No pitchforkers, please? I honestly have no idea why this took so long to write, but.... well, let's leave the list of excused to synonyms of 'crap' hitting the fan at a rapid pace... I'm trying to update everything.... I probably wont be able to do absolutely everything, but it's worth a shot...

This was supposed to have an epic battle scene and a cheesy, omg-HINTING ending, but somehow, it got tangled up in Allen POV and I got sentimental for him (blame 'My Immortal', it's piano. Piano means lots of Allen crap) so... next chapter, you get the epic fight scene and omg-HINTING ending...

and the next chapter has a spot that I was really tempted to put some lime in, but I didn't... but I wrote it anyway... so, does anyone want a vote on if they want that little bit up too, along with the next chapter? It'll be in a separate fic, though, so... yeah 0.0; I'll shut up now, but do tell me if you all want it up...

Uh, actually, one thing before I shut up. The rhyme thing? It makes no sense, right? Well, there's this rhyme that goes "[your name here]'s my name, [activity here]'s my game" and Road butchered the rhyme by saying "my happy time" instead, which annoyed Lavi, cuz not only does it sound stupid, but it's a butcher phrase. Okay. Shutting up now.

disclaimer: can I have one break of doing it???

Lavi moaned in pain as he awakened, his eyes seeing nothing and his ears not connecting the words he heard. His arms were riddled with streams of pain ripping through them from his hands, but in his numbed state, he only felt a painful tingle streaming around his arms like wires had been wrapped around them and were being tightened against his skin.

Objects were still fuzzy as he swung his head around, looking for something but never quite knowing what it was or what he was seeing anyway, but it didn't really register with him to give up, either. The pain in his arms slowly grew, the wires beginning to grip around his chest as well. His eye saw a little bit, and he managed to pick up the color of red.

"Road he's awake," Was the first thing he could hear and understand completely before a sudden blazing pain shot through his arms and clutched his whole body with what felt like electrocuted wires. He opened his right eye as best he could, half shut and glaze over with the pain he did manage to distinguish the shape of a person.

A white haired boy, in fact, the white haired supposed-Akuma they had chased into the alley. He held a mallet in his hand and Lavi almost screamed in horror when he realized with yet another wretched jolt that his hands were being nailed to the wall. His stomach suddenly seemed to turn and he was sure a few pounds had just dropped off him.

"GET AWAY!" He yelled, finding his voice very suddenly. Without his hands though, he wasn't exactly in a position to fight, and so the boy simply continued driving the stake farther into his hand and the wall.

"Get away from Lavi!" Lenalee's voice demanded. Lavi looked up again before howling in the pain as the stake was completely through his hand. Lenalee was staring down at him from above, tied to a chair and in a frilled black dress that looked like something a noble would dress their children in for amusement.

The sickening drips of blood leaking down from his hands made his stomach move again, rising up to his throat and then down again to his groin. Everywhere in between was just a strange squirming feeling as the pain rocketed through him as constantly as the rapid breaths from his throat.

"You freak! Get away from him!" Lenalee screeched again, yelling at the boy and not the small girl by her side, whom she had decided was just another akuma, possibly one of the ones who had attacked Lavi at the bar. The boy must have been the one in charge, or else be taking orders directly from something else. What else could he be?

A broker had crossed their minds, but somehow they had decided he could not be human.

"Well, Allen, you heard the exorcist, you might as well leave him be," The cherry-sweet voice called, wafting from the small girl that Lavi had failed to notice in his pain. Lenalee turned and Lavi lifted his head to the scene of the boy actually getting up and walking away from Lavi without a complaint. He stopped at the young girl's side and turned to face them again.

"Who... who the hell are you?" Lavi yelled, straining his neck on impulse though he couldn't not move forward in fear of ripping his hands in two. He was only human. He could only strain his human hands so much.

The little girl giggled at him, "You havent figured it out yet, Bookman?" she asked. Lavi blinked. She knew he was a Bookman? "And here I thought your race was supposed to be brilliant," Lavi growled and his hands began to bleed even more from the weight against the spikes in them. "Oh well, I guess there are some exceptions like that," She shrugged shortly and smiled like poisonous honey was dripping from her mouth.

It was then, in the silence of shock and Lavi's anger that you could hear a soft weeping from somewhere in the room.

"Let Miranda go!" Lavi yelled. "Where is she? She has nothing to do with this, let her go!" The girl smiled and gigged an insanely high pitch at his plea.

"Think for a moment, exorcist," She said, "We don't want to be trapped here forever, either. What in this town isn't that woman's fault?" She said it so loudly that it echoed around the room, and the wailing increased. Lavi winced at the volume. Dammit, it sounded like Miranda was about to snap... how long had she been here? How long had he been out?

"Miranda!" He yelled, louder than Road. He glanced at Lenalee for a bare moment and saw her struggling against the ropes that held her to the chair. "Miranda, where are you? Don't listen Miranda!"

The wailing lessened a bit, though just a bit. The girl giggled. "Is MiraMira that important to you?" She asked. "Do you want to save useless MiraMira?" The wailing faded to a wrenching sob, somewhere in a far wall. "MiraMira who trapped us all in this city? Trust me, Bookman, what I'm doing is going to help all of us get out," She cooed. Lavi grunted as his hands burned again, he barred his teeth and tried to with hold a little longer. Lenalee had one rope down.

"Y-you're the one.... i-in charge?" He managed. The little girl smiled.

"Bingo, Road's the name, killin's my happy time," She chanted. Lavi winced at her butchering of a childhood rhyme. 'My game', little bitch, he thought savagely.

