A Month Later

The streets were drizzly, despite the fact the sun had shone brightly the day before. The city seemed sleepy and lethargic under the cover of rain clouds, and the vendors half-heartedly called out to those passersby who braved the chilly, water-logged air. Lavi leaned inside of an alcove, waiting. He gazed out, feeling dread put a weight in his stomach that made it twist and pull down to the ground. He didn't want to be standing here in the rain and the cold. He missed Argentina, where it was dry and warm and familiar. He missed Chuleta, even though he was stabled back at the hotel. He missed predictable weather. He loved being in a city of people, but he hated the noise that they made at night when the rain finally decided to stop.

A month before, he'd been in a cabin on the top of a mountain, a vast change from the usually bustling metropolis around him. Even though there had just been Esperanza, Brother Federico, and himself, he hadn't minded it. Even with the quiet climes of Argentinian mountains, however, his mind continued to split and fracture, and Esperanza finally rooted the truth from him.

She had been less than pleased.

"You stupid, stupid boy! I could've helped you, but you did not tell me! I just went around, doing what I did, not knowing what was going on, heads nor tails, and tu vas y no hablas sobre lo! Que te pasa? Como hiciste no me dices sobre este? Estoy muerta de preocupacion y tu estaba te niega -!"

"Uh, Esperanza, I don't know what you're saying. You slipped into Spanish again."

In all honesty, she could've handled it much worse. He got a long, long lecture, but then they started talking about how to prevent the blackouts from happening. He tended to completely 'lose the present' whenever a certain smell was in the air (which most usually was Esperanza's soap, which they agreed she should stop using), and other dejavu events tended to throw him into that inert state. They had managed to minimize the blackouts to five every two weeks, but Lavi was still having issues keeping his memories from blurring. However, it seemed that they had things under control... for now.

"I need to find Bookman," Lavi had told Esperanza the day they'd left Brother Federico's house on Church orders. After hearing of Esperanza's miraculous recovery from near-death, the Science Department said that they needed to inspect her as well as get a full report from Lavi about the incident with the Noah. Their headquarters happened to be in Sao Paulo, a good couple of thousand miles from their current location. Lavi had already sent out a message to Bookman over his fixed golem. He had yet to respond, but Lavi had expected that. His last recollection of the old man (of which he could remember in perfect clarity) was of the old man stepping onto a boat to China to look up something from an ancient text that had escaped the Bookman clan's scrutiny.

The trip to Sao Paulo had been rather uneventful. No attacks, no problems, three blackouts that had all happened during the night and had seemed more like dreams. Esperanza definitely made it easier now that she kept a safe distance from Lavi, avoided physical contact, and stopped wearing her distinctive soap. Still, there was always that nagging worry that one day, Lavi was going to wake up a different person, and the person that was 'Lavi' would be stuffed into the back of the Bookman Junior's mind like so many other personalities. Despite the fact that neither Lavi nor Esperanza stated this fear, it still seemed to whisper between them when they looked to each other. He could tell whenever those blue eyes surveyed him that they were searching for Lavi the person, wondering if that was who he was now.

They'd roomed in different hotels on the Black Order's command. Lavi had not appreciated it, but he followed it nonetheless. Their reasoning behind it was that the Noah now knew both their faces, along with the drug lord Dominguez, if he had survived. To have a drug lord after their hides was dangerous, and they'd need to keep a low profile, but Lavi wasn't overly concerned with that. This was a city of over a hundred thousand. Finding them would be like trying to find two needles in... well, a stack of needles. What better way to hide a book than in a library, after all?

And now, he stood out in the rain, waiting. The city had unpredictable weather and had long held the nickname 'The Land of Drizzle'. They sat mere miles from the sea, and Lavi could smell it from where he stood. He looked down the road, watching a tram, a fairly new invention, trundle up the road with its load of people. There weren't many cars about. Public transport ruled here, along with the bicycle and the horse. Automobiles had yet to catch on. Walking was usually kept to a minimum on rainy days like these, and Lavi could see why. He suddenly wished that he had Kanda with him. He found it odd that on days where he felt depressed or lonely, he wanted that dour-faced samurai around. It made him feel better, in a weird way, to know that someone was more annoyed than he was.

