The Thief Lords From Beneath

CHAPTER FIVE

Allen supposes that yes, perhaps this is really all his fault, perhaps Kanda is onto something when he'd just ignored the crazy man. There is a low rumbling echoing throughout the house and the former heir couldn't help but repeat every single curse his companion said through gritted teeth (if only in his mind).

This is a bad situation.

They would be facing extremely territorial squatters for sure, and by the sound of it their numbers aren't as small as he will have liked them to be. If you think about it though this is all Cross Marianne's fault— he wouldn't even be here if it isn't for him, and if he isn't here, then Kanda would have finished the heist with no problem. Although, he is probably just making excuses right now, and it isn't as if he can do anything about his existence in this situation.

"This is all your fucking fault," Kanda exclaims with passion. "I'm going to head up, you deal with this."

And Allen supposes that was fair… ish…

So Kanda leaves, rather quickly in fact. He just speeds up those stairs with gay abandon (those are the exact words that Allen thought, and it's not as if he is in the right mind to think of proper descriptions).

"Oh gods in heaven," the snow-haired boy breathes out when the door starts opening. The crazy man is laughing like a maniac, and he is pointing his right index finger at Allen, which to the former heir is rather annoying and disturbing at the same time.

"Prepare to die!"

'Oh hell, this bloke is their leader?' Allen thinks.

The door busts open, hinges popping out, and falls onto the floor. A flood of people storm in but surprisingly, Allen notes, there's only about twenty of them. Well that isn't so bad a number, he could fight them off.

"The rest have headed to the secret staircase to go after the one who went upstairs."

'Now how the hell did he manage to tell them to do that,' Allen thinks, briefly considering if there is some sort of code in that scream earlier that allowed him to do so, if so, maybe he had underestimated this maniac.

"I'm sorry, I have to do this," Allen says calmly. "If it's any comfort, I'll make sure not to kill any of you."

"You should be worrying about yourself!" crazy leader man exclaims, and it really is getting annoying, thinks Allen, so he doesn't opt to answer.

It is time to fend these people off, the only way he knows how. He is reluctantly thankful for Cross Marianne at this moment (even a bastard has his uses). The man taught him to do something that he thinks so few people would be able to manage. This is a skill that all people of Dorian were born with, but it is a skill which only became significantly powerful with very few. Now that he thinks about it, perhaps the Lord Heirs are some of those few, and the Thief Lords are those with most immense power. The King of Dorian, Earl Millennium, and all his heirs are also users of this art. An art all simply call magic, although really it wasn't something so simple. It is more than just sorcery; you use your own life force for this, and that makes it more complicated, dangerous, and powerful.

Closing his eyes, Allen slowly channels his energy into his right arm and breathes deeply. He doesn't notice the gapes filled with horror and curiosity on the faces of the people around him as his body glows green and his arm turns red and wrinkled. A cross appears on the back of his right hand, seemingly embedded. He abruptly increases the amount of force he channels onto his hand. It swells, no, grows into a giant claw that looks almost metallic if it isn't so obviously alive. It is shiny, shiny silver.

Slowly, his blue eyes open, and he strikes. It is like slapping, his actions, but his huge silver arm has force much more immense than the normal human hand. He knocks down the crowd of twenty easily; almost just in the blink of an eye, he shoves them to the walls, rendering them unconscious. Then he briskly turns to their leader, and grabs his thin frame with his magically enhanced arm.

"You!" The man exclaims, eyes wide, but his expression is surprisingly not tinged with fear.

"Uhm, Yes?" Allen says, in a polite tone despite the situation.

"You must be a god!" He replies, looking very serious about it

"Whatever makes you happy," the former heir replies, and then knocks the man unconscious.

"Tim? Did you get all that?" Allen turns around to say; the winged golden ball pops out from behind a bookshelf and does something akin to a nod. The snow-haired one grins and proceeds to make the life force distribution in his body equal again. "We should head up and look for Kanda."

……………………..

'The bean is a fucking moron,' thinks Kanda as he quietly stomps down a hallway. He is headed towards their target's alleged location and had left the so-called idiotic beansprout behind.

'This would have never happened if I went alone,' he thinks. 'Why the fucking hell would that damn sister-complex strategist let the stupid pathetic excuse for a Lord Heir along, it's…. it's bad strategy that's what it is.' Kanda stops abruptly when he realizes that the hallways, for some reason or other, are getting narrowing. 'Fucking hell, what now?'

Singing, he hears singing. It is a female voice; strange really, it is coming from up ahead. There isn't supposed to be anyone around. He makes a mental note to complain about the incompetence of the reconnaissance team sent. He walks forward advancing further into the hall that is beginning to feel endless. It is getting darker, which was disturbing considering the entire left side of the hall is covered with windows.

"The singing's getting louder."

He isn't scared, he is just getting into mission mode, and that often involves him announcing obvious facts to himself.

Two more doors down and he'll be where he needs to be. He takes a few strides and he's there. Not even bothering to be discreet about opening the door (because he guesses his presence was announced pretty blatantly by the mad man's scream), he pulls out his sword from its sheath, steps back and then charges to take down the door with an ax kick.

Cautiously, he enters the room. Weirdly, he finds that there is nothing there. Literally nothing at all, the walls and floor are painted brown but the coat is peeling to reveal the grey stone beneath it. Frustrated with the fact that he found nothing, Kanda huffs, but then decides to inspect the room anyway, it is, obviously, special. After scrutinizing the walls, he finds nothing. He steps out the room for a moment and inspects the hall.

