Sorry I'm late! The plot starts here. Thank you again to IcyLady, Kayo-san, and everyone still here. I'd also like to give a warm welcome to new reader Celynne, who last I saw was working their way through the first few chapters. Best of luck! I wonder if they'll make it...in the mean time, I'll put this dedication here. Hope you all enjoy!
Thank God-if-he-even-existed, Marie let them sleep a few hours after sunrise. Daisya was used to sleeping rough, but the North Sea was another thing. Poor Kanda and Lena, they were the ones who hadn't gotten their money's worth out of the nap on the ship. They'd all collapsed into bed the moment it was an option.
Even Daisya was still aching and moaning while the four of them had breakfast in their own room. Standard place, cramped, kind of dusty, musty, but at least it was dormitory-style, thin beds stacked up on each other against all four walls. A crusted pane of a window let in little enough light that they could sleep through the dawn and see just fine in the morning. Now, their group was sitting cross-legged on the floor with their rations spread out in the space between them.
Bremen town wasn't blocked up like the port had been, but so many people were sick or were taking care of people and bodies that it felt deserted. There hadn't even been an innkeeper there when they got in; they'd just slapped some money down on the desk and let themselves in with the key on the wall. Whatever food and drinks they could get would be pretty suspicious until they figured out how widespread the sickness was.
Anyway, it was a good thing they'd packed extra. Daisya scraped the crumbs off of his mouth and tried to work some life back into his brain via the temples. There were a few tricks the old man taught him for blood flow, to wake you up in the morning. Not that they were working.
While Daisya was finishing the last of today's sausage, Marie outlined the plan.
"We should stay in the city until we make contact with Gertrud or the other Finders," he said. "It's possible that she may have fallen ill or died, and that's why we haven't heard from her."
"Still could be akuma," said Kanda.
"Shh," said Lenalee.
"Yes. Kanda, you and I will check the hospitals to see if we can find any of our Finders." Marie nodded to himself. "Until then, assume they were killed by an akuma."
Daisya chewed that over. He didn't like the sound of it much. It still made sense, though. If Kanda's weird superpower protected him against disease. He didn't look too surprised, anyway, just mumbled some kind of agreement.
"Daisya, you and Lenalee see what you can find in the western forest. Don't try to attack, try not to get sick. If you can find a water source outside of town, we'll use that. Otherwise, drink alcohol. I'm sure there's some beer here we can use to refill the canteens," Marie added.
"Got it," said Daisya. Lena made a noise through her mouthful of biscuit to say she was up for it, too. "When do we meet back?"
Marie frowned. "Either at sunset, or when you're no longer safe. It's a risk splitting up when there are so many unknowns. These rooms aren't secure, so pack up what you can carry and hide what you can't."
He could say that again. The sighted kids all shared a look to make sure no one was reading this wrong, then gave their approval. It wasn't a bad plan. They didn't exactly have a lot to go on.
"Sure."
"I understand."
"Mm."
They finished up and got ready mostly in silence. The only one of them who might have enough sleep to waste time talking was Marie, who didn't see the point. What was weird, though, was Kanda did whisper to him about something Daisya couldn't hear. It didn't go very far. Marie just shook his head to whatever Kanda suggested, and that was that. Huh. That was something he should remember, if he ever ran out of ways to push Kanda's buttons.
The inn was half-timber and sagging like an old man's skin. Plenty of space to hide, but also plenty of dust to show where people had been. Daisya put on as many layers as he could and loaded up his pack. He wrapped his spare stuff in a sheet and wedged it into the bedframe, beneath the mattress. He bet that this place didn't exactly change them often.
He was second to be done after Kanda, so he just passed the time by stretching with him. He might just be able to move his neck by the end of this.
So, they were going scouting. Huh. Neither he or Lena had any real way of sensing akuma unless he was actively sending out shockwaves from the Charity Bell, so that must mean they wouldn't even try to disguise themselves. They'd just be out in the open. Marie must be feeling good about his technique, telling them to deal with an army.
