards towards the beating heart of the Foundation's coercive power.
At last he was upon the rich mahogany door, the one with ornate gold finishings he had selected himself, that led to his private office where Dermail was entombed, likely with an entire regiment of confused soldiers in wait. Several officers sans cap and insignia sidled up behind him, guns at the ready. Treize watched one kick in his beautiful door with a wince, regrettable splintering forgotten in open fire and two men down, three, his line of soldiers advancing bottlenosed into the chambre, pouring through swollen ranks of faces horrified to find themselves fired upon by their mirrors, and then it was done.
The soldiers were down; only Dermail and a few lower-ranking Romefeller pawns remained standing. That sordid old man with his prim, pointed moustache emphasising utter shock as Treize levelled his pistol at the high forehead-
"What? What do you think you're doing, boy?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing, Dermail," replied the General in a soothing voice, smooth and steady despite the last hour of murderous exertions, "I'm changing the world."
Treize pulled the trigger.