Hi all, it's roasting hot here and I wish it were winter! It's time to check back in with our absent friends, so I hope you guys enjoy, and also that you don't have to deal with 30 degree heat in a place without air conditioning.

"Noise!"

It was a strangled yell that woke him up. Truth be told, he thought he'd imagined it among the shifting sheets and creaking bed in that second. Until he heard it again.

"Noise, Kanda!"

It came from down on the ground floor of the inn, a woman's voice most likely. No, a young man's. It was hard to tell, whoever spoke was straining against a throat full of liquid.

His awareness was slow in coming back to him. Was it morning? It felt cool, certainly, but no warmer than the night.

"Marie."

Kanda was shaking him awake now, gently. He'd taken the second watch while Marie tried to get some rest.

Ha, well. At least one of them would be fully conscious for whatever was about to happen. He could hear him breathing, not a usual thing, and it was shallow. Kanda was on the alert.

He felt heavy and so tired someone might have been pushing him back into the bed, but he managed to sit up. Clothes—he'd changed into his nightclothes. His coat was right beside the bed, as was his bag and Innocence. He could just buckle it over top for some protection. Kanda could take care of himself, thank god. And Lenalee and Daisya were safely out of harm's way.

Feeling around for his equipment, he suited up quickly. Kanda helped by packing up the few items they'd taken out of their bags, ready to flee. By his steps he prepared both his and Marie's. While Marie drank some water, he waited by the door.

"Kanda," he said quietly. There may not be time to talk when they left this room.

"Mm?"

"If you need to run, don't wait."

Kanda grunted, which Marie hoped was a "yes." It was hard to tell. He had a creeping suspicion that Kanda would not leave him, if the time came.

The commotion downstairs carried on as they slipped out the unoiled door. The woman…yes, as the stairs opened up into the main room below, he recognized her. Magda had somehow found them. From the sounds of it, she was trying to attract their attention with some kind of implement. A broom. It were loud enough in the enclosed space to hurt this early in the morning.

As they came down to the last few steps, she shuffled towards them with a fast limp. Kanda ran past him to get between them.

"You must listen—"

"Stop moving," Kanda snapped. "Don't use your leg if it can't take weight."

"Kanda, let her speak." He nodded to Kanda to make sure he knew, and got a quiet huff as an answer. Magda was still heaving.

"Why did you come here?" he asked, taking over.

"You're here," wheezed Magda. It was a wonder she'd been able to yell as loud as she had; she was barely managing to shape her breath into words.

There was a slight echo just below that, one he wouldn't be able to detect if he weren't straining to the edge of his hearing. He'd have to activate his Innocence if he were to know what it was. Everything about her said she was human, except for everything about her that said she wasn't. She was still at the foot of the staircase, blocking their way out.

It may be that she didn't now what she was. He pressed on gently. "How did you know?"

"I…felt. As if this would be safe. I don't know," Magda said, and sighed. "There are people…who came to us during the night. They seemed wrong. They asked questions that I think…were meant to find me."

He heard a click of the tongue from Kanda, looking for an answer. Marie nodded. They might have been akuma. Unlikely, then, that Magda was one. The Level Twos wouldn't respect one of their own.

That left one possibility.

Without the Organum, he couldn't amplify noise to the extent that he would hear much movement outside. For now, there was nothing but the wheels of carts that you'd expect in the early morning, traders moving to the market.

"Did these people follow you?"

"They may have," Magda breathed.

Instinctively, he pulled Kanda back before he left to check. He only thought in one straight line, the boy. It wouldn't do to start fighting when there was so much unknown here.

"Stay here for now," he whispered. "They might not know we're Exorcists."

"Tch."

"Who would they be? You know them?" asked Madga. There was a gentle footstep as she moved forward. "If you do…"

"Stay where you are," he said quickly. "Magda. When did you get sick?"

There was a pause where he could hear her breathing. If that was what you could call it. Her throat seemed to crackle and shake.

"Oh. Is that it," she said.

There was a scuff as Kanda moved closer to him. Would he be carrying—no, that was a stupid question. He wondered whether he'd have Mugen strapped to his back and hidden, or worn openly on his belt.

