The first thing Allen felt as soon as he opened his eyes was the throbbing pain in his head and on it from falling on the floor. Groaning, he pulled himself up from the bed and rubbed his temples.

"What happened—Oof!"

A large blur with long green hair tackled him and pinned him back down on the white blankets.

"Allen-chan, you're okay! I was I so worried about you; I thought I was going to die!"

He recognized her voice, but not her manner of speaking. In confusion, he looked up and saw her familiar face.

"L-Lenalee…?" he stuttered as he softly uttered her name.

Lenalee's lips, painted a startling pink, curved into a large smile.

"Oh Allen-chan, you remember me! I though you going to have, like, ah-men-ee-shia or something weird and bad and like, annoying like that," she chirped brightly, batting her long lashes at him.

Just then, the door to his ward creaked open and he saw a flash of red enter his room.

"Lenalee-san, it's called amnesia, and Allen-san is still recovering from his last mission. Please remove yourself from him so he can get well faster. We are already short on exorcists as is."

Allen gaped; Lavi's bright red hair had been combed down neatly and he was missing his trademark bandana. The redhead adjusted horn-rimmed glasses, the right frame replaced with a black material, and shifted the books in his arms. The once twinkling green eye, filled with spunk and pranks, was hard and dull, and his expression stayed impassive and serious.

Lenalee pouted. She lifted herself out of Allen's lap and straightened her uniform, which seemed somewhat more…revealing than the one she had in the past. His face flushed and he looked away.

Suddenly, her pink lips twisted into a snarl. "Why don't ya take that damned stick outta your ass and crack a joke or somethin', huh? Not even little ol' Bookman is as uptight as you are, and you're too stuffy for Allen-chan! He's been out cold for a whole day so show some joy that our friend is finally awake, you robot!" she snapped venomously, gathering the sheets of the bed in her fists. Allen fell out of the bed.

Lavi's cold eye narrowed and he replied, "Lenalee-san, I have no desire to engage in meaningless arguments regarding me and my mentor, especially not in such a vulgar manner as yours."

"Well excuse me for not being such an uptight shithole like you, firecracker, and why ain't you any relieved that your freaking colleague is alive?"

The two exorcists were too busy going at each other's throats to notice Allen quietly and bemusedly slipping away from the ward.

This is crazy! This is not right! Allen thought. His head still hurt, but whether it was from the mission or from seeing two of his closest friends acting so—so—so wrong towards each other he couldn't tell. He tried to remember what had happened before blacking out: there was the mirror that caused the comas, the one that he touched, the one that made him fall—

So did he wake up from a coma? He remembered that Lenalee—if that was Lenalee—mentioned that he had been out for a day and as if on cue, his stomach grumbled like a small earthquake.

Allen chuckled to himself. "At least my appetite's still the same."

But upon arriving at the kitchen, his appetite flew out the window. The cafeteria was utterly silent, as a loved one had died. Finders and exorcists alike ate wordlessly, and the only sounds were the metal clinking of forks and spoons and knives, and Jerry's grating voice yelling at him to get out.

"What? It's you again? Don't you realize I have a life too, other than cooking crap for you useless workers all day long? And you eat like a pig: anything and everything! If I gave you a fried akuma you would probably eat that and two hundred more in one sitting! I swear, all of you are freaks of nature, especially you, you complete abnormality! I mean, what kid has white hair? And what kid would eat more than seventeen dishes at once—"

Allen promptly left the cafeteria; he could still smell the stench of Jerry's abominations that had been still alive and kicking in the pan…whatever they were. Even so, everything was too strange and incomprehensible to eat anymore.

"Agh, my head hurts!" Allen complained out loud. His voice echoed in the Black Order hallway as he aimlessly stumbled around, trying to figure out what was going on. Mass PMSing?

"A-Allen-san? Are you alright? Do you want me to get Nurse…" The voice was weak and diminutive and disturbingly familiar.

I'm hearing all these voices I know, but it's all wrong, Allen thought to himself. He heard soft footsteps, half-believing he would no longer be surprised, and yet—

This was the biggest surprise of them all.

His hair was untied, first of all. The long blue tresses, which were always kept up and away from his face, delicately hugged his broad shoulders and made him look smaller, more vulnerable. His permanent grimace was replaced by an expression of complete submission and anxiety, and he wore a nervous smile.

He was cowering slightly, as if Allen's outburst had frightened him somehow. Which should not have happened in any way, shape or form. His shoulders were hunched and his arms held his long katana like the arms of a mother around her precious child.

His name was Kanda Yuu.

Allen stared. "Kanda?"

