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31_days2008-01-29 10:36 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-29 10:36 pm
[Jan. 29] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 29
Title: End of Days pt. 29
Day/Theme: Jan. 29/contradictions do not exist
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R
Part 28
Lenalee ran. She had never felt so distant from it and so in tune with it at the same time. It was destroying her, but it gave her everything it could, as if it knew what she was trying to do.
At the first staircase, she discovered it was easier to run on air than to run on stone.
* * *
Akuma after Akuma--each of them a level three--came out of the gate the Noah had opened up. Allen started to invoke the sword from his left arm, but when he tried to lift his right arm to draw it, the slashed tendons wouldn't let him. He ducked to the side, cursing the precious seconds reversing the invocation cost him.
Finders--too few of them, far too few--had come in and were doing what they could to set up a barrier to confine the room. One of them, a heavy-set man Allen didn't recognize, called out to the other to watch out for this Noah, this Lulubell--she's a shape shifter, don't take your eyes off her, don't let her slip by...
Allen only had a moment to wonder how the man knew who the Noah was before he had to parry another attack. He tried to block her, but instead of pressing the attack, she slid past him, heading straight for the Ark.
The egg. She's going after the egg.
* * *
"If you knew Allen was going to destroy the Ark, then why the hell didn't you tell Rondine? How hard would it have been to say, 'by the way, keep Allen away from the Ark, or half of you will die horribly?' Hmm? Or do you Bookmen get off on being cryptic? This isn't a game of riddles, Lavi. It's damn obvious you two have been keeping stuff from us--Komui told me how you got shit from Bookman for letting things slip about the Noah. Things we could have used. Granted, the Vatican was keeping the same intel from us, but God damn it! This is just ridiculous."
One of the nice things about Lavi being out of breath as Reever helped him down the stairs was that it made it much easier to rant at him without being interrupted. Reever wasn't sure what they could do down in the Science Division, but with Lavi's help they might be able to do something, find out what had gone wrong, find out how to fix it...
"Didn't know what it was," Lavi panted. His red hair was lank and dark with sweat and nearly covered both eyes. "Couldn't see what had to diverge until it did diverge." He held out his left hand and paused to look at it, nearly causing Reever to lose his footing. "And I diverged. It's all... it's all mixed up."
Reever couldn't be certain which Lavi he was talking to at any particular moment. If he was right--and he was damn near positive he was--the Lavi, no, the Bookman from the twentieth century had somehow travelled back in time with the others, but instead of having two Lavis in the same place at the same time, the likeable goofball from his time was sharing head room with the callous bastard from twenty years down the pike. He wasn't sure how that worked, exactly, but he did know it hadn't taken him very long to decide that the future Lavi wasn't anyone he particularly liked.
"What the hell happened to you, anyhow?"
"Dunno. Never did get sick like this before," Lavi said. He stopped to cough, then checked his hand for blood. "No idea how it happened."
"Not what I was asking." Reever could tell that Lavi wanted to pause on the landing and catch his breath, but the claxon was still sounding, Lavi's Innocence weapon was in pieces, and Reever's gun was safely locked in his desk three floors down. If something came after them now, they'd have time to say one last 'oh, shit,' and then that would be that. "Anyhow, my best guess is that whatever Krory did to you to keep you from being disintegrated by the Akuma poison..."
"He sucked my blood! Like a damned vampire!" Lavi's wide-eyed indignation was reassuringly familiar.
"I figure he couldn't have gotten it all, though." There was no need to go over all this right now, but it helped to keep his mind off what might be going on outside the stairwell. "It's not possible--not without killing you, right? Maybe something in his Innocence counteracted the poison, so what was left didn't kill you... Damn! It doesn't work."
"What doesn't?"
They were almost down to the laboratory levels. They hadn't seen anyone running up the stairs and away from the labs. Reever chose to take that as a good sign.
