Chapter 4
Disclaimer: I still don't own DGM and I probably never will.
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Crowry prayed that his ears had failed him. Levrier couldn't have just said that Central had ordered Allen's execution. But one look at his partner made it clear she had heard the same thing he had. Crowry knew he had to do something, but if he ran now, CROW would notice him and probably capture him before he was anywhere near Allen. Lavi had told him about them and he knew they were no pushovers. How they had managed to remain unnoticed up 'till now was beyond him, it was a miracle. It would need another miracle to save Allen, and it didn't look like he would get one. Miranda was terrified. They wanted to kill Allen, and she didn't know how she could keep that from happening. There had to be something she could do to keep him safe!
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"I'm still worried about Allen, he really didn't look healthy." Lenalee told Lavi. The red-haired boy sighed and stated:
"He'll be fine, Lenalee, he just needs some rest. I swear, you act like your his mother sometimes. He can take care of himself. We'll probably see him right here tomorrow, eating the order out of house and home." Lenalee smiled, but she still looked worried. Then she seemed to have made a decision.
"I'm gonna go check on him, he might have collapsed somewhere!" and with that, she was gone. Lavi shook his head while Timothy wondered if she was Allen's girlfriend. 'Allen must be the luckiest and happiest man on earth. Then he noticed Lavi was leaving as well.
"Hey, where are you going, Lavi?" Lavi didn't turn around. "I'm taking a walk, though if panda-jiji finds me, I'll get that promised earful, so see you tomorrow."
Timothy shrugged and turned his attention to Jerry, who was resupplying the buffet.
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"Well then CROW, You have been given your orders, I expect success. Now go." Levrier coldly interrupted the silence around him. The men bowed and started to scatter.
Miranda's thoughts were spinning around. She couldn't let that happen, but what could she do? 'There must be something I can do! Allen was the first person that ever thanked me, thanks to him I made many new friends, I must do something. I have to stop them, I have to stop them, I have to to stop them, I HAVE TO STOP THEM!' Suddenly her Innocence activated, the disk sliding to her wrist, the rings started to turn, and suddenly there were small, slow moving orbs glowing an inch above the disk. Then the rings in her Innocence stopped moving and so did the 32 orbs. Crowry was the first to realize that Komui, Levrier and the CROWs weren't moving either, in fact, one of them was hanging a few feet above the ground, defying gravity.
"Miranda," he told her "you froze them in time. They probably won't even notice something has happened." He saw that Miranda was exhausted. After the constant Akuma attacks on their way back, she probably wouldn't be able to keep them like that very long. He wasn't in great shape either, but he hoped he would last long enough. He carried Miranda off of the balcony back into the passage they came from, leaned her on the wall and turned his attention to the pressing issue: What now?
"Okay Miranda, you stay here and buy as much time as you can, while I get Allen away from here." he saw Miranda staring at him, knowing they couldn't get that done alone. "Or at least I'll inform Lenalee or Lavi, they'll manage." She nodded.
"Hurry, I don't think I can hold them very long!" When he heard that, he started an Innocence-boosted sprint, praying to make it in time.
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Lenalee was shocked. Even though she had said it to Lavi, she hadn't expected to find Allen collapsed on the floor, only a few feet away from his room, squirming in agony.
"Allen, can you hear me? It's me, Lenalee, are you all right?" That was a stupid question and she knew it, but it just slipped out. "You look like your in pain." As dumb as that statement was, it apparently served its purpose. Allen's gaze cleared and he gave her a look that said: Ya think? What gave it away, genius? A second later he actually spoke, though the pain seemed to have disabled his manners.
"Thank you for pointing out the obvious. A little help here, I'm in serious pain, so if you don't min..." the rest of his sentence was interrupted by another wave of agony.
"Don't worry Allen, I'll get you to the infirmary right away." Lenalee was about to grab Allen when another wave of pain caused him to pull his head back, revealing the mark on his forehead. She gasped. "Allen, your head, that mark... I'll bring you to Nii-san, he'll know how to help you." Lenalee managed to pull him on her back. At that moment, Lavi slid around a corner, visibly out of breath.
"The right idea, Lenalee, but the wrong destination. We have to get him out of here, or he'll be killed for sure." Lavi saw Allen's mark and his eyes widened. "Now we really have to get him out of here. Come on, I'll explain on the way." Lenalee paled, but she nodded and followed Lavi
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5 minutes earlier
Lavi was walking through the Black Order, devising a plot to escape Bookman's speech about the reserves of the Order and the Earl, when something came out of a corridor and crashed into him. Hard. When he finally figured out where up and down were, he saw that he had just collided with Crowry.