Lavi's mind strayed as he waited, heading down another path. Something had been eating him ever since he'd come back from Argentina, something that wouldn't quit nagging him. Federico had told him that the thing the Noah were looking for was most likely either hidden at a different location, or it had been removed prior to them arriving there. Lavi had peered through Order records, some of which only he had access to, and he'd found some rather... interesting documents.

They spoke of an artifact, a lost Noah technology that was close in caliber to the Ark. The lake that they'd been to, El Lago del Condemnos, was actually only one stop among many for the Noah. For whatever reason, the technology had been hidden by some unknown force, perhaps the Order in its early days. At the bottom of the lake was a certain type of recording or document, an account of where the artifact might be. It had been put at the bottom of the lake, and the lake was dammed in such a way as to look natural. Lulu must've unleashed the water, creating a flood that cascaded down the mountain and filled the river below. She had done it discreetly so as to keep attention from her activities, but not enough to hide the fact that the river had all of a sudden swelled with water that it had not possessed before.

But, it seemed that they didn't find the document. Lavi and Esperanza saw men wandering the camp from the high ridge where Federico had spied the events of the week before. They were still looking, although in a half-hearted fashion. Lulu and Dominguez had been nowhere in sight, and that was either a blessing or a curse. Darrin was also missing. They had no idea where the man and his donkey had gone. The last Lavi remembered seeing him was before they'd left for the ruins. Everything else was a blur, and sometimes he woke up sweating, remembered pain lancing through his bones. He recalled being tortured all too well., some nights. He just wished he could remember what else happened after that.

Actually, technically he could bring into recall all that had transpired, but he was worried of getting lost. Just another reason he need Bookman. He shivered as he thought about going into such a painful memory on his own. Bookman had once made mention of something along the lines of a double memory manifestation - of a person going into a memory with another person acting as an anchor if the memory was too painful or too vivid. He couldn't quite remember, however, if that was what it was, and he had been hoping that Bookman could confirm this.

"Amigo." Lavi felt a smile spread on his face as he stepped into the falling drizzle. The labored, huffing voice he knew well. Esperanza trotted up to him, a shadow of a smile on her face. It was too rainy for her to be actually smiling - he'd only seen her do it once, when she'd seen her family at the bottom of the mountain. He'd finally been able to meet Esperanza's mother then, a woman whose Inca heritage showed blatantly on her long nose and her liquid black eyes. She looked well and happy, smiling at Esperanza. The young woman had run to her mother, hugging her tightly, and Lavi finally saw one of her rare, real smiles.

"Hey, Ranza. How're you doing?" he asked. Esperanza had been sick for the past two days, sniffling and coughing. The city's ever-changing climate didn't agree with Esperanza's arid, dry temperaments. She shrugged her shoulders, and she stated in English, "I've been better." At times Esperanza would talk to Lavi completely in Spanish, feeling uncomfortable in the entirely Portuguese speaking city. He could tell she was homesick and irritated, especially seeing as she was alone by herself in her hotel. He wished he could room at least across the hall, but the Order had been adamant.

"What did they say?" Lavi asked, hesitant. "The meds?" Esperanza looked confused, and Lavi realized he'd used English slang for the Infirmary Department workers. She'd been to the Infirmary every day after she'd arrived in Sao Paulo. It had initially scared the both of them the minute they'd entered the Order HQ when several doctors swarmed around her and started to lead her away from Lavi in a frenzied state of excitement. Lavi had to resist the urge to fight his way through the doctors, and it looked like Esperanza herself was about to throw a few of them in frustration.

