Admittedly, it's been forever since the last time I updated this, and I did a few edits along the way. This is the new chapter five, otherwise known as the chapter which went… a bit overboard in certain aspects. In regards to the continuation, I am a bit conflicted to say the least, seeing that I don't really want to rush things along to make this thing even more nonsensical than it already is. Thus, I leave myself open for suggestions on what to make of this – to continue, discontinue, rework or delete it.

Cheers.

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Driven Into A Corner

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He felt nauseous, like he was going to be sick over and over. Then again, he had already ridded himself of what little had remained in his stomach, so there really wasn't much left to throw up. Hence, he was no longer slumped over a toilet seat and had instead relocated into a half-seated position on the tiled floor of the bathroom he had locked himself into, all while he – keeping his eyes firmly shut – forced himself to remain calm, even in a situation as dire as the one he had at hand.

He was tired – dizzy even – but he forced himself to remain awake and alert, knowing well that he had already let his guard down far too many times already, wittingly or unwittingly. Then again, he had been shot, and as such, he had presumably lost quite a bit of blood, something which would no doubt have inhibited his thought process – in other words, he had with all due likelihood been far too out of it initially to handle the situation properly.

That bandana-and-eye-patch-wearing green-eyed redheaded freak – Lavi, or whatever the guy had called himself – had claimed that he had been there and out for two days, an account which seemed fairly credible. Then again, regardless of whether it was true or not, Allen found himself in a civilian household somewhere in London, suffering the aftermath of an acquired gunshot wound in his shoulder, virtually stranded with absolutely nowhere and no one to go to now that the Family had likely turned on him.

Two days – possibly even two and a half if he counted the night he had been forced out on the run – had supposedly passed. If anything, it was a sheer miracle in itself that the Family hadn't either caught or killed him yet, but then again, it was entirely possible that a few of them – Tyki Mikk included – were not putting much effort into obliging to the Earl's recently issued command to have him brought in. Contrary to popular belief, quite a few of the members of the Family did appreciate leading a fairly calm lifestyle of far more discreet criminal activities – to the extent of Allen's knowledge, at any rate – and as such, said Family members were highly unlikely to go out of their way to pursue him, leaving that particular activity to the far more motivated and destructive extremists. Thus, he highly doubted that he would find himself up against the entire Noah Family, but that still left the issue that he had – in essence – been thrown out to the wolves and been completely cut off from potential allies. Then again, Allen supposed he had actually contributed a whole lot to the latter, seeing that he had disposed of his cell phone soon after he had been shot, trying to minimise the possibility of him being tracked.

Still, the realisation of just how much time had passed since his narrow escape had sent him headlong into a state of panic, a state from which he had only recently recovered, even though it had taken the sacrifice of the contents of his stomach to accomplish such a feat. As things turned out, actually vomiting and dry-heaving for a bit worked wonders in terms of easing his mood, mostly because it exhausted him to such an extent that he no longer had the energy to panic if he wanted to conserve enough energy to remain conscious and reasonably coherent. Thus, he found himself in a seated position on a tiled floor, leaning his forehead against his pulled-up knees, trying to breathe calmly. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in. He leant his head back. Breathe out…

Silver-grey eyes cracked open at the sound of soft knocking on the door. "Are you okay in there?" a familiar voice inquired.

He screwed his eyes shut once more as the knocking continued, growing louder in response to his lack of an answer to the other's inquiry. He frowned mildly at the other's seeming persistence, cursing him fluently in five different languages under his breath. To his surprise, the persistent knocking immediately ceased. Silence followed it, and was retained for several seconds before the voice on the other side of the door spoke up once more, addressing him in one of said languages. "Ehm… etto, daijoubu desuka?"

His eyes cracked back open, surveying the door with something akin to distaste. "I need my life back…"

His statement, delivered in a slightly hoarse murmur, was met by silence. Then, the voice followed, sounding rather hesitant. "Etto ne… Allen? Doa wo akete… kudasai?"

Allen?

Well, that obviously meant that the redheaded bandana-and-eye-patch-wearing green-eyed freak otherwise known as Lavi had located his student ID amongst the stuff that had been taken from him back when he was in a general state of unawareness. Okay, not so good, because that meant he would soon have at least three individuals he would have to get rid of for having discovered his identity, not to mention the fact that he was – with all due likelihood – also at the mercy of said individuals, seeing that they – now that they probably all knew enough about him to match a name to a face and said identity to a highly illegal firearm which had previously been in his possession – could alert the authorities at any minute and efficiently ensure that he would be found and killed by the Family before sundown. Truly, it was a miserable situation, especially so if one took the redhead into consideration.

