Again, thanks very much for the reviews, they're great. Daisya is most certainly maturing (though he'll learn not to show it), or at least I should hope so because that's what I was trying to go for (just very, very slowly). I currently have an essay to draft and another to outline in detail, as well as a lab to write. Therefore, I'm rewriting and posting another chapter of fanfiction. Quite a good idea, I must say. Anyway, enjoy, read, review! Or not, because I had a really clear mental image for this, so I can't really translate it into words without visuals. See for yourselves.
There was no end to the akuma. A few rounds of mental mathematics told Daisya that, if you had ten houses with ten akuma each, you could get a hundred. There were more than ten houses in the village, and you could fit more than ten akuma in each, when push came to shove. If it was definitely shove, they could have a couple hundred to take down tonight. You couldn't just defeat the akuma. You had to exterminate them.
Two thicker trees stood ten, fifteen metres apart, forming a sort of choke point. Marie had chosen it pretty well. On either side, thinner trees were clustered densely, with shrubs and bushes and Marie's strings weaving between them to form a sort of living wall, swaying with the breeze. On one side of the barrier was a mass of akuma that almost seemed to ripple in the moonlight, and on the other was a clearing strung with wire like a spider's web. The scooping shape and resonant wood functioned to amplify the noise, pushing it into the oncoming waves.
Kanda and Daisya had been holding this point for some time, and from the looks of it they'd have to stay here for a while longer. There was probably a Noah somewhere around here, to keep the akuma in line. They wouldn't have to worry about fighting if it found them. They'd be dead.
And even now they were dead tired, movements sluggish compared to the lighting speed of minutes ago. It was thanks to Marie's Organum that they held their own. As soon as the akuma heard the music, they went half-mad; like animals, frothing at the mouth. They didn't last long in the hurricane of bullets, bells, and blades.
...
Kanda ran in zigzags to avoid the bullets, crushing dry leaves underfoot. The akuma were pretty flimsy to Mugen, but he could only just keep up with Marie's help.
He leapt and feinted to the right, planted his left foot, and thrust one of the swords into the akuma. The things he liked to call calamities were already at work on the others, keeping them confused. How Daisya was managing, he couldn't guess. He seemed eerily happy, but he shouldn't have been that good.
Mugen swung in an arc, unleashing another wave of calamities. Kanda followed them, ripping into the akuma with as much speed as he could muster. The clamour of bells and the strains of the strings rang in his ears, along with the hail of gunfire. For the moment he relied on instinct, his vision assaulted as much as his ears were with shreds and dust and falling leaves. He slashed wildly, keeping his position far in front of the choke point until all that remained in front of him were mounds of dust.
Still, something of fear dripped down the back of his neck as he paused amidst the wreckage.
He glanced over at Marie, whose hands were pressed together, adjusting the tightness of the wires ever so slightly to provide the intervals of agony.
He was fine.
Marie should always be fine.
He whipped back to the front, leaping to the side to throw off the akuma's aim. The bullets didn't have any permanent effect on him, but they still hurt.
That's it.
The sword flashed again as he moved forward with the speed of a snake. His eyes flashed to the side as he doubled back behind the strings, catching his breath in the middle of the storm. Where was Daisya. He should have been just behind him...
There.
Daisya's bell flew through the air, flashing even in the barest shreds of light.
But Daisya, who hitherto had been dancing in the heart of the lightning, did not fly with it.
Instead, he slouched against a tree trunk, panting. One of his legs was planted firmly on the ground, but the other just barely touched it.
Kanda turned his attention back to the front, but kept one eye on the side, trying to keep track of one dark figure in a two-dimensional staircase of black and grey. His eyes were only just working in this light.
Daisya slid back on to his feet when his bell flew back, and kicked clumsily it at the next clump of akuma gliding towards them.
It missed.
Kanda's thoughts were clear as he ran, muscles burning, towards the akuma.
Humans are naturally dominant in hands, eyes, and legs.
A right-handed person forced to use their left arm was practically useless.
Same with eyes and legs.
Kanda skidded on an outstretched leg to slow down, scattering the rubble of the forest floor, then planted his other foot to launch himself at the akuma.
Daisya said something, but he couldn't make it out.
The twin illusions sliced through its grotesque mask, but not before a bullet grazed his left arm.
A clump of bullets. In a fluid motion, the follow-through of the slash curved back around to cut away a chunk of flesh and fabric. It was easier for his body to heal this than that much of the virus.
Kanda landed heavily on the ground, his left arm momentarily useless without a section of its muscle.
He could take care of that.
As he turned back to face the akuma — now doubled, without Daisya's help, the Charity Bell rang out again, ricocheting off a tree on their right to pierce horizontally through a row of akuma.
Someone grabbed him by the collar, nearly choking him, and dragged him further back behind the wires.
...
Daisya had remembered, watching the approaching akuma, a mill.
