Kanda was less than impressed with his new surroundings. Miles had led them up to her apartment, flung open the door, and said 'home sweet home', though this was anything but. It was lovingly disorganized with an eclectic jumble of furniture, a kitchenette, and two bedrooms with a single, postage-stamp-sized bathroom. Mornings were going to be a riot. There was cat hair everywhere along with a litter box next to the kitchen. The cat himself was a lazy calico sleeping on top of a curtain with one paw dangling. Soon after the door was opened, the cat woke up and cracked open a single green eye before shutting it again and resuming his nap.

All four had taken a shower and borrowed clothes from Cam, who luckily wore baggy pajamas, before camping out in the main living area, or what there was of it. Miles had pulled out the bed from the sofa (an innovation that amused Allen to no end, the dope), and they'd dressed it up with sheets and blankets and the like. Kanda, however, was not willing to toss and turn with the Three Stooges, and so he'd found himself a spot on the floor underneath a window where he dumped his sword and his uniform. Besides, most people didn't know what Kanda did at night in his sleep, and he preferred that he not broadcast that fact to his teammates. It wasn't that he was embarrassed or anything, but it was... less than glamorous.

Kanda talked in his sleep. A lot.

He had no idea what he said in his sleep. All he knew was that he could be quite the chatterbox, and most of what came out of his mouth didn't make sense. It was a wonder that Marie could sleep whenever they were on missions together. The first time that Kanda had found out that he talked in his sleep had been nearly five years ago when he'd gone out on his first mission without Marie. He'd begrudgingly gone with Froi Tiedoll, that vague, inattentive, loving man, and Froi had woken him up for fear that the Japanese Exorcist was having some sort of nightmare. Marie, with his superior hearing, had been able to make sense of Kanda's muttering and therefore left him to his night rambles, but Froi had informed Kanda rather abruptly about his nocturnal conversations with himself.

And now, he was having a slumber party with two of the most annoying people on the planet and an old man who looked like he might die in the middle of the night. Kanda's expression turned flat as Allen basically fell in love with the pillows and Lavi fiddled with some other new device that had caught his attention. Bookman, being the old man that he is, had already fallen asleep on the bed and was now snoring faintly. Kanda himself wanted to wait for the two idiots to fall asleep (Allen slept like the dead once he was out, and Lavi was a freaking tornado when he slept, tossing and turning and basically kicking everybody), but at this rate it didn't seem that either of them would be falling asleep any time soon.

"These pillows are amazing..." Allen sighed, burying his face into a memory-foam pillow Miles had dug out from the closet. Lavi ambled around in the kitchen, finding all sorts of doodads.

"Wow... look at this!" Lavi held up a strange, glass container with a white, floppy lid and a white base with buttons. The inside held blades, and a long cord fell out the back with a knobby end that had two pieces of metal sticking out.

"Go. To. Sleep," Kanda practically growled, sticking his head under a pillow. Luckily Allen was already on his way to slumberland, but Lavi was never going to shut up. Quite swiftly, Allen was out like a light on his blissfully soft pillow, but Lavi was still knocking around in the kitchen. After thirty minutes of reciting the same two lines of Chinese poetry in his head in order to attempt to block out the idiot rabbit's meandering Kanda gave up completely. The Japanese Exorcist sat up with his hair in disarray, gripping his sword in a rather menacing manner as he glared at Lavi -

who was crying.

Kanda's eyes widened in surprise to see the redhead leaning over the sink with his shoulders shaking. Bookman and Allen were asleep, and Lavi must've thought Kanda had also finally drifted off as well. The apprentice Bookman had taken off his headband and balled it up in one hand, and Kanda could see blood beginning to soak out of the bandage on his side into his borrowed cotton shirt. At first glance it appeared that Lavi was in pain, but the samurai knew better than that. Lavi could probably lose an arm and not bat an eyelash. His problems seemed a bit more... internal. Uncertainty gripped Kanda as he realized that he didn't know what to do. Lavi wasn't really a friend...at least, not that he thought about him like that. Yeah, he was annoying, but if there was anyone Kanda trusted besides his own team, it was the redhead with the hammer.

