Author's Note:
This was a little idea I had after watching the anime for D. Grayman as well as after reading a limited number of chapters in the Manga. So the time frame for the story would be after the anime finishes but before the discovery of Allen being a Noah. This is also my first fanfic! I really hope you enjoy! Please review, I will take supportive criticism, or unsupportive if you like. ^_^
Disclaimer: D. Grayman and all characters belong to Katsura Hoshino, I own nothing!
It was lunchtime, and the cafeteria of the Black Order Headquarters is bustling with activity. Finders, Exorcists, and scientists moved about, lining up to get their food from their ever-so-cheerful head chef. Others were chatting animatedly, sitting on the long tables and benches and enjoying the food and what little time of peace they had before it was back to the missions and research.
A certain white-haired boy plopped his 5 trays, filled to the brim with all kinds of delicious food (courtesy of Jeryy), on the table before sitting opposite of Lenalee and Lavi.
"Oi Allen," Says Lavi, "do you have any fears?"
"Fears?" says Allen, confused, "You mean spiders, the dark, that kind of thing?"
"Yes, do you have any?"
"Why so suddenly ask this type of question?" Allen asks, still confused.
"Out of curiosity, that's all." Lavi replied.
Allen thought back to the time when he was up against Tyki Mikk, when he broke Allen's Innocence, and about the time he watched, helpless as Road breaks Lavi's mind while threatening to impale Lenalee and Chaoji with candles.
If what he felt that time wasn't the gut-wrenching notion of fear, he doesn't know what is.
"Yeah," Allen replies, " Of course I have fears, don't everyone?"
"What are your fears?"
"Well," Allen began, "I'm scared of my Innocence getting broken, I'm scared of being helpless and unable to protect my friends. Oh and who could forget," Allen face turns dark, "I am terrified of my womanizing, no-good, debt-causing, master Marian Cross!"
"…."
Just how bad was this kid's childhood? Thought Lavi.
" So how about you Lenalee?"
"I'm scared of my friends getting hurt," Lenalee bluntly states, "I am scared of the Black Order getting destroyed, because this is my home, and all those who resides here I consider family. I also don't want to be separated from my brother…." Lenalee's voice trailed off, but she looked up with a start as she realized what she just said.
"REALLY?" Allen and Lavi yelled simultaneously.
"Then why do you act like you can't stand him?"
"Yeah! You smack him on the head and such…."
"I wasscared okay?" Lenalee states loudly, "He was the only family member I had after all! And besides, I was separated from him without a choice!"
At this, Allen and Lavi felt guilty as they were reminded of how Lenalee didn't really think of the Order as home when she first came.
After a minute of fairly awkward silence, Lavi spoke up.
"… oh yeah! Getting to the point, does anyone know what Yuu's afraid of?"
"… Bakanda?" Allen says, "He's afraid of… er…. heights?"
"No." Says Lenalee.
"Bugs?"
"No."
"Thunderstorms?"
"No."
"Tight spaces?"
"No."
"The dark?"
"Seriously? No."
"Sharp stuff?"
"You know his Innocence is a sword?"
"Supernatural stuff?"
"You know we're Exorcists?"
"Public speaking?"
"Do you honestly think that Kanda has done or will do any of that?"
"Okay then," Says Allen, "What do you think?"
"… I dunno…"
"Wait Lenalee," Lavi says, " Do you know for sure he isn't scared of any of those things?"
"Hmm…." Lenalee thought for a moment, "I am sure that he has went out on a mission during a thunderstorm and the dark in the past nine years he's been here, so he's definitely not scared of those. Not sharp stuff, because as I said, his Innocence is a sword. I bet on at least some of his mission he had to hide in small and tight spaces, so a no to claustrophobia. For supernatural… I'm actually not so sure about that anymore, we've only beaten demons… and investigated cases where the "ghost" turned out to be innocence because of the finders… so I'm not sure about actual ghosts."
Lavi grinned, albeit a little devilishly.
"Do you guys want to find Yuu's fear?"
Again, awkward silence.
"… I hope you do know that he is going to impale us with Mugen." says Allen.
"He doesn't have to know what we're trying to do. It's not like we can't do this with subtlety."
"Well-"
"And if we find his fear, we might be able to pay him back for calling you a beansprout all the time!~"
That is true… Thought Allen.
