A/N: In this chapter you'll see what happens when what Lelouch planned didn't quite happen as he has planned. Esem's female characters, as it appears, doesn't live life quite the same way as those in his own world.
How the Shinkirou frame survived will be explained in C. 2. In any case, please inform me if Lulu does get OOC.
Thanks, and let the read begin!
Turn 1
Lelouch's Discovery
The ruined streets of Tokyo was hauntingly empty. One year after everything supposedly ended, the scar of war, death, destruction and pain of humanity's costliest war was nowhere near healing. After all, a war that had claimed more than a hundred million lives all across the world was not going to end without its far and wide impact, hampering on the race's most earnest effort to patch up the wounded lands and bring about true lasting peace.
But humanity's survivalism was the key redeeming quality, and, like after every other war before, the survivors were ever ready to rebuild everything from scraps. Now, within the ruins of the old Tokyo and the sprouting buds of the new, changes could be seen almost daily, as the city rebuilt itself around the Ashford Academy, the very school that had seen the rise to power of the most enigmatic figure of the modern world.
Lelouch vi Britannia. Lelouch Lamperouge. The Black Demon Prince of the Holy Britannian Empire. He who "both destroyed worlds and created them".
Even now, when everything had been past and historians and bards began to band together to evaluate the true vices and virtues of Zero, opinions about the exiled Prince of Britannia were extremely diverse. Some saw him as a war criminal of worse profile than all tyrants of the world summed up. Some other considered him as a tragic hero, whose plight to save the world in his own way unfortunately brought about both the fall of the world order and his own demise. A few even went so far as condemning him to be the Antichrist, the incarnation of the Devil, while their opposite numbers trashed those comments completely, instead claiming him to be the saintly-intentioned Messiah that wasn't.
But there was something that historians all agreed. In his death, and a well-calculated one indeed, Lelouch vi Britannia had paid for his crimes, and with his own blood laid the foundation for a better world to come.
But was the world supposed to be as peaceful as it now appeared to be? No.
Or so thought that singular, stoically silent figure trudging through the broken debris where the Tokyo Settlement once stood. It was a miracle that the debris was even there – the detonation of a FLEIJA warhead two year ago at that very spot had well claimed the lives of thirty-plus million lives, as well as vaporizing most, sentient or not, things within the blast radius and reduced what it hadn't to the point of unrecognizability. Ground Zero. Not a pretty sight.
In direct contrast to that dreary and morbid scenario, the figure was quite well clad – his white, studded robe was as good as regal, the kind of ceremonial garment only reserved to the most powerful figures of the political world. His jet black, uncombed black hair came in direct contrast with his tired, pale complexion, the signs of a physically impaired person whose health was nothing too stable. Eyebrows raised, mouth shut, his high cheek coordinating all those features in a fine, tell-tale combination.
His eyes scanned around the place, with the regretful glare of a person bearing avid resentment with his own past decisions. In that glare one could find a plethora of different emotions other than that – hope and despair stood side by side, while a solid, well-founded disappointment and impatience drowned the outline of those irises. Had it not been for those complex emotions and the dark-and-brooding pace he twitched his head about he placed on show, his visage would have been perfect, that perfection of a childlike face bordering cuteness in its every expression.
That face had made the headline many times, and especially so in the months he had been wearing that regal robe. The face that had both brought hope and trashed them, that had both made people cry out in happiness and plunged them in deepest of terror, that had seen both the rise of the world and its fall, that of the Black Prince, Lelouch vi Britannia.
Lelouch vi Britannia. Sometimes he hated his own name, even now when he was no longer alive. It was not a strange effect – after all, the man by that name had killed more people than there are seconds in the year, and the past was exceedingly unforgiving.
He was dead. That was a matter of fact. But somehow, passing away from life and passing on to a next plane of incarnation are two different matters entirely. One year has passed since that day, and yet he was still around there, trudging the streets of the ruined Tokyo, as if trying to redeem himself for a final time before perishing into the unknown, like many other earthbound spirits wandering aimlessly through the ruins of war, those who have no qualms against ganging up and lynch him the moment they saw him.
Unfortunately, those dead spirits were more than abundant, as the FLEIJA bomb had made its run more successfully than designed to. Fortunately, their strength of will were uniformly mediocre at most, such that their appearance in the real world could never even be as vividly as his own, let alone openly approach him and start lynching him the way he deserved.
But he knew that he was different from those lots. In a mildly disturbing way. No, he was not there wandering the streets in regret of not having lived a full life or of his untimely death. He was not even there to atone for his arguably genocidal crimes. He was there, because his duty in life hadn't yet been fulfilled.
"Zero Requiem," silently muttered the fallen emperor. "When will it ever be done?"
