Two Akuma were waiting for them before dawn as the ferry reached the shore. Tough ones and even though they outnumbered the enemy, it took some time to get rid of these ones.
A Level 3 launched itself at Star, knocking her over and pinning her to the deck.
"Star!" Allen shouted.
She quickly activated Parasite Eve. Instantly she felt a pull inside her body as her energy converted itself into Innocence. She looked into the sharp, inhuman face of the Akuma above her holding her down. It opened it's jaws to bite off her face, rows of teeth glistening. With a thought, she manifested a pair of wire frame glasses with translucent red, gold-tinted lenses; they fogged up under the Akuma's foul breath.
Star looked into the barely visible eyes of the trapped, mutilated soul coming out of the creature's body.
"Did I mention that I can channel Innocence through any part of my body? That includes my fists. You could say that activating my Innocence literally transforms my entire body into a living anti-Akuma weapon.
With her thumb and index finger, Star flicked the seemingly impenetrable hide of the Level 3. It leapt off her and back towards the sky…too late. In midair, the Akuma's body rang like a bell, shining with a gold and green shimmer spreading outward from where Star had touched it. It shuddered violently, it's armor-like husk cracking, then the Akuma exploded.
Star stood up.
"Bring forth salvation to this tormented Akuma's soul," she said. Alongside Allen, she watched through her glasses as the soul of the child bound in the Akuma's body ascended and vanished.
Allen stared at her, surprised. Then he smiled warmly.
"That's my line."
She grinned sheepishly at him.
"I know."
Covered in Akuma blood oil, Kanda strode past them with a disgusted sound.
"Great. Another bleeding heart."
On the shore at dawn, they were met by a group of nervous-looking Finders. One of them reported.
"Hello. We're here to escort you. The Innocence is located in a field between Myre Village and the town of Hayden. We've already been informed of rumors of a strange phenomenon occurring along the trajectory of that shooting star and at it's impact site—the appearance of strange large white creatures-"
White creatures? Star listened intently to the Finder.
"Noah!"
A gunshot went off, startling everyone. Star froze. A piece of her hair fell smoking to the ground. The bullet from the shot had barely missed her face.
One of the Finders who had joined them held a gun in his trembling hands.
"Where did you even get that?" Lavi shouted at him as Allen grabbed the Finder's wrist, forcing him to lower the muzzle of the weapon to the ground.
"Are Finders even allowed to carry guns!?" Miranda shrieked, rattled.
Growing to a size proportionate to her fury and outrage, spit flying, Star snapped at the armed Finders, looming over them like a giant—
"You coulda hit me, you moron! I'm not a Noah!"
"B-b-but you're the same color, aren't you?" the terrified Finder with the gun stammered.
"I'm Black, as in of African descent. Are you slightly colorblind or are you just STUPID?! We're not even the same shade of brown! Noah are like a very flawless, appealing umber. I'm like a…caramel-cinnamon. You do spend a lot of time in Europe around white people and other pale types so maybe you accuse every brown person you come across of being a Noah, hanh?!"
"N-no!" The party of Finders fell down their knees and bowed over and over again. "We're sorry, we're sorry! We're very sorry!"
"You'd better be!" she snapped. Shrinking back to normal size, Star harrumphed, glaring down at them a second, then walked away.
"If you can't tell the difference between a Noah and one of your own, you've got no business calling yourself a Finder," Kanda said before walking off.
Seriously, Allen told them as Star stamped away, "I'm not sure you all should be carrying firearms. Leave the Akuma and Noah to the Exorcist if they show up, okay. There should enough of us here to handle them."
The armed Finders turned their weapons over to their team leader.
"Y-yes, Exorcist, sir…"
Author's Note:
[**SPOILER ALERT?**]
"Do you see Allen's body?" —Johnny Gill
"He looks like a Noah." —Reever Wenham (from D. Gray-Man Hallow dub, Episode 8 "Awakening")
In the D. Gray-Man Hallow anime, the skin color of the Noah Family is clearly brown, not the sort of gray-umber from the 2006 anime. I thought it was rude that they didn't directly note that Allen's skin color changed from white to brown. Allen doesn't have stigmata marks on his body like the other Noah so Reever is just like, Look—that skin color—he's a Noah! (and I think Daisya Barry literally said that about a Noah's color when he confronted Tyki Mikk in Barcelona). I wrote part of this chapter to express my mixed emotions on the topic.