The once proud Margrave sank to his knees, trembling in sadness - and then another burst of electricity struck out at a vending machine. Suzaku gripped his weapons, but Lelouch shook his head. Not quite yet. He needed to test this observation one more time.

"It's clear you've escaped from the hospital," Lelouch yelled. "Your Stand is destroying everything around you. All this is doing is reinforcing my opinion of you. A reckless, thoughtless buffoon who only thinks of his own needs and never the needs of another! How can I forgive someone like that?"

... And what, pray tell Suzaku, was that look supposed to mean?

Gottwald yelled in despair and clutched at his head while electricity sparked all around him. Striking the same vending machine, making it spill open with cans of unhealthy soda rolling around on the ground. Lelouch watched as they, too, were struck by the bolts, taking great interest in observing the order in particular. Yes, that made it certain. Without question, he knew how to defeat this Stand. If it came down to it.

[...]

"I'm not the one you need to apologise to," Suzaku said. "The people you frightened, the things you've destroyed." Jeremiah looked around him, as if seeing these things for the first time. To illustrate his point further, Lelouch extracted a penny from his wallet and rolled it across the floor. It was struck down long before it reached the man, and he turned white at the realisation of what he had been doing by accident.

"Another sin to bear," Jeremiah moaned. "Your highness, Sir Kururugi... Tell me: What must I do to atone? How do I even begin?"

"Very well then," Lelouch said. "Then we shall start by testing your intelligence. Tell me: What is Buridan's Ass?"

Suzaku flicked his wrist so the two steel balls started spinning in his hands. Jeremiah tilted his head in confusion, then enlightened understanding. He drew himself to his full height, smoothed back his hair and straightened himself out in an attempt to regain some level of dignity. This, incidentally, is almost impossible to accomplish in a hospital gown. Especially when the left eye refuses to settle on a single location.

"It is a paradox related to the nature of free will," Jeremiah explained, seeming much calmer and in control over himself than he had been until now. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "It refers to a hypothetical situation where a donkey - an ass - is equally hungry and thirsty, then placed precisely midway in between a bail of hay and a pail of water."

Suzaku threw both balls at once, with a precision and speed that was frankly frightening.

"The paradox assumes the donkey will always go to whichever is closer," Jeremiah continued. "But logically, since neither is closer, the donkey will both starve and thirst since it cannot make a rational decision to choose one over the other."

They maintained the same speed and a parallel trajectory. Either throw would have left an athlete gasping at the force put into either of them, never mind the fact that both had been thrown simultaneously, with the same precise level of force.

"Just the same as my own Stand appears to automatically attack whatever is closest to it, myself excluded," Jeremiah continued. "Since Sir Kururugi's steel balls are approaching at the same speed and distance, it can't choose which to -"

They collided on either side of the Stand's head, and Jeremiah collapsed to the floor, twitching slightly, but unconscious. He took the blow well. Just as Lelouch had expected he would.

-Lulu's Bizarre Rebellion Chapter 41