It's finally here, after almost two months of waiting.

All right, so here's the deal on this chapter. I introduce a few new evolutions (but you have to find out how and what they are, because I'm not telling until maybe one, two chapters from now), some original characters (I have sunken so far--I don't usually make original characters at all), and a new point of view. That's about it.

Give me advice, because now more than ever I need it. I'm still really rusty and life is distracting me, so I definitely need as much advice as I can get. However, I don't want any 'WTF, this is so stupid' kind of advice, because that's not really advice at all, that's just flaming. I hate flaming and flamers, so go shoo, evil flamer.

You're also free to ask questions because I know I wasn't really clear on some parts of the story. I apologize.

Try to enjoy, please!

Lenalee sometimes (actually, not sometimes but a lot of the time) wondered why boys were so stupid. Why did they always have to find a reason to get in a fight? Why did they always have to find a reason to—to—to be so selfish and crude? It wasn't fair for the nice girls who were near them who worried about them so much that sometimes they woke up in the middle of the night wondering if they were all right and safe. It just wasn't.

She conveyed her troubles to a strangely listening Lulu Bell as the older woman pulled out the ribbons from Lenalee's hair. The rest of the people that had been in the room had all gone out to get something to eat and (in Lavi's case) comfort a rather shaken Krory. It was just the two women now, sitting cross-legged on the floor and pulling out ribbons from their hair.

"I mean," she said rather fiercely as she felt her elder pull out the ribbons delicately, "What goes on in their heads? What is up there, besides 'I want to fight' and 'I want to flirt with girls'? What else is in there? Really."

"Your information isn't quite accurate," Lulu Bell interrupted, pulling out another particularly long ribbon. Lenalee wondered how Road had even gotten those ribbons in the first place. "They also think about work; not to mention sex," she added after a slight pause.

Lenalee made a little face and giggled. "That's not too comforting. Or sanitary."

She could feel the woman's high tension relax slightly at her comment. "It wasn't meant to be—it is the truth. Most men only think about those things, though there are many exceptions." Another ribbon fluttered to the ground, shimmering in the mixture of the room's lighting and the moonlight peeking in through the window.

Lenalee nodded slightly. "I know. It's just that the majority…" She waved her hand through the air aimlessly. "Well. You know what I mean." She then scowled as she remembered reluctantly how David had looked when he had seen Krory.

Golden eyes widening, mouth parting just slightly, teeth grinding together, rage pouring out from every pore in his body, muscles tightening, clenching, left arm glowing with the contact from its user after two long years, hair standing on end, feet scrambling across the floor and hand (tipped with black, always pure black, just like a demon's) outstretched towards Krory's throat—

She blinked and the image was gone.

Thank God.

"Of course the majority is like that. Lenalee—" She started at the use of her name. Lulu Bell ignored this. "You must think. David is tired. He has been tired ever since we got here, and Cyril forcing him to come here does not help things. He was probably not thinking clearly. Besides—" Here, she looped out a knot from the ribbon by Lenalee's left temple. "You know that he is not on good terms with that Exorcist."

"Still…"

"I will make him apologize in the morning, if the majority wishes so."

Lenalee smiled faintly at the thought. "That probably won't be necessary, Lulu Bell, though the thought is rather entertaining." I'll deal with him myself, she told herself after saying this.

They remained in silence for a while after that, the only sounds around them coming from the ribbons untwining from her hair and people moving outside their door.

"Where do you think he went?" Lenalee finally asked.

Lulu Bell didn't respond at first, choosing to pull out one more ribbon for stalling. "I suppose he went off to sulk," she said. Lenalee could feel the heaviness in her arms, how they felt tired and worn. She suddenly wondered how old Lulu Bell and the others really were. Decades? Centuries? Millenniums? "David is like a child, even now. You must remember that and be patient with him."

"It's hard to," Lenalee whispered, and felt just the slightest hint of sadness descend upon her heart.

Lulu Bell's aura somehow grew just a bit warmer. "I am sure that you will manage."

---

The space around him is dark. Probing his fingers around him, he can feel nothing surrounding him. His arms, legs, everything feel numb and heavy. He can hear nothing either.

There is no terror, however, and he swivels his head around slowly. He finds no light anywhere. Absolutely nothing.

He takes a little comfort in this, and feels a strange feeling of content rest inside him. Perhaps he could stay here forever. What was his name in the outside world again? He couldn't remember.

