Cross My Heart
Author's Note: Hi! Sorry it took so long to update. Life kind of got in the way last week. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving holidays! I get nine days to pig out, sleep late, and write! If only it truly turned out that way...
Anyway, thanks to those that reviewed, and sorry last chapter was so crappy. I say crappy because I absolutely loathe "filler" chapters no matter how necessary they are.
Disclaimer: Chloe and Charlotte and the plot are mine. Everything else is definitely not mine.
Chapter 11: Aderlangriff
"Red" was the only word that could truly describe the desolate landscape surrounding the exorcists. Why red? Red because of the blood staining the one fertile ground; red because of the broken bodies scattered over remains of a once peaceful town; red because of the blazing crimson sun rising in the East. Blood had been spilt over the land like never before.
None of the dead had been slain by an akuma. There would have been ashes in place of bodies had that been the case. No, someone or a group of someone's had methodically gone through the innocent city and taken the life of every individual they met—men, women, and children, old and young alike.
The war-weary exorcists could only stare in muted horror at the scene of mass carnage. The suspects were select in number but deadly in battle: the Noah clan. Encounters with members of this lethal family had left a great number of exorcists, finders, and other comrades alike, dead or severely wounded. The Noah possessed inhuman strength and abilities, and only a few of these fatal individuals had been clearly identified by the Order. The Grand Generals now wished to change that status.
"Do you think it was Tyki Mikk?" Lenalee asked as she knelt down beside one of the corpses.
"No. Tyki Mikk's usual method is death by hemorrhage," Lavi replied from his place next to another body.
"I doubt it was Road. Even she's not this grotesque with her mutilation," Allen stated while prodding the corpse of a man slumping back against a broken brick wall.
The body keeled over at the white-crowned exorcist's touch with the torso flopping in one direction as the legs went the other. Allen took a step away from the corpse and walked behind the wall it had been leaning against. Lenalee and Lavi cringed when they heard the sounds of retching coming from the spot a moment later. Even Link grimaced as Allen stumbled back into view more pale than before, and the Junior Inspector opened his mouth to inquire the British exorcist about his health when the wireless golem let out a loud squeal.
"Allen Walker, Lenalee Lee, Lavi, and Inspector Link, report to the nearest Ark gate immediately!"
The voice was unfamiliar to the group.
"What's wrong?" Link asked.
"Generals Tiedoll and Bellerose's group was ambushed by akuma. They called for reinforcements."
"A couple of akuma aren't too hard to take care of," Lavi stated.
"Supervisor Komui insists that you all report to the gate, immediately!"
Allen had already summoned the gate before Link could say anything, and the group hurried into the Ark without a word.
"Which door?" Lenalee asked the golem floating beside her head.
"Thirty-three."
The correctly numbered door was thrown open without further adieu, and the three exorcists leapt through the space with their Innocence already activated.
Blood…death…gore…it was everywhere. The walls, the ground, even the sky seemed to be tainted with crimson. The large cloud of death machines floating above the destroyed town did nothing to dispel the notion either.
Among the bullets and other dark matter raining from the bleak heavens, a small knot of fighters held their ground against the large army. One fought with threads; another with "art"; a third with a sword; two with ominous powers; and the last fought with a long stick. (Where she had gotten the stick, no one knew.) The "art" and the threads took on the akuma floating above the group's heads, and the sword, stick, and akuma-esque abilities took on the remaining killing machines on the ground.
The fighters were very strong. They had impressive endurance as well. They had been battling the akuma for a solid hour without showing any outward signs of exhaustion. However, humans and half-humans alike could not avoid fatigue forever. Even after four more combatants joined into the battle, the original six still took on more enemies despite having fought for longer. It was a foolhardy measure that was going to hurt them in the future…if they lasted long enough to see it anyway.
"Mind if I join in the fun, Tyki?"
Tyki frowned while turning to the red-haired woman standing at his side.
"What are you doing here, Charlotte? You're supposed to be helping Road."
"We finished her homework hours ago," the red head stated.
"Then why are you here?"