The pain was not physical, yes. Not that he had any physical body any longer to feel the pain – the sense of the daily wander now was so appalling that he sometimes felt that compared to that fate, the flame of Hell would have been way more comfortable to bear. Being rejected by both Heaven and Hell of entry was never a desirable fate for one thing. But being detained in the mortal plane of existence until he could find a person to complete what plans he had set out but couldn't fulfill was another.
It had been a year, and Lelouch was still waiting for the person to come. One year was enough to either cancel out hope and call for quit, in that situation. Even being the mastermind Lelouch was, his patience was running dry.
"Where ARE you, Renesmee Cullen?" Lelouch found himself screaming out loud. "What in the name of the gods are you doing?"
There was just one way to find out – to meet the girl in question.
"Thank you, C.C," Lelouch nodded gratefully. "This new Geass you granted me will be more useful than it might seem..."
******
Forks, Washington.
The year was 2015. It had been well ten years since Bella and Edward Cullen got married. And happily, it seemed. In a world without Knightmare Frames, without the Holy Britannian Empire, without the cursed resource of Sakuradite, with neither Zero or the Knight of Zero, where the name Lelouch Lamperouge was nonexistent, there was basically nothing that could tumble up the lives of the everyday "vegetarian" vampires of the three-thousand-people quiet township. Whatever happened in the other alternative dimension, even if the whole of that world would blow up, they wouldn't even know, let alone be affected.
It was still quite a miracle how the Cullens hid away the marriage between their daughter and their best friend. Had it not been for Renesmee's seventeen-year-old appearance, there would be no way they could have hidden away that awkward marriage before the police and other human rights activists threatening to blow their vampire cover at any moment. Still, a seven-year-old getting married was something rather disturbing by nature, and they could only be glad they all got away with it.
Renesmee now belonged to Jacob Black, being his faithful and caring spouse, and soon would bear his child, although "soon" wouldn't mean within the foreseeable future – Renesmee, after all, hadn't yet been prepared for "the consummated relationship", let alone children. But of one thing she was doubtless. With all the care and love that Jacob showers her with, the girl-woman was worshiping him not like an elder, not like a husband, not even like a lover, but more like a deity. The fact was more than reciprocated from his prospect- anyone wanting to take her away from him would have to pry her from his cold-dead corpse, be it another man, a monster, a company of soldiers, or even a Britannia-made Lancelot Mark II Knightmare Frame completed with a plethora of state-of-the-art vibroweapons and equipped with a FLEIJA device.
It as an evening like many others – Renesmee was sleeping alone in her room, a fact a little awkward for a married woman. Her maturity being that of a seventeen-year-old, sometimes her chronological age still took its due – her occasional nightmares meant that Jacob's presence on the other bed was more like that of a guardian than a lover. All too often her nightmares were greeted with the unique kindness and protection no one else in the world could give her. For the quick-to-mature girl, that was all she needed for a husband.
It was then that the meddler by the name Lelouch vi Britannia entered her dream in yet another arguable nightmare of hers, the easiness of dimensional and dream traveling being the trademark of his new Geass power, granted to him by C.C as a parting present, as well as a means for him to accomplish the seemingly impossible. The Dreamwalker and Parallel Manipulator Geass - Paradise of those wanting to take a leap into another person's wildest dreams and bend it to their will, regardless of planes of existence.
As soon as he had landed safely within Renesmee's dream realms, Lelouch was granted a nasty surprise. So put off Lelouch was at her plain look alone that the 99th Holy Britannian Emperor froze in place for a couple of seconds as he gazed at her. Had it not been for his proven trust in C.C, he would have been inclined to think that his ally had tricked him. In all honesty, Lelouch had expected to meet with a nine-year-old half his height and size rather than a fully-grown young lady, whose beauty – Lelouch muttered a silent apologetic muse to his deceased half-sister as he thought – put Euphemia to shame.
The clever warlord then quietly recalculated his coordinates, hoping to find a logical explanation in the discovery. There was none – his transition to Renesmee Cullen's dream had been flawless in execution, which didn't help. But admitting that the girl… woman standing before him was the Renesmee he was looking for was as hard-to-digest as being force-fed a mouthful of cheese without anything to wash it down – sticky, choking, and hard to swallow. After all, his purpose of that journey was ultimately to persuade Renesmee to leave her world and follow him back to the Britannian timeline, whereas she would join the Insurrection to take over Britannia, as a first step to reinstate a new, lasting world order. Judging from the current situation, that purpose wouldn't be realized anytime soon.
Finally Lelouch gathered the courage to swallow that mouthful, but that wasn't the end of the not-so-sweet surprise. Having expected to meet a strong-willed, steel-hearted child-genius with an intelligence the same as his own, eager to take and fulfill responsibility, Lelouch was more than astonished when what he saw, as he took a second glance at her shape in the blurry background of the realms of dream. The generic, flower-filled cloverfield filled the background, the signature of a loving, innocent heart, with the girl dancing gracefully amidst the flowers, without paying any attention to the surrounding. Her mood was dreamy and absorbed, entranced by her own fantasy, a fantasy, needless to say, far different from that which he would wish her to do.
