Alma saw a new face in the cafeteria today.
The new person in question was a girl too skinny to be healthy, with her left arm in a sling and bandages going around her head, shakily holding on to a steaming cup of tea in her good hand.
"Hey!" Alma said, having dragged Yuu behind him to plop down on the empty bench beside the girl, "I'm Alma, and this is Yuu. Who are you?"
Huge steel-grey orbs turned to face them. The girl blinked once, twice, and then turned away again.
Alma pouted.
"Tell me your name," he whined, and she swung to glare at him.
"Shut the hell up," the girl hissed between gritted teeth, hand tightening threateningly around a nearby fork.
"I-"
The fork came flying at him before he could finish, and the girl turned back to her tea as Alma fled.
Kanda stayed behind.
"He only wanted to know your name," he told her indignantly.
The tea cup was set down with a bang on the wooden cafeteria table, and Kanda could have sworn he saw her shoulders tremble a little.
"I have no name," muttered the girl, "Nobody cared enough to give me one."
After Kanda had finished relating the entire story to Alma, he noticed the other boy's eyes light up and felt a sense of dread wash over him.
"We'll care!" Alma cried happily, "We'll be her friends!"
Kanda groaned, trying to pretend that Alma had not just uttered the dreaded words.
"Yuu~! Answer me!"
Pulling the blankets over his head, Kanda shut his eyes and tried to fall asleep, in a bid to get Alma to give up on his crazy idea.
"I saw her following Leverrier around," Kanda told Alma a few days later. "Anybody who does that willingly is one of them. She'll never be your friend, so give up already."
Alma shook his head furiously.
"She's nice inside! I know it."
A couple of days later Kanda and Alma were wandering the corridors of the Asia Branch, looking for a spare training room.
Alma pushed open the door to one, and stopped short, causing Kanda to bump into him as he stared through the crack.
"It's her," he whispered, "it's her, Yuu."
Kanda tiptoed, doing his best to peer over Alma's head.
It was indeed the girl from the cafeteria, and she was sparring with a much older man.
Perhaps sparring was not such an appropriate word to use, but more of being beaten up by a much older man.
The sling had been taken off, Kanda observed, and she was trying to defend herself with purplish-blue bruised arms.
"Tch," the man growled, "Pathetic, Ninety-nine."
Without warning he lunged forward again, catching her by surprise. She stumbled backward while attempting to dodge a blow coming for her head, but her knees buckled and she fell onto the tatami mats.
The man looked at her with disdain.
"At this rate, you will be replaced. Improve yourself, or we will get a replacement."
With that, he turned and stalked away, in the direction of the doors. Suddenly, Alma and Kanda were scrambling to get away from the door and hide behind a pillar.
The man pushed open the door to leave the room, then slammed it shut again.
"Good day," he sneered in the general direction of the hidden Kanda and Alma, "Exorcists."
His echoing bootsteps disappeared down the hall.
When the coast was clear, Kanda and Alma crept out from their hiding place and into the training room.
The girl was holding a long piece of cloth, and attempting to wrap up her arm, which looked raw and was bleeding.
"I'll help you with that," Alma offered, crawling forward and sticking out his hand.
She slapped it away.
"Go away," she growled.
"We're only trying to be nice!" Alma protested.
That statement tore a bitter laugh from her throat, and she looked down, hair forming a curtain to hide her face.
"Nice?" she asked mockingly.
"Yes!"
"Lies," came the answering snarl, "You and Central are all the same. Deceiving others with pretty stories, then turning a cold shoulder when we discover reality. You Exorcists are just like them."
Alma had no reply, so Kanda took over.
"We're not like those Central guys…"
"Go ahead, keep telling yourselves that," she snapped back, "you follow their orders like dogs. Dogs of Central. Just because you have Innocence, just because you don't need to put in so much effort to get respect, you get this elitist mindset. I hate people like that."
"W-w-we're not!" By this time, Alma was sniffling, but his fists were clenched in determination.
"Go to hell," she flippantly replied, before turning back to her bandages.
Kanda sighed, and hauled Alma to his feet.
"You'd better go see Matron, at any rate."
"She doesn't give a damn about me either. No one does."
Alma frowned, and opened his mouth.
"Go," she said before he could say anything, "just get the hell out of here."
Several weeks later she disappeared without a trace.
"Where is she?" Alma demanded of a guard when three hours of combing the Asia Branch proved unsuccessful.
The guard looked at them.
"I have no idea who you are talking about," he said dryly.
"The girl! With grey eyes and all the bandages and-"
"Number Ninety-nine has been disposed of and replaced," the guard cut in, in a monotone voice.
Alma clenched his fists.
"Where did you put her?"
The guard remained silent.
"She was callous to you," Kanda whispered, "why do you still care?"
Alma refused to answer, and struggled as Kanda tried to hold him still. Suddenly, they heard the sharp clicking of boots, and turned to look.
"So you're the Exorcists Ninety-nine met," said a teenage boy with blonde hair and a straight-cut fringe, "Did you know because of you, she lost control of her emotions and had to be replaced? I won't make the same mistake she did."
Kanda clapped a hand over Alma's mouth before the other boy could yell anything.
"You're Number Hundred?" he asked coolly.
"Not that it matters. Mind your own business, Exorcists."
With that, the boy walked off down the corridor.
It was only much later that Kanda realized that girl had been part of Central's new programme.
A programme to produce CROWs, star fighters who worked like robots, not affected by emotions and able to effectively fight in all conditions.
Sometimes, his thoughts drifted back to her.
I wonder if she's happier now…?
A/N: This is a rewrite of my story, Firebird!
To old readers: Welcome back. It's the start of a new journey, and I hope you'll stay with me.
To new readers: Welcome, and I hope you'll enjoy this story as it develops.
I'll be updating, but no longer regularly nor frequently. I will update though, so stay tuned!
~Luna (espeon16)