Author's Note: Special thanks to Thatguyuare for help with this chapter, also The Heart song I put in the last chapter- I grabbed the lyrics off the net so I'm not completely sure if it is right, alas- there are two versions of the song. The first is when Road sings it to the general, but it is different when the General sings it back. The version I had is the second one, still not sure if it is correct, but it is definitely not the same as the first.

As always, thanks to everyone who reads/ reviews ^^. I am probably going to end this story soon, but opinion may change, so please, review and tell me what you think.

Chapter 35

The Noah mansion had been quiet lately, almost everyone had been out, collecting innocence, murdering exorcists, the usual. Road and Allen were the only two who seemed to have absolutely nothing to do, they would spend the majority of their time playing games with each other. The Earl, on the other hand, had plenty of work to do, and quickly got quite frustrated with the pair, even if they were his family. The Black Order was steadily amassing more and more innocence, and if they weren't careful, they would find more exorcists and become a slight annoyance. As such, the Earl sent them off onto a mission to find some innocence, more to occupy them than anything else. Road and Allen didn't like being forced out of the house, but at least they were allowed to go on a mission together. Apparently, they were going to a quaint country village in China where the town's main water source, a river flowing down from a large lake with a spring in it, had dried up. This was for no apparently reason, and now the townspeople were feuding, trying to decide what to do and how to evenly distribute the remaining water.

Allen and Road stepped out of a heart-shaped gate that seemed to rise from nowhere, the black and red doors thrown open. Road hadn't been taking the loss of her Noah too well, she still hadn't forgiven Allen completely, and as such was making him do most of the work. Then again, she was as powerless as a normal sub-human, and this angered her greatly. It was difficult for her, she couldn't kill a human with any Noah powers, she had to use conventional methods; knives, stones and the like.

Allen and Road found themselves on a small hill overlooking a small village somewhere in rural China. The place was beautiful, and Allen suspected that if he hadn't been taken in by the Earl, he would have loved to live here. Allen sealed up his Noah form with great reluctance as Road blew a raspberry at him. At this Allen hummed a few notes, making him speed around her, taunting her, which only made her pout more. Not wanting to piss her off even more, Allen expanded the range of his powers, so that Road also moved with incredible speed.

Within seconds, they were both inside the town, which had classic Chinese architecture and many houses, but something seemed wrong with the town. Not only were there no plants, trees or any other kind on wildlife, but the town seemed deserted. Allen knew differently, one look through his human eye and he could see roughly seventy souls residing in various buildings. They made their way to the town square, in which was an elaborate marble statue that was obviously supposed to be an amazing fountain, but it had dried up. So, it seemed, had all of the other various water features and canals in the village. Next to the town square there was a very large house, the largest in the whole town, that looked to be of some importance. Allen and road walked up to the high walls, pushed open the reed screen door and yelled, "Hello? Is anybody there?"

Silence, no one seemed to be answering, even though Allen could clearly see that there were two souls inside the house.

"We've come to help you with the strange occurrences in this town!" yelled Road.

At this, the one of the souls started making its way slowly over to the door, and Allen glanced upwards to ensure that his hair was no longer stark white, and now chestnut brown. Good, it had changed color. The door shifted slightly, revealing a frail old man who looked like he'd eaten one too many lemons. He was of short stature, with virtually no hair, just a small ring of it around the crown of his head. He carried a bent walking stick, and walked painfully slowly. Allen had to suppress the urge to laugh, he hadn't seen someone with so little fashion sense since they tried to take Kanda to a boutique back at the Order. The man didn't say a word, he only beckoned them inside with a single finger. They all walked through the lavish house, Allen could tell that they were most definitely not short of money. The soon entered the living room, where a girl who looked to be Road's age, 12 or 13, was seated. She looked like she had just lost something, or someone, dear to her. Road, Allen and the old man all seated themselves at the round table.

"So, you've come to help us, eh? Why would you want to do that, who sent you?"

"Sir, we've heard that some strange phenomena have been occurring in this town, and we have come to see if there's anything we can do to help. See, while we aren't with the Black Order, we still possess innocence, and this seems like the work of it." A confused look spread across the man's face, so Allen continued. "Innocence is a rare, special material that sometime 'binds' with a user, creating someone who can destroy Akuma, demons created by the Millennium Earl. It is also known to cause strange things to happen wherever it is." It pained Allen to sully the Earl's name, but it was for the sake of the mission.

Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, Road explained further, "We have heard that your water source has dried up, did anyone do anything odd a few weeks or months before this started occuring?"

"Well… My orphaned grandchild, Mei Ling", said the old man, gesturing to the young girl sitting next to him, "She had an amazing power to see into the future, she would use a crystal ball to predict the future. Every time she did this, it came true. It made our town prosper, and allowed us to build this wonderful home and expand. But then, one day, Mei Ling saw a horrible vision of a young boy, no older than 16, being tortured at the hands of a girl with spiky blue hair. The boy was screaming for help, covered in blood. She decided that no more good could come of her fortune telling, and so she threw the crystal orb into the lake where our water comes from, and not seven days later, the water starts drying up. It seems to be getting sucked into the bottom of the lake, we have never seen anything like it."

