Thank you everyone who made it this far!!! Those from far back and those who came later. The formatting screwed up when I copied this over, so we're missing a few italics. Remind me to add in later!
Daisya snuck glances overhead each time he passed through shadow. It was a good thing the moon was so close to full tonight, but it made him jumpy. Any akuma would have to take a careful course if it wanted to get the jump on him and not throw itself out on the ground as a shadow. He just had to keep an eye out for the moving ones.
The problem was that he chased down the paved streets nearly as fast as an akuma could move in the first place. Every spire or twisty roof in this city that seemed like it was made out of honeycomb cast exactly the same sort of shadow, and they all flashed by as fast. His pulse was flickering as he hopped from courtyard to courtyard. What the hell were they thinking when they built the place? He couldn't go two blocks without running into a building that curved sickeningly around its frame like a kid's clay model. No wonder Tiedoll couldn't keep himself away.
Daisya wished he could've got here in daylight to see it all from above. This place was cool. The old man probably had something to say about movements or reactions or forms about everything, but it was enough that Daisya had to do a double-take every now and then when he was hunting. For once, the akuma weren't holding his attention. That's why he was getting edgy. He could tell by now when he was distracted.
Skidding up to a corner, he sent out another high-pitched whistle to check for akuma that he couldn't see. Nothing close. That meant he could keep going. They'd thinned them out enough in the first few hours of his and Kanda's chase that he had to gather them up first. He needed a couple more hanging around the place before he could take them all out in one go.
Daisya scanned streets, walls, and skies, and made a dash for it to another shady gallery. He could at least try to use the moonshadow to his advantage.
Once he was safely on the other side, he ran. The only thing they needed right now was information. The sooner he could check each finicky cross-street or dead end, the sooner they could come up with something and go find the old man.
While his legs pumped, he kept his breath even. He could already see one akuma patrolling overhead and a pair somewhere behind him. They'd been hidden by a Parisian-style block of townhouse roofs just a minute ago. He took note of the positions and moved on as quietly as he could. He'd already blown up what, thirty-four, and Kanda only killed twenty? No contest there. Daisya was way ahead of the game.
He counted them in ones and twos along an uphill drag of street. Until he had to stop.
Another shadow that he very intelligently noted at high speed came at him from a side street and forced him to take cover. The door of the empty house he'd tried to force was stuck too firmly shut to break in without a noise. So, in the end, he hopped up on a ground-floor windowsill and crammed himself against the shutters with his cloak spread out. The dull fabric hid any shine off his boot-caps or white trim when he pulled it over himself, and the long drip edge of the overhead roof gave him just a bit of cover.
Tucked inside of himself, head to knee and foot to back, he waited it out with a loud pulse.
Then the akuma passed over and he unfolded. You could tell where it went from the sound of its tendrils. They clanged together like wind chimes when an akuma moved. You just had to be close to hear them.
Daisya looked overhead again before he moved. All clear.
He stayed in the windowframe and, after a couple of tries, managed to get his golem out of the pocket where he'd stashed it. It was better to have it fly alongside. Why'd he stow it, anyway?
Oh yeah. Because he was trying to hide. Those flapping wings would give him away in an instant.
He gave the blinking eye-thing a couple of strokes as apology and opened the line.
"Passing by Prague Street now, I'll see you soon. Kanda, what's your location?"
The line would take a minute to open while Kanda searched for cover. Daisya gave up on waiting, stretched, and got out of the windowframe. He'd already lined up his shot.
Drawing back, he tossed the Charity Bell as high as it went and hit it with a wheeling kick that slammed it into the wall of the next building, high up near the roof. It rebounded with the usual ring and flew—way overhead—through the akuma that just passed by and into the pair that Daisya had dodged. Trick shot!
"Watch where you're going!" he shouted as the dust rained down. That'd show them.
The golem crackled to life.
"—n't un—ou," Marie's voice said.
"Be c—," Kanda nagged.
"Sorry, can't hear you," Daisya said sing-song. "You're breaking up."
"—ow?" he heard Kanda say. If it took them any longer to sync up with the signal, it was going to give the akuma another chance to regroup. Daisya quickly scanned the street for something else.
"Nope," he said. "I'm going to try to find some high ground."
The street was sloping down the hillside. That made it easier.
Daisya started running. The trick was not to slow down. You wanted to keep the momentum going forward even as you fell, so you'd have a chance to reach out and save yourself if you messed up. It was one of the best rules out there! Who said that dawdling along was always the smartest thing to do? There were some problems you fixed with speed.
"—re y—" Marie sighed.
