I huffed down as much air as I could as I careened around a corner. Part of me was beginning to regret eating that beef Wellington for lunch, but it wasn't everyday beef Wellington was on my menu. And when it was, I usually dolefully stared at it wishing I had that kind of money. However, I kind of wondered whether having that money was worth it if my gluttony was about to get me killed.
Curse my good taste and ample stomach.
I vaulted through the nearest open window and lay on the ground, listening for a pair of feet. Something skidded to a stop near the abandoned building I'd managed to take shelter in before finally scampering off. I let out a long slow breath as I stared at the warehouse ceiling with relief, letting my head fall back onto the broken glass as I took a breather, only to hear the sound of a can dropping to the ground. I glanced over to the noise with trepidation to see five homeless men, huddled around a trash fire, staring at me in bewilderment, a can of beans spilled onto the ground.
"Uuuuh," I breathed, trying to come up with a response as to everything that had transpired.
One of the men offered me a can of beans with an imploring, still confused look, and I shook my head with a pained smile.
"No, thanks, I'm good. I, uh... I just ate," I stated as I picked myself off the ground and dusted off.
"Maggie!" a tinny voice screeched through my communicator, nearly giving my skin free leave to secede from the rest of me.
"Oh, Mother Mary on a tricycle," I spat out as I jumped, my ear ringing. "What is it?"
I began to climb back through the window I'd jumped through, waving at the homeless men who'd wordlessly watched this whole debacle. They waved back, shrugging at each other. Well - nice gents. Glad to know chivalry wasn't dead.
"Did you manage to head it off?" Kanda asked in my headset, and I winced.
"About that..."
"You lost it."
"Oh, no, no, more like it, uh, lost me," I corrected, looking about me in the alleyway as I jogged lightly in the direction the Akuma had gone promptly after my gymnastic routine through the window. "Somehow we managed to get reversed-"
"You were directly in front of him. How did you miss him?!"
"Look, everything happened pretty fast, okay? From what I recall, some poor guy with a steak cart was involved."
"Where is it headed?"
"I think Mailer's Street," I huffed, seeing several pairs of footprints in the gravel before me. "Lavi, you there? You're on Bellows, aren't you?"
"Correction: I'm over Bellows. It's headed to Mailer, like Mag said."
"Well why didn't you say that, you idiot?"
"Hey, hey, there's a lot of ground to cover from this angle, and I don't see you trying to fight this headwind."
I rolled my eyes as I rounded onto Mailer Street, feeling something dragging my stomach towards my ankles - either that beef Wellington or a serious case of dread. For some reason, no matter how many times I managed to corner a demon in an alleyway, the thought that I was going to be the path of least resistance never comforted me.
I managed to catch up with Kanda, who was doing double-time on the speed, and I briefly wondered what was the point of trying to keep up. He was going to get it anyways. There was no way I'd get to it first - never mind the fact I didn't want to.
However, as luck would have it, all we saw down Mailer Street was a spinning manhole cover. Kanda stared at the slowing plate of metal before turning his acid gaze at me. I shrugged my shoulders at him and bit my lip as he rubbed his eyes.
"You have a shield, you moron. Why didn't you use it?" he grumbled.
"I was a little too busy trying not to throw up lunch," I quipped back. "Wouldn't have done me much good if I can't concentrate while vomiting."
"I told you not to have the Wellington."
"I didn't think we'd find this thing today! Besides, it was a special!"
A pair of boots touched down beside us as a certain redhead caught up, and he looked around him.
"I don't see any dead demons, so I'm going to guess it got away. Where did it - oh, it's in the sewers. Fantastic," he said, drawing out the last word as he astutely realized my gaff.
"Well - what now?" I sighed.
For the past two days, we'd been tracking a strange anomaly of men suddenly catching fire in their homes without the aid of a candle, cigarette butt, or kerosene. Normally, these sorts of things are easily explained by a drunkard who manages to set the curtains on fire on his way to the loo, but this time around, each man was not known to have any kind of vice, other than the odd drink or two. All the wives could say was their husbands came home giddy, took off all their clothes, and promptly burst into happy flames. We'd managed to track down the culprit - a Level Two - mostly by accident seeing as it was watching one of its victims through a window.
