Another day another death

Lelouch drove his pick- up truck to his favorite gas station. It had a nice view of the countryside and wasn't too far from his house so he could be back in time for dinner. He stifled a cough as he pulled up and grabbed the hose and started filling up the blackened bathtub he'd left there after the third time. As the bathtub slowly filled up, he looked towards the horizon. Luckily, a sunset couldn't be ruined by a lack of real estate development. Substituting crumbling concrete for trees didn't screw up the experience.

It was little wonder he looked forward to the day ending from the moment he turned over to shield his eyes from the sun.

Long experience told him without looking that the tub was full. He dutifully placed his hose back and grabbed his tranquilizer. He smiled a little at the kind donation a local veterinary clinic had given him. The last few had been a bitch and a half.

He injected himself and then quickly took out a candle and lit it before gently sitting down in the tub. Waking up with half your body outside the tub was also a surefire way to screw up your day. He was soon fully submerged in gasoline while carefully holding the naked flame high enough to prevent premature combustion. Again, no need to make this any more painful than it had to be. He suppressed a coughing fit until it subsided again, luckily the convulsions weren't bad enough to drop the candle. Once had been enough.

With a drowsy smile he noticed the narcotic working, his eyes closed before the candle dropped. His eyelids turned a intense orange but he felt nothing. Not even the slight burning sensation one got from staring into the sun.

Practice makes perfect

Lelouch woke up amongst the ashes of his old body. He stood up and stretched a bit with a yawn before heading over to the makeshift shower to rinse himself off. The missus hated it when he came home dirty. A simple rope pull tipped over a barrel that had been collecting rain water and it was funneled into a shower head.

Simple mechanics kept up a nice water pressure for a few minutes. Enough to rinse of the filth and make himself presentable again. He walked his naked ass back to his truck to grab a towel and a set of fresh clothes.

He really needed to start doing this naked. Clothes were dirt cheap now, but still. With a sigh he got dressed and climbed back inside his truck. On his way home he checked his snares and found a few rabbits. A smile crept back onto his face as he saw they were only bleeding from their ears.

"Resistant little buggers aren't you" He chuckled, he threw them in the back of his truck and idly thought of recipes as he drove home. Kallen was going to be thrilled that meat was back on the menu.

As he drove he couldn't help but glance at the giant crater in the distance where a city used to be. He gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly than necessary.

"Fucking introverts. It's always the introverts. Why couldn't she be a blabbermouth. Heck Lloyd and Rakshata both talked my ears off with every little detail. But that bitch? Nope. She's too shy or whatever. Stupid more like. Even Rivalz had enough common sense to not create a button to destroy the world. I should've written a manual or something" He muttered to himself.

"If I'd known, I'd have geassed Euphy into her perfect little rug muncher. Anything's better than this shit." He drove through a intersection without bothering to look "A bullet be nice but after Schneizel got his grubby little paws on her…" He turned off the main road and headed into a little side road that led to his farm.

"I died for the world but I really should have just killed for it." He lamented "Would've saved everybody a lot of bullshit. No shortage of idiots and megalomaniacs. Should've done the world a favor by killing the morons instead of teaching them morals. It would've lasted longer." He glanced up at the darkening sky "Kinda humbling though that Schneizel caliber men turned out to be a dime a dozen. School kids could name Einstein and Galileo, no sweat. But the ruler at the time or even names like Napoleon and they start looking for a way out…"

Lelouch snorted as he pulled up in his driveway "Zero Requiem, a miracle cure that'll only cost you nine-ninety five and your immortal soul. A bargain really. Just sign here to kill all your loved ones, here to get betrayed, here to lose your lover, here to get hated by your little sister and don't forget the guilt on your way out sir." He finished in a chipper salesmen impersonation.

As he pushed open his car door Lelouch spared a thought for his best friend who died a bitter old man, hated and disgraced for his failures to keep world peace. Best damn geass he ever cast, if only unintentionally. Fucker guilt tripped him into this shit. He had to have been wasted when he thought programming Schnzeizel to give solid advice to a headstrong moron would work. Fucker killed more innocent 'rebels' by misdirection and refusal to listen than he thought humanly possible.

No wonder his federation turned to shit. He only had zombie brain and Japan fetishists in charge of a multicultural hodgepodge of nations. Still, it might've been okay without that idiot pulling out his finger-paint to redraw a couple of maps, Einstein style.

Lots of neon pink makes everything better, at least the rest of the world thought so.

