Posting again since this part is prewritten and I never know when I'll have the time to edit again! Happy ff dot net DNS hoax to everybody
He glanced up around him. The flophouse was only two stories, but it was surrounded by frilly facades that fit three stories and an attic into their space. Some were squatter, with odd curves and rooms jutting out where the family had a few more kids than expected. Then there were the higher stone buildings, with stairs tacked on as halfhearted fire escapes.
This alley was only a couple of feet across at the foot of the dormitory. Which meant…
Daisya walked a few feet to his left, hopped up on a pile of snow that had slid off he roof, jumped, and grabbed on to a crossbeam sticking out of the building opposite. He didn't dangle. That was a recipe for disaster, letting your hands get tired as you figured out the next move. He had this all planned out from the moment he looked. With his fingers locked in place all he needed to do was walk his feet up, hook a hand over the windowsill, pull himself up, then jump again and grab a hold of that roof.
The town looked different when you were in it instead of on top. The streets shone with lamps, and the alleys spewed out shadows into the lanes. The buildings seemed to lean up, sagging and tilting into the free air. It felt as if the mortar and stones and stuff were teeth trying to eat you up.
It took him a minute or two more of scrabbling, but he made it on to the window. The noise that he had heard coming out of it still buzzed in his jaw in the new hush.
No time to think now he'd committed to the climb.
With his fingers gripping one of the roof beams for dear life, he managed to pivot like a pendulum and kick the flimsy shutters in. That might wake up whoever was in there. Fine. The Black Order got some privileges.
There was a chance he was wrong. If it was some contact who was going to get mad at him for busting a secret mission, then Kanda could pay the bill. He should have thought of this before he up and disappeared into the night. It had to be somewhere in their arrangement.
He planted his feet before he let go.
They were going to be together as long as they were together. There was no way Kanda would ever let him just go when he was in his hands. He never had. He had to know that Daisya felt the same way.
"Hey!"
Daisya slid into the house from the ledge, tensed for action. People could get the wrong first impression.
The room wasn't lit. The now-open window let in just enough to see a room packed with too many bunkbeds. Kanda wasn't anywhere to be seen or heard. He'd have made himself known by now. Daisya was sure nobody else in this country had a silhouette like him.
Large shadows perked up toward him like hunting dogs. Not a single one of them looked like anyone who ever read a book. The dull faces that confronted him were hacked out of clay by an amateur sculptor of novelty pots like the ones his parents once ordered in and never sold many of. He'd just broken into a workers' dormitory. They probably didn't know who Noah was, let alone anything about Innocence.
Except.
This was weird.
The Charity Bell buzzing away on the end of his hood told him Mugen was still here.
"Who're you?"
One of the residents had rolled out of a bottom bunk.
"I'm looking for a guy. Young. Black hair," he said plainly. "Long."
"We don't have anyone like that," said the apparent leader, who was way too alert to have been woken up. "What are you doing here?"
So this one hadn't been sleeping. Somehow, he didn't strike Daisya as an insomniac, either. He could feel his hackles rise.
Six sets of bunks. Twelve people. How many of them were in on this? All of them. That's what he had to think. Either they were all akuma, or they were humans who didn't know the difference. They'd fight him one way or the other.
"You've got something that belongs to him," Daisya said.
He kept his knees springy. An idea was trickling into his brain of how to deal with this fast.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Have you got ears? I said it. Somebody here stole a sword, and I'm looking for where you got it from. C'mon. Tell me where he is," Daisya wheedled.
"Or what." The akuma-in-disguise didn't even try to hide its intentions.
"There's no 'or,'" he said. "You're going to say it eventually."
"Shut up."
That wasn't the voice he wanted to hear tell him that. It wasn't even second-place, or third, or fourth. From his perch, Daisya watched the shadows slowly block out the background. There was some rustling as they readied for a fight. The breeze whistling at his back was the only assurance he had that he wasn't surrounded.