"Hey, Allen… Come on… you seem to have calmed down now, so please come out…"

"…I promise I won't do anything weird; I just want to talk…"

Yeah, talk. They all wanted to talk, with or without pointing a gun at your temple or a taser to the back of your neck. Yeah, they all wanted to 'talk' – talk, interrogate… in the end there was little difference to it. Talk, talk, talk. Spill all your secrets – spill your guts, or we'll do so literally. Blah, blah, blah…

He had always thought them to be quite funny – interrogations, that is. The less you talked, the nastier methods were utilised to make you talk, and the more you talked, the less pain was inflicted on you, up until the moment you had talked too much and ran out of anything useful to say… well, go figure.

More knocking. "Hey, Allen… there's still some pizza in the fridge if you want some…"

Bribes? Was this guy seriously resorting to bribes – and food of all things? Okay, this guy seriously needed some sort of reality check. Hadn't he like… noticed that he had spent a great deal of time locked inside the bathroom, ridding himself of what little had still remained in his stomach?

"Hey, Alleeeeeen… Talk to me…"

Again, with that thing. Talk, talk, talk. Spill all your secrets – spill your guts, or we'll do so literally. Blah, blah, blah… – "Moyashi! Open the fucking door before I break it down!" – blah?

Bean… sprout?

Silver-grey eyes widened a fraction. What the…Hell?

Then, he was struck by a sense of realisation. Oh right, the angry Asian – or rather the allegedly grumpy but skilled business associate of some old geezer – aka the very guy who had allegedly stitched him up.

Allen sat up a bit straighter as another sharp knock echoed in the small room, cursing inwardly. God damn it, what's up with all these situations I keep getting myself into?!

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Truly, it appeared as though God – if said divine entity did actually exist – truly hated him and did so rather passionately, seeing that he only minutes later found himself sitting on a chair in the middle of some room, surrounded by three individuals, two of whom were watching him from chairs of their own while a third kept prodding at his injury, muttering darkly. It was a painful fact that he did feel awfully vulnerable to be in such a situation, even though he was by no means tied to the chair or otherwise threatened by any of the individuals in the room, and that alone should have been taken as a positive sign.

Then again… upon closer visual inspection, he could make out that the old man – presumably the old geezer mentioned by the redheaded freak – probably carried something on him, even though it did not seem like a handgun. The redhead himself was unarmed and seemingly laidback, still grinning disarmingly at him as though said redhead had not recently proved himself capable of stopping an attempt to strike at his vitals, and lastly, there was – of course – the sour-looking Asian in the room who was still busying himself dealing with the gunshot wound.

Silence. They were waiting for him to crack, weren't they? Obviously, he would hate to disappoint, but then again, he doubted he would be getting any answers to just what the Hell was going on before he agreed to part with some of his own…

"Why am I here?" he finally asked, warily eyeing his surroundings.

The sour-looking Asian paused momentarily, dark eyes levelling him with a short glare before returning to overseeing the task of redressing his wound – the guy looked grumpy as Hell, but Allen had to admit that he had some serious skills, going about the task at hand with the detachment of one very much acclimatised to violence and very much accustomed to dressing related wounds. "…You're here because some idiot found you bleeding out behind a dumpster in some dark alleyway," the other responded, tightening the bandages suddenly as if to emphasise his point, all while Allen himself hissed slightly, having declined local anaesthesia.

"Ouch," he found himself murmuring as the other finally withdrew.

"If it had been a bit more to the left, it would've ruptured a major artery," the other responded flatly.

In other words, if Allen hadn't managed to dodge it in time, he would have bled out within minutes. Huh, it seemed as though luck might actually have been on his side for once. "Figures."

"However…"

He looked up slightly, watching the other watch him rather dispassionately. "From the angle, I doubt they were aiming for your shoulder…"

Silver-grey eyes narrowed slightly. No shit, Sherlock.

"To be frank," the other explained, taking a seat in the only unoccupied chair in the vicinity. "I honestly couldn't care any less in regards to who's after you and why… but, seeing that I happened to turn up to save your sorry ass, you'd better prove useful."

…I'd better prove useful?

A white eyebrow was kicked up in mystification, but judging from the noises indicating surprise from the peanut gallery, the other's statement came as just as much of a surprise to them as it was to him. Then again, in this particular case, 'them' would serve to indicate the redhead, seeing that the old man in the room only let out a small huff, as though he had been expecting this sort of development all along and especially so when the aforementioned Asian suddenly procured a photograph seemingly out of thin air and thrust it in his direction.

Allen caught the item in question by pure reflex – even if it did occur to him that he probably shouldn't have – and flipped it over. The image of a woman met him, with a slightly sheepish smile gracing her features all while she flashed a victory sign at the camera, looking mildly embarrassed with it all. She was beautiful in her long dress and waist-length coat – there was little point in denying that – her long hair in a ponytail held together by a piece of cloth. She was beautiful – really – but there was something distinctly saddening about her, even though he really could not tell why. He looked up, only then really paying attention to the sudden increase in the attention which was directed towards him. "What?"