"There's something living inside you," he said slowly. "You must know this, already?"

Magda wheezed. No, she laughed. "Yes, I think…so. I didn't catch cholera, you see, I was already sick when it came around. So, when I was working, I think there must have been some room…I did feel half-dead."

The story tumbled out of her in bursts, incoherent to anyone else. Marie already had a picture formed in his mind, though how she described herself made him rethink some parts of it.

"Yes, I found a—some sort of living thing amongst our…hah…among the reliquaries. I prayed to them, you see, for strength. At the time…I thought God had seen fit to answer them…and help…me."

Stretching a cat's cradle between his fingers, Marie activated the Organum silently.

The Innocence inside Magda would call it more strongly when active, in the same way it had been called to their Innocence at the church. It was odd, even now, they didn't fully understand Innocence. It had its own sort of intelligence, in a way, one that defied whatever logic they put to it. It protected itself, but sometimes viciously. It was pure divinity, and it would destroy the world. Whatever the reason, the Innocence here that the akuma were hunting had seen fit to hide inside the body—was it a corpse, if she should be dead?—of a sister not much older than he was.

"He didn't," said Kanda before Marie could stop him. "The Innocence isn't strong enough to keep moving a human body for more than a few days."

"Kanda—"

"The akuma came to get you, so you won't die in peace. Either you let us take it out of you, or you let them."

Unable to say anything, Marie tugged on Kanda's arm again and gave him a glare. Magda did not have long to live. It was the least they could do to at least treat her with some kindness.

And yet, she didn't seem upset. She stayed where she was, breathing slowly.

"Innocence?" She asked herself. "So…this is it. I'm glad."

There was a sense of wonder in her voice that was unsettling. She shouldn't sound grateful, not when she was about to die. Not to the people who were going to kill her.

He came to a decision. "Wait here, please. Kanda, I need you to go to the roof. Tell me how many people you see."

Kanda mumbled assent, and dashed off quietly. That left him a few seconds.

"Magda," he said gently. "I'm sorry I can't give you a better choice. If you wanted to wait to die, we would wait with you. But people you saw would kill you first. You can still run. The akuma may have lost you in the streets. There is a chance, here, for you to live."

"Why would I?"

She sounded dreamy, still at a distance. Not just absent or tired, fond.

"I've found most people want to live," he said.

"No," she answered, suddenly loud. "I know the Innocence has hidden inside me. I have kept it safe this long…I have kept my duty. There is no reason to keep it longer. You are here. It calls to you, I feel."

Stepping down as close as he dared, he wished for once that he could see her face. Did she look as honest as she sounded? Was she scared, as she should be? He certainly was. Though somehow, she unsettled him more than the akuma that might be waiting for them.

"Why should I want…to stop any of this? We are soldiers of Christ," she went on, "Marching against evil, and it is our honour to do what we can. You must take it from me here."

"Then you're willing to give it up? To be killed?" he asked. "I need to be sure."

Magda laughed, bubbles popping in her lungs. "If we are being correct…I'm dead. I'm only glad I could help."

Marie had nothing to say to that.

He had thought that way, once. Once. It was hard to think that way after you saw what happened to people when they did die. And in the seconds before. It was part of him. It was the last thing he saw.

Maybe Madga was right, thinking that a death with meaning was the best that could happen.

He flicked his wrist, spreading the strings of the Organum between his fingers and the rafters of the ceiling and focusing his attention on them.

The sounds of the outside were transmitted through the wooden walls of the building, small and inaudible, but he could feel them and pick them up through the wires. First, the carts, then, the footsteps, picking through each layer of sound until he found the heartbeats at the base of it. One—his own. One—Kanda's, faster. One—Magda's, sluggish. Four or five—calm, moving.

Then footsteps behind him as Kanda came back down.

"A dozen, maybe two," he said. "How many heartbeats?"

"Not that many," Marie answered.

"We'll kill them, then."

It was too early in the morning after too short a night to be weighing the options that they were forced to take. The one mercy was that it was only the two of them there, and no matter what he did, Kanda would understand. Take the Innocence, protect Magda, run, fight, no matter what, they would have to reveal themselves or risk dying. The moment they killed an akuma, one would leave the group and alert the Noah here—if there was one—and then their only chance would be to hide.