"They have only seen one thing like this, from your friend Allen. They said that I was technically dead for a few minutes." She stated the last sentence with annoyance in the hoity-toity voice of the doctors. "And then my Innocence shattered the minute I was, what do they say... clinically dead. It fixed my bones, and I... I was..." Esperanza's frame shuddered for a moment. Lavi had the urge to touch her, to make her feel less alone, but he knew that for them that was dangerous, in more ways than one. He could only imagine what they'd told her.

"I was not dead anymore. I was somewhere in between, not quite alive and not quite dead either. They told me that the metal from Creacion Metalico melded my bones back together very forcefully, and that is why I am still so sore," she said, scuffing one boot against the ground in an ornery fashion. She wore a skirt these days along with a blouse and a long overcoat. The Order had not issued her a uniform - they had other Exorcists to worry about at the moment, ones that were older and more seasoned than Esperanza. The underfunded South America branch had only three or four women in their Exorcist division, two of which had uniforms. Esperanza was the one of the unlucky ones, along with another Peruvian woman named Ofelia. The Order had also mandated that she wear a long skirt and blouse, as befit a woman of the area. As he thought about this, he tugged on his own uniform coat. Lavi thought that this was dumb, considering Lenalee wore a skirt that practically revealed the shorts she had on underneath, and no one said anything.

Of course, she was the Branch Head's sister, but...

"What about your Innocence? Can they fix it?" Lavi asked. They'd managed to extract the silver fragments from her skin. He'd sat there and held her hand as they'd pulled out each one, a wince on her face every time they yanked. She was bandaged over most of her arms, some of her torso, and both legs from the cavities left behind. Changing the bandages must be a pain, especially considering she was alone.

Esperanza shrugged, her face the usual reserved mask of calm. Lavi tried to eye the tumultuous layer underneath, but she was too good at hiding her thoughts. She said, "I do not know, amigo. They don't tell me very much." She rubbed her arms, shivering from the chill, and Lavi almost pulled off his own coat for her. However, he thought better of it as he realized he was doing it again - that fondness thing. Lavi took a step back, figuratively, and made sure to keep his hands mentally shackled. Getting too close was like sticking his hands near a flame. Eventually, he'd get burned again.

Still, when you're starved for warmth, you'll do anything for it, even grab fire.

"Lenalee managed to get hers fixed. I heard that Allen's eventually reformed into a better form. Mine and Kanda's were reforged after fighting in the Ark. I think yours will pull itself together in no time," Lavi said with a bright smile that he didn't really feel. If she ended up like Lenalee, a Crystal type... He shuddered. Blood as the medium for an Innocence - it was both disgusting and fascinating. He didn't like to think too hard on it. Perhaps it was only broken the same way Kanda's and his had been, but in his mind he knew he was kidding himself. Theirs had not come literally alive, protecting the user and destroying everything in its path. Something told Lavi that Esperanza's Innocence was going to take on a scary, different form, one that he'd be much less comfortable seeing. Esperanza was scary enough as it was, some days.

He recalled seeing her at a shooting range with regular pistols. It'd been sunny, bright... He slipped into the memory, carefully keeping tabs on the present, seeing everything through two sets of eyes. She'd shot at the target several times, the Order's shooting range shuddering with sound as the pistol smoke died down. Lavi watched from a safe distance, putting up binoculars. Every shot of Esperanza's had hit the target somewhere, but a good proportion managed to put several holes between the legs. Several of the Science Department guys had quivered visibly next to him as they passed around their own pair of binoculars.

He made another mental note to never make Esperanza angry at him. Ever.

