We're back! I went camping and lost 3 nights of sleep and the entire country is on fire. Oh well!
IcyLady goodness tysmmmm. For Road's powers, I had to go back and reread some DGM because I could not tell you how they worked! I think the only time we really see her full ability is when she traps Lavi in the Ark arc. There, she's present in Lavi's custom-made nightmare (he has to find and kill her to wake up), but she's also there in the real world to threaten Lenalee. Lavi's dream draws on his memories to make the perfect torture for him, but Road doesn't seem to be actively involved with it. Later on in the Alma arc, Wisely is the one to read Alma's memories instead of Road, but she seems to have some sort of understanding of them before they show it to Allen? It's all very confusing. The way I decided to go was:
- Road can create Dreams and dimensional pockets, the Dream is purely mental but the dimensional pockets are physical
- The Dream ability generates scenarios automatically from a person's memories to make the optimal nightmare, Road doesn't design everything from scratch
- Road can interact with the real world and the Dream simultaneously
- (from wiki) Road can read people's memories, but (from manga) she can't do it as easily as clearly as Wisely. She can see what happens in the Dream (autogenerates surreal scenes based off of real memories) and it, if someone in the Dream thinks of a specific memory, she can see that one too. So: Dream creates a scene with Bodrum and Tiedoll, is also there, Daisya-in-Dream is reminded of the day he met Tiedoll, Road can read that memory. It's a time-consuming and tedious way to find information, which is why Wisely is preferred for mindreading.
- Daisya remembers Kanda, but names aren't high priority in memory and Road doesn't really care what he's called. It's like how you can't remember That Guy's name at work until like the fifteenth time you hear it.
I hope that made a little more sense, but who knows! Hope this chap is satisfactory :^)
It took half an hour of running to find the fight. Kanda counted out his breaths from start to stop. Five in, five out. He kept his legs and arms close and moving. He didn't waste time or energy.
He counted.
Marie was lagging behind him.
If he'd been thinking, then stone walls and birthing vats and dusty roads and mangled bodies would be swirling in his mind. They didn't. Only the impressions showed in his head, too vague and too painful to follow. One, two, three, four, five. He didn't think about anything more than one, two, three, four, five.
Kanda ran faster than any child his age. His body didn't have a chance to fall between each step. His feet didn't hit the ground so much as they pushed it along. Each footfall sent a flash of pain through his ankles. He ran like a river runs, pulled along by overwhelming force, fast enough for the still air of the forest to hit his face. It stung.
One, two, three, four, five.
His breath pushed out his chest with effort.
One, two, three, four, five.
It was so cold.
…
Clouds of dust lit up from the inside like thunderclouds, billowing out far to the front of him.
Every few seconds, a blast of air came shooting out from the centre fast and hard enough to sway the trees, a shockwave spreading out in every direction. When it hit him, he had to dig his heels in not to be pushed backward. Kanda recognized the shreds and tatters of akuma remains near the edge of the cloud and shadows of akuma themselves, floating around inside. A swarm of them was getting torn to pieces. More kept coming. A steady trickle of twos and threes came from the town's direction. They didn't notice him. Bloated Level Ones kept their guns levelled at the cloud and Level Twos swung whatever appendages they had. For every ten that floated into the cloud, two survived entry.
His fingers itched. It wasn't the right time. Every muscle in him was ready to swing Mugen and see the akuma fall down like flies. He couldn't. If he stayed here and missed something—
The dirt, leaves, and akuma dust blocked out the dim light that made it in here beneath the trees. At least it made it easier to hide.
Kanda broke his pace for the first time, darting from tree to tree in the cover of Lenalee's smokescreen. Now, he had to think. His job would be easier if there were no akuma on his tail to warn the Noah he was coming.
Hunting.