And I'd lost it on the last leg. I'd cut myself some slack seeing as I'd been through about two months of physical therapy, but then again I should have known better than to think everything would be that easy.
"I say we set ourselves up as bait," Lavi stated, tapping his hand on the sewer grate. "We know it targets men who go to pubs. So, we canvass a few bars, wait for it to try and get ahold of us, and there it is! We could even have a few drinks while we're at it."
I stared at him, slack-jawed, before looking back at Kanda, who looked to be deep in thought. My stomach tied itself in a knot and I blurted out, "You know what, I'm just gonna lift this manhole cover and..."
Kanda put his foot down on the cover and glowered, arms crossed over his chest.
"For once, the idiot's right. This is easier."
I gritted my teeth and stated, "I'm sure I can just put on some waders and find it down there, you know, as long as I've got a lamp. Really, we don't need to bar crawl."
"I can't believe we're doing a bar crawl," I mumbled as I dug my head down on top of my arms.
"Mademoiselle, it isn't zat bad," Charles stated beside me. "This ale is actually quite good, even if it is English."
I looked up at the Finder assigned to us, and I pointed at him, asking, "What is he doing here anyways?"
"Extra pair of eyes! Can't have too many, especially seeing as I've only got half a set," Lavi announced.
"Hm," was all Kanda was willing to say, nursing his own drink. I would argue with him that he was underage to drink, but he'd been chosen by God to fight a holy war, had fought off hordes of demons, and had probably died multiple times. He probably got a pass.
The bar around me was warm and noisy, men carousing with each other as they passed out various alcoholic drinks. Perhaps noticing my obvious discomfort, Lavi dragged his chair towards me while Charles debated the evils of dogs with someone nearby.
"Hey, don't feel bad about letting it get the drop on you. I'd have rather you let the thing get away than end up giving us a mess to clean," Lavi said, tapping his fingers against a tall glass of something dark amber. He gave me a reassuring smile and nudged me with an elbow. "And if you don't want anything, don't feel like you've got to. You can be my eyes and ears so I can drink myself silly."
I scoffed, but a small smile started to creep on to my face. I drummed my fingers on the table.
"I just... have a bad relationship with beer," I sighed.
"Or too good of one," Kanda muttered, and I glanced over at him. He, in turn, gave me a lifted eyebrow before turning back to stare at the far wall. He was more perceptive than I gave him credit for.
Lately he'd been managing to tease out a lot of things about me, and me about him. After the whole incident with my coma, the two of us had managed some kind of rapport, especially seeing as he gave me my "expensive apology" to wear in the hospital so I could feel a little bit more fancy with my butt hanging out of my hospital gown. After that point, and through physical therapy, something had shifted. It was as if someone had flipped the whole gameboard and swapped the pieces with a different set, and we were still learning some of the new house rules.
It was odd that when we bickered, I didn't feel like wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing the air out of him. Well - not all the time, anyhow.
"Something like that," I admitted, clasping my hands together to keep myself from lunging at the nearest tankard and chugging. There was something about getting lost in the dizziness of being drunk that was appealing, but this was not really a situation that warranted it. The last thing I needed was to have my face in the gutter while an Akuma took aim at my exposed derrière. Of course, the upside to that situation would be that I'd probably never even know what hit me.
"Mademoiselle, they have champaign! You want some?" Charlie asked, leaning back towards me as he jerked a finger towards the bartender.
I just about felt my pupils widen to dinner plates.
You know what, you only get to live life once, and champaign was probably something I could be happy to die for.
"I'll just have one glass. And only one, thank you."
I woke up with several dwarves marching around inside my braincase with hobnail boots, doing their best to stomp directly on the back of my eyeballs. Blearily, I cracked open my eyes to see an unfamiliar bathroom. Where ever it was, it was not my hotel. This was far too fancy. They had actual towel hangers.