Wait.

He listens carefully, and is proven correct. There are three pairs of footsteps coming towards him, and he turns in their direction, slowly and dreamlike.

However, only two figures soon emerge from the darkness. He recognizes one as his Bond, with the words tattooed on its pale arms and stigmata etched deeply into its neck. He doesn't recognize the other, though it is vaguely familiar. Its starry black eyes, deep and penetrating, gaze at him, and locks of silver hair (just like the stars themselves, woven into silk) fall down its shoulders to rest just below them.

"David," the unfamiliar one says.

The name strikes a cord of familiarity inside, and he remembers that he was called David on the outside world. Yes, that was his name. He was sure of it now.

"Do you know who I am, David?"

He shakes his head no. The familiarity is still there, hanging by a thread and tightening.

The being smiles almost condescendingly, almost lovingly at him. "You will find out sooner or later."

"Tell me." His voice echoes everywhere, bouncing and jangling and fading away into the dark. "Tell me." The second time is more forceful, pushing for answers. "Tell me who you are. Tell me—"

"Tell me why you have forgotten me." The voice is paper on glass, hanging by tiny silver strings. It is frail, broken in too many places and saddened by age and pitiful, too pitiful to even stand.

He turns.

Another figure is there, right behind him. Its feet are bare against the glowing-black floor, gray and chipped and scratched beyond repair. Soiled bandages are around its feet and arms, draped and going round and round. Black nails are bitten and chewed to the nub on some, while others are incredibly long and pointed. Golden hair (and this is what really makes David frightened) is circled around its waist, dirty and yet still shining like a beacon.

"Tell me why you have forgotten Jasdero."

Hands reach up and claw at his face as he screams.

---

David remembered that once when he and Jasdero were one whole person, his father and mother and taken them to the fair that just came in to town. He remembered holding their hands tightly, one huge hand (back then, when everything was huge) in each of his little ones, and smiling all the way while walking on the dusty road.

He remembered the swirling colors, the screams of the other children, the laughter. It was dazzling. Absolutely beautiful. He wanted to share this with his—their mother, because she was the really artistic one. She would understand how they were feeling right now, the awe, the exhilaration.

However, when they turned around to say, "Mommy, Mommy, look! Isn't it pretty," the two of them were gone. They had vanished into the crowd and left them alone.

Now, when David thought back on it, even in a thick cloud of unconsciousness and terror, he wondered how they couldn't have seen it then. How they couldn't have seen that that was intentional, that they wanted to leave him there and never take him back, even though they had smiled (too tightly, he now realized, too tense, too unhappily) and thanked one of the officers hanging around the area who had found them wandering around crying for his parents. How couldn't they have seen that?

"It was because we were too naïve," Jasdero says quietly, still staring at his other half as he clawed at his face in terror. "It was because we didn't even consider being abandoned by the ones we loved the most. It was because we still wanted to be loved, no matter how much they hated us." He smiles, and David can feel nostalgia (fear, regret, pain) rise up and up and up until it begins to cloud his vision over into a pretty blue. "Isn't that right?"

"I thought that you were dead," he chokes out, breathing heavily (how he could breathe in here? Wasn't this a dream or something?). "No, wait, wrong choice of words—suppressed. So why are you here?"

Jasdero is silent for a few moments before beginning to walk towards his other half.

(He notices that he hasn't changed since he fell off the ledge and into the dark of Noah's depths, and that makes him feel even worse, makes him feel guilty for letting him die. Seeing him is like seeing his sins and nightmares and wonderful dreams in a cracking mirror, and it makes him want to scream all over again.)

He comes to a stop in front of him, staring up at him dead on. Then, he smiles and reaches up, brushing away a few black hairs that have fallen on his face. David shivers. The touch feels so real that he fantasizes for only the briefest of seconds that Jasdero was still a living, breathing being.

The fantasy breaks after Jasdero speaks again. "You've grown a lot," he says, seemingly deep in thought at this discovery. "I always imagined us always being incredibly short, you know? Tall just didn't seem like the right description for us." He laughs a bit, pulls back another few hairs before David himself speaks.

"Answer my question, Jasdero." He thanks whoever is in charge of the dream world that his voice isn't shaking.

