Chapter 6

The next morning, everyone was up bright and early and Rosette was finding the limitations of living on a desert planet- particularly that of no water to spare to shower or do laundry in the morning.

Grumbling and cursing under her breath, she made her way into the mess hall, getting lost and having to turn back twice, all the while feeling extremely grungy in her dirty, sweat-and-blood-stained nuns' robes and lack of body hygiene. While she often returned in a similar state after her sortie missions (in fact, she was usually covered in soot and grime to boot), there was always the promise of a nice, hot bath once she got back to the convent. Now there was no such reward to buoy her mood. When she finally got through the door she was in an extremely foul mood.

She noticed Edward munching down on some pancakes while (trying to) ask Knives who sat across from him- something about the inertia of an object if it's propelled through space at the speed of light. Knives was answering in as few syllables as possible. Vash was over by the stove, wearing a large, poofy chef's hat with an apron that said "KISS THE COOK" in large letters, making more pancakes. He was the first one who noticed Rosette.

"Ah, good, you're up." He said over his shoulder. "Hungry?" he asked, as he expertly flipped the breakfast confection in the air… and got it stuck on the ceiling. It seemed he did that a lot, judging by the amount of batter up there.

Rosette nodded, still in a foul mood and went and sat beside Knives. Even though she had decided last night that her coming here wasn't his fault (might have, in fact, saved her life), she was feeling so rotten this morning that she wanted nothing to do with the Full Metal Alchemist. Edward didn't take the slight to heart though- he was just glad she didn't want to punch him out for breaking her arm and continued eating.

Vash, however, noticed it when he brought the pancakes to her and sat down opposite to her, beside Edward. He also noticed something else. "Sister, why are you still in those filthy rags?" he asked her. What happened next, no one suspected.

Rosette, quite calmly, it seemed, reached with her good hand and grabbed his shirt by its collar, pulling him across the table until they were eye to eye.

"First of all," she said slowly, every word shaking with the repressed rage of the past twenty-four hours, "My name is Rosette, not 'Sister'. Secondly, these rags are the uniform of the Mary Magdelene Order, and I worked hard in order to be able to wear them. And lastly, they're filthy because there isn't enough water in this God-forsaken place to wash them!" Finished with her outburst, she released her captive and tucked into her pancakes.

Vash sat back down, not perturbed at all. Sometimes his denseness wasn't an act at all- sometimes he really was as clueless as people thought he was. This was one of those times.

"Oh, well then, you can use my old suit," he told her with a smile. "Then we can go into town to get yourself something to wear that suits you, and maybe even find that Clock thing you guys lost."

Rosette stared at him. The man was either a moron or a genius- or both. Judging by the vacant look on his face, she decided the genius had taken a lunch break and the moron had set up shop in his absence. But it was a good idea, all the same- even if the suit didn't fit her (which she thought was likely given the different, er, measurements between them) she could wear a blanket or something till they got to town and she could get something else. Besides, she had always liked shopping, and being able to shop for herself was a small glimmer of light in what looked to be a very long, dark tunnel.

"Well, here it is," Vash said, leading her through the maze of hallways, stopping in front of a large wooden door, with the silhouette of two rather large pistols crossed at the muzzle on it. Pushing it open, he led her into a room much like the one she was staying in- the only difference being a large mahogany desk with a small kerosene lamp and a notebook-sized leather-bound book. While Vash rummaged through his closet (which was an unapologetic mess; evidently Knives was the clean freak of the two), she found herself drawn to the desk, and more specifically, the book. She ran her hand along the edge of the handsome, darkly tanned cover when she heard him exclaim, "here it is!" She turned around and felt her jaw drop.

"It's a survival suit- a 'one-piece, form-fitting guarantee of your continued existence'." Vash explained proudly. "Or at least, that's what it says on the tag."