Mugen was here. Kanda wasn't.
He'd forgotten he could feel angry like this.
"Nah."
Daisya feinted at the ham-faced bastard in front of him, near enough to make it look like a miss. A hit came back at him like clockwork with a grunt from the akuma's human form. He lunged to hit Daisya. Too bad for him, that was the point. Daisya dodged and hopped closer to the ledge. He'd take the bait. He had to.
And, yep. Frustrated by one missed swing, the akuma moved to punch him again, to try to push him out the window and make strawberry jam on the cobbles. Unlucky for him, Daisya's feet were solid on the wood beam as he caught the hand and twisted. It wasn't the easiest with a small target. The mass of flesh-and-metal that he threw over his shoulder could push him off-balance with a tiny mistake, but he'd done this all before. The weight pinned him in place like Atlas where it could have swayed him over, all two hundred kilos pivoting around his hips like a thresher's scythe. His calves stayed strong. His centre was as still as the axis of a globe.
All those days in the dojo paid off as Daisya wrenched his arms and threw the akuma back, over the sill, then sprang after him into the alley.
The cold night air sang past.
How many times had he fallen?
The inn's window in the fire.
Kanda caught him.
The abbey staircase.
Kanda saved him.
The crumbling cliff-face.
They went together
The Noah's dream-space.
A half-dozen memories froze him up as he realized the mistake he'd made. The ground had got so close.
This was only two stories to fall.
He hit the ground on top of the akuma's human form and everything was gone again, cleared out of his head as the akuma screamed in a pretty good imitation of pain. Daisya hadn't even started the chimes yet.
Gripping its collar, Daisya pushed its shoulders into the ground.
"Maybe I'll let you keep the Innocence if you tell me where the guy who had it is, huh?" Daisya lied.
Level Ones weren't that smart. Besides, now that he'd figured out this trick, he was sure he could find Mugen again. Kanda came first.
So then…
Maybe it wasn't so untrue.
The screaming that roared on had to be waking up up everyone in the next three streets. No one was going to jump out of the window after him, but he still had to move fast. The stairs wouldn't take a minute.
Daisya stamped on the thing's chest. Another howl echoed down the alley. He didn't want to kill it just yet, while it was still willing to act human. It could have some other kind of mission going on.
"You didn't have to go through with all this, but you did! Come on and just let me know." He grinned. "Or, I'll just get rid of you, and ask your friends."
Feeling his cheeks split around his teeth, he brought the curve of his nose right down to the thing's face. That shut it up for a moment that couldn't last long enough.
"You've got seven seconds. Seven. Six. Five. Three—"
The akuma flailed its arms.
"Hrrk—id—m," it said.
Daisya was suddenly kneeling at its side, holding his ear to the mouth of its human form.
"What was that?" he breathed.
"—illed—him."
The akuma whistled out something like breath. Those things shouldn't feel so damp. His knees were sore on the stone after all the hours he'd run this night. Daisya stayed bent over his own knees so he could hear everything. Footsteps were starting to sound from out the building's front.
"Fine, whatever, you killed him. Where'd you leave the body?" he whispered.
"Y—on't—" the akuma tried, then started coughing. Geez! The thing had wasted all the time he had before their company was due to arrive. Their little tete-a-tete in this alley here was at an end already.
From where he was on the ground, Daisya could only tell them by the boots shuffling into his line of vision. Steel toes clinked under thick leather that hugged legs as thick as tree trunks. They were all the same yellow-edged blue as the stones and snow in the tiny bit of light there was.
Time's up.
Daisya put his hands down against the stone and pushed himself to full height. Three or four of the same identical-looking men stood at the alley mouth. None of them looked like anything except men. Akuma, as well? He guessed he'd get an answer soon.
These ones milled around uneasily. Another point in the 'akuma' category. Humans wouldn't be so quick to come down after something that could be dangerous. They wouldn't hesitate to attack it once they got there, either.