The door he has just entered through is the final door in the hallway, but it extends further; he doubts this is just mere coincidence, and they just made the wall extra thick there to balance out the exterior design. So he reenters the room, and knocks on the left wall to find a hollow portion. It doesn't take long for him to find one, and makes himself an entrance; His kicks were really amazing sometimes.

He does enter another room, and to his surprise Toma is there. "Were you able to get the target?" he asks the lower thief nonchalantly, but Toma just stares at him with wide eyes.

There is something wrong with this picture.

Channeling his life force onto his sword, he turned around to find that an equally wide eyed bean is there, but something is even more wrong with that picture. The bean's scar, which everyone from the Order seemed to just try to ignore, is on the wrong side of his face.

"A mirror demon," he mutters and it almost sounds like a hiss.

Before he realizes it he's been thrown against a wall.

……………………..

And so, Allen Walker is not-so surprised to find himself lost.

"Any ideas, Tim?" he asks, trying not to sound desperate. The flying golden ball shakes himself from side to side as if to say "No." Allen looks disappointed.

He hears a crash. "Follow that sound Tim!" he shouts, Timcampy obliges and heads to his left.

It turns out that he isn't so far from where he is supposed to be going. He is just two hallways off. Eerily, this hallway is darker than the other hallways he's passed by. The fact is made even more strange by how this hallway had windows lined all through the left wall. He heads down, walking as briskly as he can, and stops before the door which had been torn down. Kanda's work no doubt. He enters to find a hole in a wall, and thinks that yes, the swordsman had been here. He carefully makes his way to the next room and is not pleasantly surprised to find that Kanda has been pinned to the wall by some sort of demon and is bleeding profusely.

"Holy shit!" Allen exclaims, and prayed to all the gods that Kanda is not—

"Your friend's dead, he is," the demon says calmly, and the former heir can't help but be freaked out by this.

'Fucking hell, the damn fucking demon's talking,' he thinks, while briskly channeling lots of life force to his arm again. Not even a second later it's back to its silver form.

"And you're next." The demon charges and Allen shields himself with his arm. He dares a glance at Kanda, whose hair tie has gone loose, and whose long raven hair is covering his bloodied face. The man sits limp against the wall, and doesn't really look like he was breathing.

'Shit, well this mission is sucking beyond anything I ever imagined.'

He hasn't fought that many demons before; they aren't exactly uncommon in Dorian, but living in a Royal Palace and living in the red light district (yes, that's where he and Cross lived) never really gave you many opportunities to come across a demon.

Suddenly Allen hears a girl singing, very peculiar. He gets distracted, and the demon manages to destroy his protective stance. He doesn't even get to scream a curse when the demon's claw descends on him. The pain he expects never comes however, and when he looks up to see what had happened Kanda is there, blocking the swipe with his sword.

"Kanda! You're alive!" Allen exclaims, sounding relieved.

"Shut up!" Kanda replies uncaringly.

The demon looks surprised, or at least, Allen gathers that's what the expression is.

"But you were dead," the monster says, and now, the snow-haired boy thinks, the expression is in fact confusion.

"I won't die yet you fucking bastard," he exerts forward force and the demon falls back. "I've got things to do, a person to see."

Briefly, Allen wonders if the mistake in the expression is intentional, but lets it go in favor of attacking the demon. Said monster slams into the wall on the far end of the room.

"What the fuck were you doing, bean?" Kanda screams and Allen knows right away that the man's referring to him getting distracted.

He grins. "And you said you wouldn't protect me no matter what."

"Shut the fuck up."

Ok, so he was in a bad mood, and teasing was probably up there among the worst things Allen could do at the moment.

The swordsman charges, and Allen follows closely behind him; they both deliver the final blow.

"Hnh, over even before it started," Allen remarks, looking smug.

Kanda rolls his eyes.

The snow-haired boy grins again before turning serious and saying. "I heard singing, where do you suppose that came from?"

"I was thinking it came from here, but I wasn't able to come across anything except for some illusions and that demon," he gestures towards the fallen monster with his head.

"Do you suppose she's the target?"

"How can she be the target? We're not kidnappers you stupid—" he stops ranting abruptly, Allen raises an eyebrow. "Unless there's magic involved," he says and then he slaps his forehead, he will really make it a point to complain about the incompetence of the recon team.

"How do we get to her? Err… It?"

"Use your senses."

"My senses?"

"Fish out where magic's being used, she'll be there."

Allen knows how to do that easily, this is however something Cross Marianne didn't teach him. He moves his life force from his arm to his scarred eye. It flares up—sort of, not really, nevertheless…

"Holy shit," Kanda exclaims. "What the fucking hell is going on with your eye?"

…………………….

A/N: Lots of cursing for this chapter felt it was appropriate given their situation and given that Allen lived in the red light district for a while, and Kanda has been a thief for a quite while. Usually I get lazy when writing fic and skip a lot of parts, this is the first time I'm going through a lot of details. I fear that I might get frustrated with my own slow pacing, haha. This chapter is actually up later than I'd wanted it to be up because I was in Hong Kong last week with my family and was therefore laptop-less. Next chapter will be up in a few days (hopefully), but until then, I hope you enjoyed this one (:

BTW: I have a beta for this story now! Thanks much to my dear friend Ame Mika'zuki for agreeing to be this story's beta. BUUUT our system is I post the chapter first THEN she edits : So by the time that you guys see this chap, it might still be hot off the fingertips.