Work is less bad! Delighted to announce that we've had one (1) new reader from the stats so come on in!
Snow muffled the footfalls of a shadow, cloaked and walking softly through the street. No other sound was heard. Past-midnight was when even the food-sellers were still, only the tattered ends of their stall covers trailing in the breeze.
The shadow passed beneath the light of a wrought-iron lamp, moving at a deceptive speed. At each alley, it paused, cloak floating loosely around it as if underwater. Time itself seemed to be suspended.
The trail it followed was the broad trail of a hundred people that packed the snow beneath their boots into ice. Today's marks barely showed up over the countless indentations left before them. They led right back to the main gate of the town in one straight line. Finding one path in the mess would not be easier than picking out one flagstone in a paved town.
Each intersecting street saw more speed added to the shadow's pace, leading it to a shambling run. It moved in uneven jerks. Hesitant to leave each stopping point, it still drove onwards.
The streets all melded into one, each darkened and empty, and the snow lightened.
…
Daisya felt as if his ribs were cracked for a second time, digging into his chest. The wind bit at him more even when he tried to outrun it.
…
The shadow paused, scrubbed a hand over its eyes, and pressed forward, following the footsteps through a maze.
Suddenly, it stopped. The hood-tail fell across its shoulder as it glanced up.
This church stood between almost identical rows of houses that formed a square around it. They nearly hid the building. There didn't seem to be space to breathe between the zig-zagged avenues.
Its plain plastered-over walls reached over the sanctuary and up length of a short tower, capped by a green copper roof that hid a bell beneath. The two doors that were locked over the building were barely taller than a stable's doors. At a closer distance, they were marked out by their craft and not their size. The bronze surface was worked into faces and scenes that nobody could have said were pretty.
The grotesqueries that paraded there reached their heads out, cast, not wrought. The thinnest layer of frost shone off them.
Reaching out a limb, the shadow pushed. The frost melted. Nothing else moved.
Nothing else seemed to happen, then, except for the start of a noise that spread from the handles. They rattled in place, while the rest of the door seemed to sing out in a low hum.
Standing in front of the door, the figure seemed to dissipate. It wasn't even a shadow anymore. There was just one gap in the air where snowflakes settled.
The noise faded.
Creaking in the cold, the two doors swung open on their hinges. The last reminder that the shadow even was had disappeared the moment it stepped inside. Nothing was darker than the sanctuary.
…
Ow!
Daisya's shins knocked against hardwood. This damn old tiny hiding church was too full of junk—he'd barely got past what he saw in the reflected light-shadow that came in from the street, and he had shooting pain in both legs. Just what he needed.
He eased off the grip he'd got on the pew, or whatever it was he'd grabbed to keep from falling over. He needed to find the staircase here. They had to have stairs, a ladder, whatever. People had to get up to the belltower. It was important.
Kanda wasn't the most social guy. Sure, Daisya woke up to a cold bed more nights than not when they were travelling together. That didn't mean it wasn't weird when he stayed awake half the night and he was still out. The place wasn't even that big!
By the time his watch showed midnight going, he was still lying wide awake and biting his lips like he was hungry. There wasn't any point in waiting if he was too bored to sleep. He had to get out and do something!
Even in a small town, it was hard to find someone. Daisya knew, he was usually the one hiding. Running out to go look would have them chasing each other in circles. It was better to just stay and wait until Kanda finally got over whatever issues he was having.
The problem was, Daisya couldn't just leave him alone.
So he'd left as obvious a note as he could, sketch paper on the pillow, and jumped out the window with his pack and his boots on. His fingers weren't working so well in the cold, but with hands and feet he'd scrambled up to the roof and jumped at least a few alleys before he ran into the broader streets. There was nobody out. Kanda should be easy to find!
Actually, he was hoping Kanda would hear him and call out to him. He wouldn't avoid him, would he? So Daisya had slid to the ground and kept on running through the snow-choked town wherever there was a light to see by, up and down the alleys and the main roads.
Nothing. That was expected. Except it took him hours to see nothing, and nothing was still there back at his room.
He was starting to worry. More than worry.
He was starting to feel giddy.
His heart pumped all it could, but it felt like his blood was thin as kerosene.
That led him here. Daisya wasn't one for belltowers. It was hard to be, after one tried to kill you. He wasn't stupid, either. He could recognize a last chance when he saw it.
If he could find akuma by their echoes, he was sure he could find Innocence. All accommodators could sense it, in some way. He'd tried on the Dark Boots once or twice. They didn't work for him, sure, but he could still feel how much they didn't want to work. There was something, some sameness between all Innocence that meant they could talk to each other. Accommodators felt the pull. Other Innocence did too.
