Hello everyone. After reading your suggestions and deliberating on it, I think that following on the same story rather than breaking the new arc into a new story is better and easier for everyone. So I will continue writing here and change the status back to 'on going'. Just know that this is basically the beginning of the second arc of Wonderful Wonderful Romance: Of Knights & Clocks."

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ARC 2

CHAPTER 16: THE HUNT STARTS

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Not but a minute ago, Gray had been scolding Nightmare regarding his usual lack of work ethics with that little edgier tone filled with threads that usually encouraged the incubus to do his work, which quite frankly wasn't much since mysteriously all paperwork have magically toned down after the storm due to mysterious protocols and new work practices, which had been so good that he had investigated only to find out that the direct responsible for the functional and paperless magic had been the forgotten second foreigner Aria Hadron Scherzi, who had been hired by Nightmare at some point in the past to improve all processes and lessen his work.

Since the second foreigner had appeared, she had been nagging his mind. He had almost killed her and that bothered him slightly, more so for the fact that it irked him that he was reacting towards him hurting her rather than the fact that he had done so. But overall there was just something regarding her presence that pulled on his memories and lurked in his mind, as if she was there but he was unable to simply reach those memories.

After learning of her existence he had performed investigations regarding very recent events, and had been surprised that the underworld was already boiling with rumors, but the most he had learned was that she seemed to have been directly immerged in various fights since she reappeared. That seemed off for a foreigner, and regardless of her state, which he admitted he was curious about, there was more stuff surrounding her presence that bothered him. Like how he felt he knew her well. It was undeniable that he felt some sort of empathy and understand towards the mercenary, or the almost need to go and check out on her wellbeing despite Nightmare prohibiting him from interfering, at least until she had healed, and being a foreigner, it would take a while.

Yes, it irked him, and as soon as he had overload Nightmare with more work so he was tired and more willing to share information on this outsider he would go and look for more information on her. There was something far more than weird about that woman.

That had been his plan, but he received quite the surprise when the door connecting the towers opened with a bang against the wall and she appeared on through the door frame, all geared up and with quite a desperate yet angry look while searching around for something, which he quickly determined was an exit. He had worked in the underworld for long enough to identify easily an escape attempt.

Her pupils shone with unnatural flickers of colored light dots as he looked at her. Something about her expression and her demeanor pulled painfully on his clock giving him an urging and strong sensation that made him worried. But worried for what?

He couldn't tell, but he felt the need to do something about it, however, before he could act, the mortician came running behind her and tried to grab her bag to retain her. Without noticing he was already reaching for his knives and was ready to thrown them towards the blue haired man. But he didn't even had the chance to do so. The distressed woman had turned around with a twist of her arm to provide the mortician with a hard sounding slap so strong that the clock master was thrown to the floor a clearly dislodged jaw while his body twitching in spasms.

That had probably been the hardest slap he'd ever seen or heard about. And her suit obviously had played a good part on the damage dealt. Not that he gave a damn for the mortician, but he had remained in his spot out of the slight confusion her presence had caused on him. The moment he saw the clock master trying to get her, he had been ready to jumped forwards to get him away from her, he would have attacked the man but she had done so first. But that wasn't the point. It was clear that his own clock reacted to her, maybe more so than it did to Alice.

Gray was now ready and willing to ignore Nightmare's orders regarding her, but once again, she acted before he could do anything, grabbed a chair, and used it to smash a window; then she proceeded to jumped out and his clock almost seemed to stop inside his chest.

The ex-assassin ran towards the window and, fearing what he'd thought he'd see, he looked outside. To his relief what he saw was how, hanging from a grappling hook gun that she held in her hand and that was connected by a metal line to the structure of the tower, and that had probably kept extending all the way during her fall, she graciously slid towards the floor of the plaza bellow til, a couple seconds before landing, the grappling hook released from the wall and coiled back in the gun as a cushion of some black material emerged and extended below her to let her safety land with a roll on the floor upon impact among the surprised people. Then the black cushion disappeared into her shadow and she stood up, running away from the place with a slight limp towards the far streets and getting lost into the first corner in the distance.

That had been impressive, but Gray could not forget the weary and pained look on her face before she jumped or the raging anger towards the mortician. His clock ached at seeing her away. Something pained had happened in the past with her and there was just something about that woman that drew him towards her and he wanted to know why. Nightmare had wanted to let things develop but he couldn't ignore this.