The Japanese guy – Kanda Yu or something to the like – continued watching him darkly. "That woman."

He tilted his head to the side in question. "Yes?"

The stare only intensified. "Can you identify her?"

He looked back down at the photograph, studying it with a greater degree of interest. Then he finally looked up, meeting the eyes that were watching him so intently. "…Alma Karma."

Immediately, the stare darkened to an outright glare and a dangerous one at that, and even the other occupants of the room seemed mildly taken aback.

"What?" he eventually snapped, having grown tired of being the focus of all those rather accusing stares. "That's what it says on her name tag."

Initially, looks of utter incomprehension met his eye. Then, realisation dawned upon the lot and a familiar redheaded freak sprung forth, snatching the photograph from him within the blink of an eye – honestly, what is it with this freak and his ridiculously quick reflexes? – studying it with a great deal of interest before finally looking up, an almost gobsmacked expression gracing his features. "…You're right."

Oh, what the…? This was getting utterly ridiculous! First, he had to flee head over heels to escape some crazy relatives of his. Then, he had to suffer the company of some redheaded weirdo who had apparently taken him in, and now he found himself in some utterly ridiculous interrogation-like situation where people were suddenly interrogating him about whether or not he could identify some random lady in a picture, not even touching upon the subject that he had been carrying an unregistered firearm on him and whatnot. Really, what on earth could they possibly be getting at? If they were seriously going to try to see to that he was jailed, he sure as Hell wanted to be imprisoned for something he was actually responsible for rather than for the sake of abducting or killing some stranger he had never seen before in his life, or whatever despicable act these people could possibly intend to accuse him for.

"Look…" he finally said, keeping his voice perfectly level. "Whoever she is, I'm pretty sure I've never seen her before."

"She went missing in the area more than a week ago," the Japanese guy immediately snapped back at him.

Allen gave a noticeable twitch. "So?" he returned, equally snappish. "This is London, mate, the place where Big Brother sees you almost everywhere you go as soon as you step outside the door. If this girl really has gone missing, then go file a missing person's report and have the police do the rest for you. Why are you asking me?"

That was a really good question actually. Why the Hell was he being interrogated with the whereabouts of some chick he had never seen before in his life when he could be interrogated for so much else?

Then again, with the city's surveillance system, it was even more peculiar that he hadn't been found yet. Evidently, the Family – Wisely in particular – had a tendency to mess around with said system, hacking into it and providing interference whenever there was a hit going down, ensuring the continued anonymity of the members involved. After all, it wasn't like the Noah had managed to operate virtually unknown and unseen for such a long time without the use of such underhanded means – to operate in a well-monitored zone like London for extended periods of time, providing such interference was only natural. With a start, he realised that it had become so natural that he himself hadn't even thought much about it, naturally having assumed that the systems had been brought down whenever there was a major upsurge in the Family activity. They – some of them, at any rate – had planted a bomb outside his apartment for goodness sake; if they hadn't ensured that the surveillance in that particular area hadn't been brought down, they would no doubt have been caught on at least some amount of surveillance footage. Somehow, he doubted they were that stupid, but that would mean…

There was a snort. He looked up.

"Curiously enough," the Japanese guy snapped, having snatched the photograph back at some point. "My sources tell me that up to a third of all CCTV cameras almost simultaneously malfunctioned upon the time of her exiting the Underground, which is – curiously enough – the nearly exact thing which occurred the night before the idiot found you, a blackout which continued until yesterday, when all the systems suddenly went back online again."

Allen blinked, his brain catching onto and meticulously cataloguing this new piece of information, adding it to the others. "The network… had a blackout?"

Well, that certainly confirmed his theory regarding his own situation, but it still left a whole lot of questions to figure out. Admittedly, the Family would probably have liked to get the whole deal with him finished with minimal interference from the proper authorities, but that in itself shouldn't have included them providing interference in anything other than covering up their own involvement in the matter. However, in that they had kept the interference up for days, they had by all means obstructed their own search operation. But why?

Taking this new piece of information into consideration, it would only be fair for him to assume that he was missing out on something; that there was a hidden variable somewhere which had gone past his notice, something which had either been deliberately kept from him or otherwise been overlooked, but what could it be?