The Japanese exorcist looked back at him in confusion. "Everyone calls me Yuu, you know. Remember?" Mistaking Allen's disbelief for amnesia, he quickly stuttered, "Well if you forgot, it's okay; you can always remember again later, so you can call me Kanda now and remember to call me Yuu later, unless you want to keep calling me Kanda…" His voice trailed off and he dropped his gaze to his shoes, twiddling his thumbs.

White-haired Allen politely excused himself and fled.

Every one of Allen's closest friends was twisted. He saw Bookman in the library, red-faced and surrounded by bottles of vodka, sniggering his way through hidden, highly inappropriate magazines (all of which included suggestive images of women with developed bodies and little to no clothing). Reever and the scientists were plowing through their work, without stopping for Lenalee's weirdly disgusting coffee or complaining about their miserable lives. Komui had kicked his sister out of his room, neat and spotless, and yelled at her for being such a dirty whore. A fight had ensued between the two sibilings, which was ignored by the scientists too absorbed in their research to care. Krory was running around like a small child and happily frightening the finders with his Dracula-like appearance, while Miranda eagerly helped the grumbling Jerry by loudly serving all the people in the cafeteria. Noise Marie was facing a white wall, blank-faced and open-mouthed; Allen jumped at the blind man's random bouts of laughter.

Allen was exhausted, confused, and hungry. His head was still spinning like a top and his stomach roared like an angry beast. Thankfully, he hadn't run into the generals or the Noah (yet) and he didn't want to tax his mind thinking about their surely warped personalities.

"Maybe I'll go to my room and take a nap…" he muttered, rubbing his temples again and dragging his feet towards his room. He noticed the aroma of roses wafting from his bedroom.

Lenalee had better not put some weird thing in my room, Allen thought angrily, and slammed open his door. He immediately wished that he hadn't, that he had just left the flower-scented room alone, forever concealing the atrocity within.

Inside lay Cross Marian on his bed, holding a rose between his teeth and wearing a wine-colored robe that revealed even more skin than Lenalee's uniform. Small candles and dark red petals sprinkled every surface in the room, and upon seeing his pupil, the red-haired general smiled gently.

Gently.

"Hello, Allen-chan," he purred. His voice as smooth as velvet.

Allen went pale and the thudding in his head grew more intense.

Cross sat up from the bed, the sheets slipping off of him. "I've been…waiting for you, my dear student." Other than the dysfunctional mantle, he wore nothing. Nothing.

Allen took an unsteady step backwards from his room, then took off running down the hallway. That image would be burned forever in his overtaxed mind, along with everything else that happened earlier that day.

Lenalee suddenly materialized from one of the rooms and clutched his arm.

"Allen-chan! Will you play with me?" she sang. The uniform was replaced by a pink nightgown, no thicker than a sheet of paper, and he gulped as she hugged him tighter.

"Lenalee-san! That is extremely profane behavior! Release Allen-san at once!" snapped Lavi, who walked around the corner of the hallway. He huffed and pushed up his glasses.

"And that is why you are disgusting! I am utterly ashamed to be related to you by blood!" roared Komui. He had appeared behind Lavi and dragged Lenalee off of Allen.

"Get off me, you old bastard! I'm gonna kill ya if ya don't leggo me!" Lenalee thrashed in her brother's arms, effectively tearing the dress from the waist down.

Jerry barreled into the scene with a ladle and a large metal pot in his hands. "I have had enough! I'm going to massacre all you ugly freaks and cook this place up in a bonfire!" He threw the pot over Lenalee's head, which began screaming in pain and fury, and he began beating Komui all over with the ladle. The siblings turned to the dark cook and unleashed violence upon him with the very weapons he had brought with him.

"Allen-chan, I'll save you!" sang Cross as he too grabbed at Allen, successfully snagging the left one in the process. The robe went flying, its purpose defeated, and a mental blade began inflicting scars in Allen's mind. The young exorcist panicked and desperately tried to pry off the older man's grip.

"Hands off, you ugly old man, he's mine!" hollered Lenalee as she threw off the pot, bashed in Jerry's face, and launched herself at Allen's other arm. The remains of her gown had vanished under their feet.

Kanda suddenly turned up behind Allen and tugged at his coat. "P-please, everyone, stop f-f-fighting now…" he whispered, his broad face filled with sheer terror. But his voice was swallowed up by the din of the fight and he was literally thrown away. With a petrified squeak, he gathered up his Mugen and scurried away.

