The day was gray, and the rain came down in sheets. It was a dreary time, with the buildings crumble and smoke curling in the air. It was damp, horribly damp, and he could feel it through his clothes. His wet, red hair stuck to his face as he walked slowly home. Behind him, a man watched with what seemed like awe. However, the boy didn't notice. He just continued walking as if the man did not exist. The red haired man of nineteen trailed behind him as if in a dream, watching as the young boy looked up at the sky with green eyes. However, this stop was momentary. The boy quickly picked up his pace again, weaving in and out of the crowd that was hurrying through the city very suddenly, all of them worn and half-dead in spirit. The sound of bombs and explosions echoed somewhere in the distance, but no one payed any notice to them.
The boy read the numbers on the buildings carefully, passing by broken ones without hardly a glance. He was used to broken buildings. Though new ones seemed to crop up every single day, they were always the same to him. They were all broken shells that would multiply until they swallowed the entire city. One day, that was all that would be left in the world. To him, he'd never known anything else.
Finally, he reached one that was made of what was once brown brick but was now drab, dusty stone of unidentifiable color. Here and there a plant would make an ambitious move to grow up the side of it, but it would never get far. The young boy stepped inside of the building, walking up the stairs one by one by one. Behind him, unnoticed and unseen, the red haired young man with the eye patch followed the boy up the creaking staircase. Through the steps, he could see the other floors, and the stairs themselves were eaten by wood mites, rot, and mold.
The boy finally reached a door, passing many others on his way to this one destination. He was hardly tall enough to reach the door handle, but reach it he did. Inside the room, the wail of a child met his ears, and the little boy put a small smile on his face. He walked into the room, and the young man strode in behind him before the door could close. The older man's footsteps made no sound as the little boy ran up to the crib, balancing on tip toe in order to see inside. The young man peered over the little boy to get a glimpse of what he was looking at. A baby, hardly more than a few months old, squirmed in the crib with a scrunched up face, and the little boy tickled her stomach. The baby wasn't too fond of that - she began to wail, loudly vocalizing her discomfort. The little boy payed no mind as he walked away from the crib towards a bed in the corner of the room.
A lump lay on the bed. It was covered with blankets and rags, anything that would serve for warmth. The little boy began to slowly shake the lump, and the lump stirred, revealing a woman as it rose. She rubbed her eyes, and the young man sucked in a breath.
She had reddish brown hair and blue eyes with skin that was once as smooth as porcelain. However, many years had carved lines in her face and the pox had put scars on her cheeks. She had a long, aquiline nose that would one day be evident in her son, though now his nose kept the same, smallish bump of youth. She blinked blearily, her eyes looking like washed out pans of water as she asked, "What is it?" Her voice was wavering and thin. The little boy dug around in his pocket with one dirty hand, and he pulled out a gleaming handful of coins along with a single bill. The woman frowned and rose up a little higher, and she touched the coins hesitantly, as if they'd disappear.
The young man had the urge to touch her face, to feel her hair, to speak with her. It was overwhelming as he stared at her, his eye beginning to fill with tears as he realized who she was.
"I gotcha something! Look, here's a fivepence, and here's a tenpence, and this one's a tuppence and another fivepence, and this is a whole pound!" he stated in an excited hush, pointing out the coins and single bill. The woman seemed in awe and in horror at the same time. She shook as she suddenly seem to shrink into the covers, and she asked, "Where did you get this?" The boy suddenly looked surprised, and he fell silent. He looked at his feet, and that was all the answer his mother needed.
"You stole it."
"You needed the money, Mam. I didn't want to-"
"You stole it. You stole it, and you took it, and... and..."
"Mam!" She shook her head, disgusted. She sat up in bed, shaking with the effort of remaining upright. She coughed and spat before saying, "I didn't raise my son to be a thief. God does not take kindly to thieves, and you know it. He punishes thieves and liars." The boy drew in on himself, looking up fearfully as his mother took the money and attempted to get up. She stumbled towards the door, and she put the money in a purse hanging on a wall. She stood at the wall, catching her breath before looking over her shoulder at the boy. Behind him, with much the same horrified look, the young man stood with a great sadness in his chest.
