A week later Tyki captured four Innocence fragments.
It was almost unheard of, on level with defeating a Marshall. But Tyki had tracked a relatively new platoon of exorcists, none experienced, and had Tease devour them in their sleep. He flashed the Innocence fragments at dinner, holding them between his fingers like cigarettes for the Earl to see. The Earl hummed appraisingly, lifting his spectacles to gaze at the hated Innocence.
"Very good," he said, and then with a quick nod to Tyki, he crushed a fragment in his palm. Allen was out of his seat before the Earl was finished destroying it, fully in his black form and marching up to the Earl before the dust finished settling to the ground.
"Stop!" The Earl just chuckled at him, grabbing another fragment and watching it disintegrate between his fingers. Skinn wrestled him to the ground, and the contact with the Noah of Wrath made him feel a spark of raw hate. Jasdebi joined in, twisting his arms behind his back and trying to subdue his exorcist strength. Contact with them heightened the sense of bonds he had with the Innocence, and it hurt all the more to see the fragments destroyed one by one.
His mind was filled with dirges and grim hymns, and he remembered that he was a Noah, just like them, and stopped trying to use his exorcist strengths.
Calling out to the demons in the House, he roared an order—Attack the Millennium Earl! The force of his command was nearly in league with the First Noah herself, and the demons scrambled to obey. Just as he was completely covered by a cloud of demons, the Earl spoke a single order in his mind, the grin on his face just a bit wider: Disappear.
One by one, every demon summoned in the House of the Earl self-destructed, Allen watching in horror as all those souls lost any chance of salvation.
"No!" he pleaded, nails scrabbling against the floor.
"Shut up!" Skinn drove his elbow into Allen's spine. Road sat quietly, unsmiling and unmoving. Tyki just looked amused, brushing the sand-like debris from his gloves and giving the Earl a pointed look. The Earl nodded, flashed Road a conspiratory grin, and quirked his head towards Allen.
"Hai, Hakushaku," she intoned in careful Japanese. Allen thought her voice sounded dark and strangely much older when she spoke in the Earl's language. Maybe it was just because she seemed so serious. The Earl tipped his hat with the tip of Lero and exited out to the Arc.
Suddenly Debitto flipped him over, straddling him, and dealt a vicious punch to Allen's face. Blood exploded in the back of his throat and Debitto kept raining down blows. Allen's exorcist training kept him from getting hit anywhere critical but Debitto didn't seem to care, pummeling his arms and chest.
"You screwed up big time, rookie," he sneered. "Dumbass exorcist. You think you're tough shit since you gained maturity? You attacked the Millennium Earl! You are so fucked. And you know what? I'm gonna—"
"Debitto." Road's voice was soft and carefully controlled. Debitto opened his mouth to protest, but dropped his hands went she sent him an illusion. Allen didn't know what she showed him, but Debitto's eyes went wide and he pressed his lips tightly together.
Leave. The First Noah's voice rang in every Clansman's head.
"Understood," Tyki said. The other Noah repeated the response, just a beat behind.
All at once they left the room, leaving Road and Allen alone. He narrowed his eyes at her, wiping a streak of blood from the corner of his mouth. Was she going to lecture him? Yell at him? Beat him up? She only stared with hard, unblinking eyes, and Allen steadily became more and more uncomfortable.
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked, more as a challenge than out of fear. She knelt in front of him and rested her hands on his knees. Allen remembered when she first captured him in her dimension, how she mauled herself with his Innocence and how she regenerated immediately. But he also remembered what she looked like underneath her skin. Dark and twisted and ugly.
She leaned over his chest, and when their lips were just inches apart, she opened her jacket and pulled out an Innocence fragment. He didn't dare make a move to grab it, instead staring at the molten gold of her eyes. She dangled it in front of his face, right between his eyes.
"This, Allen Walker, is Innocence," she said, twirling it in her fingers. "It adapts to certain humans, marking them as exorcists. It is susceptible to Dark Matter, the Noah's magic, just as Dark Matter is susceptible to Innocence. It fuels your Dark Order, drives you to exorcise demons like our Noah instincts drive us to kill you exorcists. I hate Innocence." She pressed her thumb and forefinger together and crushed the fragment, the glowing green dust scattering over his chest.
