A loud crack of thunder woke him in the night, and Lavi sat up, surprised. His feet tangled in a thin blanket, and he fell over in his haste to get up. He groaned for a moment, finally managing to figure out what was feet and what was blanket. He stood up, trying to remember why he was sleeping on the couch -

That's right. Bookman had given him pills to help him sleep. Well, technically the old panda'd told him to rummage through his medicine pouch for it, but it was the same thing. That meant that Lavi had actually slept through the night. Well, almost. The storm had woken him up. Nevertheless, the fact that Lavi's slumber had been completely dreamless was a feat, and the redhead regarded Bookman's medicine bag with renewed awe. He whistled low, thinking about how much punch that sleeping pill must've had. He had to remember to take those more often...

Though he could honestly say he didn't remember getting the blanket. That was new. He started to fold it and put it back as another flash of lightning brush-stroked the sky in swathes of varying shades of white. Ribbons of water trailed down the window, and as the Apprentice Bookman put the blanket back on the couch, he realized that someone must have put the blanket over him in the middle of the night. Surely it hadn't been Bookman? After all, he slept like the dead. The man could sleep in the middle of a battlefield with mortars bursting around him. He wasn't one to suddenly get up in the night out of nowhere. Of course, being the old man that he is, he took frequent bathroom breaks, and if there was anything that could get Panda out of bed, it was a full bladder...

Lavi heard a noise down the hall outside of the door, and his curiosity spiked. He pursed his lips in debate. Should he go and investigate? After all, he was already up and at 'em, so why not? There wasn't anything to do. There was mischief to be had late at night, besides. With no one awake, there weren't witnesses to any of the pranks that Lavi could pull, his favorite target being the eggheads. As much as he loved those guys, they squealed the loudest when it came to being pelted with eggs or having to dance on harmless cherry-bombs. He liked to set up elaborate traps that could take on a couple dozen victi- ...participants at once.

Already distracted by this new train of thought, Lavi headed out his door into the halls of the Order. Where oh where to start? What to do? A massive egg gun like last time? Nah, that'd take too much effort for one night. How about a funnel over the main door? Hm, that could work, but it'd be awfully difficult to string it up by himself. What about slicking the entire atrium floor with bacon grease? That sounded a little bit more plausible.

In his distraction, Lavi failed to notice that someone was huddled in an archway not five feet away as he walked down the hallway that was suspended over the main atrium of the headquarters. A burst of thunder revealed the offender with a soft, breathless whimper, and Lavi stopped, recognizing the noise. His mischievous, light-hearted thoughts were shot through with confusion and melancholy. She'd been hiding, possibly due to the fact she'd been caught here late, and with the storm about she dared no venture into the night. It was no doubt her that had entered his room and placed the blanket. Even now, she checked on him, as she had previously, even in the midst of guilt or anger or rejection. In the back of his mind, Lavi had been afraid that perhaps she was bitter towards him. Now he knew otherwise, and the knowledge that she still considered herself friend and caretaker hurt more than if she had cast him off completely in disgust.

Their parting had been less than cordial. In fact, if anything it had been strained and stiff, a rehearsal of pleasantries as they said goodbyes they hadn't meant yet seemed to have no choice but to speak. It was a slap in the face to her service to him, because he tossed her aside as if she were no more than chaff. In the hallways he pretended not to know her. In the kitchen and cafeteria, she would look into his eyes, and he'd stare right through. A clean break was the best break, but it felt wrong to even deny her help. He'd done that once, too, withheld help when he could've given it, should he have chosen to. That pained look haunted him when he was left with an idle mind, and so he filled his head with riddles, problems, and enigmas. She was a living ghost, and it was painful for them both. Seeing her in the experimentation vault below ground had been an anomaly, and if asked about his reasons for trailing the group Lavi would've said that it was more a matter of curiosity than of concern.

Should Lavi keep on going as if he hadn't heard her? Should he ignore her? After all, he'd told Bookman he had no ties to her any longer. Their partnership was void, and from the rumors he'd heard lately, the CROW were coming to take her to England for further experimentation and study. Just as in Sao Paolo, England was a land of drizzle, and she would be miserable there. If he wanted, he could pull strings, ask favors, change things, and have documents 'misplaced' in exactly the right places. Yet, he stayed mum. He couldn't interfere. He had no part in this. He had to keep that impartiality that he'd finally built back up.