"You didn't get sick in that other timeline. The one you remember. Kanda didn't die. Neither did Noise Marie, or Chaoji. Not yet, not now, anyway. Something else happened. Something else changed. What?"
Again, Lavi studied his hand, closing one eye and then the other, expression shifting from frantic confusion to cold, hard anger and back again.
"But we still have to stop Allen, right? You're still seeing that?" Reever didn't know exactly what was going on with the eye that Lavi customarily kept covered, but this whole conversation was leading to some very interesting guesses.
Lavi nodded. "It's the breaking point. I suspected that it would center around Allen. History tends to even itself out along divergent timelines. Most differences between timelines are subtle, even if what seem like key events have drastically different outcomes," he said, and there was no trace of the Lavi Reever knew in his speech or his manner. "In one timeline, a thousand people are killed in a siege. In another, the war is averted, but a stray spark sets off a fire that sends up half the city two years later. In another, a couple of plague-bearing rats stow away in a shipment of wheat. You get the idea. History won't contradict itself. Not generally. Not on its own. It takes someone like a Millennium Earl or an Allen Walker to knock things truly and permanently off track."
Reever didn't much care for the way Lavi was tossing out casualty figures so indifferently, as if he were discussing a series of experiments on conductivity and resistance.
"So what the hell made you think your happy crew of misfits could change anything?" The amount Lavi was not telling him was maddening. "You said history would just fall into line with itself. Same amount of dead. Same everything. What's the point of sending them here?"
The low, humorless laugh was nothing he wanted to hear from Lavi ever again.
"You say pretty much the same thing, twenty years from now."
For some reason, even though Reever was starting to actively dislike the future Lavi, he found himself rather offended by the notion that the future Lavi didn't much care for him, either.
* * *
This wasn't supposed to happen. The Order should not be under direct attack like this, not now, not until just before the very turn of the century.
Rondine's mind raced as he helped his fellow Finders get the barrier generators into place.
Their arrival had changed things. But what? What could they have done to shift things so much so quickly?
Three of the Akuma had made it past the line, literally tearing through two Finders who were slow to get the barricade set up. Jamie's scream lacerated a pair who tried to follow their example. It didn't stop them completely, but it stopped them long enough for another exit to be secured.
Not enough men. Not nearly enough, he thought. And half of those who were here looked wasted and pale. Several were coughing. A few could barely stand. But they were here.
Forgetting that he wasn't supposed to be there for some years yet, and that these men certainly didn't know him from Adam, Rondine barked out orders. There was only one puzzled look, but the men did what they were told, glad to have someone who sounded as if he were in charge giving them orders.
Rumor was becoming harder to sort from fact. All the exorcists were dead or dying. All of the exorcists were immune. Two people from Operations had been shot trying to break out of quarantine. Director Komui was ill. Section Chief Wenham was dead. Some exorcists had been evacuated before the quarantine.
The sight of Klaud Nine's Innocence rampaging against the Akuma galvanized the men for a moment, and a group of three was able to contain an Akuma for long enough for General Nine's Lau Jimin to eviscerate it with one swipe of its paw.
Walker was not doing so well, but he was injured, his flesh arm hanging limp and impeding his ability to handspring back to avoid the Noah's attacks.
Where were the others? Were there only two who were able to fight?
From this perspective, he couldn't tell for sure if the body on the other side of the room was Misha or not. Rondine kept trying to see, when he could flick his attention away from what he was doing, kept looking for details and kept finding ways to tell himself it wasn't Misha. And where was Dolores? She may have been young, but she knew her duty. She should be here...
And none of this should be happening. It hadn't happened, and yet, here it was.
* * *
"One more flight--well, one and a half, and then we'll be safe in the lab," Reever said. He felt as exhausted as Lavi looked, and he hoped it was just fatigue and not the first signs of something else.
He couldn't wait to get down there. As much as he groused about the long hours his job entailed, the lab was home, and his wanting to be there gripped him like despair. He tried not to think about leaving Lavi here and running ahead to get to the lab. He could always send a couple of people up to help Lavi down while he got a read on what was going on.