"Amigo, you are smiling. What is so funny?" Lavi shook his head, and he said, "Come on. You wanted to go to that Italian restaurant, right? Let's go already, then!" Lavi dragged her out into the rain despite her half-baked protests, and they quickly crossed the street as a tram approached. They entered the Italian restaurant, savoring the smells of braised beef and pasta cooking in vast pots somewhere in the kitchen. Lavi had learned that, as of late, Esperanza had developed a tongue for pasta, something she'd never had before. Lavi tried to treat her to pasta when he could, a sort of apology for ignoring her for nearly two weeks. He'd seen her off and on since they'd reached Sao Paulo, saying hello before awkwardly going about their way. When they had a single day, Lavi usually took her some place to catch up on things.

And also, to plan on courses of action that were better left unspoken in the Order halls.

They were discreetly searching for the artifact that had eluded them at the Lake of the Condemned. In addition to finding articles on the artifact, they were also searching for Darrin. It was an extra-Order mission for them both. By all technicality, they should be focusing on recuperating and waiting on orders, but neither Lavi nor Esperanza were the type to just sit and twiddle their thumbs. While Lavi had been pouring over article after article of information, Esperanza had been asking around, calling friends of hers in the Rio Seco area, checking up on things.

When they had reached Rio Seco nearly two weeks before, the town had changed. There were several new graves, which the locals attributed to bad luck from the sudden influx of water into the dry riverbed, as well as a very haggard doctor who had no idea what was going on. Dominguez was nowhere to be found, and no one had heard from his family either. All of his daughters were already married, save the one who had celebrated her birthday while Lavi and Esperanza had been in attendance. She was also nowhere to be found, though they had heard rumors that she had taken ill and was now convalescing at a very opulent hospital in the mountains of Peru. Miguel, the cattle rancher and sheriff, had been found, dead out in the desert with only his badge for identification. Esperanza had been heartbroken over the loss of a friend, and Lavi had done his best to keep her mood up. The town had been in turmoil and would remain in turmoil for several more months until another drug lord established some sort of skewed version of order.

They had visited the Traveling Guide's Village, and there were only five men pitched at the edge of town. The others had left for safer, more stable locales. It didn't help that the winter snows had started to come, which meant hardly any work for them. No one would want a guide over the mountain passes in the snow, not unless they were desperate. Only one had seen Darrin, a small man from Bolivia with a hawk-nose and bright, black eyes like those of a beetle.

"Where did he go? Do you know? Did he take anything with him?" Esperanza had asked anxiously, and the unctuous little man stated, "Yes, yes, senorita, I see him before, I tell in espanol, yes?" He eyed Lavi with distrust, and Lavi took the hint, walking away with a sick feeling in his stomach. People tended to stare at him with greater disdain these days in Rio Seco, and he felt alienated and unwelcome. Even the children neglected to play with him, fearing the glares of their mothers and the scoldings of their fathers. He was mala suerte. Bad luck.

The last person they had spoken to in Rio Seco had been Rico, the head of the Inca-descended village on the mountain. He had pitched his own tent on the edge of town, though not in the Traveling Guide's Village like he usually did. Something told the both of them that Rico meant to speak to them more than snag a few travelers wanting to go over the mountains into the verdant towns on the other side. They had had trouble translating what he was saying, as he spoke a little modern Spanish and a mix of quechua and medieval Spanish. After a while, they pieced together what had happened.

Darrin had entered the small Inca town, shell-shocked and weary. They'd kept him for three days, and he'd told them all that had happened. They had noticed that he had an object with him, a strange sort of bronze cylinder. He refused to let anyone touch it, saying it was very bad luck and that someone had tasked him with keeping it. Darrin said no more on the matter, refusing to even acknowledge the artifact, and Lavi knew that that cylinder was what they were looking for. Somehow, Darrin had managed to find the artifact before the Noah and the Akuma could, and he'd figured out what it was and how important it must be.

They weren't searching for him only for the cylinder with its miraculous accounts and such. No, they also needed to know that their friend was all right, in more ways than one. Rico had hinted that Darrin, when he'd left the village, had not been all together in his mind. The stress of saving the two Exorcists, along with watching them nearly fight to the death, had somewhat shattered his psyche.

