And just when I was considering blackmailing you all into reviewing with a cliffhanger, serendipity strikes in the form of waterlit and lostinmusation, who have given me a deluge of feedback alongside such regulars as karina001 and Hn, so thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank yourselves, because this way you're getting more writing more quickly.

To answer a couple of questions before moving on: Kanda and Daisya are either 10 and 11 or 11 and 12 in this part of the fic. The wiki's a bit vague, so I thought that Kanda and Daisya were the same age when I wrote it, but it appears the general consensus is that Daisya is a year older than Kanda. I haven't been able to find out when Kanda got out of the testing facility and got apprenticed to Tiedoll, so that affects things a bit. Also, it depends on whether Kanda was apprenticed to Tiedoll during the testing, or otherwise. It's most likely that they're 11 and 12, but when I wrote it they were both 11. Marie would be 21, and because I failed to check the wiki before mentioning bits, Lenalee went through her confinement when she was 7, and not 9. Hopefully that clears that bit up.

Edit, in light of Magician's info: Screw the dgm timeline, I'm making up my own. This one is nearly identical to the original, except for the following: everything is two years earlier. Kanda returned to the Black Order just before Tiedoll picked up Daisya, age 11. Daisya stayed with Tiedoll for basically a year (this takes place about a year after Tiedoll found him) and Lenalee got released before Daisya came to the Order. From then on things happen at the proper time (Lavi will come to the order when Kanda's 16, etc.). Probably.

And about what Tiedoll does between apprentices, I believe it would probably be tantamount to exterminating akuma and driving off Noahs. Lower-level exorcists can take care of small numbers of akuma and fetch Innocence fairly easily, but I think that the Generals would be used for the most difficult tasks, such as infiltrating Noah territory, fighting Noahs, and taking out villages of akuma and more. Considering the sheer amount of akuma in existence, that would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. So, while Tiedoll looks like a harmless old man, he would be a person of mass destruction as his day job.

Anyhow, I'm sorry to say that the writing will be a bit lower in quality from now on, though it should remain correctly spelled. Also, the reason I use 'akuma' instead of 'demon' is because I just have a really hard time thinking of 'demon' and envisioning a big metal shell with guns, so using 'akuma' allows me to keep only one set of connotations in mind. But that's fairly irrelevant, for now...

The final part of the chapter can be read any way you please, but I wrote it as different pieces coming together to make a picture that you wouldn't expect, but that's still there. Like a math equation. You wouldn't expect 1 - -1 to be 2, but that doesn't change what it is. Either way, please read, enjoy, and review, hopefully in that order.

Another train ride. Great. They were getting really boring.

Daisya took a breath.

"H–"

"No."

Kanda anticipated his suggestion. Where Daisya was staring out the window, Kanda was sitting opposite him, and as close to the door as possible. He hadn't moved a muscle.

He didn't even look annoyed. Just bitterly angry.

"We should probably sleep today," Marie said quietly, shooting a look at Kanda, "Last night was long. We shouldn't waste any more time."

Daisya kept his mouth shut. Marie was right. But he wasn't the one kicking up a fuss over nothing — Kanda shouldn't even have been affected by the fire. He was an exorcist. They dealt with worse stuff all the time.

He was fine, even when he was the one who got all burnt up. Kanda should have been good in about ten seconds. Even if he'd sprained his ankle, or something, it wouldn't be too hard to grab some medicine and a pair of crutches and get moving. He hadn't even done that. Daisya was watching him, and he didn't move like he was hurt, or anything. He was fine. Should have been fine.

But there was something that had happened — maybe he had to jump some other time, or maybe someone made him jump.

Daisya had a feeling that "Alma" had something to do with it. Anyone important enough for Kanda to actually remember them had to be something. Though, to know who Alma must have been would mean to know Kanda — a thing whose impossibility had drawn Daisya to him in the first place.

So…

Who's Kanda?

Or, and this was important, who was Kanda?

Daisya could remember a lot of things, if he wanted to. But he never wanted to, so why bother?

Kanda was around his age. So, within a year or two of twelve.

Kanda didn't mention any family — then again, neither did he, and neither had most of the others he'd overheard. The eight-year-old was the only one who talked about it, and even then it was just her brother.

So, if he had family, they were irrelevant. And, from his behaviour, pretty weak or preoccupied. He took care of himself pretty well, anyway. Daisya doubted he'd bother rebelling against anything, too, so his parents must not have enforced sophistication in the first place.

That was family taken care of. Nothing too special.

Background. Hometown. He looked Japanese, but he didn't talk with much of an accent. Maybe he was just good at languages, but who knew. And he didn't have any cultural thingies — habits, that was the word — per se. Home probably didn't figure much in his mind.