"She's alive and went away"

Nightmare informed aloud what he'd read on Gray's thoughts, and Gray turned his slitted eyes towards the cause of this, the mortician that was barely managing to move again due to the electric shock of the slap and was trying to stand up but couldn't do so yet; then the lizard's eyes landed on the bag the mercenary had been forced to drop. It was open and its contents were visible, they were medical supplies. Gray's yellow eyes narrowed and he ran out, stepping over Julius body on his way to search for the wounded foreigner.

Some murmurs came from the faceless that had seen the scene as the mortician finally managed to stand up after the lizard stepped over him just when Alice came running into the room and let out a little shriek of horror at Julius's dislodged jaw.

Completely ignoring Alice, Julius raised his hand and accommodate his own jaw back in place with a sickly sound. The mortician then looked at Nightmare and managed to coerce into words the mess that were his emotions and thoughts - "I remembered"

Nightmare's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he simply assaulted psychically the clock master's mind with all the force of his power to see all that had been remembered. This incident had affected him too and it wasn't of his liking at all. So he was gonna go as far as needed.

Julius was forced down to his knees by the mental hit that caused his nose to bleed from the pressure on his brain and Alice tried to help steady him by grabbing unto his arm while Nightmare hovered menacingly slightly up in the air displaying his powers against the bluenette.

"Nightmare stop!" - Alice's words were lost in the air.

The first foreigner saw between the grimace in Julius's face and Nightmare's hardened gaze. She then ran to grab onto Nightmare's arms and shacked it to make the lord of Clover stop, but the incubus continued his assault until he saw everything that had truly transpired regarding the second foreigner; which was apparently an outrageous revelation that caused the dream demon to go even paler than when he was sick and forced him to hold tightly onto the desk with Alice's support while a trail of blood ran down his nose.

He had seen through the mortician's memories how she had at first kept herself hidden for a while before revealing her presence, how she had worked for all the territories and some of her interactions with everyone; her tendency of getting hurt but avoiding death and how she had saved herself at the first ballroom event she had attended; how she had represented the prison at the concert event and how after that they had sent her into a suicidal mission to retrieve Alice. How she had applied her deal to control the repairing of clocks and how they had tried reaching Diamond, barely in time to see her almost get killed by the Jabberwock and then fight it will all she had, only to get lost to Spades.

Nightmare saw everything Julius had done or shared regarding her, all little interactions and all little discussions before the second event at the amusement park where she had decided to cut ties with those that were only using her, and had attested how bad Clover and Hearts had been after they came back from Diamond. He had seen how she had been the one to crash Alice's wedding, or how she had been extremely sketchy when the mortician had tried helping her but how she had saved his life in that alley. He had even seen that stolen kiss or what she had almost done with him before Alice arrived…

Even if Nightmare couldn't remember it, now knew it too. He now was aware of who the mercenary was and what had happened. Why she had wanted to remain in anonymity and why she didn't trust any of them. He knew just how bad this was and how much on the edge she was. How they had failed and how the game had continued.

It was much, much they forgotten and much that could happen, but underneath all that, he now also understood that everyone forgetting her hadn't been, nor merely nor casually, caused by the storm. No. Someone or something had use the storm as a conduct and enhancer for messing with everyone's minds. The dream demon had suspected something was amiss but had no reason to think much of it until Aria appeared. And it was most likely related to the dark part of the dream real where nightmares lurked no longer under his control. That sent chills down his spine, but the only one who could have a clue about it had just jumped out the window and would certainly not want to cooperate with any role holder and with good reasons. They had earned that instead of wining her.

Nightmare looked around and took a breath at the overwhelming waterfall of information he had just gotten while the mortician, with his back humped, was already retreating back to his tower tail between the legs, as Alice seemed unsure if to follow him or remain here.

Half of the faceless that had seen this had disappeared and the wind that came from the broken window howled a warning about all that could go wrong now. The lord of Clover didn't know what else could have happened to Aria Hadron Scherzi or what she might plan to do. He didn't know what could have messed so many memories about her so much... or worse yet... Who? What he was sure of, was that things had been set in motion and that the hunt to find the second foreigner had begun.

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Yeah, she used that grappling hook gun mentioned a couple chaps back ;) And Nightmare is right, I seriously doubt she'd like to cooperate with any holder at all. I also don't think Ace will take this little incident kindly or that Blood will remain idle after the little scare Alice got from all this.

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BTW and out of frame. Had anyone who had read the Mature one-shots noticed that they are all written completely in the guy's POV and not Aria's at all?