However, in all of this hubbub in his head, he continued to walk. He'd gone nary three steps when a massive crack of thunder broke so loud over the building that the floor shook. Too proud to ask for help, yet too afraid to leave, he heard Esperanza let out a short shout of surprise and fear before cutting herself off with a quick slap of the hand over her mouth. Lavi stopped, faltering. His heart was rent in two, torn between the compassion blooming within his newly hardened heart and the callouses that were finally forming. Yet at that moment, hearing her scream, he was brought back to the night where she was terrified in a tent on a mountain, shielded by a thin layer of oilskin from a terrifying tempest of his own making. This in turn brought a bout of empathy as he remembered the horror he'd been faced with on his trip to Sao Paolo realizing that his mind was unraveling and Esperanza's subsequent help managing his synesthesia and nightmares.

Finally unable to bear it, Lavi sighed to himself. He turned tail, walking past the woman as fast as he could manage without appearing rushed, and he stopped at one of the large banners the hall sported between tall, glass windows. The halls of the headquarters were most usually lit with gas lights and torches, seeing as it would take a massive amount of money and effort to put in electric lights, and that meant the banners were made of a leaded cloth that was fireproof and, more importantly, soundproof. Lavi walked up to one, a massive thing nearly twenty feet long embroidered with a very pre-Columbian design in silver, and he began to tugging it off its pewter hanger. After about three swift yanks, the entire thing fell in what seemed like slow motion, and Lavi's eye widened as he realized that he was going to be swamped in cloth. A massive avalanche overtook him, and he barely managed to keep his footing.

Looking like a walking mountain of cloth, Lavi managed to find his way to Esperanza. He dumped the cloth at his feet, finding Esperanza looking down in confusion through tear-stricken strands of brown-black hair. He lifted up the end of the banner, and he wrapped the eighteen-year-old Argentine swiftly in massive layers. Soon, she was practically cocooned in a tent of thick cloth, once more ensconced in a make-shift fort. Esperanza looked up, absolutely perplexed and confused, and for a moment Lavi saw a pair of bright blue eyes peer out from the dark interior of the pile. In that instant, he saw a distilled sort of awe and relief, almost joy, and Lavi felt guilty for incurring it so rapidly only to have to put it out later.

So, without a word, he left for the kitchens. He had a floor to grease.

"How long do I have to stand here with these on my head?" Lavi asked, straining to keep his balance. He was standing on one foot on a chair with a stack of textbooks sitting on his cranium. They tottered dangerously to and fro as Lavi kept trying to recover his center of balance. So far, he'd tried to complete Bookman's exercise five different times, and on each of those five tries, either the books fell off his head or he fell off the chair.

"Apprentice, should you be speaking?" Bookman asked. Pouting, Lavi looked away.

"No."

"Then you should stop speaking." Bookman went back to writing in his notepad. Darrin was attempting to keep his mirth in check, but it seemed that he was struggling. The two were sitting in armchairs only five feet away from Lavi with a table in between the both of them. On top of the table the bronze cylinder puzzle lay underneath lamp light. Bookman studied it prodigiously, holding a small lens between clawed fingers. He squinted at the writing stuck between the dials that circled the cylinder, and he grumbled something under his breath.

"Curious," Bookman muttered. He had had yet to examine the artifact himself, and he had previously been listening to Darrin's exchange whilst Lavi attempted to keep his balance, both mentally and bodily.

"What's curious?" Darrin asked, leaning forwards to look at the cylinder. Lavi had no doubt that Darrin was familiar with the object, but the old man hadn't actually looked at it, not the way that Bookman or Lavi had. The elderly chronicler turned the cylinder under the light, and Lavi watched as Bookman ran one gnarled, clawed finger over the strange markings that circled the locked object. The old man's lips were moving as he peered through the lens, and Lavi knew immediately that Bookman knew the strange language. However, Lavi would have to wait patiently before Bookman would divulge what he knew. Of course, the redhead was used to that sort of treatment. It always seemed that Bookman was either telling him to wait and slow down or hurry and speed up.