Charlotte let out a sigh and glanced over at her fellow Noah.
"Do you not want me to be here, Tyki Mikk?" she asked.
"No, it's just…" Tyki trailed off with a scowl. "Never mind."
"I already knew that she was here, if that's what you're wondering," Charlotte stated a second later.
"Then why did you come? I thought—,"
Charlotte raised her hand to stop Tyki from continuing.
"The Order did a lot of things to a lot of innocent people that it needs to pay for, starting with the project that made Chloe and me into what we are now," the red head said after a few moments. "The higher-ups thought that they had gotten rid of all the evidence of their heinous experiments, and I'm going to show them that such is not the case."
Tyki turned back to the battlefield. His gold eyes easily picked out a certain red-haired girl, and he watched as she fought the akuma.
"What are you planning on doing?" Tyki finally asked while facing Charlotte once more.
The red-haired woman let out a soft chuckle and smirked up at the Noah of pleasure.
"Something those exorcists are never going to forget."
There was no end to the akumas.
Kanda cursed as he slashed a level 2. The world spun in front of his eyes, and the left side of his chest ached abominably. His body was demanding rest, but there was no time. There were akuma to kill.
He raised Mugen as a level 3 sped towards him, and he readied himself for the inevitable clash when the akuma just suddenly…stopped.
"Well, if it isn't the pretty samurai from the Ark. Last time I saw you, I didn't think you were going to make it."
Kanda's eyes widened as his grip on Mugen tightened. He knew that voice.
"Looks like Chloe fixed you up really well, Mr. Samurai. I wonder how she did too. We were only taught how to take life, not restore it."
His heart pounded wildly in his chest. Not from fear; not from anger. No…it was something darker, much more primal than that. His senses were screaming for him to move, to do anything to get away from the fatal entity lurking behind him. Kanda's body, however, betrayed him and remained rooted in place.
"Mr. Samurai, you were one of the Order's experiments, weren't you?"
The voice was so close now. Kanda silently cursed and willed his body to move, but to no avail.
"Did you know there were experiments that ultimately led to the conclusions that created you, Mr. Samurai?"
Move…move…move, damn it!
"Before the Order even thought of making the 'second exorcists,' they tried to create the ultimate anti-akuma human weapon."
A cool hand brushed Kanda's shoulder as the red-haired woman he had tried so hard to forget appeared in front of him.
"Many innocent children died before the project succeeded. The products of the scientists' research were so foul that those working on the project were immediately fired, and the things that they had created were locked away. The things were supposed to be dealt with, but, ironically enough, the executioner too pity on the poor souls and took them away instead."
"Why are you telling me this?" Kanda whispered as he stared into the Noah's cruel gold eyes.
The woman smiled and leaned in towards his ear.
"Because I'm going to awaken the very thing the Order tried to destroy all those years ago."
Kanda saw the Noah glance over her shoulder and followed her gaze. She was staring straight at—
"Yes. It's time for her true nature to wake, so don't you try to stop me, Mr. Samurai," the woman said while turning her back to the Japanese exorcist.
The Noah slowly brought her hands together in front of her face and began to chant. A faint glow surrounded her body, and the air grew heavy with each word she uttered. Kanda had no idea what the Noah had in mind, but he wasn't about to find out either.
"Bellerose, get the hell out of here!"
The tension that had seeped into the air suddenly disappeared, and Chloe immediately whipped around at Kanda's warning. The red-haired exorcist's eyes widened when she saw the Noah standing in front of Kanda, and she attempted to run towards him before a wall of akuma surrounded her once again. The Noah slowly turned around and glared up at Kanda.
"I thought I told you not to stop me, Mr. Samurai," she said while lowering her hands to her sides. "You must be punished."
The pain hit Kanda before he even realized that he had been struck. It hurt so badly that he couldn't even scream. The ground rushed up to meet Kanda moments later, and darkness clouded his vision as blood poured from his body.
"KANDA!"
Get away…Bellerose…the Japanese exorcist thought as the red-haired girl sprinted towards him.
The last thing Kanda saw as consciousness slipped away from him was the Noah's vicious smile.