The cloud lit up green and with a sound like fireworks. Two Level Twos flew out of the cloud, each hitting a tree with enough force to snap the trunks. They dissolved into dust before they could even reach the ground. Then a streak of light darted around the edge of the cloud, faster than he could make out. The milling shadows that tried to follow it rammed into each other in a way that should have made him laugh.
Kanda watched for anything that might change his mind as he ran closer, and waited until the last minute before he turned. But nothing happend, and he left the lightshow behind. Lenalee was holding her own against Level Ones and Twos. Thank God. Marie was right behind him, so she wouldn't be alone for long.
Vaulting over a fallen trunk, he brought one arm up beside him to shield from the spray of splintered wood and needles that rocketed out from the fight. Some went far enough into his jacket to pierce the skin. They were pushed out quickly as the skin rippled and healed.
Moving around the edge of the cloud and staying in it as long as he was able, Kanda tacked back along the way Lenalee and Daisya had come from. No akuma here, not in the distance either. That would make it easier. His eyes darted up and down. If he didn't watch the ground, he'd trip and at this pace, he'd fall hard. If he didn't watch around him, he would never find him.
Behind him, he heard the roar of flames. Right after that, screaming strings.
He couldn't look back. The two of them would take care of themselves. He was looking for a body here, something he could take back to be burned. He couldn't let himself look for someone living. That was stupid.
Three dead trees. Kanda moved between the darkest patches of the forest with an eye out. Lenalee could help him, if he pulled her out of that fight, she could tell him right where Daisya walked beside her and right where she forgot him.
His legs stretched out to cover ground. Strands of muscle strained, broke, healed, regrew with each stride that was never long enough.
Grabbing Lenalee would bring the akuma down on him, and then he'd have no time to search. No. As long as she was there and fighting, that was a diversion for him.
Wait—
A noise made him stop and drop into fighting stance, looking frantically around. All he saw were tangled trees and bushes, needles, leaves, dark figures standing in rows that reached as far as he could see.
He didn't have time to wait. You could be slow when you cared about your own life. The only thing that was important now was to keep going.
When he looked back and saw nothing, he broke and ran again.
Zig-zagging through the clearest stretch, he dragged his eyes over every patch of ground open or hidden, looking for a blue cloak. Black, in this light. He looked for grey bandages or a bulky body, laid out on the ground. He even looked for blood. The trees were pencil-black, smudged, filthy, fake, choking out any light.
A stump looked like a torso and roots looked like hands. Kanda's head was swimming from the start, full of too much to think about. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was looking, and he hadn't found it yet. Hadn't found him yet. He couldn't stop looking as long as that was true. He watched for the three dead trees. No. One dead body. Only that existed.
It was hard to look. Between the wind and the shrapnel, the tears wouldn't stop coming. He could run with his tight chest and breathe through the taste of blood, but he couldn't fix that unless he cut his eyes out. And if he did that, he couldn't search.
So he kept going.
He ran over cold ground under tall trees, eyes adjusting to the darkness.
Damn.
His insides felt like they'd been infected. They were swollen, and where they touched the inside of his ribs and his skin, they burned. Kanda knew the different types of pain and what each of them meant. Hot was infection, cold was a bruise, sharp was either something superficial or something so deep down it couldn't be fixed. This was a stone in his throat. It was sickness. He kept opening his mouth to swallow, but there was nothing there. It stayed there pushing his moth open and apart, sinking too slowly into his gut to get it over with and still fast enough that the pain spread from neck to stomach. From minute to minute, his gag reflex seized and tried to push something out of him. There was nothing.
And he was still looking.
Stumbling now, he didn't bother to stay quiet. He slashed at the ground and kicked up stones, cutting through each traitor branch that tried to look like an arm. The sounds of fighting were gone, so maybe the akuma were redirecting. It didn't matter now. His fingers were white on Mugen's hilt and his eyes could barely see at all. All he was good for now was fighting.
Daisya was—
"Hm? Are you getting tired?"
He didn't stop moving. Everything else did.
