So One Rain Drop Raises the Sea has been edited (it should be exactly the same minus the errors and continuity issues). I just wanted to say that before I let y'all read this.
Chapter 29
Temporary Allies
Neah sat in his chair smiling. Only the Earl remained in the room; the rest had not been too sure if they would have been able to control their tongues or actions concerning the Fourteenth. Neah's attack after he had been rescued from the Apocryphos was still fresh in everyone's minds.
"Yet again I find myself in your grasp," Neah remarked, acting nonchalant. Then his smile turned into a sneer. "As a matter of fact, I can feel your claws curling around me in a cage already."
"Were you not the one to promise to stay by my side?" the Earl retorted. He continued when Neah made no motion to reply. "The game has changed Neah. For now, let us put aside our actions of the past and form a temporary alliance. I need your help reversing your implantation of memories. "
The Fourteenth looked incredulous. "Now why would I help you do that? I would die without a host, and frankly I do not want to die a second time."
"Tell me, do you know who your host is?" Adam prompted. Neah's gaze dropped to the left arm. It was bare, the cursed Innocence exposed to his eyes.
"The body you reside in belongs to Allen Walker, the adopted son of Mana Walker. He is your nephew." Adam approached Neah, touching the Innocence with his fingertips. "He is also the adopted son of Desire, the lover of Joido, General of the Black Order, and a candidate for the Heart who is being pursued by the Apocryphos."
"This is no time to be joking," Neah spat, his gray eyes as cold as ice. "There is no way someone could be so intertwined in this war, with both sides at that."
"I am not joking. Your host is an unusually unlucky fifteen—no, sixteen year old boy. I told you all of that so you can see how important he is to the Noah Clan, and every plight he goes through makes us cherish him even more. I want to save him, Neah," said the Earl. Neah did not know how he should react.
"In order to save him, you would need to kill me," he said at last. He didn't think he could kill Mana's son if the time came. But at the same time, he still had ambitions to follow through with. He couldn't simply give up just because he held a few sentimental feelings towards someone he didn't even know. "I cannot allow you to do that, Earl."
"You wouldn't need to die. My original idea was to find you a new host to transfer your memories into. In order to do that, we need to know how you gave someone your memories in the first place," Adam explained. Neah shook his head.
"I can't help you. I really do not understand how I came to be in a host, because it was Bookman's Apprentice who helped me. You would have to find—" a loud growl interrupted Neah. The Fourteenth winced as a sudden hunger overcame him. "—Bookman's Apprentice. Who on earth gets this hungry? I feel like I have a black hole in my stomach, it feels so empty!"
Adam watched with mild amusement as Neah attempted to curl in on himself to alleviate the pangs of starvation.
"Then we search for the Apprentice," he decided. "If I find him and he can help you take a new host will you cooperate with us?"
Neah hesitated.
"Does this body really mean so much to you?" he asked softly. The Earl gave him a sharp look.
"We do not care about his body as much as we care about his soul. Like you, I will never give him up."
"You have changed, if you love this Exorcist without trying to kill him as you did with Maria," Neah said with a sigh. He reluctantly met the man's gaze. "I have no obligation to help you. However, this is Mana's precious son, so I will do this for the sake of my brother. I assume you do not know Mana's location?"
"I do not," Adam led. For now he would keep Mana's death and resurrection a secret.
"Then I will use this boy to find Mana in return for helping you," Neah promised. "I want to find him, and it seems that in order to do that, I need to follow your plan. Track down the Apprentice, find a new host, and then this Allen can lead me to Mana."
Neah shrugged. "If we both profit from this, then I will do as you ask and become your ally. For now."
"You are not worried that I may kill you or the Apprentice after I have what I want?" Adam asked curiously.
"Are you not worried I might stab you in the back?" the Fourteenth retorted. "Besides, Cross is still in this game as well."