She grabbed his collar, pulling him up to eye-level.
"You think you're on middle ground? That you can just be half Noah, half exorcist? This is not a truce. You are not free to skip over the line whenever you like, choose to be a Noah one day and an exorcist the next. I have no qualms destroying your Innocence right here and now." She seized his wrist with enough force to snap it. Allen didn't make a sound.
She leaned forward and touched her cheek against his, lips right above his ear. "You are a Noah. Not an exorcist, not a savior, not the Crowned Clown. You are the disgraced and diminished Fourteenth that has finally been beaten into submission. Your memories have already started to fade since your birth as a Noah, and one day you wont remember what your life was before you gained your stigmata." She pulled away abruptly, the swiftness of her retreat ruffling his hair.
She stalked out, giving him a final telepathic order that he found himself unable to defy.
Go back to your cell.
She was right, he realized with sinking dread.
He had assumed his time in the House of the Earl was just high stress and overshadowed his memories of the Dark Order. But since he became a Noah...
He knew that the Dark Order was composed of exorcists and Finders, and all of them were sent to search and preserve Innocence fragments as well as locate Innocence adapters. He knew that he was the owner of the Point Breaker Innocence, Crown Clown and that he thrived on saving demons' souls. He just couldn't remember.
He no longer recalled the surge of power that came every time he released the Crown Clown or the ecstasy of laying a pitiful demon to rest. He couldn't form solid memories of his friends at the Order; his annoyance at Kanda, his friendship with Lavi, and his attachment and companionship with Lenalee. He couldn't even remember the night he was captured, other than knowing Tyki had taken him.
Damn it! He dug his fingers into the rough stone of his cell. It was horribly cliché, having a dungeon in the basement, but Allen supposed that the Millennium Earl was a bit of a cliché himself. The whole House was one big fortress, like a medieval castle. Not that he could complain—after all, the Dark Order was like Rapunzel's tower on steroids.
He sighed, holding his head in his hands. He was almost surprised when his fingers found the ridge of the scar on his face. It had been practically invisible in his black form.
He let the back of his head crack against the wall behind him. He was even forgetting he had a freaking curse mark.
Oh, Mana, he thought. There's always been a clear path for me to take. Why is it now that everything is in darkness?
Allen woke, as always, in his cold and slightly damp cell. What a loving family, he thought wryly. At least they didn't chain him up anymore. A knock at his door didn't quite manage to surprise him—the Noah had an uncanny ability of entering his cell right as he was waking. The timing was so impeccable it was scary. He could faintly hear voices through the door as he called, "Come in!"
"Why the hell did you knock, idiot?"
"That's what you're supposed to do when you enter someone's room, asshat."
"He's in a dungeon for fuck's sake. Just open the door, Jasdero."
With a startling crack, Jasdero's booted foot came through the door, and Allen winced at the harrying noise of wood ripping. Jasdero's head poked through the stellate tear in the door, antenna bobbing and eyes rolling.
"Let's go, student!" Jasdero and Debitto yelled in unison. "You may want to change into your black form." Allen blinked. Only Road had ever visited his room, without counting Tyki's one-time drop off. And if Allen ever expected another Noah to visit him, the last people/person he would imagine—especially after last night—would be the indignant Jasdebi. And did they say student?
Technically, according to the complex hierarchy of the Noah Clan, Allen was one step above the twins, at least power-wise. But they were older, and their Memory number (they were the Ninth Noah) was higher than his. He switched to his black form, slightly apprehensive, and was surprised by both the speed of his transformation and the intensity of the headache that came with it. It was a sharp pain, more so because it was unexpected.
Synchronization should have made his mind less volatile, and indeed the music was quieter—just a tiny sound accompanied by the buzzing of the Noah signature—but he would have thought the headaches would stop. Maybe he needed to meditate more.