Whatever Rosette had been expecting, it sure hadn't been this. It was coal black, with hoses and tubes connecting from various parts of the suit to a central- the only word she could think of to describe it was "port hole"; a large circular plate of glass- in the middle of the chest. Rather than make the suit look ridiculously cumbersome, the tubes added to the suits utilitarian charm. There was only one problem. "Uh, Vash? I can't wear this."

The gunslinger looked at her incredulously. "Of course you can. It's a gift- I insist you take it. Besides, I don't wear it anymore, so it might as well go to someone who can put it to good use." He held out the suit expectantly.

Realizing he had mistaken her meaning, Rosette blushed. "No, no, that's not what I meant. I mean I can't wear this." To emphasize her point, she took the suit and held it against her chest to show the fit. Where it fit perfectly for the tall Plant, it would be at least a foot too big for the shorter nun.

Vash grinned. "Not to worry," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "Put it on, and you'll see." Reluctantly, she took the garment.

After making him promise to wait outside in the hall, and threatening him with another one of her five-finger-sandwich specials if he so much as thought of peeping in on her, Rosette proceeded to take off her worn and bloodied robes, hesitating at her wimple. She decided to leave it in- after four years with it on, she'd have felt strange without the slight weight on her head and felt the material on the back of her neck. Besides, it hadn't gotten very dirty at all. Sighing, she pulled on the survival suit. As expected, she looked like a child playing dress-up- the arms were too long, the legs were double the length of hers and the neckline was so low she felt almost naked.

She yelled out to Vash. "Like I said, it's way too big!" She felt extremely stupid. Hadn't she known from the get-go it was going to be like trying on a giraffe skin?

"D'you see that yellow button on the left side of the belt?" He called back. "Push it." Deciding to play the charade a bit longer, she located the daffodil-coloured button and pressed it. Instantly, the suit reacted.

Making a "slurp!" sound, the legs, arms and neck suddenly scrunched in on themselves, becoming half their original length. Her fingers found their right places in the gloved ends of the sleeves just as it settled into its new shape. Rosette was astounded. It was certainly form fitting, but not indecently tight, and she retained the mobility of all of her limbs. Indeed, she felt as though she were wearing a second, protective black skin. And the material wasn't all that had adjusted to her smaller frame. The "port hole" in the middle of her chest had been the size of a dinner plate when she had first noticed it. Now, as she watched in frank amazement, it and the hoses and tubing connected to it also shrank, becoming a fraction of their former sizes. The tubes retained their length but had drastically decreased in diameter, making it possible to be able to hide them under clothes when she got half the chance.

She a knock at the bedroom-slash-change room door and Vash entered with a knowing grin on his face. "See? What did I tell you- it fits like a glove!" He seemed very pleased with himself.

"How… what…" Rosette was still so shocked by the suit's performance she couldn't string two words together.

Vash chuckled. "What, you think a society that can build cryogenic 'sleep pods' and travel vast distances in deep space would need tailors? The suit can retain as much as a gallon of water that would otherwise be wasted as sweat or evaporate from the skin and recycle it to re-hydrate your body, and the material is a special 'healing' matrix- if it gets caught or ripped, it will regenerate the lost tissue." His grin widened. "And that's not all she does." In a loud tone he ordered- "Wake up, EVE!"

As if answering Vash's call, the suit started to hum with energy as lights began blinking on and off in random, yellow and blue

(yellow and blue lights oh god where are we yellow and blue and yellow and blue we're not in new york no more nope nope nope YELLOW AND BLUE LIGHTS)

patterns.

Rosette stood there, shocked as another piece of the fragmented memories of their trip here began to fall into place. Something about the yellow and blue lights- somehow, they were integral to how she and the alchemist got here. Rosette shook her head to clear her thoughts.

"Hello, Vash- long time, no see," she heard… coming from the vicinity of her chest. She looked down and let out a shriek. Somehow the devil must have entered the suit while she was putting it on- because staring out of the porthole in the suit was a face.

