The last thing Lelouch vi Britannia remembered was the cold bite of steel sliding between his ribs and the warm spill of his own blood soaking the white of his royal garb. Nunnally's scream had cut through the roar of the crowd like a blade sharper than any Knightmare's. "Brother!" she had cried, and in that single word he had heard every sacrifice, every calculated death, every lie he had ever told to build the world she could finally live in. Zero Requiem—his masterpiece, his suicide, his gift. The stage lights had dimmed. The curtain had fallen.
Then came the dark.
Not the peaceful dark of death, but something else. Something that smelled of rust and chemicals and distant smoke. Something that pressed against his skin like damp cloth and hummed with the low growl of unseen machines.
Lelouch's eyes snapped open.
He was lying on cold, uneven stone, half-curled against a wall slick with condensation. Pipes ran overhead like veins in some colossal beast, dripping a greenish liquid that hissed faintly when it hit the ground. The alley stretched away in both directions—narrow, crooked, swallowed by shadows at either end. Faint neon flickered far above, casting sickly violet and amber smears across the brick and scrap-metal patchwork that made up the walls. The air tasted bitter, metallic, like chewed copper and old oil. Nothing like the crisp, filtered atmosphere of Pendragon. Nothing like any place he had ever known.
He pushed himself up on trembling arms and froze.
His hands.
They were small. Delicate. The knuckles barely scuffed, the fingers short and unscarred. No calluses from years of gripping controls or signing death warrants. No faint ink stains from endless strategy notes. Just… a child's hands.
Lelouch's breath caught. He scrambled to his knees, ignoring the sudden wave of dizziness, and caught his reflection in a shallow puddle pooled between two cracked flagstones. Violet eyes stared back—wide, too wide, framed by a face that belonged to a boy of perhaps ten years old. Black hair fell in messy strands across a forehead that had once worn the weight of an empire. The sharp, aristocratic lines he had cultivated were gone, softened into something almost fragile.
"What… is this?" The words left his mouth in a whisper, but even the voice was wrong—higher, lighter, stripped of the commanding baritone he had honed to move armies. He pressed a small palm to his chest. The heartbeat beneath was rapid, frightened. "A dream? A hallucination before the end? Or have the gods decided my punishment is to relive childhood as some cosmic jest?"
He laughed then—a short, sharp sound that echoed off the alley walls and sounded far too young to belong to the Demon Emperor. The laughter died quickly. Lelouch vi Britannia did not panic. Lelouch vi Britannia calculated.
Step one: assess the environment.
The alley was no mere backstreet. It felt… sunken. The distant roar he had mistaken for wind was actually the rumble of heavy industry somewhere far above. A thin haze hung in the air, glowing faintly purple where stray beams of light pierced it. He could hear voices—rough, accented, echoing from the mouth of the alley—but they were not speaking Japanese or any Britannian dialect he recognized immediately. And yet… the cadence was close. Familiar enough that his prodigious mind began cataloging phonemes even as panic tried to claw its way up his throat.
Britannian English, or something near enough. He would be fluent within hours. Days at most. His memory had never failed him before.
Step two: test capabilities.
Lelouch closed his eyes and reached inward, searching for the power that had defined him. The Geass. The contract with C.C. The absolute command that had bent kings and commoners alike to his will. He felt the familiar twitch behind his left eyelid—the sigil ready to bloom.
A group of shadows detached from the gloom at the alley's end. Four figures—older boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, dressed in patched leather and ragged coats stained with what might have been oil or blood. One carried a length of pipe. Another twirled a crude knife. Their eyes gleamed with the easy cruelty of those who had learned early that the weak existed to be broken.
"Hey, fresh meat," the tallest one called, voice thick with the local drawl. "Lost, little topsider? What's with the strange white garb? Did your fancy parents dump you down here to toughen you up?"
Lelouch rose slowly, smoothing his torn white tunic—too big now, stained with blood, hanging off his smaller frame like a costume from a play he no longer remembered the lines for. He met their stares with the same imperious tilt of the head he had once used to face entire armies.
"You will leave this place and forget you ever saw me," he said, voice steady despite its youth. The Geass that should have flared to life in his eyes in the form of a crimson crane, the feeling of entrapping his enemy simply didn't happen.
The thugs blinked. Then they laughed.
"Kid's got some spirit," the one with the pipe sneered. "Not to mention he could pass of as a lass with looks like that, one of those degenerates from higher up would definitely pay a hefty sum for this peace of booty!" The thugs snorted in merriment.
Lelouch tried again, sharper this time. "I said obey me!"
No Geass manifested, he could feel the lack of connection. No glassy stare. No sudden slackening of shoulders. Only mocking grins and the whistle of a pipe cutting through the air.