Jasdebi led him through the maze of hallways in the House of the Earl, a path he hadn't taken before. Allen found himself noticing how mismatched the twins were. Debitto walked with his hips, like a surly model, hands buried in his jacket pockets, while Jasdero walked like a hunchback, as if the weight of his head (or his antenna) was too much. Completely different, yet they still matched each other stride for stride.
"Where are you taking me?" Neither of them responded, but he felt them smirking as surely as if they had spoken aloud. They loped along the tiles, each of them walking in their respective styles, headed towards a familiar transporter. It wasn't as familiar by sight, so much as familiar by instinct. The Arc portal. He remembered the hidden room, the Fourteenth's room, which he used to control the Arc just under a year ago.
"Why are we going into the Arc?" They waved their hands dismissively but answered anyway.
"We're going harvesting—" they said.
Harvesting. That's what Tyki was talking about last night.
"—and we're bringing you along. You learn fast don't you, mature Fourteenth Noah-san?" Allen ignored the dig, still perturbed by their synchronous answers.
As soon as they entered the Arc, Debitto rushed out, sprinting forward like a cat. Jasdebi accelerated too, holding out his arms and spluttering like he was an airplane. Matching stride for stride. Allen, momentarily shocked by their sudden haste, raced after them. If they thought they could outrun him by catching him by surprise, they were quickly disappointed.
His gait was long and energetic—it felt good to use his fighter's muscles after focusing so much energy on Dark Matter—and he quickly caught up. He could have passed them, but he didn't know his way around this Arc, and trailing behind them, they soon reached a white-washed door—evidently a portal to the outside world. The door opened, a roiling swirl of purple akin to the entrances to Road's dimension.
"Wait," Allen said, backing up. The last time he stepped through one of these doors, he almost fell into a bottomless pit. "What's harvesting?" Jasdebi just laughed and shoved him forward (actually, Jasdero kicked him), and he was flung through the door, smacking the ground much too far below. He groaned and sat up, opening his eyes to look at the world he was stolen from.
The first thing he noticed was the grass. His spat a few blades out of his mouth. All around him it was sunny, brighter than the artificial light of the Arc, doubly so compared to the perpetual darkness of the House of the Earl.
The second thing he noticed was a coat, folded up on the ground. It was sturdy—thick to protect against rain, and reinforced with armor sewn inside. Black embroidered in red, and a crest that glinted in the blinding sun Allen was now so unused to.
Jasdebi hit the ground behind him and he heard the sinister click of their guns being loaded.
"Jasdebi..." It was the first time he said their name. He was looking into the face of a man, frozen in the act of bending down to pick up the coat, just out of reach. "What's harvesting?" he asked again.
The man's face, at first shocked to see people seemingly fall out of the sky, had a look of horror etched into it that Allen was sure mirrored his own. The man mouthed the word, too scared to whisper it: Noah.
Allen stared back, eyes now full of anguish. This man had only the Beginner's crest, he probably hadn't even fully synchronized—no match for three Noah.
Jasdebi howled, a war-cry that spurred a deep instinct within him, urging him to fight, to kill, to take. Harvesting.
Allen mouthed a word, as if in apology: Exorcist.
"EXORCIST!" Jasdebi cried, cocking their guns and shooting twin Materialized bullets. The battle was pathetically short, a one-hit kill, and the Innocence fragment bounced on the folded up coat, now blood-spattered and out of reach forever.
Debitto raised his booted foot and stomped down, shattering the fragment. He twisted his foot the way Tyki ground out cigarettes, smashing the green dust into bloodied coat.
Allen dug his hands into the grass. So this is what the Earl had planned for him—a life as a full-fledged Noah Clansman, complete with duties of exterminating exorcists and harvesting Innocence fragments. He should have expected no less.
Harvesting.
If only he had known.
Four hours and thirteen Arc doors later, they finally found another Innocence fragment.
The doors, Allen realized, only led to strategically placed openings in the world, and not to the ever-changing locations of Innocence. His relief was short-lived, however, because following the twins out of necessity for hours and listening to them complain about Innocence—or lack thereof—was a grueling task, and his headache wasn't getting any better. As much as it sucked to be a third wheel in this 'mission', he was at least glad that he wasn't forced to witness an exorcist slaying again.