Mugen wouldn't fill with noise the way akuma did, or ring out like bells. It was too thin, too hard. Like its owner. He'd get a tinny little ring at best. The Charity Bell couldn't pick that up over the breadth of the town.
Something else, though, as big as an akuma, a thin metal shell that he knew could deal out some real damage if it wanted to…
The belltower that leaned up out of the inkblue sky had just about stopped his heart with hope. Wherever Mugen was, he was sure he could pick it up if he just used that bell.
Which led him to his current problems. The doors had opened for him readily enough once he shook the lock out of its bearings, but now he was staggering around in the pitch dark in a room full of hard, pointy objects that he didn't even know about. He'd seen the spikes on some candlesticks. Those were lethal.
Was it worth starting up some light? He could always ring the Bell again. The noise might get him some bad attention. But it was that or find some candles, or try and remember where the tinderbox was in his pack. There wasn't any time for that.
Daisya kept the Charity Bell small as he did this. That was a trick the old man taught him when he was back in the summer. Letting it grow was just impulse whenever he tripped the Innocence. It felt wrong to keep it small. A larger shape had better resonance and was easier to kick, anyway. The living Bell knew what size was best. He could still force it to change if he really wanted to. It just needed constant concentration while he used its other abilities. A huge Bell could give you bigger, knockout resonance, but it was impossible to kick it as far just with his legs. It was better for sending out pulses and hearing echoes.
A smaller one was just as impractical. Most of the time. It was too small to hit. Even you did manage to connect, then it didn't have enough force when you did to pierce anything. Its waves were limited. They made your head ache, and they were never strong. What it did do was concentrate the faint light that came off the Bell when it was active, without the din of the usual one.
Daisya flicked the doorbell up in the air, letting it ring in the register that would get dogs barking all over the place without waking a human. The light it gave off was enough to show him the crowded benches and tables all over the small floorspace. Well, small compared to the Order's grand church and the cathedrals he knew. It wasn't that small.
Stairs. He needed stairs. There were alcoves here and there, a chapel or two, but nothing that looked promising.
Daisya hopped on to the back of one of the pews and ran. It was one movement, not a bit of spare momentum tipping him forward or back. He barely touched down as he raced from spine to spine towards the choir loft. All the while the ghostlight of the tiny Bell hovered just in front of him, looping in circles with each occasional bat he gave it.
The plaster construction meant there was none of the ornate stone detailing that any good building should have, but the blank walls were dolled up. Someone, someones, probably, had painted big arches and pastoral scenes on them in black and white and fading colour. There were people craning their necks every which way. Halfway up the loft, bounded by scrollwork, a few angels were pulling a curtain apart. He followed the hovering Bell like a sighthound. Aha! They'd painted the door right into the mural!
The Innocence helped even when it wasn't making noise. He figured it was just naturally trying to protect its carrier. It seemed to be…not quite alive, but maybe imbued with a little purpose. Something that made it try to survive, like it had in the moving castle and on the illusory ground that started to crumble.
Daisya yanked at the handle and wrenched his shoulder for his trouble. Why would they need to lock a door inside the church? The big old lock on the big doors should keep everyone out.
He bounced the Charity Bell impatiently off the wooden planks and rang it as best he could. It didn't do much. Except, it did show him a crack that ran through the whole thing.
Fine. He could work with that.
Backup up along the length of the row, Daisya checked for any tripping hazards. Yeah, no. This choirloft was made of fairly broad steps. It was practically begging to be run on.
Daisya brought the Bell up to full size, sprang off from the back wall, and kicked it full force at the door.
He didn't even pause as he sailed straight through the cloud of falling splinters, after the Bell and up to the spiral staircase on the other side. The new steps were wood, warped with age and too many uses, too high in places and too low in others, polished in the middle to a mirror shine. It was a good thing Daisya was running too fast for a fall to matter. By the time one foot could slip, the other was already planted on the stair above. The Charity Bell ricocheted up with a kick mid-stride.
The exhaustion would catch up with him soon. One day of travel and no hours of sleep before sprinting through the city with a backpack on could only end one way. The fear flitting around the corners of his consciousness had fledged fully in the time it took him to get there.
Slowing down to a walk as he neared the top, Daisya came out on a thin wooden skirting around the square frame of the belltower. The view over the rooftops showed him a few illuminated streets and a whole lot of dark nothing all around. Careful, now. He wasn't about to fight off akuma for years and die from tripping.
It wasn't high up enough for any kind of weird effects, and still Daisya felt like the land was cringing away from him. The edges of the town pulled down at the edge of his sight like a hospital bedsheet and laid everything bare to inspect. He didn't have Kanda's eyes. At this distance he couldn't see any hard faces glaring out from under black bangs. The thing about things you can't see is that you're desperate to know if they're there.