Lavi walked slowly with his bandanna to the small, round table made of fake wood in the middle of the kitchen. He placed the bandanna down and set his hammer next to it. He was red-eyed, and he'd bitten into his lip to try and quiet down his sobbing. What was the matter with him? Kanda had never seen him like this. He was the idiot with the smile on his face, the stupid Exorcist who was always cracking jokes, pulling pranks, hiding... hiding everything that hurt to make everyone feel better. Kanda hated that about Lavi, the first time he'd met him. He could see right through the facade of frivolity to the curled up, numbed, dead little thing he'd been behind that green eye made of glass. Now, it was the opposite. His facade was the same, but the reasons why he kept it up were different. Lavi was very, very, very good at hiding how he truly felt about things, and that had always put Kanda on edge. He always seemed to tailor his reactions specifically to the people he was around. It was a wonder he could keep track.

Now he was sitting down in a chair at the table, rubbing both eyes with long spindly hands. Kanda finally sighed to himself, deciding he might as well help him before he tried to kill himself or something stupid like that. Heaven knows, if Kanda was going to suffer here, so was the idiot rabbit. No copping out for either of them. Lavi looked up in abject surprise when Kanda seated himself at the table nonchalantly, and Lavi discreetly looked away to wipe his nose. Kanda laid down his sword on the table, leaning back in his chair, and the two shared about five minutes' worth of companionable silence.

"You think I'm an imbecile, don't you? Crying for no reason," Lavi said in a whisper, his head angled down to stare at the table. His hair fell over his eyes, creating a curtain. Kanda made no comment, just sat there. It was what he was good at. No one really realized it, but Kanda happened to be a good listener. He didn't judge, he didn't interrupt, and he didn't give away what he thought on the matter. He just sat there and listened.

"Everything's so different here. It may not worry you... and it may not worry Allen... but..." Lavi finally looked up at Bookman, asleep on the bed-sofa in the living room. Lavi's lip quivered, and he shook his head.

"There's so much that... that I don't know about this place. There's so much to learn. I don't think you or-or Allen could understand just how... how frightening that is to us," Lavi said, his voice cracking. His skin was pale, and Kanda realized that Lavi's agitation might've opened his wound again. He was going to start bleeding out. Kanda contemplated waking up Officer-Whatsherface so they could take the idiot back to the hospital, but he decided that sitting here and listening would do more good than just a blood transfusion and a good talking-to on wound care.

"An entire history of almost two hundred years... and I don't even know if they have Bookmen here," Lavi chuckled darkly. "Maybe everything that I've worked for is for nothing now. Maybe... maybe it doesn't matter because for all we know we can't go back." Lavi's face contorted to one of surprise as he was knocked over the head with Mugen's sheath. Kanda's eye twitched as he frowned, and Lavi rubbed his sore noggin with a look of perplexity.

"Idiot. You think you're the only one afraid of losing their purpose?" Kanda muttered, his voice so low it was almost a growl. Kanda looked off sullenly. A thought had been nagging at the back of his mind since they'd arrived to this odd place in the future of a world where they had never existed. Kanda had never considered what life might be like after the war was over. Now that he was in a civilian setting, he wasn't quite sure how he was going to fit in with everything else. He didn't know the people, the language, the technology, or... anything. He was starting from scratch. His entire purpose for living, that being 'destroy Akuma', had been plucked from him as surely as Lavi's prospective Bookman title had been stolen.

The two sat in silence as Lavi slowly realized what Kanda was alluding to, and the redhead sighed. He sniffled, wiping his nose on his arm. Wearily, he laid his head on the table, staring at his hammer, which he probably no longer needed, and the bandanna. Kanda knew that Johnny and a few of the other Science Department geeks had created the uniform especially to Lavi's specifications, including the headband. Once Lavi'd dropped it down a ravine on one of his missions with Kanda, and the samurai had been surprised to find later that Lavi had gone down the entire canyon to retrieve it.

"You really think we'll never see them again?" Kanda asked quietly, staring at the tall, boxed ice-chest that hummed next to the wall. Kanda had an idea of what was on Lavi's mind by the way the young apprentice was staring at his bandanna with a forlorn expression. Lavi sat up straight, and he crossed his arms. His face had become a mask again, and Kanda immediately felt loathing. Lavi could be a cold individual when he wanted to be, and sometimes he did it without even thinking about it. The young man shook his head.

