I do not own DGM.
I'm not very impressed with this chapter but it needed posting! I had to rewrite it twice, because the Wizards are very important to me, and also I know next to nothing about how towns work so I apologise now to any politicians out there.
You are always more real than fiction.
The last time she'd left her body in a building during an Akuma attack was Paris but she tried not think about that. Nathanael couldn't die. She couldn't comprehend a world where Nathanael was killed, so it would be alright.
She crashed through the roof and flew above the street to get a better view. What she thought was a bird earlier was actually a human being, floating in midair with their feet stationed on a spear. A black cloak billowed around them, and when they turned she saw a full-face mask tied around their head with an excess of striped ribbon.
Her breath hitched when she saw the intensity in the Wizard's eyes. They looked at her for a fraction of a second then swung down and grabbed the spear from under their feet. She could see hints that gravity still applied to the being, unlike her, but they were subtle. It reminded her of watching acrobats in a circus.
In fact, it was exactly like watching an acrobat.
They somersaulted around the spear again and landed on it in a crouch, all the while flying at a breakneck pace towards one of the Akuma. Mia held her breath, holding back just out of curiosity.
The Wizard flew right through the demon, rending it in two. It's soul escaped into the sky with serenity on its face, whispering a heart-felt thank you that the Wizard didn't hear. The other Akuma – a level-two – attacked. It was in the shape of a ballerina, with a vicious looking headdress and sharp, pointed shoes. It's hands were made of knives that glinted in the light of it's mangled energy source, but one of them was already on it's way to the Wizard.
Mia didn't wait for them to get their bearings after the quick evasive manouver. She drew her scimitar with both hands and kicked off the air in the demon's direction, too fast to be anything more than a blur. She swung the weapon at it's chain to add to the momentum, but it only chipped it slightly, pushing her off her course.
A knife flew through her back, sending with it a tiny spark of illogical despair. She drowned it in anger and swung her arms around to face the Akuma again. It was probably close to another evolution and frankly she had doubts about her ability to handle a level-three. One of those could probably tear her soul apart and it wasn't something she was willing to risk.
"Get the fuck out of my way," she heard the wizard hiss in her direction as the Akuma flew feet first at her, missed and pirruetted with her arms spinning out to slice the air. Mia didn't fail to notice the crowds of humans cheering from below. It was disgusting.
She did not grace the performer with a reply and blocking an attack from the demon found her revolver with another hand.
If she could only get it to stay still.
The Wizard made a stab at the demon with the spear, but because they were using the weapon to fly as well it weakened the attack. Assuming the spear could fly on its own, Mia figrued that the only reason the Wizard was in the air was for show.
Motives aside, they had distracted her enemy enough for Mia to aim properly and shoot; from this distance, the demon didn't stand a chance and crumbled to pieces with a bewildered cry.
She turned her attention back to the Wizard, who had already figured out that the crowds couldn't see her. They executed a bow towards the crowd, then subtly ran their finger across their neck in a way that was clearly meant for Mia.
Leaving her more confused than worried, the accommodator vanished into the horizon.
In the time she was gone, Nathanael had ordered food for them both and wrote half a page in what looked like a journal. It quickly disappeared as soon as she opened her eyes but she managed to notice that it was weathered enough to have been there for each Akuma battle that he would have faced.
She explained what happened but he only nodded.
"That's what the reports said," he told her, the condescension forgiven because it was her own fault for not reading them. "It's assumed that they're destroying Akuma to get the public on their side."
"Do you think they might be luring them here too, or is there an unstable Innocence fragment?"
She felt anxiety before she even realized what was wrong; her heart-rate wasn't slowing down. It was usually a minute or two that it was like this after she returned, though it had been about five and it was still hammering like she'd run a marathon.
"Could be both," Nathanael narrowed his eyes at her, "are you feeling okay?"
"Yeah," she said quickly. Too quickly – there was no way he'd believe that. She corrected her face into a smile and repeated, "yeah, I'm fine."
This isn't his problem to worry about. Hopefully that got across. She slowed her breathing as much as possible and turned her attention back to the actual problem.
"I can't go undercover now, they've seen me in my uniform," she pointed out, "do you think they know about the Order?"
"If they do, it'll be only extremely vague information."
"Eh?"
