Standing Tall (Patreon)

Rakshata Chawla smirked as she slowly drew the tobacco into her lungs with a long, deep breath.  Most people just took her for an addict, and that was true to an extent; however, she didn’t smoke merely because it relieved stress, kept her awake for long hours into the night so she could work, nor because it served as a good deterrent for weak-willed idiots…no, she smoked for the simple reason that it gave her a certain mystique, or style that made others pause before her.

An…intimidation tactic if you will.

Save for the fact that it wasn’t working on her latest visitor.

The young Lamperouge, if that really was his name, had introduced himself, shaken her hand, and held her gaze with a disturbing intensity.  The light smile he wore didn’t reach his eyes and belied the fact that he was here, obviously, to speak of business and only business.  He carried himself tightly beneath the casual clothes despite the fact that he couldn’t be older than sixteen and couldn’t have possibly had enough life experience to be that cautious…

Rakshata frowned somewhat at the cool violet orbs set elegantly into his face.

They were too cold, even for someone as cynical as the blonde scientist.

“And what can I do for you, boyo?”

“Well, Dr. Chawla, straight to it then,” Lelouch nodded.  “I read the last article you published under the publication Methodology of Britainnian Medicine and wanted to talk to you about the procedure you theorized.”

Rakhata raised an eyebrow…the boy would have been, what?  Eleven, twelve, at the time?  Provided he hadn’t dug through a hundred back issues, such would have made him an extremely well-read child.  Still…

“Spinal prosthetics?  Well, I hadn’t expected that dinosaur to come up…anyway, it’s impossible.  I’d need someone with a virtually identical bone structure, blood chemistry, and they’d need to be no more than a few years apart.  Since you read the article, though, you’d know that there’s enough physical pain involved for the donor.  Both parties would need intensive rehabilitation…and that’s discounting the failure rate, which was dishearteningly high.”

“But there’s a chance, correct?”  Lelouch pressed.

Rakshata frowned further.  “Child, I don’t know exactly who you are, but you’re obviously desperate enough to track down a fugitive of Britainnia and, somehow, I think you’re the type to know exactly what you’re dealing with…”

“A dozen people died in one of your medical surveys due to improper dosages of drugs,” Lelouch stated dispassionately, stopping Rakshata cold with his lack of emotion.  “I’m also aware of the extenuating circumstances, Ms. Chawla.  Your assistants were either incompetents or stupid.  I’d never have approached you if the mistake was due to personal failings in judgment or intelligence.”

“You’re a good doctor, Ms. Chawla,” Lelouch continued, “And a better scientist.  I feel justified in intrusting the health and safety of my sister and myself into your care.”

Rakshata scowled, her face twisting in anxiety.

“Please,” Lelouch asked quietly, the word cracking the mask of impenetrable confidence he wore perpetually.  “I’ve exhausted all other avenues.  There is no other route open for me to see my sister walk again.  I won’t beg…but I will do anything-anything-within my power…any amount of money, to see her walk again.”

Rakshata inhaled deeply before fixing the hidden prince with an almost predatory stare.  “Well then, boyo…I suppose I have no choice, but…”

“You may find that some prices…are not so easily paid.”

Chapter 1-Of the Buying and Selling of Souls

He’d refused her.

The man, boy in front of her had done what no one else, no one, had ever done in her long, long life.  If he’d even cared to look, he would have seen gaping shock on the green-haired witch’s face; as things stood, the teen had merely stepped in front of her in a noble, if misguided, attempt to protect her from the spray of the royals’ guns.  He was brave, perhaps a trait gained in his maternal lineage, though C.C. had to admit, that even in the dim light of the underground, Lelouch strongly resembled his father…with hints of his mother’s blood here and there.  It was such a shame, too, for him to die here, alone with only her to witness yet another death…

-ding! Ding-ding-ding-ding!

Amber eyes flared wide at the…metallic sound of bullets reverberating off something that was most definitely not flesh.  Curiously, C.C. blinked away the remainder of the fluid from her eyes…surely some of the guards’ shots had merely missed…

But no.

Her eyes hadn’t deceived her, the bullets had hit home.  The shots had been fired with all the accuracy expected of special operations divisions of the Britainnian Military and…nothing had happened.  Well, not exactly nothing, but the bullets had just bounced off the teen standing in front of her.  Even with the several centuries worth of life experience the immortal possessed, this development left C.C. blinking.

“You’ve killed my best friend, you’ve tried to kill me, and you’ve doubtless committed countless crimes against humanity in the name of Britannia,” Lelouch spoke quietly, his tone cast in iron and cold as ice.  “In the name of the Eleventh Prince of the Empire, I sentence you to death for these offences.”

When he moved, it was almost too fast for her to see.  In mere fractions of a second, Lelouch had cleared the space between himself and the guards, the lead man’s head now in his hand.  Despite being hardened to displays of blood and gore, even the immortal flinched as Lelouch’s crushed the man’s skull with all the ease of stepping on an ant.  What followed was brutally efficient, shocking, and a testament to exactly why the secret prince had turned down her offer of power.

Lelouch trust another hand out, his outstretched fingers leading through one of men’s chests.  A fountain of blood erupted in concert with the man’s horrifying scream.  The lethal wound that had appeared in his chest saw to a quick death, his life blood flowing out as if in a river.  Lelouch’s hand, dripping with gore, shone bright red in the dim light of the derelict subway station.

Necks snapped.

Bones broke.

Flesh tore.

Each scream was inhumanly loud in the confined space, C.C. flinching at each noise.  It had been a long, long time since such casual brutality had been inflicted from one human being on another in this primal way…she had not seen the like since her torture centuries ago.  What she saw before her was not a human, was not a being of enlightened reason…no, what she saw before her was something crawled up from a deep pit of the human consciousness, a beast gnawing at the dark heart of man.

That which was neither man, nor beast, but a remnant of ages long past all the same.

The gruesome scene, soaked with blood, that the immortal looked upon when all movement ceased was one which would have left some people, other people, sick at the mere sight.  C.C, it should be noted, was not one of those people.  She had seen entire armies of dead and dying men on hundreds of battlefields throughout time, all left as food for carrion eaters at the end of the day.

As he turned back towards his fallen friend, Lelouch’s eyes were wet with emotion