"No. Gramps has only told me once about the War of the Witches. From what I know, it takes a lot of oomph to send a person through a dimension, much less back... You're gonna miss them, too, huh?" Lavi asked. Neither stated the word 'friends' outright, but the meaning was understood. People like Lavi and Kanda didn't have friends. They had assets. In that way, they could relate. Kanda's dark eyes cut across to meet Lavi's single green eye, and the two of them seemed to instantaneously understand.

"No more Lenalee bringing coffee. No more Johnny bugging me to play chess. No more... no more Komui with his robots and his stupid machines. No more Hevlaska and that freaking creepy Innocence of hers," Lavi muttered quietly to himself, laughing a little at his last two comments.

"No more being bugged by Finders. No more... no more fighting," Kanda commented rather glumly. He'd never thought about it, but he loved the thrill of the fight. There was nothing like pitting yourself, all of yourself, against a machine of death and coming out on top, even if you had to practically kill yourself to get there.

"No more fighting," Lavi whispered. There was a moment of silence, and Lavi tried to stand, but for the second time that day, he fell to his knees. Kanda immediately stood up, creating a screeching noise as the chair screamed against the plastic-sheathed floor. Lavi put up a hand as he gasped, and he said, "No, don't worry about it. Just... got dizzy, there, for a minute. I've had a little too much excitement for one day." The redhead managed to find his feet, and he stood up slowly. The shirt he was wearing was now gaining a pinkish-red color, and Kanda felt a twinge. It was an odd twinge too, the type of twinge he got around Marie and Tiedoll and... and Lenalee and... This was beginning to get weird. Maybe being dropped in a different dimension had scrambled his brain.

Lavi began to hobble back to bed, and Kanda suddenly said, "Hey." Lavi, surprised, looked back to the samurai standing rather self-consciously in the kitchen. The swordsman blinked several times, realizing he'd actually initiated a conversation, and he said, "Change your bandage. You're going to get the bed bloody." Lavi stood there, dazed for a minute, before sadly smiling. He saluted Kanda, and he began to head off to the bathroom. Kanda, realizing he finally had his peace and quiet, went back to his spot on the floor. Sleeplessly, he listened to Allen's breathing, Bookman's snoring, and Lavi's nearly inaudible puttering in the bathroom before finally allowing himself to drift off.


Lavi cracked open a single green eye as his internal clock basically screamed "GET UP YOU LAZY BUM AND GET YOURSELF BREAKFAST". The Bookman Apprentice (or was that ex-Apprentice? That idea still nagged at him) slowly got out of bed, feeling his body creak in all the wrong places. With a stiff walk, he turned the lights on with a simple flick of a switch. With even that small action he winced as his wound twinged, and he realized he'd need more pain medication. However, he wasn't sure exactly how to take said medication, though he realized it was oral, thank the Lord. Lavi had only ever had to use a suppository once in his life, and he was very hesitant to ever have to do so again. The redheaded man shambled over to the table, finding the little baggie that held his prescription, and he took out the bright orange bottle with a look of confusion. He could very clearly read the directions, which were somehow written in an incredibly neat script as if someone had done it up on a typewriter, and he tried to get the cap off, but it stubbornly refused to open. After three different tries, including using his teeth, he gave up. Even Lavi was no match for childproofing.

He slumped in a chair, checking his bandage. His shirt, which had once been white and now was a disgusting pinkish red, had dried out so it was a little stiff, and his bandage was mostly clean. A bit of pink showed through where Lavi had wrapped another bandage around the wound. He remembered enough first aid to know that taking off a bandage was a bad idea if it was just healing. The scab was still stuck to the bandage, and if you peel the bandage you peel the scab. His side was sore, though, and he was a little dizzy. The room randomly tilted now and again. To distract himself, he continued to catalog the items he did recognize and the items he didn't.

The carpet was new. He'd never realized that carpet could be anything other than a rug, and this was an awfully strange sort of invention. Still, he couldn't say that it wasn't easy on the feet. The plastic floor in the kitchen was new, too, and it was yellowed with what Lavi concluded as age and water damage. The appliances in the kitchen were mostly a mystery, though he'd guessed at the function of the glass pot in its stand and the sink with its running water. The icebox was rather interesting, seeing as it really had no actual ice in it, and it was a wonder it stayed cold. The television (he remembered overhearing Cam tell Allen about that) was a blank, black screen much like the ones he'd seen in the Order, and he guessed that this was a case of 'convergent invention' more than anything else.