He leapt up from the cobbles and grabbed the edge of a balcony support, then swung his feet up on to the railing of the next balcony. It was easy to flip the rest of him up, the golem trailing behind him. He kept moving, jumping over and pushing off the top of the window of the next building over. That gave him enough lift to grab on to some kind of ornamental stone thing, which lasted long enough for a swing that got his feet on top of the snuffed-out street lamp in this terrified city. He stayed suspended like that for a minute while he got his bearings, totally exposed, and then he kicked off the lamp and got his feet hooked into the roof's edge as the rest of him dangled above the street.
Daisya almost wanted to stay there and enjoy the view. Moonlight glinted off the shells of akuma as they drifted over the place. Off toward the sea, the Finders' traps glistened like flies' wings. It looked even better from upside-down. Nothing made sense anymore. The spires of the town were chomping down on them like teeth.
"Daisya?" Kanda's voice came through loud and clear.
With a tortured groan, he heard a few of the akuma's guns started swivelling around. Daisya wasn't going to kill himself over a nice view.
Seeing the sights was going to have to wait until sunrise.
He hooked his fingers in the same sturdy lip around the tiles' edge and let himself hang by a hand and a foot instead of two feet. The second foot swung back and forth until he had the force to flip on to the rooftop like a tortoise getting itself back on its feet. He scrambled up the tiles before he could start slipping, heading for the spine of the roof.
"You took your time to say something," he said.
Kanda ignored him. "Tell us where you are. I'll get to Marie soon, unless you need backup."
"I'm less than one click," Daisya yell-whispered as he started running. He could already see the holes down the centre of the akuma's barrels. "Just need to take care of these guys."
Daisya started to sprint down the roof's centre as he watched the cross-street coming up. It didn't look too wide. The townhouses all followed the slope of the road, so he wouldn't have to kill his speed with an uphill climb.
"I won't look for you," Kanda warned.
"Daisya, do you need support?" asked Marie again.
"I'm fine!"
Throwing the Charity Bell ahead of him, Daisya watched it drop toward the roof of the housing block on the other side of the street. His muscles bunched up as he hurtled forward.
Daisya jumped.
The akuma nearby had already drifted closer. That's when they started firing, when he was mid-air and sailing over the cobbles. They were still out of range, the suckers! Not one of the blasts he saw strobing in the distance reached him. The golem squeaked in panic as it tried to catch up.
"I saw you," Kanda said over the line.
"As I can hear you," said Marie. "Are you sure you can handle it?"
Daisya's metal-capped boots struck sparks off of the tiles as he slid from terracotta on to slate. Must be imported stone. He skidded his way over to where the Charity Bell was resting before he got too carried away wondering. He wasn't about to wait for his inertia to stop! While he still had some of the power of the jump, he kicked the Charity Bell off the roof and into the oncoming knot of akuma.
"Hey, suckers! Don't ask who the bell's tolling for!" he said.
The golem zigzagged around his head. With the voices coming through, it gave Daisya the impression that they were the voices of his conscience coming from deep inside some echo chamber.
"What are you talking about?" asked Kanda.
"I don't think that's how the verse goes," said Marie.
Daisya ignored them. There was a flash out there that wasn't the same iron-grey shine or gunpowder flare that he was used to seeing. "Anyway, I need to get back to cover. Didja get a read on me?"
"Yes," said Marie. "Be careful, the signal still isn't easy to hear."
"Yeah," said Kanda.
A dozen akuma some three kilometres or so away vanished in a cloud that looked like a thunderstorm come to earth. Lightning struck out from a dark mass.
"I know, what, did you think I wouldn't notice? Talk to you later," he said casually.
As the dust cleared, Daisya almost cackled with the satisfaction of seeing it. He'd recognize that profile if you put a blindfold on him and turned him around in the dark. Kanda was standing on a rooftop somewhere, covered in grime and looking straight at him. He couldn't see Mugen from this far away, or even much of his face but the phantoms shimmered as they slid around it.
Daisya grinned. He could already tell the more distant akuma were coming in hot on the heels of the ones dumb enough to try him.
With a wave that maybe only Kanda could see, he hopped off the roof and shimmied down the drainpipe back to safety.
…
"Whose end, now?"
Black butterflies burst out of the grinning bastard's shadow and wove around him and blocked out Daisya's vision like Kanda's phantoms did. Only, where the phantoms overlaid some kind of weird ghost-light on the scenery, these looked like someone had cut a hole in the world's stage set. This was wrong.
Daisya punched him. His arm lashed out in pure terror before he had time to think.
At least, it shold have. He was sure all the right muscles were tensed to send his knuckles straight through the man's stomach. The searing pain wiped everything else away except for the last thing he'd felt before it started. He was frozen in that pose while the last corner of his mind whited out.
Daisya screamed.
He went on screaming.
There was pain he'd felt before. The worst one was glass. This was worse. It was different.
