What's this? A new chapter a day early? Well here's the thing, I'm going out of town for a few days and when I get back I have a cosplay thing to get to so I wont be able to get chapter 13 out on time. Sorry. So to be nice I decided to the three people who read this and post this on a Sunday and not a Monday. So you three people, if you have any ideas on who you want the next chapter to be based around, just review or DM me. Also I will most likely be rewriting this once I post the last chapter just to make it, I don't know, good. So if you have any ideas on how I should fix it, then you can say that to. Anyways, thanks for reading this! Enjoy!
Chapter 12! Blue eyes, Black sky
Naruto was a little upset when she was chosen to go back to the castle, epically after the 'incident' she had left on. It wasn't her fault that the inspector creeped her out and sent off all the warning bells in her head. Naruto didn't know who he claimed to be, but it sure as hell wasn't who he was. She felt like she had seen him somewhere before but she didn't know where.
She wasn't really looking where she was going, to busy trying to figure out the lyrics to the song that was stuck in her head, and ended up stepping on something crunchy. She looked down and saw heavily burnt grass. "Ok, that's weird." She said slowly. Looking up she saw that several parts of the field in similar condition, the burnt grass and mud giving off a strange smell. She started getting worried, this wasn't a training field. Atticus got mad when they trained outside of the training areas. Hell, he got made when they did this kind of damage to a training area.
Naruto looked towards the castle. It looked totally fine, but she was proof enough that looks can be deceiving. Maybe what ever went down was limited to the grass, but something told her that the castle wasn't out of the woods yet. Maybe it would get damaged, but hadn't yet. She started flash stepping towards the entrance of the building.
As soon as she got through the gates and into the stone halls she ran into a pissed off Raven. "Raven!" Naruto said loudly. "What the hell happened?"
Raven took a breath as if to calm herself. "Bounts." She grumbled "We fought and they ran." She muttered something else that sounded like 'and I didn't get to kill any' but Naruto wasn't sure so she didn't ask. Instead she just waved and continued on into the deeper halls of the castle. Leaving Raven to grumble in peace.
Mercury was the next person she ran into. He didn't say much but did direct her to go talk to Atticus. He seemed tired, like all he wanted to do was lay down and never get up again. Naruto tried to asked where the Captain King was but he just shrugged and said no one was seen him for a while. His best guess was that he was at work in him human job. While Naruto had never worked a conventional job before, she knew that when the weather got colder, the jobs required longer house. Why the king needed a job was anyone's guess but no one really questioned it. They knew he worked at a store, but it was the kind of job that required a unique set of skills.
Finally, she got into a dark hall and managed to get ahold of Atticus. She had never been in the hall before but all the rooms on her left side would have a great view of the garden and the roof of meeting hall. "Oh good, you made it." he said tiredly as he opened a small door that lead into one of the rooms with a view. "Come this way. You missed a lot while you were gone. Not enough to explain but enough to mention." He sighed and looked down. He seemed tired, just like everyone else. Even the random unseated officers, which were very scares, she had passed on her way to the upper part of the castle looked like they had all the energy ripped from them.
Naruto looked over at him with big eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong. "I feel like, you know what, never mind. What do you need me to do?" she asked, trying to keep up some amount of energy despite the depressing air around nearly everyone.
"Do you still have the object with you?" he asked. Naruto nodded and pulled out the object, which was wrapped in cloth, and showed it to Atticus. "That's it?"
"The Bount died for it, so I'm hoping it is. Plus, the location taking thing you did confirmed it." Atticus nodded and took the object. "So like the Bounts came here? And then they just ran away?"
"They came here but they didn't run away." he said. "Here." He said and opened the door wide enough for her to enter. Inside sat Mathias, he was loosely bound in chains but they were clearly just for show as he raised his arm to wave hi but then saw Naruto and imminently put his arm down and pretended he was bound tight. "It's ok Mathias, Naruto doesn't care." He said "Naruto, this is Mathias, he's a Bount who came in and helped us when his clan tried to attack us. Mathias, this is Naruto." Atticus tossed the object towards him and the Bount caught it. His spiky hair bobby slightly as he moved his head out of the way so he didn't get hit.
Mathias held the object up to his face in order to get a better look at it, the chains staying on his arms in a similar style to a shawl. "Where did you get this?" he asked, his smile falling from his face. He looked just as tired as everyone else, but it was a different kind of tired. More of the sick and should be in the hospital kind of tired and not the I just got back from a fight kind of tired.
"On a train." Naruto said. "Not that I'm questing your judgment, but if here's here to help then why is he in chains?"
"It's more for his protection than anything else, most of the Reapers here don't trust him and asked me to keep him contained." Atticus answered. "He can get out at any time but it's this or throwing him in the dungeon and clearly he doesn't deserve it."
Naruto walked closer to Mathias "What do you know of a Bount named Vash?"