A tell-tale sign of a merrily wed woman with complete contentment in her life, it seemed.
Not that Lelouch was allergic to the bed of fluffy clovers. No, he was not sadistic by default, although many historians were now dying to tarnish his name further with that title following what he had done in those two earth-shaking conflicts. The last time he remembered, the frowned Geass he bore had no soul corrupting effects. But with his objective in mind, how the child prodigy he expected to collect and groom up to be a perfect leader of the people of Britannia and the world as a whole now turned out to be that kind of happy-go-lucky married woman whose serenity in each and every move told of peace and happiness was unexpected at least, and illogical at most. And irritating to his master-strategist brain as well, when he was at it.
It took Lelouch Lamperouge a full minute and all his courage – a more or less unprecedented event, noting his spontaneous decision in almost everything of importance in his past life – to finally make up his mind and approach the girl in question. His imperial garment was not the most lightweight and movement-friendly of all apparels, and his shuffling along the clover caused significant amounts of noise as the lower edge of his cloak brushed against the vegetations, signifying his presence to the unaware dancer. She instantly stopped, swinging her head around in caution, and when that vigilance caught Lelouch's lumbering form advancing towards her, it translated at once into panic – childish panic of a de facto girl at the sight of a stranger with unknown intention.
"Who… who are you?" she cried out, staring at Lelouch alarmingly, more panic reflecting in her eyes as the ex-Emperor closed on her.
The Black Demon Prince smirked, as his Geass-saturated irises flashed with both disappointment and amusement. Whatever psychological fortification the girl boasted was falling apart following his ever step towards her, as she nervously backed off. She was genuinely afraid as she did so – judging from the cripplingly frightened look in her terrified features, Lelouch could see that never before she had encountered strangers alone, at such a close proximity.
"Even though this is just a dream, you are running away?" Lelouch shook his head as he approached, the context of said thought Renesmee would never know.
"Stop! Stop right there!" screamed Renesmee as she shuffled backwards with trembling paces.
Lelouch saw no reason to comply. At one end of the nobility scale, he found it compulsory to have the girl grow some spines. At the other end, regardless of what he might have declared, Renesmee's fright as she backed off was highly entertaining to look at. Having seen people rushing to death without turning back even once for the full duration of his life, how the girl struggled to keep the distance to the stranger, who could be as harmless as a bunny, was particularly interesting as a change of air to the ex-Emperor.
In time, when the girl realized the menacing stranger was not giving in, Renesmee's self-defense mechanism kicked in as a hesitated shriek, but with conviction as it escaped her lips.
"I… I am a vampire, you know. A Vampire, I said!" she shouted as she kept backing off. "If… if you come any closer I'll… I'll bite your head off!"
"Can you?" Lelouch smiled as he thought. And it was not without merits – as powerful and devastating vampires were, they were helpless against spirits like him. After all, he was dead long before that day. It was impossible to kill him again by any means – the thought of standing at the very epicenter of a FLEIJA explosion just for kicks to get the feeling of those victims' last minute had been somewhat tempting to the deceased emperor.
But Renesmee was genuinely frightened, her bewildered eyes panicked and demoralized as Lelouch saw it. And in terms of simple diplomacy and psychology, further threatening her in that situation would not dovetail too well with his overall purpose. Promptly the ex-Emperor stood back, smiling at her, this time with a comforting and understanding look in his eyes.
The Britannian Imperial Family's charisma was hereditary, in life or death. With those tell-tale, dramatic and convincing eyes that could swing an entire enemy unit to his side – without the Geass, that is – soothing Renesmee's agitation didn't even count as a pushover.
"I didn't say I would harm you, did I?" Lelouch said to the girl as his voice softened and sweetened to fit a psychological nine-year-old, a tone he took with some degree of self-disgust though. "I am just passing by to say hi."
"So you are the new neighbor?" the girl calmed down a little as she asked back, with a degree of innocence worth laughing out loud on Lelouch's behalf.
"Not really," Lelouch was quick to regain his composure as he went on. "I'm just a passer-by who happens to come across this place. My name is Lelouch Lamperouge, by the way."
"Mr. Lamperouge, I'm sorry, I can't help you then," Renesmee opened her eyes wide with the curiosity of a stainless mind at him, and then shook her head. "Dad, Mom and Jake – especially Jake – have made it a point against speaking to strangers."
"Well, I've told you my name, so I am no longer a stranger, right?"