The world collectively dipped their hands into a bucket of pink paint and then whipped it at the world map. Not his cup of tea but he could have lived with it, if they hadn't added some sickly green to represent the radiation. Well, that was a understatement. It was more like a never ending oozing waterfall that he had to burn off routinely for his own mental health.

He never thought regular self immolation would be a sign of good mental health. Another trite saying to bite him in the ass like 'good intentions pave the road to hell'. He really hated that one.

Though C.C's 'Read the fine print' was a close second.

Lelouch shook his head, he was complaining too much again. It kinda got ingrained though after being a grandpa so many times. "Really wish they were here. It sucks having to cook all the damn time." Kallen was great and all but she still couldn't cook worth a damn.

"Should've put some on ice. Though I've got no clue how long they would last. Doubt it's centuries, so probably a moot point anyway" Lelouch grumbled as he knocked on the door for the hell of it. It was open.

It was always open. No need to lock it when the only other human in existence was your spouse. "I'm back" He greeted

Heck he'd welcome a burglar with open arms and give him the red carpet treatment. He might even treat a psychopath nicely just for the sheer variety. If he had to die a few times for his amusement. Then so be it.

When no answer greeted him back he shrugged and slung his rabbits over his shoulder and trudged into the house. It didn't take long before he found Kallen staring at their wall.

A wall that had been repainted two dozen times to make room for new scribbles and mathematical equations. It was tough work visualizing temporal and spatial equations, especially if you threw in the soul symbol. That just led to endless frustration.

"Any luck?" he asked not really expecting anything. They'd been stuck for years. Every now and then they had a breakthrough but it was still marginal progress stacked up over time. Manpower to brute force a solution was impossible but they had all the time in the world.

Kallen looked at him with a unusual smile. It almost seemed genuinely happy. They were happily married but the general fucked-upness of their life always put a strain on their smiles.

Her tentative smile turned into a fullblown grin "It works" she said softly before almost screaming "It works. It finally fucking works!"

"What" said Lelouch in a daze barely following. His mind knew what was happening but his heart had trouble believing it. It didn't dare hope only to be crushed again.

Kallen calmed down a bit when she saw his expression "I looked at some old equations of yours and started randomly throwing them in to see what happened. I think you might've written one off too soon. It works with our latest model" She finished and nodded at him as if to say it was okay to smile.

"You checked it?" Lelouch asked tentatively as his chest swelled up with a feeling he hadn't felt since their wandering began.

Hope.

He looked at the wall and her newest additions in particular. He recognized her short hand for the soul in the middle and that was time over there. Some biological and biomedical calculations over there and that was quantum theory but the last bit had him confused. If he read this right then instead of sending their souls through space to search for new bodies on another planet like they planned. They would just appear there, no wormhole to transport them across the vast expanse of space but some infinity calculation. He thought over his own mystical research and supposed it could work. Kallen had substituted C's world into the infinity variable to account for their transportation. The nexus of souls was the veritable hub that held all living beings together. So naturally it was faster to travel through the center than along the wheel hoping to stumble onto something. But more importantly it was actually guaranteed they would find something living to inhabit instead of praying for one.

Kallen nodded "I ran it twice. We can't be sure till we try it but I think we're as close as we're ever going to get"

Lelouch smiled. He'd recheck everything himself and refuel their supercomputer to rerun their calculations from the very basics. Everything had to be perfect. They were gambling their souls after all.

But nevertheless he truly smiled at the news. He trusted Kallen. She'd always been smart. Maybe not as smart as him, Schneizel Lloyd, Rakshata or that bitch. But she got straight A's while barely attending school and plotting to overthrow a dictatorship. It just got lost in comparison.

This could work. It had to. The earth was poisoned. It would eventually recover but it would take eons. The time of humans was over, like the dinosaurs that came before them. He had no intention to sit around for the next generation of species to come along and nurture them into his vision of a gentle world. It would probably work better than his original version but he was tired. He was spent. He just wanted it to end.

They may not have the luxury of dying to escape it all but they would find a way.

Worst case: they'd appear in the vacuum of space and float around for eternity. They'd die and never resurrect again.

It was an end either way.

Two hundred years later.

Lelouch woke up screaming but it was a good kind of screaming. He screamed in triumph. He was a baby!

He was upside down, disoriented and everything was way too big. The pain in his ears due to some loud noise made him want to scream even more until he realized it was his own voice. Even the air felt weird on his skin after being squeezed through a little hole under high pressure out of his mandatory prison of nine months.

