The next day, Allen was buried elbow-deep in dirt concerning a certain few men. It was hysterical how they left so much out in the open with no competition after the previous head's eradication of every other prominent family in Lucifenia. It was sloppy and reeked of poor management, but at least it worked in his favor.
He sipped his coffee, scrolling through the ministers' paper trails. A lot of it didn't work out - bank accounts that went nowhere, misplaced files, some paperwork just downright missing. Did none of them have driving licenses, or were the channels they secured their identification through just that incompetent? There were tax evasions by the dozens, though he couldn't really say anything, since he was considered dead by the police. You couldn't tax a dead man no matter how much Riliane wanted to. It would fix the funding crisis, at least.
Allen felt the strangest urge to smash his mug. He was not Chartette.
The funding crisis, as their boisterous security detail had coined it, went like this: Riliane and Allen had a sizeable inheritance left by the previous heads of the Lucifen family, easily in the millions, but in theory there should have been an even more sizeable amount of money in the family coiffers. Funds left from past family operations, their businesses still functioning at the pier, the casinos, the protection tax, the construction labour union infiltrations and the ever-popular illegal arms trade. It should've been well into the billions, even with the Lucifen family's retreating influence in Evillious. Arth and Anne had toiled too much to not see profit even four or ten years after their deaths, and they were the ones who secured the organization in the first place.
Riliane had thrown a right fit, and he had barely been any better.
"I will have their heads! Fetch me who did this!" Riliane had screeched, and then Allen and Chartette had to double-team her so she would stop shredding paper. It took Chartette shattering two sets of china for her to calm down.
The numbers in the family accounts were alarmingly stagnant. No, not only that, the numbers were decreasing. Allen had run everything two, three, nine times, and the same mocking string of digits stared at him. It was barely a half more than their inheritance.
To up those numbers, Allen had to resort to desperate measures. He ran around Lucifenia, sleeping in alleys, perching on balconies, leaping off rooftops and slumming it with the unfortunate to minimize cost of living, stake out the state of the Lucifen family's influence, and steal things. Allen was very good at stealing things. He'd been at it for eight years, and with Riliane, that was essentially his entire life.
It shouldn't even be his job. There should have been people in charge of finances, people in charge of the paperwork, intelligence officers stationed throughout their territory that were supposed to report to Riliane or some other higher-up about these kinds of issues but they had all either sacrificed themselves in the various gang wars during Arth's reign, were eliminated and dismissed as collateral, their loyalties lied with someone else, or just plain incompetent.
Looking at the numbers in front of him he was inclined to believe the latter options. He was going to cry and faint again and break things and just become Riliane, maybe. He didn't want to deal with this shit.
He shook his head, shutting off his carefully cleaned computer and disabling his private network with swift fingers. It was half past two in the afternoon; his sister was due her evening snack in a bit, and he had to be on top of things before leaving that night.
"Chartette, could you tend to the Princess? I've got to prepare her tea," he said, taking out dough from the oven.
The redhead stomped gaily into the vast kitchen, arms filled with plates and eating utensils. Allen could only assume she had broken the dishwasher and was afraid of breaking the kitchen taps. "Yeah, Allen, I've got it," she said.
Allen raised an eyebrow. "You are quite sure of that?"
"Yeah, too!" She marched right off, leaving the great heap of silverware and delicate china on the drying rack with a resolute clang.
The boy nodded, as this was trademark Chartette behavior, and turned back to his brioche. "I'll keep you to it, then."
He was sure he would have to help her out pretty soon, though.
True to his predictions, he heard a crash coming from upstairs - oh, the dome. Truly spectacular. Allen wondered if Chartette had broken through a window. If she did, Allen had no doubt she would be alert and eager to please even after falling hundreds of meters to a not-death. Chartette was practically indestructible and possessed a monstrous strength that even his old tutor, Madame Phutapie, seemed to be wary of.
