The graveyard of Loum was silent, save for the whisper of maneuvering thrusters and the distant pulse of damaged reactors venting their death throes into the void. From the cockpit of her high-mobility Zaku II, Lieutenant Tanya von Zehrtfeld watched as Side 5—the once-proud constellation of humanity's ambition—drifted as a monument to annihilation. Millions dead. Fleets broken. A strategic triumph written in fire and steel.
She said nothing.
Then, a private channel lit up. It was Captain Jurgen Helmstadt—her second-in-command.
"A rather stark canvas, wouldn't you agree, commander? The Principality has painted its masterpiece in shades of ruin."
"Art is chaos. This was arithmetic," Tanya replied, her tone flat. "And the equation isn't finished."
Jurgen's voice was dry but edged with admiration. "Char insists the masterpiece is complete. Revil's flagship is retreating—barely."
Another voice, sharper and colder, cut across the tactical net: Lieutenant Commander Char Aznable.
"All units, prepare for deceleration ambush. Von Zehrtfeld wing—flank and disable their primary drive cones. The bridge must remain intact."
Tanya didn't respond. Her Zaku's thrusters ignited, flaring against the void. Her sensor readout blinked: Magellan-class vessel Ananke, designation confirmed.
The crippled ship tried to flee, leaking plasma and shattered pride. Tanya's mono-eye zoomed in on the port engine bell. Two precise bursts from her 120mm machine gun tore through the housing. On cue, Jurgen mirrored the maneuver on the starboard side. The Ananke slowed, then stalled—adrift, crippled, and helpless.
"Drive systems neutralized," she reported curtly. "Preparing boarding clamp."
Back in Zum City, Lelouch von Zehrtfeld stood at the center of the war room, watching the real-time feed. The tactical map confirmed it. Ananke was adrift, and internal resistance was already crumbling.
"Target secured," a voice intoned. Tanya's.
He closed his eyes, a breath catching in his throat—not from relief, but from the cold understanding that what had just been captured was no mere general.
It was a catalyst.
---
Aboard the Ananke
Tanya moved like a machine—precise, economical, efficient. Her boarding team cut through resistance in the corridors like a scalpel through flesh. The remaining Federation troops, conscripts mostly, were already dropping their rifles. There was no grand speech, no plea for mercy. Only silence. Only survival.
The bridge was taken within minutes.
There, surrounded by his command staff, stood General Revil. Older than she expected, but not fragile. Not defeated. He met her gaze through the haze of smoke and the sputtering light of broken consoles.
"You've destroyed half the stars to win one battle," he said.
Tanya's visor glinted green, her voice unreadable. "And yet you lost both the battle and the stars."
Char entered then—sword sheathed, helmet under arm, smile razor-thin.
"We could have killed you. Remember that."
Revil's response was a silence that screamed louder than any words.
---
In Zum City
Lelouch watched the shuttle leave the wreck of the Ananke, its path rerouted midflight—no longer bound for Solomon but for the political core of Zeon. Revil would be paraded, no doubt. Gihren would thunder. Kycilia would maneuver. The people would cheer.
And yet Lelouch saw it—what Tanya would later call "the spark."
When her secure message reached him, her words chilled him to the bone:
> "We did not win peace. We won time. They'll rebuild, with Revil as the face of their rage. What we captured today wasn't a general. It was a cause."
Lelouch turned to the great window of the war room, the panorama of Side 5's destruction stretched before him.
His violet eyes narrowed.
"A war of battles becomes a war of ideas," he murmured. "And symbols don't die easily."
The air in Zum City tasted of victory—a cloying, metallic tang of ozone from holographic projectors and the lingering fizz of cheap champagne from the street-side celebrations. Parades snaked through the grand boulevards, citizens waving the crescent-and-star banner of Zeon with a fervor that bordered on hysteria. From the spartan office overlooking the teeming masses, Lelouch von Zehrtfeld saw not triumph, but a dangerous, self-congratulatory fever.
Zeon believed it had won.
But what they captured at Loum wasn't peace—it was a spark.
A single, volatile spark named Revil.
Lelouch, officially a logistics officer and intelligence analyst—titles as unassuming as they were deliberately misleading—served under the charismatic but tragically naive Garma Zabi. His gaze swept across the data slate on his desk: fuel quotas, ration curves, munitions flowcharts. The unglamorous arithmetic of war. It was the perfect veil. No one looked twice at a numbers man.
Then his terminal chimed.
A discreet, priority-one alert.
Encrypted. And not from Garma.
