((And college eats your time. Sorry for the wait.))
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Eleven Times Faster Than a Normal Zaku, Suzaku Kururugi
Throughout Richilieu's entire 'divine' monologue, O.O. had been politely clamping her own mouth shut, trying painfully to restrain a rich laughter. She allowed him to finish, however, only did so by pure luck, losing her restraint the moment he completed the word "God". Doubled over, holding clutched hands at her side, her far more innocuous laughter filled the empty air where LeDieu's egotistical claims had been only moments beforehand.
"A… A God! Oh, wow, that's funny!" Tears formed at her eyes, such was the intensity of this chortle.
Richilieu, of course, was less than amused. Eyes narrowed, a near scowl painted on his lips, and he addressed the involuntarily demeaning woman.
"Dare I ask why you're laughing so hard?"
Her vehement laughing had died down into a giggle, O.O. straightening up, taking in air, and brushing white hair from her face. A last snicker and she began to speak normally, though not without an amused grin silently mocking the signer of her contract.
"Quite honestly, you've gone through the transition way faster than any of my former users. How does it feel, the unearned megalomania?" She openly mocked him with her tone, a condescending stride carrying her over to the understandably annoyed Richilieu, her slender hands subtly dragging his head downward to face her, the youth noticing that her well structured hands were yet another indicator of the aristocracy.
"Unearned? I just outmaneuvered Zero, O.O., or didn't you notice?" His hands awkwardly twitched in his pockets, eager to act on his slighted pride despite his face's stoic appearance. Still, though, he held firm, merely gazing down at O.O. as per her wishes and detecting from her facial features nothing he hadn't expected.
Amusement, condescension, arrogance…
However, Richilieu also observed several seemingly inappropriate expressions.
Anxiousness, worry, hope…? Is she concerned about my outburst?
"O.O…." A sigh, and his eyes softened. He realized that she was jest as likely attempting to preserve her new toy for as long as she could as she was actually attempting to protect him out of some sense of comradery, however, he still found himself somewhat touched by the emotions played out in her eyes.
A sole finer shoved itself directly into LeDieu's face, the uncalloused skin shining in the foreground of the boy's vision.
"When you are able to kill one, you are an assassin."
Another finger shot up, indicating the second item on her list.
"When you are able to kill millions, you are a king."
A third, forming an awkward W, now appeared.
"But only when you are able to kill all, to hold the fate of everybody the world over in your hands, are you a god."
She turned back now, solemn.
"Richilieu, you've barely passed the first threshold. You're no more powerful than your every day murderer, and yet you claim divinity for blind siding a classmate?"
Her stride took her a few feet away from the boy, forcing him to turn his head to the right in order to keep her in sight. He appeared, outwardly, anyway, to contemplate her words, however, was fairly quick to retort.
"Not a classmate. Zero. That's the identity that he's chosen for himself." A defense of his claim, though he in no way addressed O.O.'s attack. Stepping so that his entire body was now facing this girl, the gravel underneath the soles of his sneakers crunching, he sighed with exasperation. "And you know, as well as I, that Zero is a very formidable foe."
"Formidable enough that you become a god upon getting in a sucker punch? Stop flattering yourself, and Lelouch too, for that matter." She stared disapprovingly. Was she disappointed with him? "Regardless," She began again, blue eyes focusing in the distance as her head tilted to the side in wonder. "Your 'foe' is here."
Richilieu's own eyes, another shade of blue that defied and mismatched his hair, darted to the side, a slight rotation of the head revealing a noticeably upset Lelouch walking determinedly toward the thief of his helmet.
"So what now, Mr. God? Gonna summon a tornado on him?" She spoke mockingly, but her tone only confirmed in LeDieu's eyes her disappointment, her discontent with his reaction and proclamations.
Well, big deal. I disappoint a lot of people. Though the words were somewhat false. He was, if only unconsciously, mildly upset that she so disapproved of his actions.
At last, the hidden prince came within speaking distance, knees only just discernable as shaking from the long chase he had been forced to run. His eyes, a supernatural shade of violet, and his hair, curly brown mess that it was, sat atop a profile that made obvious its determination in its goals, jaw firmly set and teeth clenced. Those same supernatural eyes were set in a fierce death gaze on LeDieu, and his straw thin body, clad loosely in the black and gold laced uniform students were required to wear, stood perfectly straight, leaving no doubt that Lelouch had every intention to weather whatever LeDieu could throw at him.
