Authors Note: I actually started writing in hopes of updating Ace of Cakes, but this story came out instead. Ha-ha...
Thanks so much for all the reviews, everyone! I'm glad you all liked the last chapter!
This one is quite exciting if I say so myself. ;D And a bit fluffy too, but just a bit.
As Allen squinted down, he could make out Kanda speaking, though the words were lost for the distance. Allen steeled his expression.
"I'm coming, Kanda!" he called, before taking one step forward and toppling over, mimicking the journey his love had taken a few moments before.
Squeaking and grunting in pain as he rolled downwards, Allen landed in a messy heap. He winced and held his eyes closed for a moment to combat the wave of dizziness and nausea. When he opened his eyes again, Kanda had moved above him. Very gently, he cradled Allen in his arms, frowning.
"…idiot bean. Are you hurt?" he murmured, checking over Allen's face.
"Who cares about that, you're alive!" Allen cried, wrapping his arms around his love's neck and pulling him into a tight hug.
Kanda stiffened and pulled away, pinching Allen's cheek hard enough to make the boy wince.
"Why the hell didn't you wait for me?" Kanda asked in a voice made raspy by his restraint. "I told you I'd come back."
Allen pushed Kanda's hand away from his face and pouted. "You were dead," he replied. "What was I to do? The Prince said he'd kill me if I didn't—"
"Enough, I don't want to hear about that bastard," Kanda cut him off and helped him to his feet. "But you should know better, beansprout," he continued. "Tch, as if something like that could stop me."
Allen rolled his eyes playfully. "I'll remember that for next time."
Kanda took his hand as they started walking, looked Allen straight in his April rain eyes and said quite seriously: "There won't be a next time."
Drawing in a breath, Allen stopped in his tracks. Kanda looked at him in question, blinking as the boy's eyes grew glassy with unshed tears. Allen bit his lip as though to hold back a smile too large for his petite face.
"What is it, bean?"
"…I still love you, Yuu Kanda," he said softly. Kanda flushed red and looked away.
"What the hell caused that outburst?" He asked, clearly embarrassed. His next words were murmured low enough that Allen almost missed them. "Anyway, I know that."
Releasing his wrist from Kanda's grip, Allen cupped his love's cheeks with both hands, turned his head so they were face to face, and kissed him squarely on the lips.
"So Kanda was alive!" the boy cried. "You lied when you said he died!" he reached over to whack the older man on the arm.
"Ouch! Hey, hey, I was just telling the story as it was told to me. I felt you could get a better understanding for Allen that way," the story teller reasoned.
"I get it. Anyway, if this is going to be a kissy scene, skip it, would you?" the boy ordered, making a face.
The older man sighed. "Such a shame, you're missing out on a lot of good stuff."
"Uh-huh. Just keep going."
"Now, Kanda had originally intended a different route, but thanks to Allen, they would have to go through the dreaded Fire Swamp."
"What were you saying to me as you fell, by the way?" Allen asked.
Kanda sighed in mild annoyance. "I was telling you whatever you do, stay up there."
A pout claimed Allen's features again. "Were you planning on leaving me there, then? Ass."
"No, you idiot," Kanda scowled. "I could have gotten back up the ravine on my own and we could've been on our merry way, but thanks to you flinging yourself off the side to join me, we're stuck going this route. I can't take care of you and climb up, you know."
"How rude!" Allen sniffed, "I'm not a weakling, you know."
"Sure, bean," Kanda smirked, "but climbing up a ravine isn't something someone who failed at climbing trees in his childhood should attempt."
Allen turned a shade pink and quickly changed the subject.
"So where are we going now?"
"The Fire Swamp."
"W-W-What?" Allen spluttered, gray eyes widening in shock.
"What?"
"Kanda, we'll never survive!" the boy exclaimed with a shiver.
"Nonsense," Kanda scoffed, dragging the boy along as they approached the Fire Swamp's ominous entrance. "You're just saying that because nobody else ever has."
The Fire Swamp was a dark, dank mess of soggy ground, gnarled trees and clawing vines. Even the light of the midday sun did not penetrate the meshed wreath of twisted branches above them. The entire place smelled putrid; a low fog shrouded their ankles, and the bizarre sounds of some unknown creature penetrated the stillness.
"It's not that bad," Kanda stated as they surveyed the Swamp. Allen looked at him incredulously and Kanda shrugged. "What? It's nothing I can't handle, in any case."
Allen blinked.
"…I guess the trees are kind of pretty," he said after a moment. "Not that I'd like a summer home here or anything, but—"
A strange popping-crackling noise interrupted the white-haired young man, and the two looked around for a cause.
It was then that a shoot of red hot fire spewed from the ground quite near them, so close that it caught the ends of Allen's clothes on fire.
