It is now 2015, the year that I have looked forward to for reasons that you have no need to know. The only thing you need to know is that I do not plan for those reasons to get in the way of updating.

Let us continue. Please take into account that the events described after the first line break take place at the same time as the events of the Rewinding Town Arc. So, how does this affect the whole story as a whole? Well, let's just say that there will be three new Exorcists in the Black Order.

Allen woke up in, to his surprise, what looked like Miranda's living room. After a quick look around, he found out that it was Miranda's living room. He was lying on the couch.

Everything quickly came back to him, and he slowly sat up, mindful of his wounds. Again to his surprise, he only felt a dull ache in his back and head, even though he had been stabbed several times in the back.

He looked down to see white cloth bandages wrapped around his legs and torso. He tried out his voice, and as he expected, it was croaky from not being used for a long time. It took a good bit of throat clearing and humming to get it back to its smooth normalcy. Then again, he supposed he should be fortunate for the fact that he even had a voice, that Road had not even attempted to stab his throat.

Road Kamelot. Allen felt a rush of hatred and fear at the thought of her. Even though he had gotten so much more powerful since he had last seen her, he was still barely a match for her, even if they were fighting in her world. How much stronger would he have to get to fight with her on equal grounds? And what about Tyki? He was at least as powerful as Road, if not even stronger.

Allen shook these thoughts out of his head as he heard footsteps in the hall. He was surprised a third time when it was not Lenalee or Miranda who appeared, but Bookman. The small old man regarded Allen's awakening with little surprise or fluster, only nodding, as if checking something off a list of things to do. "You are awake," he commented.

"Bookman. Why are you here?" Allen asked after clearing his throat a little again.

Bookman handed him a glass of water and Allen gratefully drank it. Bookman spoke once Allen was done. "Komui was worried when we lost contact with you and Lenalee, so he sent out backup to the field teams of Exorcists. I was sent here because Lenalee was more important, and she might have been hurt, if you understand my meaning," Bookman smirked. Allen chuckled in agreement.

"When I arrived, I quickly located this apartment because it was the only one with a screaming woman in front. Miss Lotto was quite frantic for you two," Bookman said.

"That sounds like her," Allen agreed.

"She was the one who led me up here, and I was not too surprised to find the two of you rather gravely injured, you quite a bit more so than Lenalee. I healed you both with acupuncture, but you have still been asleep for a day and a half. Still, I expect a full recovery from you both by tomorrow. Astounding, considering the stab wounds."

Allen nodded. "And what about Lenalee and Miranda?" he asked.

"Miranda fainted from the stress of worrying about you after Lenalee woke up a few hours ago. Lenalee and I shared a few words about what transpired here before she fell asleep again. Now they both rest, and now I must discuss things with you, the one who always seems to know about these new players in the theater," Bookman said.

Allen nodded again. "Yes. We were attacked by Road Kamelot, a member of the Noah Clan. I suppose that Lenalee told you that Blake and I had encounters with Road in the past?" Bookman nodded. "She's still as powerful as I remember. She was only toying with Lenalee and I, and we still got so injured. We must become more powerful if we have any hope of rivaling the Noah."

Bookman nodded again. "Yes. The Bookmen have records about the Noah, but not many. Still, when we return to the Black Order, you, Blake, and I must share what we know about the Noah with the others."

"Agreed. Not sharing that knowledge was an act of carelessness I don't care to repeat. And Bookman, what do you think of Miranda?"

Bookman frowned. "She is an Accommodator, so we have to take her in. Her nervousness and clumsiness rather grates my nerves, but she showed admirable stubbornness when she protected you and Lenalee. I think that she will be a fine Exorcist."

Allen smiled. "Great minds think alike. I believe so, too."

Bookman's frown remained. "Allen. Lenalee also told me what you tried to do." Allen knew what Bookman was referring to, and he looked away. "You were a fool to do that, Allen. I know that your eye forces your sympathy for Akuma, but I agree with what Lenalee believes. You should not have tried that. Acts like that are what draw the ire of Lenalee. She treasures everyone at the Black Order as her precious friends, and could barely stand to lose any of them. That is why she was so angry with you."

"Is she still angry at me?"

The grave look on Bookman's face told him the answer.

Allen decided to change the subject. "You said that backup was sent to the field teams. Who was sent to Blake and Lucia?"

"Lavi."

"Lavi, huh? Well, here's hoping that they're all right."

