A/N: What's this? Two chapters in the same weekend? Blasphemy!
Fun fact. When I originally wrote this (back in, you know, March), Allen was actually supposed to help Lenalee with her Innocence. But I didn't like that direction, so I went in another.
In spite of Lenalee's insistence, Allen did nothing to assist her and Bookman eventually talked her out of trying to intervene. The guilt that Allen felt for ignoring her pleas threatened to crush him, but he didn't let that be known. None of them knew he could have helped her to begin with, after all. The only one who might was Chomesuke, but she neither pressed the matter nor acted as if it was even in consideration. Instead, she took the opportunity to suggest another possibility, one that Allen knew he wouldn't like from the moment she opened her mouth.
When she spoke, she addressed him directly, forgoing his seniors in favor of pitching her plan to him. "Lord Allen, I can take you and another to the crown of the Akuma's..."
With nothing but the softest of smiles, he silenced her. She trailed off, understanding the silence command that went unheard by all of his human companions.
"Stay here with Miranda and Lenalee," he said, his words hiding what he actually what he wanted to say. Protect them. That was the quiet order that tickled past Chomesuke's ears, meant only for her. His attention moved to the golden golem that fluttered around their heads, as ready as Chomesuke was to serve him.
"Timcanpy, if you would, please?" Allen asked, not needing to elaborate further for one of his oldest friends to understand. Timcanpy obeyed and without waiting another moment, he doubled in size, dwarfing even the person who'd requested the change.
Allen should have taken up a place on top of Timcanpy's head, effectively reversing their persistent roles, but something else drew him away and that was Chomesuke. He shed the white cloak drawn around his shoulders and wrapped them around her instead. When the fabric touched her, she flinched, but Allen spoke and withered her instinctive fear of Innocence to nothingness in a few short words. "She won't hurt you. Keep her near and she'll ward off your natural, murderous urges."
"Is that wise?"
It was Bookman who spoke now as Chomesuke's fingers curled around the edges of the cloak, pulling it tight around her as she gave all her trust to him in exchange for what he'd given her. Before he even had a chance to respond to the older man, Chomesuke leapt to his defense.
"Lord Allen knows what he's doing," she said, her voice verging on scathing. The small laugh that bubbled from the deepest part of his throat was a ruse to hide the distress that gripped him every time she called him that. He wasn't her lord. He would never be her Lord.
Just be my friend, he wanted to say more than anything else in the world. He wanted to get down on his knees and beg for it because he had no interest in a servant.
All he wanted was for someone to miss him when he was gone.
"Please don't call me that," Allen said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. The Bookman's eyes were on him, trying to ascertain his every action and find a hidden meaning in every word. It was like he'd figured out what he was a long time ago.
"He might have, Nephew."
Allen gave a subtle nod to the man who couldn't even see it. It was very possible; he had known his Uncle Neah in the past and had the luxury of being able to watch Allen's every move, unlike the Noah. The Bookman knew far more than Allen should have liked, but he realized with a start that it was the opposite.
Even if Bookman had already figured everything out, he couldn't care less.
Allen gave him a reassuring smile to assuage his worries, if he even truly had them. "Thank you for your concern, but I'll be fine," Allen said as he leapt on top of Timcanpy with ease, offering his hands to Bookman and Crowley to help them up. "Timcanpy will take the both of you to the Akuma."
It wasn't hard to miss the way he'd omitted himself from the equation, but it was Crowley who asked, "Wait... What about you, Allen?"
"I'll be going after Adam," Allen said with a wistful smile as Timcanpy soared high into the air. They left the warehouse behind them, the golem showing no sign that carrying them was a difficult task.
"Adam?" Crowley inquired, but the sharp look that Bookman shot him told Allen that he knew Adam and the Earl were one and the same.
Crowley wanted to know who he spoke of, but Allen couldn't tell him he'd be fighting the Earl. He kept it to himself for the moment because he didn't want them to interfere; he didn't want them thinking they had the power to help him in such a battle, so Allen brushed off his concerns
"Don't worry about it."