"I want you to... I... I need you to just... You need... to... I... I don't know what I want you to do... I don't know what I want you to do," the woman suddenly said, collapsing to her knees as she began to sob. The baby screamed and screeched, and a thump from above was followed by a loudly yelled "SHUT UP DOWN THERE, WILL YA?"
"WHY DON'T YA JUST SHOVE IT?" she shouted in retaliation. Suddenly, things fell quiet, other than the sound of the baby crying. The young boy edged closer to his sobbing mother, her shoulders shaking with the weight of her despair. She looked up at her son, her nose running with snot and her eyes red from weeping.
She touched her son's face, holding it in her hands as she stroked his hair and asked, "What are we going to do? You just... you wanted to-to help, but... I don't know what to do. We... there's nothing we can do." She laughed with a touch of hysteria as she cleared her son's hair out of his face as a tear trailed down his cheek. She shook her head, sucking in a deep breath that shook like a leaf in a storm.
"Mam, what's the matter?" he asked. "I was just hungry. I just... wanted to get something for us. To get dinner." She shook her head with a sad smile, and she wiped her nose.
"Son, y'can't make a dinner out of a pound and ten pence," she stated, holding him by the shoulders before giving him a kiss to the head. She patted his cheek, and she said, "Don't ya do it again, or else I'll take a cane to ya." The boy nodded, and Lavi stared at the scene with both awe and confusion. His life... he'd hardly remembered his life before becoming a Bookman. He didn't even remember what his real name was. He couldn't have remembered his mother, either. All he knew was-
There was a knock on the door. He looked up quickly, instinct and intuition immediately telling him what was going to happen next. The boy's mother stood up, staring at the door with a look that was part fear and part hope. She shook as she opened the door, though from ill health or fright, Lavi didn't know. He stood behind them as the door was quietly opened, and two dark clad men stood there with their faces ominously shaded by their hats.
"Is this him?" one of them asked, gesturing to the young redheaded boy. She nodded meekly.
"Are you sure he will - "
"I am more than sure," she stated with a strength Lavi wouldn't have thought she possessed. The two of them fell silent. They looked down at the boy, and with a single flick of his finger gestured the boy to follow them. He looked up at his mother uncertainly, but the mother was walking away towards her daughter. She picked her up and began to rock her with swaying motions that put Lavi in mind that she would be in danger of falling over. Her shoulders were shaking, but she hid it well. The young boy looked up to the strange men, and he began to follow them.
Suddenly, though, the building shook, and the two men dragged the young boy into the stairwell with them. Very suddenly, the entire building began to collapse, and they began to scream and shout. Lavi was aware that he was behind the two men and the boy instead of inside of the room. I can only see and sense what I've already seen and sensed before. Of course.
"Mam! MAM!" the boy shouted, trying to run back towards the room, but the stairs were already collapsing in puffs of dust and splinters. Both Lavi and the boy glimpsed for the last time the woman with red hair, washed out eyes, and sad face in the center of her room with a baby in her arms and a look on her visage that stated she was resigned to her fate. The entire side of the building collapsed, and the rain of dust spattered them all. They coughed and spluttered, waving away the dust. The only things left were sections of stair clinging to the building and a few of the rooms downstairs. Wailing cut the air, and people shrieked.
The boy's home was now one of the broken shells he passed by every day. He shook as he stared down below, seeing a single arm sticking out of the rubble. The hand was familiar, one that he knew had taken his hand and stroked his face and smoothed his hair. Not ten minutes ago, those arms had held him. In that moment, Lavi realized something.
Never once, at all, that he could remember, neither of them had ever said 'I love you' to that woman, never thanked her, never said a word of gratitude other than to steal money for her even when she didn't want it and to cling to her when things got rough. Lavi stared numbly as he followed them down the stairs as far as they could go before they had to climb. He stared at the white arm in the rubble, reaching up to the sky, and he remembered something that had struck him that day, a thought that couldn't be spoken in this memory.
"God punishes thieves and liars."
"I think we broke him," Mr. Naso said simply. Lulu stared at Lavi with a slightly peeved look. She flexed her hands as Darrin watched in almost horrid fascination.