"The Order… they uh… when an employee with a lot of information leaves they um… erase their memories first."
Nathanael took a swig of his drink, hiding his face. Mia stared at him, refusing to comprehend. Her heart suddenly had reason to be unsettled - that this was possible at all was sickening, but that the Order did it on a regular basis…
The first question that came to her was, "how?"
"A drug, probably… or sorcery. If you think about it it's not even that surprising." He still wasn't looking at her.
She made a strangled sound and decided it would be better to think about it later. Or not at all.
"Okay, fine. Lets say they do know then… vaguely. They're already paranoid about politicians and the police upsetting their plan to take over the world, so they're going to be especially wary of us."
"… you're saying we should keep our affiliations secret?"
She nodded. He sighed.
"There's no way they'd trust any stranger though; we'd have to keep this up for months to get anywhere."
Mia did realize there was a third option, but the Order wasn't going to like it.
She thought quietly as a waiter set their food out. The cutlery was neatly wrapped in a napkin, which only somewhat made up for the lack of tablecloth. The pie smelled nice enough to make her smile at her plate - she was going to eat food and she was going to enjoy it, not just because it was good but because it meant surviving a while longer.
"What if… what if we left them alone," she muttered, quietly. She didn't look at his face, because it would either be disgusted or surprised and then she'd have to explain. Nathanael didn't reply, thankfully, and she started pretending that she never uttered those words.
She stabbed her pie with a plain piece of cutlery, foregoing the knife and scooping up a dripping forkful of vegetables in gravy. It was unlike anything she'd ever had at home, where her parents regularly fired chefs for being too boring. They'd love Jerry, she thought with a smile, and then realized that she missed him. She missed listening to the cheerful conversations that took place just so that doomed people had something to laugh at.
The Finder was silent and she wasn't planning on speaking either.
Edith had still been digging through Ethel's ashes when Klaud explained to her that she had no other option. There had been neither hesistation nor apology. It made her wonder what the Order would do if she failed to report an Accommodator, what the consequences could possibly be.
"If we can't convince them to join they'll send the cavalry," Nathanael broke the silence finally. It was a strange mixture of wisdom and threat. Mia didn't ask who the cavalry were because she liked to pretend that no-one at the Order could faze an Exorcist in a fight. General Klaud had just mentioned that the Order had 'methods' and she was too distraught at the time to doubt her.
Mia didn't want to do this job at all. It would make her a coward and a hypocrite even if she convinced herself that there was no other way - there was no saving her from the guilt. She forced herself to continue eating but it seemed pointless.
"How many are there, did you say?" She didn't want to ask, but it was the way forward and it was much better than thinking about not wanting to live.
"Three or four; it hasn't been confirmed yet." Nathanael was watching her suspiciously so she did not smile when a spark of hope ignited in her soul. I can save at least one or two, then, pretend that they don't exist. She would have to get as much information out of the Finders as she could and then complete the mission on her own.
She questioned further, and found out that their abilities were vague, and their hiding places completely unknown except for one abandoned building that the police had ambushed them in once.
They weren't anarchists exactly – it was more about overthrowing the current (somewhat corrupt) city council. Politics were too often rigged for there to be any other way to get an honest person running for mayor. However, since what they were doing was on all counts illegal (theft, sabotage), they could not take control of Hrebenne in any meaningful way if the people did not support them.
The more she heard, the more Mia realized that she was definitely one of the worst people they could have picked for this job. Nathanael had simplified the political situation but it was still horribly uninteresting and all her efforts at paying attention failed.
She couldn't let Nathanael take control of this mission though, so she pretended that she understood everything and was already preparing a plan of attack. What she needed was to talk to the group without any Finders around.
As she always did, she scouted the city for Akuma, destroying just enough to get their attention but not enough for that to take effect until tomorrow. It was a weekend, which meant that the streets would be perfectly crowded. This was a trap that weaved itself, all she had to do was sit and wait.
Nathanael left the next morning for a chat with the chief of police, in the hopes of gathering more data. She cleared the Akuma around the station to make sure he would be safe, and then found a group that was heading towards the centre and followed. A plain black coat covered her uniform, and a cap hid her hair so she could easily walk within fifty metres of them without fear of discovery.