The old man had dragged him all over the place, and England had been full of fabric mills, spinning out yards upon yards of fabric by the day. And in the mills, there was always a hum that emanated from the brickwork. Like some sort of primeval music, punctuated by the clacking of the looms. Daisya liked to try and hum the same note as the mills, and sometimes he got it.
But sometimes when he got the note right, the volume of the two sounds combined was more than just one loudness added to the other, to his ears. He'd asked the old man about that, and had gotten a long-winded explanation about 'interference' and 'waves' and a dozen other words he couldn't understand, or that were familiar but used in the wrong way. He'd ended up with the impression that waves fought each other, and when they were fighting and one hit you, that was one of the waves that would knock you into the sand. He still didn't get what that bit had to do with the sounds, but whatever.
The one thing he remembered was that two different versions of the same sound could combine better than any other two sounds, when they were in roughly the same place. Or sometimes when they were in different places, but that was a bit of a toss-up.
He'd tried to hum a note that was the same as Marie's when he felt his ankle give out. He'd gotten it, and heard the sound ringing in his ears.
He'd heard the leap in volume, and seen the akuma fall faster when more than one bell was ringing.
Now he heard different things as he half ran, half hopped a retreat. Someone yelling in his ear, to be specific. Not nice. He could taste blood in the back of his throat, and something a bit like worry on the backs of his teeth.
"Daisya, what the hell are you doing? Let go right now."
"What, like you're going to kill them all now that you just tore a chunk out of your arm?!"
His voice was climbing up the pitches, as it did when he was excited. But the adrenaline in his veins was countered by one last vestige of logic, hence the flight through the trees, to the centre of Marie's nest.
"I'm fine, trust me! And why did you stop, anyway? Can't you even fight?"
"I'll be fine in five minutes, I just twisted my ankle. But then you had to go and cut off your own arm."
"I told you, I'm fine! I heal better than you."
Daisya didn't look back, but he heard the rage boiling in Kanda's voice.
"So then we can just start fighting once we get to Marie, okay? I've got a plan."
"Last time you had a plan you nearly killed yourself!"
"Yeah, well last time I had a plan, we both survived."
"You have to be the dumbest person I've ever met."
"That doesn't stop you from being an idiot with a martyr complex!"
Daisya's voice was nearly a whisper when they came to a halt in front of Marie. He was almost like a statue, arms crossed in the shadow of the forest.
"Hey–"
"I heard," said Marie, forestalling Daisya's explanation, "Kanda's right. His body is stronger than yours."
"Oh, yeah. But that's not what I was gonna say."
Daisya was now walking back and forth slowly, putting more pressure on his ankle. They still had a bit of time before the next wave hit them. Thirty seconds? A minute?
"So, you know how if you play two of the same note at the same time, they sound a whole lot louder if they're at the same place?"
"Yes. The principle of constructive interference."
Kanda was already shifting into a fighting stance, ready for the akuma to catch up. Daisya noticed that he'd dropped the double-wielding, though his wound was slowly healing over.
"Well, d'you think if you played your strings at the same note as my bell, it could work?"
"I don't know. Combining Innocences isn't something most people do."
Marie paused, and seemed to think for a moment. Daisya could see the akuma, tortured by the music but still moving, still moving closer. Marie's muscles were tightening unconsciously.
And Kanda still letting his left arm hang at his side.
"But we haven't even killed half of them–"
There was a sharp intake of breath, and Marie shifted some notes up a tritone, trying to keep the akuma at bay. The moon above them wasn't normal. You notice the weirdest things in the middle of a fight. Like the fact that it was a nice, dark rusty red. The colour of dried blood.
An akuma approached Kanda, and Daisya kicked the Charity Bell at it, breathing hard as his strained tendons protested.
The bell pierced it, and rang, but the akuma didn't slow down.
Kanda's Calamities swarmed it, and Kanda himself ran to slash into it. It was almost at the choke point, moving with the finality of a glacier.
And Daisya saw that it was different. Not a painted face on a mess of tubes, but a grotesquerie of metal.
Kanda threw himself sideways, rolling and barely dodging a serrated paw — it couldn't be called a hand.
The Charity Bell flew back, and another akuma appeared, then another. The army had finally amassed.
All the while, the strings were screaming. Marie must have cranked it up hard, because now the trees around them clawed up at the sky like teeth or withered bones. It felt like a choke-hold.
Daisya put all his willpower into his twisted ankle, and balanced on one foot.
Almost, almost...
A bullet short through his hood as he kicked the ball through the files upon files of monstrosities.
"Marie! NOW!"
The volume, already seemingly at a high, doubled as an impossible chord howled into the night.
The bells tolled in resonance, and Marie dropped to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears.
But Daisya stayed upright, willing every last ounce of energy into synchronization, feeling the peals of noise resonate in his chest. It was as if the Innocence was beating in time with his heart, not just keeping him from death but making him alive...
Around Kanda, the akuma fell like lotus petals.