He wedged one hand into the empty doorframe and found a knothole. That should hold him. Then, balancing the Bell on one foot, he let his breath slow for a minute. In the fresh air he could see steaming plumes puff out over the empty space.
Here went nothing.
He kicked the smaller Bell straight into the big one.
The effect was a little underwhelming. To start out with. The Charity Bell ricocheted off the inside surface like a stone in a tin can. What came out wasn't a chime as much as a more metallic-sounding thunk.
Except, the ricocheting didn't stop.
Inside the mouth of the bell, the Charity Bell was accelerating. Whatever angle it bounced at seemed to propel it right back in. Each note lingered. Individual clangs and clongs built up a powerful sound one at a time. Daisya wasn't just ringing that chime like an akuma. He was making it into an extension of the Bell itself. That took time.
And he was doing it!
No one ever knew how Innocence worked. Parasitic users had to be different from equipment users, otherwise it wouldn't be different. The Charity Bell couldn't be a part of Daisya. Otherwise, it would've been. It was more like he was a fiddler and the Bell was a dancer. All it did was shake and sometimes glow. He couldn't make it do anything. What he could do was make it want to do something. It was hard as hell to keep on moving to a different tune than what was playing. The Bell could still ring loudly if he wanted quiet. He had to make quiet irresistible for that to work.
Right now he wanted the Bell to become its own fiddler. Make the big bronze monstrosity into something that could actually help them. Reach into the cast mass so that it was so much easier to just transmit the noise than damp it down.
The pulse that was coming from it now was…unbelievable.
Even Daisya's dull ears picked up on the sounds of nothing. You didn't realize how much you depended on them until sergeant master Marie made you go around an entire day with your head wrapped in cotton. The background noise of the world told you who was with you, where, and how fast they were or were not throwing something right at you.
The Charity Bell made a battlefield into the background. This thing made the background into the land.
Keeping his feet planted on the scaffolding, he edged around the side of the church bell to get a better look. The high ring of houses around the city acted like an amplifier. All the tiny noises quivering in sympathy with his tolls got funnelled right up at him. Daisya cackled. Just this once, was the best that ever was!
It wasn't perfect. Half the sound was just wineglasses and metal. Lucky for him, he had already tried to tune to Innocence before. Daisya narrowed the range bit by bit from up on his perch until he felt no change. Cutting out the place where sleighbells would vibrate, for instance, meant that every one of those things in the town would stop humming. Every huge chunk ripped out from the tapestry of sounds meant that Daisya was getting rid of the fluff.
The Innocence would exist above all of those things. The closest way he could describe the sound was that it was like a glass harmonica. Marie had found one as a curiosity at a fair and wouldn't let them leave before he tried it. It whined with the thinnest tone imaginable. That's what Daisya looked for now.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Daisya closed his eyes and hoped he wasn't going to fall fatally. He was picking up on guitar strings, spectacles, and really fine glasses. He had to find the one noise that was it.
Huh. Maybe he was doing this the wrong way. He wasn't looking for just Innocence. He was looking for Mugen. The noises it was making were going to be trapped inside solid steel.
Daisya opened his eyes again to stare at the space beyond the city walls. The countryside was one black curtain. The town was the stage set. Nothing could be seen behind it.
Mouth open too in concentration, Daisya searched.
Steel. It resonated well enough, but you needed space for any noise to gather. It would be small and tight. Not muffled, constrained. Immense power all corseted up. Like Kanda.
He couldn't not recognize it, he was sure about that. Come on…
Relief hit Daisya. Daisya's knees hit the wood.
Ow!
He got his balance back before it sent him down to the flagstones as raspberry jam. No doubt about it, that was Mugen. Leave it to Kanda to land a strike from five hundred metres away. What the hell was he doing in one of the houses?
Flicking his wrist like a conductor, Daisya called the Charity Bell back to him and kicked it off the tower.
That was a story he was dying to hear. This was a story he was dying to tell. One way or another, Daisya was going to get what he wanted.
He leapt down into the abyss, grabbing the bellpull with both gloved hands. The friction shooting through them as he fell would've torn the skin off if they were bare. As fast as he could, he tangled his feet in the rope for a foothold and jumped off before he hit bottom. The landing still did a number on his ankles.
Then, guided by one wispy light, he darted back through the church and out the open doors. The place would be freezing come morning.
So would he.
!I just love the Daisya (: I rewatched some of his episodes in sub before I edited this and I didn't even realize that he uses 'oira' as a pronoun sometimes? Or do my ears deceive me...