It was a woman's face, with long, jet-black hair, slanting, almond-shaped eyes and long eyelashes, which were closed. When the face opened her eyes, Rosette saw that they were the most beautiful shade of green. Rosette's mind only registered one thought- that she was wearing a suit possessed by what looked to be a succubus-class devil- and judging by the way the suit clung to her now, humming with the energy of the thing inside the glass, it would be next to impossible to get the damned thing off before it consumed her.

"Calm down, calm down!" Vash exclaimed, grabbing her hands and forcing her to look at him. "This is EVE, the suit's personality. Her name is an acronym for Environment Vital-Exosuit." He looked at the woman. "EVE, would you mind 'gramming out here so I can introduce you two properly?"

The devil- personality- whatever- in the suit sighed and a second later two thin beams of light shot out of the chest of the suit, one coming from the top of the circle and one from the bottom, until they formed a sort of open-ended triangle pointing to Rosette's chest. They proceeded to draw, layer by horizontal layer the head of the woman in the porthole, and a body to go along with it. She was dressed in a cocktail dress holding a martini, with her dark hair in an elaborate bun. If Rosette hadn't been freaked out so totally over the appearance of this "ghost", she would have gagged at the woman's style of choice as being too pretentious. "What the hell?" she asked. She went unnoticed by the other two, as the newcomer evidently had eyes only for Vash.

Very angry eyes, from which Vash was slowly backing away from.

"You don't call, you don't write, hell, you don't boot me up to shoot the shit once in a while. What am I, scrambled data to you, Vash?" She asked him, knocking back the virtual martini in one gulp. She tossed the empty glass behind her back, which disappeared in mid-air. "Five years, Vash- Five years I spent in hibernation, waiting for you to call me up again! And for what? I come back online and instead of finding the suit on you where it should be, it's on Little Miss Chestless over here! What is she- a girlfriend or a whore?" She eyed Rosette with nothing short of hatred.

At being called a whore, the colour flooded into Rosette's cheeks and she went into full battle mode. Had Chrno been there to witness it, he would have said a prayer for the other woman. "I am not a whore, lady, nor am I his girlfriend! My name is Sister Rosette Christopher, a nun and Devil Exorcist First Class, and you can address me by that, whoever you are!" she shouted back.

EVE was taken aback the younger girl's ferocity, if not rank and title. 'If this little tramp is Vash's new girlfriend, then I have some serious competition.' The program's internal processors thought. 'However, she says she's a nun, and last I checked my data, nuns remained celibate. Besides, if she is his girlfriend, why would he wake me up when she put the suit on?' The Personality & Protocol Program (P3) of EVE-Suit 19603-B was confused.

EVE decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. "All right, I guess you're not his lover, which is good news for you. However," she said, ice in her digitized-soprano voice, "there remains the fact that you're wearing me and Vash isn't. So I suggest you push the yellow button and step out of the suit, or I'll override the locking mechanism that holds the atoms of the suit together and it'll slough off you like water off a duck." Sometimes she really enjoyed her built-in euphemism dictionary.

"Now Evie-" Vash began, using his nickname for her to see if it got him leverage. Judging by the glare she sent him, not only did it not gain him any but it lost him a lot of ground with her.

"Don't 'Now Evie' me, Vash. I'll deal with you in a minute" she snapped at him, "once I finish with Miss High-and-Mighty here." She turned her attention back to Rosette, who had not budged to remove the suit.

"Listen Sister, take that suit off now or so help me I'll-"

"Evie, calm down!" Vash interrupted her. "Her regular clothing is too bloodstained and dirty to be able to go to town in. The suit was the only thing that would fit her, so she'll just be wearing it for a little while, and then she'll get a change of clothes in town and remove the suit. Is that all right?" He was studying her holographic face intently, eyes pleading.

