Soooooo...~~~~
I'm up to date with the story outline. I have up to chapter 42 and I'm working with the rest of the story as of date xD
Now for the thank yous :D
-Tris PhantomEvans: Haha, about that. I haven't read Order of the Phoenix in such a long time -w- I shoud reread it. But that's not where I got that from, though. Just saying :3 And thanks about the review and the story follow xD I love reviews cuz their critical to how I write things c: they help me fix mistakes or tell me I'm doing good with what I've got so far -w- so I love them :D
-Penelope Jadewing: First of, nice name ;) and second, thanks for follow and favorite~!
-DreamingInThePast: Thanks lots for the following :D I love those cuz it shows that you're interesting in reading whatever comes up next x3
-Otaku2448: Thanks so much for the favorite :D
No lie, this so far has been the most feedback I've gotten in this rewrite. This makes me know that I'm doing good and that people want me to continue c: that makes me happy :D
Now let us continue with this journey ;'3
Chapter Seven
Alice & the Pocket Watch
My eyes fluttered a bit as I began to wake up. But, to my surprise, I wasn't at the Rainsworth's mansion. No, this place wasn't anywhere I could remember. The room was circular, the walls made of stone. A single window was to my left with a small arc that seemed to overlook a grand forestation and was draped in colorful fuchsia curtains.
The room itself was pretty empty from what I could see. There was a desk and a couple of book shelves. A small table close to the shelves with a couple of ornamented chairs. A lonely couch sat on the middle upholstered a dark crimson. What shocked me as I glanced at the couch were the dark shadows that sat and stood before it.
Some sudden shuffling caught my attention and made me turn around towards what seemed to be the exit to the room, draped in dark crimson drapes.
There a little girl stood, immobile. Dark, almost ebony hair was styled up in a small ponytail and she was dressed in a pretty sky blue dress. Her face, for some reason, was obscured to my sight. I couldn't see her and I couldn't recognize who she was and if I even knew.
Suddenly, from her face, tears started to roll down her cheeks and her lips started quivering. I tried reaching out towards her in comfort but before I could her tiny voice came out as a soft echo reverberating through the stone walls.
"Why are you not telling me anything?"
Her tiny voice sounded broken and I couldn't make out where I had heard it. But the distress and pain that I heard from her damaged voice was writhing me in my own pain. From the corner of my eyes, I saw one of the shadows from before coming closer to face the little girl.
"You're all I have left! None of them could ever replace you!"
Without thinking, I grabbed my own chest when I began to feel a strange pain. Something was aching like never before. It was awful. The little girl's voice grew louder to counter whatever the shadow before her was saying.
"You've left me alone..."
The atmosphere came to a sudden change when her quivering lips took a firmer grimace. It felt forced, as if she were trying to make herself shout out her next words.
"You abandoned me to become stronger! Now tell me... Where has that power gotten you?!"
The whole room was instantly engulfed in red flames. The heat made me automatically bring my arms up to guard my face from the flames. A horrid stench caught my nostrils almost making me vomit. At bringing my arms down, I couldn't help but gape at the changed scenery before me. A building was being engulfed in those embers; the walls and curtains and furniture were being eaten away by those flames. The foulness I had smelled was from the dead bodies that laid about everywhere. The smell of burning flesh was making me choke as I began to find it hard to breath. Instantly, I brought my hands to my mouth to keep the retch that was threatening to come out. But at doing that, I felt the warm, sticky liquid that came in contact with my face when both touched. I brought my hands to my view and noticed the crimson blood that drenched them. Glancing down at me, the same liquid coated my everything: clothes, hair, skin.
What in the world...has happened here...?
"...air...?"
This blood...these dead bodies...
"...Claire...?"
Did I...kill them...?
I couldn't keep the shriek that came out of my lips the moment I woke up. As my sight became less blurry, I could finally focus on who was before me.
"B-Break?" My voice was weak and shaky.
"Finally awake I presume," he answered with a covered hand upon his mouth. "By your violent thrashing and cries, it sounded like you were having a very nasty dream."
Dream...? No, whatever that had been was far from a dream. Surely a nightmare. I shook my dread away before sitting at the edge of my bed.
"What time is it?"
"It's becoming evening already. You have been asleep and blowing off your job for most of the morning, Miss Claire," he chuckled, making me pout a bit.
"I didn't blow it off," I countered as I began to put on my coat and boots. Soon enough I came out with Break into the hallways as he guided me towards a different vacant room. "Reim-san offered to let me rest and take my place. I didn't see much wrong with that."