"This is an old, old, old language. Lavi and I speak a form of it, though it's been changed quite a bit from the original dialect, which was spoken about four thousand years ago. It's a Bookman clan alphabet, one that I'm not familiar with but can recognize," Bookman said about ten minutes later, and Lavi's eye widened. He'd thought the letters looked oddly familiar. Unbeknownst to most, the Bookmen did have their own language complete with an alphabet that could be written down, though only under dire circumstances would the foreign tongue be put to paper. It's obscurity was one of their best kept secrets, and they wanted to keep it that way. Some information was not meant to be divulged to the rest of the world.

"Ken ya read it?" Darrin asked gruffly. Lavi winced as his arms began to burn. He'd only been holding them out for the past five minutes, and they already hurt. He was getting flabby. Nevertheless, he was more captivated with the conversation going on beside him than the fiery sensation in his muscles.

"Of course I can, though it will take time. It appears to be a set of riddles, each one pertaining to the number on the dial above it. I can have it done in as little as a week," Bookman stated, and Lavi whistled. This had to be a very old alphabet - it usually took Bookman all of an hour to untangle most dead languages, even in obscure dialects, into English. Bookman raised a nonexistent eyebrow at his apprentice, and Lavi smiled cheekily.

Suddenly, the door to the library opened, and someone walked in. Their heels went clip-clip-clip down the parquet style floor, and Lavi resisted the urge to look behind him. His curiosity burned like a live coal in his brain as he tried to keep from turning his neck and upsetting the books on his head. Someone came to stand right next to Lavi, and he realized that whoever it was happened to be standing on the side of his covered eye.

Aw, not fair.

Suddenly, Lavi felt a pinch on his upper thigh, and he yelped. Despite the painful attack on his skin, Lavi managed to remain on one leg, still supporting the stack of texts on his head. He wobbled, though, and Bookman watched in what seemed to be amusement.

Esperanza came to sit down at the table, and Lavi tried not to fall over as he realized that her entire side was slicked with bacon grease. She must've slipped on the massive sheet of the stuff in the atrium. Lavi had watched with glee as several scientists took tumble after tumble before Bookman finally dragged him into his chosen method of torture. Her face, as per usual, was passive, though underneath he could see the ire underneath the calm. Bookman gave her a small smile, and he asked, "Yes?"

"I have a missive for you and... Lavi," she said, reluctantly looking over at the apprentice ridiculously attempting to maintain an upright stance. He looked away as he noticed the question in her eyes. She remembered last night. Crap. Lavi felt sweat break out in the small of his back. He shouldn't have done that, but his stupid, fool, ugly, feeling, little heart decided to get tangled around his ankles and trip him up. Lavi stolidly looked away, pretending to be very interested in a copy of Geometria y La Complicacion de Los Cielos. Hair fell in his face from underneath his bandanna, and Lavi tried to blow it away, but it only succeeded in tickling his nose.

"Ah, thank you, Esperanza," Bookman stated, perfectly congenial. Though things were quite awkward for both Lavi and Esperanza, given the circumstances, Bookman and Esperanza had gotten along very well. They were both of similar temperament, especially now that Esperanza was finally in control of her emotions once more. Lavi had watched someone spit on her boots in the cafeteria -

He winced at the memory. She'd been spit in the face, too, come to think of it. And in the hair. And clothes. From what he knew, she had a good following of supporters, too, though they were definitely the minority in this case, considering it was a European organization they happened to be running under... All in all, she hadn't gotten into any more fights, so that was good. She hadn't smoked, hadn't drank, hadn't slammed anyone's face into a table. She was back to her old self, though it seemed that the weather still had her under a tiff.

Just because he couldn't interact didn't mean he couldn't keep tabs. It wasn't spying - it was concerned surveillance. That was his argument, and he was sticking to it.

Suddenly, Lavi felt the urge to sneeze. He wiggled his nose in an attempt to subvert it.

