Title: The Witch by the Sea.
Fandom: D.Gray-Man.
Characters: Lenalee Lee, Anita, Mahoja.
Words: 2.8K.
Tags: Witches, Magic, Fantasy.
Chapters: 1/1.
Summary: Alone and isolated, Lenalee lives in a seaside village - one that is plagued with nightly attacks. One by one, people disappear, dragged into the watery depths as Lenalee struggles to protect herself.
One night, two strangers appear.
Excerpt:
Lenalee blinked, her eyes opening slowly. Sitting up in bed, she looked around her dark and small bedroom. The cot was thin and lumpy beneath her body, the straw stuffing dry as it poked her skin. Lenalee ignored the sharp prodding she glanced around the room. Rotting wood, fogged glass – an empty cot remained across from her where her brother had once slumbered.
A small sting pierced Lenalee’s chest, her violet gaze resting on that empty cot. Swiftly, she looked away.
A hum tickled her ears, and Lenalee blinked. She turned toward the window as something echoed against the glass; wind perhaps, or a seagull’s call. It was so faint yet familiar, as though it struck some chord deep within her core.
Lenalee crept out of bed, tiptoeing toward the window quietly. She peered out through the fogged glass, vision straining as she gazed into the night. From her window, she could see the shore, the waves crashing against the rocks. They cracked through the silence, and a strange, eerie hum filled the air.
In the distance, something shimmered beneath the waves. Luminous. Silvery. They moved about as they slithered beneath the waves, spidery fins slicing through the surface.
Lenalee paled, her heartbeat faltering. ‘Sirens.’
Read on AO3.
Written for the @curseofthecross zine! I had such fun participating. Thank you to the mods for putting this together and to all the other contributors for creating such amazing work!
Rules: Choose any three fandoms (in any order), answer the questions and tag 10 people you want to get to know better.
It was really hard to choose just three, between Karneval, Inazuma Eleven, Starmyu, Utapri, Code realize, laughing under the clouds and more but I am willing to do another if I feel like it I ended up choosing:
Three Fandoms:
D gray man
Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu
Akatsuki no yona
The First Character You Loved:
Tyki Mikk
Sion Astal
Ki-ja
The Character You Never Expected To Love So Much:
Kanda Yuu
Tiir Rumibal
Keishuk(I know it’s an unpopular opinion but still...he’s cool and goodlooking)
Author: liketolaugh
Summary: In a last-ditch attempt to keep Sasuke in Konoha, Kakashi goes looking for an Uchiha who went outside the Hidden Countries thirty years ago - Uchiha Yuu.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to help a little girl get a cat down from a tree, and then-”
Kakashi dodged as Tsunade threw a thick medical tome at his head. Really, the last Hokage had been far more forgiving of his habits. Tsunade was just violent.
“Two hours late!” Tsunade snapped at him, sitting back with her arms crossed. “And don’t tell me it’s because you’re still on medical leave, I know you could cross the city faster than that with your leg broken.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong. Still, the drag of exhaustion hadn’t left him yet, and he still ached a little. He could manage a mission, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
He slouched in place and ticked an eyebrow up. “Aa, but where’s the joy in that?”
A vein pulsed briefly in Tsunade’s forehead, but she took a breath and visibly centered herself. When she looked back at Kakashi, her expression was serious.
“How likely is it that Sasuke will attempt to go for Orochimaru?”
Kakashi had to give her credit; she hadn’t missed a beat as her old teammate’s name passed her lips. Of course, she was a ninja.
Even so, it was more than Kakashi could manage.
After a moment, he shrugged.
“More than is good for him,” he allowed. “Nothing has made him any less determined to kill Itachi. We both know Naruto will do anything to keep him from leaving, but that might not be enough.”
Tsunade nodded, looking tired but unsurprised.
“There might be Uchiha outside the Elemental Countries,” she said.
Kakashi only kept from startling through years of determined laziness. The seriousness never left Tsunade’s face, a furrow of concentration in her brow as she leaned forward slightly.
“Thirty or so years ago,” she continued, frowning slightly, “before the Second Shinobi War, there was a man, Uchiha Yuu. I didn’t know him well, but he left… suddenly, under mysterious circumstances.” Her eyes returned to Kakashi’s, intent. “It was all over the village, because he said he was going outside the boundaries of the Hidden Countries.”
“He could have been lying,” Kakashi argued, not quite hiding the sharpness in his visible eye.
“He was a jonin,” Tsunade snorted. “He could have come up with a better lie than that. It was unbelievable.”
Kakashi was allow her that. Still- “And he was just let go?” That seemed, if anything, even more suspect.
Tsunade’s lips thinned.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “That was the odd part.”
Kakashi let that sit for a moment, and then tilted his head and nodded.
“If we found another Uchiha,” he said at last, “it may be enough to stall Sasuke.”
Tsunade nodded again.
“Much of Konoha’s strength comes from its bloodline limits, particularly its doujutsu,” she reminded him, as if he wasn’t well aware. “As things stand, we can’t afford to lose the last of the Uchiha right now. We cannot look weak.”