"KANDA!"
Chloe's panicked shout gained the other exorcists' attention, and they stopped fighting for a single second as Kanda fell to the ground in a bloody heap. Anger immediately gripped the Innocence-wielders. They began destroying akumas left and right in order to reach their fallen comrade with rage-fueled strength. Lenalee was the first one to break through the fray and ran towards Kanda's prone body. She knelt down beside the Japanese exorcist, keeping her eyes away from the ghastly wound covering his abdomen.
"Kanda! Kanda!" Lenalee said while gently tapping his cheek.
The Japanese exorcist's eyelids fluttered, but he didn't wake.
"That one is a goner, second exorcist or not."
Lenalee's head snapped up in the direction the unfamiliar female voice had come from, and the Chinese exorcist immediately stepped protectively in front of Kanda.
"Who are you?" Lenalee asked.
"No one special," the woman replied with a grin.
"Lenalee, get down!"
The Chinese exorcist hit the ground without question, and she felt a strong gust of wind pass over her mere milliseconds later. Lenalee lifted up her head after a moment and gasped. Chloe was lying at the strange woman's feet, and the red-haired girl's body convulsed as she coughed up mouthfuls of blood.
"Is that the best you can do, Chloe?" the woman asked while bending over the writhing exorcist.
Chloe let out a strangled cry when the woman slammed a booted foot down on her ribs, and even Lenalee could hear the 'crack' when Chloe's ribs broke from the pressure. The woman stared down at Chloe for a moment before reaching down and grabbing the front of the red-haired exorcist's uniform jacket.
"You've become weak, Chloe," the woman said as she roughed hauled the red head to her feet. "Becoming an exorcist was the biggest mistake you've ever made, little sister."
The woman slammed her fist into Chloe's jaw with enough to send Chloe back to the ground and rip her jacket to shreds. Chloe remained motionless on the ground, and blood dripped from her head and her mouth. The woman huffed and placed her hands on her hips.
"I thought I could force you to awaken by beating, but I guess I'll have to go with plan B now," she said with a sigh.
With a flick of the woman's wrist, Chloe's body was lifted into the air, and Lenalee could faintly see something wrapped around the red-haired girl's wrists, stomach, and legs. Something that looked an awful lot like wire…
"Akuma, come here."
The woman motioned to a level 3 that had been observing the proceedings from the side, and the akuma slowly walked towards the white-clad figure until it was only a few meters away.
"Yes, Noah-sama?"
Noah-sama? Lenalee thought. That woman is a Noah?
"Shoot her," the woman said while pointing at Chloe.
Lenalee's eyes widened, and she quickly got to her feet as the level 3's arm transformed into the barrel of a gun.
"Move, Miss Exorcist, and Samurai boy dies," the woman—no, the Noah—hissed with a glare in Lenalee's direction.
Lenalee felt her legs buckle underneath the intensity of Noah's malignant gaze, and she fell to her knees as her body trembled in fear. The woman turned back to the akuma and nodded. The level 3 took a moment to aim before firing, and Chloe's body jerked despite being bound as the akuma's bullet tore through her body.
The binds keeping Chloe upright disappeared once the shot had landed, and Chloe's body slumped to the ground in tangled jumble of blood, uniform, and limbs. The woman approached the body after a moment and nudged it with the edge of her pristine white boot. Chloe's hand jerked in response, and the woman smiled.
"I wonder which one you'll be when you wake up."
Lenalee had no time to ponder the statement before the air suddenly grew extremely heavy with power. The Chinese exorcist hit the ground when the unknown force increased, and she fought to keep her head up to watch the woman's next move. What Lenalee saw next was something she wished she could forever erase from memory.
"…Chloe…" was all Lenalee could utter at the sight.
The red-haired girl stood above the white-clad woman with a wicked grin on her blood-flecked face, and her hands were covered in dark red blood. Chloe slowly brought up one hand to eyelevel and gently lapped at the crimson liquid staining her skin with her tongue. Her eyes, which were normally a gentle blue-green color, had turned dark vermillion and held such malice that Lenalee couldn't bear to meet her gaze.
