Chapter 3
The world was spinning. At least, that's what Rosette thought when she first opened her eyes. Then she came to another realization: She was going to throw up. Immediately.
After finishing that little pleasantry, she shielded her eyes from the glare of the midday sun and looked around at her surroundings-or lack thereof. She was obviously not in Sister Kate's office, unless New York was turned into a desert in her absence. She shuddered at the thought, and tried to remember what had happened-
(A devil leaping at the stranger, him grabbing the Seal-)
But it was all a jumbled mess. Yellow and blue lights, the sensation of flying, the falling… She shook her head. It would sort itself out. In the meantime, she'd have to find out where she was and how she could get back home. And the only person she knew who could do this was-
She looked around. Her kidnapper/saviour, Edward, was lying flat on his back a little ways away, evidently just as sick as she had been. She looked away as he was reacquainted with his breakfast.
When he was done, she called to him. "So, is this your home, then?" Because if it is, she added silently, I want you to get me back to MY home!
Edward looked up, startled. "What are you doing here?" he asked in bewilderment. "You should be back at the convent!"
Rosette saw red. Before he could think of anything else to say, she crossed the distance that separated them and had him in a chokehold.
"You're damn right I should be back at the convent!" She screamed at him. "And I'd like to go back to it! So give me the Red Water, or whatever you called it, so I can go home-" Her eyes widened and she let Edward go, who flopped to the ground gasping for air. The Clock Seal. The last time she had seen the Seal, it had been around her neck. It had been wrapped tightly in Edward's metal fist as he fought the devil-
And now it wasn't there anymore.
She was stranded in the desert, alongside a man who claimed to be a student of an unorthodox branch of science, with no way home, a devil on the loose and no weapon.
It was just not her day.
"W-water…" Rosette croaked out. After frantically searching around the area where they had landed (that's they only word Rosette could think of for describing it, even though she hadn't been conscious for the actual arrival) for an hour, they had decided it would be in their best interests to look for signs of civilization before they died of heat stroke or dehydration, both of which were likely in the unrelenting desert sun. Deciding that North was the most likely direction in which there might be an encampment, or at least a water supply in this hellish place, that was the direction they had set off in.
That had been hours ago.
Now they were overheated, tired, hungry, and most of all, thirsty. Rosette would have gladly taken a vow of silence if it meant she got a glass of cool water. She was silently cursing the heavy boots she was wearing, and Edward had taken off his red coat and tied it into a sort of turban to keep the sweat from running into his eyes.
"Don't talk about water," Edward said snappishly from the top of a sand dune up ahead of her. "It'll only make you thirstier."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Rosette replied sarcastically from on the rising slope. It was too hot to work up a proper lather, a fact Edward should have thanked his lucky stars for. "Y'know, if you had told us that you lived in Nevada-"
Edward cursed in German. "This isn't Nevada!" he yelled, turning to meet her gaze. "The Red Water was designed to send me through an inter-dimensional portal-"
"A what?"
Edward tried to explain. "An interdimensional portal- you know, a nexus?" Rosette looked at him blankly. He sighed.
"The theory goes that there are millions of Earths that exist in the same time and space, but in different dimensions. My home is one of those dimensions, which exist in- parallel, is it? Things existing side by side?- with yours, and there are ways of going from one to another, like going from room to room in a house. That was what I was trying to accomplish." He looked at her almost pityingly. "What I'm trying to say is; that we are not in your world any longer.
Suddenly, Rosette felt as cold as if she had spent the night in the icebox, a feeling the overbearing sun didn't even touch. If they had been in Nevada, fine. It was only a couple days' train ride away from New York, and she would have been safe for the interim. Even if it had been in some far-off place like Africa or Turkey, she could have arranged a plane ride back to the Order, albeit with a little difficulty. But not even on Earth? That was impossible!
Wasn't it?
Rosette didn't know. What she did know was this: she was going to kill the man who had brought her here, take his arm, and try to find the Clock Seal so she could go home. She didn't care if she went to Hell for it; she was already here, and as long as she got to find Joshua and kill Aion before she returned, she could care less about coming back.
With a savage snarl, she leaped at a startled Edward, tackling him and send them both rolling down the other side of the sand dune, kicking, biting, clawing and grabbing at the other on the way down.