> TO: 2nd Lt. Lelouch von Zehrtfeld, Logistics Corps
FROM: Sovereign Degwin Sodo Zabi
RE: Temporary Reassignment — Special Security Detail
Lelouch's fingers stilled. An order directly from the Sovereign was an anomaly of the highest order. He read on, his violet eyes narrowing.
> You are hereby temporarily reassigned to the military compound designated Sector 7, Zum City.
You will assume responsibility for overseeing all logistical and security protocols for High-Value Prisoner 78-Alpha.
Effective immediately.
cc: Vice Admiral Kycilia Zabi, Intelligence Corps.
He leaned back in his chair, the syn-leather creaking softly.
This wasn't guard duty. This was politics.
Degwin, weary yet cunning, likely saw Revil as a diplomatic instrument—the key to ending a war before it became a wildfire.
Kycilia, sharp and cold, saw him instead as a font of intelligence. And somewhere in the middle, they had chosen Lelouch: a soft-spoken strategist with a noble name and clean hands.
They believed him loyal. Controlled. Useful.
They weren't entirely wrong.
He was a tool.
Just not theirs.
---
Sector 7 was buried deep beneath Zum City's surface—a sterile wound carved from concrete and steel. The jubilation of the surface world did not reach these corridors. Here, the only sounds were the hum of filtration systems, the whisper of turrets tracking movement, and the echo of jackboots on polished tile.
Lelouch stood with his handpicked detail—quiet professionals trained for efficiency, not glory.
The transport arrived with a hiss of hydraulics. The ramp lowered.
Two armored guards descended, followed by the prisoner.
General Johann Abraham Revil.
Even bound and exhausted, Revil carried weight. His uniform had been stripped away, replaced by a standard-issue jumpsuit. His hands were bound by magnetic cuffs, but his eyes still burned. A monument toppled, but not broken.
"Second Lieutenant von Zehrtfeld," Lelouch said calmly, stepping forward. "I'm assuming command of the prisoner's detail. Follow my lead to Cell Block Delta. No deviations."
The guards gave a wordless nod. Lelouch motioned, and his escort formed a protective diamond around the general. The procession moved with surgical precision through the compound's corridors, each footstep echoing like a metronome of control.
Lelouch walked just behind and to Revil's right, watching the man watch.
Every seam, every blind spot, every route—the General's mind was cataloguing them. He hadn't stopped thinking.
The cell was sterile, windowless, inhuman.
A slab bed. A recessed toilet. No comforts.
It was not a prison. It was a statement.
"Secure the prisoner," Lelouch ordered.
The escort obeyed, removed the cuffs, and exited. Lelouch lingered at the threshold, meeting Revil's eyes for the first time in full. He gave a small nod.
"Wait outside. I'll conduct the final security check."
The door hissed shut.
Silence.
The containment field buzzed faintly. Revil massaged his wrists, eyes never breaking contact.
They were sharp, measuring, unafraid.
"You don't belong here, boy," the general rasped.
It wasn't insult. It was diagnosis.
Revil had seen past the uniform, past the facade. He knew a wolf in strategist's clothing when he saw one.
Lelouch didn't react. But the truth of it landed.
"And where do I belong, General?" he asked, voice quiet, academic.
"Not here," Revil repeated. "I've seen your kind before. Not in a Zeon uniform, though. You think in angles. Not fury. You have the eyes of a chess player—not a soldier. The ones who run this war? They don't think. They burn."
Lelouch's lips curved—not into a smile, but into something colder.
He had spent a lifetime hiding that flame, that ambition, beneath layers of calculation.
"My sister burns," Lelouch murmured. "I calculate. That is why I'm here."
Revil stepped closer, his voice low. "Why are you here, really? You don't seem like a man who follows orders blindly."
Lelouch didn't blink. "Because if someone like me isn't here... someone like you won't survive what comes next."
Revil's eyes narrowed. He understood the implication.
This wasn't about Earth vs. Zeon.
It was about Zeon vs. Zeon.
"The fire in their eyes?" Lelouch said, his tone measured. "It consumes everything. Enemies. Allies. Assets. They see a spark... and they only know how to stamp it out."
He turned back toward the door.
"I'm not guarding a man, General. I'm guarding a symbol. They think you're a prize. But you're something else—a narrative. A catalyst. A rallying cry."
He paused, looking back only once.
"I am here," Lelouch said quietly, "to make sure the right people are left standing when the Zabis finish burning everything else down."
The door opened.
Light poured in.
And Lelouch von Zehrtfeld walked back into the cold corridors of Zum City—alone, unarmed, and far more dangerous than anyone dared to imagine.