Kanda spun around unseeing, and swung on intsinct. The remains of a leafy bush fell around him in tatters.
As his eyes refocused, he saw. Her. Sitting up in the fork of a beech, a girl watched him with yellow eyes. Too far away to hit. Damn. He should have called up the spirits when he had the advantage.
"You didn't last long," she said. "I thought you were looking for something. But, maybe, were you just looking for a fight?"
He opened his mouth to say something, swallowing down around the dry stone, and formed the words. He just didn't say them. Something was blocking his mouth from his throat.
It took him two tries to spit them out. "Where is he."
"Oh, you're looking for someone? Who? Maybe…I saw him," she said deliberately.
Staring at her, he flexed his fingers around his sword's handle. The fast and frantic feeling of his heart slowed. At least, it didn't burn him like before. A chill was spreading inhim. Everything was becoming just the points of his hands, chest, and feet as he let himself breathe, ready to fight.
When it was time, he'd move faster.
His mouth stayed open, breathing, as an answer.
While he watched her, the girl's expression flitted from concerned to annoyed, angry, undefinable. She seemed distracted, as if something was constantly pulling her attention away as she tried to focus on him. Good. He'd never been more focused.
After watching him for another minute, the girl slid forward and dropped to the forest floor. Instead of landing, she just seemed to float above the ground, then stepped down on to it. Whatever she was wearing, it was oversized and black, and it didn't follow her exactly. It rustled against the ground as she walked toward him. It would be hard to guess her moves just from body language if he fought her.
"And I thought you wanted to find him. Don't blame me if you're too shy to ask."
The Noah grinned widely, circling him with her arms held behind her back. She didn't think he was enough of a threat to guard against. He was standing in a small clearing, where the bushy undergrowth was thin and four big trees marked a rough circle. An easy place to swing a sword.
She had to be wrong.
"Come on, I'll give you one last chance." She leaned in next to his ear. He could feel her breath on his face. "Tell me—"
He swung the sword in one strike, burning up his lifeblood to cut through her in one move. He did. With a sound like a rubber tire deflating, the top of her body floated down to the ground beside the bottom half, landing like an empty pillow case. Its mouth still moved, and it was smiling.
"Do you really think you could kill me?"
Kanda's inhumanity saved him.
His ears picked up the hum of movement above normal range, and in that moment he pulled Mugen back in time to spot the darts that flew at him from out of nowhere. Moving on instinct, he stepped and cut the air around him as each dart pierced the place he'd just been. One aimed for his chest—he cut in half—one aimed for his head—he ducked—one at his gut—he spun, stepping into the spaces between spikes. Some managed to catch the edge of his clothes, but he let them. The scientists that put him in this body made sure that it could feel bullets in the air and dodge them.
This fight would be like nothing he'd ever lived through before.
Wheat fields.
Golden light.
Nothing that he remembered.
The sweat running down his arms threatened to grease his grip on his Innocence, so he raised it into a high guard. Shivering from the sudden swing, he backed up against the nearest tree and looked around frantically for the source of the attack. The Noah might be able to summon them at a distance, which meant she might not even be in striking range. He had to find her before she wore him down.
The forest was darker as the dust from Lenalee's fight spread, but he narrowed his eyes as he stared down each lane of trunks. Maybe she would come out to taunt him. Otherwise, maybe Marie would be right. She would kill him before he had a chance to attack.
Instinct forced his head up. It was two seconds before it would have been too late. He saw fire.
And jumped out of the way, watching nine burning candles fall to the ground and hover, turn midair, and aim at him. The Noah sat above them, swinging her legs from a thick branch. Another fake?
At least there was a pattern now. These darts had to be like the demons in the blade, they generated from nothing and acted on their own. He knew how to counter those. With one slash he sent out his own attack, watching the ghosts snatch up and destroy the candles before they could hit him. He didn't take his eyes off of the girl, but kept his focus at the back of his head. If she attacked him from behind again, at least he was prepared for it.