"Ah, it's another mission. A phenomenon has been located in Guatemala. Disappearances have spiked in the rain forests due to some sort of amphithere, and they want the three of us to go and investigate it," Bookman said. Esperanza visibly brightened at the mention that the three of them were leaving. Darrin grumbled his discontent with being left with the eggheads, scratching his ever-present layer of stubble. Esperanza rolled her eyes as she patted his shoulder with rough affection.

The sneeze was lodging itself firmly in the tip of his nose. He could feel it waiting there. Lavi shot a breath through his nose, but that did nothing to deter the tickling sensation.

"We'll leave in the next four days. Oh, and Esperanza - Alfonso wants to know exactly when you'll be leaving for England. I've heard you have yet to give a straight answer," Bookman stated, his kohl-lined eyes glittering with anticipation at this development. He knew Esperanza was quite strong-willed, and a missive to England was the last thing on her mind while the game was afoot. Though her outward expression didn't change, there was a subtle shift in her stance and demeanor that gave off vibes of disdain.

"I will get back to him on that," Esperanza stated, her voice level.

Finally, unable to hold it in any longer, Lavi let out a raucous sneeze, falling over backwards chair, books, and all. The three, who'd forgotten that Lavi was even present, turned back around to stare incredulously at the haphazard redhead buried amid a good sized pile of books. The shelf behind him suddenly unloaded quite a few more tomes on the already large pile, and Lavi groaned as he was interred by pages of script.

Darrin guffawed, and Esperanza tried to keep a straight face, though she herself didn't look exactly put together either with her hair slicked to her head by grease. Lavi sat up with a wince, catching a mirthful glint in Bookman's eye. Lavi extracted himself from the pile of books, patting himself down to make sure everything was in its correct place. He didn't feel anything broken, though quite a few spots on him were sore, and Esperanza walked over to him. He flinched as she raised a hand, sure she was probably going to give him a light smack for his prank, but instead she straightened his headband. He rubbed his head awkwardly, not sure what to do.

Luckily, he didn't have to do anything. A Finder ran down the hallway, slipped and slid past the four, and then scrambled to turn right back around. The Finder ran up to Lavi, but he halted suddenly upon catching sight of Esperanza. The Finder was wearing a cloth mask around his mouth, a normal sight in the usually congested city. Most people, especially newbies, were immediately stopped by the fearsome visage Esperanza wore with her triple-scar and hard-set eyes, but there was something else in this Finder's face than just surprise and deer-in-the-headlights confusion. Too late, Lavi realized this was the Finder Esperanza had beaten the ever loving crap out of just as he took off his mask. The mustachio'd man worked his jaw before saying in precise English, "There is a package for you, Mr. Lavi. I have been instructed to direct you to the post room."

Lavi contemplated this, looking at Esperanza briefly. Her face showed no emotion whatsoever, and Lavi cursed internally. She'd gotten much, much better about concealing emotions from him. She must have tailored that look specifically to hide her thoughts from his ever-observant eye. He'd underestimated her yet again. Good - he always liked a challenge.

"Sure," Lavi said, cocking his head to the side and giving a small smile to put the man at ease. He was obviously high-strung and cocky considering his company, and it would do little good to have him riled up again to lob another winning throw at Esperanza's pride. In a silence as dense as Irish fog the two of them left the library at a brisk pace, feet slapping against the parquet floor of the library. When they were out of the confines of the tome forest Lavi visibly witnessed the man relax.

Now that Lavi could finally get a good look at him, this Finder was hardly older than Esperanza herself. Lavi had originally pegged him as four or five years older, but now that he could study the man, he realized that the Finder wasn't much more than a year or two older than Lavi himself. He was stocky, though, well muscled by hours of labor no doubt at some menial job as a teenager before he'd taken up the mantle of a Finder. His face was decidedly European, and his skin was a very, very light tan. His eyes were the color of slate, and his hair was a very dark brown. His mustache was thin, and he had an accompanying strip of hair running from under his lower lip down to the end of his chin. All in all, he looked much better than he had the last time Lavi'd seen him, in the Infirmary as he was with a broken nose and a black eye. He had a scar where a gash had been, also from Esperanza's less-than-gentle handling.

"You look... uh, healthier," Lavi said, suddenly running out of words. The halls were empty, and the masonry wafted the cold. The storm from last night had died down to a mere drizzle, though the occasional flash of lightning did light the interior of the headquarters from tall, glass windows. The Finder shrugged.

