Hey everyone! I'm back with chapter 2! Yayyy. Honestly, I didn't think I'd go through with this chapter. I thought it would be like every other story, discarded and left to rot in that larger-than-my-tv-pile... but it didn't! Or, well, not yet at least. Anyway, here's the next chapter! Hope you enjoy-

Also, something I forgot to add in Chapter 1: I don't own any of the D. Gray-Man characters. (*Cries*)

Chapter 2: Taken

Cross was in ecstasy. No, pleasure. And that was quite a feat, unless he was doing someone. The mere thought of his idiot apprentice's face as he walked away caused him to cackle unnecessarily loudly.

He was so, so satisfied.

Now, the only thing left to do was find another bar in another street, get down with another lady, and get drunk with another bottle of good wine.

But where would be a good place to drink, he wondered, swaggering down the road as he searched left and right for a decent bar.

As he stalked down the street, black leather shoes stomping the ground slowly and echoing through the quiet road, Cross somehow had a bad feeling churning in his stomach. It had started when he left his brat and the lovely Lenalee to fend for themselves, but he supposed it might have been the food he ate just before their little brawl.

But still, something was nagging him in the back of his mind...

Ah, well. What did it matter, Cross snickered, because he was sure that the brat didn't need him anyway. Besides, he thought, stopping in front of a brightly lit bar, he didn't care.

But twenty minutes later, when he was most definitely drunk and most definitely about to get down with three fine women, a loud banging was heard from the outside. When no one answered it, the banging resumed. But this time, loud enough to scare the daylights out of the girls and desperate enough to call the bartender over.

Upon opening the wooden door, gasps erupted from the women, and there stood the person General Cross least wanted to see.

"Allen Walker, my idiot apprentice."

He did a double take, and it was painfully obvious that the kid was in bad shape. Clutching the wall breathless and wounded, bleeding on both shoulders and cuts and bruises everywhere. His hair was a disheveled mess, bits of concrete tumbling down from his white locks to fall onto his uniform. Or at least, the half of it that was left. What was exposed instead were two gushing wounds, too large to be from his gunshots.

Akuma.

But despite knowing what must have happened, Cross took his cigar out of his mouth, blew smoke across the room, and asked.

"What the hell happened to you?"

It was best to know the full story first, after all.

He saw more than heard Allen take a ragged deep breath. "Level 4," He started, only to cough out a few drops of blood.

He took another breath, and tried again. "Too strong. Took... Lenalee."

Cross stood up immediately, shoving the girls off and realizing how dangerous the situation was. He didn't care about the brat, nor even the girl, but from what he knows there's a chance she has the Heart, and no fucking way are the devils getting their hands on that. Briskly, he took the bloodied wrist of his pupil and walked out the door, ignoring the cries of the unpaid bartender and pulling out his gun.

"Where to?"

Allen struggled to keep up with the bleeding wounds on leg and arm, breath coming in heavy pants and gasps for air.

"Don't... know." He stated clearly and calmly, though Cross could see his panicking heart beneath that calm exterior. He stumbled across a gap in the gravel, nearly tripped, when Cross gripped his wrist tighter and pulled him close. "Get yourself together, damn brat. Women don't like men who can't do shit."

At this Allen blushed beet red and retorted, "How do you know? All the women you've been with were hardly any decent!" He huffed, staggering again after stepping on another rock.

Cross ignored his comment, though it was true. Well, for most women, at least. "Anyway, you better tell me where we're supposed to be headed, and it better be where I'm headed. Because if I'm wrong and have wasted all those young ladies back there along with my precious time and money-"

"You didn't pay," Allen remarked, but Cross continued talking without missing a beat.

"-then you're going to go through hell," he spat, because he was most definitely not in the mood for this right now. But the heart was the heart, and he had a job to do.

He turned a sharp left and then another right, uncaring whether his apprentice was behind or not. Other than the occasional "Hurry up!" he didn't even make a peep, and neither did Allen.

Eventually they came to a stop at a dead end, brick walls blocking a path that Allen supposed should've been there, and finally spoke his mind.

"What are we doing here?"

Cross again ignored his apprentice, commanding, "Open the gate."

Allen raised an eyebrow, skeptical. "Open the gate?"

His master grit his teeth. "Just do it, you damn brat, unless you don't want to get that girl back."

"But I don't see where-"

"Just do it!" He yelled, scaring the wits out of the boy.

"... fine," He finally grumbled, mumbling insults the general didn't quite catch.

"What did you say?" He threatened, and Allen quickly covered up his "mistake".

"Nothing, master," he said politely, forcing a smile, and obeyed his order.

A white, rectangle-like shape began to appear as Allen replayed the song in his mind, piano keys playing its soft tune as the lyrics unfolded with his voice. Naturally, Cross couldn't hear a thing, but knew that his apprentice needed a moment of silence to concentrate, and kept his mouth shut.

A minute passed.

"There," he finally said.

Cross nodded, then stepped through, but not before grabbing the boys wrist again and leading him through the sterling white city.

"Do you even know where we're going?"

"Just shut your damn trap, boy, and follow me."

Allen sighed, saving his breath for when he needed it. The wounds in his torso were getting worse, and the pain of the blood loss was getting to him, head slightly dizzy already.

He had to keep up though, and he wouldn't let something as small as this stop him from preventing another friend's death. Because what kind of person would he be to let Lenalee get hurt? What would Komui say? And what if -

He stopped his train of thought. Allen didn't want to imagine it.

As Cross lead him through a seemingly random door, the white-haired exorcist found himself in a room with a deep black ocean that seemed to stretch endlessly. Connecting with the horizon was a white sky with just as much clarity as the strange floor below. As they stepped onto the pitch-black water, Allen expected to fall and drown, but he did not. Instead, his foot found somewhat solid ground to step on, ripples making tiny waves.

"Was this room always here?" He wondered aloud.

"No, it's a shortcut," Cross replied, and marched on.

Time seemed to pass by forever, and still the two weren't anywhere nearer to wherever Cross was leading Allen. He began to doubt his master knew what he was doing, and stopped.

"We're lost, aren't we?"

Cross turned back to the boy. "No, we're not," he replied. "Now quit your whining."

But Cross didn't resume walking.

Allen sighed, disappointed. "Yup, we're lost."

It certainly was different from the usual, wherein he gets lost and Cross does not. But the Ark was Allen's territory, and nobody knew it better than him.

Well, he still didn't know everything about it.

Anyway.

Allen opened another gate within the ark itself, a glowing doorway appearing before. He and his master stepped through it, landing back in the large city.

"Can you please tell me where we're going, master? Most of the doors here lead to locations I've been to before. Others lead to random rooms, the contents of which I don't remember."

Cross clicked his tongue. "Where's the order?"

Allen raised an eyebrow, but pointed to the door on the left.

"Good," Cross said, then pushed him through it.