A/N: Ahhh! Thank you so much for deciding to read this! This is my first fanfic EVER so, i'm kinda excited (If you couldn't tell) ;D Please be kind, I'm new to the world of writing fanfiction so I'm not really sure how this will turn out. I really hope you like it and all reviews and constructive critisism are very greatly appreciated! Thank you again! *bows*

Um, this story would take place right around the end of the second season of the anime. I've done my best to keep all of them in character as much as I can. It's rated T just to be safe, because of violence in future chapters, but there won't be any coarse language or sexual themes.

Disclaimer: Only one of these characters belong to me, the rest belong to their copyright holders. I'm just having fun with them ;)

Chapter 1

The akuma were coming, and a lot of them too. I could sense it from where I was sitting on the roof of the house I was currently living in. They weren't coming here, but they were headed for the village just a few miles down the road.

I couldn't figure out exactly what they wanted there; there wasn't any innocence hidden there, nor any other reason I could think of for that many akuma to be converging there, but the Millennium Earl had seemed to find some sick pleasure in randomly wiping out whole villages recently. Maybe he was just desperate for more souls to make into akuma.

Regardless of the reason, the point right now was that they were in fact heading there. I thought back to the little old man who sold fruit and would always throw in a few extra raspberries (my personal favorite) for me whenever I went there. I thought of the children who were always playing and laughing in the streets, and the kind young seamstress that I had spent many afternoons chatting happily with.

There were many great people in that village, and none of them deserved to be slaughtered by the akuma.

I could sense 3 distinct pieces of innocence heading quickly towards the village, and knew that it must be the exorcists, but they were too far away. They would never make it to the village in time to save everyone.

I stood up and began to pace agitatedly back and forth on my rooftop. I knew I could save them, but to fight the akuma would be to potentially expose myself. If the Millennium Earl were to discover my existence, it could mean the end of the world itself.

I couldn't figure out why this situation should bother me so much; I had seen more deaths than I could possibly count in all the years that I'd been alive, but for some reason I couldn't bear to let all those kind villagers be murdered just a few miles away while I sat and did nothing.

I paced around a few more times, unable to decide what to do. Angrily, I decided I had no choice but to help the villagers, even if it meant risking the very world itself.

Komui sat at his desk at the Black Order, surrounded completely by his usual mess of papers. He sat with his elbows placed on the stack of papers in front of him that hid his desk from view, and had his fingers laced together in front of his mouth. His often spastic and overprotective demeanor was replaced with a very grave expression.

Seated on three chairs in front of him were Allen Walker, Lenalee Lee, and Lavi. They had been roused from their sleep in the middle of the night by an urgent message to go to Komui's office immediately. Any clinging sleepiness had left instantly when they saw the expression on Komui's face. They knew that something serious had to be going on.

"We have discovered a very large group of akuma converging on a small village about 36 miles northwest of here." Komui began, "All of the finders in that area were overwhelmed and wiped out before they were able to warn us of the akuma. Luckily one finder managed to escape and contact us just before they reached him too."

Lenalee and Allen both gasped in the background, while Lavi just hung his head sadly.

Komui continued, "We know the akuma are there, but they are already quite close to the village. The closest exorcists we have to that area are right here at the Black Order itself. We-"

"Then why are we sitting here talking about it?" Lavi interrupted suddenly, standing up. "We should already be on our way to the village to stop the akuma if they are that close!"

Komui gave him a very careful look before continuing. "Yes, you will be leaving very soon, but first I need to warn the three of you. There is an extremely large number of akuma there, and with the increasing number of reports lately, our exorcists have been kept plenty busy, as I'm sure you know well enough. We can't spare any more exorcists for this, so it will just be the three of you. This will be a very difficult mission. Please be careful and contact the Order again as soon as you have the chance."

With that the three exorcists agreed and stood up, hastily rushing out the door to be on their way. As soon as the door to the office closed, Komui immediately dropped his head face first onto his desk and began to wail in between his sobs, "Oh Lenalee! How could I send my precious little Lenalee on such a dangerous mission? What if she gets injured? NOOO! LENALEE!"

Allen, Lenalee, and Lavi were sitting on the handle of Lavi's hammer, having decided that it would probably be the quickest way to get to the village. All three worried that they would be too late, but none of them voiced their worries. Allen spoke up first. "I think we're getting close. That must be the village just ahead of us." He pointed to a black splotch against the dark grey around it.

"But if that's the village, then where are all the akuma?" Lenalee said hesitantly. "If there's really as many as he said, surely we should have seen at least some of them by now…?"

