That Awkward Moment when you're reading fanfiction before class starts, and your teacher witnesses you having a serious fangirl moment. Yeah, she asked me if I needed to go to the nurse, and she was a hundred percent serious, too!
By the way, CHAPTER 58 IS A FAN Q&A, SO START SUBMITTING QUESTIONS NOW! All questions will be answered, ask as many as you want, and to any character or me.
Situation
Chapter 56: Kiseki Mana Walker
"She is so beautiful," Lenalee whispered, joyful tears falling from her eyes. The baby was fast asleep, but I couldn't see very well until my best friend brought her to me, "Here, but be gentle."
Nodding, I take my daughter into my arms and cradle her, my own tears falling as I do so, and Kanda strokes her cheek lovingly. Lavi, who was standing beside Lenalee with an arm around her waist, asks, "What's her name?"
As soon as he says it, I look up at Kanda, "What's 'miracle' in Japanese?"
"Kiseki," he whispers. "Our miracle, Kiseki Mana Walker."
When the words pass his lips, little Kiseki's eyes open, and I find myself pierced with a gorgeous blood red, the gaze immediately reminding me of her father. Smiling, I say, "She could kill with a death glare, but let's hope she's sweeter than Kanda."
"And yet, you call me Kandy," he teases. A thought crosses my mind, and I ask Lenalee, "What breed is she?"
"See for yourself," she replies, obviously waiting for a reaction from me. Moving his hand from her cheek to the blanket covering her head, Kanda pulls it back, two black and white ears springing forward, and I notice the head-full of hair she had was as pale as mine except for the ebony spots. Scratching behind her ear, I say, "Snow leopard."
"Nya!" Kiseki cried happily, scarlet eyes glimmering.
"Ice will be excited," I say. As I said it, I felt a bit sad. I mean, with the baby born, I won't be able to communicate with the kit anymore.
"Yeah, and they can eat mice and stuff together!" Lavi adds, receiving four equally appalled looks.
"My daughter is not eating mice," Kanda growled. "Though, I'll encourage her to chase some rabbits."
The rabbit the statement was directed at gulped, but I interrupt, "Komui, is there anything wrong with her from the early birth?"
The scientist shook his head, "Nothing bad."
"What does that mean?" Kanda demanded, his hand now cradling Kiseki's face. Komui explains, "As you all are aware of, Innocence does weird things, and in this case, the Innocence sped up the time the rest of the body would have needed in the womb."
Confused, I continue, "What does that have to do with anything?"
"The point is that while that helped her, parts of her brain that normally would be unreachable for a human were unlocked. There's no way to tell what effect it will have until she's older, but if I took a guess, she might just be able to have an extraordinary memory."
"And if it's more than that?"
"Then it could be possible for her to hold information in her brain better than Bookmen, among other things. She could become extremely keen on emotions and body language, more than a regular feline or person. She won't get super powers, but she could be one of the most intelligent people in the world."
"Why would that be bad?" I ask, even more confused.
Komui shakes his head, "Not for me. For you. She'll be able to sense unease, fear, and she'll know where your scars come from if she sees them. By the time she turns seven, she'll be as smart, if not smarter, as Lavi. She'll be able to walk in weeks, and talk in days. It's not a bad thing, but I'm afraid that if the authorities found out about this, they might try to put her on the battlefield before she's four."
"Like heck they will!" Kanda growled quietly, death dripping from his voice. "I'm not letting her fight until she's sixteen."
Komui looks down, "This experiment wasn't acknowledged beyond the European Branch, Bak, Lou Fa, and Fou. We might have to hide her if such things happened."
Holding her close to me, I give Kiseki a kiss on her forehead, nuzzling her cheek. Trying to get on a happier note, I look up at Kanda, "Do you want to hold her?"
"I-I…um…I don't know…how…" he trailed off, looking at the floor. Giggling, I show him how to support her so she'll be comfortable and hand the baby to her father, happy when he smiled at her. From where I was on the bed, I couldn't see Kiseki, but I did her high-pitched laugh and two tiny hands beginning to swat the hair dangling by Kanda's face, and I say, "I'm not the only one who thinks your hair is fun to play with."