"Actually, departed not that long ago. The Apocryphos killed him." The Earl did not wait for Neah to register the words before he continued talking. "It has been 35 years since you died. Your allies have grown old, forgotten you, or died. Even Timcampy is nowhere to be found."
Neah snorted. "Of course Tim is nowhere to be found. He was made so that he would gradually fade when I awakened. He was also a host for a few of my memories. He is somewhere in my subconscious now."
The Fourteenth did not let his enemy see how disturbed he was to her about the death of his friend, and the loss of all the people he had worked so hard to recruit. He had no choice but to depend on the Earl for now. At least it was the same for the bulbous man.
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Every Noah was on edge at dinner. Adam arrived last, pulling a weary and tired person behind him by the hand. No one trusted the Fourteenth but they believed in the Earl. He would not have let him out of the room if he was going to be a danger. The Fourteenth also looked weak and extremely ill. There was no doubt that the two injuries from Innocence were taking their toll on the Noah. He was almost certainly beginning to progress past the earliest stages of the Awakening where Allen had been stuck in. Even after all blood had been washed away, the young man still looked like hell.
"It is good to see everyone here," the Earl declared as he pushed his companion into the chair next to him. "As you can see I have brought a dissident child with me. Meet the Fourteenth Noah, Neah Walker."
Neah looked around the table at each of their new faces, dreading the expressions he might find there. No one seemed to hate him (more than they usually did) so he supposed their memories might have been damaged when he killed them. Or they could have forgiven him. It was really hard to tell with the Noah family. Neah paused as he caught sight of an eerily familiar face. He had never seen it before, but he recognized it nonetheless. After all, it looked just like his own.
"Who are you?" he asked. More like demanded.
"I am Joido, the Noah of Pleasure. I go by Tyki Mikk in this life," the Noah replied. His face seemed like a mask had been carved onto it, but Neah understood the reason at once. Adam had told him earlier that this Noah was the lover of his nephew. Honestly, why had things become this complicated? Now he would have images of this body and that Noah together, doing things only lovers would.
"Do you see a familiar face?" teased an annoying Noah's voice. Neah turned to glare at the white haired Wisely, who wore a smug smile on his face. "Curious, is it not, not he should carry such an uncanny resemblance to you?"
"Wisely," Neah murmured with narrowed eyes. "You are as annoying as ever. I think you are the only one with undamaged memories, or you would not know something like that."
Wisely said nothing; he merely continued to smile. Neah brushed away his irritation and glanced back at Tyki again. He frowned as something in his body responded to their gazes meeting. It would seem that Allen's body still reacted to its lover's familiar motions and actions. How bothersome. And awkward.
"What do we do know, Earl?" Road asked.
"Neah has agreed to work with us. He claims that it is his friend who performed the implantation, so we need to search for him," replied Adam. He turned to his Fourteenth. "Do you happen to have any leads?"
Neah pulled himself from his thoughts and cleared his throat.
"Yes. He and I were investigating a secret that not even the Earl knew about. I took one course of action which caused my death," he explained. "Bookman's Apprentice took another.
The Earl frowned. "You mean Maria's secret? Why did you concern yourself with that?"
Neah briefly wondered if the Earl had ever suspected what he was about to say.
"We learned that Maria gave birth to a baby girl. We suspected she could be connected to the Heart, so we looked for her. I interrogated Maria. He looked at the hospital records." The Fourteenth gathered his courage. "I think you know that this secret was kept because that baby was yours."
The Earl stared at him, unable to comprehend what was being said to him. It couldn't be true. No, he couldn't believe these words, they were simply too preposterous! An Exorcist and a Noah couldn't possibly have a child. The Earl could not possibly have a child after what happened so long ago. He just couldn't—
"I have a daughter…?" he murmured in disbelief. He suddenly felt regret fill him. Any child born to him would always live a horrible life, plagued by unluckiness. This girl would die in misery. And it was his fault. It wouldn't surprise him if she was dead already.