EVE finally relented. "Oh, all right. Besides, it'll be good to stretch out my systems after such a long nap." She turned towards Rosette, who stiffened. "But the moment you get your dress Sister, is the moment I come off, so I suggest you find something and get to the changerooms quick." Rosette nodded. Even if she weren't a devil, the nun would be glad to get rid of the overbearing woman.

"Evie, she can't go to town in a survival suit. Could you 'gram a dress over the suit, at least till she buys a real one?" Vash asked her.

EVE for once did not complain but did as she was asked. She walked towards Rosette and embraced her like a sister, and as she did so, her body turned into a lovely robin's egg-blue simple dress with a white and blue polka-dotted smock on the front.

Rosette gasped from watching the smooth transition of the woman to a dress. "W-what the hell?" she asked again in a slightly agitated voice. She was starting again to wonder if the suit was possessed.

Vash hurriedly explained. "What you saw was called a 'hologram'- a three-dimensional image made of light particles. Since it's just a projected image, the 'gram can change into almost anything. In this case, a dress."

"Yeah, but don't get used to it," she heard EVE say. "You're only wearing me for a while." That was perfectly fine with Rosette- she didn't care if the suit allowed her to fly to the moon, as long as she had to deal with this much attitude she'd take a plain, old, everyday dress over it every time.

"Well then, shall we?" Vash asked, opening the door and bowing like a valet, allowing the ladies to pass through before exiting the room himself and closing the door behind him.

His head hurt.

As Chrno slowly regained consciousness, a throbbing in his temple increased as his awareness did. When he was fully awake it felt so bad he thought he'd died. Then he remembered. 'Oh, yeah. I did.'

Chrno sat up looked around. He was lying on the ground in some place where there was only a vast, yellow-tinged expanse as far as the eye could see, and, Chrno was willing to bet, farther, in all directions save one: Right in front of him stood a huge door.

It was flanked by two columns and was topped by a triangle, lying on its side and looking for all the world like the entranceway the Lincoln Memorial that Chrno had seen pictures of. The difference was that between the two columns were two huge, rectangular slabs of stone standing on their ends, side by side as doors. On each was half of an upraised Eye, lidless with concentric circles rippling out from the center into ever-widening circles until they met the rim of the Eye. No doubt about it- he was at the Gate.

He dredged up the memory of the first time he had crossed the Gate of Knowledge, from the other side; he doubted the process would be too different from this one.

"First," Aion had explained, looking at each of the five devils standing in front of him, "you must clear your minds of all thoughts, except your destination. Next, you must picture yourself there. And lastly, you must give something in exchange to be allowed to traverse the Gate. Genai. Viede. If you would bring our guest."

The hulking devil, Viede, brought forth a bound and gagged old devil who was trying his best to escape the younger's grasp. Genai whacked him upside the head, eliciting a whimper from the aged devil. "Shut up, or it'll be a lot worse, old man." Genai growled. His left hand, a giant pair of shears, found themselves on either side of his victim's throat. With one muscle twitch, the old devil's head would part way from his shoulders.

Aion watched, not quite impassively, a smirk working on his face. Rizelle, the spider she-devil who fancied herself his mate, snuggled up close to him, gazing raptly at his face. The antromorphic cat-devil, Shaena, giggled. Chrno turned away; he was not sure whether it was the torturing of the old man or the shameless display of unrequited affection that made him feel nauseous.

Suddenly, with a shinkt sound, the captive's plaintive moans ceased. Chrno's nostrils flared at the unmistakable smell of the old devil's life force escaping into the air. It smelt a lot like ozone, the kind of air you got when you climbed a high mountain. And then, suddenly, it was there.

There was no ominous mist or bang or any theatrics; the Gate merely appeared, drawn to the old man's spilled essence like a shark to blood in the water. Slowly, the doors swung inwards with a creak and groan, into a blackness marred by a thousand staring purple eyes.