Until door number thirteen.
They came out of nowhere, at least to the platoon of exorcists, like nightmares conjured from the darkness. Four exorcists and two Finders. Allen didn't know any of them, and in his ashen form, he didn't think they recognized him either.
Jasdebi called to the surrounding demons, and like insects they rose, a swarm of Level Ones. The Finders and the two younger exorcists panicked, spinning around frantically trying to see all the enemies at once. The more experienced exorcists had eyes only for the three Noah that stood before them.
They had heard reports of the twins—one blond, one black-haired—and stories of their manic slaying of exorcists around the world. The third Noah they didn't recognize. No one had said anything about a Clansman with white hair.
Jasdebi shot forward like bullets from their guns. Debitto loaded his gun with a jerk of his wrist and fired a water-type bullet that smashed into an exorcist with enough force to break bone. Jasdero flew through the air, and in an elaborate spin, dealt a savage kick to another exorcist's skull. Cries of, "Innocence, activate!" reverberated through the air and sent Allen spiraling into nostalgia.
His own Innocence pulsed, awakening from its long sleep. His eye activated and he couldn't help but see the souls within all the demons they had summoned. The once quiet street plunged into chaos, and only Allen stayed out of the battle. How could he fight? There was no way he could harm an exorcist, what he was—or used to be. But how could he betray what he was now?
His Innocence powers were Marshall-level, but that didn't work against exorcists. He bounced on his toes. Should he join the battle? Who would he fight, the exorcists or the Noah? A memory surfaced in his mind. Road facing him, eyes hard as diamonds and just as cold.
You are a Noah. Not an exorcist, not a savior, not the Crowned Clown.
"Quit drooling, rookie!" Debitto sneered, blocking an exorcist's daggers with the barrel of his gun. Jasdero told him to get his head out of his ass before an explosion sent him flying. Terror seized him. He had to choose. Either way he was betraying someone.
You are a Noah.
Jasdebi finally imposed their will on him, and though it wasn't as powerful as the First Noah's, it compelled him to join the fight. The Ninth Noah's voice was young and childish, overly bright like the voice of the Level Four. Fight with us, Fourteenth.
He jumped from the edge of the street into the throng of bodies engaged in life-or-death battles.
An exorcist lunged at him, a senior member according to his crest, reached out as if to grab him, and called: "Innocence: ignite!" He barely dodged the plume of flames that erupted from the exorcist's bracelet. An Equipment-type.
He blocked all the exorcist's attacks, dodging and circling. He was distracted, what if someone recognized him? But the attacks were slow and world-weary, Allen expected the exorcist had already fought throughout most of the day. Compared to Road, dodging them was easy.
Allen could see rage building up behind the exorcist's eyes as he increased his speed, adding new fervor to his attacks. This exorcist had everything to lose and was driven by the promise of justice. Burns accumulated on Allen's arms when he was too slow, but his skin regenerated over the oozing black marks, forming back into a smooth sheet of gray. Explosions shook the earth; the demon bullets were hazardous to everyone.
The Finders captured as many as they could in a stasis spell. Their moans shook the Innocence-reinforced glass and their eyes rolled back in their head. Without realizing, Allen sang out to them, freeing them subconsciously. One of them shot a Finder, and his skin became riddled with the telltale black stars until he crumpled, dust and sand.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
His mind was at war with his body, and right now the Noah in him ran rampant. The exorcist rushed in past his guard and fire burst in his face. His skin healed, but not before the exorcist lunged again. And again, and again. Allen was hindered by his reluctance to actually fight, and it was costing him the battle. His Innocence was shaking now, twitching and convulsing, warning signs that Allen was in dangerdangerdanger. It took almost all of his willpower not to release his Innocence, and then he lost control over his Memory again.
Notes burst from his lips. The air rang with whistled notes and chords and the exorcist fighting him clapped his hands over his ears.