Lavi got up again, and he leaned against the counter. It was a long bar that separated the kitchen from the living room and was an obvious addition rather than having been constructed with the rest of the apartment. Lavi peered over at his companions, all of them asleep. Bookman's face was serene as he snored, and Allen looked so much younger. Lavi chuckled as he realized that Allen was snuggled up to Bookman, the older fellow instinctively flinging an arm around the younger boy. Lavi remembered that he'd slept like that with Bookman when he was young and just starting out as an apprentice. He hadn't been used to the sounds of war, and the roar of mortars hitting pavement had driven him into Bookman's arms at some points. Kanda, asleep beneath the window, was mumbling. His night rambles weren't as secret as he thought. Lavi had listened more than once when he couldn't sleep on missions with the dour-faced Exorcist, and he was glad to know that it was mostly nonsense and nothing to do with... with that incident.

Secretly, Lavi was also glad for Kanda's intervention last night. His calm facial expression fell to one of blankness as he thought about what would have ensued. Lavi would've chewed those thoughts over and over and over until he couldn't bear it any more. Eventually, it would've come out somehow, some day, and it wouldn't have been pretty in any case. That sort of frustration was hard to bottle up for more than a few days at a time. Though Bookman didn't seem duly affected by the same though, Lavi figured he needed to make sure just to be on the safe side. He made a note to talk about it with the old man today.

Miles' bedroom door opened, and Lavi tensed instinctively. His entire form relaxed, though, as Miles' calico, which he learned was named Skitters, moseyed over to the kitchen. The cat sat in front of his empty bowl and glared at it as if it was the bowl's fault it was empty. Lavi laughed as the cat suddenly trotted over to Lavi, meowing. At least cats didn't change. Realizing he didn't know where the cat food was (and he didn't feel it was very polite to riffle through the cabinets on his own), he wandered over to Miles' room, nudging the door open with his foot.

He stared in confusion. Miles was laying face down on her bed wearing a skimpy top with a pair of light, cotton pants. Emblazoned on her back was a large tattoo. It covered a good portion of her mid and upper back, and he was sad to say it was rather anticlimactic. It was a raven with both wings spread across her shoulders, a candle at its feet. There were words written on the candle in some sort of Old English typography that was too difficult for Lavi to read. Sighing in her sleep, she flipped over, revealing yet another tattoo that had previously gone unnoticed, this one a little bit... stranger. It was almost the size of a dubloon, not much bigger, showcasing four razors in an 'x' formation with a snake eating it's tail overlaid on top of it. Lavi narrowed his single eye, wondering what exactly all of this meant about the woman who'd invited them to stay in her home and claimed to be an ex-witch, if an ex-witch even existed.

Miles stirred, and her eyes flew open, staring at Lavi dumbfounded. Suddenly she cursed and scrambled for the pistol on her nightstand, immediately pointing it at Lavi with a surprised shout, and the redhead swiftly closed the door and shouted, "Don't shoot! Don't... don't shoot! Sorry, I, uh, I was going to ask where the cat food was." Lavi waited, standing away from the door. Finally, he heard the snick of a magazine coming free of a gun and the sound of padding feet towards the door. Miles stepped out, and she sighed, "Sheesh, for the love of Pete, don't scare me like that. Knock or something, okay?" Miles looked awkwardly sheepish as she headed towards the kitchen, and Lavi followed behind. The raven on her back glared at him as she searched through her cabinets for the cat food.

"You holding up alright?" she asked, and Lavi blinked, still distracted by the wording on the tattoo.

"I beg your pardon?" Lavi asked, rubbing his face. Miles took down a single can of cat food, and Skitters wound around her feet in excitement, meowing with anticipation. Miles picked up the cat and handed him to Lavi, the chronicler taking the cat rather hastily. He began to rub the cat between the ears, and the calico purred like an engine.

