Woah! I can't believe I made it to chapter 8! I didn't know I actually had a story in me. Thanks so much for your reviews again, that was the most I've ever gotten before! Oh, to help myself (and the plot) I've decided to add dreams/ memories of the past at the beginning of each chapter! Oh, and there's a tiny bit of comedy flung here and there. Without further ado, here is the conclusion on lost. (Sorry I had to.)
Disclaimer: Me no own -man. (with my amazing grammar, aren't you glad you read my story?)
/"Allen I'll be back shortly. I just have to return to town to get some food for tonight's dinner. Wouldn't want to look bad in front of your uncle, now would I?" Mana smiled and patted the child on his white hair.
Allen looked sad and disappointed at the mention of the soon-to-be absence of his foster father, but nodded and waved goodbye. "See you soon, Mana…"
His silvery eyes traced back to his also-tall uncle, Neah. Allen's uncle had been sitting at a piano when they arrived, and he seemed to be very caught up in the song that was resounding from his tan fingertips.
Neah turned his head at the sound of the shutting door and realized that the small strangely-colored- hair boy, was standing next to the empty exit, his right hand fidgeting with his left sleeve, attempting to bring it down further over his holey glove.
"Boy, your name is Allen, right? Mana's kid?" Neah stopped playing completely, attempting to make light conversation with the uncomfortable looking kid.
"N-no, not really. Mana, adopted me a couple of months ago…" He eyed his left glove.
Neah had been introduced to Allen before his brother had left on his errand, and Mana had explained to Neah about Allen's deformed arm. Neah took the news without any fear, or distaste, which was more than the young boy could've hoped for.
The adult ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair. "Kid- Allen- you should really stop playing around with that arm of yours; it'll only draw attention it you know." His light tone kept Allen feeling barely self-conscious at all. But even though he made Allen feel slightly better, the young boy still drew his arm into his chest, cradling it with his other.
With a heavy sigh in a mock air of defeat, Allen's dark haired Uncle motioned with a point of a finger, for Allen to sit next to him at the long, white piano. A smile erupted on the pale boy's face as he nearly skipped over to the bench and sat down with his gray eyes inspecting every black and white note on the instrument.
Neah smiled in mild amusement at the kid's eagerness. "Here, I'll teach you how to play a song."/
xX-Xx-xX-Xx-xX-Xx-xX-Xx
"Where do I put these?" Allen held up a tray of empty tubes with labels over the top, his right hand carefully balancing them.
The man working with Allen- if you could call him working with, seeing as he only watched to make sure the young teen did everything right- slightly nodded his head.
His bright blond hair was seamlessly braided down his back while his bangs shortened drastically on the forehead, revealing two small circular tattoos. His face was a void of emotion. "Down the hall, take a left, in the first door on your right. Put them on the table."
The working boy decided to skip rolling his eyes this time, as sarcasm or attitude of any sort was lost on his viewer, and walked down the short hallway, the other man following closely behind.
When he reached the specified room, he stood in front of it without moving. The idle teen looked back to see the other man still emotionless, well perhaps a little impatience was showing. Allen looked faintly embarrassed as he gestured to his bandaged arm. "Um, could you open the door for me please?"
Without any hesitation or a pause, the braided worker stepped up to the door and held it open for the disabled boy. Allen walked in with small thanks, and looked inside the dusty room.
He set the tray of cylinders on the only table that sat alone in the back corner. Once the pair of workers left the quiet room, Allen's hunger finally came back.
The hungry boy stared at his stomach in utter disbelief at the monstrous sound that resonated from his belly. His fellow 'worker' also stared, his eyes threatening to leap out of their sockets.
"… I think you're dying!" The dotted-forehead man nearly shouted, pointing his index finger at Allen's loud stomach.
After the hungry boy stopped laughing, Allen clutched the noise making body part dramatically and moaned. "I'm sooo hungry! Where is the food?"