"Good. And here I thought that part of you had died forever, Chloe."
Chloe's mouth curled into a snarl as the Noah got back to her feet.
"You should thank me. I finally gave you freedom," the woman said while brushing the dirt from her clothes. "I'm providing you a feast, so don't hate me yet."
The snarl on Chloe's face quickly morphed into a smile when akumas began to materialize behind the Noah, and the red-haired girl lunged for the mechanical killing machines faster than Lenalee could follow.
Screams filled the air a few seconds later, and blood and body parts rained down from the sky as Chloe cut through the akumas with her bare hands. Lenalee looked away from the growing carnage and felt bile rising up in her throat. She slowly sat up on her knees as footsteps approached.
"Lenalee!" Allen called as he skidded into view.
The white-crowned exorcist knelt down beside Kanda, completely unaware of Chloe and the Noah, and grimaced at the severity of the Japanese exorcist's wounds.
"Yuu-chan!" Lavi screeched when he arrived.
"…Shut up…baka…usagi…" Kanda ground out through clenched teeth as his eyelids slid open.
"Yuu's alive!"
Kanda glared at Lavi and attempted to sit up. He only got so far as lifting his shoulders off the ground before his eyes squeezed shut in pain and his head dropped back down.
"Kanda, you shouldn't sit up until—,"
"Where's…Bellerose…?" Kanda asked, interrupting Lenalee in mid-sentence.
Allen and Lavi shrugged. They had no idea. Kanda glanced over at Lenalee, but the Chinese exorcist refused to make eye contact.
"Lenalee…tell me."
Kanda's voice, soft but demanding, made Lenalee drop her head, and she could feel tears streaming down her cheeks as her body shook.
"She's not Chloe anymore."
"What are you talking about, Lenalee?" Allen asked.
Lenalee lifted up her head and pointed behind her.
"See for yourself," she stated.
Allen's and Lavi's eyes widened when they saw Chloe, and their faces turned ashen at the destruction she had caused. Kanda sat up, ignoring the pain seething throughout his body and stared at Chloe.
Blood dripped from her hands and clothes and coated her red hair. She smiled as she destroyed the akuma. Her red eyes drank in the blood, death, and destruction as if it were the only pleasure she had in life. As if killing was her sole purpose.
"…Shit…" Kanda murmured while placing a hand on the ground beside him. "I told her to run."
Before Lavi, Allen, or Lenalee could stop him, Kanda had gotten to his feet and lunged for Chloe. The Japanese exorcist and the red-haired girl tumbled to the ground, and Chloe growled as she fought against Kanda. Despite his wound, Kanda used his larger size to pin Chloe to the ground and held her still as she struggled in his grip.
"Bellerose, get a hold of yourself, you stupid idiot!"
Chloe froze at the sound of Kanda's voice, and blue seeped into her red irises. Not enough to obliterate the scarlet, but enough that Kanda knew he was getting somewhere.
"Next time you'll listen when I tell you to run, Bellerose," the Japanese exorcist stated while watching the red-haired girl. "Now stop sleeping and get up, or I'll kick your ass!"
Kanda sat back as Chloe's body began to convulse, and he glared at the Noah standing off to the side.
"You have become a real nuisance, Mr. Samurai," the woman said with a frown as she raised a hand.
Allen, Lenalee, and Lavi materialized in front of Kanda and Chloe a moment later, and the Noah scowled while lowering her arm.
"Until next time, exorcists," the woman hissed.
A door appeared behind her, and she stepped back into it. The last view the exorcists got was of the Noah was her scathing glare.
Kanda resisted the urge to sigh and glanced down at Chloe instead. Her blue-green eyes were wide open, and she was staring at her bloodstained hands in horror.
"What the hell did I do?"
All right, I hope all of you are happy now that I have updated. Even if you aren't, that's fine too.
By the way:
Aderlangriff = "Eagle Attack"; term for projected "decisive attack" by the Luftwaffe on RAF Fighter Command.
Criticism and comments are welcome! Until next time! XD