"I asked if you were doing okay. Not in pain, are you?" Miles asked, dumping the cat food into Skitters' dish. The cat leaped out of Lavi's arms towards the food, and Lavi realized that Miles was staring at the large spot on his shirt. He guiltily rubbed the back of his head and stated, "Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm fine. I had a bit of... of a problem last night." Miles nodded as she started to dig stuff out of the big icebox, and Lavi sat down quietly at the table.

"Um... Can I ask you a question?" Lavi said suddenly, unable to stand the silence. His mind was running around in too many circles for him just to sit there. Light was beginning to fill the room as the sun rose. The city was already up and about, the noise filtering through the walls as people took showers, cooked, and talked throughout the apartment complex.

"You already did," Miles said with a sardonic smirk, and Lavi winced playfully. He sighed, leaning back with his arms crossed behind his head, and he asked, "What's with the ink? You're not the type of girl I'd expect to get tattoos." Okay, this was a bit of a lie, but it was odd seeing a woman with tattoos besides. Lavi had only ever seen one woman with ink, and at first glance he'd thought that she was a man. Lavi watched Miles' reaction carefully, knowing he was treading what was probably shaky ground. The woman slowed down pensively, thinking. She pulled out a strange looking container of eggs, a jug of milk, and two shakers of salt and pepper. She prepped her stove with strange dials situated above the stove eyes, and she finally said, "They're from my coven days. Covens are pretty closely tied with the gangs. If you look close enough at the wings, you can see a Sacred Heart one some of the feathers. It has a special blue streak through the middle, and it belongs to the Immaculada gang. It shows what gang my coven's allied to, though it changes and so the tattoo usually changes as well. Magic makes it easy to get alterations done, though."

"What was your coven?" Lavi asked. Behind him, he could hear Bookman stirring. The old man was always an early riser.

"Ravenlight. Yeah, yeah, really dark and angsty, I know - we were kids when we started it, being on the wrong side of the tracks and all that cliche stuff. We thought it was a cool name, and we stuck with it. We had a coven mother who'd started a coven similar to ours called Raven Kings before it ended up busted because of a drug raid," Miles said, her voice oddly detached as if all of the things she'd said had happened to someone else. She poured the milk with the naked egg whites and yolk and stirred while adding salt and pepper.

"You don't get them removed? I thought you said you were an ex-witch," Lavi asked.

She hesitantly said, "I keep them as reminders. Y'know, that I'm not spotless and I screw up. It keeps me focused." Feeling inquisitive, drumming the table with his long fingers, he asked, "And what about the one on your chest? With the razors?" Miles looked back, her eyebrow raised as if to say 'haven't you asked enough questions?' Still, she humored him.

"All coven members pick a specialty after they finish Basic, and the tattoo marks your specialty. Everyone gets the oroborus - it means you finished Basic. The razors mean I'm a poteracruxus - literally, 'power cross.' I was a power broker. I could influence certain things to happen, and I could store energy in different objects for later use. I used to be able to commune, too, but that took a lot of effort and scared the living crap out of me. It's one of the more dangerous fields of magic, but it's nowhere near the level of an energeinotor - energy user. They take the raw stuff and use it to do work, whatever work is needed, without a go-between. That's what Cam is, and she's one of the most skilled at it. It takes real intuition and guts." Miles put the eggs in the pan, and they sizzled. Lavi felt his curiosity get the better of him. He wanted to ask more questions, but the others were beginning to wake. It was easier for a person to talk about stuff like this one-on-one rather than with a group present.

"Well, what's on our agenda today? I'll stop pestering you about your checkered past," Lavi said, jokingly referring past coven. Miles turned around and leaned against the counter with an eye roll.

"It's Saturday, luckily, so we can get Allen enrolled in the local school. I don't want people knocking at my door because he's truant. He'll probably be in the same grade as Cameron, so he at least won't be facing high school by himself. We'll need to find jobs for the both of you, so I'll be picking up ads at the store so I can see if there's any place that'll hire you. We'll need to go shopping for supplies, too. I don't have enough clothes, shampoo, food, and toothpaste for all of you," Miles sighed, pushing back her hair from her face. Allen sat up very suddenly, and he asked, "Is that food?" He clambered out of bed, nearly tripping over Skitters as he did, and Lavi laughed as he practically salivated at the counter.

"I apologize, Miss, but... uh, could I have some eggs? I'll make my own," Allen offered, and Miles shook her head.