It was why Chartette had been raised as their maid and their unconventional bodyguard. She was clumsy at all the tidy work, leaving Allen to (quite happily) pick up the slack, but when it came to protecting the manor she had every card in place. Allen was gone so often; he needed someone to protect Riliane in his absence. And he had complete faith that Chartette was the woman for the job.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
His brain rushed to catalogue; light, feminine voice, his twelve o'clock, five meters. He watched the window; no telling glint of an unsheathed weapon-
Allen stilled. "Would I have the honor of knowing the lady's name?"
"Well aren't you a polite one!" A disarming laugh.
He was adept at dealing with assassins, but he hadn't heard this one coming. That was okay. He had disarmed ones that didn't announce their presence at all. Curious, why this one did. Maybe killing isn't the objective? But that was an assassin's approach, aside from the liberal use of voice. Calmly, the boy turned around.
Bright ponytailed hair, knives, a few inches taller, gray ensemble – a teenager.
The alarm must've shown on his face, because the girl—assassin, surely—broke out into another laugh. She waved it off, but Allen refused to put his guard down.
"Apologies, apologies, Heir," she curled her lips into a wry smile, yellow eyes twinkling.
Heir?
"Make it quick," he snapped, filing that away for later. The girl wasn't approaching, but he eased himself into a casual, careful stance with his left side wide open. Safe, not sorry. "Tell me your business here, young miss, and we can talk."
"Mother always warns me about this," the blonde girl muttered. "The name is Ney, Ney Phutapie. Ring a bell, 'Lex?"
No one alive knew of that name. He had made sure of it. Even Riliane had forgotten it, over time. Allen. Allen. Allen. It had always been his name, as far as anyone was concerned.
"Phutapie," he said slowly, "as in Madame Phutapie?"
There. Recognition, but—
Phutapie raised her hands and her lips stretched into an all-too-familiar grin on an uncannily familiar face. "Who else?"
"Gretel?"
"Shh!" Gretel—Ney—hissed. The floor was spinning. Boom, boom, boom, in his head. "It's Ney. Wax is in the bricks."
Ears in the walls. She still remembered that juvenile code they'd made up, all those years ago, before he had left for good, when they had more time to play rather than strategize meetings and heists, when the Lucifen family business was nothing more than a nebulous concept left to the adults.
"My name is Allen," Alexiel whispered to himself. Thunder crackled, lightning shooting up the sky as he ran away from the house that held nothing but ghosts. "My name is Allen, and I am a street kid of seven, and I have never heard of the Lucifen family name."
"My name is Allen," Alexiel sniffed at the other kids, later. The sun was beating down on his face and they were all gathered under a bridge, waiting out the daylight. "I'm seven. I was wondering..."
"The name's Gretel," a girl said, wild short hair and a dirty white bow askew, grin a thing of legends. "You lost, city boy?"
He made to speak.
"Shh, the walls have ears," she whispered. Alexiel laughed, confused, exhilarated and overwhelmed, sitting under a bridge with the homeless while a world away a storm was beating down on his family.
"More like the brick is full of earwax," he said, nearly stumbling on the weak snark. He knew why he did it — it was unfamiliar, an entire new behavior that belonged to Allen and Allen alone. A distancing thing. "I was wondering if I would be inducted? It's dreadfully hot out here, and I'd rather keep our the heat, if you understand what I'm getting at."
She smiled. "Consider y'self inducted."
"My name," Allen said later, when night had stretched across the slums and the children, festering with hunger and sallow in their features, had dispersed. Gretel turned to him.
"My name," he repeated, "is. Was. It was Alexiel."
"I was supposed to be Cain," Gretel said. She traced stars in the dirt.
Alexiel—Allen, snorted. "There's a story there, you know. Why Gretel? Where's your Hansel? Your Abel?"
She paused. "Why Allen?"
He didn't answer.
"Masters smite your face," he swore softly. The grin grew wider.