"Vash? Um," the Bount though for a little bit "He was from a rival clan we don't normally get along with but Vash tried to stay out of everything so he would try and help us out when we needed."
"Anything else?" she asked.
"His old lover adopted a child with his new wife but when their marriage fell apart Vash adopted her."
Naruto didn't let her face change but Mathias could see her eyes shift. "And was that child?"
"She weak." He said sharply "After she left Elizabeta house, she ended up on the streets half starved. I don't think she ever fully recovered. And they wanted to keep her out of everything so they never taught her how to fight."
"Elizabeta?" Atticus looked up at him "Was her husband's name Rodrick?" he asked slowly.
"Ah, yeah. How did you know that? Why are you asking me these questions? These people aren't in my clan."
"One of my teams ran into that duo when on a mission. You're lucky their not taking any living souls. But," he sighed.
"But?"
"They are killing humans and then consuming their souls."
Naruto turned her head to look at the second in command "That's a detail I was not told." She said confused. "Was that the mission Mr. DB's team was working on?"
"Yeah. But the deaths were only in certain areas so I think it's only the two Bounts who are responsible so those but I have no way of confirming that." Atticus nodded to Mathias. "Do you know anything about that?"
"Like I said, they're a rival clan. But from what I do know, that's not something they would do. Maybe one of their heads but not Liz."
"So, what did your clan do to get food?" Naruto asked awkwardly.
"We had a cover up job as exorcist back home. Sometimes we find hollows but most of the time we just find upset spirits."
Atticus motioned for Naruto to come closer to him and away from Mathias. "That object. What is it?"
"Um," Mathias moved the object around in his hand. "It's kind of hard to describe. From when Lukas tried to explain it to me he said that it's the sleeping Doll of a sleeping Bount."
"By sleeping, do you mean dead?" Naruto asked.
"Not sure. Could be in a coma but Lukas never told me. He sometimes disappears and comes back with these kinds of things. I never learned where he got these." He tossed the object up and down in his bare hand.
Naruto leaned over to Atticus and whispered "Who's Lukas?"
"My boyfriend." Mathias said loudly. "He's hot but can be a pain in the ass when he sets his mind to something." He laughed "I guess that can be said for anyone in my clan. I mean I technically was the head but I rarely get to decide anything now-a-days."
"You're the head?" Atticus asked in disbelief.
"Was, I sent them away without me so by law I lost my place." He shrugged "I'm a traitor."
"There's laws?" Naruto asked surprised. "Hold on, I don't feel comfortable talking to you in chains. Like, I'm sorry At but I don't care what the others thinks." She walked over and lifted up the steal links.
"You don't have to. Really, its ok."
"No it's not. I don't believe in treating people like monsters just because of what they can do." She said sternly. "Now about those laws."
"Well, you see. My clan were from further north than most clans, Emil spent most of his life in Iceland, so our laws might be a little bit different than some other clans."
"Your Nordic." Atticus chuckled. "That explains why you all have blond hair and blue eyes."
"Guess I would fit right in with the rest of your clan then!" Naruto laughed along with him. "So what's the rest of your clan like?" she said, trying to act a little bit more friendly towards him.
"Well, what came here was kind of it." he said slowly "Berwald and Tino are fostering of these two kids but I've never been sure on if they are going to adopt them or not." He looked up to the dark ceiling "We've kind of been dying off lately, and the massacre in Japan hasn't been getting ones hopes up. Especially since none of us can have kids."
"I'm sorry, I wasn't there for whatever went down outside. So please explain."
"Um, well Berwald is tall and creepy but he means well. Tino is small and seams nice but is really scary. Emil is Lukas little brother, well, Lukas found him and that's normally how we decide on how everyone is related but Emile doesn't like being called that. And Lukas is just Lukas. He's really into magic and stuff that I'm not allowed to touch."
"Sound sweat." She smiles.
"You said something about sending them home but they wouldn't make it." Atticus said, not as a question but as a statement.
Mathias nodded "This, object, has a large amount of constricted reishi, it might as well be a soul. A soul has a lot of power. I don't know how it works, but Lukas told me that if I fill up the necklace he gave me with these stones. Then we could go home. But we needed all of the objects."
"And you didn't have all of them." Naruto said quietly.
Mathias nodded "This was the strongest one." He said "Without this all I could do was get them close enough for them to make it on their own."
"Why didn't you take a plane if you needed to get home that badly?"
Mathias smiled softly "I wish it was that simple." He sighed and stretched. "Hey, Atticus right?" the lieutenant nodded "Can I have some food? Anything made from Reishi should be fine."
"Yeah, uh, Naruto. Can you go get some food from the dining hall?" Atticus asked politely.
"You guys have a dining halls here!" the Bount yelled. "So cool!"
Atticus just waved Naruto out the door and continued to talk to Mathias. Naruto sighed, this was not the reason she came home. She still hadn't even turned in her report, which she had written while taking the train back.