Stomaching his own words had never been more painfully guilty to Lelouch like this time. From when did the virtuous – to a sense, of course – 99th Holy Britannian Emperor begin to sound like a despicable pedophile trying to trick a naïve and innocent girl? No, not that Lelouch's code of honor was strict or anything, as he had had no qualms against killing off whole towns or ordering the execution of his ex-comrades and friends en-masse. But that kind of comment he was now forced to throw out was definitely out of his way.
At least it worked – the next thing Lelouch realized was that Renesmee's defenses had loosened somewhat, herself showing up in a visibly accepting air, in contrary to the previous animosity. As before, it was a notion both rewarding and disappointing – to think that this kind of moron would later on take over Britannia and watch over world peace in his and Suzaku's place was disturbing at best and downright repugnant at worst in the ex-Emperor's mind. As before, Lelouch had to painfully swallow the thought while appearing to be genuinely sincere and friendly. And as before, it hurt his self-esteem. A lot.
"You… you do have a point, Mr. Lamperouge," shyly responded the girl. "I guess you are no longer a stranger."
"So, what is your name, young lady?" Lelouch asked, the moral weight of his questions increasing as he spoke.
"I am Nessie," she replied. "My full name is rather hard to pronounce, so I go with this name in general."
"So… who is this Jake you are talking about?" Lelouch asked as he approached her, this time without further objection.
"He's my husband!" Renesmee answered with a degree of boldness and possibly ignorance so gigantic that it almost shook Lelouch off his feet.
"Your… husband?" as much as Lelouch tried to contain his disbelief; his composure was beginning to leak at this point. He managed to seal the container quickly thereafter, but his marriage-innocent brain was visibly melting as he heard her, resulting in a rather awkward moment of silence as his face slowly turned red. Red, as in a beetroot.
"Yeah!" Renesmee replied, oblivious of Lelouch's apparent embarrassment. "And tell you, I've been married for two years!"
"Err…" Lelouch twitched his eyebrow. "Do you really actually know what a marriage means?"
"It is awesome!" Renesmee said blissfully. "It mean you have someone you have known since birth to guard you, look after you, care for your every need and most of all, truly love you, who stays by your side day after day, month after month and year after year!"
Lelouch felt like facepalming as he heard her comment. Judging from her passionate voice and convicting attitude, she seemed to have fully believed in what she said. Her conviction was so strong that Lelouch nearly questioned his own knowledge about marriage – after all, the Emperor had never really loved anyone in the style of courtly love, let alone got married. He could have as well been forced to had he been first born, but alas, he was the 11th son.
"So… you're sure you're married?" Lelouch could barely breathe
"Why not? Jake is so nice to me!" Renesmee declared. "It's like, he doesn't have any life out of me, and he said he will take his own life if something happens to me! That is the power of true love!"
"Oh… god. Is she truly ignorant, or is she feigning said ignorance?" Lelouch's eyebrows twitched even harder.
"Okay, cool," Lelouch yanked, with the top of his psychological capability, his runaway-prone astonishment, barely successful, as he suddenly changed his topic. "Say, would you like a present?"
"A present?" Renesmee rolled her eyes. "For what?"
Even as he spoke Lelouch didn't believe he had actually mentioned it. His iconic Shinkirou was to be passed to his next, rightful heiress, as he has planned – a pity that Nunnally was capable of neither piloting nor ruling. Sooner or later, it would be Renesmee's to use, and that was why Lelouch had brought the craft with him as he passed through the dimensions to the rainy town of Forks.
Yet, judging from the current state of Renesmee's naïve and still childish mind, she had better not touch it yet. However, it looked like Renesmee's rambling on love and marriage had, inconveniently enough, confused the ex-Emperor to the extent that he gave out a Freudian Slip. One that he was sorry about as soon as it escaped his lips.
But withdrawing that comment was close to impossible – Lelouch was determined to build up trust with that girl, and he would rather swallow the mistake than giving her a bad impression. So Lelouch played along.
"Let's just say that Mr. Lamperouge wants to give you a little something for… for your touching speech on true love, yeah!" Lelouch found his throat reeking of immorality as well as doubt and some regret as he spoke. "Say, a toy, mayhaps, Nessie?"
"A toy?" Renesmee repeated. "Sorry, mister, but I have a lot of them at home already!"
"Well, like, a big one. A really big one," Lelouch coaxed. "As big as a house!"
"I've never seen such things," there was explainable doubt in Renesmee's eyes, but for all what Lelouch knew, she was extremely interested. "Are you sure such a thing exists?"
"Mister Lamperouge doesn't lie," Lelouch answered confidently.
His confidence was well-founded. A special package had made its way to the Cullen family's front yard even before they spoke, and it was even bigger than a house, when Lelouch was at it.
"I've delivered it to your house," Lelouch smiled in a friendly manner, as he suppressed all his doubts. "Whenever you return, Shinkirou-kun is yours."
******