"We don't have another option," he said finally.

He turned back to Magda, who had moved slightly. She must be looking out the window.

"Magda—"

"Hm?"

"Are you sure?"

She turned back, stepping forward slightly. "Yes, of course. Take what you need, please."

"Thank you." Marie kept his face blank, nodding to Kanda.

There wasn't a word from any of them. Mugen was drawn and activated in a second, whining as it synchronized with Kanda's soul. Not for the first time, he wondered how the one could reflect the other, and what it meant. It wasn't like there would ever be an answer. Kanda fell into a ready stance.

Then the almost-soundless slash, the high hum of bared Innocence, and the thud of Magda's body as it fell to the ground.

"She should've fought us," Kanda said flatly.

"I tried to give her a choice."

"The Order would have her killed anyway. Who cares what she wanted?"

The boy was shaking in anger. Marie could hear the rattle of the buckles on his uniform, even after he put a hand down on his shoulder.

"Kanda, we should try to be respectful."

"It's not like she can hear us. Let's dump the body and get rid of the akuma."

He disappeared abruptly, kneeling down to pick up the corpse. A few seconds later, it was thrown over his shoulder with a wet crunch. Marie tried not to think about what it looked like, but he could smell it well enough now that the Innocence was gone.

"Very well. I'll play the Organum from in here, then move out. You go ahead of me."

Marie unfurled the strings from the wooden beams and pulled them between his fingers, strumming on them to warm up.

"I know," said Kanda.

He waited a last few seconds for Kanda to leave. At first, Marie had wondered how to act when every fight could be deadly. He had settled on the idea that there should be no last words. Make yourself clear while you were alive, and there would be no regrets in death.

He should know.

Marie caught his breath, played one great chord, and followed Kanda out the door into the chill morning. A landscape formed around him.

Bullets cut through the air in short, stunted paths as the akuma tried to move in the paralyzing din. They were so focused on Kanda that none of the shots even brushed by Marie's face. He could only tell the number of shots by the difference in the sound of firing and impact.

It had taken him a long, tedious time to track sounds precisely in space; even now, it was hard to tell more than relative location. Even so, he managed to pick out different points, different landmarks that helped him read the scene. The akuma were—scattered, and converging. They could be close by on the ground in twisted half-human shapes, they could be up overhead searching for him. He had to tell by context.

There were distant sounds of panic. Nothing close by, though, and there were no real sounds of footsteps outside of Kanda's leaps and bounds. They were looking at a host of akuma taken to the air, most likely. Whichever few were on the ground must have been cut through by Kanda. They had followed Magda, though, which meant these were Level Twos. They wouldn't be so easy to fight.

A click alerted him to one that had started to move toward him, which he took care of in an instant. They had taken their attention off of Kanda. Time to start his offensive.

The layers of action built themselves up the longer he played, devoting part of the Organum to output and half to input. He kept the akuma surrounding them paralyzed as best he could, though there was no way of telling how many it affected. There was a massive flow of people out around the battle as you'd expect. It wasn't like Level Twos to attack in broad daylight, since people often came running to see the trouble. They never came too close, though. The tall rows of buildings blocked off crowds, while the akuma converged over the top of the roofs.

The angle must be sharp, to try and shoot at him within range, which was why he only had to dodge one or two shots fired off in his direction. Thank God Kanda was keeping them busy.

Level Twos were still a challenge. Already they were throwing all manner of projectiles at him, blasts of wind or something that felt an awful lot like fire before he managed to push it back. At times like these he wouldn't have traded the Organum for anything, it kept a radius around him secure that wouldn't be breached for anything.

Letting Kanda scrabble across the rooftops and slice these things in half, he set his strings in a net over him, securing themselves around the rooftops and running straight down to the facades and doors of the houses opposite, a sort of lean-to barrier. Anything that tried to pass through them would be caught like a fly and blasted with sound until it escaped or disappeared.

He couldn't count these akuma, but he could get a sense of them from the impacts on the strings and gradual thinning of the sounds around him. There had to be at least two dozen that Kanda was ripping through like paper. He doubted either of them would have survived this long in another combination, the Organum could only cover so much area without compromising its strength. This was why they were here, though. An army. This was never out of the realm of possibility.