"Well, we're done with what we sought out to do." With that said, he opened the doors to the parlor. Inside I could see Sharon, quickly starting to doze off, on a couch near the tea table while Gilbert was sitting down at the edge of a bed. "And it's here," he whispered as he went on ahead to sit next to Sharon.
"Are you all right, Claire?" Sharon's soft voice came to me. "You seem a tad bit pale."
"I'm fine, Sharon," I assured her. At seeing Gilbert, I ran up to him calling out his name. But at noticing my voice was too loud, he picked his finger to his lips and quietly shushed me. I covered my mouth with my hands as I approached the bed.
He turned his head to whomever was laying there. At this, I did the same and came to notice, for the first, the young boy that slept on the small bed.
At closer inspection, I could see he was quite young. Perhaps my age from what I could tell. His short hair was a bit tattered but it kept its lustrous, golden look. His chest was bare except for Gilbert's coat that covered him and bandages that peeked out that covered some kind of wounds.
I turned to Gilbert after looking at the boy and asked him directly. "Is this...?" He gave a curt nod before he averted his eyes from me towards the boy.
"That is Oz Vessalius." We both turned to face Break who now sat down beside Sharon who was quickly starting to fall asleep. "The young boy who was sent to the Abyss ten years ago."
"But our plans seemed to have changed," Sharon added with a dainty yawn while covering her mouth.
My brow furrowed at this choice of words. I glanced towards Gilbert's way, "Changed, how?"
"Oz," he slowly replied my question. "He came out of the Abyss through his own means."
"And since we do not know how that came to be, the only way to figure out all these mysteries is to await for Oz-kun to awaken," Break finalized just as he began eating a portion of cakes from the table across from them.
"I suppose." I never thought that it would be until nighttime when goldilocks actually came to. I had been precariously lying on the ground when I heard a shuffling of clothes and Gilbert's sudden voice calling out to Break.
"Break, he woke up."
At hearing this I brought myself to sit up and watch as the dazed look that he held in his eyes. He seemed out of it. It wasn't until Break welcomed him back to 'his world' that he came fully aware of his surroundings.
"He's a bit of a ditz, isn't he?" I quietly inquired from Gilbert who now stood next to me. He didn't answer and instead only averted his eyes. I gave out a giggle while the boy went on ahead to change from that battered uniform. Truthfully, what Break told him was true. He didn't seem to be the formal type of guy. From his looks alone, he seemed to be more of a mischievous, little brat.
He began to sit down on the table were Break and I had prepared sweets, snacks, and some tea. He was asking about what happened with the people at some coming-of-age ceremony and Gilbert answered him that they were all fine and well. Now that I thought about it, I couldn't go about calling Gilbert by name in front of the boy. He had specifically asked me not to. Something about not wanting to tell him right away.
But regardless of that, when Break started to introduce himself, I took it as a sign to do so as well when he pointed at me with his cane and said, "As for this young lass..."
"Ah," I turn over to the young blonde and give him a small smile. "Just call me Chronos, Vessalius-san."
"A pleasure," he mumbled under his breath.
And after that, I shut my brain off. I couldn't concentrate with so much stuff in mine. So while Break and Sharon spoke to him, the latter whom had awaken shortly after, I went ahead and sat on a chair while watching the whole thing.
"Is something the matter?"
No, just me being...absentminded, I suppose. Nonetheless, I heard bits and pieces of their conversation. Break recapped after Oz had explained his escape from the Abyss. Apparently he was able to escape thanks to a certain Chain's power. B-Rabbit he said, or that's what I thought I heard Break repeat.
"That's the...?"
"Black-Stained Black Rabbit."
"You knew it?" I asked under my breath closing my eyes briefly.
"Back when I came to be, I could always sense an astounding presence everywhere yet nowhere at the same time. I knew it was a Chain but it seemed peculiar, unlike Lacrimosa and I who were part of the first born Chains of the Abyss. It was just there, stagnant and immutable. But from what I could gather, it was a very powerful Chain. Felt primal even. It's powers could overwhelm my own pretty easily, with that I'm saying much."
So whatever helped Oz out of the Abyss was a pretty damn powerful thing. Yet just when I was about to ask Chronos more about this B-Rabbit, Gilbert's sudden outcry of Sharon's name snapped me back to my senses.
At looking up, I saw Oz holding a knife up to Sharon's throat, holding her hostage. Break kept babbling on about how amazing it was completely ignoring Sharon's current state and it pissed me off.
