Ok, so I know I said I wasn't going to upload in France, but inspiration struck me, and I've been writing a little bit each night before I go to bed, and I had plenty of spare time in the airports. After this, all the chapters will have been written entirely in France. They'll probably be pretty sporadic, but.. yeah. Here it is!
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The whole scene was rather familiar. Well, to Allen, at least. The same thing had happened to him with the persnickety gatekeeper. Had it not been so serious, he might have laughed at the comedy of errors unfolding before him.
"For the last time, I'm still partly human. Just because I'm of mixed race doesn't mean that you can't let me in." It was obvious that Minuet was not happy with the hypochondriac gatekeeper, but she was trying to deal with is as an ambassador, which is precisely what she was. The gatekeeper, however, was not being at all cooperative.
"But I can only allow humans inside! If I can't get a good reading on you, how can I be sure you're not an akuma?!" Allen sighed as he listened, wondering why Komui didn't intervene. But, knowing that sister-obsessed scientist, he was either asleep, or building another Komurin. The exorcist sincerely hoped it wasn't the latter.
"I give you my word as a namer, that I am not an akuma." The terse words were hissed between teeth clenched in anger. This was not what Min had been expecting when she agreed to come to the headquarters of the Dark Religious Organization. Not. At. All.
"But how am I supposed to know you're telling the truth?" Uh oh. That did it. The gatekeeper had no idea the kind of floodgates of anger he had just opened.
"You dare insinuate that a namer, a keeper of lore and a person sworn to speak only the absolute truth as they see it, would tell such a blatant, and obvious lie, simply to gain access to a place that, in all honesty, I could probably sneak into anyway?" her cold demeanor interlaced with scathing words had sufficiently cowed the gatekeeper, but another person, less easily intimidated, had already begun an attack.
"Kanda!" Allen cried out as his fellow exorcist descended seemingly from nowhere. "Stop! She's a friend!"
Minuet was not going to wait for the attacker, Kanda, to heed his friend's words, but instead drew Tysterisk, and easily blocked his sword. "I am not an enemy."
"We can't be sure you're not an akuma. We'll see when I split you open." Allen grimaced when he heard a line almost verbatim of what he'd heard when he first arrived.
"That will prove to be a tougher task than you think, kid. I've got decades on you, at least." With that, she began her attack, calling on the wind to push the samurai off balance as she moved in. A single tap near the hilt in precisely the right place, and the sword went flying. Before he could react, Min grabbed his hand, and twisted him to lie prone on the ground. She then sat down on his back, pinning him to the stone with her own weight, and keeping painful, but not harmful tension on his arm. "Are you done yet? Or do I have to break your arm?"
Suddenly, the door opened and a pretty girl with pigtails came out carrying a clipboard. "Kanda! Don't attack our geusts! Come on. You've been cleared to enter. Sorry about that." With that, she turned and let the exorcists enter the building. "When she lets you up, you better not attack her." The samurai's response to this was simply 'che'.
Once Min deemed it safe to let go of her attacker, she stood, and offered him a hand up. "Kanda, was it? No hard feelings. I'd have done the same thing if someone were giving grief to the guards at my home."
"I don't need your help." No apology, just a grudging nod of respect. He had never seen anyone so fast, and he had no idea how he had ended up off balance, but he knew when he had been beaten. Min had seen such pride in others, and knew not to be offended. The namer knew that this was all the recognition she'd get. Maybe a proposition to spar later. Maybe.
"Come on, you two, or you'll get locked outside again!" Linalee called out from inside, and the two walked briskly into the building. Min had never seen anything like it. It rivaled the genius of Gwylliam's architecture in the Cauldron, and the technology needed to construct such was far beyond anything she had seen. Perhaps in this world, there would be something to help her discern the host of the F'dor from the rest of the population. Who knows? All she could do was pray to Mithras, and hope for the best.