-Chapter 4-

Rolo had woken up on a mountain of corpses. That had not been a very comfortable experience.

The boy did his best to ignore the stench of death and decay around him as he tried to figure out where he was. He distinctly remembered dying. He was intimately familiar with the process even if he had never been in that particular position himself before.

Rolo placed his fingers over his pulse points and then directly on his chest. No, his heart was not beating. Oddly enough, he was still breathing. On a whim, he decided to stop.

After a few minutes of this, he decided to resume breathing. It didn't hurt not to and he clearly didn't need to draw in oxygen any longer, but it just felt too strange to not breathe.

Didn't that mean that he was dead? Was that why his brother had abandoned him in what appeared to be a mass graveyard? He wondered if he was a zombie like in those movies that his brother and his friend Rivalz had forced him to watch. The atmosphere was certainly appropriate for a horror movie. The sky was grey and cloudy, and there was no sign of life anywhere within viewing distance. Beyond the 'mountain' that he was sitting on, there was only a wasteland of dead grass and rotted tree husks. There weren't even any carrion around.

Rolo suddenly realized that his locket, the first present that anyone had ever given him, was gone. He frantically searched through the pockets of his school uniform and even through the pockets of the dead woman he was sitting on before he forced himself to give up. With a sigh of regret, he turned his mind to more important matters. Where was he? Where was Lelouch?

He climbed down the bloody mountain of rotting bodies to look for answers.

Rolo had walked for about half an hour before he sensed that he was being watched. He turned around and standing directly behind him was a humanoid that appeared to be the progeny of a wolf and a human. The beast was covered in light brown fur and appeared to be male.

He looked at it curiously. Was this a wolfman like in the movies? He had been under the impression that such creatures were fictional. He knew that he had lived a rather sheltered existence, but he thought he would have known if there was such creatures living on Earth.

And why was the wolfman wearing sunglasses when there was no sun?

"You're not an easy one to scare, are you, Rolo?"

"How do you know my name?" Rolo asked tersely.

The wolfman smiled, revealing two rows of sharpened fangs. He said, "I know many things about you, boy of many identities. Rolo Haliburton. Rolo Lamperouge. Member of the Geass Order."

Rolo's body tensed. Nobody was supposed to know about the Order.

That razor-sharp smile grew even wider. The monster said, "Not many demons these days can recognize the spiritual signature of a Geass user. One can hardly blame them. It's such a rare phenomenon. It's quite outrageous that a few dozen users have suddenly appeared so recently. The Geass Order, I believe it was called. My master will be quite pleased that I have managed to snare another specimen for his collection."

Rolo was barely paying attention. His eyes were busy scanning the area for a potential weapon. He was also running mental simulations of what action to take if it turned out that his Geass was no longer operating.

"Free feel to try to use your Geass on me. I am interested in seeing what form it takes. Not that it will do you any good," the wolfman said with a smirk as he tapped his eyewear. "In my experience, most Geass powers rely on some form of eye contact and the ones that don't tend to be defensive in nature and are not very powerf-"

The wolfman broke off as he looked down and saw the sharpened tree branch sticking out of his chest.

"Ho-how?" the monster asked as he fell to his knees.

"It appears that you do not know as much about Geass as you think you do," Rolo said and then he wondered why he said it. There was no need to explain anything to a dying man- or creature. Maybe Brother's sense of drama was rubbing off on him.

What was more interesting that he had not felt any of the strain he was used to feeling when he activated his Geass, which raised some interesting possibilities...

Since the immediate threat had been neutralized, Rolo continued to wander the bleak countryside. It took a few more random encounters with these 'demons' and the subsequent interrogations and killings before Rolo determined that he really was dead and he was in Hell.

It took warding off a few dozen groups of attackers that came at him in increasing numbers and at increasing frequencies over the next few days before he realized that the demons had no effective way of blocking his Geass. And if the wolfman had been telling the truth, then most of his adversaries probably didn't even know what they were up against.

After a few close calls, including one in which he had to regenerate his left hand, he kept his Geass active all the time with a sphere of influence in every direction so that nobody could sneak up on him. Rolo could activate his Geass for as long as he wanted without ill effect, and, although he often felt hungry and sleepy, he found that he didn't actually need to eat or sleep.

This tactic would only delay the inevitable though. Sooner or later, one of these demons would realize that his power didn't affect non-living objects and then he would either be bombed or sniped and then captured before he could revive himself. Assuming that the inhabitants of Hell had such weapons, of course.