The fire spread all over him when he burned up, mounting from comfortable to uncomfortable to bad to worse. The shards of that lampglass cut into skin that was already numb.
This was worse.
The left side of his chest sucked in on itself like nothing else he could think of except a cavity gone rotten. It bent him double over his knees while he choked and the right side sizzled with the burn of a long run, so many times over.
The Noah said something. Daisya heard it, but he couldn't understand. It was a language he might've known if anything could have made sense now.
"That should have been your heart."
He tried to limp back. No way was he turning his back on this guy. He didn't know if he could turn around without collapsing. The moon cast his shadow ahead of him and showed him how much he was shaking.
"You're not hiding something from me, are you? Daisya Barry."
That finally stoked his anger enough to force Daisya's head up. This jerk wasn't about to have the last word. He tried to reach out for the Charity Bell and—
A black shape brushed over his hand.
Daisya screamed again. The pain that scorched his insides for the second time was in the centre of his palm. His fingers fell limply. Not just the fingers—he could see his hand bend. It flopped over like the bones had been taken out.
Still stunned, he felt the Noah grab him by the collar.
"I'm really going to enjoy killing you."
There was a push to the centre of his chest that knocked him off whatever balance he had left. He fell. The fabric caught before he hit the stones, and the Noah dragged him backwards down the street.
The friction on the ground would've hurt if the white-hot ringing in his chest and hand had stopped even for a second. Daisya screamed without thinking about it. He could see the golem hovering just out of view. The white eye blinked at him. Somewhere on the other end, Kanda and Marie were there.
They'd come. He knew that.
He tried to think of a way out that wasn't one of them.
Nope. Nothing.
He couldn't even exhaust the possibilities. He'd need at least one to do that.
"Come, now," the Noah said. "I haven't got all day."
It glanced down at him again. It looked like it was having a lot more fun than the blank girl Daisya saw in the forest. What kind of guy could have fun when Daisya wasn't having any?
Daisya's throat had dried out as fast as hot pavement. He tried swallowing. When that didn't work, without being able to scream or stop any of it, he tried to figure out what the Noah did to him.
That would tell him how much time he had left to deal with.
He could only feel the right side of his chest swell when he panted. That, and the horrible sucking sore-tooth pain in the left side said that one of his lungs was missing. Whatever the hell injury it was, it wasn't anything that a normal weapon could do.
The ramparts on either side of the narrow streets reached up infinitely. Daisya saw the sky running between them in a river. It was shimmering blue-on-black like a beetle. There had to be light somewhere in there.
Wasn't the moon full, then? The last time he saw a Noah, he was sure it was this bright.
He tried to remember. The broken-down belltower had reached straight up toward it. The last time he saw a Noah, his lungs had been crushed, too.
No use. Either the moon was gibbous or it was full. It didn't matter anyway.
Daisya wondered if the Noah's magic would cauterize the wounds, sealing off the edge where the lung ran into the trachea. Maybe not. It felt raw. The blood would be pooling in-between his heart and his liver. Wasn't it already wet? He didn't know what went on in there, other than that it looked gross.
Suddenly the river pooled into an inland sea. The tight walls had opened up into a square. A courtyard.
He didn't know if you could live without a lung. The bones missing in his hand, or whatever it was, he'd be fine. Could you breathe fine with one lung? The way they ached after a good match, he was sure he couldn't run fine with just one.
They stopped.
The Noah had taken his time keeping him alive. It was at least a minute since he tried to kill him. Kanda was less than a kilometre away. The fastest he could ever move was two minutes, for one kilometre. That was a straight line. Daisya had watched him run it.
His one lung he had left froze up all of a sudden. Daisya gasped. The Noah's hand had twisted, flipping him over from his back to his knees in front of a stone plinth. When he tried to see where he was, all he found was an iron spire that went up to a three-pronged lamp.
Funny. Those things just kept coming back. One lantern in an inn, one lamppost in a snowy alley, one here. People just weren't satisfied with stars.
"I'm afraid I'll have to do this quickly. It won't hurt—once you're dead."
Still staring up the lamppost, Daisya cringed with pain. The Noah had taken his bad hand. There was something cold. The distant part of him that could still think in a place like this wondered where it came from, that metal chain. It wrapped around his wrist.
"Take your time," he rasped.
"Hm? Oh, I'm sure you'd like that. Would you take this?"
The sweat beading under Daisya's bandages ran down into his eyes as the Noah spread his fingers open. On his bad hand. He didn't even realize what happened next until it was over. His fingers were threaded through the the chain that bound him. The hand couldn't close to hold it.