"That's it!" I hiss under my breath once I got tired of Break's incompetence. Yet even before I could reach them, Break had already put into action a binding field that he had, without a doubt, placed way before hand in this specific room.
He twirled his scabbard about in one hand while methodically approaching Oz who crouched before us all. Out of nowhere, Break stabbed Oz in the chest with the tip of his cane. What I didn't expect to happen was for a young, brunette girl to materialize out of him.
"Alice?!" Oz called out in concern as the girl hit ground.
"What in the-" I cringed, not finishing my sentence, as a loud and annoying ringing began to echo in my head. It was painful and I had never felt it before. It was as if it were piercing my eardrums. It just...hurt.
"Cl-" I caught Sharon's hand before she even reached my shoulder and gave her a small smile to assure her I was fine. Truth be told, I wasn't in the least.
"I came to this world..." Her name... Her voice... Why did everything about her seem so damn familiar?! "To find my scattered memories!"
"Relax!"
I could barely hear Chronos' bellow from above the constant ringing in my head. What I did hear was Break suddenly snapping away a knife from Alice's hand when she tried to attack him. He was about to attack her again and would have been able to had Oz not gotten in between the two and taken the hit in her stead.
"If you insist on harming Alice any further..." he grunted under the pain the cane had caused him. "I'm afraid I won't cooperate with you."
"Cooperate?" Break repeated a bit perplexed. "Whatever would you mean?"
When Oz starting tallying off Emily's and Sharon's previous remarks about him and how he had deduced we wanted to use him, I cringed internally. This kid...he thought quick on his feet.
"But the one who saved me was Alice!" he shouted at Break with a loud and clear voice. "If you insist on harming the person who saved my life then you are an enemy."
"Enemy, huh?" Break repeated softly while raising his cane. "Seriously, you messed around too much and went on to make Oz-kun mad, Emily."
"Stop putting the damn blame on others, you retard!?" I yelled infuriated at his toying around with us all. Honestly, I will kill him one of these days because of his playing around.
Break simply laughed it off and undid the binding field to let the two little ones move around freely. "I just played a little too much, right? I'll make tea as an apology." Tch, him and his stupid tea. "Shall we talk about it then? Our true goal, that is."
"Damn you, Break," I hiss under my breath. The ringing in my head slightly intensified the instant I heard Chronos outburst in my head.
"The way!"
"What?"
"The way, it's connecting!" Gilbert suddenly yelled out turning about towards the table where, from out of nowhere, the pocket watch that Oz had left, had started to shine.
"It's opening from it!" I called out understanding now what Chronos and Gilbert meant. Just as if on cue, the way opened letting out a Trump. "I'll-"
"No need," Break said to me while keeping both, Sharon and I, away from the incident. He then turned to Gilbert and pronounced, "Release the Black Rabbit's power. I want to see with my own eyes just how powerful a thing that is."
Gilbert clicked his tongue and placed his hand upon Oz's head releasing the seal he had placed on B-Rabbit's power. At doing so, Alice's human form disappeared and turned into a giant, black rabbit. As for what happened, I stood watching with my mouth wide open as the brutal carnage took place.
I couldn't believe it. It appeared so implausible that such seemingly innocent thing was capable of such violent acts. Then again, I suppose she's not the Blood-Stained Black Rabbit for nothing.
"She completely...destroyed it," I mumbled under my breath just as she finished and came to be that same girl once more.
"That is it. That is the immense prowess I felt from before."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Oz reaching out towards the pocket watch that had fallen sometime during the battle. At his touch, however, the watch began glowing once more. The shine was so powerful that it made me cover my eyes with my forearm.
Once I could see, I found myself in pure whiteness. I turned about trying to find the others and frantically calling out to them but to no avail. They were nowhere in sight.
"You came as well."
The voice that suddenly filled my ears was soft and tender and, for some reason, very calming. At turning around towards where I had heard the voice, I found an arched doorway clad in dark curtains. Just like the ones in my dream.
Squinting my eyes, I could barely discern a silhouette and perhaps a faint face but nothing else. The only hint I had was that the voice was deep and most likely a man's voice.
"You are just like her. Searching this world for what you lost."
What I lost...? "You!? Do you know about my past?!" I took a step forth but when I did, the image started to fade out. "No, wait!?"
"Don't fret. He has arrived at last. If you follow after him, you will surely find that which you seek."
"W-Who are you talking about?!"
There was a slight pause before he smiled, making me flinch a bit and feel my cheeks get warm. What was the matter with me?