The hurt expression that Crowley shot him made his chest clench painfully, but what else could he do? None of them needed to be aware that he was possibly the only person among them capable of fending off the Millennium Earl. They didn't need to know he wasn't human; he didn't want them to know.
The higher they rose, the closer the Akuma became and it chose then to attack, taking advantage of the dwindling distance between them. Beams shot out from its body, aimed at them. Timcanpy weaved erratically through the sea of them, dodging them to the best of his ability while focusing on keeping his three charges safe. One cut too close and a deep gash swept across the side of his round body and Allen gasped at the sight of the cracks on his golden form.
"Tim!"
Timcanpy didn't stop, even as the cracks began to spread. Allen knew full well that he would regenerate as he always did, but it didn't keep his guilt at bay. It didn't stop the flush of anger and self-loathing that spread through him. He blinked the tears out of his gray eyes as his friend struggled now to keep them all afloat without sending them all plummeting to the ground far below.
When the next wave came, Allen didn't think. He couldn't emphasize how little he was thinking when he opened his mouth and screamed. It echoed, the quality distorting as the pitch hit its peak and warped the air around the four of them. Timcanpy made no attempts this time to dodge the rays composed of Dark Matter and just as they were open them, they hit an invisible barrier. Like light reflecting off a mirror, they bounced back in the opposite direction and struck the Akuma, sending it reeling across the battlefield.
Allen snapped his mouth shut, bringing the scream to an abrupt end as the beams dissipated. He spared Bookman nor Crowley a glance; he knew what he would see in their eyes. He'd see shock and accusations, hatred and fear... It didn't even matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't ask them understand his inhumanity.
"You're a monster, just like the rest of them!"
I should've listened to him, Allen thought so himself with a bitter smile. The first person to call him a monster after he joined the Black Order and instead of hating him, Allen could only agree. You were right, Chaoji.
"Keep going, Tim!" Allen yelled as he pushed those thoughts away and slid down the golem's side, kicking off in the direction of the last two remaining Noah: Skin Bolic and the Earl himself. Up until then, they'd been watching, waiting for something and Allen knew now what it was.
They were waiting for him. Had they known all along who he was? Had they not wanted to believe it and waited for his confirmation?
"Allen!"
Crowley called out to him too late. Allen was already long gone and was, within seconds, upon the other two Noah. His feet collided with the ground as he skid to a stop several feet away from where they stood.
"Neah..." The Earl muttered, his voice cracking with despair as the monstrous face of his suit split right down the middle, revealing a more familiar one. Allen's response was a soundless one; his mouth twisted into a smirk and sparkling gold replaced his usual gray.
"So you did know."
The Earl's uncontrollable shaking pulled a sigh from the Noah once thought dead. "Feels like I wandered into a freak show and that face of yours isn't helping," he muttered, his humor falling flat in the tense atmosphere. "Hey, did you cut your hair?"
The Earl's answer came in the form of a black broad sword embedding in the ground where his feet had been a mere second prior.
"Woah, hey, it was just a question," he said, smirk transforming into a sadistic grin as his hand wrapped around the sword's grip. "But I guess I won't look a gift horse in the mouth!" In one fluid movement, he heaved the sword out of the ground and charged.
The Earl froze, pulled into a nightmare of a memory. Neah remembered it just as well. The Earl standing there, mouth open with shock as Neah brought down his sword and... Just like what happened before, the fool Noah next to him moved right into his sword's path.
"M-Miranda?!"
Chomesuke called out to the Exorcist as she fell into her awaiting arms. The cloak that rest on her shoulders encircled the fallen Exorcist, as if it were intending to protect the both of them from a threat she hadn't yet seen. Its length nearly doubled to compensate for its second charge. Even when a presence appeared abruptly behind and lips pressed to her ear, the warmth radiating from the fabric didn't diminish.
"Out of energy?" a man's voice spoke and she recognized it as belonging to Lord Tyki Mikk, the Noah Of Pleasure.