Aion shook Rizelle off of him and stepped towards the gate, arms outstretched as if greeting an old friend, a genial smile lit upon his face. "Creatures of the Gate!" He called, "We wish for passage to the Human world. You have smelled your payment," At this, Viede tossed the decapitated corpse inside the gate, where it was instantly snatched up by a thousand black hands, "and now, fulfill your side of the bargain!"

The black hands reached out towards Aion, who was laughing all the while, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs and began to pull him in. Rizelle looked about to leap in to try to save him but was restrained by a silent Viede, who shook his head. More tentacle-like arms, with grasping hands of the ends of them came through the Gate, taking Viede, Genai, Rizelle, Shaena, and finally, Chrno.

As he was drawn into the blackness, Chrno realized that it wasn't a sea of black, but rather a long, shining yellow tunnel with a white light at the end of it. And something else too- something he'd heard rumours about, the reason why he joined Aion: Warmth. Contrary to the Christian doctrine, the place where devils called home was neither hot nor filled with fire and brimstone. Rather, it was a cold and desolate land, where nothing grew or changed. Chrno knew that any place that had such a wonderful sensation would have to be Heaven- no other world could be so well off. For the first time in his existence, he was warm.

Chrno smiled at the memory of his naiveté. That was before he met Mary Magdalene, and long before a young Rosette and her brother Joshua barged in on his self-imposed exile.

Rosette. The name was like a bucket of cold water to the devil's face. He knew he had to get moving if he was going to be of any use to her. He stood up and walked towards the Gate. It stood silent, impassive. Chrno knew he was only going to get its attention by offering up a sacrifice of Astral energy.

His mind screamed at him not to do it, not to through away his only weapon and power source, something that would enable him to fully utilize his demonic powers once more. He pulled off his Horns and looked at them longingly not for what they were but what they represented, still pulsing with the energies from the Spirit bullets the Elder had put into them.

Then he threw them right at the Gate.

The effect was instantaneous. While they were still flying through the air, the Gate opened and the tentacle-arms flew out to grab them, greedily siphoning the energy from the Horns even as they were being pulled in. Screwing up his courage, Chrno shouted out before the Gate could close, "Take me to her!" he cried, lifting his arms so they could be grasped to drag him, once more, through the Gate.

The arms that were not busy with the Horns came barreling down him, clutching his arms and legs. They pulled him inside the Gate, which closed with a bang.

Chrno could tell that something was wrong this time around. Instead of merely clutching his arms, and legs as they had before, it seemed that wherever they touched him was fading away. He began to frantically beat at them and struggle, until he managed to loosen their grasp on him and he dropped in freefall. The arms were almost upon him-

Chrno awoke to the smell of smoke and dust. Every muscle in his body felt like it had been stamped on by Rosette in her steel-toed boots, his head felt like it had cracked in two, and places he didn't even know he had were hurting. But all that amounted to one thing: he was alive and whole.

He slowly sat up. He was weak- very weak. Chrno hadn't realized just how much energy it took to get across the Gate. And now, without the Horns…

He struggled to his feet trying to gain his bearings, before he stumbled and collapsed, exhausted from that small effort. If he didn't find an Astral energy source soon… He shuddered to think of it. He used this time between attempts at rising to take in his surroundings. He seemed to be on the top of a small hill, overlooking a canyon. Down in the canyon he could see men working, pulling little round stones out every now and again from the walls. He was just about to shout for help from these miners when he saw something sparkle on a rocky outcropping down below him. Curious, he decided to investigate.

He managed not to slip and fall on his face as he climbed down. He reached the ledge above where he saw the reflection and was just about to peek over when he was roughly flipped over onto his back and the blade of a rather sharp-looking sword put an inch from his face. The wielder of the blade looked down on him with eyes the colour of dried blood, a maroon so dark they appeared to be brown, glaring at him under jet black bangs. The blade quivered when the boy spoke.

"Say your prayers, spy of Zaibach."

Authour's Note: The Gate is actually from Fullmetal Alchemist, NOT Chrno Crusade.