The watcher stood and watched the pitiful boy walk hopelessly around for the cafeteria section of the large hospital. But after about five minutes without a word spoken, the older male lightly grabbed Allen's shoulder, though he didn't notice the flinch that resulted, and guided him down a few turns in the opposite direction.
Allen's eyes widened at what he saw. The hospital's cafeteria was full of patients and family members because it was lunch, though it wasn't too far off from the one at his school, minus all the giggling high school girls and hot shot boys. But the thing that caught his eye was the large pile of food waiting on a table with a smiling Dr. Bak who was spreading his arms protectively around the mountain of munchies.
"Allen! Over here!" The blond cupped a hand around his mouth to amplify the shouting.
The summoned boy ran over to the food with his mouth watering. "Dr. Bak, um, what's with all of the food here?"
Bak just smiled and laughed. "Your…Well, I don't know who he was, but the one who checked you in, told me to give you a lot of food. So I did!" He gestured proudly to the stacks of delicious food. Some of the other patients in the room stopped what they were doing to look up and down the tower, eyes wide and appetites lost.
'Thanks, Komui.' Allen silently praised the man with a slight intonation of guilt from earlier.
Without asking for anymore confirmation that the food was in fact for him, Allen dove into the food, and finished everything in humanly impossible speed, even with his injuries. Jaws dropped, Bak laughed, and Allen wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"Mmm, that was delectable!" (AN: For some reason that was one of my favorite lines in the English Dub.)
"Link, you seem frozen, are you okay? Perhaps you're trying the experimental cryogenics pills?" Bak mocked the blond, making Allen look up from his daze.
"Your name is Link?" He quietly questioned the man.
The man apparently named Link closed his gaping mouth and recomposed himself. "Yes, if you must know, my name is Howard Link." Allen nodded as if taking mental notes for the next three months of working.
Suddenly, breaking the slightly uncomfortable silence, Bak checks his wrist watch and frowned.
"Well Allen, it's been nice but we need to get back to work! Follow me and I'll show you to the staff room." The doctor instructed the fed teen after motioning another worker from the kitchen to take Allen's monstrous disaster of dirty plates and bowls.
As it conveniently turned out, the staff room was actually only a few strides down the hall from the packed cafeteria. A large plaque dominated the upper center of the white door, stating bluntly that only workers could enter.
Allen, followed by Link of course, tailed Bak as he turned the handle and stepped into the unsurprisingly bright and rather large room.
The blond doctor continued further in the room, determined to get somewhere. Though, where, was beyond Allen. "Um, excuse me, Dr. Bak? Where are you going?"
The mentioned man turned around and actually seemed to be surprised to see the other two. "What? You're still following me? Oh, well, I don't know. Do something productive! I have a patient to check up on now!" With that, the doctor left behind Allen (and Link) behind, staring aimlessly at the opposing door that Bak had just escaped through.
Link had apparently noticed the shorter teen's lost-puppy aura, because he spoke up for a rare moment. "Perhaps you could-"Unfortunately, or not, the stalker was interrupted by a fairly rude and threatening voice.
"Moyashi? What the hell are you doing here?" Allen's face paled.
'What in the name of mitarashi dango is he doing here?' The white faced boy allowed a hint of a glare to intrude on his glance to Kanda. "K-kanda! What are you doing here at the hospital?"
"Che. Baka moyashi, are you blind or just stupid? I work here. See the badge." He grudgingly pointed a perfectly sharpened nail to his tag and badge that had Yu Kanda printed over it. He was scowling in the picture of course. Allen subconsciously noticed that it also read intern.
"You're an intern here? Wow, I never imagined that the great Yu Kanda would work actually helping people." Allen menacingly joked, forgetting about the after effects it would take on the short-tempered victim of it.
Without warning, the long haired Japanese boy had a fist poised in front of his face. "Moyashi I swear if you ever call me by my first name again, I will gladly murder you with a dull butter knife."