Rolling his eyes, he bounces her a little, and I hear her laughter, the sound like beautiful music to my ears. Was this what it was like for all mothers? I guess I'll never know until I meet one, and that I hadn't done in the exception of Lila, but we don't talk that much about her kids.
oO_Oo_oO_Oo
One month later
Truly, the Order was much more cheerful now that there was a little cat-girl running through the halls chasing after Kanda of all people. When I was younger―you know, when I didn't have a kid―I heard people say that children naturally had a strong bond with their mothers. Yeah, that's not the case with this family. Every day, Kiseki would get out of bed whenever Kanda did, no matter what, and then she would follow him around like a little duckling. We would eat breakfast together, and she would eat about half as much as I do, most of it consisting of milk, fish, and chicken. She had tried soba of course, but she didn't like it that much, not that Kanda minded that much, because she still ate all her food with chopsticks and made sure that she didn't eat too fast. For the record, I didn't teach her that.
Next, one of two things would happen. One, Kiseki would go with Kanda to train, and yes, she is already training a week and a half after she took her first steps. Komui told me that because of her gift, she would most likely reach one-hundred percent synchronization before she turned ten. Did I mention I'm proud?
Or two, she would hang out with Lenalee and I, usually begging Kanda to come until he finally gave in about two seconds after.
After lunch, Kiseki has lessons with Lavi, and they are currently going through a book for third-graders, and they're nearly through it. She could already read and write better than me, and is constantly borrowing books from the library, going through Goosebumps books in one night. And she doesn't just read novellas. This one-month-old will get informational books to read, and at this point, she had memorized half the Bible. I can't even figure out what some of the words in that book was and she can directly quote from it!
Now for the thing Kanda was so proud of: Kiseki was already nearly fluent in Japanese, which slightly ticked me, because the two of them would say something, look at me, and then break out laughing. Not that my boyfriend would tell me anything. Nope, he just said that it was something school related, because he knew that if he told me what was said, he'd be sleeping in the crib for a few weeks.
Ice and Kiseki have a really strong bond, too. Even though she likes to sleep with Kanda and me, on the nights the cat-girl sleeps in her room, Ice will curl up with her and they'll sleep through the entire night.
Speaking of night, you know how scientists say that every night you have dozens of dreams? Yeah, that's true. Every morning, Kiseki wakes up earlier than we do, and she has a journal she writes down all her dreams in. It's amazing to me that she can remember all the details, and on top of that, she will write a good ten pages. So now, we have three full, hundred-page journals under our bed with Kurohana's.
Early on, I realized that Kiseki loved stones like I do, and now she teaches me about the different types, not that I mind. She really likes to learn about psychology, always reading about body language and voice changes, and she also told the rabbit that Kanda doesn't really want to hurt him. Needless to say, this was before I hooked a rope to Lavi's pants while he wasn't looking, and he ended up running for his life while my daughter chased him around the Order trying to get to the catnip ball I put at the top.
"Hey Daddy, when will I get to go on a mission?" Kiseki asked, piano ears perked as she awaited an answer. At this, Ice jumped onto her belly and started distraughtly crying to which the cat-girl whined, "I know, I know! Save me the lecture, Sis, but I wanna go with Chichi!"
I'm not sure at what point Ice became "Sis", but it happened sometime. The bed Kiseki was lying in was actually my old one, but we moved it in here since she hated being in the crib. Come on, she may be the size of an infant, but she's as smart as a ten-year-old!
"I already told you, Kiseki, you can't go with me," Kanda said as he walked into her bedroom, drying his hair with a towel. Giving him the puppy-dog look, she asks in a frustrated voice, "Why not? I'm old enough to take care of myself!"
Shaking his head, Kanda sat down beside her, "No, you aren't. You aren't big enough or old enough. Allen was twelve when he first started training, and he still got his butt kicked."
"Hey! I object to that!"
"You can only raise an objection in court, otherwise it means nothing. And even then, it would still be true," my daughter stated, not helping my case at all as her father smirked at me. Eying him, I threaten, "One word and you're sleeping in the bathtub tonight."
"Anyways," Kanda said, reflecting the subject to why Kiseki was so distressed in the first place, "you can't go with me. It wouldn't be safe for you at all. When we explained this to you the first time, we promised to take you when you turned twelve."
Nodding, I add, "And he won't be gone longer than a few days."
"Fine," she muttered, earning more scolding from Ice.