Jasdero's smile turns just a bit darker. "You always were impatient, Davie." He practically spits the old nickname in his face, the stitches twisting and snarling around his mouth.

David flinches and pulls away from his touch. This spirit is not the same as his younger half, he thinks warily. This being is not his other half anymore if the boy had the gall to actually snap at him. The old Jasdero would never do that at all.

The being laughs, high and cold and so unlike Jasdero's old carefree laugh. "You're right, Davie. I'm not Jasdero anymore." He giggles a few more times before looking up at him. The golden eyes are amused, sparkling with genuine interest and cold anger.

"I changed after I 'died,' Davie. I went to the spirit world and was greeted by three spirits. One was Noah himself. Another was the exorcist's God. The last one—" He shudders before continuing. "The last one was the Devil. David, I saw the Devil there, standing there and smiling like there was no tomorrow, and he—he—he grabbed my wrist and began pulling me towards these huge black gates."

He mimes a sort of twisted motion along his wrist and traces the bandages along his arms.

"I asked what he was doing, where he was taking me. He told me that he was taking me to Hell. He told me he was going to take me to Hell for what we did, Davie, and that after you died too he would separate us forever."

David can't move, only stare in horror at this—this thing, this thing taking up where Jasdero used to be. Jasdero wouldn't speak like this. Jasdero wouldn't look like this, so bitter and angry at everything.

"I know what you're thinking. I'm not a 'thing,' David." Jasdero's voice is quiet at first; then, it begins to shriek as he raves at him. "I'm not a thing! I'm still your brother! I'm not a dead thing! I'm not!" His eyes are wide as he reaches out his hands towards him. "I'm still here! I'm still your brother! I'm still Jasdero!" His face is twisting and twisting and morphing into something David can't even describe.

He feels the two spirits vanish behind him, and the fear continues to grow and grow until it's consuming him.

"Don't forget about me!"

---

"Ow!"

David scrambled out from under the dusty table, groaning and rubbing his head. Already he could feel a small bump rising at the back. Lovely. "What the hell—where am I, damn it?"

As reality slowly came back, he began to remember what had happened before he woke up. He winced. Oh yeah. He had freaked out, attacked the vampire Exorcist, yelled at Lenalee, stomped over into the closet, just absorbed a new type of matter, and had the worst nightmare in the history of nightmares. Fantastic.

He shook off afterimages of the raving spirit he had just met and focused back on the present.

Also, his arm was aching like there was no tomorrow and he mumbled an, "I hate life" under his breath before twisting his head to look at it.

The pit of his stomach promptly dropped onto the floor.

It wasn't that his arm looked any better than it had before. It didn't. Actually, it looked worse because now, it had black and white markings tracing all the way up to his shoulders. Then they broke off in another branch and nonchalantly made their way down to the front of his chest, printing an imitation of the Noah's stigmata across the gray skin.

He craned his neck further to find that they extended all the way to the base of his neck and traveled all the way down to the mid-back. At the back, he found, it seemed to gain a pattern, showing two crosses, one black, one white, intersecting at each of their middles.

It shows the collaboration of two Gods, he realized with a start. These markings show a start of a new age.

Well, duh, the voice sounded sarcastically in his head. This has been mentioned a few times. New age, new era, new light of the world—

"Okay, now you're pushing it," David growled.

Hey, take it easy, Mr. Cranky, the voice chuckled. Wouldn't want to mess with your 'new-age' arm, would you?

David imagined dissecting the voice into little tiny squares.

Ouch, it snorted, still chuckling slightly. Touchy, are we?

"No shit. Now shut up. I'm getting out of here and finding something to eat. I'm starving." He pushed himself to his feet and began to head for the door.

Are you sure that you want everyone staring at you, now that you've got all these things on your chest? Especially Lenalee. Think about how freaked she'll be if she sees you like this.

David stopped in his tracks. The voice had a point.

I do, don't I?

He spun back around and spotted a sheet conveniently placed next to him. Snatching it up, he draped it around his shoulders and turned towards the door. Fiddling with the knob for a few minutes, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the light.

He became temporarily blind for just a few moments before he shook off the spots dancing around in his eyes. Turning on his heel, he began to stride down the hall, the sheet flowing out behind him like a white cape.

"David!"

He felt fury as a giggling Road, who hopped onto his back from behind and wrapped her small, but surprisingly strong arms around his neck, foiled his escape plan.