"I heal fast," the Finder said, and Lavi suddenly asked, "What's your name, anyways?" The Finder looked surprised, and for a moment skepticism crept onto his features. However, the young man dismissed this and stated, " ' Name's Teo. Yours?"

"Lavi," the redhead answered in turn, giving the usual one-word, guyish response.

"You hang out with the murderer," the Finder said, his words flat, and his tone telling. Despite the lack of inflection, Lavi could tell that the word 'murderer' was meant to hold a taint of disdain and hate. "Pity. You seem like a nice guy. Must be fun having her as a partner." Lavi suppressed a pang of offense. He had to remain impartial. What did he care if this guy thought Esperanza was a murderer? It wasn't like she wasn't a murderer. She just wasn't active any more, thank whatever higher power existed.

"Yeah. She's alright once you get to know her. What's your beef?" Lavi asked. They passed a group of scientists, all wearing labcoats and arguing over flux capacitators. Lavi watched them walk past in order to avert his gaze from Teo. The older boy would feel more secure if he didn't look directly at him. Humans, like dogs, didn't like to be looked in the face when they were uncomfortable or felt threatened. It was too much of a challenge. Teo chewed his lip in thought, and Lavi wondered if he'd stepped too far too fast.

The Finder said, "My little sister, Gracia, went to a little white school in town. Pretty little twelve-year-old girl, y'know? One day, I came to pick her up... except the school wasn't there anymore. Poof - all of it, a crater. We found her body five days later, or what was left of it. My mother committed suicide three days after her funeral." The man's voice cracked towards the end, and Lavi frowned. The Wildcats had been notorious for targeting schools with heavy white populations as well as hotels and ritzy cafes that catered to the lighter-skinned populace. They hadn't just been against whites either - anyone of European descent was in danger. They'd been a nationalistic group of bomb-toters, and their prey fought back with their own bombs. It'd been a war in all senses of the word.

"Was Esperanza one of the people who bombed the school?" Lavi asked quietly. The Finder scoffed, and Lavi threw him a quick, hesitant glance. Teo looked a little bit conflicted for all of a moment before saying almost inaudibly, "It doesn't matter if she'd bombed that school herself or not. She might've bombed some other school, or maybe she wasn't even a part of the bombings and just helped the extremists. Either way, someway somehow, she's the reason why my sister and mother are dead, even if she wasn't the one planting the bomb. That's something they would never understand." Lavi couldn't argue with that logic, and so they continued to walk towards the post room in silence.

Teo gave a limp smile to Lavi as he saluted the Exorcist, leaving for other parts of the Order. From down the hall, Lavi could hear screams as people continued to slip on the bacon grease he'd put in the atrium, and he smiled to himself ever so slightly. The post man looked up in expectation, and Lavi signed his name. The young post man handed Lavi a small box, and the redhead frowned. There happened to be no return address, and it was fairly small. The box lacked a sender's name, and that immediately sent off warning bells. Lavi, however, hid his unease, and he waved to the post man. The Portuguese post man smiled and waved back.

In the hall, Lavi hid himself in an alcove away from people. He held his ear to the box, and he was relieved to hear no ticking noises. However, that didn't mean there wasn't some sort of internal construction that could go off the minute Lavi opened the box. He hated the fact he didn't know where the thing had come from. Suddenly, Lavi came up with a bright idea - ask a bomb expert. And he knew exactly where to find one.

Lavi raced back to the library. Esperanza, Bookman, and Darrin were still amid the forest of shelves. The ex-terrorist was reading a book on mythology, while Darrin snoozed and Bookman worked. The latter looked up as Lavi came near, and Esperanza lifted her eyes ever so slightly from her tome. Lavi held up a white box, and Bookman frowned.

"You haven't opened it yet," Bookman noted, gesturing to the package. The redhead sighed as Esperanza watched him with careful, blue eyes. Lavi said, "It has no sender's address or sender, and it's a rather small package. I don't know what's in it, and it worries me. So... I wanted to know what she thought." Lavi looked over at Esperanza, and her facial expression remained flat. Lavi suddenly worried that he might've offended her, but she stood up with a creak, and she took the box out of his hands. Their fingertips brushed, and her eyes betrayed her for a moment as she looked up at him. She wasn't as restrained as she thought. Lavi hid a smirk, looking away.