After Kanda and I tucked Kiseki in, we got in our own bed, and I say in the darkness, "You know that we'll have to go on real missions soon. We're lucky this time it was just retrieving Innocence, but one of these times, Lenalee, Lavi, you, and I will have to investigate something to do with the Noah."
"And Fou will take care of her until we get back. By the time something like that happens, she'll have the brain of someone our age," he says, holding me closer, and he rubbed my back through the fabric of my turtleneck. The biggest downside of all of this was I had to wear my turtlenecks at all times, because Kiseki had a tendency to come in here in the middle of the night, because she can't sleep.
"As in someone seventeen or twenty? There's a three year difference between us, you know."
"I meant my age then. You're just too mature for seventeen."
"And you're too immature for someone who's twenty," I fire back, giggling.
Oo_oO_Oo_oO
When I woke up to hear screaming, I'm nearly certain that Kanda originally thought it was me, because I thought he'd give me a concussion with as hard as he was jerking me. It took one more second for us to run into Kiseki's room, finding her crying and curled up in tight ball with her ears flush to her skull and fluffy tail over her face partially.
"What is it?" Kanda asked before she all but hurled herself into him, shaking hard and clinging to her father for safety as he tried to soothe her.
"A-a nightmare. There was this g-girl with golden eyes…and a lollipop…" she trailed off into sobbing, but Kanda's eyes became as wide as mine usually were while I was seeing through dinner plates. Slightly hating myself, I say, "Kiseki, it's really important that you tell us what happened, and don't leave anything out."
Shaking her head, she whispers, "I-I don't r-remember…."
"Kiseki," Kanda said seriously, holding her close, and I knew that with the way he said it, she couldn't refuse.
Sniffling, she says, "I was in this room. It was like an alternate universe, a world full of toys, and it felt like I was in a big present. But there was something off about it, like there was a darkness in the present that was supposed to be all happy. Then, I saw this girl that looked about twelve, only her eyes were golden with little lines in them, and they made her look like she was older, like Bookman. She was wearing purple stockings, a white shirt, and a pink bow, and she had blue spiky hair. And little crosses went across her forehead. There was a little umbrella that could talk under her that she was standing on, and lit candles with pointy ends where floating around her. But then she called me Hyō."
"Means leopard in Japanese," Kanda explained quickly, then nodded for Kiseki to continue.
The cat-girl had stopped crying, but she was still obviously upset, but she still carried on, "She asked me why I looked so young and if I'd seen Tyki and Jasdevi yet. Then, she told me that Skinn was dead, that a freakin' exorcist with long hair murdered him. Chichi, that wasn't you, was it? You wouldn't hurt someone's family member, would you?"
"I did. What you need to understand is that I had to, and he was a Noah," Kanda explained. We then continued to tell her about the Noah and about what happened on Noah's Ark.
oO_Oo_oO_Oo
"Lavi, I need to ask you something," I said, sitting across from him in another chair in the small reading are of the library. Nodding, he put down his book, "Okay, shoot."
"Who is Hyō?"
Giving me an odd look, he asked, "How did you find out about her?"
"I don't remember."
The look he gave me obviously said that he knew I was lying, but I still ask, "Who is she?"
"It's classified information―"
"It involves Kiseki, okay? I need to know!"
Sighing, Lavi glances around the area to see if anyone was around before saying, "Fine, but you cannot repeat a word of this to anyone, not even Kanda."
I nod, and he continues, "Hyō Wrine is a Noah that went missing decades ago. We really don't know that much about her other than she had the memory of Intelligence and was supposedly Road Kamelot's lover. She's the only Noah known that can completely change her eye color to any color on earth, which was why it was always so hard to relocate her. But then one day, there was a battle taking place and when she showed up to fight with Road and Tyki, according to finders and exorcists that were fighting, she just disappeared into thin air, and has never been seen again."
As he finishes, more confusion floods into my mind, but I push it aside. Coincidence. It was all a coincidence. Right? Right.
Author Note: So yes, I will be doing a sequel, but before that, I'll be doing another story called Bruise. It will be a story about an abusive Lavi and screwed up Allen (yes there will be cutting and domestic violence), and then it turns Yullen. Anyways, please submit your questions for the Fan Q&A, and please, Please, PLEASE R/R!