Allen frowned at Road, concerned about the vision the girl had.

"Well then, do you mind if we go up to the top and see if we can do anything about this? You never know, it might be a simple matter of swimming down to the bottom of the lake and retrieving it."

"Go right ahead, if you can fix our water supply, you'll be heroes in this town", the old man said skeptically."

At that, Allen and Road rose, departing the house and making their way up the mountainside, following the riverbed to where the lake was. As they round the steep him, neither of them even the slightest out of breath, they came upon a vista that would have been beautiful… If the lake had even a little water in it. As it was, there was barely four meters of water in it, out of a possible twenty or thirty.

"If they're running out of water so badly, why the hell wouldn't they just swim down to the bottom and retrieve it?" Enquired Road.

"They're probably superstitious that a monster will devour them or something." Allen Replied.

The view was quite incredible, there were large mountains in the backdrop, all covered in snow, and large forests a few hundred meters away. Where the lake should have been, there was just a large pit in the ground. So, without further adieu, Allen stripped down to his boxers, much to Road's liking, and made his way down the muddy embankment to dive into the water. With hardly a splash, Allen entered the freezing water as if it were lukewarm. Cold didn't seem to affect him anymore, for some reason. He dived down, humming a simple tune in his head. This was his first time to experiment with his Noah power like this, and to his surprise, it worked! Allen could 'slow down' the time around him, and not only that, but it also allowed him to hold his breath for an incredible amount of time. Allen swam down to the bottom the lake, the bed was cloudy with mud, rocks and sticks, but shining through the grime, Allen could see a glimmering orb. He felt a familiar hatred within him, emanating from Neah, and he instantly knew that it was innocence. With quick, powerful strokes, he made his way over to where the orb was resting in the brown silt. Putting his left hand out so as not to cause Neah much more pain, he grasped the glowing crystal ball and returned to the surface. He brought his head up to above the water level, and he found that he wasn't actually out of breath, even though he had actually been down there for 10 minutes of 'Allen's time'. Road looked shocked when she saw the innocence in his hand,

"How did you get that so quickly, you've only been down there for a few seconds!"

"Wow, really? I didn't expect that, I had no idea that my Noah power was so strong."

Holding the elaborate glowing crystal sphere in his left hand, he drew on his strength and clenched his fist. With a loud, resounding crash, the orb shattered, bursting into a million shards of glass. They retained the shape of an orb for half a second, before rushing past Allen's hand like a light shower of rain, falling to the ground in a circular shape, resulting in a glistening circle of glass. As Allen felt the familiar sensation of innocence being absorbed, he noticed something odd happening on the ground where the glass shards lay. They seemed to be… dripping?

Road noticed this too, looking at it as if it were a freak at a circus. Within seconds, the trickle transformed into a small stream, and then it turned into a huge cascade of water. The water was spreading around them, quickly, and it seemed to be coming from the crystal shards. Maybe because the innocence-permeated glass had 'absorbed' some of the innocence, it began to 'absorb' the water around it, which, in turn, made the glass ball like a drain at the bottom of the lake.

Acting quickly, Allen hummed a few notes in his head, expanding its field so that Road felt the effects too. They both moved fast, sweeping every last one of the glass shards back into the lakebed. Allen 'unblocked' the time around them, allowing the water to move quickly again. Before long, the lake was near full, and the flow of water from the shards seemed to have lessened. With that, Allen and Road set off to where they had left the gate, they did not want the villagers to see them summoning it. As they were walking along the plateau in which the lake was, Allen could hear the villagers rejoicing about the sudden flow of water through the canals. As they were about to descend the plateau, a gate that was shaped like the silhouette of a frightened cat shot up in front of them. The doors instantly shot open, revealing Lulubell, who had a very urgent look on her face. She was in her human form, instead of her cat one, which was a rare enough occurrence for Allen to know that she was serious.

"The Earl has sent me to tell you that he's heard from some level twos that there's a band of four exorcists headed your way!"

"Ooh, good, how should we deal with them?" Road enquired.

"Hmm… Well, the Earl told me to protect you by any means necessary, so I am here to assist you. And Allen, they can't find out about you, they think you've been kidnapped…"

Allen had an idea, "What about… What about if you took on my form, bloodied and bruised, and Road stands over me, pretending to torture me?"

All the others nodded in agreement, and so they prepared. Lulubell transformed into a very battered Allen, Road stood in the middle of the road as Lulu lay down on the ground, allowing a pool of crimson to seep out from under her. Allen found a place in a nearby tree, a suitable vantage point. He leapt up to one of the highest branches and settled in to watch the show.

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