Okay, so they had seemingly made an attempt on his life by blowing up his apartment. Still, there was the fact that he had been warned about it – technically speaking – with Tyki giving him a heads-up that something was about to go down. Without any disrespect to the guy in question, to the best of Allen's knowledge, Tyki Mikk was not the most perceptive person in the world. If the Family – in other words, the Earl – had really wanted to ensure his imminent demise, the man would probably have seen to the matter during a Family gathering rather than sending someone else to deal with the matter, especially considering the trouble the man allegedly went through to see him brought into the Family in the first place. Then again, it obviously wouldn't do to disregard the fact that the man in question was a whimsical madman who murdered his own brothers…

Allen shook his head tiredly, deciding to ponder such a matter at a later date, once he had managed to figure out just what the Hell was going on with people randomly deciding to interrogate him about the whereabouts of random missing women. Then again…

"Uh… Yu?"

He looked up, only then really taking note of that the crazy redhead – that Lavi guy – had at some point exited the room and only then really stuck his head back into it, addressing the raven-haired Asian who had probably spent the last few minutes or so glaring at him.

"What?" said individual snarled, shifting his attention towards the redhead – who was wearing a rather odd look of something akin to disbelief on his face – who in turn procured a remote, pressing a button to turn up the volume.

"The TV," was all that Lavi offered as an explanation before once again disappearing out of sight. "You've both got to see this…"

Allen kicked up an eyebrow in mystification as the glaring individual immediately got up and left the room, presumably to find out just what had caused such an emotion to emerge in the aforementioned dubiously sane redhead. With an odd feeling of foreboding, he got up to follow rather than to sneak out now that everyone seemed distracted with this new matter at hand, catching the end of a report of some gruesome murder before a disturbingly familiar face popped onto the screen. The blood drained from his head in what seemed like an instant, and he imagined the colour had drained from his face just as fast.

"Allen, you okay?"

That… was an awfully stupid question.

Allen felt his legs go weak and his hand shot out to seek support from the doorframe, his mind reeling. I'm so dead.

To think that the Earl would pull such a stunt on him… perhaps the old man had actually cracked after all? I'm so dead.

I'm so dead.

"…There's still no sign of the missing heir of Ark Enterprises. Fifteen-year-old Allen Walker disappeared in London on the night to the 14th, and evidence found in his apartment strongly indicates that he did not leave it by his own free will…"

The television displayed some brief footage from his wrecked apartment before shifting to yet another familiar face of an unusually sombre-looking Earl, presumably at some press conference, all while the reporter continued on her voiceover.

"…A search is currently underway, but the sitting director Adam Walker has stated that any tips leading to his nephew being found will be rewarded…"

He could feel his legs folding beneath him, sending him crumbling to the floor into a heap, tearing his disbelieving eyes from the screen and fixating them onto the floor all while quietly admitting a glaring truth to himself. "I'm so fucking dead."

"This is Lulu Bell, reporting in for BBC News."

Of all things they could possibly have thrown at him, why did it have to be that?

Once more, he found himself at the very centre of attention, the focus of far too many eyes.

"Dude…" Lavi finally said, pointing towards the screen with the remote all while looking at him with something akin to disbelief. "Ark Enterprises?"

Ark Enterprises, otherwise known as the surprisingly successful side project of the Fourteenth. It had started out as an almost fully legal project, dealing mainly with creating computer software and coding and decoding information. Neah Walker – as the slightly homicidal musical genius he was – was, as mentioned, a bloody genius and thus required quite a bit of intellectual stimulation, stimulation which he found in dabbling with programming and creating computer software, intricate symbols and whatnot. During this time, he had allegedly created the code – which was nowadays used for communication between highly ranked Family members – and shared it with Mana, developing a sort of secret language in the process, one which Allen himself had more or less unwittingly made the Earl privy to.

Ark Enterprises, originally the surprisingly successful side project of the Fourteenth, which was nowadays still a very successful side project, though to the Earl once Neah had failed in his attempt to take over the other 'family business' and been executed as a result.

Ark Enterprises, nowadays the small but widely successful company working as the legal front to a criminal empire set on world domination and whatnot.

Ark Enterprises. The utterly accursed Ark Enterprises.

Of all things they could possibly have done to him, why did it have to be that?

What could they possibly attempt to get at by bringing him out in the public eye? Were they honestly too bloody lazy to track him down by themselves? Were they really going to have the public find him for them so that they could stage another bloody sniping incident out in the open? Just what the Hell were they planning?

Hands landed on top of his shoulders and his head snapped up in attention, bringing him face to face with an annoyingly familiar and sheepishly smiling redhead. "Does this mean I'm accidentally a kidnapper now?"

He stared at the individual in question with clear disbelief. No really, he was stunned speechless, which was a fairly rare occurrence overall. Then, his brain finally caught up to the situation, and he said the very first thing which came to mind, his face deadpan. "Are you fucking crazy?"

There was a snort from nearby. "Did you really need to ask?"

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