"Any of you seen my man? About my height. Did I say he had long hair?"
Bringing out a hand from under his cloak, Daisya twirled the small-form Charity Bell between his fingers. He had to keep them on edge. The akuma might have other orders if they were going for Exorcists' Innocence instead of the easy pickings that were still lost. Of course, he could kill them all in a blast, but they might give something away if he taunted them with it.
The akuma spread out. Blocking his escape route. He was sure that's what they thought he was doing.
Daisya wasn't a little kid anymore. Hell, even when he was a little kid, he knew how to dodge that kinda thing! People were always trying to get between him and the goal. You just had to throw yourself at their legs and slide past like a cat.
"Something tells me you know him." Daisya nodded down at his now-quiet captive. It still wasn't transforming for now. Probably in shock.
There was one lamp at the alley mouth, he saw.
One brick warehouse on one side, the half-timber barracks on the other side. Both barely bit at the deep-blue sky before they ran out. Everything else was just that blank space overhead. It wasn't the actual real sky. He couldn't see any stars in it. Someone had painted it all over with clouds too high up to see. It was plain.
It was all the same.
Boring!
Daisya bounced the Charity Bell down off the flagstones like it was rubber, and all the akuma cringed the same way. There were still probably some humans in the flophouse. Not in the warehouse, no, probably not.
Daisya caught the Charity Bell and whipped it casually sideways this time, rebounding off the warehouse wall. He listened for the resonance. There was always one frequency that would do the trick.
"Do any of you know even know German? It's not even a hard question," he said dryly. At least, he was sure it was dryly. His mouth didn't have an ounce of spit left in it. "I can do French, if you want. Anyone speak French? Turkish?"
Four faces looked at him in confusion, mild panic, anger, and confusion again. Damn it, he'd take the white masks over this stuff! Couldn't they at least fight him? Standing around like this bored him to death.
Again, Daisya hit the warehouse with the Bell and let it ring. He caught it on his foot this time. Instead of stopping, he let it spin of its own accord, revolving, growing, then flicked it back up to his hand.
That finally spurred them into action.
A full-body twitch skidded Daisya's feet forward by a millimetre before he caught control of himself. The akuma moved, but not towards him. They'd just bunched in on themselves and were muttering in the voices that were usually so out-of-sync with their mouths. The words were all blown out in the same flurry.
"You said it was safe!"
"Sure, I kept an eye out! No one ever comes by that close to the gate."
The akuma chattered without even trying to hide.
"So what's this one doing?"
"Careful. Someone mighta been watching from the windows."
Processing each word one-by-one, Daisya shook. It took him a second to remember that he wasn't cold. His face was burning.
"Nah. They'd be running scared."
"Hey, where'd we leave it?"
"It's behind that tanner's, yeah? We hid it."
Daisya didn't stop to think about why they were acting like this. He'd heard what he needed to.
"Coulda sworn I dragged him—"
"What are you standing around for? Get him!"
The akuma moved the same second he did.
One lunged for him with an over-wide swing that he dodged, darting through the gap it left in their defensive line. His boots skidded over the snow-dusted ground as another one of them grabbed his cloak. These ones weren't very smart. Even as the akuma's thick fingers yanked the fabric, it came off, slipping from Daisya's head and falling limp in the akuma's unpracticed hands.
Daisya turned on a dime, bringing the other foot around in a thigh-kick that could break two planks put together. The satisfying snap he got out of one of the akuma's legs told him it broke something. He couldn't even celebrate. He had to catch them all, on the offchance one of them was human and wouldn't get caught by the frequency of his that paralyzed.
There wasn't going to be anyone coming for him this time. He knew that now.
One of the akuma was standing still with his own cloak in hand. One was still getting his balance back. Two were aiming fists inches from his torso, thrown off by his quick escape. One was flat out on the ground.