For a while, they stood in silence, somewhere along the line Richilieu rotating to face him and O.O. slipping behind him. Truthfully, the thin corridor was rather appropriate for their showdown, their position between two buildings casting a shadowy atmosphere on the opponents' dark hearts.
"How?" The Britannian royal spoke first, voice teeming with malice, but also, perhaps, with a tint of surprise.
"How…?" LeDieu unintentionally seemed to mock his counterpart's query, rotating his hand forward in an indication to elaborate.
"You have Geass, I'm certain of it. Possession, most likely. I spied your body collapsing roughly a sixteen of a second before I blacked out, so you're transmitting more than just light." He sensed an internal revelry by Lelouch, perhaps a small celebration to acknowledge that he'd guessed the most likely ability of LeDieu based solely on such a minute observation. "I want to know how. Did you get it from C.C.?" He sounded betrayed. Clearly his relationship with the immortal granting his Geass was a tad more intimate.
O.O. nodded at his question, but not in affirmation. Instead, it seemed to be more for herself, as if confirming a silent query. Richilieu, shutting his eyes and procuring the dropped helmet from the ground behind him, deemed it appropriate to smirk.
"And what would you do if I had?" Confident, brazen… Was this an act or did Richilieu's ambitions from earlier override the disappointment laced in O.O.'s voice?
"That wasn't what I asked. No matter; how did you find out I'm Zero?"
"You turned around." LeDieu was certain to keep his eyes closed as Lelouch blinked, processing what this youth had to say, his expression gradually darkening into a ghastly scowl, lips and nostrils flared with teeth visibly gritting. The realization, by Richilieu's account, that he himself had revealed his identity shattering any internal calm he may have had.
"It… it was a guess?" He hissed this, much to the entertainment of O.O., who appeared to be snickering silently at Lelouch's rage.
"Does it alter your situation if it was? Either way, I know now." A condescending smirk shot at Lelouch's pride, the youth unable to do much to the discoverer of his helmet discreetly. Cornered and fatigued, Lelouch conceded a tactical retreat. He hung his head with his concession.
"What do you want?"
While Richilieuy silently reveled in this open admittance of defeat, O.O. only stared at the son of a Britannian king, dumbfounded and more than a little disappointed at such an anti-climactic conclusion. Just as Richilieu was about to state his demands, O.O. shot her hand up from her side to cuff him on the ear, causing the boy to stop in the middle of his though and turn, perplexed and slowly with an eyebrow raised confusedly, toward this offender of his sanity. She refused to await his beratement, instead stepping out from behind him and marching toward the defeated Britannian.
"Oh, come on!" Her forceful gait crushed gravel as Lelouch slowly peered upward, perplexed. "You're going to surrender so easily to him? Where's the action? Where's the drama? No, you'll have to try again. I won't let Richilieu win after that little speech without him at least earning it." Hands were placed on hips as this snowy haired girl gazed defiantly at a rather befuddled Britannian and his French counterpart.
"But… Aren't you with him?"
Richilieu's face met his palm as he too strode forward, intent on physically repressing her verbal assault on his victory.
"With him? He wouldn't know if a girl were coming on to him if she-"
"O.O., shut up!"
"O.O.?" Lelouch's eyes shot forward to this girl with such a strange name.
… Dammit! I slipped.
O.O. herself now actually appeared rather amused at the conflict, slinking again to a more inconspicuous location, not at all unaware that Lelouch, Zero, was watching her movements.
"So she's-"
"A cosplayer. She's a character from one of those Eleven animations. She likes to remain in character, so I indulge her by speaking the character's name." Richilieu stepped further forward in order to capture his attention away from the complicating girl, the Frenchman's eyes tightly squinted so as to avoid a collision. His prey refused to be fooled, however. Rising from his slump, a hand placed dramatically over his eye in order to keep the gradually developed, unspoken agreement of no Geass intact, Lelouch spoke.
"Odette Ophelie, am I right? If that was you on the PA system, O.O., then I can only assume Richilieu here is the contractor to your Code."
"Oh, you know about that? Don't say anything else, please, I haven't told him about the Code yet."
Richilieu plastered a scowl on his lips, swinging his right arm, helmet and all, around in front of him in order to garner attention.
"Enough! Don't forget, Zero, I have your helmet still!"