A haze had crept up from a nearby swamp, turning the streets into milky canals. It was that quiet time in between the sunrise and awakening, when it was too empty outside for anyone other than demons to stir the misty air into hurricanes.
"I swear I'm going to destroy you myself if you don't shut the fuck up."
The Akuma had been bickering for a while, about one thing or the other, but the latest topic was relevant. It seemed like they were getting quite fed up with constantly loosing to the Wizards, the latest bout of dissappearances blamed on them, but they both had opposite ways of dealing with it.
The rude one wanted to attack with an army, while the other was obviously scared for his life. 'Lets just look for another job,' he'd been saying for the last three minutes.
"We'll just tell the Earl to send-"
"Oh? You're saying I ain't strong enough? The Earl sent us 'cause we can totally beat the crap out of them. Easily. Get your shit together."
It was a lie and both the Akuma and Mia knew it. They might be spectacular at killing people but Exorcists were a different matter. The last two had died ambushed by a three-hundred strong army, taking down most of them before bleeding out. These two demons were going to die and there was nothing they could do about it; it was the one thing the Order and the Earl had in common – both were remorseless to the point of being inhumane when it came to their weapons.
She heard a flutter and something kicked off the shingles of a nearby roof. It looked to be a raven, but the sound it made wasn't the sound she usually associated with birds taking flight. It was more like a thud.
Barely even thinking about it, she found the handle of her revolver a second before a rustle behind her alerted her of danger. She spun and pointed the gun with a steady hand, finding nothing. Her next breath was audibly distressed.
She'd activated her Innocence, but the only Akuma she could see were the pair dissapearing some seventy metres ahead. On the other hand, a common thief wouldn't think they'd have to ambush her to win in a fight.
Wizards. This was surprisingly simple. Feeling quite nervous at the realization that she would have to talk to strangers, she paused to recollect the sentences she had prepared the previous night.
"I want to talk to you," she said quietly.
She saw a figure on the roof right before it jumped off, swinging the blunt edge of a sword at her before even landing. Mia just about managed to avoid it with an ungraceful step back and was forced to stop before she impaled her spine on a spear.
"You're stalking our prey," the Spear Acrobat hissed. It was the same hiss she heard yesterday, not quite clear enough to let her identify gender, but intense enough for the anger to come across.
"I wanted to talk to you," she confessed immediately, dropping her hands to her sides but holding on to the revolver, "because I'd love to let you kill them if you did it without endangering civilians."
The Wizard in front of her spoke for the first time.
"You're from the Order." His mask was of the same style but decorated differently; with red butterfly wings stretched out across the face.
Mia wasn't sure if what he'd said was a question or an accusation, but she nodded. The two exchanged a few glances, their hands twitching in barely noticable gestures. Mia pointedly did not raise her hands, keeping them at her sides despite the blade digging into her back. She worked hard to make her face look nonchalant.
"We're not interested in joining your organization," the Swordsman said. Mia rolled her eyes.
"I know. It's only a problem because the Order is desperate for new Exorcists, and they have a proper messed up code of ethics."
The Spear Acrobat snorted an unimpressed laugh. Although she did not usually sympathise with people, Mia cringed at the naïvety until they added,
"They'd pay a lot for you then, won't they?"
"What…?" She was thrown by the lack of visible expressions, but once it got through to her what they meant it was her turn to laugh. "Did you hear what I just said about the ethics?"
Nobody likes me there anyway.
Silence. She didn't know whether they were confused or telepathically communicating a plan, but she used it to get some information across.
"Honestly I just thought you'd appreciate the warning… so can you stop pointing sharp things at me? I uh… I wanted to tell you that the Order doesn't actually know how many Wizards there are – I suggest you use that to save a couple of your friends."
Mission accomplished. Whether they would use her kindly given help or not was entirely up to them. She'd have to make a show of trying to convince or capture them later, for Nathanael's sake, and it would have been easier with them playing along but talking had never been her strong suit and she just didn't care enough.
The Swordsman nodded, fractionally, and Mia looked back just in time to see the Spearperson incline their head. In the grand scheme of things, she thought, they aren't exactly nice people. I'm only doing this to erase my own guilt.
"Come with us," the Swordsman decided finally, spinning his sword in a practiced knot. It dissappeared into the folds of his cloak, but she was certain that if she made any sudden move it would find itself in her throat.