As he fled, Reever and the scientists filed into the hallway with flasks overfilling their arms. "Can't a researcher work in peace in this Godforsaken shithole?" he thundered. The scientists hurled the beakers into the fray like bombs; sure enough, with the sound of shattering glass, colorful smoke encompassed the fight, muting the noise and hiding the scene. Satisfied, the group left and hallway and disappeared.

The thick smokescreen blinded the fighters, but they ignored that and instead thrashed around, trying to hit anything and anyone. Allen's eyes watered from the smoke and the pain and the nonsensicality of the entire situation. He tried to call out but the breath was squeezed out of him when Lenalee plopped herself on his chest. Through a cloud of pink and green (which conveniently censored her body), he saw her flirty smile and olive eyes, though a large bruise was beginning to distort her features.

"Now I have you," she said happily and leaned forward towards his face. She was roughly struck aside and was replaced by Cross, who retorted, "Bitch, get off, he's my pupil!" With a snarl, Lenalee launched herself at Cross and the two began to fight right on top of Allen. Kicking and screaming and clawing at each other's faces, they rolled off of him and onto another unfortunate figure, concealed by smoke. Dancing away from the fists and kicks, tiny Bookman giggled and hiccupped as he watched the two exorcists fight, perspiring and unclothed.

Lavi's voice rose above the clamor and Allen could see disheveled red hair bob among the blurs of people like a bottle in the sea. "You lot ought to be ashamed of yourselves, losing your civility in acts of savagery like these! And you, Bookman-sensei! You are simply repulsive! Remove yourself from the vicinity at once!" The tiny scholar vanished as Lavi grabbed him by the hair and flung him into the abyss below the railing. Hevlaska, who was trying to sleep at the time, was hit by the flying Bookman. With a deep, reverberating roar, she climbed up to the floor the fight was on, gasping for breath as her swollen figure inched its way up. White tendrils emanated from her, most latching onto other floors for support; the rest of them began to whale on the crowd.

Pure infuriation had already begun building up inside him from the moment he opened his eyes that morning, but like all bottles, he reached his utmost limit.

"I DON'T KNOW ANY OF YOU!" he bellowed, scrabbling to get up in vain. "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME AND LET ME GO HOME!" He was thrown down on the ground again and his head struck the cold stone floor. Stars and lights burst in his vision as he lay there, dazed. But before long he had recovered from the dizziness, although the fight had grown brighter, as if someone had lit a bonfire behind his eyes.

"INNOCENCE, ACTIVATE!" His cry echoed in the hallway above the commotion of the fight. With a soft green glow, his left arm transformed into the faithful, demon-slaying weapon and began slashing at everything and everyone in his path. His vision began to blur and the pounding in his head started to intensify till the pain actually began to block out his senses. He could hear yells of agony as he felt his arm blindly strike unfortunate lumps of flesh. Allen was just barely hanging onto what was left of his sanity as he lashed out in all directions when suddenly, Lenalee reappeared on his torso, and as he fell back to the ground, her full, unpainted lips moved and he heard her whisper, "Wake up, Allen." His eyes widened as he saw the familiar, tender smile again and he tried to answer her when his throbbing head struck a large, ornate mirror that materialized behind him. The blackness that threatened his vision conquered his sight, and as he faded into unconsciousness he could hear the shattering glass echo in his head…

Allen blinked. He found himself back in Nurse's room, which was now in tatters. His transformed left arm was pinned down by Reever and the scientists. A snarling Kanda was pointing his activated Mugen at his neck and Lenalee, whose hair had fallen out of her pigtails, was still crying, "wake up, Allen!" in his face while holding down his right arm with all her strength. Behind the two exorcists, Lavi stood with his hammer lodged into the wall through the frame of the mirror; shards of the reflective surface dangled in the frame as the larger pieces shattered and collected into a pool of fragments at the red-head's feet. Jerry fretted over the spilt porridge and Komui stretched his white hat over his face, moaning about reparation costs under his breath.

He blinked again. Lenalee leaned forward and stared into Allen's eyes, and a flush built up behind his pale cheeks for a forgotten reason. Then, she cheered, "He's awake!" and gathered him up in her arms.

"Che," Kanda muttered, impassively sheathing his blade and drawing away from the bed. Lavi tugged his hammer out of the wall and frame with ease and began to drive a knuckle into Allen's head.

"S'about time!" he laughed as the white-haired boy struggled for air and movement under the mass of arms. The scientists collapsed in a gasping heap as Allen's arm deactivated.

"You sure caused a storm, Moyashi!" said Lavi, finally releasing the younger exorcist from his fists.