"David, where have you been?" she scolded, promptly changing her tone from light to serious. "Why are you wearing a sheet? I've been looking everywhere for you. Cyril and Tyki said that you hadn't come back to the room at all, and Lulu Bell said that you didn't come back either, so I was really worried. Also, I want you to apologize to Krory and Lenalee! You were really mean, so—"

She stopped and twisted her neck around so that the corner of her eye was able to see him. David desperately tried to shift up the sheet again and failed. How much did this girl weigh, anyway?

"Is something wrong, David?" She scowled. "You aren't yelling back."

"No," he grumbled, and continued walking as fast as he could.

"Liar! There is something wrong! And I bet it has something to do with this sheet too, right?" Road's scowl deepened and she clutched the sheet, sliding down with it in her grasp.

"Road—" David attempted to snatch the sheet back before it exposed his extremely altered body.

Too late.

---

"Sirs!" A Level Two Akuma went on one knee, clasping its metal fist over its chest. Two figures turned towards him. "We have received reports from the Akuma stationed outside the Black Order that there has been a disturbance in the force."

A dark figure from in front of it snickered. The other dark, smaller figure sighed and said, "Level Two, please refrain from making puns on old sayings. It's unseemly, and it entertains my companion here far too much."

"Hey, hey, let 'im," the other one snickered, waving a thin, bony hand from the side. "It's a hell of a lot better than seeing things get smashed up. Continue, Level Two."

"As you wish, Sir. A former master of ours, Lord Jasdevi—"

"I thought Jasdevi died," the softer one said, musingly.

"Nah, just one half of him. The other survived. Go on, Level Two."

"Lord Jasdevi's surviving half, Lord David, has acquired a new type of matter, we believe."

"A new type of matter?" the smaller one said, inhaling just a bit. "Have you defined from what origin it is from?"

"No sir, we haven't. However, it is evident that some forces unseen are working together to form this new creation." The Level Two looked nervous, fiddling a little bit with its metal skin on its 'hand' before finally concluding, "That's all they managed to find out, Sirs."

The larger, bony figure put its finger to his chin. "Huh. A new evolutionary creation." It snickered a bit. "Kind of like us, huh, Adam?"

The smaller one sighed and stepped out into the light.

The Level Two blinked and attempted to find anything wrong with its vision. It couldn't be possible, what he was seeing. It just couldn't.

The figure named Adam appeared to be—in every sense—human. The Level Two could literally hear the heart pumping once Adam got closer, could smell the blood flowing through his—at least, the Level Two thought Adam was a he—veins. Large brown eyes gazed down at Level Two serenely. Dark brown hair, snipped away at mid-neck, fell around his pale face with a sort of beautiful gesture.

But this being wasn't human, the Level Two realized in terror. And the other one—

"Yeah, we're not human, Level Two," the other figure laughed, also stepping into the light. "We thought that was obvious."

This one, the Level Two observed, also appeared to be human. Green eyes were framed dramatically by black, and his black hair was shorter than Adam's, though it also framed his pale face.

"What are you?" the Level Two squeaked out.

The unnamed one snickered and patted the Level Two's head. "Hey, hey, don't get your metal panties in a bunch. We're still Akuma, just on a higher level. We can project the image, sound, scent, pretty much everything an Akuma can do to ward off suspicion from Exorcists." He smirked, and the Level Two felt a very distinct sense of fear cloud his mind. "That pretty much why we're the leaders of this revolution and not you guys."

"Don't provoke it, Brant," Adam spoke. "No matter if it's a lower level of Akuma, there is still a high chance of it attacking you."

Brant smirked. "Yeah, right. If it does that, I'll just tear it down." He turned back to the Level Two, who was paralyzed. "You got that, Level Two? You or any of your little Akuma buddies do anything to disobey us, we'll rip off your heads and put them on stakes in our front yard as examples." He grinned, and the whites of his eyes darkened into black. "Got it?"

Level Two nodded fervently.

"Good. Now run along and go manage yourselves."

Level Two managed to recollect himself. "But sir, what should we do about Lord David?"

Adam sighed. "Leave it be for now. We will deal with this matter later."

The Level Two, eager to get out of there, bowed its head and leaped away into the night.

As it gathered itself and neared its campsite, the Level Two thought, Well, if these are the Akuma leading us in this war, we have a very good chance of winning indeed.