However life-threatening the threat did in fact sound, it was mostly wasted on the white haired boy, as he was used to that and much, much more from Cross. But he still cowered a little. Allen couldn't stand when people got angry, especially when they were angry at him.
"S-sorry Kanda..." Allen mumbled.
"Che. What happened to your arm?" It would be lying to say he sounded concerned, but Kanda didn't look as furious as he usually did.
Allen, seeming to have forgotten about his injuries for the moment looked down at his bandaged arm held in place by the sling. He scratched the back of his head with his good hand and looked back up with a bashful look on his face. "I, uh, tripped..."
Wow. Was he even being serious? Kanda had more than half a mind to break the kid's other arm. But, being the stuck-up and overly-stubborn person he was, he just left with an intensifying glare and yet another grunt.
"Moyashi you must have memory loss as well as blindness, I asked earlier what the hell are you doing here?" His tone gave off the impression that he was about to snap at any moment if nonsense was shown.
"Um, my arm, remember?" He nodded at his broken arm.
"Then why are you in the staff room?"
"I, uh, work…here… for the next few months I will be working here…" Allen didn't really see much harm in telling Kanda that he worked in the hospital, as long as he didn't know the reason why
Kanda, of course, didn't care either way. At least, that's what his hostile glare told Allen, but really, the angry teen had a few more remaining questions for the observably lying boy.
With a frustrated sigh, Kanda swiftly strode to a small table in the corner of the large room, and opened a draw. When he returned to Allen he flung a workers/volunteer badge at his head. Allen, not being very coordinated, especially in his healing state, fumbled around a bit to actually grab hold of the object that had gotten stuck on his sweater's hood.
An admiring look took its place over Allen's scarred face, as he looked down at the badge. "Thank you Kanda. I wasn't aware I needed a badge." Allen looked expectantly at Link, who, by the way, was still walking around after the new worker everywhere. Honestly, he got paid for this?
Link just stared back at Allen, his eyes seeming to bore into his very soul. The young teen cleared his throat as if to say we're moving on, and proceed to clip the badge onto his shirt.
Suddenly a loud explosion was heard from down the hall. In the cafeteria to be exact.
Allen, skirted by a certain blonde hair-braided man, ran towards the defining BOOM.
There was a thick, heavy-scented, smoke that layered the food area, and multitudes of people were running out, their hands covering their mouths as they fled. Allen however, was intrigued by all of the noise, and saw it his place as a worker to investigate the curious noises and smells, all of which seemed to emanate from the kitchen.
"Good Lord! It's on fire! Fire! Fire! But it smells so goood~! "A rather, feminine sounding man screamed from inside the even farther smoke-filled kitchen.
Allen, fearing the person might be in some sort of danger (and the smell of food was always welcome) ran nose first, into the hazy cooking room.
What he saw confused him. He didn't know whether he should be delighted to see such a large cake that made his already-fed mouth water, or if he should be horrified, seeing as it was indeed on fire. Allen chose to go with the latter and ran to assist the unusually dressed… male…
"Are you alright, sir?" Allen yelled, gaining the attention of the chef who had oddly light purple hair, and pink ties around it.
A giant smile spread on the cook's face as he caught sight of Allen, a cute little teen wandering into his kitchen, heroically calling for help. "Well, hellooo! I am mighty fine, and how are you little munchkin? What happened to your arm there?"
Allen stopped in his tracks. 'Little munchkin? What is he talking about? Does he not see the fire? Or the smoke?'
Even if the cook had apparently forgotten about his burning masterpiece, the fire-hazard sprinklers hadn't. For they had just started to spray their frigid water all throughout the opaque room and onto the three members of the hospital that stood in the middle of it.
As the small fire on top of the large cake died down, the sopping wet teen looked over at the smiling chef's face, which was still smiling.
"Um… Why was the cake on fire? And why is it so big anyways?" Allen curiously asked, hoping that the answer was good considering all of the damage. Not that the small fire itself caused much harm, but the water would take a good few days to thoroughly get rid of.