"Ah!" he cried, tripping over a protruding root in his haste to back away. The flames began to eat up his shoes and the ankles of his pants, and the two hurriedly smothered the fire.
"Singed a bit?" Kanda asked when Allen stood inspecting his feet.
Still breathing a little heavily, Allen shook his head. "You?"
Kanda gave him an 'as if' look and they continued onwards.
"What are we going to do after we get out of this godforsaken place?" Allen asked after a few moments of catching his breath. "The Prince is still trying to find me."
"Crowley's ship, the Man Eater, is banked at the other end," Kanda informed. "And I told you, I'm the Dread Pirate Crowley."
"But how is that possible? The Dread Pirate has been marauding the seas for decades, and you only left me about four years ago."
"It's pretty fucked up actually," Kanda admitted, unsheathing the katana-like sword to hack away at any vines that impeded their journey.
Allen raised his eyebrows at Kanda's apparent skill with the blade, but said nothing and waited for the long haired man to continue.
"I wasn't lying about how Crowley was interested in me after I told him why I needed to live. For two years I was his apprentice, even though the bastard said he'd kill me in the morning every day. Then one day he called me aside and told me that he actually wasn't the Dread Pirate Crowley- that had been his great-grandfather, who is currently relaxing in the Mediterranean. His real name was Aryster, and he was getting sick of all the pirating and wanted me to take over. He was more of a sissy than you'd think."
"Pirating as the family business," Allen murmured, "wow."
"So we got an entirely new crew and Aryster stayed on and called me the Dread Pirate Crowley long enough for the crew to believe him before leaving. And since then, I've been the Dread Pirate," Kanda finished his explanation and turned to look at Allen's reaction.
"…what are you going to do now?"
Kanda sighed. "Well, since I've got you to worry about now," he frowned in Allen's direction but the annoyance didn't reach his eyes, "I'm going to give the title to my first mate, take my share of the loot and we'll settle down in that shitty town of yours or wherever."
Allen looped their arms together and smiled.
"That would be nice."
Allen took a step forward and then he was gone, sucked into the earth. His arm slipped away from Kanda's like butter and even before Kanda could blink, Allen's moon-shine hair was swallowed up by fine, powdery sand. Lightning sand!
Eyes widened to extreme proportions, Kanda's heart raced loudly in his chest.
"Tch!"
Thinking quickly, he lobbed off a long vine with his sword and, using it as a makeshift rope, plunged into the sand after his love.
Meanwhile, on the hills above the Fire Swamp, Prince Tyki set down his binoculars.
"Clearly, the fiend has taken dear Allen into the Fire Swamp." The soldiers around him gave a collective gasp, and Tyki nodded gravely. "However, I will remain firm in the belief that my bride will make it out alive, and so we must be ready to save him from the grasps of the wicked Cross's. Onwards, men, to the exit of the Fire Swamp!"
Making his horse stand on two legs like those fancy marble statues of important generals, Tyki charged forward.
Back to our heroes—if you remember, Kanda had just dived in after Allen.
There was no question in Yuu Kanda's mind that he would find Allen and they would make it out alive; they were already too far along for something like this to stop him now. He knew he had limited time, limited air, and that at most he could get a foot of distance by kicking. When the vine's length ended, Kanda knew he had to let go and find Allen within two seconds, or they would both be—no, that wasn't an option. He would find Allen.
So, Kanda let go, and almost immediately, his hand found a thin, bony wrist.
Yuu Kanda actually gasped for fear then, and as the sand filled his throat, he let go of the skeleton wrist (fleshless, dead for who knows how long- things tended to float around in the lightning sand). Frantically, he reached both hands out to probe the sand, and after only a blessed second of searching, found Allen's shoulder.
Once he had a firm grip, Kanda kicked with all his might to get that foot of distance so that they might reach the vine. It was fruitless for a moment, but with his last strength, Kanda managed to grab hold of the vine and slowly but surely pull Allen and himself up out of the hell hole.
It was a tad unnerving even to Kanda when Allen lay motionless for an unbearably long two minutes. At last, the boy began coughing up sand and Kanda helped him sit up. When he made to pull back and give Allen some breathing room, Allen crushed the two of them together in a tight hug, burying his face in Kanda's neck while half-crying and half-laughing and, if you'll excuse the logic, half-coughing all at the same time.
Kanda allowed the hold, returned it even, for though he would not admit it, the fear of actually losing Allen had crossed his heart, and it was quite comforting to just hold his love like this, to make sure the silly bean was still there, still alive.
Yet in the Fire Swamp time does not pause for romantic situations, and from the corner of his eye Kanda noted the Swamp's other deadly inhabitant: the ROUS (or Rodents Of Unusual Size).
"Come on." Gently freeing himself from Allen's hold, he brushed himself off and stood. "Let's go."