And now, here in this rainy city, the two were conferring to pool all their knowledge. They couldn't do so in the Order - the bureaucrats would get too antsy about pissing off the Vatican, especially if it was about more funding, and they'd be called on to stop the search, despite the fact that finding the document and the artifact the document pertained to probably exceeded all priorities at present, money included.

Esperanza ordered herself a plate of angel's hair pasta with marinara sauce, while Lavi only asked for a cup of coffee. He still had yet to regain his appetite, and the smells coming from the kitchen were enough to give him a bad headache that was mounting to a migraine and a stomach that refused to stay still. Esperanza eyed him, noting that he was slowly turning white with effort, trying hard to keep control of his stomach. Esperanza suddenly wondered if Lavi had even eaten since they'd come to Sao Paulo. When she'd been able to tend to him, she'd forced him to eat foods that had no smell or little taste (though Lavi loathed the practice). He was definitely skinnier, and she felt a pang of worry. He would only get worse if this continued.

"I haven't found a whole lot of new information," Lavi admitted, leaning his elbows on the table. Esperanza situated her skirt across her legs nervously. She always felt strange, sitting here in a restaurant with Lavi. It felt too much like an intimate rendezvous, and a guilty one at that, considering they were defying Church mandate to be here.

"Neither have I, amigo." Her plate of food came up almost immediately, and she took it thankfully. She was starved. Lavi watched her dig her fork into the pasta with a pang of envy and a bit of disgust. He covered his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut as another wave of nausea hit him, and Esperanza held her fork midway to her mouth as she watched him.

"Amigo... perhaps we should move this outside," she stated plainly, always blunt. Lavi looked up at her, knowing that she was foregoing pasta for his comfort, and he suddenly felt absurd. He waved a hand, smiling wanly.

"You eat first. I'll be fine." He nursed his cup of coffee while she ate, and finally they were calling for the check. The lunch had passed in somewhat amiable silence, despite feeling awkward due to Lavi's current problems and Esperanza's shame, now that Lavi was aware of certain portions of her past that she would rather keep in the dark.

At last, they got down to what they really needed to talk about.

"I have called several different hotels, and I have one lead. He booked a night in Buenos Aires about three weeks ago, and then he traveled with a small group of travelers to a small town in Peru, not sure of the name. It's in quechua. After that, he must've gone west. I think he's trying to reach the United States, as he's been going north. He could be on a boat right now, headed towards Texas," Esperanza said, her face downcast. Lavi sighed.

"Which means we've lost him and the document," he breathed. Esperanza nodded.

"Yes. I am afraid so. We can ask for a grant to follow the trail by messaging directly to the European Branch, but I am afraid that perhaps they will be... more forceful in the retrieval of the document by sending CROW. I would not want that, especially if Darrin fights back," Esperanza worried, her face dark in the dim lighting of the Italian restaurant. Lavi sighed. That was all too likely. They might actually have to track him down themselves. Perhaps Lavi could convince the Church to send a few Exorcists after the man.

Lavi looked up at Esperanza as she contemplated the check, holding it between thumb and forefinger while scrutinizing it with a furrow of her brows and the ever-present deadpan set to her mouth. Her eyes looked deeper set in her head, as if she'd not slept well. Her hair was bound back in a ponytail, slicked back to show her high forehead. She'd covered up her scars with a gratuitous amount of make up, making her look oddly off to Lavi, as if he weren't speaking to Esperanza but some sort of strange copy. He suddenly felt sad, as if the Esperanza he knew was being suppressed and buried under layers of expectations and the environment she occupied. He missed it when she wore pants and was reckless, yet at the same time stolid and stoic. She seemed so much shakier now that her health was declining, and he hated to see someone so strong be pulled down by the world around her. She looked so uncomfortable here, so out of place.

Suddenly, Esperanza looked up at him, and he looked into her eyes for a brief moment. And, there, he knew it. They both were neglecting themselves, destroying themselves in little ways, and neither of them would admit it. The truth of it was there in the gaze they held, but they couldn't bear to say anything.