The solution to this problem was actually quite simple. Rolo's main skillset was in assassination but to be a good assassin one also had to be knowledgeable in infiltration. So he allowed himself to be captured.

"What happened after that?" Lelouch asked as he listened to Rolo's story in horrified fascination. A chill had gone down his spine when he realized that his 'brother' was now effectively invincible. It was fortunate that the boy still seemed to hold him in high regard.

Rolo's story had also been quite enlightening. It sounded like that there were only a few demons who knew about Geass and they hoarded that information in order to make use of that knowledge themselves. It was to be expected that Hell was not a place where openness and transparency would be considered virtues. Lelouch supposed that if he had waited around long enough to be registered and processed that he would have been 'collected' by now.

Rolo gave a small shrug in response to Lelouch's question. He replied, "There's not much more to tell. I was bound and gagged and taken to a laboratory. I suppose they thought that as long as I couldn't move or speak that I wouldn't be able to use my power."

"They were wrong, of course," Lelouch said with a small smile.

"They were going to put me in a cell. I couldn't allow that, so I froze everyone in the room. It took me some time to get out of my restraints even with my training, but I had all the time in the world. After that, I persuaded my captors to help me. I spoke with the head scientist first. It was surprising how much he resisted, especially considering how I-"

Lelouch was not a squeamish man, but he really did not want to know the details of what that 'persuasion' entailed. He quickly said, "I believe I can safely assume that the result of your... negotiations was the ability to travel around Hell undetected. You said earlier that you're here to help me. That implies that you've been looking for me. Considering the vastness of Hell and the rather convenient timing of your arrival, I suspect that some type of tracking program was activated when my file was accessed and you were alerted about my location."

"That is exactly correct, Brother," Rolo replied with obvious admiration in his voice.

Lelouch leaned back in his chair and regarded the boy before him over his steepled fingers. Once again, the depth of Rolo's loyalty surprised and touched him. He wondered if the boy had any relation to Jeremiah Gottwald. They were both stubborn idiots and two of the best followers that he had ever had.

He struggled to reconcile the conflicting emotions inside him. He still deeply resented Rolo for killing Shirley, but he had to admit that her death was as much his fault as it was the boy's. Lelouch had manipulated Rolo's feelings to co-opt him as a tool, and he had never given any further thought as to how unstable a child assassin with a big brother complex would be. Lelouch had never considered the obvious reaction that such a person, someone who clung desperately to the illusion of a normal school life, would have toward a threat to his fragile and precious situation.

After what Lelouch had yelled at him after he thought Nunally had died, Rolo would have been extremely justified in allowing the Black Knights to kill him, but the boy had saved his life. Even now, in death, Rolo was still trying to serve him. Lelouch wondered if he should be pleased or dismayed that even Rolo with his puppy dog loyalty had been convinced that Lelouch would end up in Hell sooner or later.

Part of him wondered suspiciously if this Rolo was not simply some demon in disguise. As Lelouch had said earlier, Rolo's appearance was rather convenient. He quickly dismissed this thought. Constant paranoia about the state of reality was a quick route toward madness. He would simply have to accept what he was seeing until he received evidence showing otherwise.

That didn't mean that he had to be stupid about this.

"We have certainly come a long way from the peaceful days at Ashford. I can still remember Nina's ridiculous farewell Cupid Day event."

Rolo looked confused. He said, "Wasn't that festival organized by President Milly?"

"Oh, that's right," Lelouch said. "The last few months of my life were rather hectic and then to wake up here... It's no wonder that my memories are a little hazy these days. Thank you for the reminder, Rolo."

Behind the dismayed expression on his face, Lelouch smiled. It looked like he wouldn't have to use his Geass after all.

An expression of sympathy crossed Rolo's face. He said, "I'm sorry that I couldn't find you sooner, Brother."

"Don't worry about it," Lelouch replied.

He looked around the control room that was filled with demonic corpses. He said, "I suppose we should get going. Somebody's probably wondering by now why this room has gone silent."

Rolo shrugged. "There is no hurry. My Geass will stop any intruders."

"So will mine," Lelouch reminded the boy. "It is still best not to get complacent. It is possible that there are creatures in Hell that are immune to Geass. I do not wish to press our luck."

"Of course. I should have thought of that," Rolo said. He pulled a rectangular device out of his pocket. It looked like a cheap Blackberry flip phone. Since Rolo was presumably not trying to make a phone call, that must have been the machine that allowed Rolo to transport around Hell at will.

As Rolo fiddled with his gadget, Lelouch thought about what his 'younger brother' had said about helping him conquer Hell. Was that how Rolo saw him? As some kind of power hungry maniac who couldn't be happy unless he was out fighting wars and creating chaos? Did he really not understand that everything he had done had been for Nunally's sake?