"Road..." Lavi mutttered. "W-what are... you?" The ropes were almost done, then one snapped just a bit louder than the others. The white haired boy beside her turned to the sound and stiffened.

"Isn't it obvious?" Road asked, amazed. She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. "I'm a Noah—"

"ROAD!" A sudden white light erupted from the boy as he dashed between Road and Lenalee, her boots activated and glowing brightly, aimed for the Noah.

The flash of light grew blinding.

There was a pained yell.

As Lavi's sight returned, the scene before him way laid out. The white cloak the boy had been wearing before had returned, and it now seemed less like fabric but a curving steel barrier that he had erected to try and prevent Lenalee's boots from reaching him and the Noah.

It apparently failed. But not the way it should have for an Akuma. An Akuma should have exploded, let Lenalee's Dark Boots go right through it.

There was a hole in the cape where she had broken through, and the heel of her Dark Boot was dug into the boy's right arm, which he had put up to shield himself. A sticky red substance was pouring out of where she had completely penetrated his skin.

And behind him stood the Noah he had just crippled himself to save, standing quietly, some sound surprise on her face, but utterly uncaring that this—this— whatever he was— had just protected her from certain death.

Lenalee realized what her heels were kicking into and dislodged her foot, flying back towards Lavi. The white cape vanished and the boy held his arm tightly, his right eye closed and peering carefully through the slit of his left eye. Road snickered and jabbed at his bloody arm, making him breath in sharply and make a soft pained sound.

Lenalee wasted no time in kicking up a blinding malestorm and spinning around to wretch the spikes out of Lavi's hands. He shouted, jarring pain returning for a single horrid moment before it faded again. The air stung the holes, what would have been considered by doctors 'a clean cut' let him see a bloody floor through them.

Lenalee wrapped her arms around him and pulled him up, holding to her chest as she kicked off and flew to the other side of the room. Wretched pain flew through Lavi as wind passed through the holes in his hands. "Lavi, are you okay?" Lenalee cried over the sound of another of her twisters. She paused to kick up several more in the direction she thought the boy and Road were. Lavi shook his head slowly, with difficulty against the wind pressure against him.

"H-How did you get it untied?" He yelled. The wind grew louder and his headband flew off his head, hair uncontrolled began flying into his face.

"There was a candle nearby," She yelled back. "I managed to grab it and cut the ropes."

Lavi nodded against the wind again. "Where are we going?"

"To Miranda!"

000

"Well that was interesting," Road stated, digging a nail into Allen's new wound. She hadn't known that Coin Boys didn't even need their Master's consent to do something, not that she didn't mind the extra little blood she managed to get out of the experience. Allen shuddered made soft whimpering noises as she continued to dig around in the wound. "Why didn't you mention she could do that?"

"S-she—ACH—di-didn't do it, before," He managed. Road nodded, pulling her newly bloodied fingers out of the great shoe-shaped indent that was prominent on his pale right arm. She looked around at the white cloak that now covered both of them, shielding them from the windstorm that could be heard outside, the cloth around them flapping and waving like jell-o that had been hit several times with a hammer and somehow hadn't splattered.

She stuck the bloodied fingers in her mouth and began to lick them, tasting the cherry-sweet, thick fluid. "Fine. Heal up, then," She muttered, not sparing her gaze for the remarkable healing ability the boy had. The skin on his arm stretched across the wound, creeping like it was alive while the blood faded lighter and lighter until it was the color of his pearly-white skin. "Think they can find the lady?" She asked absentmindedly.

Allen didn't nodded, he just said "The girl was awake when you hid her, Road."

Road sighed. "I hate it when exorcists are stubborn," she muttered, "I mean, it's fun when you're hurting them, but any other time, could they learn to back down?" She asked to no one in particular. Allen stayed in a respectful silence, allowing Road to rant on whatever she hated about people for several more seconds until the wind died down.

"Open it," Road muttered, not knowing if he would or not without her telling him. A seam split across from them, laying before them the wreckage of the room that Road so loved to hurt people in. She frowned. "This'll take forever to clean up," She muttered, glancing around at her mangled toys with their stuffing strewn about the floor and the ripped wallpaper with the dimension exposed from behind them. Allen remained silent behind her as she stepped out and examined the remains of her room, which the exorcist had so ruthlessly destroyed.

He himself was beginning to act on the programming that Road was unconsciously instilling into him, and acting on that slow programming, he was also scanning the area, his eyes darting from one place in his socket to another, taking in everything in the room with his electronically filed memory, but everything else on his was stilled. In his peripheral vision, he was keeping watch on Road as well. He was listening for the exorcists, waiting for them to make their move, but it was such a long, quiet wait.

Had he had his own emotions he would have been frightened, waiting for the enemy to make their move from the shadows where he would be killed instantly from one of their lesser attacks as they would then move on to a surprised Road.

But the circuits in his brain cut off those thoughts and that emotion.

And so he was simply waiting, waiting for the exorcists to come or waiting for Road to give him and order, but nevertheless, he was waiting.

"Allen," Road said, bringing his wait to an abrupt halt as he turned towards her voice. "Take one Akuma and find the exorcists," she said. "Surprise them."

Allen smiled softly, charmingly as he could. He made it like candy. "As you wish it, Road," He turned to one of the Akuma, his smile slowly fading as he motioned for the small four-faced one to come with him.

With the Akuma by his side, he bent his knees like he had in a foggy memory, like that of a past lifetime. Then, he jumped up onto the rubble, into the settling dust of the room, following his orders like a lifeline.

Because, they came from her.