Not ideal. Brick wasn't a great conductor.
If he choked now, Daisya was sure he wouldn't see tomorrow.
Daisya tossed the Charity Bell up.
He wouldn't see Kanda.
Something swung at his head. Hard.
It would end like that.
He could hear the thrum the fist made through the air as it came at his head.
Then there would be nothing.
Forgetting the Bell, he dropped to the ground. The humming passed over his head. The Bell swelled to full size as its noise swelled too.
Nothing, forever.
Daisya caught himself in a crouch.
As long as he didn't have to be there for the nothing, he guessed, that would be all right.
Something kicked him in the ribs.
Just…
He kicked it in the kneecap hard enough to fracture, rolling with the momentum back to standing.
Would Kanda be there, too?
The Bell plummeted back to earth.
All that happened in the space of a breath. When his Innocence finally reached his eyes again, the akuma were too bewildered to change shape.
He didn't want to go there with him. If that was where he was, Daisya wasn't following. There were so many things to do, here. He wasn't going to stop just because of one dumb kid.
Daisya kicked the Charity Bell through the warehouse wall.
The Bell glowed.
It chimed.
No matter what happened, if Kanda's luck finally ran out, if his blood was all dry on the stones because Daisya wasted so much of it so long before he even knew what it meant, he was going to see it.
Stone, he knew, sounded high notes, higher than it should, the chink of chisel on marble or clack of river stones. Brick was the same. There was barely any room for sound to bounce around before running into another plane inside of itself. You couldn't grow the rich, dark, lovely sound that you got from even a crowbar's worth of metal.
So it was definitely a chime he heard instead of a toll, he figured, as the brick wall shattered outwards.
The akuma screamed.
It was over fast.
The bricks flung out from the Charity Bell hit first, then rubble poured over them as the building sagged. Daisya could only see the forward two akuma from his vantage point outside the alley. The rest were buried when the brick wall bellied outwards.
The flophouse had taken a hit too. Only one of the beams. No walls caved in. It was fine. He wasn't trying to wreck the whole place. He just needed to keep a few bodies still.
Bodies.
If those were akuma, they should turn to dust.
Daisya could see blood pooling from the crumpled skull of the one that tried to stove his head in.
Maybe these akuma looked a lot like humans.
Still, no human would steal Innocence.
Daisya looked around for any other threat. The heart stuttering in his throat wouldn't calm down until he felt Kanda's skinny wrists in his own hands. When his eyes told him different things, he could depend on that.
Illusions or not, he couldn't see anyone else coming for him. Lamps were turning on in windows, though, and people were rushing out into streets. He needed to be gone. It would be better if he wasn't ever here at all.
He used the blown-up wall as a ladder.
Climbing the remaining stones up the side of the building, he leapt into the same window he broke through earlier as the house's residents came pouring out the front door.
The akuma's bunkroom was quiet. Empty.
From the sound of the Bell that hovered over his shoulder, they'd left the Innocence here too. Daisya could hear it from the corner. It was hard to pay attention to his surroundings when it was calling him this loud.
Skidding across the planks, he snatched up the drawstring pack from a bedpost and felt the blade inside it. His fingers wrapped around it like it was…
Good.
Daisya shouldn't finish that thought.
It was Kanda's Innocence. He was going to give it back to him. It was Kanda's Innocence, and he had it now.
He'd have to search the whole night for Kanda.
His own backpack was still strapped to him. Should he stow Mugen there? Or…
Daisya drew out the sword with a clatter of buckles. Still on its belt. They'd taken it off of Kanda like this.
Despite the cold, his cheeks felt warm.
He wiped his face.
Moving slowly to keep his shaking hands from messing up, he cinched the belt around his waist. It barely did up at the furthest it could go. Somehow it helped to have it tight around him as his breaths heaved his whole body.
Daisya felt Mugen's hum in the belt across his stomach while the Charity Bell sang in his ear.
Time to go.