"Yo Kuro-chan, what's the rush? You look terrible, maybe you should also take a rest." Crowry looked at him and gave a relieved sigh.
"Thank god, it's you Lavi. You have to get Allen away from here as quick as possible, Levrier brought CROW's best men to kill him." Lavi gasped, but quickly got dead serious. "Arystar Crowry, tell me what happened." If there was any further proof needed that Lavi didn't take it as a joke, it was the fact that he called Crowry by his real name.
When Crowry finished, Lavi analyzed the situation. "Okay, we're gonna do this. You return to Miranda and lay low while this blows over. Then you to pretend you just arrived. I'll get Allen out of here, Lenalee should be with him. Lenalee can dump him somewhere safe and return before anyone notices she's missing. Oh, and let's keep Miranda's new trick a secret, or Levrier might add 2 and 2 and get a result that will bring us all in helluva lot of trouble." Crowry thought about it, then he agreed. That was so crazy, it just might work.
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Cross yawned. The meeting had been long and boring, mostly telling him to stop ordering expensive wine and cigars. His reply had been something along the lines of 'I'll stop ordering what I need to make my stay here bearable when hell freezes over.' Now he was looking at one of the orders plazas from a balcony. He turned to leave when he noticed that Winters Zokalo had stepped onto the balcony as well, even worse, without his mask. Cross was almost at the exit, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. At first glance he saw a red-haired boy looking vaguely familiar and Lenalee, apparently carrying his stupid apprentice on her back. His second glance spotted the mark on Allen' forehead and he thought 'I'm impressed with the boy's willpower, this should have happened over a week ago. If he wasn't hurt, he probably could have suppressed it even longer. But now it's too late.' His third glance showed him that Zokalo had noticed everything he had, and a moment before the trio vanished in a path heading to an exit, the bloodthirsty general had leaped over the balcony.
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"Crap!"Lavi had spotted the man falling with a mad smile on his face just before they entered what they had hoped was a way to escape. He had also seen Cross, but right now, they had bigger worries. "We have company." He increased his speed to reach Lenalee. "Behind that corner the road forks. I go right to confuse him, you head left to the exit." When he noticed Lenalee looked upset, he continued "General Zokalo is bloodthirsty, but not stupid. He can't kill me or you, but Allen will be counted as a Noah and is marked for death anyway." She nodded as they passed the corner and they split up.
"I hope Lavi is alright.", Lenalee thought as she ran into the left path... and straight into Cross Marian. Lenalee was in a panic. She could hear Zokalo behind her, and her only escape was blocked by Cross. Even under normal circumstances Lenalee wouldn't have been able to beat one of the Generals with their offensive Innocence, let alone two. But in this narrow passage she wouldn't even be able to dodge attacks, and she knew it. Her only chance was that Cross wouldn't attack a girl like her, but she had already lost too much time to be able to outrun the other General who would without a doubt cut her down if he needed to. Lenalee felt tears in her eyes, when Cross suddenly spoke.
"Innocence activate. Grave of Maria, Magdala Curtain." The coffin appeared, Maria rose and began to sing. Not even five seconds later Zokalo reached the fork and looked straight at them. He seemed confused, but then Lavi made some noise and Zokalo spun around and ran into the right path. Lenalee was eternally grateful for his actions, when Cross dropped a stash of money and a replacement for Lenalee's blood soaked clothes he had just gotten from the laundry's stash (guess why he knew her sizes) and walked into the path Zokalo had just taken like Lenalee was invisible. She picked up the money and ran, Allen still on his shoulders.
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Cross smiled to himself. Lenalee would find a way to get Allen to safety. Zokalo wouldn't be a problem, because he had the very useful habit to forget failures, especially his own. Not that he had many, but at the time the interrogations would start, Zokalo would have forgotten Allen existed. Now he only had to make sure that Zokalo didn't let his bad mood out on the other boy. Not that he would have cared, but it might make Lenalee cry, and something ending with crying ladies was unacceptable. If he could only remember where he'd seen the red-head before. Oh well, it probably wasn't important anyway.
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Lenalee wasn't sure if she was having good or bad luck, so much happened happened in so little time, but there, at the end of her T-shaped passage right in front of her, was the emergency exit, a man-sized hole in the wall blocked by three inches of steel. She knew that the steel slided into the wall above, but without the know-how or inhuman strength, it was impassable. There also were a few charms, but they where only there to stop Akuma from using the gates, so Lenalee wasn't too worried. Now if she could only reach and open it without being spotted... And then she was certain that this would be the worst day of her life.