"You don't think… we're too late, do you…?" Lavi's voice wavered very slightly.

"Come on, quickly!" Allen nearly shouted.

Just outside of the village, Lavi lowered them to the ground, then returned his hammer to a smaller size. All three of them ran towards the village. A few more feet and they could hear explosions ahead.

Doubling their speed, they could soon make out the shapes of around two dozen akuma floating above the town. Before they could reach them however, four of them suddenly exploded, one after another.

"What was that?" Lenalee exclaimed, still running. "Why did they just suddenly explode like that?"

"I'm not sure. I couldn't see what caused it." Allen puffed, very slightly out of breath.

As they watched, more exploded in quick succession, right in front of them, but they still couldn't see anything besides the akuma themselves. All suddenly went quiet, and just a small handful of akuma remained. They didn't move for a few heartbeats, then they seemed to come back to their senses and began firing on the town, right as the exorcists reached them. They wiped out the level 1 akuma easily, then stood there looking around.

Lavi spoke first. "Komui said that it was supposed to be a really big group of akuma here, but we can't have seen more than 25. I don't see any more nearby though. You don't think the rest are hiding do you?"

"I don't see what the point would be for them to hide, especially if there were that many." Allen said as he looked around. "I'm more concerned with what was killing those akuma before we got here. You don't think it could have killed all those akuma in such a short amount of time, do you?"

"I'm not sure, but we need to be on guard in case whatever it was isn't too friendly with exorcists." Lavi said.

Lenalee had been looking around with a calculating expression, and she finally spoke up. "But if it was killing the akuma, wouldn't whatever it is be on our side? I can't see the Millennium Earl wasting that many akuma for no reason. Do you think it's possible that there is innocence somewhere in this town and it protected it from the akuma?"

They spoke for a while about some of the possibilities, and none of them could really make much sense of the strange situation.

"So, what do we do now?" Lavi asked.

"Well, I guess we should contact the Black Order and see what Komui thinks." Allen decided.

Using Timcanpy, Allen got a hold of Komui. Komui's frantic voice suddenly flowed out. "Allen? What's wrong? That was much too quick, you can't possibly have killed all those akuma already! Something's wrong, isn't it? Is it Lenalee? Is Lenalee okay? Please tell me that Lenalee is okay! Oh, I'm such an awful person to send my precious Lenalee there! I'm such an awful brother!"

Once the trio was finally able to convince Komui that Lenalee was just fine, they told him what had happened. Komui was absolutely sure that there had undeniably been a large group of level 1 akuma almost upon the village. He said he was curious if there was in fact innocence somewhere in the village, and ordered them to very carefully search the village to make sure no more akuma were hiding nearby, then if it was clear, to stay for a couple days and look into any strange happenings in the village.

After sweeping the entire village, and not finding even the tiniest hint of more akuma, the sun was just beginning to show on horizon. Finding a small motel, they checked in and collapsed exhaustedly onto their beds, and were asleep in no time at all.

I sat silently on the roof of a building, staring down at the three exorcists as they wondered what was going on. They were completely unaware that I was there. Those exorcists had certainly taken their time getting here. If I hadn't acted, the village would definitely have been completely destroyed before they could have done anything about it. I had taken out almost all of them before they arrived. It wasn't very challenging, even though it had been such a long time since I'd used my power. They were all level 1 akuma with no mind of their own. I wasn't even out of breath by the end of it.

I left the last few for the exorcists so that I could see just what kind of powers they had. If I was being completely honest with myself, I had to admit that I was kind of impressed with how quickly they had erased the akuma, as well as how well they all worked together.

They were definitely more skilled than the exorcists I had seen a few decades earlier. It seemed that the Black Order was getting stronger. That would explain why the Millennium Earl seemed to be getting so desperate. Perhaps now would be the best time to act.

As I continued to watch the exorcists, I decided that the time had come. I would make my move, and to do that I would need to meet these exorcists, without them discovering who, or more specifically what, I was. This would certainly be an interesting confrontation, but it could wait until daylight. I needed to plan it out, and decide what would be the easiest way to use them to my advantage.

I watched them until they turned to leave, then I went my own way back towards my village, knowing I would see them again very soon.

It was the second day that Allen, Lenalee, and Lavi had been in the village. After they had rested up a bit, they had spent what was left of the first day speaking with the villagers. No one seemed to have noticed the disturbance in the night, and the village itself seemed to be an everyday, normal village. The people were very friendly and welcoming to them, and they couldn't find any information on any strange or abnormal event.

