They stopped at a small town at the border for the night. The train didn't end there, but Bookman thought it best to check out the area for the strange going-ons that he had heard the passengers mention on the train.
"So that was what he was doing?" Lavi whispered out of an instinct to joke. He then realized that no one was behind him to heartily laugh along with him except Riko, and he wondered what exactly made that girl laugh.
They were the only ones to step off the train at this station and when they stopped at the edge of the village, all three froze.
"It's barely six in the evening," Riko pointed out, "Where is everyone?"
"Maybe there's just not a lot of people here, or everyone's eating supper," Lavi suggested.
"No," Bookman replied, "It seems more deserted than anything else."
And with that the old man waddled forward into the village with Riko and Lavi following close behind him. They kept their eyes peeled for anything suspicious, but besides the fact that this was a ghost village, nothing else seemed out of place. They saw a small wooden building like all the other ones with the roof low and flat. A little sign hung just beside the door indicating that it was an inn of some sort. Bookman walked in without word.
A skinny man with a goatee greeted them at the front desk, which was more of a table than a front desk for an inn. His smile seemed forced and a little bit hostile, "What can I get you?"
"Two rooms, please," Bookman said half-heartedly as he glared around the room cautiously.
"Hey, pops, why is the village so quiet?" Lavi asked and gave a nervous laugh, trying to keep his voice light.
"A plague was here," the innkeeper said with his back to them while he bent down to get something.
"What kind of plague?" Riko added.
"Not sure, but people started dropping like flies. There'd be screams and thumps in the night and often people are wiped out by families or people close to them," the man turned around and gave them a shuttered smiled, "So what brings you here?"
"We're exor..." Lavi started and immediately got interrupted by Riko pulling his arm towards her.
"Engaged!" she said in an over-enthusiastic tone and looked up at Lavi, "Right, sweetheart?"
Lavi swallowed and tried to wrap his head around the idea that the girl who wanted to do him serious bodily harm was now pretending to love and care for him. "Yes," he shook his head of any hesitant thoughts and dedicated himself to playing the role. She might not trust him, but he trusted that she had enough experience to make a quick beneficial decision.
"And him?" the man looked over to Bookman who was just standing in the corner of the room watching their conversation.
Lavi couldn't help but laugh, "He's our servant."
"Father!" Riko butted in, "My father. They have problems, in-laws, you know. My father is a servant, a butler..."
"Yes," Bookman stepped forward, "Which means we need those two rooms and quick as possible, please."
The man shrugged and waved them up a set of dark stairs to the second floor. He opened up a dingy door and handed Lavi only one key, explaining that the rooms were joined from the inside and therefore they could go through and open the other door from the other side.
Just as he turned to descend the stairs, Lavi shouted, "Hey, we forgot to pay."
Two shots suddenly sound from behind Lavi and he watched as the man's meager figure crumple to the floor. Lavi turned to see Riko holding a gun steady in her hands. She then slid her gun back into a holster at the back of her belt.
"What are you doing?" Lavi yelled.
"The money deity," Riko stated and bolted into the room. Bookman and Lavi followed her in and saw her examine the scene outside the small windows. A smell hit Lavi the minute he entered the room. A smell of an old room which had not been used for a while. A long while. It smelled of death and sadness and loneliness and pain. It smelled like an akuma just after being turned.
"What?" Lavi asked again.
"The innkeeper had a shrine for the money deity in the corner of the room," Riko explained, turning around to face them, "He would never forget to ask us for our money."
"I was standing beside that shrine," Bookman added, "No one has put anything there or even cleaned it for the last few months."
Riko reached behind her and seemed to keep her hand on her gun as if it was a security blanket, "They'll come to get us now."
"In that case, we leave," Lavi said firmly.
"And go where?" Riko asked.
"Out, into the open, that's the only way to fight them properly."
"No, you hide until they come out into the open and you pick them off."
Lavi stared at Riko's new idea. He always looked for open areas, but maybe his hammer needed it and her gun was better at sniping down akuma from afar. And also, she has been on her own for some time now, it would be stupid for her to go into the open on her own to fight all those akuma.
He stepped closer to Riko who reacted by stepping back, "I need more space for my innocence to work without having to go through the trouble of destroying these buildings."
"What's your weapon?" Riko asked curiously.
"Out into the open," Lavi ignored her question, "With my friends behind me, that's how I fight."
Lavi expected some nasty remark about how he had just called her his friend, but she smiled a weary smile and said, "Some people aren't that lucky."
"We have to go," Bookman interrupted. He had moved to the window when Riko had moved away and must have saw something alarming.
They raced out the room and down the stairs, past the pile of ashes which the innkeeper had been reduced to. They raced out into the street, Lavi already wheeling out his hammer, "Big hammer, little hammer, grow, grow, grow!"
Lavi screamed out for the fire stamp and the first two akuma to approach the inn deteriorated into ash. He heard bangs of a gun behind him and saw two more drop from the sky. Needles too were flying in the air. But there were a lot more akuma in the sky than they had anticipated and being elevated on his hammer, Lavi saw that many more were on the horizon clumped into a ball over a church.
"Lavi!" Riko yelled after his second fire stamp knocked out four akuma, "What do you see?"
He relayed what he saw to his two companions on the ground.
"Could it be innocence?" Riko asked the question that was on everyone's mind.
"We can't leave it if it is," Lavi responded, shrinking his hammer because the first wave of akuma had lessened. But by then Bookman was already flying a good hundred meters in front. Only when Riko started running did Lavi realize how difficult it must be for her to fight. Her gun could snipe from a distance, but it provided her with no speed like Lavi, Bookman, Lenalee, and even Kanda's equipment-type weapons. But just as he came down to pull her onto the handle of his hammer, Riko pulled away and smiled. She flipped her gun twice and a click indicated that she had turned something off. Then, bending her knees, she shot at the ground and her body propelled upwards into the air. She rose higher than Lavi and shot again, this time allowing Lavi to see that she was shooting highly concentrated gas particles to propel herself upwards.
They all made it to the clump of akuma at about the same time. Lavi quickly counted a good forty, but Bookman had already started taking some down. Another click came from Riko's gun and she started to help.