Demons swarmed to Allen, drawn by the music. Right before his eyes, they started evolving—changing from Level Ones to Level Twos. Was it because of him? The exorcist's Innocence shuddered and hissed, repulsed by the powers of the Noah of Music. He couldn't clamp his mouth shut, though, and to his horror he just sang louder and louder.
The pressure in his skull was unbearable now, without the redeeming cacophony of music. It seemed that ever since his maturity, his head was mostly silent, the music instead flowing out into the world until it was audible to everyone around.
"What are you?" The exorcist looked at him like he was the bile of the Earth. And, he realized, he really was. Black skin, white hair, one red eye—he was a monster.
I don't want to do this! he wanted to scream. He never asked for this, he was never supposed to have the Memory of the Fourteenth Noah. He was an exorcist! With a final jerk, he lost control over his Innocence.
Black claws erupted from his finger tips. The Crown Clown, in all its white-glowing cynic glory, flowed down his back. Immediately the headache ceased, the song dying in his throat. Maybe he could do this. Turn against Jasdebi and escape back home.
He activated the Crown Clown, pulling his left arm from his socket into a sword, and—
No.
A jolt of unfamiliarity hit him and he almost dropped the sword, so wrong in its essence and appearance. This was the Earl's sword, not the Crown Clown. It was some inversion of his Innocence, deep navy instead of white. The platoon of exorcists balked; they recognized the sword.
"A-are you the Millennium Earl?" Surely the description didn't match up, but the sword was like a wake-up call. They had been outnumbered, and now, far outclassed. Allen stood with his arm shaking, wanting to toss the godforsaken sword to the ground because it wasn't his, but he couldn't. It was getting harder to separate the Noah's will from his own.
A loud cackle met his ears, informing him that Jasdero killed his target. The other Finder lay dead on the ground. The senior exorcist he had been fighting stared at him, sense telling him to retreat, but duty urging him forward. Allen stood rooted to the ground.
The exorcist took a step backwards.
The sword lurched forward, dragging Allen behind like a puppet, and before he could stop it, it was embedded in the exorcist's belly up to the hilt. He wanted to take it all away, fling the sword away and erase time, heal him like Miranda's Timescape, but he found himself thrusting the sword in deeper. The exorcist gurgled, drooling blood. And then he died, still skewered to the inverted Crown Clown. He hadn't said anything, no last words or taunts or promises.
The body slid off the sword and hit the ground in a nauseating tumble, the limbs jangling and spraddled like all the bones had melted. Satisfied huffs came from Jasdero and Debitto, signals that they were done with their fights.
Half of the Level Ones had been wiped out. All of the Level Twos were still intact.
Was it really over? They had only captured one Innocence fragment—Debitto's catch—and two Finders lay dead next to the mutilated corpses of Allen and Debitto's kills. Only two exorcists survived, retreated somewhere, probably a Finder's hideout.
Allen felt like he was going to be sick. And then he was on his hands and knees, vomiting a stream of blood ("The Noah don't digest the way humans do," Road later told him) onto the ground, splattering the bodies on the trampled-down grass.
Neither Jasdero or Debitto laughed, only scratching their heads and scowling in disdain.
"Is that all you can do?" Debitto seemed more disappointed than malicious. "Sing pretty songs? Shit, I guess maturity ain't all that it's cracked up to be." Jasdero nodded erratically, energized from the high of carnage.
"I didn't want to fight," he wretched. He wasn't sure why he felt he needed to defend himself.
"You better get used to it!" Jasdero sang. Debitto smirked in agreement, finishing his twin's sentence.
"Because you're going to be doing this every day, for the rest of your life." Debitto tilted his face up and shadows raked down his cheeks, accentuating his dramatic makeup. "And when you're a Noah, that's a long-ass time."
...
A/N: Please review, please critique. Really tired. Hope I haven't screwed up the story for you. I have to say, you guys are extremely insistent about an appearance with the Dark Order. But calm down. I haven't forgotten them, and they're coming soon. But Allen is supposed to forget about them (you readers were too, but I guess that didn't work) so they haven't been mentioned so far. Once again, thank you for your reviews and support.