He was dripping with sweat, and his body was scarred with a multitude of burns. His face was cut in several places along his cheeks, and rivulets fell over his chin on to his chest. He was a bloody pulp - he hardly even looked like a human being. He was a mangled, broken person, and Darrin had had to watch them try and get a scream out of him for the past twenty to thirty minutes. They had had no such luck.
"We probably did," Lulu said, looking rather undecided about something. "You think we should just kill him? After all, there will be more Bookmen. He's expendable..." Darrin scrambled for something in his mind. They were after him because of information, and more Bookmen out there meant-
"You don't wanna do that, Miss," Darrin growled out gruffly. He glared at the woman, and she stared at him out of the corner of her eye. She walked over to him, standing toe to toe with the man who was sitting on the ground. She looked down and asked, "Why is that?" Darrin only grinned cheekily, and Lulu shoved him back with a boot to the neck. Darrin wheezed as she pressed down hard, and she asked, "Why is that? I couldn't hear you, I'm sorry." Darrin coughed and tried to say, "Come... come for... him..." Lulu frowned, and she took her boot off his neck.
"Others will come. Others... others will come for him," Darrin wheezed. She stood there, contemplating that idea for a moment... and then she nodded.
"He's right. We're better off keeping him alive as a hostage. Though from what it looks like, he won't be alive for much longer," she said, nudging the inert man with her toe. He didn't even budge. Lulu walked out of the tent, and Mr. Naso began to clean up. He looked towards Darrin with a kind smile, and he asked, "Would you like something to eat or drink? I need to feed this one anyways." He gestured to the man he'd been torturing only moments earlier. Darrin felt a chill spread from the nape of his neck to his spine. This man... he was so strange and incongruous, completely ruthless one minute to a kind, gentle person the next.
"No thanks," Darrin stated, shying away. The man walked out of the tent, and Darrin quickly stood up and tried to crawl towards Lavi. The man's red hair was stuck to his face, matted with dried blood and dirty from travel. Darrin managed to get his hands in front of him, and he lifted the man's head up. He didn't even groan as Darrin touched the drying scratches on his face. He winced as his fingers bit deep into the wounds, revealing that they were at least a millimeter deep, almost scraping the bone.
"Boy... boy, ya better wake up, alright? Cain't stay 'sleep like that fer the rest of yer life," Darrin said in hushed tones. Lavi's eye was the same dull, almost lifeless green with no activity revealing that he was actually conscious. His lips moved slowly, forming words that Darrin couldn't understand. He frowned as he let Lavi's head flop back down on his chest. All of a sudden, there was the sound of screaming, and Darrin looked behind him. He blinked as he realized that something was on fire. He could see the glow from inside of the tent, and he tentatively stood up. He was staked to the ground by a rope around his leg, but he could still get pretty far. He crawled on his stomach towards the entrance, just barely managing to move back the heavy canvas to see what was going on. He saw dark boots flash past as men yelled in Spanish.
And out of nowhere, there was screaming. Darrin scrambled back, wondering what in the Sam Hill could cause men to shriek like they were now. He felt his heart beat faster as he wandered back over to Lavi. This may just be their chance to hightail it out of there. Darrin quickly looked down at his wrists. They were tied together, but that had never stopped him before. As long as his fingers could move, he could get out. He tried to walk towards the torture table, but it was too far away. He looked around for something to throw, but he found nothing. He sighed as he sat down in front of Lavi, trying to think of something that might help them.
Lulu's voice suddenly boomed, and Darrin almost fell flat on his back. She was loud! He quickly stood back up as something flew into their tent. A bucket... that was it? A bucket? Darrin took it anyways, and he chucked it towards the torture table. Several implements suddenly flew off, and the only one within reach was the meat tenderizer. Darrin growled at his bad luck, and he started to worry away at the rope connecting him to the stake he was tied to. It was frayed halfway when Mr. Naso walked in. He stared at Darrin, grabbed one of his knives... and then he immediately walked back out. Darrin stared for a few moments before continuing his task, and he finally managed to get the rope off enough for him to snap the rope. He strode over to Lavi, and he started to undo the ties that held him to the rack.