"I've got it, thanks. Get dressed and ready. We've got a busy day today."


"What do you mean, you don't have the demon?" A young man with short, buzzed hair and several tattoos raged at Iris. The witch recoiled slightly as he menacingly took a step forwards. She gripped the crystal in her pocket, reassured by its pulsing warmth. She pushed back with her own snarl.

"Exactly what I said. I. Don't. Have. It," she spat out, her hair pulled back into a high ponytail to show off the tattoo along her hairline. Darius' glance flickered between the snake with the intricate circle inside its confines back to the woman's face. The teletransitrist glared back defiantly, ready to use any of her power should the volatile young gang leader decide to whip out a gun or a knife. He'd done so before, and hopefully he'd learned his lesson the first time around. Several of his cronies slumped against the walls of his dingy apartment, some of them watching the TV that was providing the white noise in the room. Several witches were also present, all of them wearing street clothes, some of them displaying their insigne through cut shirts or low cut tops. Most of them were just as tense as the gang members in the small apartment. It didn't help that most of the witches in the room were only fourteen or fifteen years of age while the gang members were considerably older. It was obvious that the witches were not on their turf.

"Tristos says the Nitestalkers are comin' in the next three months. THREE MONTHS, IRIS! WE GOT THREE MONTHS, AND WE DON'T HAVE THEIR MONEY!" Darius' shouts were so inflamed, he was flinging spittle. Iris continued to stand her ground, head thrown back as she glared at him down her nose.

"You know that the Nitestalkers got the Tri's on their back, and you know the Tri's love to play first before they off somebody," Darius growled, prowling back and forth like a caged tiger. His gang was an upstart. Nearly ten years ago, his father had started it before getting a gunshot to the head, and Darius had continued it on, racking up a good amount of members.

However, some of them'd accidentally walked in on a deal made by Nitestalker members and another gang, and the idiots actually tried to steal the stash. Nearly five hundred and fifty thousand bucks worth of coke and Mary-Jane had ended up being dumped because the fuzz had nailed the three carrying it off in their truck. The Wrench Dogs had been 'billed' by the Nitestalkers after the incident with a dead Dog member on Darius' doorstep with the money amount carved in his chest. Nitestalkers were known for their brutality towards offending gangs, especially abrupt crop-ups like the Dogs. Iris knew they were affiliated with one of the most notorious witch covens below the Mason-Dixon Line, the Tri Clave, a group so strong that most witch covens who stepped on their toes tended to disband in order to fly beneath their radar.

Needless to say, those covens never got back together because none of their members were... present to do so. The only hope the Ravenlight coven had of keeping alive and intact was a weapon bigger than the Tri Clave's members combined. Their hope, of course, had just flown out the window with their botched summoning.

"What do you think's gonna happen to us if we don't pay up? You think they gonna just slap our hands 'n say 'no, no, bad boy'? Are you an IDIOT?" Darius screamed, his voice cracking. The members of both groups seemed to bristle. It was too early in the morning for this.

"We can get it back," Iris ground out, balling her fists. She sighed before opening both hands and holding them. An image appeared between them, the crystal in her pocket burning hot as the energy leaked through it. She cursed her current poteracruxus. She was piece of crap. Gale at least made sure the crystals were bound tight before shoving energy into it. Hers didn't just leak.

The image between her hands showed the faces of seven different people. They were more possibilities than sure suspects seeing as anyone from that universe could've been plucked off their world, but the main focus of unwitting visitransitrists usually put magical emphasis on them and them only when it came to summons. One was white-haired with a scar through his eye. The second was a long-haired man with a sour expression. The third was a man with red hair and an eyepatch. The fourth was an old man with kohl-lined eyes and a question-mark ponytail. The fifth was a girl with girlish pigtails on either side of her head. The sixth was a man with a white stripe in his hair and no eyebrows, and the seventh was a man with curling hair and a beret.

"These are the seven that are probably out there. The contract currently numbers four, though, so I'm guessing four out of these seven are wandering around. I'd prefer them alive as that'd save a lot of time, but if they're dead I don't really care either. My own witches will go with your guys to make sure the job's done properly. Once they're dead, the circle's free to use again, and I won't have to break contract," Iris stated, darkly lined eyes drilling holes into Darius' face. The gang leader stuck out his bottom lip petulantly, considering this. A tattoo peeked from inside of his lip as he placed with a ring through it. He finally shrugged.