Or so he thought.

"Lavi... we can't keep doing this," she whispered. She reached across the table, but she stopped her hand, remembering propriety and Lavi's particular disposition at the moment.

"Esper-"

"Do not lie to me. I know you have not been eating. You're thinner. Your clothes are rumpled. Lavi, we need to find Bookman, and soon. When is he coming? I can not leave you like this," she said sternly, and Lavi realized that he'd underestimated this woman yet again. Just because she wasn't wearing a duster and her wide-brimmed hat nor revealed her scars and carried a gun meant she was any less strong than the day he'd met her. Even broken and batter as her mind and body happened to be, he should've guessed that she'd still have that sure fire way of making him sweat bullets when she gave him that cold, steely blue stare.

"And what about you? You haven't been sleeping either. I bet you've been having nightmares," Lavi shot back, suddenly wounded that she'd actually question his ability to take care of himself. A wave of nausea set in, but he fought it off as he continued the battle of wills taking place between their stares.

"You haven't been brushing your teeth," Esperanza said, raising an eyebrow.

"You haven't been changing your bandages. They're bleeding through."

"You haven't been meditating. You're spacing out and can't focus."

"You haven't been brushing your hair. Don't tell me you didn't brush it, I can see the tangles."

"You pulled those clothes out of the dirty hamper!"

"Ha! You can't talk - you wore that skirt three days ago!"

"You haven't been shaving either. It's been a week, and you still have stubble." Lavi rubbed his chin pensively. Oh. She was right.

"You... you haven't..." He realized that he had nothing left to fire back with. "You haven't, uh, been... moisturizing your... face..."

The two stared at each other. And finally, they started to snicker. And then, they began to guffaw.

"Moisturize your face? That is the best a Bookman Junior can come up with? HA!" Esperanza gasped, wiping a tear from her face.

"Your face is dry! Shut up, I was running on empty!" Lavi chuckled, rubbing his face. They stared at each other, and finally they sighed.

"I think we should move back into one hotel. We can keep an eye on each other better that way. It does us no good to stay apart, especially you. You will starve without me," she quipped, her face once again deadpan. Lavi pouted at her. He wanted to shoot back with something, but he realized he had no room to speak. He really hadn't been eating.

"Yeah, though I can't do anything about your nightmares. Well, actually I could, but you wouldn't want to hear my idea of 'helping'," Lavi said, mischievously wagging his eyebrows. His face promptly made a very intimate introduction to a fork.

"OW! Hey, that's sharp!" Esperanza gave a small, little smile, and Lavi rubbed his face.

Lavi was aware of everything at that very moment. The light from the chandelier, Esperanza's expression, the turn of her hair in her ponytail, the feeling of the linen napkin in his hand, the small sting of having something sharp hit his face. It was as if everything had slowed down, letting him savor everything.

And then he was aware that he was being thrown in the air and that there were bits of glass falling around him as he was catapulted through a window.

And then he was aware that he was in pain, lying under a mass of rubble in a cobblestone street.

And then he was aware that everyone that had been sitting in that restaurant could very well be dead.

Lavi sprang up, raining dust and rubble. He had several bruises, but his uniform had absorbed most of the impact. He was completely fine from what he could tell. No bones were broken, no real lacerations beside small shrapnel cuts. The building he'd been in had been shelled, and he was lying out in the street. He must've been thrown out the window, breaking the glass and getting lucky. He brushed off the pieces of debris, clearing the smoke. His heart pounded as adrenaline caught up with him. The people...