My head was leaning against the cool porcelain of a toilet, and I lifted my head to rub my face. I winced, my body feeling like someone took a tenderizing mallet to it. On top of that, I was only dressed in my skivvies. The rest of my uniform was scattered around the bathroom, along with... someone else's.
I stood up shakily, and I realized with horror that I had absolutely no recollections of the night before. I had one glass! One glass of champaign! At least... that was what I remembered having. The rest was just a blur of random impressions. Something about a mansion, a train yard filled with frustration, and a bathtub. I looked to my left to see the latter, filled with water. Had I tried to bathe in... my underwear? I tottered my way over to my shirt and pants, noticing that they were fairly caked in mud and blood in places. What had I done, roll around with some stuck pigs?
As I put my shirt on, I hissed as I stretched my right arm. There, I found a bandage around my upper bicep - well, more like a handkerchief doing its best impersonation of a bandage. It was soaked in blood, and it felt as if someone had taken a pair of shears to it, but I had no idea how that had happened or where. How did I remember none of this?
I stumbled towards the door and seriously considered whether I wanted to face a possible walk of shame. I had no idea who was on the other side. Of course, I knew I couldn't just spend the rest of my life in this bathroom, though there was a good fifty percent of me that was willing to give it a shot.
I opened the bathroom door with trepidation to find a trashed, but stellar, hotel suite twice the size of my original. At the least drunken me could pick the rich ones. I did my best to keep my composure as I stepped into the hotel room, turning my head towards the king four-poster bed.
"Kanda?" I asked, staring incredulously at a half-dressed Exorcist lying on the bed.
With a startled grunt, he tried to get out of the bed, but only managed to get tangled in the sheets instead. He popped up from the floor and grappled Mugen, the sheath slinging across the room as he swung it. I flinched and screeched as I brought up a shield. The sheath pinged against it and smacked a light fixture before bouncing on the ground.
"Stop! Stop! It's me!"
He stared in confusion before stumbling back and sitting down in one of the ornate chairs.
"My head..." he growled, rubbing his temples.
There was a squawk from nearby, and a peacock hopped up onto the bed. The two of us stared at it before launching into questions.
"What the hell happened last night-?"
"Do you remember what went on after-?"
"-and what's with the peacock-"
"-I woke up almost naked?"
We stared at each other, our respective brains doing their best to put two and two together, but only really coming up with "fish".
Finally, he said, "Let's just try to find the other two."
"Good plan," I said.
While Kanda got dressed, I looked around the hotel suite for clues or signs of our other companions. Much to my chagrin, I found neither of them, though I did scrounge up a noise complaint, a hotel receipt with enough digits to make a count faint, and an entire case of empty water bottles meticulously arranged to say "wawa". Drunk me was also more creative, apparently.
"You find them?"
"Nope," I sighed. "We're the only two here."
I sat down in a chair at a table, and Kanda followed suit. His perpetually skeptical eyes had bags underneath them, and his skin was pale as paper. He'd managed to put his hair back up into something vaguely presentable, though his clothes were a mess of blood and mud. We sat in silence with each other, trying to digest what had happened, before finally I broke the silence.
"We must have been drugged," I stated.
"Tch. I don't -"
"Look, I remember you saying you couldn't get drunk without some real effort on your part," I interjected, leaning towards him. "So either you drank out an entire bar's worth of Miller, or something did its best to drug us."
Kanda narrowed his eyes and suddenly reached a hand towards my face, and I jerked back instinctively. He hesitated a moment, before continuing, "You've got something on your face."
And this time around I held still. His fingers took hold of my chin with surprising gentility and turned my face to look at my left cheek.
"We were attacked on top of it. You have road rash," he muttered, running a thumb over the scratches gingerly before looking down at the arm of my shirt.
"Take your shirt off," he ordered, gesturing.
"You're not going to at least take me to a nice dinner first?" I joked, a thrum of nervousness going through me.
He gave me a look, and said, "Lunch wasn't enough?"
For all that is good and holy on this earth, stop the presses - did he just flirt?
"It's been too long for lunch to count," I shot back before I could fully process the small miracle that had just happened.