He should already be down there, he thought, and that's when it hit him out of the blue.
Someone should have come looking for him by now. Long before now. Komui's illness wasn't general knowledge yet, but the science team knew about it. They--or at least Johnny and Tapp--knew that Reever had gone up to the infirmary.
"You hear that?" Lavi whispered, pulling on Reever's arm to bring him to a halt.
Reever paused, holding his breath as he strained to listen. It was nearly impossible to make anything out with that damned klaxon still going off.
He was running before he'd even finished processing what he'd heard.
"Get back here, you idiot!" Lavi yelled, loud enough to send him coughing again. Only part of him knew what he was doing when he slapped his right hand hard against the wall. "Ah, screw it. Kin Ban!"
* * *
Allen dashed after the Noah, not noticing the Akuma barrelling down towards him until it was too late.
But then, a cross-shaped mark spread over the Akuma's torso and pulsed with light. A split-second later, Allen registered the sound of the gunshot. He looked up quickly and found he was actually glad to see Cross for a change. He was up on one of the catwalks, gripping tight to the railing as he picked off Akuma after Akuma. The man did not look well. In fact, Maria probably looked livelier, but he kept standing and kept shooting. It gave Allen the cover he needed to go after the Noah.
"No!" She was fast, too fast, and he couldn't catch her. He couldn't beat her to the Ark.
Then, something came streaking through the air overhead, something that wasn't an Akuma. Lenalee turned sharply, banking on nothing but air, then jumped, hurtling feet-first towards the Noah as if she were a human javelin. She struck true, hitting the back of the Noah's neck. It didn't stop her, but it got her out of the way.
Lenalee screamed in pain at the impact, and her feet would no longer hold her in the air. She tumbled to the ground, not far, but far enough to hurt. Allen went to go to her, but one murderous glare told him not to waste this. The Noah was only diverted, not stopped. He only had one chance. He jumped for the gate and disappeared inside the Ark.
TBC (why do I always run out of wakefulness before I run out of story?)
Day/Theme: Jan. 29/contradictions do not exist
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R
Part 28
Lenalee ran. She had never felt so distant from it and so in tune with it at the same time. It was destroying her, but it gave her everything it could, as if it knew what she was trying to do.
At the first staircase, she discovered it was easier to run on air than to run on stone.
* * *
Akuma after Akuma--each of them a level three--came out of the gate the Noah had opened up. Allen started to invoke the sword from his left arm, but when he tried to lift his right arm to draw it, the slashed tendons wouldn't let him. He ducked to the side, cursing the precious seconds reversing the invocation cost him.
Finders--too few of them, far too few--had come in and were doing what they could to set up a barrier to confine the room. One of them, a heavy-set man Allen didn't recognize, called out to the other to watch out for this Noah, this Lulubell--she's a shape shifter, don't take your eyes off her, don't let her slip by...
Allen only had a moment to wonder how the man knew who the Noah was before he had to parry another attack. He tried to block her, but instead of pressing the attack, she slid past him, heading straight for the Ark.
The egg. She's going after the egg.
* * *
"If you knew Allen was going to destroy the Ark, then why the hell didn't you tell Rondine? How hard would it have been to say, 'by the way, keep Allen away from the Ark, or half of you will die horribly?' Hmm? Or do you Bookmen get off on being cryptic? This isn't a game of riddles, Lavi. It's damn obvious you two have been keeping stuff from us--Komui told me how you got shit from Bookman for letting things slip about the Noah. Things we could have used. Granted, the Vatican was keeping the same intel from us, but God damn it! This is just ridiculous."
One of the nice things about Lavi being out of breath as Reever helped him down the stairs was that it made it much easier to rant at him without being interrupted. Reever wasn't sure what they could do down in the Science Division, but with Lavi's help they might be able to do something, find out what had gone wrong, find out how to fix it...