Allen nodded, too much in shock for words, and the two continued, Kanda discreetly checking their surroundings every so often.
When Allen was able to speak again, he asked:
"What are the terrors of the Fire Swamp again?"
"The flame spurt, which are kind of anti-climatic if you ask me, there's that popping sound before each one," Kanda listed them as he subtly quickened their pace. He'd lost sight of that one particularly fat ROUS… "And two, the lightning sand, which you so brilliantly discovered."
"There's a third one," Allen insisted, "I'm sure of it… it's… oh god, it's the ROUS."
"I don't think they exist," Kanda replied haughtily, and not one second later he found himself tackled to the ground by that bastardly rodent.
Allen made a strange noise and stumbled backwards, searching for anything to use as a weapon.
"Kanda, your sword, where is it?!" he cried.
"Over—there—I dropped it—argh!" Kanda spoke between grunts of pain as he attempted to shove the obese thing off of him, shouting as it bit down on his shoulder.
Allen immediately took the blade and sliced the rodent's back with it, causing the creature to shriek and turn on him instead. As Kanda got to his feet again, Allen was having difficulty dealing with the rodent- he hadn't used a sword since… well, ever, unless you counted the mock-fencing he and Kanda did when they were children with sticks…
"Kanda!" he called out. "Help?!"
"Toss me the sword, beansprout!"
Allen did so just as the rodent caught a hold of his feet and tripped him. Kanda stabbed the thing before it could start gnawing on Allen's ankle, and the rodent performed an insane, physics-defying leap into the air as it tackled Kanda to the ground and ripped into his arm.
As Kanda wrestled with the beast, he caught a strange popping sound, kind of a crackling sound, that came from somewhere next to him… he swiftly rolled so that he and subsequently the rodent, moved in that direction, and not a moment later did a fire spurt up from the ground, severely burning the ROUS.
Allen had picked up the sword by this time, and as Kanda stood up only somewhat shakily, he stabbed the rodent several times in succession until the thing made a squealing sound and died. Allen supported Kanda, placing his arm around his shoulders and offered a smile.
"I think I see the exit."
Kanda made an appreciative sound as they left the confines of the Fire Swamp, and Allen took a deep breath and grinned as he felt the sunlight again.
"We made it," he said in relief and happiness.
"We made it," called another, regal voice. Startled, Kanda and Allen looked around to find Prince Tyki Mikk riding into the clearing. "Just in time, it would seem. Surrender!"
"To me? I accept," Kanda replied cheekily, smirking. "Now if you'd get the hell out of here so we can be on our way—"
"What nerve!" Prince Tyki exclaimed. "I'll give you full marks for bravery, but please don't make yourself a fool."
"You can't capture us—"
"Shut up and surrender, barbarian!"
From the corner of his eye, Allen saw more than a handful of soldiers emerge from the trees, even some hidden with crossbows.
"I'd rather die," Kanda snapped, and Allen could have slapped him.
Honestly, there were some things you just didn't say when you had a battalion of soldiers pointing their swords at you.
"Stop!" Allen yelled. "…don't hurt him," his voice dropped. "If…If I go with you, do you promise not to hurt him?"
"What?" Prince Tyki looked at him, shocked.
"What?" Kanda turned to him, eyebrows raised and eyes a mixture of emotions Allen didn't want to see.
"I said," Allen repeated in a firmer tone, "if I go with you, you must promise not to hurt him."
The Prince paused briefly before a satisfied smile spread over his handsome face.
"Very well, it shall be done."
As Kanda and Allen looked away, Tyki leaned towards Count Boric, and in a low murmur commanded:
"Take him to the zoo."
Allen gently caressed Kanda's dirty cheek.
"I lost you once, Yuu. Thinking…no, knowing, you were dead killed me too. If I can save you this time, I'll do it. I'll do anything."
"You idiot bean, I—"
But Allen didn't get to hear what Kanda would say, for Prince Tyki scooped him up onto his horse and away they rode.
Count Boric approached Kanda.
"Let's…go, then…buddy…"
"You're a horrible liar," Kanda spat, and the Count grunted.
"I guess. Okay, lock him up."
As they chained Kanda's hands, he smiled.
"What's so funny?" the Count asked, narrowing his beady eyes.
"You've got six fingers on your right hand," Kanda said lightly. "I know someone who was looking for you."
The Count growled and punched him. Kanda slumped to the ground, unconscious.
A/N: So originally, the Dread Pirate's ship is called Revenge, but I thought Man Eater fit this Dread Pirate better. ;)
This chapter is a tad shorter than the previous ones, but a lot of stuff happened, ya know? It felt like a good place to stop.
Let me know if you see any typos or other errors!
Reviews are always loved, cough cough, and provide the most wonderful inspiration~