Allen re-examined his old childhood friend. The same mean edge to her eyes, albeit a different color - contacts, of course - and frighteningly long hair a shade brighter than he was used to. A looser, more languid, more careful gait, a carelessness with her limbs that spoke of ignorance, a certain grace about her borne of trained poise, hands never straying from her belt (she must have depended on it a while, now. Allen knew all about depending on weapons.) Nothing like the energetic, spiteful, obnoxious child he had met under the bridge. "You've changed."
"As all do," and the smile dropped, leaving a slightly grim face alien to him. It must have belonged to Ney Phutapie, and her alone. A distancing tactic. He understood that.
She sat on the island counter beside the silverware, appraising the pile blankly. "They were necessary measures. How's the Heiress?"
"She insists on calling herself the Princess to respect mother," he said by way of "okay". Questions bubbled in his mind and by every second that went by another one took its place. He ignored it for now.
His eyes trailed to the clock. "Fuck." It was 2:42PM.
"He said fuck," Gretel - Ney said, eyes widening in something akin to comedic reverence. "The ever-eloquent Alexiel. It is a sign of the end times."
"I can say fuck if I want to," Allen said, "and it's Allen, now. Just Allen."
"Necessary measures?"
"More selfish ones," he corrected. "Get yourself off the island, you're making me think of cleaning when brioche should be made."
"You can cook?"
"I will cook you if you don't start explaining yourself, and yes, I am proficient in the art." He went back to brushing the loaves with eggwash. In the corner of his eye, Ney shrugged herself off the island and reached a hand into her jacket, pulling out a thin stack of gray files.
"I brought some things you might want to know, Heir."
Managing finances was hard. Managing mysteriously disappearing finances which should have been in their favor, even more so. She was elbow-deep in nonsensical numbers and, at that point, felt entitled to a spot six feet under in the Heavenly Yard where she would never have to manage family accounts ever again. She wasn't even supposed to be doing this, but Allen was absolutely insistent on doing subordinate work. After he fainted the other day, it was only natural for her, a big sister, to help out!
The door opened, and she glanced to see familiar blond hair before glancing down again, intending to make more progress before addressing him.
The Princess of Lucifer resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she heard a loud crash from somewhere. Chartette was most likely responsible. Riliane just wanted to have a good soak—that would calm her headache—but the redhead just wasn't made for the finer tasks of a servant, and she knew her brother couldn't be everywhere at once no matter how hard she wished.
"Are you done? I will not entertain you if you are any later."
Her focus on the papers before her was cut short at what was most definitely not her brother's voice. Her head snapped up sharply, reaching for a concealed weapon almost subconsciously.
Blond ponytailed hair, blue eyes, a knife. Very mightily dressed up, garish makeup on his face and a truly ridiculous... thing on his head. It was an abomination to hats everywhere, she almost felt personally offended. A teenager, perhaps, slightly older than her.
The teen snickered at her expression as she lowered her hand. "Were you going to attack me? I'll have you know that I'm the best knife thrower in this country."
Her lips curled into a smile. He never changed. "Lies and slander," she said softly, and the boy's smile widened. "It is common knowledge that I am the best, Hansel. You should know that."
He huffed, wrinkling his nose in a too-familiar gesture. "You're deluded. And it's Lemy now, Ril-yan." His accent was much better now, but for some reason he was insistent on butchering her name. He took off his hat.
Still, though—
"Lemy? That's your killer name?"
He walked up to her desk, bristling. She didn't bother hiding her laughter. "Yes," he grit his teeth, "I am Lemy Abelard. Fifth the Pierrot to Pere Noel!"
She smiled indulgently. No chance. "I am sure you must be very intimidating, what- Boy of the End?"
Riliane finally left her desk and resisted the impulse to hug her lifelong friend, adjusting her skirts. "Now, let's go. You must be introduced to my brother." She made her way out of the room, knowing that Hansel would follow.
"What a demanding woman you are," he crowed. "How is he like?"
"He's you, but better."
"I see you're still an insufferable pedant."
"And you're still a dimwit. Good to see you haven't changed much."
