Sorry for any typos that may or may not be lurking in this piece of crap I call a chapter.
Disclaimer: DO. NOT. OWN. That is all.
Chapter 13: Just One More Problem
"Antonio! Lovino!" the three heard Lenalee shouting. She fell slowly from the air, gaining speed with every passing second. "Get away from my friends!" She plowed into the head of the level two Akuma. It screamed in agony, spinning away to crash into the street.
"We're okay!" Antonio shouted from the middle of a circle made from stand statues. They'd linked arms, creating a wall between the pair and the Akuma. When an Akuma came too close to the inn, a statue would leap away from the line, swinging whatever weapon it clutched in its hands. The others would close ranks until the statue could step back into the circle. "Three of those pieces of innocence came to me! One of them made an axe in my hands! What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Stay put!" Lenalee cried at him, alighting gently on the edge of the roof.
"Give us this innocence!" a voice screeched from behind her, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
"Lenalee, watch out!" Allen shouted, occupied with shoving his hand through a level 1, "It's a level 3!" Lenalee began to swing around, but it was already too late.
The level 3 retracted its foot, ready to send her flying until another voice broke through the cacophony. "Little hammer, big hammer, grow, grow, grow!" Lavi shouted. Her hammer, ten times bigger than it had been only moments before, smashed into the level 3 just as it was getting ready to send Lenalee flying across town with a well-placed blow to the side.
Allen and Kanda made quick work of the level ones, and the level 2 that had begun to rise from the rubble it'd been buried under. "You can have the innocence when I'm dead and fertilizing my fucking garden!" Kanda yelled at the level 3, curling her lip up at the grotesque creature.
"Lenalee! Lavi! Go check on Lovino and Antonio! Kanda and I will take it from here!" Allen shouted to the others as Kanda continued to yell obscenities at the level 3, landing beside his lover. He Clown Belt wrapped securely around the level 3, propelled the Akuma far over the buildings giving them a moment of reprieve.
"Okay," Lenalee called back, rapping an arm around Lavi's waist and jumping into the room. The statues stepped apart for them before closing ranks once more. "Be careful!"
"How do you want to do this?" Kanda asked casually, twirling her sword slowly through the air. Her smirk grew with the thought of battle.
"We attack at the same time, then after that, you circle around back while I stay in front as a distraction," Allen suggested, flexing his claws. As the level 3 approached them at full speed, he grabbed his wrist, pulling his sword forward, "Let's get this over with."
"Sounds good to me," Kanda said, her smirk widening into a smile.
...
"Thank you so much ma'am. We're sorry about your inn," Antonio told the elderly innkeeper in Spanish, closing the door gently behind him as she bustled off to figure out how to fix her inn. She'd been very accommodating, like most old ladies. He had a sneaking suspicion though that she was only being nice because she thought gays were cute.
"You can't keep monsters from destroying things," she'd chuckled good-naturedly, "I'm just glad those things are gone."
Letting go of a long suffering sigh, he hurried over to Lovino. He was laid out on the floor, gasping for breath. The statues still held their stance around their rag-tag group, ready to destroy the first thing that meant them harm. "Is he alright?" Antonio asked Lenalee anxiously, dropping to his knees beside her.
"He won't be if he doesn't deactivate his innocence," she replied, worry plain in her voice, "Lovino, please. You have to deactivate. Your body can't handle the strain of sustaining the activation yet."
"Monsters. Akuma. They'll kill all of us," he whispered breathlessly, cringing in on himself as the innocence sent out another wave of power. His eyes were screwed tightly shut against anything he might glimpse.
"Lovino, honey, it's fine now. Allen and Kanda and Lenalee and Lavi destroyed them all. They can't hurt us now," Antonio soothed, brushing his bangs back from his face, "Please, I don't want you getting hurt."
"Yeah," Allen piped up, "All the Akuma are gone. They won't be bothering us."
Lovino sucked in a shaky breath, holding it in his lungs. He let it out slowly, his innocence deactivating with an explosive BANG! The others were thrown back into the statues, letting out gasps of surprise and groans of pain as they made impact. His head rolled to the side, and he went still.
"Lovino?" Antonio said, scrambling back towards him, "Lovino? Lovino, wake up please!" He pulled the other man into his arms, shaking his shoulders gently, his eyes wild with fear.
"Antonio! Antonio, stop! He's fine," Allen said, grabbing the man's hands, stopping his futile attempt at waking his lover, "He's just sleeping. He's perfectly fine." He smiled reassuringly, his glowed hand covering Antonio's wrapped around Lovi's shoulder.
Antonio looked to him, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. He dropped his head into Lovino's stomach, tears coming fast. His shoulders shook violently, but he was silent.