After Blake and Lucia had said goodbye to Allen and Lenalee at the train station, Blake could hardly contain his excitement. "A vampire! Imagine, Lucia, a blood-sucking humanoid beast of the night! I can't wait to have a go at it!"

Lucia rolled her eyes. "Blake, you do realize that the chances of this being a real vampire are very slim to none, right?"

Blake chuckled. "Of course I am. Little villages like this always have their horror tales. This is probably one of them, even if there are witnesses to the perpetrator this time. For all we know, this vampire could be a cannibalistic serial killer with a taste for draining the victim of blood. But that doesn't change my opinion that this is still an interesting case!"

Lucia sighed. "Of course it doesn't."

Now, Blake and Lucia were sitting in their own personal compartment. The silence between them was not because they were giving each other the silent treatment, but because they were both reading books. However, so engaged they both were in their own books that they did not mark the other's piece of literature until Blake glanced over the top of his book to peek at Lucia. He saw the cover and snickered.

Lucia heard. "Something wrong?"

"Bram Stoker's Dracula?" Blake asked, unable to hide his surprise and amusement.

Lucia turned away, embarrassed. "What's wrong with it? We are going to fight a alleged vampire, after all," she defended herself.

"Lucia, while Stoker does make some fair points about vampires, I think that there are some flaws in the anti-vampire methods that he uses. For example, garlic? Really? Vampirism isn't like rabies; it is no catchable disease. It's more of a species of monster like a dragon or a phoenix, who simply happens to be able to pass on its genes to other creatures."

Lucia bookmarked Dracula and quizzically stared at her partner. "Really? All right, Mr. Vampire Expert, what else do you know?"

Blake shook his head. "I'm only stating what I believe. The idea that garlic can repel vampires is too far-fetched! They might hate the taste, sure, but so much that it repels them? Please. The holy cross and holy water? Yeah, sure, why not? The stake in the chest? I have no problem with that. Crumbling to dust at sunrise? Believable. But garlic? That sounds as ridiculous to me as the poor attempt of an amateur fortune-teller trying to interpret bones."

Lucia raised an eyebrow. "That was…surprisingly well-put."

Blake shrugged. "I'm passionate about things like this. My Innocence does dabble in legends and myths, after all. But believe what you will. I have no right to impose my beliefs on you."

So saying, he picked up his book again, and Lucia's eyes widened at the sight of the title. "Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?"

Blake looked at her. "What? It's a perfectly good book."

"It is, but…I never expected to see you of all people reading something like that," Lucia explained.

Blake shrugged. "You learn something new every day. So you have read this?" He indicated his book.

"I enjoyed it very much. It was slow at first, but it sped up very quickly around the middle," Lucia replied.

"I actually don't care for the plot so much as the characters. They're very interesting." Blake smirked. "In fact, you and Elizabeth share quite a lot of personality traits. You are strong-willed, not afraid to speak your mind, honest to a fault…you even had your own prejudices about me."

Lucia returned with a smile of her own. "The same could be said of you and Darcy. You are proud, arrogant, warm on the inside, tall…" She studied him quizzically. "Hmm…not really handsome, though."

"Hey!"

Lucia laughed, and they spent the next two hours discussing Pride and Prejudice. This would have been surprising for many people, but Pride and Prejudice was a very deep book that could have gone many ways. Also, both Blake and Lucia were very impressed by it, so it took a while for them to get everything they had theorized and liked about the book. At the end of two hours, Blake stopped the discussion because Lucia yawned, and Blake let her sleep some more. They still had a long way to go; they would even have to sleep overnight on this train.

A few hours later, Blake woke Lucia up for dinner. Like Allen, Blake had also prepared a huge amount of funds for the trip, and even though the Black Order had covered the main food bill, even for Parasitic-Types like Blake and Lucia, Blake still tipped the waiters generously for their troubles.

After dinner, Lucia fell asleep again, and sitting around all day reading a book had lowered Blake's energy level as well. Before long, his eyes began to droop, and he soon followed Lucia into dreamland.

"…sande? Miss Melisande?" Lucia stirred at a rather solemn but smooth voice. The source of the voice sighed, and then Lucia felt strong arms take hold of the back of her knees and her back and lift her up from her chair.

"U-uh…Scion? Is that you?" Lucia heard, no, felt, her body ask, even though she had not willed it. Her words were slightly but sharply accented.

"Who else would be brave enough to carry you like this?" the man called Scion chuckled.