She turned the box over in her hands, feeling the weight and heft, sliding her fingers along the edges of the box. She pursed her lips, brow furrowing ever so slightly as she tried to determine whether the box was a bomb or not. Finally, she sniffed the box, searching along the edges. The Argentine handed the box back, and she shook her head.

"It's not heavy enough to contain a big enough charge to be dangerous. There don't seem to be traces of any gunpowder or nitro on the box. It's too light to have a mechanism, and it doesn't shake. I say it's safe," Esperanza said. Immediately, Lavi took the box back. He put his fingers around the edge of the box where the top met the rest of the box, and he flicked his eyes between Bookman and Esperanza. Darrin stayed oblivious in his chair, snoring. Lavi tore off the top of the box, trusting the Argentine's judgement, and inside lay something small and white on a bed of black velvet.

It was a clean, white ribbon.

The smell of shattered glass, crystal in the air, blood in his nose and oil slick on the ground, a spear tip shoved in his face, a friend's eyes in mind, kind eyes that could heal with a glance and decipher the heart, eyes turned to stone under death and imprisonment, the feeling of metal giving way underneath his hammer, screams reverberating in his ears, screams that weren't Doug's, screams that were his and his alone, tear tracks down his face as -

Lavi's eyes widened as his breath caught in his chest, hundreds of feelings, sensations, and thoughts flooding his mind as he attempted to stop the mental hurricane. Bookman frowned as Lavi stood there, breathless, with the box in his hands. Finally, Lavi looked up with a plastic smile.

"How nice. A ribbon," Lavi said, picking it up with two fingers. The culmination of his first failure, his very first failure, was sitting between his fingers. It might not be the ribbon, but the meaning was clear. There was only one group of people who knew about this, and Lavi suddenly felt an immense rage fill him. Bookman, accustomed to seeing past Lavi's firm mask of cheerfulness, had his lips set tight as Lavi put the ribbon back in the box. A small note lay underneath the ribbon, and Lavi removed that as well. Esperanza, clearly dumbfounded, watched as Lavi read the note, his lips moving with the words.

Like the gift? There's more to come.

Lavi's smile seemed to crack, but it held together. He put the note back, and he stuck the box in his pocket. The two watched him tensely, but Lavi ignored them. He nodded to the two of them, walking back out of the library with heavy thoughts. All that time, there was a vacantly calm look about his face, an impenetrable mask of frivolity as nebulous as mist.

The door slammed as Lavi walked out, and Darrin woke up with a start.

"Wha'd I miss?" he grumbled blearily, Esperanza and Bookman looking to each other.

"Que estaba este?" Esperanza mumbled in Spanish, and Bookman answered in kind, "Estuve amigos con un Buscarero se llamo Doug. Ya murio casi un ano. Doug compro una cinta por una nina se llamo Collette en Francia. Estuve blanca, y Lavi nunca se olvidio. Doug... Doug y Collette cambiaron en Akuma. Lavi se mataron." Esperanza's eyes widened slightly. However, she kept her tongue in check as she digested this information, going back to her mythology text.

"Why ya gotta speak in Spanish? Ain't we in Brazil? Shouldn't ya be speakin' Portuguese 'r English? Come on, now, give the dog a bone!" Darrin pleaded, feeling out of the loop. He scratched his stubble with a frown, and Bookman tried hard to ignore the pang he felt. He shook his head, and he went back to his work.

"Hello?" the Portuguese guard asked. The woman smiled, batting long eyelashes, and the guard flushed. She'd walked in with a package, and now she seemed to be walking back out. She'd come through the back door, an odd place to start off from, but he couldn't really complain. After all, it wasn't every day that he got to meet a pretty girl.