But he was honest enough to admit that he also enjoyed creating brilliant strategies and testing his mettle against the full might of the world. Even if he had no reason to do so, trying to take over Hell would be an interesting challenge in itself.

Lelouch mentally shrugged to himself. It was as good a way to kill time as any.

"It's ready," Rolo announced.

Lelouch came out of his musings and looked over at the opening that Rolo had created. This portal was different from the ones that Lelouch had traveled through. Those portals had been windows of blinding light. Rolo's portal was a ragged maelstrom of blues and purples. It reminded Lelouch of one of those wormholes that one would see in a speculative fiction drama. It was like looking at living geometry with the lines and curves of color.

"So where are we going?" Lelouch asked as he stepped into the opening.

Rolo said something, but Lelouch didn't hear it as he felt his body get spun around like a top. After a indeterminable amount of time, Lelouch hit the ground with a mild grunt of surprise. A few seconds later, he saw Rolo land next to him.

"Not the most comfortable mode of travel," Lelouch muttered to Rolo as he got to his feet. Biting back a slight groan, Lelouch glanced around to get a feel for where they were now. He had to blink several times before he could accept what he saw.

He and Rolo were standing alone in the courtyard of Ashford Academy.

"What on earth is going on?" Lelouch said as he spun around trying to see every detail of the buildings surrounding him.

"We are not on Earth," Rolo replied calmly. "This building was constructed by the demons."

Lelouch calmed himself after hearing Rolo's words and forced himself to evaluate the building more closely. Once he did he could see that while there was a more than superficial resemblance to the school that he had grown up attending there was also an air of wrongness around it.

The doors and windows in his line of sight were slightly too wide. The school buildings were closer together than he remembered, which gave the courtyard an air of crampness. There were other off-kilter details as well like the shades of paint on the wall and the number of trees in the area. It was as the builders had seen some depictions of the school on some postcards or brochures and then attempted to reconstruct that image from scratch.

What really clinched the matter for him that this was not Ashford Academy was that the wall that Lelouch had ordered a female student to mark daily was bare and pristine. It staggered his mind that the denizens of Hell would go to all the trouble of reproducing his school. He supposed that this meant that a great number of Ashford students ended up being damned by their petty dramas, intrigues, and cruelties. He probably shouldn't be surprised by that.

High school was often referred to as a living Hell after all...

Lelouch stared warily at the windows overlooking the courtyard. It was a little eerie standing out in the open like this. Even though nobody appeared to be around, he would feel better once he and Rolo went inside. Then he would ask the younger boy his reason for bringing him to this place.

"Help! Somebody help me!"

Lelouch whirled in the direction of the scream. It came from inside the school.

"Please, stop! Don't hurt me anymore! Why are you doing this?"

Lelouch could hear his heartbeat pulsing in his ears as the sound of a sobbing voice seemed to be coming closer.

It was a female voice. A familiar voice.

No, it couldn't be...

Rolo was instantly standing in front of him with a dagger in his right hand. Lelouch knew that the boy was moments away from activating his Geass.

"No, wait!"

He almost didn't recognize the strangled, panicky voice that came out of his mouth.

Rolo turned to look at Lelouch with a puzzled expression.

The southeast doors to the courtyard burst open. A figure came running through.

He saw a glimpse of green eyes and orange hair...

"Shirley!"

The fleeing girl came to a halt a mere twelve feet away from him. She was trembling so badly that her hair had obscured her face, and, for a brief moment, Lelouch thought he may have been mistaken about her identity. Then the hair moved and he saw that it was indeed Shirley Fenette, the girl who had died in his arms.

She slowly took a few, shaky steps toward him then stopped as if she couldn't dare to believe what was in front of her.

Lelouch forced himself to smile and hoped that Shirley wouldn't notice his heart breaking once again.

"Shirley, it's me. Lelouch."

A look of joy came over her face washing out the fear and the pain that was there before. He wondered if he had a similar look on his face. Lelouch felt a little embarrassed to be wearing a loincloth before Shirley who was wearing her school uniform with the yellow jacket and green tie. She looked so happy, so carefree, so Shirley, like before the horrors of Geass, before the war, before everything had gone so wrong...

She reached out to him with tears in her eyes saying softly, "Lelouch..."

Her body jerked.

A stain of red blossomed across Shirley's stomach.

With his ears still ringing from the gunshot, Lelouch helplessly watched as Shirley fell forward into his arms.