"I'm gonna gitchu outta here, okay?" Darrin said, and he felt a pang of pain in his heart as he thought about how many other rescues of his had actually failed. He'd quit trying after a while, decided it was just better to be alone without anyone to save... and then these guys showed up on his front door (well, tent), and threw his world straight into what seemed like hell - and strangely enough, he sort of liked it that way.
More screaming was heard, and a man ran into the tent in a frenzy, hiding behind the winged chair that Lulu regularly occupied. He shivered, and Darrin pushed away the urge to glare and bark at the man to stop his whimpering. He had more pressing matters. He finally undid the last tie, and Lavi flopped to the ground in a heap. He didn't even bother to get up off of his ribs, and Darrin knew that the man was lost deep, deep, deep inside of himself somewhere. It'd been eerie to watch him transition, as if one minute he was there and the next he was a dead carcass meant for whipping, slashing, and burning. Darrin had a time trying to lift him up, seeing as Lavi was a good one hundred pounds heavier, and all that weight was all muscle and bone.
As Darrin carried Lavi out, men passed them by without a second thought, screaming, "Corra! Corra!" Suddenly, Darrin found himself at a blockade of Akuma, surrounded by them, though they didn't seem to notice him.
And then, briefly, Lavi woke up.
He began to speak, but he was mumbling so much that he couldn't tell what he was saying. Darrin slowly began backing away from the line of Akuma, lowering his head to Lavi's level at his shoulder.
"What'sat?" he muttered, a cold sweat coating his body as the armored demons corralled the men back into the camp. The words were becoming more distinct, but it still sounded like a garbled mess. Darrin didn't blame Lavi, considering his mouth was a pulp along with the rest of him, but it was highly frustrating.
"Ha-ha-... ham-m-mer. Need... need it," Lavi breathed, and Darrin immediately understood. He momentarily froze as he realized he had absolutely no idea what they'd done with it. It could be anywhere. More than likely, it was probably destroyed. The sounds of destruction were suddenly getting closer as Darrin realized that the Akuma were shooting at anyone trying to leave the camp.
"Dirty humans! Get back there and fight! She's one of you, anyways, you dumbasses!" one of the Akuma snarled in English, and the men fled back towards camp. The light of the moon was distorted by the warm, ominous glow of fires that had sprung up all over.
"Partner, 'at's a bit of a problem right now," Darrin stated, grunting as he dragged the younger man back behind a tent. The Akuma floated in droves over the camp, shooting humans indiscriminately now. Lavi raised his head, and Darrin looked at him in surprise. He was met with a stare that he could only describe as mechanical. The body was alive and working but the mind... it was as if the body were on autopilot, working only to survive and nothing else. It was chilling.
"I know where it is," Lavi said in a dead voice, no inflection and no tone. Darrin suppressed a shiver as he nodded and stated in a falsely cheerful tone, "Okay, where?" Lavi looked up the mountain to the head honcho's tent, and Darrin felt his stomach fill with lead. That was a good half-mile of enemy territory right there, occupied by both scared Spanish men, Akuma, and whatever was causing the hubbub. There was a sudden stampede as horses flooded out of the camp. Darrin realized he'd have to move and soon. If he didn't get out of there, he was going to either get them both shot, trampled, or discovered.
The trek up to the head tent was arduous and nerve-racking. Twice, Lavi was nearly shot, and Darrin had come very close to being discovered, and by Lulu no less. By the time they reached the tent, Darrin thought he would have a stroke from sheer stress alone. He huffed as he waited in the darkness behind a tent, and Lavi said, "Go... inside. Take... find... hammer. Get out. Leave me here." Darrin stared for a moment... but then supposed that there would be no arguing with him. Getting in and out quickly would be a hassle if he had a half-dead man on his back. Darrin lowered Lavi gently to the ground, placing him face up, and he headed off to the tent.
Within minutes, he'd found what he was looking for. The hammer looked like a prize, sitting on its own pedestal of sorts near the made up cot. For whatever reason, it'd been kept, and it was partially disguised by stacks of large chests that towered inside of the tent. Darrin grabbed the hammer-
Voices assailed the tent, and Darrin scrambled to hide inside of a half-open trunk full of clothes. He just barely managed to squeeze his small frame into the trunk, and he felt horribly claustrophobic and trapped. Voices became clearer as he lifted the lid of the trunk an infinitisemal amount.