Nevertheless, I wriggled partway out of my shirt through the neck to maintain at least a modicum of decency, and he examined the handkerchief on my arm.
"Doesn't look too deep. You might have bruised the bone though. Do you know a St. Martine's?" he asked, tugging at the edge of the hankie to show me the monogram.
I winced.
"Yes."
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, squinting.
"Because it's a cabaret."
"This doesn't make any sense," Kanda said. "Why did we come here?"
"Maybe Lavi convinced us," I grumbled.
"Not outside the realm of possibility."
I shifted the peacock I was holding onto my hip as it squawked loudly. The hotel had said they couldn't promise the poor thing wouldn't end up on their dining room table as an evening special, so I'd thought it better just to release it at the nearest park. So far, it didn't seem to mind being carted around.
The cabaret, St. Martine's, was a classy building with gold accents and red carpets, full of lascivious luxury and pomp. In the day, there weren't many here besides a skeleton crew, and we drew a lot of looks, Kanda wearing his full uniform and me wearing everything but my coat. For some reason, I couldn't find it, which might explain why my arm felt like it'd almost been sliced in two. A girl came up to us curiously and asked, "May I... help you?"
"Yes, we... came in last night, and we were wondering if you could tell us what happ-"
"Magnolia, dearest, what do you think you're up to?"
I looked up to a familiar voice from the stairs. A middle-aged woman wearing a stunning evening gown and feather stole trotted down, and my mouth flopped open.
"Marianne! What are you doing here?"
"I could be asking you the same thing. And this is...? You failed to introduce us last night," Marianne asked, appraising Kanda next to me as if she were picking out a prime rib steak from the market while starving.
"My partner. I mean, work partner. So we were here last night?" I asked, cutting to the chase before she could start licking her lips and sharpening a knife against a fork. Kanda, to his credit, did not step behind me, though he did clasp his hands in front instead of folding his arms. I was not entirely sure it was a voluntary action.
"Yes, actually. Here - let's step into my office."
Up the stairs, we took our spots in two wingbacked chairs. Marianne offered coffee, and I accepted, while Kanda professed a headache.
"So. Why do you want to know what happened last night? You don't remember? Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but..." Marianne said, putting on a pair of stately glasses to review something on her desk.
"No, we don't. Do you mind?" Kanda asked bluntly, and I winced.
"Sorry for the haste. We lost two people on the way. We're looking for them," I explained, nursing my mug.
Marianne looked at me, confused, before she continued, "Then you lost them before you got to me... We had our last show about two in the morning, and in the middle of it, you stumbled in bleeding like a headless chicken and drunker than Irish sailors on shore leave. You asked for me, I showed up, and you explained you needed to hide from the police for reasons I couldn't quite pull out of you. Not because you wouldn't give it up, mind you, but because you were spouting some pretty thick nonsense, and your compatriot was not much better. Darlene patched dearest Magnolia up, and after the pigs did a sweep of the place, we let you go with a hotel recommendation."
"Do you have any idea where we'd come from?" Kanda asked, his brow scrunching further in at the mention of police.
"If I had to guess - the train yard. It's the only place around here that'd get you that muddy in so short a time. Besides, apparently Magnolia had been winged by a train, if I remember your story right. That, and a copper got one of your friends," Marianne said, gesturing to my arm. Well, that sure explained a whole lot.
"I... need to use the bathroom. Where is it?" Kanda said brusquely, and Marianne pointed to the left.
Soon after, it was just me, Marie, and the bird, and she took that opportunity like an owl does a defenseless mouse: without mercy or preamble.
"Where did you get him, and where can I find more? Goodness, hon, you know how to pick them. Bentham was a stunner and rich to boot."
"He's my work partner!" I hissed. "That's all we do together! Work!"
Well, and argue. And occasionally train. Now and again, we do lunch or play go...
"Uh...huh," Marianne said, looking less than convinced. "Well, you'd best let him know that, because he would not let a living thing within five feet of you last night. Livid, I say, absolutely livid when you explained how you knew this place was safe!"