The first blow caught him across the ribs. Pain exploded—bright, immediate, far too real for any dream. Lelouch staggered, small body folding around the impact. A second strike slammed into his shoulder, spinning him into the wall. Rough hands grabbed his hair, yanking his head back.
"Think you're special, huh?" the leader hissed, breath sour. "Down here, you're nothing but another mouth to feed or a body to roll for spare parts."
Fists and boots followed. Lelouch curled into himself, protecting his head the way any child would, but his mind raced. This was no illusion. The pain was too sharp, the copper taste of blood in his mouth too vivid. C.C.'s contract… the code… it should have protected him. Yet here he was, bleeding in an alley that smelled of industrial decay and forgotten hope.
He refused to scream. Emperors did not scream.
A soft clink of metal on stone cut through the grunts and laughter.
Then the world filled with smoke.
Thick, acrid, billowing white clouds erupted from a small sphere that had rolled between the attackers' feet. It popped with a muffled whump, and suddenly the alley was a choking fog. Coughs and curses erupted around him.
"Run!" a small voice hissed from somewhere above—high, urgent, laced with a mix of fear and wild excitement.
A tiny hand—smaller even than his own—grabbed his wrist and yanked. Lelouch stumbled after it blindly, boots slipping on wet stone. The grip was surprisingly strong for its size, tugging him through the swirling smoke with the certainty of someone who had done this before.
They burst out the far end of the alley into a wider lane lined with flickering chem-lamps and hanging laundry that smelled of lye and rust. The hand kept pulling, weaving them between crates and rusted barrels, down a narrow stairwell that spiraled deeper into the maze of metal walkways and dripping pipes. Shouts echoed behind them, growing fainter.
Only when the sounds had faded to distant echoes did the small rescuer skid to a halt in the shadow of a massive support pillar. Lelouch leaned against the cold metal, chest heaving, one hand pressed to his bruised ribs. His savior stood a few paces away, half-hidden by the pillar's curve.
She couldn't have been more than ten herself—maybe eleven at most. Skinny arms and legs, pale face smudged with grease, bright blue hair tied back in a single messy braid that swung like a pendulum when she moved. A simple patchwork dress hung off her frame, pockets bulging with what looked like scrap metal and glass vials. Wide blue eyes stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness, one hand still clutching a second small sphere that looked suspiciously like another homemade explosive.
"You okay?" she asked, voice quick and a little breathless. "Those guys are mean. They like picking on anyone who looks… new. You look..." her words were cut short as she noticed the obvious blood on his half torn off clothing.
Lelouch straightened as best he could, ignoring the protest of his small, battered body. Even at ten years old, even bleeding and lost, the Demon Emperor knew how to command a stage.
"I am… unharmed, it's not my blood, at least not all of it" he lied smoothly, the words already shaping themselves to the local cadence with unnatural ease. His mind filed away every syllable, every inflection. Fluency would come faster than these children could imagine. "You have my gratitude, young lady. That was an impressive device. Homemade, I presume?"
The girl's eyes lit up for a split second—pride flashing through the caution. Then she shrugged, scuffing one worn boot against the ground. "Yeah. Just some powder and chemicals I mixed. Vander says I shouldn't play with 'em inside, but… well, you needed help." She tilted her head, braid swinging. "I'm Powder. What's your name? And how'd you end up in the Lanes looking like you just ran away from your own wedding? You are from the uppercity, Piltover aren't you?"
Lelouch opened his mouth to answer—what uppercity? Piltover?—and stopped.
Because the truth slammed into him like a second beating.
He had no idea where he was.
No idea how he had arrived.
And worst of all… when he reached for the familiar thread that connected him to C.C., to the World of C, to the immortal witch who had granted him power and purpose… there was only silence.
An empty void where her mocking voice should have echoed.
Lelouch vi Britannia—genius, rebel, emperor, martyr—stood in the dim glow of an undercity lamp, ten years old again, blood on his lip, and for the first time in his entire calculated life… he felt truly, terrifyingly alone.
He smiled anyway. A small, sharp, dramatic smile that didn't reach his violet eyes.
"My name," he said, voice steady despite everything, "is Lelouch. And it appears, Powder… that I find myself misplaced..."
"No shit?!" The girl—Powder—retorted him amused, with those wide, curious eyes, fingers twitching around her second smoke bomb like it was a comfort blanket. Above them, the distant rumble of the city continued, indifferent to the two small figures standing in its shadows.
Lelouch's mind was already spinning new plans, new strategies, new layers of the grand performance that was his life.
But deep down, in the place where even emperors kept their fears, one question burned brighter than any Geass: Was he, the Demon Emperor, given a second chance?