"Well, you're no fun," she pouted. "Come on, won't you please talk to me?"
Kanda waited.
"If you won't talk—"
The next attack moved imperceptibly through the air, but Kanda was ready for it. He parried it again in a flurry of strikes, letting the spirits guard his back. Then, panting, he turned to face the Noah again. Her face had lost some of the teasing. She was angry.
Good.
"I'll make you."
Kanda counted his breaths. Each one connected him to Innocence. It needed to be another limb. It was always alien, but so was he. The old man had been pushing his synchronicity higher in training than he said most Generals reached at his age, whatever that meant, but now he understood. The sword was humming with the same energy that was burning him up.
He watched the Noah flick her wrist, sending the same candle-darts at him from all directions. They burned white. He waited, letting them get so close he felt the currents in the air around them.
Then jumped.
The force should have broken his bones. It had, before, and that was why they stood up now. This was his one chance.
Kanda moved the sword before he drew level with the Noah, using the speed of the jump to stab out faster than a human could dodge.
But it didn't hit. His aim wasn't off. Instead of the Noah, the blade cut into a shell of candlewax. Before he could even start to fall, the Noah had pulled its darts out of the air and warped them into a shield for itself.
As he grabbed a tree branch to keep himself up, he saw the blazing mass melt together and morph into a glowing, waxy skin that covered the Noah like armour. God damn it.
He scrambled for his footing. Where the Noah's head had been, points of the wax started to flicker and shine. Two eyes. A grin. More like two smudges and a jagged slash. Kanda's hands slipped on the tough tree bark, dripping with sweat. If he dropped to the ground, he'd be too far away to get her. If he didn't get a grip, it wouldn't matter. The slash opened into a circle as the Noah spoke. Now that he'd failed, it was back to being smug.
"You're such a stubborn boy. Anyone else would know when I'm being nice."
Frustration bubbled up in him like he was going to throw up. The tears had almost dried up, but now his body was shaking as he struggled. The only thing that kept him from crying was knowing he would die doing it. Damn it. Why did he come out here? Why did he want to die so badly?
He bit his tongue, but this tears came anyway. Why did he think he stood a chance?
"I think it's time for you to die now," she said.
His foot hit a knot.
It stuck.
Kanda didn't wait a moment before he leapt at her again.
His body was shaking. That gave him the edge. He turned each tremor into a strike, beating out a full kata in a split second as he tried to keep the Noah on guard. This must be the real body, if it was defending itself.
Chips of wax split off from the carapace, flowing back into it too fast for Kanda to break through it. Too bad. He could keep this speed up for hours, and this thing still had to think it was dealing with a human.
Bracing a foot against the trunk of the tree, he shoved off the branch with all his strength and jumped after it, taking the force of the fall and putting it into one hit that jarred his bones. Just once, he saw a crack open up on to the grey girl inside.
And then they hit the ground, and Kanda threw himself sideways, rolling to dodge the darts that thudded into the ground one by one after him. He came up into a low slash immediately, just missing the Noah's arm as it danced up candle steps back into the canopy.
Hah. Did she think he couldn't keep up?
The Noah jumped from branch to branch, protecting itself with the candle darts where the armour wasn't enough, and Kanda chased after. They parried like daggers, catching Mugen or knocking it off course.
It had let him get through once, and that was too much for it to stand. What it didn't get was that it didn't matter whether his attacks hit. He could keep this up longer than the Noah, he could hit harder, and if it could use its powers, it couldn't make up for raw strength. He followed it, light enough to run along the thin branches. He'd called up the demons to gnaw at its armour, digging away so that it had to constantly regenerate. Sooner or later, it would break. Then he would cut its ankles. Then, when it couldn't run, he'd ask it.
Where is he.