He tried for a triangle stretch, failed miserably, turned it into a lunge, and glanced at Lena. She always had some of the best results of the kids. That had to count for something, right? Besides, Marie was good at this. He'd survived a long time. So, what was he expecting them to find? Was he just wasting time?
Looking at Kanda's face didn't give him any hints. He'd just have to find out.
"What?"
Caught out, Daisya switched to stretch on the other side.
"Hm?"
"You were looking at me," Kanda said flatly.
"Yeah, now I'm not," he answered.
Daisya grinned to himself at the noise Kanda made. Whatever else happened today, it was starting off good.
…
There were fewer people on the streets, but Marie had a hard time feeling thankful. Coming across an epidemic not only introduced a whole new set of risks to the mission, it meant that thousands of people would be that much more miserable and vulnerable, prey for the Noah and a weight on his shoulders. Exorcists were so used to supernatural and unholy dangers that the mundane seemed far worse. He knew and expected broken bones. Not this.
He followed Kanda's footsteps ahead of him, using a cane rather than activating his Innocence. Noah encounters were rare, and indeed a few Exorcists had escaped with nothing more than a bad shock. General Tiedoll had seen them safely out of an encounter when he and Kanda were first on a mission with Daisya. This team found itself in a different situation, though. He wasn't anywhere near a General's level. Not to mention, this was still a much more populated area than the small town they visited then. Any one of the footsteps here could belong to a Noah. It might already be expecting them.
There wasn't any margin for error. He only hoped that his fears would be unfounded and that this mission would be routine. It was troubling, that he had to hope that Gertrud, Hansi, and Sarah were dead or dying from illness.
Kanda murmured the landmarks and names of streets to him as he went, guiding them along the cobbles. At least some of it would stick in Marie's memory, useful if he needed to ask directions. It was quiet enough this morning that he could make out the different people moving down the street, though the lack of noise made it harder to get a bigger picture from the echoes. The lack of pressure in his head told him today would be overcast.
After a while, he heard Kanda pause, and stopped with him. No one was close by; the road seemed to have narrowed, leading off from the town centre. No danger of anyone eavesdropping.
"What's your real plan?" asked Kanda.
He'd expected this earlier. Kanda was never afraid to make his opinions known, even if he'd rather end arguments than start them. It didn't make sense at first, but he found that he could think of Kanda as a hammer. He could only see his problems as nails. With as much brute strength and experience as he had, there wasn't ever any need to argue or reason your way through a problem.
"Sending them out alone?" he confirmed.
"Yeah."
"I didn't send them into danger, if that's what you're asking."
"Okay." Kanda paused again. "Yeah."
Over the rooftops he heard a few hawkers yell out at a passing cart. It must be hard to get their wares out with the light traffic. Marie felt some reassurance at the fact that Kanda didn't press the issue, waiting for him to explain if he wanted to. He was growing up.
"Gertrud's last message reported over a dozen akuma to the west of the city," Marie stated. "She was most likely spotted, and killed. Assuming that there's some kind of coordinator here, or a commander, they should have guessed she transmitted their location and moved."
"What if she didn't get killed? She could just be dead," Kanda said.
"Do you think so?" he asked.
They started walking again, ducking back on to a broad street with smoother stones and the clatter of trotting carriage horses, not old cart nags.
Kanda waited a minute before coming up with an answer. He would figure it out.
"No," he said eventually. "She would've taken time to get sick, so she could have sent a code."
"I thought so too," he said.
"Mm."
The air had started to take on a scent, the smell of spices, specifically. People with money to spend, protecting themselves in any way that might help, or merchants, selling what they hoped someone might buy. At this point there should be no point in the old miasma theory, with Pasteur's work and the gradual rerouting of London's sewer systems. Anyone in a trading city like Bremen should know better, already.
What was the price of hope? Marie wondered. Giving someone false hope seemed cruel, but was there really any other kind? These people all had to know that nothing would help as long as there was disease in the water.