A pair of horrified eyes turned towards the man as he grabbed her by the throat. Miranda fell from her grasp, but was held up by the tendrils stemming from the cloak. "An Akuma, huh? I wonder... what are you doing with the Exorcists?"
"I—"
Before she had a chance to answer, the sharp, white edges of the cloak lashed out against her capture. Tyki was forced to retreat, yet did so a second too late. When she swiveled to watch him put distance between the two of them, she could see the thin, red scratch the ran across his chest. It barely tore his clothes, but his grimace spoke volumes of the pain stemming from the Innocence-born cut.
"Isn't that the boy's cloak?" he asked, pursing his lips when Chomesuke chose not to answer. He approached again, this time with enough caution to put an elephant to shame. More prepared for a potential attack now, he stepped and jumped out of the way of several swipes made at him.
But as he neared, coming too close to Chomesuke for her comfort, the Innocence's tactics changed. More than one pair of eyes widened when two hands formed from the cloak and wrapped around the man's throat.
Two hands made of the purest crystal stretched from the middle of Chomesuke's back, like they belonged to the cloak itself. The arms weren't the only thing that appeared. Half a body followed.
A humanoid creature made of crystal took shape near the cloak's shoulders. This creature bore a feminine face that was covered in part by a mask that did little to veil her eyeless sockets. Her body were featureless, betraying the characteristics of the face that would've otherwise pegged the creature as female.
Male or female, eyes or no, the creature was clearly not human. At the sight of it, Tyki's frown turned into a carnal grin.
"Oh? What's thi—"
His words were cut off as her scaled hands clamped down on his throat, cutting off his air supply. Underneath her breath, she spoke. The confusion etched in Tyki's eyes suggested that he hadn't heard her any better then Chomesuke and when the creature repeated itself, a shiver crawled up her spine. It was more than just the words that chilled her to the bone. The voice alone—rough and gravely, high-pitched and raw with emotion—made her knees shake. Every pore in her body screamed at her to throw the cloth away and run as far as her legs would allow until they gave out beneath her.
It bid her to surrender to the Noah because they would surely offer more mercy than this terrifying and beautiful creature.
"Anyone who hurts Allen should just die!" she screamed, "Starting with you!"
A single tendril shot out from the cloak and Tyki tore away from the hands gripping his throat just in time to step out of its path. And as he did, he nearly stumbled right off the roof as pain wracked his body and a lone tear made its way down his face. That shocked him more than the pain itself did. Even the crystalline creature stopped in its attacks at the sight.
Tyki pressed a hand to his wet cheek to pull it away and stare at the residue it left behind on his fingers.
"Why... Why am I crying?" he asked quietly as the tears started to flow freely down his cheeks. "I can't seem to stop them."
Neah stared down at the Noah that had leapt in between him and the Earl. Skin Bolic lay on the ground, ashen gray bleeding out of his skin as a a halo of rouge wrapped around his still form.
"Damn fool," Neah muttered as he dried his slick cheeks with the back of his hand, but that did little to stop the liquid that continued to dribble from his eyes. He blew out a sigh of dismay and disappointment before turning away from the sad sight and back to the still image of the Earl. "Sorry, Nephew. I know this wasn't how you wanted this to go."
"Neah..." The Earl continued to mutter. He said his name over and over, like a mantra. The tumultuous swirl of emotion in his barely visible eyes wove a delicate tale that Neah didn't care enough about to read.
He should've cared and it almost hurt him that he didn't. It was something he'd hate to tell his mother if he ever met her in the afterlife.
"You know, you were a really crappy father," Neah said, trying to keep his face straight. Despite the bond that they'd once shared, he'd crossed him in his attempts to help him. If the victim had been anyone else, Neah would have been able to overlook it. "Allen's a good boy, so I'm going to take over from here."
He smiled and pointed the broadsword at the clown he once called his brother.
"Hope you don't mind, Mana."
A/N: Does this make up for me taking so long to update this story? Maybe?
I'm really iffy about what I did with Crown Clown in this chapter, so I'd really appreciate your opinions, you guys!