"Actually, that is a good point. How did I-"
She pointed to a poster by the wall with her face plastered on it, wearing a risque outfit that covered less than a handkerchief. I snapped my mouth shut.
"My advertising is quite good, and you saw a poster, recognized me. I'm actually flattered. It's been years. Anyway - he definitely did not act like a 'work partner' last night. Ugh, he hovered like a bad odor. I don't think he left you for more than a few seconds at a time. I was worried Darlene would end up short a hand. And the way you two bickered and fretted over each other - Ah! It reminds me of my husband and I when we were young."
"Marianne, you stabbed your husband."
"Self-defense, darling, he was brandishing a knife."
"A butter knife!"
"Oh heavens, you act like I killed him. I just nicked his liver, is all. No hard feelings."
At that moment, Kanda reentered her office, and he said, "I need to talk to Maggie. Alone."
"Of course," she said with a wide smile, and she vacated the office.
I had the distinct feeling that I was being zeroed in on, and I rubbed my eyes as I prepared myself for the onslaught of insults.
"Do you remember anything else?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"I remember the train yard..." I began, and to my surprise, I began to surface more memories. "...and the police got Lavi. He tripped over a track and busted his nose. Charles wasn't with us by then, though."
"So the police station is where we'll have to start. Lavi will know what happened."
"Kanda, I don't know about that. We might still be wanted for... something," I reasoned.
A pregnant silence ensued as I pet the bird, and Kanda considered our options.
"I do remember we were at someone's mansion. No idea whose. Probably where he came from," Kanda said, pointing at the bird now investigating Marianne's office. "If we could find out where Lavi is..."
"... he could tell us more about last night," I finished for him.
"Hold still! It's hard enough as it is with how much you weigh," Kanda grumbled as he held me around my legs, while I desperately tried to see through the jail cell window.
As luck would have it, my supposition that we were wanted men turned out to be correct when several police officers took an unhealthy interest in us, and we were forced to tie them up, gag them, and toss them into a coal box. I had to leave the peacock under the watchful eye of Marianne seeing as carrying a peacock made a person all too noticeable. With this in mind, we decided that a more discrete method of attack was necessary, and rather than knock on their front door, we used the windows to get a better idea of the police station layout. Unfortunately, the police had considered that windows might be a weak point in the design of a cell, and the little gremlins put them almost ten feet up, forcing us to get extremely creative.
"You hold still! I can't see with all this wobbling," I hissed down at him, trying to get a better look.
I was lucky. This window was on the wall without cells, so I could see into the other brigs pretty easily. However, the window was pretty dirty, so even if I could see Lavi, I don't know if I would recognize him.
"Hey... about... last night."
Did we have to have this conversation right now?
"Um... I'm a little busy looking for our Third Musketeer," I said, veering the subject into safer waters.
"Tch. Typical."
"What do you mean, typical?"
"You avoid confrontation the way Komui avoids acknowledging Lenalee's past puberty," he spat, headbutting my backside with his forehead.
"I do not!" I retorted, looking back down at him with ire before going back to my original job.
"Then why don't you want to talk about last night?" he grunted, shifting my weight. I still couldn't see anything worthwhile in the jailhouse. The first two brigs were empty, and the third was a little difficult to see.
"Because there's nothing to say," I hissed. "It doesn't mean anything. For all I know, I was hot and wanted to cool down."
"So you bathed in your underwear."
"Yes- wait. How did you know that?" I asked, looking down at him quizzically. "I had my clothes on when I came out of the bathroom this morning."
Kanda looked just as confused as I did.
"Not sure," he answered honestly. "Okay, hurry it up. How long does it take to peek into a jail?"
I sighed and went back to looking into the window.
"No, I don't see - oh! There he is! He must have had to use the bathroom. They're taking him back to his cell. Charles isn't with him, though," I said, a sinking feeling beginning to settle in my gut.
Finders did not have the best shelf life, and drunk Finders might as well be snow balls on a hot summer's day. I sincerely hoped that Charlie was somewhere safe and sound, sleeping off his massive hangover. Lavi, on the other hand, looked as if his hangover had throttled him, but that could have been both his black eyes or the cotton wads shoved up his nose.