He could hear groaning and crying out. Some of them didn't get quite as lucky. The smells of pasta and blood mingled in his nose, and he realized that he was getting sick again. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, something slink off into the dark. He was torn between following what he knew must've been an Akuma and helping out the people already in the restaurant. His breathing suddenly hitched higher, and he drew his hammer, torn between the two -

And he realized he was standing in another memory entirely. He wasn't in Sao Paulo any more, despite the fact that just the minute before he was. He tried to place the memory, but he realized that he couldn't... not quite. This was one of his subconscious memories, one that he'd buried.

After careful scrutiny, he realized where he was. This was Paris, in a bombed out building that he'd been looking through. There was Bookman, talking to somebody about something while Lavi (no, his name was Jacques now, not Lavi, not yet) walked into a shelled apartment. He stood there, staring at the bodies within -

NO! He had to get to the present! He couldn't just stand here like some sort of lame duck! There were people who needed him... if he could just get back.

And just like that, he realized it. He need a reason... he needed an anchor... he needed something...

The sting of the fork he'd had on his face suddenly panged, and Lavi was jettisoned away from Jacques straight back to the present. He blinked, and he realized that he was staring at an Akuma that had not been there before. He didn't remember this part of the memor - He wasn't in the memory any more! He had to act! He could move now!

However, his body was too slow, and he knew it. The minute he raised his hammer from its holster on his leg, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to block the attack that was coming. The Akuma was already raising a long, sharp blade with a bomb attached on a string, and it left its hand in slow motion as he launched it. Lavi watched it with horrid fascination, noting every pock and scratch on the blade, the way the light bounced off it, the rain that pittered over it. He was still swinging his hammer, hoping and hoping and knowing and knowing -

And then, he was knocked back by a black and brown blur, dragged down as the blade suddenly was obscured from his sight. He was surprised to find himself on the ground, looking up at a winded Esperanza. She didn't look too much the worse for wear. Her clothes were torn, her hair was a mess and had come loose, her face was haggard. His eye widened as he stared at her side, realizing there was blood gushing over her skirt. She got up quickly, standing spread-leg and strong, wreathed in the rubble and rain.

She suddenly ripped the blade out of her back, whirling around and throwing it back at the stunned Akuma. The blade sliced through one of the Akuma's legs cleanly, burying itself into the wall of a building. It exploded, leaving the building to sag. The Akuma screamed as it staggered, glaring daggers at its attacker. She wouldn't be standing much longer, not with the blood she was losing. Still, she felt it in her, that iron will to continue fighting even past one's limits.

And then, a hand was on her shoulder, gently pushing her away from the fight. Her surprised blue eyes clashed against Lavi's determined and sorry green orb. She wanted so much to push back, but she knew she had gone too far this one time. She sloppily knelt on her knees as Lavi walked past, growing the head of his hammer. The Akuma charged, a knife in either hand, and Lavi easily parried and blocked the attacks with simple swipes of the long handle. Lavi was a whirling machine of hammer and human, beating and slamming the Akuma. It was a Level Two, but a powerful little Level Two at that. Lavi finished it off in five minutes, longer than he would've liked.

He looked back towards the rubble where the Italian restaurant had stood. People were beginning to gather, and fire trucks were approaching. Already, survivors were being pulled from the rubble. Esperanza had fallen on the ground, unnoticed by most everyone. A small pool of blood was beginning to gather underneath her, though most of it was soaked up by the brick-dust. Under the gray sky, he could see her shiver. Lavi walked over, picked her up, and carried her away, gently crooning as she grasped his coat.

A/N: Ah, another chapter finished. I've been working on this all Thanksgiving. I hope you guys enjoyed it!

Now, on to our recognition phase of this lift-off - A big thanks to janrockiss, Kai-Chan94, and Ryo Hoshi for leaving comments, questions, notes, etc. on the reviews page. Especially to Ryo - definitely set me straight on a few historical facts that I'd been unaware of. Also, big thanks to EaglefootMoonflightVipertail for adding the story to their favorites. And finally, my lone subscriber, Lotyuu, that brave little soul.

Already got the second chapter in the works, and it should be out pretty quick.

God bless and good reading!