"What is it this thing that has attacked my men? Tell me, is it one of your own concoctions? One of your own devil-gotten beings?" That voice was male, deep, and loud. It was also very angry, and he figured that was the Senor, the drug lord facilitating this debacle. Another voice answered, this one melodious and female.
"You should know better than to think that the monster attacking your men is ours. We, at least, have better control over our creations. The Earl is not like the church. We're much tidier." There was the sound of buttocks hitting a trunk as someone sat down, and there were a few moments of tense silence.
"When will you finish your... project? I do not believe we may stay here much longer. The men are losing morale, and the thing you seek must be elsewhere. I do not believe it is here," the male voice said. Darrin frowned. That was what those monsters had been doing... they were searching for something. He'd thought that-
"Believe me, it's there. We stay. The Bookmen have information we may need, and I believe they've programmed it deep into the boy's subconscious. Once we have accessed it, we'll have the exact location of the artifact," the female voice answered, and Darrin thought the temperature in the tent dropped a few degrees centigrade. He swallowed, trying his best to remain still. Any move and they might realize he was there.
"You have never told me what you were looking for."
"That's because you don't need to know."
Another tense silence, this one punctuated by gun fire and the sound of men screaming.
"How will you destroy it? The thing out there?" The male voice was tense. "What is it after?"
"Not it. She."
"She?"
"Yes. She." Darrin frowned, and he cautiously raised his neck to the level of the slit in the trunk. He peered out to look at whatever was visible of both the Senor and Lulubell. She? Were they talking about the thing rampaging through the camp?
"All right. What is she after?" Darrin held his breath. Had Esperanza survived the fall somehow? Along with those five or six gunshots? If she had, that meant she wsa either undead or made out of steel. He gripped the hammer, his knee shaking from the strain of holding up the heavy lid of the trunk. He waited with baited breath.
"She's after the Bookman Apprentice. Innocence does strange things to their users. Lenalee Lee, another Exorcist, was saved by her Innocence during a battle. Allen Walker was also saved by his Innocence. I have no doubt that this Innocence probably did the same for its owner. However, I do not believe it has ever reacted quite this... strongly towards adversity," Lulu said, and she walked past his trunk. He felt his heart stop as she momentarily walked back in front of his trunk, standing right in front of him.
"The Akuma should be able to shoot her down. Do not let your men leave the camp. We need every single one of them," she stated. Suddenly, there was the smell of burning, and cursing filled the air. Darrin had to strain in order to see what was happening, and Lulu and the Senor hurried to the side of the tent out of his sight. A figure suddenly stood in the doorway, and Darrin's eyes widened in fear. He shivered and shook, tempted to lower the lid and forget the sight he'd just witnessed.
It appeared that his earlier question of whether or not Esperanza was alive was now answered. She was alive, but... He shivered. Her body was mottled with blood, black under the skin. Bones were jutting against her skin, but she continued to walk and move. She looked like some sort of anatomical anomaly. There was no way she could still move in her state, and yet here she was. He heard distressed words before there was a sudden choking sound while footsteps rushed.
A body hit the floor, and Darrin curled up as closed in as he could around the hammer that Lavi had so wanted. Things suddenly fell into a deathly hush, the only sound Darrin could hear was his breathing. He trembled as he thought he could hear footsteps approaching his hiding place, but a heat caused him to realize that there was a fire, and sooner or later he had to vacate his current spot.
Lavi! He'd left Lavi, and a fire was beginning! There was no way the boy would be able to save himself - he was too battered to even try. Darrin tried to think of a way to escape the trunk without spurring attention when suddenly it was blown backwards. Darrin tumbled with a great yell, and he landed on the grass spread eagle on his back. He was surprised to see so much burned, as if a massive explosion had eaten the trees and grass. He scrambled to his hands and knees, and he surveyed the charred ground for any landmark that might denote where Lavi was located. He hoped that the boy hadn't been roasted. Already, the smoke was filling his lungs and making him cough as he raced down the hill side, unwilling to look behind him at what may be following him.