"Can't you get hard-copies of pictures? Can't exactly carry around magic voodoo stuff with me and make it work," Darius quipped, and the gang members grinned and chuckled darkly. Iris smiled with a sickly sweet taint, and she handed over four scanned pictures. They were merely line drawings - that, Darius hadn't expected. Even the drawings that Iris had put up with her hands were mere pencil sketches, anime-d sketches no less. How was he supposed to work with this?

"I'm pretty sure I can give you guys a place to start off from. A 'friend' of mine probably already has them tracked down. That should make it easy. I'll call in an expert when things get really rough," Iris stated, and Darius sniffed.

"When's 'really rough' start?" he asked with a belligerent mumble as he flipped through the pictures. The floating images in front of her fizzled out as her crystal died. Iris' eye twitched. In her pocket, the crystal crumbled.

"When I say it does."


"All right, here's fifty bucks each. If it's over twenty dollars, you're being swindled. If it's under five, you're still being swindled. Capiche? All right, get out of here," Miles stated, shooing the three Exorcists and single sister off. Bookman watched with amusement as the boys looked around in confusion and interest at the building Miles had called a 'mall', which Bookman decided to equate to an indoor market with fans and much better aesthetics.

The old man had been quite pleased to know that most of the things in this universe he already understood. He himself had never been here, but he'd read accounts from people during the War of the Witches about places like this. Unlike Lavi's previous fear, Bookman was not at all scared that he might not understand all there was about this world. He was, after all, a Bookman. It was what they did. And if they didn't have Bookman here - well, there was always starting over. As clan leader, Bookman wouldn't have minded changing a few things himself, though he'd have never dreamed of actually employing his changes without a general outrage to follow.

"You're looking smug," Miles noted as she walked over to a table. She sat down, and Bookman followed suit. They'd had a rather enlightening talk on their way to the mall while the boys were busy gawking and all-around being teenagers. It was actually a relief to see them acting their ages for once, especially given the fact they were no longer in a war. If he was honest with himself, it pained Bookman to see Lavi have to go through war after war, each bit of his innocent naivete chipped off like so many pieces of shale, especially now when Bookman found himself uncharacteristically... compromised.

"Oh, nothing. Do not mind me. I'm just... enjoying myself," the old man grumbled in his usual drawl, surveying the area as was his habit. He took in all of the surroundings with his usual meticulousness. There were many people, yes, and there were many stores, but nothing really interested him, per se. It seemed that general disinterest in the things of the present did not change from universe to universe.

"So, you know about all this, do you?" Miles asked. She gestured to the entirety of the building, possibly meaning the entirety of the universe in general. Bookman shrugged as Miles dug a water bottle out of her bag.

"I'm old. I see things," Bookman answered simply and cryptically. He was used to being vague. Many people asked questions they didn't want to know the answers to. It was best to be as ambiguous as possible, at times. Never the less, Miles was adamant.

"I sent them off because I needed to talk to you," she stated, and Bookman resisted the urge to sniff derisively. You think I didn't realize that the minute we stepped in the horseless carriage? Her entire body language had shouted that she needed to speak with someone, especially after the... incident in the parking lot.

Kanda was a lucky, lucky man. He was born (or created - it was hard to say) with good reflexes, strong training, and, best of all, a knack for sensing trouble and following it. They hadn't been outside for more than three minutes before a missile the size and shape of a shard of glass had nearly hit Allen in the head. The old man had had the time to realize what was happening without the body to react - Kanda, however, had both, and he'd smashed the flying projectile handily with the flat of his sword. What lay on the ground had been a metal bird folded into from a sheet of metal like an origami crane. The edges were razor sharp - when Cameron had picked it up she'd cut her fingers on the folds. It had been flying fast enough to actually scuff Kanda's blade. The bird had been headed towards Cameron, and Miles herself had looked shaken. Several more had rained down after that, all of which Lavi beat off with swift bats of his hammer. Allen himself had invoked his Innocence, to the awe and confusion of those in the parking lot. Luckily, it was not needed. The initial rain was the only rain.