A sudden feeling of apprehension overcame me, and I put up a shield of light around the two of us, turning to my left as I heard a noise in the alley. Several fast somethings smashed into it, and a humanoid Akuma wearing a mockery of a nurse's uniform entered my field of vision. Kanda hurriedly put me down - an action I had already prepared for - and he removed Mugen from its sheath. I opened a hole in the shield just big enough for the strike that ensued, but the Akuma was fast, and we were unprepared.
"Drat!" it screeched, as it brandished a set of needles at the end of its fingers. "I nearly had you!"
"Hey, what's all the commotion about!" a voice rang out near us, and I groaned as a portly police officer stared in confusion at the tableau in front of him.
"Lord have mercy on my ever-loving, sweet, good-for-nothing soul-" I grumbled as I unfolded the shield to its maximum area to cover the breadth of the alley way, anticipating Kanda's lunge towards our attacker with an opening. It was fast, I'll give it that much, because it managed to dodge three swipes of a sword, and Mugen at that, while having illusory hell insects follow right after it.
"If you would, please: get out of here," I asked nicely, and the officer was more than happy to obey.
"Behind you!"
The shield reapportioned around me into a hemisphere, and the Akuma only managed to smack into it, rather than ram its pointy fingers into my side. It fell back against the wall, pinned by the both of us - Kanda with a sword to its right, me with a shield to the left. Before I could fold the shield around it, the Akuma scurried back up the wall behind it and over a building, Kanda following after in quick succession. I didn't bother trying to scale the thing - Kanda would have killed it by the time I managed to heave myself over the roof.
After twenty seconds, Kanda leaned his head over the building and said, "It's gone. Don't know where it went."
"See, it's not just me! That thing is quick!"
Suddenly, I heard the sound of pounding boots and whistles, and my brain kindly informed me that I was, indeed, a wanted woman right next to a jailhouse. Realizing that I had nowhere to go but up, I gestured for Kanda's hand and stepped as far back as possible. Looking dubious but resigned, Kanda had a hand ready to grab. The last time I'd done this, I'd pulled a muscle in my leg and ended up more iced than a corpse in the morgue. I was hoping this wouldn't be a repeat feature, otherwise I was in for a rather long and painful jail stay.
I jumped up the building, using my shield as a platform, and grabbed a hold of Kanda's outstretched hand. He grunted as he took my weight forward, and we both fell over the edge of the building, panting and looking back where I'd just come. Blue-uniformed men began to search the alley, and I grimaced, pulling my head back and away from the edge.
"I'd call that impressive, but you should have been able to do that months ago," Kanda complained.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I muttered, brushing myself off. "What now?"
His usually beetled brow scrunched even tighter. At this point, I was beginning to believe that if you put a piece of coal between his eyes, he could press it into diamonds.
"We break him out. We'll have to wait until nighttime. Too much activity right now."
After much debate (and by debate, I mean snapping) about where we'd while away our next daylight hours, we decided that the place the police would find us last would be our own hotel room - our original one, anyway. They would have already searched it by now, and given the fact the town was large with lots of goings-on, it wasn't likely they had a detail watching it, unless we'd committed murder unwittingly last night. We were betting that we hadn't, and that we were rather low priority on the police hit list.
"All clear," Kanda said, and I walked into the hotel room with relief, feeling a little too exposed in the hallway.
I made a beeline for the bed, sitting down on it with relief and rubbing my feet. My arm felt like someone was sawing it in half with a rusty bread knife, and my feet throbbed with every heart beat. My stomach was also doing its best to climb out my throat. Kanda took up the only seat in the room, and asked, "Alright. How do you know Marianne?"
I gave him an exasperated look and threw my hands into the air.
"Does that matter?!"
"Your past has a bad habit of trying to maim or otherwise kill you."
"That was one time."
Kanda's brow dipped into an even deeper frown and said, "You're going to have to figure out I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to keep you alive. I can't do that if you don't get honest with me."