He looks over at Kanda, sitting by himself as always, though Lenalee has tried to invite him over to sit with them multiple times. He was eating soba noodles, not a surprise there. Allen tries to recall back on his missions, he doesn't remember Kanda being frightened of any particular thing…
Hey, it wouldn't hurt to try right? I mean what's the worst that can happen? He tries to kill us? Well it's not like he's the only one who has Innocence here, we can always defend ourselves… and this isn't the first time we got on Bakanda's bad side, Lavi braided his hair once!
"Okay." Allen says, "I'm in."
"Great!" Lavi looked positively ecstatic, "Lenalee?"
"I don't really like where this is going…" Lenalee states, hesitant, "but I'm in, someone has to drag you two to the infirmary afterwards."
Fear of Bugs-
"You think Bakanda will be frightened by a spider?" Allen asks, doubt written all over his face.
They were making their way down the long winding hallways of Headquarters to Komui's office. Occasionally stopping to check if Kanda was anywhere in sight, though Allen didn't really think he cares as to why the three exorcists were wandering the hallways after lunch.
"Not likely," Lavi admitted, "but we don't know for sure. It's easy to test anyways, I bet the science department has plenty of creepy crawlies in their labs for testing whatever stuff they make in there."
"Okay, so how exactly are we going to set the bug on Kanda?" Lenalee inquires, "He's going to flick it off or slash it to pieces the minute it crawls on him."
"So we do this when he doesn't have his sword on him."
"He always has his sword on him! It's his Innocence!"
"No, not always." states Lenalee.
"Seriously?" Allen gaped, "When?"
He couldn't remember a time when the Japanese boy didn't have his sword in its sheath hanging around the waist of his uniform.
"Well, I'm not 100% sure… but I remember that sometimes when he meditates, he doesn't have his sword on him… he has it close by, but he's not carrying it."
"Then it works!" Lavi exclaims excitedly, "If Yuu flicks the bug off without showing much expression, then he's not afraid. If he gets up, gets his sword and chops it to pieces (poor bug), then he's not afraid. So we basically have to look at his expression to see if it shows anything close to fear."
" Okay." Allen said, "If this fails, then Lavi's going to be the first one to get killed."
"Why me?" Lavi retorted, "You and Yuu aren't exactly on good terms either, beansprout."
"My name's Allen, and you are going to be the first one he kills because this was your idea."
"Just because it was my idea doesn't mean that Yuu will aim for anyone individually. He'll probably use first illusion and then we'll all get killed together."
"You know that's worse then just one of us getting killed, because while one person's getting killed the rest can run."
What did I do to deserve this? Lenalee thought.
In their conversation, the group hadn't realized they have reached Komui's office… until they heard.
"LENALEEEEEEEEEE!" Cries Komui as he runs over from his desk covered with at least 20 piles of paperwork and grabs on to her.
"''- "
Bam! Lenalee clocks Komui over the head with her fist.
1 hour later.
"We got a hairy tarantula!~" Lavi says with glee as he stares at the clear jar Lenalee held.
Lenalee sighs, "I hope this is going to work out. It was hard explaining why we needed this spider. And we can't even tell them what our actual objective was!"
It's true, Allen thought, after Komui finally calmed down, we had to tell Komui that we were bored and wanted to play with the biggest, hairiest bug the science department's got on hand… of course then Komui disagreed… and then Lenalee pleaded and said that she also wanted to observe it for the sake of science or something along the lines of that… and then Komui says then they can just observe it in the laboratory. Then Lenalee says that she wanted to keep it overnight because she wanted to record its activities over a long period of time….
Allen shakes his head. At least they got the creature, but they also got some strange looks pointed their way from the science department.
Oh yeah, and Lenalee has to make Komui coffee for the next three weeks, but she doesn't seems to mind.
"Well then, lets go find Yuu! He should be meditating right now, correct?"
Lenalee nodded.
"Then let's go!"
As the three approached the hall where the meditating room was, they became very quiet in fear of being discovered. Very carefully, Lavi opened the door just a slight bit, justso that there is a crack big enough to see through.
Thank goodness this door doesn't squeak. Allen thought.
Lavi gestured for Lenalee and Allen to come over, and, being as silent as possible, Lavi peered into the crack.
Kanda was sitting cross-legged on the floor with one hand placed on each knee. His eyes were closed and, to everyone's surprise, he looks peaceful… well, as peaceful as Kanda can get, anyways.
"Wow," Says Lavi, "Yuu does that almost everyday? Seems kind of boring."
"Shhhh!" Shushed Lenalee.
"Does he have his sword?" Whispered Allen.