"Queen of Hearts."
"Murderclown."
"Evil aristocrat."
"Chicken Little."
He sped up towards her. "That was a one-time alias!"
"Not anymore, it isn't," she sing-songed. It was good to have a friend back.
Ney watched as her oldest friend's knuckles grew white from gripping the thin files she'd brought. One required a certain level of naivety to even react in such a way, and seeing Alexi- no, Allen, a fellow street urchin, acting with any amount of disregard for his typical cynicism was partially amusing and partially pathetic. As he brought a hand to his face, an enraged screech piercing her ears, she struggled to keep neutral. The only thing preventing her face from giving any tells being several years of intensive training.
"You must be better," IR said, pacing around the room like a predator stalking prey. "You must be stronger."
Gretel didn't like being prey. "What does strength mean when you have no one to be strong for?"
The woman laughed, and Gretel could only watch. "Be strong for yourself. It is the only way to be acknowledged by others. People who are only strong for other people and not for their own sakes will be destroyed in this world; for what will happen when they are gone, and the people they are strong for are left with no one to be protected? What will happen when there is no one left to protect?"
She had been so angry, at that moment. A trusted instructor attacking her very reason for existence - it was hard to swallow and harder to consider and downright impossible to implement.
And here Allen was, one of the strongest people she knew, shedding enraged tears for a problem that shouldn't even be his. It was laughable. Pitiful.
"I'll kill them," he whispered, and the familiar promise was foreign to her ears. "I'll kill them all."
The grey files she brought contained several accounts of multiple things. One of the most prevalent things among them was fairly blatant (and ridiculous amounts of) embezzlement, appropriation of family-owned property, identity theft, raids under the wrong names, stolen accounts, unaccounted-for acts of unnecessary border violence, the whole ten yards. Insubordination. Insubordination. Insubordination. Chat logs, filed video proof, paper trails, discrepancies in administrative files, references of references upon references of data and damning evidence she had accumulated over the span of a week. And Allen was holding onto the proof of their empire crumbling despite all the work she knew he had put in like it was the only thing that kept him alive - no, like destroying it would be the only thing to validate his existence. Brioche lay abandoned on the countertop.
She had to distract him, somehow.
"You told me," she said abruptly, and she could feel Allen's eyes boring into her side but nevermind that for now, "you told me that you would tell me about your sister when she found you."
"And you vowed you would tell me about that brother of yours when you happened upon him," he said listlessly. He was so much more articulate, these days. It fit him. "You found him, then?"
"I did," she said, voice hoarse, "I did. He's great."
He laughed. It was broken. "Did you know Riliane didn't even remember my name when she came for me? It was raining and father was drunk and sister wasn't any better. I called to her, 'Riliane!', and she looked to me, confused, like I was a stranger." He shook his head, ran a flour-caked hand through hair she was unused to seeing tied. "I told her my name was Allen."
Wait. "Am I…?"
"Yes," he said. His lip curled in the bitterness of it all, and Ney couldn't blame him. "You're the only one who remembers my name at all."
"People who are only strong for other people and not for their own sakes will be destroyed in this world; for what will happen when they are gone, and the people they are strong for are left with no one to be protected?"
"You're wrong," she said, and she didn't know who she was saying it to. "Your name is Allen, now. Just Allen." He didn't say anything for a while, and the kitchen was plunged into a calm sort of silence.
Briskly, Allen broke it by turning on the tap to wash his hands and pick out the flour from his hair. Still such a neat freak. "Don't you think this reminds you of the old times?" he asked, wringing his hands. "Us telling each other our problems, and all."
Ney blinked, thinking about it for a bit. "Bah," she nudged him, slipping into an accent she hadn't revisited in ages, "old times, 'e says. Speaks even li' a blueblood being in a cot of spoons, too!"
He recoiled. "'ve always been talking li' that, 've been!"