Allen rubbed his back soothingly, not sure whether the man was crying out of fear or relief. Maybe it was both. He glanced around at the others. "So we're all here and intact, and we've got all the pieces of innocence?" he asked, looking to Lavi since she seemed to be the most untouched, and was the one who kept the most precise lists.
She nodded. "Yep, I guess that means we can go home in the morning." She sighed happily at the thought, slipping until she was spread eagle on the floor with a stupid grin plastered to her face. "Finally, a real bed with real privacy, and a real bath that I can soak in for hours. Oh blessed home!"
"Thank god," Allen whispered, sighing deeply, "I've never been so happy to go back to that place since Rouvelier left."
"Speaking of the innocence, where is it?" Kanda asked irritably, still sitting against the statue she'd been flung at. She sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, Mugen resting against her shoulder, leaning back against the statue of a tall handsome man holding a sword at his side.
"Well, Antonio has the three that flew up here and Lovino has the other that we found like a month ago," Lavi recited, ticking the pieces off on her fingers. She puckered out her bottom lip. "Wow, that's a lot of innocence. No wonder we had so much trouble."
"You think?" Kanda shot at him sarcastically before turning to Antonio, "Let me see the extras." She held out her hand and effectively surprised the entire group.
Except Antonio, it seemed. He sat up slowly, wiping the tears from his face with the heel of his hand. He reached deep into her pocket, pulling the small glowing materials from its depths. He gingerly handed them to the moody Samurai, watching as her hand pulled back to cradle them against her chest, before returning to standing sentry over Lovino.
They glowed brighter in Kanda's grasp. She examined them with narrowed eyes, confusion hidden in her dark eyes. She ran thin fingers over the pieces, pausing as the intensity increased once more.
The group was silent, watching her curiously. After a few moments, she clapped a hand over her mouth and jumped to her feet. "I'm going to fucking puke," she snarled. Mugen clattered to the floor as she rushed through a small gap between the statues to the bathroom. The door slammed shut with enough force to shatter a window, and seconds later they could hear her disgorging whatever was left in her stomach.
She still had the innocence.
"I don't understand," Allen muttered, looking to Lenalee with worried slate grey eyes, "He was fine just this morning. Then…then…then this! All this puking! Did he get food poisoning?"
Lenalee looked as if she were going to be sick herself. She shook her head, rubbing her arm self-consciously. "No. I don't think so." Silence reined over them, only broken by Kanda's retching. Allen flinched periodically.
Kanda threw the door back open, her teeth brushed, the toilet flushed, and her eyes wide with horror. She paced back and forth in from of the statues, her hands pressed together in from of her mouth.
"What? What is it? What happened?" Allen asked urgently, jumping to his feet and rushing towards her. He tried to squeeze through the slot she'd pushed though, but he couldn't get his shoulders through. He frowned, digging his nails into the stone. "Can you come back in here?"
"They're gone," Kanda whispered so quietly that the others could barely hear her, ignoring Allen's request.
"What's gone, Kanda?" Lenalee asked, getting to her feet as worry started to invade her.
"The innocence." It was so silent that you could have heard a needle hit the floor.
"What?" Lavi asked, standing slowly with the rest.
"The innocence is gone. How many fucking times do I have to say it! I had them in my hand pressed to the floor one minute, and then the next they were gone! I checked everywhere. They're totally gone." She dropped her eyes to the ground, her hands shaking slightly. She clenched them into fists.
Lenalee's lips pressed into a tight line. "I have an idea where they've gone."
"Where?" Allen asked, looking over his shoulder at her.
She shook her head. "We need to get home as soon as possible. We've got a lot to deal with when we get back."
Her three friends frowned. She shared a knowing look with Antonio, their eyes flicking between each other's and Kanda's, before he dropped his eyes. He hand slowly stroked Lovino's hair, his touch loving.
"What's wrong? Why do we have to get back so quickly?" Allen asked worriedly, pulling Kanda through the hole between the statues to his chest.
She struggled against me, swatting at his hands. "You want to be here any longer?" she growled, gnawing on his wrist without meaning to maim.
Lenalee shook her head. "I'm going to go ask the innkeeper to use her phone," she mumbled, disappearing through the door. Lavi and Allen exchanged worried looks.
Sorry for the lateness of the chapter. Two more days of school left for me :D Yay! I have to play with the Orchestra for graduation tomorrow, yay. -_- That'll be interesting. I just hope I don't die like I did the two years before. My wish most likely won't come true, but we'll see. The chapters should start speeding up after school's out and I finish my summer assignment. Anyway, hope you liked the chapter. See you in a couple days!