The next day they hadn't seen any sign of more akuma either, so they decided that it should be safe enough to split up for a bit before lunch so they could cover more ground. Lenalee went with Allen while Lavi went on his own.

Lavi had just finished speaking with a very kind old man at a fruit stand, and decided to try some of the back streets. He turned a corner and saw a young lady in the middle of an otherwise deserted street.

She looked to be around 16 or 17 years old, and had long, dark blonde hair that fell in waves around her face. She was wearing a plain, long silky black dress and no shoes. Her eyes were a startling dark green.

However, the thing that really caught Lavi's attention was that she was on her knees, hands on the ground on either side of her as if to support herself. Her eyes were wide open and staring blankly at the ground in front of her, and she was very slightly shaking. She looked terrified.

Lavi ran forward. "Hey, are you okay?" He asked softly. She didn't respond, just continued staring at the ground as if she didn't even know he was there. Lavi tried again. "Miss, are you alright? Can you hear me? What's wrong?" Still she gave no response, not even a blink of and eye.

Lavi placed a hand on her shoulder and instantly she jerked violently backwards and into the dust with a gasp. She stared up at Lavi fearfully, and started shaking even worse than before, breathing heavily and unevenly.

Lavi very carefully extended his hand towards her, careful not to touch her, and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I promise I'm not going to hurt you. Please tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help."

She stared for a couple more seconds, then slowly the shaking slowed and stopped. The fear faded from her eyes and reason seemed to return to her. She flushed bright red and reached an unsteady hand out to Lavi's steady one. He helped her up and smiled warmly. "There, that's better."

She blushed even more, then stuttered, "I-I'm so s-sorry. Th-thank you for helping me up." She began dusting herself off, and turned her head purposely away from Lavi, but not before he saw the tears that were beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.

"Are you alright Miss?" He spoke softly, as though he were trying to calm a frightened horse. "Do you mind if I ask what's wrong?"

She sniffed, and replied, "Don't worry about it. You wouldn't believe me anyways, it's such an outrageous story. I'm not sure I myself entirely believe it, even though I think I saw it with my own eyes." She sniffed again and said, "You'd just think me crazy."

Lavi was very curious at these words. It sounded like just the kind of thing they were looking for. With the same tone to his voice, he replied, "No, I've seen plenty of weird things myself. I promise I won't think that you're crazy. Maybe I can help. Please tell me…"

As he finished, she suddenly started crying freely and threw her arms around him as though he were her only anchor to sanity. Her whole story suddenly came spilling out amidst her tears. Lavi looked startled at her actions and awkwardly patted her on the back as she spoke.

"It was two nights ago. It was really late at night and I heard something strange outside. I went out to look and I was in the street when a… some kind of… monsters appeared. They were just floating in the sky, and they had guns and they started shooting at me. I ran and ran but two of them were chasing me. I ran into a dead end and they had me cornered, and they were closing in on me and I just knew I was going to die. But then they just suddenly exploded. I ran back to my house. There were so many of them, but they kept randomly exploding in the air. I was so scared, but I knew no one would ever believe me, so I didn't tell anyone. I thought I could just forget about it and it would all go away, but today I was walking to the store and this was one of the roads that they chased me down, and as soon as I came here it all came back to me…"

She seemed to be unable to keep talking. Lavi had been listening patiently this whole time. He said, "It's okay, I believe you. You're not crazy." She looked up hopefully at him and said, "Really? You believe me?"

"Yes, I've seen these monsters before. It's alright though, they aren't coming back, and they won't try to hurt you again." Lavi said with a smile.

Her look turned confused. "Do you know what those monsters were?" Lavi just sighed heavily and said, "Yes, they are called akum-"

Suddenly Allen turned the corner into the alley and started running desperately towards them. Lenalee wasn't far behind him. Allen suddenly shouted, "Lavi! Get away from her! She's an akuma!"

A/N: Sorry to leave off on a cliff hanger, but it helps keep people interested :) Thank you for reading the first chapter! What did you think? Good, bad, just okay? Please please tell me what you thought about it! All reviews and constructive critisism is helpful. I basically have an outline of the entire story written down on paper, but I'm still very open to suggestions. Also, feel free to point out any mistakes to me if you see them. I was actually surprised how long it took me to type this up, but I'll work on keeping the story moving and not having big gaps between chapters. Reviews are always great motivation to type faster (hint hint, wink wink) ;) And again, I'm so very greatful to all of my lovely readers!