Nea D. Campbell, Link finds out, has a hero complex.
After the Sparkles fiasco, after which Nea got promoted to A Decent Person by Link, something a little bit more serious than a hurt cat happened. The Earl caught up to them.
When Link woke up in the morning next to a small fountain (you see, the town only had one hotel, owned by the person Nea had previously punched in the face), things seemed normal enough. As much as a former Crow, a former Noah and a former stray cat could have "normal". After a few minutes, during which he hadn't noticed anything unusual, Nea woke up with a loud yawn and a sleepy 'good morning' to Link. The Nea pointed out the lack of people in the streets. It went all downhill from there.
The air suddenly grew cold and the small square got enveloped by a thick unnatural mist. As far as Link could see - which wasn't very far - there truly were no people around save for the two of them. He didn't think much of it before, considering the town's small size and the fact that it was around six in the morning, but the rapid change in temperature made him frown.
"We should go," Nea muttered, afraid to break the silence.
Link nodded just as they heard a loud bang the Earl's crazy laugh. "You're not going anywhere, dearest Fourteenth!" he cried, so far out of their sight. He laughed again.
Okay, forget crazy, the Earl was batshit insane.
"That's not what you want," Nea said at normal volume now. He sounded nonplussed. Link found himself to be impressed once again.
They agreed the previous day that they would no longer use the Ark because of the Order's access to it, but under the circumstances there seemed to be no other choice. Neither of them expected the Noah family to catch up so quickly.
"The Ark," Link whispered just as the Earl's silhouette appeared from the mist.
Nea looked at him quizzically. "He brought the Akuma. There's people here."
And once again, Link stared and stared.
"Nea," the Earl said, "come with me... Nea, my Nea."
What, Link thought as Nea grabbed Sparkles and ran in their enemy's opposite direction. Ditched, for the lack of a better word. Link went after him.
"Won't you kill the Akuma?!" he cried.
"No way," Nea replied as he looked over his shoulder. "Not with Adam here!"
Link could hear the Akuma shooting after them, but decided to ask anyway: "Who's Adam?!"
He only got his answer after a small pause; "It's complicated." Link got the idea he'd be hearing that a lot from now on.
The two of them finally passed the stone bridge, one of the entrances into the city, and then exited the path to run straight into a wheat field. They had seemingly lost the Earl, but the Akuma were still after their trail. Link wondered if a Noah would even be able to kill an Akuma. Or if he'd even want to, he thought bitterly.
Nea, as if reading his mind, turned around, and swiped his hand in an intricate pattern. One of the Level Twos stopped right before Nea, and when he touched it, it disappeared. It didn't crumble like it did when killed with Innocence. It was there one second, and the next it was gone. Link didn't know what happened to the soul, but he was pretty sure Allen wouldn't appreciate it.
Nea did the same trick a few more times, and with a little help from Link, there were soon no more Akuma to fight.
"Where's the Earl?" Link asked. One look at his partner (that's what he was now, wasn't he?) and he knew that Nea was as baffled as he was. Their situation didn't look very promising.
Maybe a minute passed with Link listening to every sound carefully and Nea nervously glancing back to the town as if afraid of what the Earl could do to it. Then they heard it - a cry. Nea let out a very undignified shriek and when Link realized it was a weeping child, he almost got the urge to laugh. They set off in the direction of the quiet sobbing and soon found two children sitting between the wheat.
"Hey, kids," Nea said, "get out of here." He only made them cry harder.
Link sighed. "Let's just leave, the Earl seems to have ran away." He didn't really believe it himself, but he did believe that if they stayed, it would do more bad than good, both for them and for the civilians.
Nea nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but the Earl apparently deemed this a worthy moment for his entrance. He suddenly appeared behind Nea, who almost didn't manage to dodge the hand that tried to grab him.
"Goddamnit, Mana!" he cursed under his breath and succeeded to make Link even more confused than he had been just a few moments before. Link wasn't one to stand still and do nothing when confused though, so when the Earl took out the sword and prepared to pounce, he arranged his hands into a familiar pattern.
"Bind!"
The spell quickly enveloped his enemy, but was gone the next second. Seems like he's in a better shape than before, Link thought. His powers didn't seem to faze the Earl in the slightest, as he didn't even look around to face him. It was obvious that he was after one thing only - Nea. Nea himself seemed focused on dodging and running - whether it was because of his inability to fight at the moment or because of some other reasons, Link didn't know.
The Earl took a few more swings with his sword, but suddenly decided to pursue a different tactic. One neither Nea nor Link appreciated. He grabbed one of the children after almost tripping over them, laughing some more.
Link expected the manly shriek coming from Nea. What he did not expect, however, was being thrown right into the Earl's stomach. By Nea. He was seriously considering reevaluating his life choices. And the Noah's sanity. While doing that, he managed to elbow the kid hard enough for her to fall down, and tackle his enemy to the ground.
"The Ark!" he cried over his shoulder as he did his best to keep the Earl down with both his sorcery and his physical strength.
"But the Order!" Nea said with a highly bewildered look. Really, did he even have a plan when he flung Link?
"Do it!"
In the end, Nea did. It took some serious skills to manoeuvre himself, two children, and a human desperately clinging to their enemy into the Ark. He, however, managed, which was nothing short of miraculous considering who their enemy was. The last thing Nea thought he heard was the Earl whispering his name in a broken voice. That reminded him a little bit too much of Mana, so he forced himself to think he imagined it. He'd always been good at denial.
He ran through the familiar streets quickly. Afraid that the Order could be scouting the Ark for him, he opened the first door he got his hands on. When they exited it, Link seemed to be quite surprised to find all of them unharmed, excluding his own swollen wrist which Nea eyed with an indecipherable look.
"Hey, you try tackling Satan to the ground," Link said with something akin to venom.
"I knew you could handle it!" Nea replied, grinning slightly at the other's tone of voice. He looked around, realizing they were standing in a conveniently empty street.
Somehow, they managed to calm the two children down, and after a short discussion discovered that they were both orphans. Nea said they could adopt them into their "little family". Link was, at this point, not even all that surprised, so instead of gracing his joke suggestion with so much as a snort, he decided to walk in the direction of the nearest orphanage. He offered to take them back after things calmed down in their hometown, but the children seemed pretty scared of going back. Link got the idea it was not only because of the Earl. Eyeing them again, he doubted they even occupied an orphanage before.
It was only after they settled in a local hotel at the end of the day that Link noticed the presence of a certain cat. He glared at Nea.
"What did you expect?" Nea asked, offended. "She's our child, I had to take her!"
Link didn't reply. He had no idea how Nea had the time to protect a cat between fighting the Earl and trying to save two orphans by throwing people, but he couldn't muster up the power to ask. Instead, he sighed, and added another line to his mental list; Nea D. Campbell either has a hero complex, or is insane. He favored the latter.