"Oh, well I was experimenting on a few layouts of the cake- it's a birthday cake- and apparently you shouldn't light fireworks over the top. I tried to warn Bak, I did, but that face he was giving me when he requested it, I wouldn't be able to refuse it even if I had the nerves of that mean Kanda."
Allen was now even more curious than before he had asked the question. "Birthday? Who's birthday?" He doubted he would know anyone's name at the hospital, but he asked none-the-less.
"Well it's for this little sweety boy, who dropped into a coma years ago. Actually he's a friend of Kanda's I believe! His name's Alma I believe! Alma Karma! In fact, I think that little boy's the reason Kanda works here at the hospital! To keep Alma company! Is that just the sweetest! "The excited man loudly expressed to his guests.
To say Allen was shocked was a little understated, but he nodded and continued with his questions. "So, um, why was Dr. Bak helping? I mean, they do work together, but to bring a cake to a patient, especially such a large cake." He eyed the towering pastry up and down, taking note of some cursive writing at the top that had 'Alma Karma' and the date December 6th.
"Oh, well you see, Bak has been a personal friend and even helped raise Kanda and Alma! He's is just the greatest!" His enthusiasm never waned as he continuously raved about all of Bak's endless good deeds for the boys.
'Poor Kanda… No wander he's such a pain, he's had it considerably rough…'
Allen then refocused on the cook, whose name happened to be Jerry, and concentrated on the one-sided conversation, which had somewhere along the way turned to how you prepare the perfect cake.
After about ten minutes of mindless talking, the injured worker excused himself to tidying up the water filled room.
xX-Xx-xX-Xx-xX-Xx-xX-Xx
When Allen and Link left the staff lounge, Kanda was, much to his delight, alone.
The Japanese teen wandered over to a wall where a light green nature calendar loosely hung from a nail the stuck out of the side. He probed the dates until his fingers reached the sixth day of December. A frown deepened on his face as he slowly crossed off the boxed number with a marker that had been left.
After placing the red marker down on the table underneath the calendar, he sighed and paced the room. He hated breaks. It always let his mind wander to places he rather left unexplored.
Still undecided on what he would do to expand over the remaining time he had to fill in the long drawn out break, Kanda decided to make coffee, even though he doubted he would end up drinking any.
As he neared the small kitchen-like corner of the room that held a miny three-foot-tall fridge, a microwave, and the coffee make,r he noticed quiet talking coming from behind a door that had been left slightly ajar. Being Kanda, he leaned in and listened.
"We need to get him now. Soon will not cut it anymore! When he leaves in a few months, who knows when we will see the boy again! He will disappear and we will be stuck looking for him again!" Kanda was even more drawn into the conversation now. Just who were they talking about? Why were they looking for him?
"I know, my apologies, sir. Shall we start tonight perhaps?" The eavesdropper paused. He knew that voice. That was Dr. Bak. He leaned further in until he stopped, fearing he would be seen.
"Yes. Tonight we will start. I will make sure of it, because apparently you are incapable of doing so." Kanda caught a glimpse of the other man, who appeared to be further up in the years and had a minuscule mustache pressing at his top lip. He couldn't help but feel like he'd seen the elder man before.
"Should I bring the boy to the assigned room at say seven O'clock?" The other man responded with a nod.
"Mr, Rouvelier, tonight Allen Walker will be subdued."
And there you have it! Ohhh ominous! (I hope). Okay so I would like to thank aaalll of you who reviewed! You guys totally rock! Oh and just a fun little side note: I was sooo lucky that Alma's actual birthday was in December! I had first planned to just make it some sort of day to remember him on, but I googled it (gotta love google) and to my luck, his birthday was in December! I'm so lucky! Heh. Sorry I got carried away… Anyways! Review! Please! I do my part and update, and you do your part and review! Just think about it, I write thousands of words, and you only have to write somewhere under 50! It's fair to you guys!