Ney smirked triumphantly, ruffling his hair and ignoring his indignant screech. "Nay, ye aint've. Ye've been talking li' a port brat for longer if 've got summat say in it! Nothin' li' yer sister!"
Allen slapped the hand away. "Ye've got it wrong, cur! Me sister aint've-"
"Allen, you know that ghastly dialect?" a mortified voice came from the entrance.
Lemy and a teenage blonde girl with her hair in a bun and a scandalous expression on a familiar aristocratic face. Ah. Ney loosened her stance, staring at the newcomer. They truly looked alike, the Princess of Lucifer and her best friend. It was almost uncanny.
"Riliane Lucifen d'Autriche," Ney said, cold and blank. "I've been waiting for you."
Ney saw her eyes flitting across the room; brioche unmade on the counter, Allen's hair disheveled and wet, the files on the countertop, her working clothes and the utter dissonance between Ney and Lemy's current personas.
"Get away from him," she said, just as authoritatively and with just as much icy vitriol. When Ney didn't move, the Heiress snapped her fingers. "Chartette!"
Ney carefully didn't startle as a red blur fell from the rafters, barely reacting fast enough to avoid the death-dropping 'Chartette'. A guard, bright red hair in tornado twintails and a ridiculously inconvenient maid outfit. It looked like something her mother would ask her to wear.
That wasn't the point. Allen didn't tell her of this, and neither did any of her distance surveillance provide evidence of a guard in the quarters! By all means, the two heirs to the Lucifen family were all but defenseless!
She cursed, taking a defensive stance. As an assassin, she wasn't used to direct combat, but guards had to be adept at it.
Chartette swooped in quick, fast, and heavy. Ney fell back, dodging a few more bruising strikes before going for an opening on the redhead's side - it was so unguarded, it was practically -
Dodge, dodge, that's a -
No!
She barely escaped. She was getting rusty. Ney had to find a way to take out her knife. Chartette's incessant blows, slowly backing her up against the wall, made it all the more difficult to do so especially since with the ceiling at this height Ney simply couldn't afford to jump. There was an instinct-filled haze taking over her brain as the two went at each other with the intent to neutralize, Ney on the defensive and Chartette on strong offensive and it was working damn it she should be better than this!
Chartette grinned. Ney kicked in a chair and ducked, the air whooshing out of her for a split second before she regained her bearings and unstrapped the knife from her bracers. It was her time to grin.
The redhead startled, and they began a new game. Chartette wound her arms and Ney tucked in to hamstring-
"Ril-yan!"
"Chartette!"
The two fighters did not disengage, their breaths heavy, falling into something reminiscent of a battle fog.
"Allen!"
Ney's knife stopped centimeters from Allen's throat, and Chartette's combats very nearly made contact with his back.
"Both of you," Allen said, "stand down."
They stilled.
"You absolute idiot!" Riliane screamed, dragging Allen away from the awkwardly standing girls. "You could've gotten hurt!"
"Well so could they, had I not intervened," Allen said. "They are both very dear to me, Riliane. Must I explain that further?"
Riliane, being a sucker for Allen's puppy dog eyes, relented. "Alright," she said, massaging between her brows in hopes of banishing the headache building up there. "Would you do me the courtesy of introducing yourself, at least?"
"I'm afraid you'd be talking to my sister, you'd be," Lemy snarled.
Riliane's eyebrows shot up. "You mean to say-"
"Yes," Ney agreed, no, purred, "Ney Phutapie, at your esteemed service - or Gretel Salmhofer, if you prefer."
Ney carefully watched Allen from the corner of her eye as the tension bled out of his body. He didn't know her last name, but he did know Salmhofer. Who didn't?
Riliane squinted imperially at Ney. The package felt heavy in her duffel -
"I imagined you shorter, to be frank."
Sasha: This was a bitch of a chapter what the hell... Allen had to yell at me to get on the doc and write this thing. In any case we're getting to the Fun Shit next chapter now it's like 12am dhdbfkdn
Allen: That's not true? I get naggy, not yelly.