The Britannian turned his casual glance from O.O. to Richilieu for a moment, grimacing in contemplation. The trembling LeDieu, upset that he'd been revealed so easily spoke again after a few moments.
"A vow of secrecy. I know that you're both Zero and a Geass wielder. You know of my Geass and O.O. We speak of these things to no one but each other. Agreed?"
"So we'll be blackmailing each other, is that it?" His eyes narrowed at LeDieu, obviously not pleased with having anything held over his head.
"Unfortunately."
Both parties sat momentarily in a contemplative silence, the third party, O.O., rapidly losing interest and inspecting the back of her hand quite studiously in her wait.
"Very well." Lelouch eventually spoke, dropping his hand but keeping his left eye shut regardless. "It's a deal." His opponent simply nodded, sighing and leaning against one of the two brick walls. Zero's helmet eventually found its way again to the feet of Lelouch, clattering along abrasive gravel to the silent chagrin of its owner. Unwilling to spoil their tenuous agreement, however, he remarked nothing on the matter, contenting himself to casually retrieving it from the ground. Lelouch continued.
"Then I must go. My helmet can be seen by no one else." Though a hand covered his face in an international sign of failure, LeDieu still nodded in approval, observing with ears alone Lelouch's departure, the crunch of gravel on sole obscuring the mumbled musings of O.O.
"Not quite the negotiator Clovis de Lyons was, is he…?"
---
While some might legitimately argue that failure is a necessity to success, it could not ever appear so in the eyes of the thwarted Frenchman. To him, this defeat was a shame, a dishonor made worse by the fact that it could have easily been prevented. In his anger at her indulgence, he'd accidentally called O.O.'s name, revealing to Lelouch her identity and their acquaintanceship. A blunder, truly and fully.
"Oh, get over it." O.O. irritably called from the bland couch of Richilieu's dormitory, eyes and hands focused on the mastery of a hijacked portable game found in the office's "Lost and Found". "So you screwed up; that's part of being human." The subject of her message was, himself, lying on his back in his own bed, arms folded over his eyes as he thought over his current situation. Things were advancing too quickly; how long ago had it been, the day O.O. granted him Geass? Three days, maybe four, and already he was engaged in a duel with Zero, the masked terrorist who threatened to one day overthrow the government and its injustices. It just seemed so rapid, and the damage he'd received falling from his power high certainly didn't do much to assist his struggling thoughts.
"O.O.," He called to his more experienced roommate, typically ignoring her statement with the utmost nonchalance. "He mentioned a Code. What is that?"
"Ah, but that would be helping, wouldn't it?" She giggled and said nothing more, playfully waving socked feet in the air. A scowl met her in response, but Richilieu did not pursue the matter further, most likely due to fatigue, and simply lay, letting his thoughts go unreined and watching as an observer as they flitted in and out of his psyche. Grand and miniscule, philosophical and material, altruistic and selfish; all were present. LeDieu had no influence over what he considered in those moments.
In what seemed an instant, a revelation hit, and he suddenly stood hunched over O.O., arms on either side over her shoulders so as to prevent her escape.
"The Code. It's the code to the mind, isn't it?"
The thought had spurned from his unorganized psyche. Whereas, when put under this stress, his mind had simply caved and given in to a fatigue, O.O.'s always appeared reined in, under her own control and her own volition. In his desperate search for knowledge of this word that eluded his texts and danced so mockingly in the minds of both O.O. and Lelouch, this conclusion seemed justified.
O.O. barely put her game down, just enough so that her eyes could meet his as he made his query. A smile, revealing her teeth, was given, conveying more amusement than happiness.
"Not quite." She shuffled into a more comfortable position that involved letting the portable device drop to the ground as she squirmed into a more upright position. "But if you absolutely need a hint."
She leaned forward, and her lips met his. Richilieu stood still more from surprise than shock as she pulled away, his eyebrows raised and eyes nonverbally asking her the reason for that action.
"It's the Code to that. Interpret that however you like." She smirked again and squirmed out from under his grasp, leaping from the arm of the couch into the doorway of his bedroom in order to slip under the sheets before he could have a chance to claim them, leaving her target to merely stoop on his legs and contemplate her actions.
"Lust, love… Life?"
"Y'know, for someone who studies people," She shouted from the next room, having heard his guesses, "You sure don't understand them very well."