He tripped over something, and he finally looked back to see Lavi on the ground right where he'd left him. The tent that he'd been hidden behind had collapsed, the tent poles shattered and strewn about by some unknown force.
"W-what... what...?" Lavi breathed, but Darrin didn't take the time to explain. He simple tried to drag Lavi in any direction that was away. Suddenly, he stared into a line of Akuma, and his breath caught in his throat. They stood like sentinels against a fiery background. All the men were gone, and Darrin had the feeling they were either dead, dusted, or worse. He shook, realizing he had nowhere to go-
Lavi suddenly shoved Darrin to the ground as a hail of bullets tore up the ground into a purplish-brown haze. He scrambled back, looking up at Lavi with amazement as the man straightened up from his pained hunch. He stared at the Akuma with a mechanical eye, and there was something almost inhumane about him as he changed his hammer's size to that of an elephant's. The Akuma began firing again, but they couldn't make a dent in the hammer, or Lavi's defense as he protected the one human ally he had with him.
Finally, as if he'd had enough, he summoned his Level Two invocation, calling upon his seals like a master summoned hounds. Faithfully, they rung around him as he smashed his hammer into two different stamps, his Wood: Wind and Fire Stamps. Darrin watched at his feet as Lavi unleashed a massive wall of fire around them, spiraling out into a sphere that swallowed all in its path without intense heat turned his skin to leather and robbed his mouth of all moisture. His eyes watered as they were dried out within mere minutes. Screams of men unseen and the screech of Akuma met Darrin's ears, and he knew that in all his years he'd never heard a sound like that.
And then, it was all over. The fire dissipated to nothing but wisps, and Darrin shook on the ground, his heart thudding at an arrhythmic pace. A good 100 yards' radius was burned and leveled. Tents were charred remains, and the trees were nothing more than blackened sticks that were on fire or smoldering. The ground was dark and ashy, lumps of dark substance denoting where men may have once stood. Such power... such ability... Lavi suddenly looked down at Darrin with empty eyes, and he felt a thrill of fear as he realized that he didn't see a spark of recognition in the man's eyes. He scrambled backwards away from Lavi as the battered man advanced, twisting his hammer in his hand.
Darrin knew that in the moment when he backed into a burned, scalding pole he was going to die at his own friend's hand for no other reason than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hammer, bigger than the move above, came down -
and stopped.
Darrin stared at the woman holding the hammer up by the handle, stopping it with a shivering, straining arm. She was disgusting to look at, repulsive to behold, and yet Darrin could not tear his eyes from her. Her skin was covered in a strange, swirling pattern that turned her brown skin into a scaled silver as if she was adorned with shimmering slivers of steel. Bones jutted, skin was marred, massive half-healed wounds dotted her body. She was half-naked, wearing only a brassiere and her underwear. Her hair was covered in leaves, grass, and twigs, and there was no way she could still be alive.
Yet it was most definitely Esperanza. She was still recognizable, even with the blood, bones, and silver slivers along her body. The two entities, driven by separate wills that originated from different sources, stared at each other for several moments. Lavi's green eye pierced into the dead, blue eyes Esperanza sported. For a moment, Esperanza seemed to recognize Lavi... and then she threw him back ten feet.
Lavi retaliated as quickly as he could, smashing her into the ground with his hammer, but before he could do that, she dodged his attempted move and landed a foot to his gut. They continued to battle, and Darrin was caught between trying to stop them and surviving. They should both be dead by now... they should be dead. And now it seemed that the two people he'd meant to save were going to fight to the death. The very irony of it hit him, and he laughed with a note of hysteria.
And suddenly, he let loose a screaming laugh that only belonged to those whose works had come to nothing and whose nerves were near shot beyond repair. With this background music of lunatic mirth, the two continued to do battle, as broken as they were, for reasons they did not know and did not care.
A/N: So for this issue, we've only got one new person to add to our ranks: Kyuu333, for both favorite story and a subscription.
As I've said before, I very much enjoy reviews. I'm glad that this story gets so many views, but I can't make anything better if I don't know what I need to work on. Still, keep up the good work and keep reading!
-Doctor Yok