Home, on the other hand, was something to Daisya. Yeah, it was mostly just a place to get away from, but no one else in the order came from a godforsaken desert town, so it was something to be a bit proud of. It was why he hated boring things so much. If you lived in Bodrum for ten years, you wanted to spend the rest of your life high on — what's it called again? Oh, yeah, adrenaline. Anyway, you wanted the rest of your life to be really exciting, no matter how long or short you end up living 'cos of that. That was probably wrong, but English was weird when it came to idioms.

So. Home. Kanda didn't care much about home. Didn't talk, didn't tell, didn't show.

No home, no family. What the hell else was there?

He didn't play soccer, so there weren't any teammates. No neighbourhood kids. They were boring, but they were something.

Maybe he had a friend, or something. But that would be pretty rare, finding someone who didn't drive Kanda up the wall by just being there.

So, who fit the criteria?

Let's see…there's the little girl, the old man, and Marie.

It was hard not to like the girl, from what he'd seen. Didn't talk too much, didn't do too much. Same with Marie. You couldn't find anything particularly wrong with the two of them. They just sat there, and said nice things. Things that made too much sense.

And there was something about Marie. Daisya had sort of noticed it, but he hadn't quite been able to put a finger on it before.

Well, this train was pretty slow, and time wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

Time to figure it out.

What did Marie do?

He was helpful. He carried the bags, looked for places to stay, and mediated when he and Kanda were feeling a bit cramped. Sometimes he tried to keep the conversations going, and sometimes he tried to stop 'em.

He tried to fit in, and he tried to compensate for Kanda being himself, sometimes.

Yeah, that was it. He tried to keep the conversations going if Kanda was in a good mood.

He had a soft spot for Kanda — maybe they were a bit like brothers, the way it was supposed to be. Not like his siblings. They whined and whined and whined and the moment he left they pretended they were perfect. Hah. Not a chance, kids, not a chance. He wasn't going to go back, not even if it killed him.

Daisya left off the tangent again. So, Marie. From what he could see, Kanda didn't yell at him too much. Or at all, really.

But we've got no one to compare him too, 'cause the little girl's too cute to have competition. The old man, maybe? Kanda seems to like him. Or respect him, at any rate. He's good at what he does, and he doesn't yell at Kanda. And he trained him.

Daisya's ass had been unceremoniously saved too many times when he was stuck with the old man, so he took a guess. Kanda probably wasn't perfect, either.

So the old man was nice to him and helped him out. Which meant that Marie probably did the same thing.

But they didn't just meet at lunchtime at the Order, or something. They were a bit too friendly for that.

So sometime back before. That was that solved, as far as Daisya could know.

And then what's left is personality. Character, you know. The kids all said his sucked, but he'd like to see them say that after meeting Kanda.

Kanda didn't like to talk.

Kanda didn't like to get talked at.

Kanda was sort of okay with games, or anything small and brainless, as long as he was in control.

Kanda liked being in control.

Kanda was annoyed just like he was bored or preoccupied — all the time, not meaning to, just as a way to live

So maybe there was something that had made him become like that. Or maybe he had been born that way, and become more like that.

Kanda wasn't as extreme as most people thought, though. He did what he could, when he could. He — what's that word, yeah that one — he adapted. He'd lied for him, and he'd been sort of neutral. Not friendly, yeah, but not that mean.

Kanda was a kid who carried his world with him. Nothing else really mattered.

That is who Kanda was back then, and still was now.

But…all that aside, that's just what he was. Who Kanda is is a bit different.

The answer to that wasn't a list of things about the kid.

Daisya carried his world with him, too, so he tried to answer the question.

Hey, who's Kanda?

The trees flew by the train, albeit more slowly than before, and the blurred movement sometimes gave an outline to tableaux — places where the gaps in the leaves blended together to form a shape.

The answer was so obvious it almost appeared out there, spelled out by the universe, or maybe God.

Kanda's a friend.

Well…

Kanda's a kid. He doesn't make much sense. He's annoyed a lot. And angry. Kanda yells at most people, except the old man, the little girl, and the blind guy. But most of the time he's quiet. You can never tell what he's thinking.

Kanda's interesting. And exciting. The opposite of boring.

He'll never tell you anything about himself, so you shouldn't bother making friends with him. He'll just yell at you.

You'll never know anything about him.

He's just Kanda.

But there's so much more to it than that, and I'll never know.

But I want to know. I want to try and find out who Kanda was.

I'm going to find out who Kanda was.

I'm not going to leave him alone until I'm satisfied.

I can't leave him alone until I'm satisfied.

I want to stay with him.

There's only one other person I've met that I want to stay with. There'll be some more, yeah, but for now Kanda's a pretty rare subject.

So, if a friend is someone who makes you happy just by existing, then yeah.

Kanda's a friend.