Lady Fortune was a b*tch. Lenalee hadn't been ten feet away from the exit when Klaud Nine and Froi Tiedoll had walk right in front of the exit. She knew they hadn't tried to ambush her, because they looked just as surprised as she was. It had been a coincident. Everything was lost because of a coincident. Allen would die because of a stupid little coincident! It was not fair. Froi spoke.
"Good evening, Lenalee, why are you still up? You should be in bed. And why are you carrying Allen Walk..." his smile froze. Klaud's eyes widened as they both saw the mark. Allen, who had tried to remain still even in his pain and sometimes even lost consciousness, had noticed both the exit and the invincible army that guarded it. He was too weakened to move or even speak, so all he could do was hope that Lenalee wouldn't get punished and his end would be swift, and silently curse whatever being it was that had caused this situation. Klaud looked at her fellow General.
"What are we going to do with them now?"
"I don't know," Froi replied "I'll need some time to think about it."
Lenalee flinched. Time was the one thing they didn't have right now.
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Lenalee had no idea how right she was, because at the second most bottom floor, Miranda collapsed into Crowry's arms unconscious, her Innocence deactivated and the CROWs took flight to hunt down their prey. Komui, who was the only one who had noticed Miranda and Crowry, saw they vanished, deduced what had happened and silently prayed the they had been able to buy enough time. He made a shocked face and ran off without another word to Levrier. The man just smiled, because this shocked reaction was exactly what he had expected from Komui. Everything went according to plan and on schedule. If he only knew. But even though he tried, Malcom C. Levrier would never find out what really happened that night.
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The situation was getting dire. Lenalee knew that the danger of the assassins unfreezing and spotting them was growing with each passing second, but there was nothing she could do.
Klaud was a gentle and kind woman, but Tiedoll was as predictable as a feather in a twister. After what seemed like hours to Lenalee, Tiedoll spoke. But to Klaud, not to him.
"Klaud, if I remember correctly, you said that one of Lau Shimin's specialties was strength, am I right?" Klaud seemed confused, but nodded. "Would you be willing to prove that?" he further inquired. Klaud didn't look happy, but she nodded again. "Great," Tiedoll cheered "then as a test he'll... Hmm." he looked around. Lenalee was preparing for a fight. If they took Allen, it wouldn't be without a fight. "Ah, I know." He smiled. "He'll lift that." he said, pointing at the steel plate barricading the exit. Lenalee blinked. Was he serious? Klaud seemed equally confused, but then she smiled.
"Activate. Lau Shimin, you know what to do." And indeed, the white ape-beast lifted the plate and the way was clear. "How long until you're convinced?" Klaud asked.
"Oh, as long as it takes." he smiled. Lenalee couldn't believe her luck and slipped past Lau Shimin and through the exit. Allen thought 'I owe them my life', then everything turned black. The last thing Lenalee heard was Tiedoll saying "Alright, I'm convinced." The plate dropped and Lenalee started to run.
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Lau Shimin had just turned back into a small monkey on Klaud's shoulder, as a member of CROW spotted them. He landed before them. "Good evening General Tiedoll, General Nine. Pardon my question, but have you seen anything suspicious around here?"
"Yes." The two Generals answered.
"Really? What?" The man seemed stressed. Allen Walker had neither been at the party nor his room. To make matters worse, no one was sober enough to remember when he left. The catastrophe came when somehow, the man suspected someone had talked, the news of the order to have Allen Walker executed had leaked and the entire Order knew it. If the boy had heard it, which was almost certain, he'd be on the run and hiding, which was why they were ordered to search the entire perimeter. The boy was Crosses apprentice and if he was anything like his master, they could search for weeks without finding him. The captured Golem didn't help either, because it would locate Cross, not Walker. Also, some sadist had replaced the usual eye with a sharp-fanged and hidden mouth. Three members were bitten, one was bleeding badly and another had even lost two fingers to that deathtrap. To make matters worse a gorilla known as the head nurse had arrived and dragged all three to the infirmary and was now set on not letting any of them leaving till morning. The morning of next Friday to be exact. Even if the boy would be caught and exterminated, and the chances of that happening were getting slimmer by the minute, this operation would leave a major dent in their reputation.
The Generals grinned. "You."While they did have a point, that was not what he was hoping for.
"I meant was there someone here?"
"Yes."Did they see Allen Walker? After the initial inability to locate him, they had decided to keep an eye on the exits. Was this a clue?
"Really, who?"
"We." He couldn't believe he had fallen for the same trick twice. If this got out, their reputation wouldn't be dented, it would be crushed beyond repair.
"Never mind. Thank you for your cooperation." with that, he left.
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Lenalee had the feeling she had forgot something important, while she ran past the trees towards the cliff. Then she remembered. Kanda liked to train and meditate here. She remembered because he was standing in front of her.