It took about an hour more of walking, spices growing stronger in the air along with soap, starch, and filth, before they got to the nuns' hospital. Stone buildings like this trapped noise inside, which made it hard to tell how close they were.
"We're here," said Kanda. "They have a rose cross painted on the doorframe."
"Good." He tried not to breathe in too deeply. Most people understood that he relied more on his hearing without eyes, but no one seemed to realize just how much smell took over when there weren't many sound stimuli. "We'll go in the workers' entrance, if you can see it."
"Yeah, it's around the back. Looks like they bring laundry through there from annex."
Kanda walked around the building with a deliberate amount of noise, leading them toward the answers that they needed.
The church of the Order was subject to as many schisms and rivalries as any other branch, starting with the problem of its existence and going down from there. Each branch had its own interpretation of the facts of life—akuma, Noah, Innocence—and its true believers, as well as people who had their own religion. The fracturing had the opposite effect of what you'd expect. Anyone who ran into akuma was aware of the necessity of Exorcists, so they made friends in unexpected places. From west to east and overseas, Exorcists and Finders found sanctuary at churches Calvinist and Orthodox, universities, synagogues, mosques, and temples.
To keep alive, the Order was not bound by any religious doctrine as much as pragmatism. Marie was raised in the church, with a few of his grandmother's teachings, but Lenalee and Komui's beliefs didn't follow any one god and Kanda swore off anything to do with the Church. Daisya had been raised to say his prayers facing southeast, Froi had told him, but he gave that up as soon as he realized no one was telling him to. He didn't pray at all, unless you counted the swearing.
In the end, the Order got by with the signs. Any place where someone knew of the Order and their work, they put a rose seal somewhere it could only be seen by someone who looked there. It didn't work so well for Marie. Thankfully the Order also used code words.
They slipped past the fence and followed a much-clothed figure to reach the entrance, Marie taking the lead. When they reached the door, the other person there had stopped to greet them.
"Hello," they said quietly. "Know that we have no beds. If you do need help, it must be urgent. But you don't look ill…?"
"No," he answered. "A companion of ours missed a rendez-vous. If she caught the sickness, this is the only place she would have come to. May we enter?"
A clothy noise beside him told him that Kanda had shown the rose seal on their uniforms to their gatekeeper.
Their companion sighed. "Ah, oh, well, I see. You can follow me, though I don't think we have had anyone you know come in here. I am Magda."
It was clear now that she wasn't quiet, she had to be wearing something over her mouth that muffled the words. Of course, if this was a hospital, they would need protection, for the patients as well as for themselves. They were lucky to have had to bring their packs anyway.
"Thank you, Magda. Can we take a moment to cover our faces? We have been travelling, so we can't rule out that we carry some kind of disease," he clarified.
"Yes. Don't take very long."
Kanda was quiet as Marie asked him to tie the scarf around his mouth and nose, not that he needed it, and as they both followed Magda into the main sickbay.
There wasn't the clamour you might expect from a busy hospital, which felt more scary than reassuring. What that meant was that the patients here were on death's door. Cholera didn't let the body go silent. From the echoes, this room was some sort of chapel, separate to the main church structure. It must be an improvised room. All around there was the slosh of water—what he hoped was water—in buckets and whimpering.
"Kanda?" he murmured. He couldn't make out any voices that sounded right.
"Most of them are still in their clothes. Can't see any Finder's gear."
"Do you recognize the faces? They may have gone under cover, if there was enough of a threat."
"No," said Kanda.
They passed down one row of beds, then turned on to another, still following the swish of Magda's cloak on the floor.
"If your friend isn't here, it's best for you to leave quickly," said Magda. "We don't have very many people here, and every new one is a threat to the others."
Not quiet, not muffled, Marie realized, her voice was choked.
He picked his words carefully. "I understand how easy it is for people to die. Believe me when I say that we haven't come in here lightly. Please, if you have any other patients, or bodies, that we could see, show us. I need to know if she's here."