Lucia fully woke up just as Scion set her down on the bed. She saw that Scion was a man with a sharp face and black hair spiked up, rather like Blake's, but it was shorter, and lacked the distinct antennae-like bangs that so distinguished him. Also, this man lacked Blake's differently colored eyes, and a glance down to his waist made Lucia see two sheathed short swords at his belt.

Lucia looked back up felt a flush of pleasure at the sight of his grin. It was mocking on the surface, but underneath was infinite kindness. It was so much like Blake's.

"I have to check on Nea and Lazuli. Of course, I won't go into their room; who knows what they're doing in there. Thank God the walls are soundproof, eh, Melisande?" Scion quipped.

It came to Lucia. In this dream, she was a woman named Melisande, and this Scion was someone very special to her. The other names he had mentioned: Nea and Lazuli, they were her dear friends. It also seemed to Lucia that she could not control Melisande's actions, as if she were a spectator from within her own body.

"Will you return to me tonight? My neck would be so stiff without you," Melisande asked, a joking tone in her voice.

The corner of Scion's lips turned up even more as he smirked. "You honor me, my lady. I will return in a matter of minutes."

Scion kept his word. A few minutes later, he returned. "They are both asleep, apart from each other for once. Still, I suppose I wouldn't really mind if they did decide to sleep together again."

"Scion?"

"Hmm?"

"I want to thank you for everything you've done these past years."

Scion looked surprised. "Well, where did this come from?"

Melisande ignored this question. "When I came to England from France, I was despised for it. No one listened to the music that I wrote, except for Nea and Lazuli. They helped me expand it even further."

"Then why thank me?"

"Because I would not be alive today if not for you. You protected me that day, Scion, and you very well know it. Why?"

Scion looked at her for a long moment before opening his mouth to speak…

Lucia's eyes opened. For a moment, she thought that she was still in a dream, because she was lying down and covered with a wool blanket. Then she felt the wall next to her, which fully woke her up; Melisande's bed was in the middle of the room.

Lucia sat up to think. That name, Melisande; it was the same as her mother's sister. Lucia's mother had told the young Lucia much about Melisande.

Melisande Bellerose was the oldest child of the Bellerose family in France, a family of slight yet sustained wealth. However, instead of marrying a man of fortune as her family had hoped, Melisande left France at the tender age of seventeen in order to seek her own fortune, much to the chagrin of her family. She was apparently a talented musician and composer, but her French origins had caused her to be subjected to much torment in England. The letters that she sent home spoke to both optimism and dire straits.

At some point, the letters stopped altogether. Melisande Bellerose had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared from the face of the Earth. Lucia's maternal relatives had searched England frantically, but to no avail. Then Lucia's mother married the heir of the Remier family, a family with the same middling origins as the Belleroses, and that was more or less the end of the Bellerose family, as they had no sons to carry on the name.

The thoughts of her family led Lucia to wonder how they were doing in France. They had tried so hard to hide what they considered her affliction from the rest of the world, to the point that her family home-schooled her themselves. Very few outside their family and closest friends even knew of Lucia's existence. These circumstances had developed Lucia into an intelligent, witty young woman, if a little sharp. She was not spoiled at all, either; her family knew how to bring discipline if needed.

But all that changed when a Finder had come upon their home in his travels. He unintentionally discovered Lucia due to her own carelessness, and when he saw how much she ate, so much like Suman Dark of the Black Order, as well as her covered arm, he knew that she was a Parasitic-Type Accommodator. And just like her aunt Melisande, Lucia left her home and family.

A deep rumbling growl made Lucia turn towards Blake, who was sleeping in his seat across from her. He too was covered in a wool blanket, and she smiled as she noticed how innocent his smile looked as he slept. It was very different from the mocking grin that he normally displayed when he was talking to her.

Her eyes widened as another detail came back to her from her dream. The name Scion…that was the name of Blake's disappeared uncle, Marcus Phantasia's brother. But the Scion that she had seen was confident and unafraid of anything, very different from the introverted recluse that Blake, or by extension Marcus, had made him out to be.

The names are the same. That is only a coincidence, Lucia thought as she lay back down to try to get some more sleep. But sleep was a long time coming.

Both Blake and Lucia awoke again the next morning. They went the first hour of awakening with no words shared between them; Lucia was not the only one who had had strange dreams last night.

Breakfast and tooth brushing went without words. It was a while before either of them spoke to each other again, which was unusual. The casual observer would have said that they were a couple in a fight, and in fact, even those like Lavi and Komui have said that they were fighting for the silence, but the two just had a lot on their minds, and when they did, they were silent.