I continued to rub my feet, chewing over what information I could feed him without giving up my hard-won dignity. It had... gotten easier to talk about it, especially seeing as Kanda often just sat and listened without saying a word. Yet, pulling up those bits and pieces of history was a lot like digging around in a full bathtub for a dog that had died and rotted for a month. It was not a pleasant experience.
There was also the little problem that I had yet to tell him my...condition yet. I knew that the longer I avoided it, the worse the fallout would be, but I wasn't really ready to broach that topic until I knew I could contain the upcoming explosion.
"The two of us worked together, at one point. She vouched for me when I started because I'd helped her with some bookkeeping, so that's what I did first for her... outfit. Then, I moved from desk to dance floor, and that's where I met Bentham. He struck a deal, and the rest is traumatic, uncomfortable history," I explained, glancing up at him. He remained completely stoic, his face a wall of brooding contemplation. Usually, I could manage to tease out one or two emotions, but he was as unreadable as Ava's crayon scribbles as he stared out the window at the city.
"Do you remember anything else from last night?" I asked, changing the subject.
He gave me a brief glance and purse of the lips, but he didn't make mention of my attempt to take the conversation elsewhere.
"I remember... I thought something was wrong with my beer," he answered in a drawl.
"Well, you were drinking New England lager, of course you were going to think something was wrong with your beer."
He glared through his eyebrows before continuing, "Besides that. Something was in the beer, besides just beer. You started to act a little strange. Singing bar songs, nudging the idiot, hugging Charles-"
Oh. Oh no.
"That... that sounds a lot like something drunken me would do."
"Drunken you must be a party animal, then. You danced on a man's back."
"What?!"
"Barefoot."
"No."
I held my head between my hands, gripping my hair. Oh God, I was going to throw up. I had sworn to my sister Vi I would never again, in my life, become drunk, and that had apparently gone out the window along with my wholesome reputation. Drunken me had not a single ounce of shame in her inebriated, tart-ish body.
"You're a surprisingly good dancer for someone with two left feet, especially since the guy was doing push-ups," Kanda begrudgingly admitted. "Then Lavi was acting strange - well, stranger than normal. He didn't even bother hitting on the waitress, just stared into his glass. Then I... don't remember what happened after."
He frowned, leaning back in his chair.
I dug around in my memory, trying to summon a shred of a recollection, anything really that might tell me what happened the night before.
"I... think we went to somebody for help. One of us realized that something wasn't right," I said. "I remember being carried into the mansion because I didn't want to go for some reason. Something else about a broom closet somewhere. And a bar fight! I remember there was a bar fight. I sort of remember leaving Marianne's for the hotel she told us about..."
"And after all that?" he asked dryly, and I clammed up.
I didn't want to think about it, much less talk. There was something horribly embarrassing about that sort of loss of control, especially seeing as the recipient was both a mentor and a... well, I guess "friend" would apply to someone who's stuck his neck out for you multiple times.
"Not a single thing," I sighed, brushing out my frazzled, curling hair anxiously. "Do you?"
The look he gave me made my stomach seize up into knots. It was equal parts pitying, reluctant, and resigned, not at all his norm. He was seriously considering what had happened, and after much appraisal, had probably realized that it was something he didn't want to tell me, not helped by the fact that I didn't want to hear it. To make matters worse, there was a part of me that was more than just a little morbidly curious about what happened and, God help me, how he felt about it.
"We... behaved," he said, carefully picking his words. "It's blurry. Bits and pieces. And... you were burning up. That's why-"
"- you stuck me in the bath tub," I finished.
It was as if the proverbial light bulb went on over both our heads.
"The Akuma. Lavi's bait plan worked," I said.
"Yeah, it worked. Too well," Kanda grumbled. "That's the last time I agree with one of his plans."
I sighed.
"For once, I second you."
A/N: Hey guys! I'll spare you the long spiel and just say, thank you so much for reading the story! I really appreciate the reviews. This particular fic has been running something like seven years and it's been a fun ride! Of course, there is more to come, and I hope you continue to follow Maggie on her long (suffering) journey to becoming a professional Exorcist!
God bless you, and thanks again for reading!