Lavi scanned the room. It was empty and devoid of any furniture. The floorboards looked shiny and new, the walls were a perfect white, and the doors looked like something that came from a Japanese dojo. Actually, this whole room looked like a room from a Japanese dojo.
Suits Yuu, since he's Japanese and all… Lavi thought.
Finally, Lavi spotted Mugen in its sheath, leaning against the wall in the far right of the room.
"His innocence is in the room," reported Lavi, "but it's about 6 meters away from Yuu."
"Okay, good enough."
Lavi inched the door open further so the spider can crawl through, then gestured to Lenalee, who brought over the jar.
Slowly, she twisted the top of the jar open and faced the opening to the crack of the door. The tarantula inside didn't move, so Lenalee tilted the jar's back up, until slowly, the spider edged its way out of the jar and on to the wooden floor.
Once in the room, the creature started to pick up speed, as if sensing its newfound freedom. The three peeked through the crack, heads on top of each other, trying to get a look. This arrangement was fairly uncomfortable, especially for Lavi, who was at the bottom, but the exorcists were too intrigued by the matter at hand to pay any attention to posture.
The spider headed straight for Kanda.
"Score!" Lavi cheered silently, "Spiders are smart."
The creature is now crawling on to Kanda's right leg, the group held their breaths as they watched, curious as to how he would react.
The reaction wasn't even close to one-half as dramatic as they wanted.
If Kanda had sensed the tarantula, he's not showing it. The Japanese boy continued meditating, either oblivious to what's now on his lap or didn't think it was important.
"He's not reacting at all!" Allen spoke in a hushed but urgent tone, "So does that mean he's not afraid of bugs?"
"Maybe Yuu doesn't see it."
"So what do we do?"
"We have to get Yuu to open his eyes."
"So… you're saying that one of us has to go in there and stop his meditating?"
"… Yeah pretty much."
"That's insane." Lenalee said, "Kanda doesn't really like it when people interrupt his meditating… scratch that, Kanda doesn't really people, period."
"Well then, to make things easier for us, we don't have to go in alone."
"You mean we all just march in there? Don't you think he'll just get madder if three people randomly barge in instead of one person randomly barging in? And wasn't it you who said getting us all killed is a bad idea?"
"Yeah but we can all say- "
Alllen and Lenalee never found out what they were supposed to say because at that precise moment the three teenagers realized three things:
1. That they weren't whispering anymore and were instead talking at a volume that was above average.
2. That the door was open quite wide and a certain dark haired exorcist with Mugen in his hands was fixing them all with a death glare.
3. That the certain dark haired exorcist had the tarantula in his hands.
" Tch, What the hell are you people doing here?" Said Kanda, looking very annoyed.
"We were um…" Lenalee stutters.
"You see Yuu-"
"Don't. Call. Me. That." Says Kanda, enunciating each word clearly, "Or I will kill you."
Allen swore he could see the aura of the devil light up around Kanda.
"… A-a-anyways," continues Lenalee, "We… we were-"
Darn darn darn I can't think of anything!
" Meditate!" Allen pipes up.
Kanda raises an eyebrow.
"Yeah! Er… I mean… we wanted to meditate! You know, the stress on missions lately and the whole Noah Clan and HQ getting invaded and… yeah…"
"Right!" Lavi agrees, "We heard meditating was good for both the mind and body and can prevent brain… disease … and- ouch!"
Lavi cuts off because Allen has just nudged him on the arm, hard.
"So… what do you have in your hand there?" Asks Lenalee a little nervously.
"Tch. Some bug. Any idea who's it is?"
"N-n-n-no! Not at all!" Lenalee declines frantically, shaking her head, "why would we know who something like that belongs to? I mean there are a lot of staffs in Headquarters after all…"
"Yeah!" Lavi follows suit, "It's not like we deliberately set it-"
Lavi's air cuts off from a vicious elbow to the stomach, courtesy of Lenalee.
"It probably belongs to Komui." Allen said, trying to keep his voice stable, "Because they're the Science Department so they need test subjects…"
"Hn." Kanda says and walks off, muttering something under his breath that sounded like "Komui" and "Dim-witted".
As soon as the dark-haired exorcist was out of sight, the group let out a huge sigh of relief.
"So…" says Lavi, looking a lot more optimistic than Allen and Lenalee felt, "Guess Yuu's not afraid of bugs?"
Guess this is it for the first chapter, hopefully it wasn't too long. If you read this far, thank you very much! I will try to update as soon as possible. I'm aiming for three chapters! :D