The sensory overload was incredible but eventually he got a hold of himself and simply blinked a few times as he took in his new surroundings. It was at first glance a bit disappointing. There wasn't a machine in sight. The only thing that gave him hope was the paper somebody was taking notes on. A medieval backwater by the looks of it.

A jarring slap to his bottom shocked him enough that he couldn't resist screaming again for a moment. He looked to the man who did it and noticed he wore a headband. A metal headband. A quick glance confirmed that they all wore metal headbands with a strange symbol on it. Some kind of cult perhaps or a army? It seemed strange for medics to wears them unless it was their version of the red cross. Lelouch nodded to himself. Yeah that made sense.

He looked around then in hopes of finding Kallen. No scream alerted him to her whereabouts and she'd gone first. She had to be here somewhere. His search was cut off by a cloth shoved into his face. For a moment he thought he was being killed at birth but then it shifted and rubbed the rest of his body. He stopped screaming once he realized they were merely wiping him down. Fuck, it was scary being a baby. Every little thing was huge and threatening, no wonder they screamed so much.

He was plopped down in a swaddling of blankets next to another baby who he hoped was Kallen. Her gurgling did not help nor did his own slurred speech. It was frustrating but he would have to wait until he re-mastered his greatest weapon, his big mouth.

While his ears tried to decipher the babble that hopefully-Kallen was making at him his eyes scanned the room. No windows, torches for light, damp, probably condensation, so a cave?

Weird.

He looked towards his mother for answers and only found more questions. Instead of the stereotypical mother smiling through the pain to greet her baby he found a wide eyed animal clawing at her restraints.

Leather straps bound her to the table but with enough slack for her to arch her back instead of the mere wiggle that was intended. The jarring sight was ended by a quick chop to her neck.

Lelouch stared at his new mother's seemingly lifeless form until he could finally make out the tell tale sign of her chest rising. Not dead yet.

Why did they? Where was he? The cult answer seemed even more likely now. He tried to sit up but his arms failed him. He cursed, this body was even weaker than the last one. He silently promised himself he'd work out this time despite knowing he'd break that promise.

The men around him talked above him and prodded him a bit and took some blood. All technically normal stuff but terrifying nonetheless with his unconscious mother in the background. He tried to ignore it up until one guy put his palm on top of him and it started glowing green. Lelouch stared. He just stared. He'd seen some weird shit in the geass order but glowing hands hadn't been one of them.

Then it dawned on him. Somehow these people had also mastered the same equations that took him centuries to puzzle out. They could access the same energy and more importantly their bodies had adapted enough to use it. He grinned at the possibilities of relieving his boredom. He could finally explore it without traveling a fortnight to make sure his corpses wouldn't foul up his home.

There was a reason why he had practiced for the final version of his soul jump in a freezing wasteland.

Practice makes perfect

Author

I wanted to do a code geass crossover for a long time. Trouble was the start and goals for me. Usually how the MC arrives in the new universe is just hand waved away by the author and while I don't care as a reader I do care as a writer. So I wrote my own generic story opener that I can use for several crossovers with a inbuilt hook of a changed Lelouch. The deliberately suicidal but very sane Lelouch struck me as more interesting than just transplanting him just after Requiem or during the rebellion. It has no loose ends that need to be tied up in the canon storyline so I don't need to muddle up any plotline with unnecessary angst about them.

I still have a problem with goals though since Lelouch's goals are in context. I doubt he would care as much about a gentle world without his sister and other precious people to protect. So I had Kallen join him as motivation and dialogue partner. I also want to keep them immortal just in new bodies. It shouldn't ruin the story since every experienced reader knows the protagonist is practically immortal until the story ending. And C.C. already showed there are worse fates than death in the first episode. Just picture Orochimaru meeting Lelouch or just Ramsay Bolton.

No clue how to write him in the naruto verse though. Yes he would want to create a gentle world despite how badly his last attempt worked out. But not immediately and would he be able to connect with people other than Kallen? When should he be born? Just before or during the third war to make a difference or go down the well worn path and put him in naruto's generation? I'm leaning towards before third war but it makes world building a bitch and a half.

I'm spinning my wheels a bit in several fandoms trying to ground a proper storyline but not having much luck. Bits and pieces only. So if anyone wants to use this generic story opener they have my blessing.

My one piece fic is dead but not the code geass fic. I still got plenty to publish if I wanted to.

Don't expect any quick updates.

PS yes this can be used for westeros and I'm spinning my wheels on that version.