It was far beyond what he'd expected to deal with while Daisya and Lenalee were gone. He'd been so sure the Innocence would take longer to find—

A faint sound sprang out at him from the throng.

"…rie? Ma—"

The golem. He thought frantically. The golem.

Which was in his bag.

Which Kanda was still carrying.

Damn.

"Golem!" he shouted, hoping that would be enough.

There was a rush of high-pitched wind, which had to be Kanda sending out more of Mugen's ghosts, then the thud of feet hitting the ground for the first time during their fight. Kanda was searching for the golem.

Moments later, he heard a slash and a small explosion, then the slipping noise that was undoubtedly Kanda climbing up the side of a building to jump back into the fray.

He focused hard, listening for any sounds he recognized. One came through over the static.

"…Lenalee…destroyed five akuma. I think they…different groups."

The chill in Marie's bones had nothing to do with the autumn wind.

Someone—somehow, there were akuma still waiting in the woods where he'd sent Lenalee or Daisya. Or, no, someone had sent akuma after them. There was no other reason for both of their groups to be under attack at the same time, down to the minute. Not when the kids had been on alert. He was sure he'd told them to watch out. Something must have followed them from the village, but—how? He hadn't heard anything, and Kanda would have told him if he saw anything. Or Lenalee, she paid attention. This was a strategic move, to try and wipe out their two groups before they could contact one another.

Planning wasn't impossible for a high-level akuma. What was likely, though, was that these ones had a leader.

A Noah.

Marie's stomach turned. Komui had been shivering when he told them that the four of them together were only just expected to survive.

In this town, there were enough bodies piled high to send a flood of akuma after all of them. The Noah couldn't be in two places at once, though. Only one had been spotted, but they couldn't rule out the chance of two in one place. If there was only one, then one of their teams might survive.

Pushing down bile, Marie acknowledged which one it would be.

Suddenly, the things he'd said to himself sounded like a joke. Of course there would be regrets. What had he even said to Daisya, the last time they were together? Did he ever ask about the things Tiedoll told him to look out for? Would Jerry still have the tab with his name on it set aside to make something the night they came home? How—

Kanda's voice brought him back.

"We've got our own akuma," he heard shouted into the golem. "I'm getting us out of here. Don't die. I'll find you later. We found the Innocence."

Kanda wasn't keeping secrets like he should, though now Marie guessed that none of their mission had been secret from the start.

Striking another chord, he wondered if any more akuma than this would go after Lenalee and Daisya. No, he wondered whether they would survive more akuma. Daisya's range and Lenalee's precision would help them keep up with the best teams, but the fact remained that Kanda was stronger than either of them and Marie was more experienced. Even if the Noah didn't find them, those two…

He bit his lip. They would escape, or they wouldn't.

"Marie!" Kanda shouted close by. "Cover me when I say."

That was the plan, then. It wouldn't do much.

He never know how Kanda could hold his weight even as a child—a younger child—thought what he told him about his blood went some way to explaining it. People heal, people grow over time, so to concentrate that healing would give you power, even if you died sooner. Maybe Kanda's strength was borrowed from his older selves, or maybe it was just that his body burned like a firework rather than a candle.

"Go!"

One by one, Marie untangled the taut strings and reeled them back. Each one played a single sharp note as it returned, running up the scales in ways that would have the akuma screaming, shaking, falling to dust. Just under that sound, the silver hiss of Mugen tore into the akuma that were still left.

"Ready?" Kanda gave him a second's warning with a tap on the arm.

"Yes. I'll keep playing."

"Yeah."

Kanda kicked his legs out from under him and caught him in a fireman's carry, still awkward with his new growth. Then, he started to run. He shouldn't have been able to run with even Daisya on his shoulders like this. Marie was taller and broader than that by far, ten years older, and still somehow Kanda didn't stop or stagger, he just ran forward.

Whatever the reason, he knew their best chance of getting out was to take advantage of Kanda's strength. It didn't stop the guilt.

Poor Marie! Not a great day to be the babysitter.