A small dissertation on gifted kids - I had to spend a good deal of my school years in the same school as the kids in my city's gifted program, and from what I was able to observe, there are three things they tend to have in common.
1. They all argue like the devil. If two of them get into an argument, they will use every available piece of evidence to try and prove their point, and will only give in once each of their points has been definitely and logically refuted.
2. They get bored really easily. While in the normal junior high classes the students just sat down and listened to the teacher, the gifted classes sat around and talked, made paper cranes, played the powder game and dino run on the computer, and played connect four in math class. I'm amazed they even passed, but they did, and with flying colours, even if they did talk the building down.
3. Linked with 2, if they do some sort of activity, be it gymnastics or piano, it will be to a ridiculous extent. On kid was in ARCT piano before he finished junior high, one girl did gymnastics 3 hours a day, 6 days a week, and a kid in my choir who was in the program did debate on a national level. And these weren't supergeniuses - most of the kids in the program seemed mostly normal, and didn't invent anything extraordinary. Mostly they were slightly annoying and slightly weird.
Thus, I'd say it's a 50/50 chance that Daisya, as he's characterized in the anime, is gifted. It doesn't affect his character at all, but I just found it interesting how he reminded me of some of the kids in GATE.
Anyway, with that over with, the lovely Karina and Hn are back (for a moment I was a bit worried about the latter), and I must thank them infinitely for the questions, queries, comments, and compliments they offer. Without them, I might be posting every two weeks at most.
This chapter is regrettably short, but it's been a short wait and I'd be a fool to waste the opportunity to cut it off where I did.
...
Daisya flopped down on the bed with a sigh of relief. This room was nice and big, with two narrow beds along each wall, a dresser with a large kerosene lamp, and faded wooden walls and floors. It was on the second floor, too, so the ceiling was filled with rafters and crossbeams. It felt nice and airy.
"Whew, another bed! It's our lucky day."
He looked over at Kanda, who had dumped his bag at the end of his bed, and whose hair was momentarily loose, for once.
"Just be quiet."
Kanda tried to snap, but his heart wasn't in it.
"Yeah, yeah."
"Shut up."
It was only six o' clock, and he was not willing to stay awake another moment. Beds were hard to come by, and the last time they'd stayed the night in one, Daisya had to drag him off.
But now he'd promised to shut up, in return. Kanda couldn't have paid him enough to do that.
"I still don't see why we all have to share a room," he grumbled, complaining to what should have been the thankfully unresponsive Daisya.
"It's cheaper, I guess."
Goddamnit.
"Shut up."
They'd even bothered to change clothes for the occasion, but Marie and Tiedoll were securing transport out the city. Austro-Hungary had nowhere near the modernization level of France or Germany, so the train lines were less reliable, and the town they were headed to was a bit of a backwater, making it even more difficult to get there speedily. Time was still a precious commodity.
Kanda wandered over to the window, to latch the shutters down. The last thing he needed was any more noise in the night, besides Daisya's tossing and Tiedoll's morning routine at 4:30 ante meridian.
He let out a sigh as he moved quickly, snapping the metal bolt over the greying wood, smoothed by wear. The window ledge was high enough up for him to need to stand on it to properly close the window, and he sent up a quick prayer that Daisya hadn't been looking to notice.
Though, if he had been, retribution would have been slow. Even with his stamina, Kanda's chest felt heavy from the fatigue of sleepless nights and days spent traveling. The air here was smoke-smelling from the fireplace and slightly stale, but he drank it in like an elixir.
A light push on the shutters proved the latch to be useless, so Kanda left them open, with an unlit kerosene lamp on the ledge. The alley outside was fairly quiet, anyway. And after so many days, Daisya's repertoire of sheet-rustling blended into the background, like the wind or the sound of voices.
Even his words blended into the background, as Kanda realized the stream of mumbling that was Daisya talking to himself had passed over his head, and that the other kid had already pulled the covers up over his head. It was a funny habit of his.
Kanda collapsed on the bed. The room was warm and dark, and the mattress was welcome after sleeping on benches. Even the muffled breathing from the other side of the room gave the silence a comforting texture, with the cooler air from the window painting across it.
That night, Kanda slept deeply enough to dream.
…
At eight o' clock, Noise Marie and General Tiedoll were still awake, sitting at the corner table downstairs. The past few hours had been a slew of theories, maps, and doubt.
"So it's possible the the whole population of the town might be akuma?" asked Marie in a low voice, "That would be difficult to achieve. Akuma have to be called back, and it's a reasonably-sized town."
Tiedoll looked to the side, begrudging his former pupil his point.
"Yes, it would logistically be a bit of a challenge, but it could happen by coincidence, if there was Innocence there that they could not find. And it would be simpler to accomplish if a broker were involved."
"Even so, they would have found the Innocence by now if it were there, and otherwise there is no reason for a town of akuma to exist."
Marie shifted position on a chair far too small for him.
"Then again," he conceded, "We have no better option as of yet."
Noah involvement had been struck down on the basis of the indiscriminate slaughter of the finders. Noah were, in a way, human. They liked style.
Had the Noah killed them, the finders would have had plenty of time to transmit one last scream.
There were some exceptions, but they had been gone over in detail and discarded. It never paid to be too careful, with the Noah. Level one akuma were predictable, if dangerous, and level twos were only trouble in numbers to a team of their strength.
Tiedoll thought for a moment, then nodded to himself.
"Would you say we have covered all possibilities?"
Marie's eyes closed for a moment, in a purely symbolic gesture.
"Yes, I believe."
Tiedoll nodded, keeping his voice even quieter than before.
"Then we shall have to leave the kids to their own devices. There's a reason we stopped here. I finder I once worked with retired here — I think we should pay him a visit."
Marie was puzzled.
"Why would a finder know what to do? Their training is for survival, not–"
Tiedoll put a finger to his lips as a more polite was of interrupting.
"Precisely, though not many make it. I imagine there is a reason this one survived to retire."
Marie nodded, yielding the argument.
A few minutes later, having paid the bill, the two exorcists headed out, walking in the even strides of those who had nothing to fear from the night.
…
In a decade or two, the Austro-Hungarian empire would be involved in the start of a war engulfing the world.
For the last few years, even decades, Austro-Hungary, or its predecessor, Austria, had been torn in either the pan-European conflicts of the nineteenth century or the equally renowned nationalist movements of the same time period.
It would so happen that, at ten o' clock at night, in Budapest, a nationalist Magyar would set fire to the inn of a pro-empire Austrian. A stone, with burning rags wrapped around it, sailed through an open window, knocking a kerosene lamp off the dresser and on to the floor. The spilt liquid quickly caught fire, and slowly the flames worked their way across the inn.
As the nature of exorcists' missions normally requires secrecy, no one was recorded as being on the second floor. By the time of the fire, the only person aware of the four beds to be filled was somewhere beyond the reach of word - namely, comatose in a bar.
That Austrian innkeeper had, hours earlier, rented the room to another Austrian, an exorcist by the name of Noise Marie.