Hi again! :D
I know I take very long to update… BLAME MY SCHOOL! So many tests… It's like, exam MONTH. D: So I think I can only update weekly…
Well anyways, please enjoy ^^ Read in the dark with the lights on! (haha that doesn't make sense)
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"Hey, wait!" Allen called, turning to run after her.
But when he had gone out of the room, the little girl had already disappeared.
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"That's strange," Allen mused aloud. "How can one little girl run so fast?"
He lay down, pressing his ear to the floor, listening for Kanda's and Lenalee's movements. Nothing. Allen began to worry that Kanda and Lenalee had suffered the same fate as the Finder. But they were Exorcists! Surely they could land properly! But that also depended on the floor.
What if it's sharp spikes? What then?
Allen dared not think of the consequences if the floor Lenalee and Kanda was going to land on was made of sharp spikes. Lenalee could probably avoid it with her dark boots, but how much stamina did she have to keep jumping off the walls to avoid reaching the floor? And Kanda… he would drop like a rock to his untimely demise.
Allen shuddered. It had better not be sharp spikes.
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THUMP.
Lenalee landed on a soft mud-and-hay floor, disoriented, dizzy, but otherwise fine.
Where am I? It's so dark! I can't even see anything… I must be very far from the top of the house.
"Allen? Kanda? You guys should come in!"
Silence.
"Guys?"
Silence.
Lenalee frowned. She activated her Dark Boots, leaping up. She had dropped a long way down, so she decided to accelerate upwards quickly… and hit her head, hard, against a solid ceiling.
"Ow…" she mumbled. "Ceiling? Wasn't this house hollow?"
Her hands found some hooks on the ceiling, which she grabbed onto and screamed for help. Yet, there was no answer again. That's when she became conscious of the sticky stuff on the hooks. There was a thin shaft of light shining through some loose grains of sand and soil. Stretching her hand out to the sliver of light, she saw what the liquid that stained her hand was.
It was red, slimy, and thick. Only one thing was like that. But it was fresh… And if it was not her blood, then… whose was it?
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Once Kanda landed, quite gracefully in fact, he heard a muffled scream pierce the air. Judging by the sound, it must've been a really loud scream, if not for the thick floor muffling it. He paused, thinking, then moved towards the sound cautiously. It was pitch-dark there too.
Damn that baka Moyashi! He cursed. If not for his stupid action, I'd still be fine.
Plink. Plink. Pink. Stadium lights switched on one after another, flooding Kanda's vision with blinding white light. Instinctively, he raised his arm to shield himself from the glare. Around him, the walls were made of metal-plated concrete. He frowned. Was there no route of escape?
Plink. Plink. Plink. The bright lights revealed a long, empty hallway with the thickest, blackest carpet Kanda had ever seen.
"Oh great," the swordsman rolled his eyes. "I bet the carpet's covering some traps."
He sighed. All the missions he got were pretty much clichéd.
The corridor was rather wide. Just to be safe, he leapt from the bases of the light-stands, and made it across effortlessly. But when he stepped on the last stand, he seemed to have activated something. He heard the unmistakable clang of a metal grille behind him. But then, he was in mid-leap, and when he reached the other end of the corridor and looked back, the grille had shut completely. He had only one direction to go—forward.
In front of him was a door, padded with soft velvet, outlined in gold. Strange. Kanda didn't remember his house having such a feature. Nonetheless, he pushed open the door carefully, suspicious of everything.
Stepping in, Kanda entered a beautiful room. The carpet underfoot was deep red and soft, and the wall was pure white. There was a four-poster, King-sized bed in the corner, with sheets matching the color of the wall. A mahogany cupboard stood next to the bed. There was a small round table in the middle of the room, in front of a chair that was fit for a king to sit on. That's when Kanda noticed the small figure seated on the chair.
"Welcome home," said the small child, a smile tugging at her lips.
Kanda' eyes widened: "Imouto-chan? (Transl: Younger sister?)"
The girl smiled wider, twirling a strand of dark hair around her index finger. Her legs weren't even long enough to touch the floor. She was wearing a plain white dress.
"You… You're only three years younger than me… so how are you still a kid?!" Kanda frowned.
His sister laughed, got off the chair, and tugged on Kanda's sleeve, walking him further into the room.
"During the year when the Akuma attacked us, you left for the Order, right?"
Kanda nodded. His sister looked up into his eyes, expression suddenly serious.
"Mother died of heartbreak shortly after. You were her only son! Father was very angry with you. He didn't support your decision. Having lost his wife and son, he too, died soon after. And I was left alone… I kept thinking that you'd come back someday, so I didn't sell the house. I didn't have money then, I was only six," she laughed bitterly. "I died a month from my seventh birthday, still clinging on to the hope that you'd come back. Now that you're back… stay here forever."
Kanda felt a painful lump at his throat. He couldn't, and didn't know what to say. All these years he was at the Order, and he'd left his family behind, just for them to die one by one. Especially his sister… he treasured his sister more than anyone (but maybe on par with the Moyashi).
"Stay," said the little girl, smiling.
But to Kanda, her voice was so far away. He felt sleepy, oh-so-sleepy—he was too lost in thoughts to realize that his sister had stood atop the chair and pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth to his nose. Gently, the little girl led him to the bed and watched him fall asleep.
She smiled contentedly. What now? Oh yes, get rid of the other intruders in the house.
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Lenalee found an escape hatch. That's right. After kicking the ceiling a few thousand times just to discover that Innocence had no effect on the destruction of the ceiling, she found a handle she could pull. Climbing through, she found herself facing a shifting corridor. It was a long, empty hallway with a black carpet, with a metal grille separating a door at the end of the hallway from her.
Oddly, the hallway was shifting its form.
Sections of wall slid in and out, changing the shape of the hallway. The floor slid back, creating a sound similar to the collapse of a building. (One floor above: "Oh shit! Is this an earthquake?!" cried Allen.) The floor was vibrating violently. After a lot of tremors and shifting about, the entire hallway was changed. The velvet-and-gold door was hidden out of view, and instead, the hallway was shortened and let to a control panel of buttons.
"Hmm… wonder what this does," Lenalee mused, walking over to it.
She randomly pressed a rather appealing green button.
Nothing happened.
Blue button?
Nothing.
"Maybe it's a combination kind of thing… Ooh, I like buttons…" Lenalee thought, pressing more buttons…
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One level up, Allen was busy avoiding spikes.
"What on earth is going on?!" he gasped, doing some odd form of a tap dance on the floor. "Someone must be pressing some buttons to activate this!"
"If this doesn't stop, I'm going to be pierced!!!"
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Okay, so I have this odd habit of putting bad cliffies at the end of a chapter… Sorry
Anyway, do tell me if it's irritating! And also, please review! Thank you! ^^