Kanda stared at Allen's forehead. This couldn't be true. The Moyashi was a Noah? This was too good to be true. He could cut him down and nobody could give him an earful about it. Goodbye and good riddance, as they say. He grinned and was about to draw Mugen when he saw Lenalee's face. She was crying.
Lenalee cried. To have grasp at freedom just to have it slip between her fingers twice in one night was to much. What had she done to deserve this? Kanda seemed to hesitate, a fierce battle raging in his head. Then slowly, almost begrudgingly, he sheathed Mugen and walked passed her.
"Che, what you two do here in the woods is none of my business. Don't involve me in it."
Lenalee could have kissed him, but she had more important things to do. She jumped of the cliff, held Allen tightly, muttered "Innocence activate. Onkyou no Tougi: Otokase." and headed off with sonic speed.
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It didn't take her five minutes to find a safe town fifty miles away from the Order. She also found a nice little inn owned by an elder couple. They agreed to let them in at this late hour and offered to let them stay a few nights. Lenalee dropped Allen in a bed, paid the couple extra for the sheets Allen would inevitably ruin with his blood and his squirming. The couple told her that their son was a doctor and offered to let him take a look at Allen when he'd arrive in the morning, free of charge. Lenalee thanked them, changed into the clean spare clothes Cross had gotten her and left. She was about to return when she saw an old horse-wagon filled with sacs. She asked the driver what they contained, and when she heard it was coffee, she bought two of the sacs before returning to the Order.
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In the meantime, the old couples son arrived, and when he heard there was a wounded boy upstairs, he immediately went to check on him. He replaced the bled-through bandages with new ones and disinfected the wounds. He noticed that there also seemed to be a wound on his head, so he brushed the white hair aside... and froze. He didn't believe his eyes.
"I must inform the Earl immediately." he muttered and went downstairs to make a call.
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The Noah were at dinner when the Earl stepped in. Everyone looked at him. Tyki, Cyril and Lulubelle with polite interest, the twins with upset faces and Road visibly bored. She wanted to play with Allen and get rid of all that homework. The Earl spoke.
"Well my children, I've just got a call that one of my Level 3s found a Noah in the awakening process. Unfortunately, he's too close to the Order to wait for. One of you will have to bring him."
"Tyki volunteers." Road immediately shouted. Everyone else seemed to agree.
"All right, I'll do it. But I'm taking a gate." Tyki stated.
"Very well, but only to get there. As I said before, it's too close to the Order. Once you have him, you'll have to take a train to..."
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Lenalee was greeted rather coldly when she entered. Standing in front of her was Levrier, looking like he had just eaten five pounds of lemons.
"Where were you and what were you doing there?" He barked at her. Lenalee had gone through too much to be intimidated for the rest of the week.
"And a good morning to you as well." Levrier seemed to loose his cool.
"Answer the question." But before Lenalee had a chance to come up with an excuse, Johnny had spotted her.
"Hey Lenalee, you're back, and you've got the coffee." this was followed by a hip-hip-hooray from the entire science division.
Levrier seemed unable to decide if he should explode with anger or stare in shock. "You've sent an exorcist to get coffee?!" Johnny nodded with a grin. Levrier seemed to give up and walked away, foaming with rage.
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Tyki had arrived without a problem and had to watch the gate, and with it the chance for a quick and easy way home, vanish. He light a cigarette to calm down and followed the Akuma to the new Noah's room. "Okay!" He called "Hello, I'll soon be your new brother and I'm here to take you..." He froze mid-sentence. He stared. The cigarette fell to the floor. He didn't care. He rubbed his eyes and pinched himself. The picture didn't change.
"Cheating Boy A?" he asked.
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And that's it. Wow, almost twice as long as the former chapters. Well, I promised a longer chapter and here it is.
What I forgot last time: to Starforce119: About Timothy's Innocence, I probably had the translation and you the original name. But Tsukikami sounds much better, so thank you.
It took me pretty long to get this scene how it is and I think it came out okay. I'm currently in a writing fever, so who knows, next chapter might be done tomorrow, maybe Friday. But don't get used to daily upgrades, I won't be able to keep this up forever. Again, I value opinions and ideas from everyone, so if you feel like it, send me ideas for exorcists (I have a few myself, but more is always good (see author's notes of chapter 3)), or Noah (I just noticed, there are seven empty seats, so help me fill them if you want (Name, appearance, background(again optional), Noah of, abilities would be nice). Also, any ideas for Cyril Kamelot's power?). If not, then tough luck for me, oh well. Again, everything but flames is welcome.
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