Everything seemed to flash from now to then as the Noah chained his torso and then other wrist. Daisya couldn't tell which hand went first, whether he was watching it with an aching neck or imagining how it had to look. He couldn't look up for long with his shoulders so heavy from the chains. It wasn't even the first Noah he ever saw. Why would he bother watching him? The world swam around like he was underwater. The noises were like that, too. It all sounded tinny.
Tin. Metal. The Charity Bell, it was still here.
Daisya tried to concentrate again. If he could just get it to hum, that's all he—
He screamed again when the chains around his wrists tightened. Good. At least he could do that.
They pulled him up to standing and off the ground, rising along the length of the lamppost. His shoulderblades ground together like millstones and crushed the nerves between them.
"Now, let's see. Feet above your head. Yes. You're not worth it. Didn't I tell you? I'm looking for someone else."
Daisya heard a ringing different from everything else he knew. He couldn't look to see what it was, he could only feel himself stop moving mid-air as the ends of the chains drew out from underneath his fingers and ran around the pronged beam. His head dipped forward on to the cold iron of the lamppost.
Less than a minute. He was dead if Kanda didn't get here.
Daisya tried to remember the exact street he'd been on when he saw him. He couldn't even see his face, just his sword.
He was beginning to suspect he was dead already. The Noah wouldn't take any chances. If those butterflies could rip out any part of Daisya, then only Kanda could stand a chance. Marie would go down when the first silent black moth landed on him.
Another chain was rattling as it slid against itself. Daisya didn't know where they were. Maybe they were made of the same stuff as the butterflies. He was starting to feel his mind come back as the sweat ran off him and down the metal.
What was he going to do? Hell, what even could he do like this?
The chain he could only hear was a chain he could feel now. It tied his ankles together.
What did he even want to do?
Right now, he just wanted the pain to stop.
He didn't need to do anything for that.
Daisya shuddered as the pressures working on him shifted. The chain around his feet lifted, the night breeze slid over his bandaged stomach underneath his cloak. If he lived, he was going to need a new one. The glass had cut it to pieces. There wasn't even enough of it to flop down over his head , not with the chain holding it in place.
The world moved as he turned. The moon above was over his head and the ground stayed below his feet. Everything in-between was all mixed up. He could see the Noah again, standing on solid ground with the Charity Bell at his feet.
Bastard, he thought.
Then the blood rush blacked his world out.
That's what they said when you couldn't see. Except, it wasn't always black. Closing your eyes on a sunny day just made you see red. Keeping them open now made Daisya see something shifting back and forth like sand across the surface in front of him.
Not sand.
Sand somewhere far-off. Close by, a cloud shifting over the ocean.
He was looking back at home from the middle of the bay. The faint sand-coloured buildings were as pale as the mist. On his right, the grey seemed like it had part of a cliff wrapped up in it. The hill where the old man was always sitting.
"You're so—" he gritted out.
Finally, Daisya heard what he'd been looking for. The Charity Bell rang high as it shattered.
"Was that it?" the Noah asked.
He could see something else stand in front of his eyes. Tall enough to cross the whole height of what he saw from the waves to the land's horizon, but not exactly tall. Pale, too. There was someone standing on the sea's surface just like he was. Staring. He could see the marks on his face. The grey bandages melted his body right into the fog. Only the face stood out. Like an akuma's, it hung in from nothing.
This boy was looking back at him from where he'd stood in last night's dream.
Daisya knew.
"Any last words?"
Why did you break my charity bell? You didn't have to do it. Kill me if you want, but let some other poor kid get it! Come on.
That's one.
It's pretty dark and all the blood is rushing to my head. I can't see straight.
That's another.
You said Lenalee called, but I never heard her. Marie must have heard me. When I was looking for the old man then, I couldn't find him. Maybe it's just the blood rushing to my head, or the moonlight on the paving stones, but Kanda—
— I think you're going to miss me.
"Any last words?"
Short answer:
"No, not really."
Long answer: No, not for you.
Pain pierced Daisya's chest like a needle inches wide. A sword. The sunburst in front of him burnt the cloud off of the bay. This was home, not the wet wintry mist.
Tiedoll was sitting where he looked for him on the point. Seagulls screamed. He'd left this town. Any road he could have taken ended here. Where was the fun in that? He could only ever come back.
How could he have stayed?
At least I was never bored.
The awkward jump in the middle is because I try not to write anything that's shown on screen. The two parts of the chapter are just the bits that we miss in the episode! Except, man, the number of times I had to rewatch my fav getting murdered to try and get the lines right…the dialogue is a mix of sub and dub and something else where they didn't line up well. Daisya in the dub is a bit more professional!
As always, comments concerns queries typos greatly appreciated. I'm on a deadline, otherwise this would've had a half dozen revisions. This is not quite the end…but what remains is only epilogue.