Rosette was just about to gouge out his eyeball when they landed at the bottom of the sand dune with a thud, jarring both of them. Gasping and panting they struggled to their feet, the side of Rosette's mouth bleeding where her canines had scraped the inside of her cheek and there was a cut above Edward's left eye. He was holding his side from where she had tackled him, and he did not look in very good shape. The two combatants circled each other, trying to keep the distance between them the same while gauging the other's strength and abilities. Edward went first, moving with a sudden, jerky grace that bespoke of a man who has grown quite a lot in a short amount of time yet was extremely agile when he was smaller. He went in for a punch to Rosette's solar plexus, which was blocked by the nun's forearm. Unfortunately, metal is stronger than bone, as Rosette found out when she heard a sickening crack as the bones snapped like toothpicks.
Screaming from the white-hot pain lancing up her arm, she pulled back her good arm and was about to drive it into his nose when something met the back of her skull and the world went suddenly black.
For the second time that day, Rosette woke up to a crushing headache. However, as events rushed back into her frazzled mind, she sat up like a shot, and was rewarded with her head feeling like it had met with a freight train.
After recovering slightly from her stupidity, she saw that she was in a bed in a darkened room, probably to lessen the effects of the headache. As she began to check for any injuries, she felt tenser bandages wrapped around her forehead and her left arm in a sling. Feeling confident she could stand on her own two feet, she moved the covers to free her feet.
Just then she felt something frighteningly like a gun barrel at her temple. She heard a voice:
"Move and it'll kill you."
There was a flash of light, and all three- the devil, the nun and the crackpot scientist- were gone.
"ROSETTE!" Chrno screamed and with his arms outstretched, launched himself at the space that she had occupied a scant second before, closing his embrace on air and crashing to the ground, where he began to frantically claw at the floor as if thinking the devil had taken them to Hell.
It took the remaining figures in the office a moment to react. But when they had gathered their wits, the lull was but a memory.
"Elder!" Sister Kate cried, coming around her desk to the aid of the battered weapons maker. He had landed on his head, not an injury to be taken lightly for a man of his vintage. Sister Kate looked around frantically, eyes finally coming to rest on Father Remington. "Father!" she called. Remington's face, still lit with the shock and horror from the disappearing trio, turned slowly towards her. He stared at her with a blank look in his eyes, as though not comprehending what was going on. "Father Remington!" Sister Kate shouted, louder now. He could have shell shock on his own time. Right now, they had emergencies on their hands. Remington snapped out of his funk. "Father, get the medic sisters here now! The Elder needs professional attention!"
Remington, glad to have something to do flew off in the direction of the infirmary. Chrno, no longer scratching at the ground, was sobbing quietly where Rosette had last been before the flash.
Sister Kate's heart went out to him. It didn't take a genius to see that there was a bond between the Sinner Chrno and Sister Rosette Christopher, something that went far deeper than being allies in a cause or even being close friends. It was something Sister Kate now wished she had been able to experience before she joined the Church, young and impetuous as she had been. She realized she was not concentrating on the task at hand and mentally scolded herself for putting her mind on personal matters when there was a situation, but was interrupted by three nun-nurses and a stretcher that rushed into the room to help the Elder.
Sister Kate had just helped getting him onto the stretcher when from behind her came the most horrible sound she had ever heard in her life. She and everyone else in the room whirled around, but they were unprepared for what greeted their eyes.
Still sitting on the ground, with his legs askew, was Chrno, face raised to the sky, wailing. But it was unlike any sound she could compare it to- high-pitched and screechy, yet around the screech was a lower, softer tone. Tears flowed freely down the small devil's cheeks.
Sister Kate was flabbergasted, but she knew that if he did not stop that racket soon, her head would explode. So she did something that shocked no one more than herself; she kneeled beside Chrno and hugged him close to her, allowing him to vent his grief while muffling the noise. She put one hand on the back of his head and the other one at the top of his spine, feeling the shudders of his body as he wept.
Remington stood back and smiled. Then he turned around and motioned for the sisters to get the old man to the infirmary, where he would get looked after. Following the girls outside of the office, he turned around for one last glance over his shoulder at the unlikely scene; the age-old devil, part of the Revolution of Pandemonium, crying into the robes of a young Mother Superior, part of a religious order sworn to exterminate all devils on Earth and send them back to the fiery pits from whence they came.
Remington smiled and shut the doors behind him.
