Blah blah blah, please read and review, etc., whatever. Basically, if someone's ooc, please tell me, because that is the greatest crime of fanfic. Actually, it's second to incomprehensible writing. Anyway...
"Do either of you play football?" asked Daisya through a mouthful of scrambled eggs, "No one here seems to like it."
He finished the eggs in record time, moving on to the stack of pancakes on the other side, spraying crumbs across the table as the other three sitting there attempted to finish their first meal a bit more daintily.
"I don't really like sports," said the blind kid — Marie, who was sitting beside Tiedoll, facing Kanda.
Well, 'kid' was a bit of a misnomer, but Daisya had picked up a habit of calling everyone under the age of 25 'kid'.
"Your loss then."
He finished the pancakes, and swept his knife and fork around to four o' clock on the plate.
"What about you?"
The question was addressed to the kid beside him, who had spent most of the meal leaning away in distaste.
"I don't play sports. They're a waste of time."
Daisya raised his eyebrows.
"Wow, your lives must be boring. Do you even know how to play?"
"I think there'll be time to play later," interjected Tiedoll, noticing the unnaturally calm expression that had plastered itself on to Kanda's face, "But for now we should probably get going. An assignment's come up in Hungary, so we'll only have a few days to get ready."
The news seemed to fit its purpose — Daisya brightened up a bit, and Kanda had regained his look of mild disgust. Kanda was an odd one — he had been a somewhat civil apprentice, and treated Marie with deference, but was contemptuous towards almost all others.
"There have been a few odd occurrences near the border with Romania — ghosts, disappearances, the usual — but there were too many of them in one place. The finders there seemed to suffer the same fate almost immediately, and we're the largest group of exorcists that can be sent out as a unit, now that Kanda and Marie had joined us."
"That's convenient," said Kanda, unable to keep his voice clean of disdain, "Seems we won't have time to play football, thankfully."
Daisya absentmindedly rapped his knuckles with the spoon he was twiddling.
"Didn't your mother tell you not to be petty?"
Kanda appeared to freeze for a moment, then smiled.
"Daisya–!"
The general's reproach was cut short with two purposeful clinks of metal on china.
Marie pushed his chair back, and collected his dishes. He was already pushing 6'5", and for all his blindness his stare held a certain hold over the two children opposite him.
"If that is the case, I think I'll need some time to prepare. It's best to get an early start."
Tiedoll nodded, and made a note to himself that it was probably best to seat Kanda and Daisya kitty-corner from one another in the future.
"My thoughts exactly," he added, shooting a 'you'll get a scolding later' look at Daisya. He had assumed the kid would get better, but his behaviour continually straddled the line between chatterbox and egomaniac. Even Kanda had been more manageable, if initially cold.
But, he remembered, that wasn't all there was.
And maybe he'd been a bit too strict lately, but Daisya would have to grow up quickly to survive in the Order.
For the moment, he had but one hope, and it was that both his apprentices would survive both each others' attacks —
— and those of the akuma. Kanda was competent, but his shaky regard of his own life left him vulnerable.
They may have been children, but they were also exorcists. Travelling in a pack could only help so much. In as little as a few years, they would fight alone.
His job was to keep them both alive until then.
…
"…how can you not like football? I mean, I bet that brat doesn't even know how to play! I'll teach him — like, literally, I'm going to have to teach them both, and it's always really annoying because then you have to know the rules really well and…"
Daisya chattered on as he muscled his sleeping roll into a cylinder. A simple task, but he simply lacked the body mass to do it. Nonetheless, it had probably been a therapeutic half-hour for him.
General Tiedoll, meanwhile, took the post of the sensible adult of the duo — that is, packing everything Daisya had forgotten under the set of drawers, and trying to fit his own belongings in the same bag.
He'd hoped Daisya would have tired of his quest by now, but a few arbitrations on his (and twice that on Marie's, so he'd heard) had showed him that the journey was going to be a long one.
Oh, well. At least the time period between fights was getting marginally longer. Just a few hours ago Kanda had agreed to a game of hearts.
Daisya had then proceeded to go on a tangent about the scoring, which Kanda turned into a jab at football, which then escalated from there.
For all his maturity towards adults, Kanda had little patience for children his own age.
Or maybe not so surprisingly. He had only matured because he had no other choice, so it was to be expected that he lapsed a bit in a new situation.
Daisya was a borderline example, as he had a self-centred thought process without the subtlety to blunt it. He had no fear of consequences, however rational. No fear of scolding, no fear of pain, and Tiedoll suspected his addiction to adrenaline would nullify even a fear of death.
Fear is a healthy thing, and Tiedoll would soon find out that not one but both of his apprentices were starving for it.
…
"…that brat is just so utterly obsessed with that stupid sport of his."
Marie dutifully chalked the utterance up as the nineteenth in twenty-five minutes.
He did agree, of course, but Kanda should have figured it out by now.
Now, let's see, the drawers felt empty, he'd swept out under the bed, and he could hear any dampening when he tapped on the ground. Thankfully, Kanda grasped the concept of 'packing' far better than others his age.
Though, from his experiences, Kanda would have needed to grow up. Marie didn't like to think about what he must have gone through, but the fact was unavoidable that Kanda had seen far too much of death.
He hadn't told Tiedoll yet, but he had been told to keep an eye on Kanda. The Order hoped to nullify some of his more unpredictable traits by pairing him with a kid as brash as Daisya.
Had Marie been able to see, he would have glanced up at Kanda, and attempted to read his expressions. This was the most Kanda had spoken in a while. Instead, he settled for picking out the nuances in his voice.
"…what's the point of kicking a ball? It's useless…"