She had waist-length black, glossy hair with a pair of brown eyes. Her face was heart-shaped and doll-like, her lips full yet tiny like a flower. Her cheekbones were high, and her features were slightly off-kilter, though not enough to make her ugly. She wore a hat to keep off the damp, as well as a thick dress made of expensive brocade. The guard doffed his hat, holding it to his chest. The girl smiled, and he attained a deep burning in his face. He was just a humble guard outside of a backdoor here to check in and check out people as things moved in and out of the headquarters. It was a lonely post in an alleyway where trucks usually pulled up to deliver large deliveries.

"Your name?" he asked, and the girl giggled. She put a gloved hand to her mouth, like a coquettish schoolgirl flirting with a boy in the street. Feeling slightly put out by her behavior, the man awkwardly smiled. She shook her head, hair swaying to and fro from her waist. Her visage was pale, almost sheet-white, and he was entranced for a moment by her youthful appearance. Large earrings glinted in the light at her ears, bright disks with a small black, onyx stone set in the middle.

"Don't you know? It's Ofelia Dominguez, silly. You don't remember me?" she asked with a tittering laugh. The man's smile fell slightly as he felt something wet spill down his pants. Too late, he realized that while he'd been distracted by her flirting glance, she'd stabbed him in the femoral artery. A gush of blood shot out, and he was about to scream. A knife flashed briefly with a bright, silver dart. His neck opened like a mouth, the lips of the gash spilling blood of its own. The guard fell down, bleeding out and unable to scream.

"Oops. Did I do that?" she asked, almost surprised. She smiled at him, coquettish once again, and she stepped over his frame. She pressed a button on her earring, and it crackled with noise.

"I believe a door's been accidentally left open. It's an open invitation, if you ask me," the young woman said, sighing as she put the dirtied knife in its hiding place up her sleeve in its special sheath. That had been all too easy. Men were so easily distracted. It was almost no fun.

Almost.

"The package has been delivered, yes?" a voice asked, and Ofelia chuckled deep in her throat. A strand of straight, black hair drifted in her face, and she brushed it away as she walked past a group of Finders walking towards the kitchens. She knew the entire layout of the building, from the lowest cellar to the highest rooftop. She was entirely confident in her directional capabilities. This would be a breeze.

"Yes, yes, your precious little gift has been received. If anything, it looked like he thought it was something... dangerous. Perhaps you should've put a sender's address," Ofelia suggested. The voice on the other end chuckled in response, sounding disturbingly like Ofelia's own laugh.

"No, no. This is perfect. Everything is going according to plan." Ofelia frowned. She shrugged to herself. If that was what she wanted... She smiled to herself.

Finally, she was going to have the chance to take back what was hers. She would find the person who'd killed her father and bring him to justice. She would -

"Ofelia?"

"Yes?"

"Remember what I told you. Leave him be. Take the one with the scars, not the redhead." A bitterness spread within her. Nevertheless, she sweetly answered, "Your wish, my command." She passed the post, stood at the edges of the atrium, and watched people slip and slide on the floor of bacon grease that still hadn't been cleaned.

She smiled as she heard screams from behind. The fun was finally about to begin.

A/N: Why hello there, everyone! I finally put out a new chapter! I understand, this doesn't have the normal amount of insanity, but hopefully the sore attempt at humor makes up for it. For those who don't understand the white ribbon, download the Reverse Novel about Lavi, or better yet just go the wiki page for DGM and you can find a synopsis there. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter so far.

As for reviewers, I'm happy to say that I've seen some new and old faces: big thanks to PrevalentMasters for that fabulous story, Miss Tigger for her input, and Feline Exorcist for posting at all. You guys make this story better, just a little bit at a time.

I also have a new band of favoriteers: Miss Tigger, Ciaou, and Bluring. Together, you will be... the three favoriteers! ... Obviously, I've spent too much time on the computer.

Miss Tigger is also a newcomer to the amazing subscribe list, for which I am happy.

Now, discussion questions: What are the Noah planning? How badly has Lavi been affected by the appearance of the white ribbon? Does anyone even like reading the Author's Notes? What are good suggestions that can be made in regard to Lavi's mental fragility? Is the plot still moving too slow? Would you want to stick around for the next chapter? Do you like the tension between Lavi and Esperanza? Do you think it's plausible? Are you enjoying this story? Are descriptions too detailed or too general?

Again, I bid all of you adieu. God bless and good reading!

I have new