---Chapter 04: Blind Bird – 1---

"Supervisor, incoming report-"

"Give it here," snapped Komui, leaning forward onto his office desk to snatch the papers from Reever's hand. The Section Chief wondered at the Supervisor's sudden enthusiasm towards paperwork, and then he noticed that his superior was sweating. A lot.

"… Supervisor, what's wrong?"

"Damn it, there's just more of them!" shouted Komui, slamming the bundle of papers on his desk, causing his cup of coffee to fall off and shatter, spilling the dark liquid all over the paperwork on the floor. Bringing a hand to his mouth, he began to bite his thumbnail in furious anxiety, "Dear Lord… What have I done? I have no idea… Reports about that district keep coming… More and more Akuma are discovered… And I only sent three of them!"

---

"Get down!"

Allen Walker's familiar voice was ripped apart by the sound of an Akuma's machine gun. Finder Maosa found himself almost just wondering what was happening, when the white figure leapt to him like a ghost and encircled him in its secure embrace. Maosa could feel the impact of Akuma bullets hitting Crown Clown's cloak, but he wasn't hurt.

"Master Exorcist!" shrieked the Finder in terror, "You mustn't do this, it's too dangerous! Just leave me-"

"Don't you start talking nonsense, Maosa!" Allen Walker shouted in reply, "If you die here, Miranda's going to cry! All day! And Chaoji, too! Don't you dare die in front of me!"

"Crap, they keep coming out of nowhere!" With a swing of his size-shifting hammer, Lavi knocked the Akuma into a building then leapt closer to cover Allen and Maosa's back. "To think there are this many Akuma in just one district of London!"

For once, Kanda Yuu actually seemed to agree with his partners. "I'm so going to hit that curly bastard on the face once I get back," he grunted angrily, slicing a Level 2 into halves.

"Finder Maosa, I suggest that you move away from the line of fire!" Inspector Howard Link pulled the Finder out of Crown Clown's cloak, snarling, "If you are unable to help, please at least don't be a burden. Would you be so kind and help the townspeople evacuate?"

He pointed, with both his finger and the switchblade on his wrist, at a group of people who gathered together fearfully inside the other Finders' barrier. Maosa obeyed, running towards them with his talisman held high. Allen only had the time to throw a glance after the Finder he just saved, before leaping backwards to evade yet another blow from another Akuma.

"Edge End: Claws of Destruction!"

The Akuma was torn apart; its oily blood splattered everywhere like crimson rain coming down in torrents. Link jumped aside to avoid that poisonous substance, but the Akuma were expecting him. Just where he landed, he found himself face-to-face with a Level 3.

"For a normal human, you survived pretty long." It dared to praise him using that mocking tone, as if thinking he was a five-years-old who is stupid enough to get provoked. "Let's see how long you can make it!"

The Akuma's belly tore open into a black, seemingly endless hole from where ominous, lizard-like hands shot out, charging directly at the young Inspector. Not wanting them to get too close, he decided to retreat, but no matter how many turns he made, the hands kept following hot on his heels.

"Link!"

At the end of the street, Allen Walker appeared, with his sword in hand, like a savior. Concentrating all his strength to his legs, Link threw himself forwards, faster and faster. The hands also speed up and more of them had been shot out; he could hear them hissing hotly through air behind him. Suddenly, he crouched over, curled up, and rolled like a stone until he bumped against the collapsing wall of a nearby house. Not having the time to think about the injuries he just got, Link looked up to see where the Akuma's Dark Matter had gone. Allen was currently chopping them down, five at a time, with his Innocence sword, and Kanda had just succeeded in impaling the Akuma's skull with Mugen.

"Watch out!"

Kanda didn't need Lavi's warning to be alarmed; he had caught the dying Akuma's movements and had expected its final attack. Arching his body gracefully, the black-haired Exorcist barely managed to avoid it. The Dark Matter hands only grazed his torso, but then again there was something terribly wrong…

"The townspeople!"

Allen cried out in terror and swung himself towards the Finders' glowing barrier on Clown Belt, but he wasn't fast enough. The Akuma hands shot past Kanda and hit the barrier, hard, and soon the talismans shattered in the Finders' hands. With no barrier, this small group of people, men, women and children, was left wide opened to all Akuma attacks.

"We have to evacuate them before more Akuma come!" Allen scanned the streets with his left eye, trying hopelessly to find a direction to which the cursed eye didn't react, but failed. "Not good… It looks like we're completely surrounded."

"It appears so. Komui's order is to retreat." Kanda landed next to Allen; the black golem perched on the Japanese boy's shoulder. "There are too many for just the three of us."

"Right, I'm going to create a Gate. Lavi, please tell the Finders to bring those people here…"

"I can't agree, Walker." Link placed his hand on top of Allen's, stopping the boy's movements, "You are not yet authorized to operate the Ark at will-"

"Are you insane, Link?" The white-haired boy swept Link's hand off and stared at him with angry eyes, "There's no time to talk about such absurd rules!"

"There are reasons!" retorted the Inspector, "Last time in France, you failed to create a Gate because of the enemies' barrier. We don't know what else they can do. What if they can track the Ark? What if they can move it to some unknown dimension and leave it there? What if-"

"Of course I don't want to get stuck inside the Ark again, but this is survival we're talking about! Central wouldn't want so many Exorcists to die in the same day, correct?"

At this point, Link was shocked. Since when did you learn to argue like that? He stared, trying to find irony in Allen's eyes. And he found not only hurtful irony, but also some kind of challenge. Once he found it, he had to suppress a thrill, the feeling of falling into a dark, bottomless well with no way out, for he knew it was impossible, impossible to rewind time, to make things right again…

But still, he spoke, and he almost wondered at his even tone. "In that case, I must insist that you don't bring the townsfolk inside the Ark-"

"I beg your pardon?" Allen, even though so gentle and obedient in nature, now began to fume, "Are you telling me to leave them here to die? I know you are insane, but I had no idea-"

"There may be Brokers among them." Link raised his voice to overcome Allen's ranting, "I'm quite impressed by your capacity to tell Akuma apart from people, but I doubt that you could tell those traitors of mankind apart from harmless townspeople. This whole thing could possibly be the Earl's scenario, and we wouldn't want to play right into his hands-"

Link stopped, because Allen had slapped him. With his left hand. Hard.

"There again you're so smart, so smart…" The boy's white hair hung down the sides of his face, so Link couldn't see his expression, but he couldn't possibly misunderstand the feelings in that shivering voice, "Tell me… It must be great… to be always so calm, so cautious… to be able to think so thoroughly… to be so uninvolved… Tell me the truth, Link…" Allen's fists shivered slightly with each word, "Just, are you still even human…?"

Howard Link could not reply to that question. Time froze, and he just stood there, staring down at a fallen brick that lay next to his feet. No one said a word, not Lavi, not even Kanda. From there, the world around them seemed to be deprived of all sound, color and motion.

And then the spell was broken by the Akuma's gunshots, by the screaming of men, women and children, by the disgusting sound of human bodies shattering into nothingness. Time flowed again; memories faded, and Link did not remember how they ended up slipping inside the newly-created Gate, dragging behind them as many living people as they could. He did not remember if it was real, or it was just his imagination, that Bookman Junior had turned to him, when they got out of the Ark and entered the lounge, looking at him with a single green eye, murmuring, You are just another blind bird…

A/N: Many thanks for the ones who cared enough to review and to add my story to their alerts! I try to reply to every review I got, but of course I can't do that (mostly because I don't know what to say -fails-) So please just know that I'm very thankful, and hope you enjoy reading!

P/s: Credit page has been changed (again) Please check, if you find it necessary.