"I can see that-" there was another slight pause before he heaved a relieved sigh and continued. "You have kept it even after all this time."
"Kept it?" I repeated under my breath. I could have sworn I hadn't even voiced it out.
Suddenly, his arm came forth and his gloved hand came to point towards me. No...not me. He was pointing at...my broche. "My present...to you."
"What?" I inquired while unconsciously reaching up to it.
He gave me one last smile before his image finally started to fully fade while the room began lighting up in a blinding light. Before I actually saw him vanish completely, I heard his deep voice one last time. "Find the connection. Only then will you be able to find me once more, my friend."
The whiteness overwhelmed my eyes and soon made me cover them. By the time I opened them, I found myself lying in the same room as before. The others, as well, were starting to wake up from the daze that apparently had taken over us all.
Gilbert came over to me once he helped Sharon out. He gave me his hand which I gladly took while holding my head with the other.
"Are you-"
"I'm fine," I replied to his interrupted question. It was getting really tiring hearing the same question over and over again. It took us a couple of minutes to situate ourselves back onto our feet. Once done, it didn't take Alice a second's hesitation to go back to her brutish semblance. But after the whole affectionate way she'd been with Oz after finding that one memory, I wouldn't buy that rough persona.
I sat aside from the whole situation while Break told them about out mission. I didn't really understand what he meant by them turning into his subordinates but what can I say. Better them than me. I've dealt with his madness way too much already. But then again, if they worked for Break then they would be my allies too. Oh well, I can deal with that. As long as she kept her temper under control and he didn't get on my nerves, I was a-okay with it. And what's better, according to hierarchy of the job, I could easily boss them around.
Nice.
A sudden ray of sunlight caught my eye making me cover them so they wouldn't be hit directly. Mm, had all this really happened over the span of the evening towards the morn?
The couple of exclaims made me jump a bit as both Oz and Alice ran towards the balcony doors and burst them open. I couldn't really hear what they were talking about but it didn't matter much really.
"And you know, Chronos—" Break's pronunciation of my name made me turn up and face him. I hadn't noticed that all of us had stayed behind inside the shade of the room to avoid the sunlight that rose over the horizon. Break was simply leaning against Sharon's sit while Gilbert stood beside my own. He raised a finger my way and wagged it as if playing around. "This means that I have a very special job for you~"
I really don't like the sound of that. "W-What is it?" I inquired a bit hesitant.
His grin grew bigger before he chirped out, "You're going to be Oz-kun's new bodyguard!"
"What?!" I raged out almost tipping the chair where I had been sitting over. "Like hell am I going to watch over a snobby brat!"
"It would be much simpler for you than any of us. You would blend in much easier and besides you have tracking skills like no other," he pointed out as I tried keeping my anger inside.
"So...what you're saying is..." I hissed through gritted teeth.
"You're on babysitting duty!" Emily chirped right up making me boil over the top.
"You little-!"
But before I could utter a curse towards both of them, I felt a heavy and large hand upon my head. At turning up, I only saw Gilbert's profile as he stood a bit ahead of me.
"Would you do it?" he calmly asked me. "Not because he told you to but because I'm asking you as a favor...from a friend."
He removed his hand and smiled. I couldn't help but smile back and give him a curt nod. "If it's a favor for you then I'll do it. Don't worry, he'll be under my watch all day, all night."
"Good then," Break agreed clasping his hands together. "But you must finish the last task you were given. That way you can give your full attention to this new, long-term one."
"Don't worry, I'll finish that Rakshanah case," I assured him before turning to glance out towards the two kids outside. "After I'm done there, I'll meet up with Oz, Alice, and Raven." I glanced to my side towards Gilbert, "Is that okay with you."
"Yes, it's fine," he agreed at last. "Be careful out there and be back safe."
I gave him a last curt nod before answering him properly. "Don't worry, I will." And with that he left towards the balcony towards Oz. He placed his hat on the boy's head catching him completely off guard and making him blush a bit and left afterwards. He could be so shy sometimes.
But regardless of what I thought, I would come back and deal with this boy. After all, he is the clue I've been waiting for. He'll be the one to guide me to where I'm supposed to go.
Both of them: Alice...and Oz Vessalius.
Well, how was that? so far I have up to chapter 12 already written and awaiting to be proofread. Since it's only me doing that, it's going at a slow pace. I've wanted to see about a beta-reader but I don't think I could uphold a deadline or something cx
We'll see about that one. But for now, hoped you liked it and see what happens next ;D