Lenalee nodded in agreement. "Ever since we returned from the mission, you've been moaning all day like you were having a nightmare and then suddenly you activated your Innocence and began screaming and thrashing and—" She broke off and awkwardly began to tie her hair back again.

"You nearly killed the entire research team, you idiot," Kanda spat, his dark eyes flickering over to the said team, who were recovering from Allen's outburst.

"YEAH, ALLEN, WE NEARLY DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!" the team roared, then ran out of the little air they managed to gather and collapsed again.

"I-I'm sorry," Allen stuttered, still confused about what had happened. He tried to remember the last thing that happened before his fit.

"After I touched the mirror..." he mused. He glanced at the remains of the broken pieces of glass that littered the ground.

"You fell into a coma, too," Lenalee finished. "But after Lavi broke the mirror, you woke up."

"So the Innocence—"

"Hevlaska examined the mirror when we returned and confirmed the presence of Innocence in it, and so she extracted it," Komui said, still lamenting about the damage to the room. "But there must have been something else about the mirror because you still didn't wake up after she took it, so we were trying to figure out what to do when you began all this…broken furniture… torn sheets and curtains…splintered walls…" He buried his face in his hands.

"Well, what matters is that you're okay," Lenalee said firmly. Allen smiled. He had a strange feeling of relief, like all the worries he had had just been resolved. He couldn't remember the source of these feelings, but something within him assured him he was better off not knowing.

"Thank you, Lenalee, everyone, and I'm really sorry for all this inconvenience I caused—"

"More inconvenience to ME!" boomed Nurse, who just barreled into the room. She gaped for a moment, taking in the destruction, but recovered and glared at the lot of them. Allen gulped.

"ALL OF YOU, OUT!"

Everyone, including Kanda, fled, while Allen was shoved back into bed by Nurse's steely arms.

"Take this for now and get some rest," she said in a considerably softer tone. She handed him two white pills and a glass of water, then faced the mess and groaned. With an uncertain grin, Allen swallowed the medicine and felt the darkness overtake him again, this time in a much more comforting manner.

All was clear. An old woman, clad in black, moved far more nimbly and silently than any person of her age should be capable of. But then again, she thought to herself as she removed the wrinkly mask and fake dentures, she was far from old.

Now shed of her disguise, the woman, who appeared no older than Allen himself, slipped into the ward where the mirror stood, disconsolate and broken. She clicked her teeth in annoyance as she tiptoed over the maze of glass shards till she reached the frame itself. She sighed in relief as she ran slender fingers over the carved gold and found no scratches or chips.

But she had been right; this magic frame was the most exciting artifact she had ever stumbled across. It conducted magic over whatever surface was lodged within its confines, and depending on that surface, caused different effects on the ones who touched it. She would definitely use it again.

The girl giggled and picked up the frame with ease. Her dark brown eyes caught the light of the moon and glowed, giving her an ethereal presence. She took a step and stumbled on a shard of glass, and a stream of curses came from her mouth as she quickly stemmed the flow of blood from the wound on her toe.

"Who's there?" Lavi, who had been on his way to the library, quickly approached the room with his hammer in his hand. His bandana suddenly pulled itself over his eye and he yelped in confusion, wrestling with the piece of cloth. As quickly as it moved, it stopped, and it dangled limply in his free hand, causing his red hair to tumble over his forehead.

"That was weird," he muttered to himself. He stuffed the green bandana in his pocket, wary of its strange action, and entered the ward again. No one was in there, and for a moment, he thought it was just his imagination that conjured up the noise in the back of his head. But before he left, he realized the splintered walls were whole and the bed was neatly made and repaired and the shattered glass was gathered in a waste bin under the window. The frame itself had vanished without a trace, but in its place was a silvery feather. Lavi crept into the room and picked it up. The feather felt slippery and cool, like a silk ribbon, before it liquefied in his fingers, dripping water into a small puddle on the mended floor.

Far away, the girl with the golden frame watched the tall, spiraling headquarters vanish over the dark horizon. With a mischievous grin and a flick of long, black hair, she turned and flew away with shining wings that trickled silver rain onto the forest below.

A/N:

And it's finally done!

It was actually really fun to write everyone out of character like this. This is probably also one of the weirdest things I've ever written. But I enjoyed it and I hope you did too!

Virtual cookies to anyone who can guess who the girl was in the end! *trollface*

But for which poor sap will she use that frame again? MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

Thanks to my reviewers, dragonzftw, mitsuhiko1998, and Badee Badaa Doo!

(PS: Sorry, dragonzftw, for missing my self-proclaimed deadline by a mile. Here's a free virtual cookie in apology!)

R&R!

~Wings~ flying off