"Didn't know what it was," Lavi panted. His red hair was lank and dark with sweat and nearly covered both eyes. "Couldn't see what had to diverge until it did diverge." He held out his left hand and paused to look at it, nearly causing Reever to lose his footing. "And I diverged. It's all... it's all mixed up."
Reever couldn't be certain which Lavi he was talking to at any particular moment. If he was right--and he was damn near positive he was--the Lavi, no, the Bookman from the twentieth century had somehow travelled back in time with the others, but instead of having two Lavis in the same place at the same time, the likeable goofball from his time was sharing head room with the callous bastard from twenty years down the pike. He wasn't sure how that worked, exactly, but he did know it hadn't taken him very long to decide that the future Lavi wasn't anyone he particularly liked.
"What the hell happened to you, anyhow?"
"Dunno. Never did get sick like this before," Lavi said. He stopped to cough, then checked his hand for blood. "No idea how it happened."
"Not what I was asking." Reever could tell that Lavi wanted to pause on the landing and catch his breath, but the claxon was still sounding, Lavi's Innocence weapon was in pieces, and Reever's gun was safely locked in his desk three floors down. If something came after them now, they'd have time to say one last 'oh, shit,' and then that would be that. "Anyhow, my best guess is that whatever Krory did to you to keep you from being disintegrated by the Akuma poison..."
"He sucked my blood! Like a damned vampire!" Lavi's wide-eyed indignation was reassuringly familiar.
"I figure he couldn't have gotten it all, though." There was no need to go over all this right now, but it helped to keep his mind off what might be going on outside the stairwell. "It's not possible--not without killing you, right? Maybe something in his Innocence counteracted the poison, so what was left didn't kill you... Damn! It doesn't work."
"What doesn't?"
They were almost down to the laboratory levels. They hadn't seen anyone running up the stairs and away from the labs. Reever chose to take that as a good sign.
"You didn't get sick in that other timeline. The one you remember. Kanda didn't die. Neither did Noise Marie, or Chaoji. Not yet, not now, anyway. Something else happened. Something else changed. What?"
Again, Lavi studied his hand, closing one eye and then the other, expression shifting from frantic confusion to cold, hard anger and back again.
"But we still have to stop Allen, right? You're still seeing that?" Reever didn't know exactly what was going on with the eye that Lavi customarily kept covered, but this whole conversation was leading to some very interesting guesses.
Lavi nodded. "It's the breaking point. I suspected that it would center around Allen. History tends to even itself out along divergent timelines. Most differences between timelines are subtle, even if what seem like key events have drastically different outcomes," he said, and there was no trace of the Lavi Reever knew in his speech or his manner. "In one timeline, a thousand people are killed in a siege. In another, the war is averted, but a stray spark sets off a fire that sends up half the city two years later. In another, a couple of plague-bearing rats stow away in a shipment of wheat. You get the idea. History won't contradict itself. Not generally. Not on its own. It takes someone like a Millennium Earl or an Allen Walker to knock things truly and permanently off track."
Reever didn't much care for the way Lavi was tossing out casualty figures so indifferently, as if he were discussing a series of experiments on conductivity and resistance.
"So what the hell made you think your happy crew of misfits could change anything?" The amount Lavi was not telling him was maddening. "You said history would just fall into line with itself. Same amount of dead. Same everything. What's the point of sending them here?"
The low, humorless laugh was nothing he wanted to hear from Lavi ever again.
"You say pretty much the same thing, twenty years from now."
For some reason, even though Reever was starting to actively dislike the future Lavi, he found himself rather offended by the notion that the future Lavi didn't much care for him, either.
* * *
This wasn't supposed to happen. The Order should not be under direct attack like this, not now, not until just before the very turn of the century.
Rondine's mind raced as he helped his fellow Finders get the barrier generators into place.
Their arrival had changed things. But what? What could they have done to shift things so much so quickly?
Three of the Akuma had made it past the line, literally tearing through two Finders who were slow to get the barricade set up. Jamie's scream lacerated a pair who tried to follow their example. It didn't stop them completely, but it stopped them long enough for another exit to be secured.