Then they seemed to recognize the other's presence again, and they smiled at each other. "So, for the sake of conversation, how did you sleep last night?" Blake asked.

"Well enough, thank you. Do you want to discuss the mission?" Lucia asked.

Blake checked his pocket watch. It was nine o'clock in the morning. "Three hours or so until we get there…why not?"

Lucia extracted the mission files from her bag and browsed through them. Blake joined her on her side and craned his neck to read the documents.

"Do you think this alleged vampire will be strong?" Lucia asked, very aware of the fact that he was very close to her.

Blake seemed to realize this and moved away a bit so that he could still read, but also try not to make her uncomfortable, which Lucia was grateful for. "I personally believe that vampires are essentially humans with a thirst for blood and hyper-enhanced physical abilities. It's likely that if he chooses to run, we won't be able to catch him on foot. I think that your archery would be our better asset in this fight."

"But what about fighting?" Lucia persisted, knowing that Blake had avoided the hidden meaning behind her question.

"As I said, vampires are strong, powerful creatures. If this thing attacking the village is a vampire, then we, as humans, even with our Innocence, would be hard-pressed to fight him." Blake suddenly looked thoughtful. "Actually, I have my doubts that this alleged vampire is an Akuma."

Lucia rolled her eyes. "Oh, please! What else could it be? It's not like vampires exist!"

Blake glared at her. "Just for that, I'll make sure to say 'I told you so' if he is a real vampire, but that's not what I'm saying now. I'm just saying that if there is something attacking those villagers, it's not an Akuma. No Akuma drains human blood. Even the Level 2s rely more on their physical strength and abilities."

Lucia sighed. "Blake, you yourself said that Level 2 Akuma can have all sorts of abilities. What's to say that this thing isn't an Akuma with vampiric powers?"

Blake nodded. "True enough. Still, there's something about this whole case that bugs me for some reason…"

Blake and Lucia dropped the subject and continued discussing other matters, all the way to the end of the journey. When the conductor informed them of their imminent arrival, they had fully studied the files and were ready to take on whatever it was that was attacking the village.

The train arrived. Blake and Lucia stretched their bodies, gathered their things, and left the train, already dreading the return journey. Twenty-two hours in a train weighed heavily on their nerves, and both of them were aching for some exercise. Blake was hoping for something like battle more than Lucia was, but that was beside the point.

Their designated village was not too far from the train station, but as they entered, Lucia and Blake could not help but feel like they were being watched. Both of them could see the tiniest hints of eyes peeking through shuttered windows to glare at them.

"Are we welcome here?" Lucia asked.

"It seems unlikely," Blake answered. "Tell me, do you have any qualms about using your Innocence to fight the villagers if necessary?"

"I do."

"Then if that happens, stay back."

Right on cue, an aged man with brown clothes walked up to them from a random hut. Blake's sharp eyes never left him, but the man seemed more nervous than threatening.

"T-that uniform…"

Blake and Lucia exchanged glances. "What about it?" Lucia asked.

"A man came here one month ago…he said that if Count Krory ever started acting strangely, ask anyone with a uniform like his to deal with it. Are you two from the Black Order?" the man asked.

Blake mentally prepared to attack if necessary. "Yes."

The man fell to his knees. "Oh, bless the Lord! We are saved! Everyone! It is okay to come out!"

Blake sighed in exasperation as villagers emerged from their huts and began to gather around, cheering and shouting in joy. Lucia smiled at the crowd, but Blake hated crowds, and he quickly silenced the one that was gathering.

"Enough!" Blake roared. The crowd suddenly fell silent, shocked at the temper of the boy. Lucia stared at him, but Blake was focused on the first man. "Sir, if it's not too much trouble, could you please describe the man who came here last month?"

"Y-yes. Of course. He was tall, wore a hat with a large brim and a white mask on the right side of his face. He had white spectacles, red hair and a red goatee. His uniform was like yours, only…"

"It had yellow markings instead of white," Blake interrupted. Lucia's eyes widened. The Generals of the Black Order had those uniforms.

Blake knelt down, opened up suitcase, and extracted a photo from it before closing it again. "Is this the man you were talking about?"

The man studied the photo before nodding vigorously. Lucia would never forget that moment, because Blake let out an loud roar of anger at the man's answer. "Damn it all! That bastard!"

"Blake! What's wrong?!" Lucia demanded.

Blake turned his glare at her. "The one who came here last month…was General Cross!" he snapped.

And that will do for now. Please leave a comment below if you so wish.