Magda must have lost someone here, maybe just today. She would understand someone searching for a loved one more than she would internalize the importance of their mission. At any rate, she seemed to consider that more seriously than what they had said before. With a touch of Kanda's hand on his wrist, Marie turned to follow her as she led them elsewhere in the hospital.
…
"Sooooo…what do you think Marie's playing at?" asked Daisya.
Like any city, Bremen had a few dirt tracks running out into the countryside from the centre. It was hard to find them at first, Lenalee had hopped up into the air just at the city outskirts and found a few, hugging the edges of streams and fences. It took some time finding one running in the right direction, but once they did it was smooth walking.
"Hm?"
They'd made it a good way with whistling, across some mixed patches of gardens and farming, over unnamed rusting tools and a few of the better-made fences. It was a great day, grey and overcast, so Daisya had taken some time to admire the green and tangly scenery. Now, though, he was bored. Lenalee would have to talk or be talked at.
"Well, he wouldn't be sending us out here if he really thought there were akuma, yeah?"
He paused to hop a wooden turnstile from a potato field to a barley field. It looked dry enough, until his boots landed on the grass with a squelch.
"It's wet here," he announced.
"There's a trail just there, you can see the runoff comes along this wall," said Lenalee, pointing to the base of a stone fence, rare for this area.
Anyone could have missed that! It wasn't like Daisya was slacking off, he was just focusing on more things than whatever flow patterns were here.
"Need a hand?" he asked. His mother didn't raise a brat, even if that's how he turned out, so he held up an arm.
"No, thanks!" she said.
Waiting on the other side, he watched Lenalee take a running start and push off the top of the turnstile, landing a few metres beyond him. She missed the wet patch entirely, didn't even slip on the grass as she came down fast.
"Huh, you've been training. Did Yeager put you on a program? Thought you were supposed to be focusing on academics, after you fried the Boots," he noted.
They set off again under grey skies, boots leaving marks in the damp autumn dirt. Daisya hiked his pack higher on his back to try and keep it from bothering him.
"He hasn't," Lena said. "But that's why I'm getting better. If I'm stronger, I won't have to rely on Innocence as much."
"Sure, yeah. I guess. That's hard, though, it's no fun training by yourself," he said.
There was a nice rock just on the side of the road, which he kicked square across the field. Hot damn.
"Who says I'm by myself? Kanda trains with me," said Lena.
Now that was a funny image, since Daisya was always down in the dojo with Kanda first thing. Regular.
"Huh. I've been out a lot more than I thought, haven't I?" he lied.
Lena just laughed. "Not really. We start at five in the morning, before we have breakfast with you. You should try it sometime."
"Hey, not a chance. Marie tried to get me doing that, but he's not the old man. He can't force me."
"Maybe."
They watched the forest grow closer to their left, a scrubby bunch of bushes climbing up into thin beeches. Nearly there, though what they'd do under the canopy, Daisya didn't know. Oh, which reminded him—
"Hey, you didn't answer my question," he said. "Why're we out here? If Marie was trying to play us safe, can't he just let us sleep in?"
"It's not safe in the city," said Lenalee. "They're all sick."
"Yeah, well, what can we do about that?"
"We can look for fresh water, like he told us. Are you all right? You seem distracted. Or, maybe you're just slow today!"
Daisya aimed a kick at her heels on the next step.
"Respect your elders, kiddo. The water can't be that bad."
"All I know is that we've already drunk our supplies. Come on, let's go faster. We've skipped training, so you should have lots of energy."
Without waiting for his answer, Lenalee moved into a light jog. Ugh. She was getting too cocky now that she was older.
"That doesn't mean I want to run!" he called. "Brat."
Just a note, I had an epidemic planned as part of this arc way back in 2018, so it has nothing to do with COVID-19. Different type of disease, different type of transmission entirely. Anyway, take care everyone!