Not enough men. Not nearly enough, he thought. And half of those who were here looked wasted and pale. Several were coughing. A few could barely stand. But they were here.
Forgetting that he wasn't supposed to be there for some years yet, and that these men certainly didn't know him from Adam, Rondine barked out orders. There was only one puzzled look, but the men did what they were told, glad to have someone who sounded as if he were in charge giving them orders.
Rumor was becoming harder to sort from fact. All the exorcists were dead or dying. All of the exorcists were immune. Two people from Operations had been shot trying to break out of quarantine. Director Komui was ill. Section Chief Wenham was dead. Some exorcists had been evacuated before the quarantine.
The sight of Klaud Nine's Innocence rampaging against the Akuma galvanized the men for a moment, and a group of three was able to contain an Akuma for long enough for General Nine's Lau Jimin to eviscerate it with one swipe of its paw.
Walker was not doing so well, but he was injured, his flesh arm hanging limp and impeding his ability to handspring back to avoid the Noah's attacks.
Where were the others? Were there only two who were able to fight?
From this perspective, he couldn't tell for sure if the body on the other side of the room was Misha or not. Rondine kept trying to see, when he could flick his attention away from what he was doing, kept looking for details and kept finding ways to tell himself it wasn't Misha. And where was Dolores? She may have been young, but she knew her duty. She should be here...
And none of this should be happening. It hadn't happened, and yet, here it was.
* * *
"One more flight--well, one and a half, and then we'll be safe in the lab," Reever said. He felt as exhausted as Lavi looked, and he hoped it was just fatigue and not the first signs of something else.
He couldn't wait to get down there. As much as he groused about the long hours his job entailed, the lab was home, and his wanting to be there gripped him like despair. He tried not to think about leaving Lavi here and running ahead to get to the lab. He could always send a couple of people up to help Lavi down while he got a read on what was going on.
He should already be down there, he thought, and that's when it hit him out of the blue.
Someone should have come looking for him by now. Long before now. Komui's illness wasn't general knowledge yet, but the science team knew about it. They--or at least Johnny and Tapp--knew that Reever had gone up to the infirmary.
"You hear that?" Lavi whispered, pulling on Reever's arm to bring him to a halt.
Reever paused, holding his breath as he strained to listen. It was nearly impossible to make anything out with that damned klaxon still going off.
He was running before he'd even finished processing what he'd heard.
"Get back here, you idiot!" Lavi yelled, loud enough to send him coughing again. Only part of him knew what he was doing when he slapped his right hand hard against the wall. "Ah, screw it. Kin Ban!"
* * *
Allen dashed after the Noah, not noticing the Akuma barrelling down towards him until it was too late.
But then, a cross-shaped mark spread over the Akuma's torso and pulsed with light. A split-second later, Allen registered the sound of the gunshot. He looked up quickly and found he was actually glad to see Cross for a change. He was up on one of the catwalks, gripping tight to the railing as he picked off Akuma after Akuma. The man did not look well. In fact, Maria probably looked livelier, but he kept standing and kept shooting. It gave Allen the cover he needed to go after the Noah.
"No!" She was fast, too fast, and he couldn't catch her. He couldn't beat her to the Ark.
Then, something came streaking through the air overhead, something that wasn't an Akuma. Lenalee turned sharply, banking on nothing but air, then jumped, hurtling feet-first towards the Noah as if she were a human javelin. She struck true, hitting the back of the Noah's neck. It didn't stop her, but it got her out of the way.
Lenalee screamed in pain at the impact, and her feet would no longer hold her in the air. She tumbled to the ground, not far, but far enough to hurt. Allen went to go to her, but one murderous glare told him not to waste this. The Noah was only diverted, not stopped. He only had one chance. He jumped for the gate and disappeared inside the Ark.
TBC (why do I always run out of wakefulness before I run out of story?)