Gritting his teeth, Kanda focused on the flow of energy up the blade and imagined it sticking to his fingers. For a few blows, he thought of nothing but that. Then he wrenched his hands apart, pulling a shaft away from Mugen that he could feel in his hands, but never see. The ghost-light blasted into the forest, going past colour and lighting up everything in dead white. He could feel himself start to grin. He wasn't Kanda any more than he was Mugen now. He didn't know if any of this was his choice. He just did what felt right.
This was the next step, the old man said. Objects were nothing but a focus for Innocence. Once you synchronized with it, the Innocence was just an extension of you.
He hated that explanation. But it was working for him now.
The Noah hissed when he pushed his next attack. Both swords hammered down on its armour, filling it with energy and then breaking it apart, leaving the girl scrambling backwards. Good.
Forgetting the plan, he crossed the two swords against her kicking legs and yanked—
…
Road frantically threw up another shield. It lasted maybe two seconds, slicing apart where she should have lost her ankles. That was just long enough for her to dart away from the demonic thing that was chasing her around the clearing. At first she'd thought he was just another Exorcist, but he…it couldn't be human. The Noah had powers that elevated them above the rest and the Exorcists had just a little bit of the divine with their Innocence. This was different.
She'd been messing with the kid while she searched the other one for something useful to make this mission less of a failure. There wasn't anything he should have been able to do about that. Anyway, if he attacked an illusion of her, why would he ever think this body was the real thing?
But then he came after her like the distance was nothing and lashed out at her with something close to pure Innocence. And when he missed her, because there was no way any Exorcist could lay a hand on her who wasn't even grown up yet, he came back at her before she even realized he was still there.
After that, she didn't even have a chance to go on the offensive. While concentrating on the other one, the dead boy in the Dream, she had nothing left to throw at this one that wasn't used up just keeping her safe. She couldn't even use Lero without pulling him off the boy's body, and who knew what this animal would do if it thought she'd killed him? She was running out of options.
Road was running scared for the first time in her very long life, except for the beginning, from a kid?
Geez, that was embarrassing! The Earl would have to answer for this when she talked to him.
The creature hunting her had beaten her around the space she chose for him, always moving, never stopping, stabbing and slashing at her with an open mouth and bright eyes. When she skated through the air away, he jumped down and landed hard. This space was the real world, only a small part of the Dream extended here. He should be feeling all the pain of sprained and broken legs, he should only run as fast as human bodies went or hit with the strength of a child.
She pushed another strike off of her from the metal sword, feeling it nick the awful big black dress. It was ruined now. Chunks of it hung off of her and there were nicks or cuts beneath it when she'd been too far off in the Dream to defend. Down near her legs, she felt the burning sword bite into her armour again. He wasn't even trying to kill her, he was trying to wear her down. Road lashed out desperately with own candles, trying to make contact—
Pain shot through her ribs as the boy kicked her square off the branch, and she tumbled to the ground almost too fast to catch. She almost felt the twigs snap underneath her when her candles swooped down and caught her with a crash that knocked the breath out of her.
As her eyes cleared, she was too late to do anything about the creature falling towards her, swords crossed to trap her against the ground. She rolled, and the boy landed hard beside her, but she wasn't fast enough to run. One sword slashed a chunk out of her ear and she yelped without meaning to, it stung so bad. The other stabbed down beside her neck, keeping her from moving, and as the first sword flashed through the air again towards her, she realized she had no choice.
She closed her eyes to block out the red-eyed, grinning face and sighed, bringing the Dream overhead to cover them both.
Wow, you spend a day writing an action scene and when you step back it's about 3 paragraphs long! There's a reason I like dialogue.
I know it's a little unrealistic to have Kanda hold his own against Road when she can own Allen and Lena without breaking a sweat. But, Kanda kills another Noah in a few years and Road is distracted with Daisya rn, so I figure she'd have a hard time going up against that. Good luck to our intrepid protagonists, they're really in it now.