"And yet, you sent them alone," Bookman stated. Miles took on a look of shock and realization. She almost stood up, but Bookman said, "Don't worry. As long as they don't wander off by themselves, they'll be fine. The boys have been trained since they were young to detect and thwart harm that comes their way. Your sister seems to have been trained well, too, hm?" Miles sat down heavily, her shoulders slumping. Her round-necked cotton shirt revealed the edge of a razor, and Bookman sighed.

The witches of this world were no different from the ones in his. The same tattoos, albeit different names, the same rituals, the same goals even - humans were so predictable.

"Look, I need to know how much you know about us. I need a good estimate on just how well they'll fit in," Miles stated, gesturing out past Bookman towards the Exorcists goofing off near a kiosk. Bookman turned back around to look at them. It was hard to say how well they'd adapt to civilian life, much less civilian life in a different time.

"They're... resourceful. I believe they'll do just fine, given enough time. Is magic common here?" Bookman asked, turning the conversation in a different direction. Miles shook her head, rubbing her temple as she leaned an elbow against the table.

"Hardly. Those that do know about it keep mum to stave off panic. Those that don't know about it are better off. Those that ignore it are idiots," Miles stated simply, and Bookman chuckled. If that wasn't the truth by all accounts.

"Allen will do well in a school, and he will learn fast. He's very sociable, and he is educated to an extent. Lavi will need time to respond to his environment. He wants to know about everything, and that will occupy his mind for a long time before he can actually interact. Kanda... will be harder to judge. Normally he is volatile in most social situations -"

As if on cue, an argument flared between Kanda and a salesman.

" - though I think he knows his limits." Bookman watched Miles contemplate this, and he took advantage of her mental processing to ask, "Are the witches here related to crime as well?" Miles looked surprised by the question, but her look immediately became somber.

"Yeah. Most of them make pacts with gangs. The gangs provide physical protection and the things witches need to complete rituals, most of which are illegal or very hard to obtain, and the witches provide protection in the form of magic and the expedition of drug-making. Witches can take shortcuts most people can't," Miles explained, rubbing her crooked nose. To Bookman, it was all too obvious that Miles was a reformed crook and had been a witch herself. He could almost sympathize - almost. He didn't honestly care either way about her. If she died tomorrow, the only thing he'd really be worried about is the fact that his group would now have to find some other place to stay.

"I will guess that this makes witches fairly dangerous. They have firepower on their side," Bookman stated, leaning back in his chair. Miles looked up, and her eyes were strangely empty.

"Sometimes, it ain't even the witches you need to worry about," Miles stated, taking a sip from her water bottle.


A/N: Yet another chapter. Sheesh, I'm on a roll this week, it seems. Twice in the same seven-day is pretty amazing, eh? Also, if you haven't noticed, I'm basing the chapter names off of famous books, and those should give hints as to the main focus of that chapter if you know anything about the reference being made. Obviously, the first chapter is straight off of a book about a man being transplanted to a different time and place. The second is a reference to 'Encounters of the Third Kind', referring to the sudden introduction of magic. I know. I'm a very, very big geek.

I appreciate the reviews, especially from Uniasus for his/her detailed account on all the discussion questions, and from karina001 for the humor and laughs she instilled when I read her response. I'll attempt to work on the things you've said, and maybe make things just that much better.

I have one new favoriteer to add to the Three Favoriteer's ranks! All hail EaglefootMoonflightVipertail (whoo, a mouthful)!

I have no new subscribers, but hey, sometimes that happens. Just gotta keep on rolling, I guess.

And now, las preguntas discursos: Do you like the idea of gangs teaming up with witches? What sorts of things can you see these characters doing in a mall (I may not take exactly from what you say, but it will certainly give me inspiration)? This chapter was fairly introspective - good or bad? This chapter is also longer than usual at about 7,000 words - is that too long? Do you enjoy switching between the points of view of different characters, or is it confusing? Who would you like to hear more from or about? What do you think the witches are planning? How much do you want to know about the magic of their current universe? Do you think its possible for the current characters to become magic-users?

Hopefully things get back on track and I'm on some sort of schedule, though that seems rather unlikely. For now, I'll attempt to keep it weekly.

Happy reading, and God bless!