Kakashi let the corners of his mouth tilt up, unseen. “I do have some abilities as a tracker.”
Tsunade smiled, too, grim and dry. She reached into a pile and pulled out a folder, probably placed carefully in sight well in advance.
“With my clearance as Hokage – only with my clearance as Hokage – I was able to get the name of his destination.” He handed him the folder, which he tucked under his arm to look over later. “Search for the Black Order first, and pick up the trail from there.”
“Your will be done, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi said with an ironic little grin.
She threw another book at him. Ungrateful.
Sasuke’s disasterous clash with Naruto only further convinced Kakashi of the importance of his mission, and when he finally passed the border of the Elemental Countries, it was with his cute students in mind.
And then when he left, no one had heard of the Black Order. Not in inns, not in bars, not out on the street – No one knew what he was talking about.
He did get an awful lot of chances to brush up on his Chinese, though. No one seemed to speak Japanese out here.
Finally, he resorted to one of Jiraiya’s favorite methods. He went to a brothel.
He considered sneaking in, but eventually decided to walk up and do it the civilian way. Less conspicuous that way.
The door was answered by a woman, tall and broad and masculine, with a fearsome glare that would definitely have made any civilian wet their pants. As it was, Kakashi was rather impressed, even if he wasn’t frightened.
“No first-timers allowed,” she informed him, terse and irate, with a glare to match and then some.
Kakashi held up his hands in a sign of surrender, taking half a step back. “Now, now,” he protested, and grimaced when she scowled harder. “I’m not interested in patronage. Could you tell me about the Black Order?”
That made her visibly hesitate, looking him up and down, and that was more of a response than he’d gotten out of anyone else so far.
Finally, she huffed, stepped out, and closed the door behind her.
“I’m keeping an eye on you,” she warned, gesturing for him to move. “But I’ll take you to Lady Anita. She’ll decide what to tell you.”
That sounded promising.
The looming woman took him around back, to a different entrance, and inside, there was Lady Anita – elaborately dressed, unsuited for fighting in, but though the bouncer was the more intimidating, it was undoubtedly this one that called the shots. She was watching Kakashi with a gaze like steel, and she held herself with clear pride.
This, he gathered, was the mistress of the brothel.
“This man said he was looking for the Black Order,” the bouncer informed Anita, voice heavy with meaning, and if possible, Anita’s gaze sharpened further.
“Why are you looking for the Order?” she asked him, sparing no time for misdirection or power play.
He slouched in place and shrugged.
“I’m looking for someone,” he answered after a moment, keeping his eyes on hers. “He went to them thirty years ago, haven’t seen him since.”
Pity appeared in Anita’s eyes, and Kakashi tensed even before she spoke.
“He’s probably dead,” she said plainly. “Most members of the Order last far less than even ten years.”
Well. That would certainly throw a wrench into their plans, wouldn’t it?
“Let’s pretend he didn’t,” Kakashi said, because for the sake of the mission he needed to at least confirm Uchiha Yuu’s death. “How would I go about tracking him down?”
The pity didn’t leave, but the woman gestured to the ground in front of her, and after a moment, Kakashi sat down.
“I am Anita,” she informed him redundantly, “and this is Mahoja.” She paused for a beat, considering him, and then huffed lightly. “The Black Order is a highly secretive organization, so most aren’t ever informed of its existence. The fact that you know its name but nothing else is highly unusual.”
Kakashi shrugged. “Just following a paper trail.”
Anita hummed doubtfully. “Well, we’ll start from the beginning. Do you know what the Black Order does?”
Things got weird.
It wasn’t that Kakashi hadn’t noticed anything off about the outside world, or even that he had never heard of akuma before. But he’d long dismissed them as myths and legends. And anyway, even if they had ever existed, none had been seen since-
Since the chakra barriers were erected around the Hidden Countries, preventing anyone not descended from the Sage of Six Paths from entering.
Dammit, it would make sense if it weren’t so insane.
He mulled that over, swallowed it reluctantly, and pushed, “And where would I find it?”
Anita smiled, as if he’d passed a test, and rose to her feet.
“There’s a location on each continent,” she said. “I’ll give you a map. The Asian headquarters isn’t terribly far from here.”
Kakashi lifted an eyebrow despite himself. “You’d give me the location that easily?”
She cast a smile over her shoulder just before she passed through the door.
“The headquarters has a guardian deity,” she said, clearly enjoying the oddness of what she was saying. “If you mean them harm, she won’t let you in.”
Of course they did.
As it turned out, they were a stone’s throw from the Asian headquarters. In other circumstances, Kakashi may have waited a day to infiltrate, but time was unfortunately of the essence. Night was the best time for sneaking anyway.
Anita wished him luck as he left, and as soon as he was out of her sight, he moved into flash step; for some reason, he was feeling impatient.
He reached his destination only an hour later, just as night was falling. For a while, he contemplated what he could see of it.
He didn’t see any form of sentry or guard, but he knew better than to assume that meant there were none. Further, he didn’t see anyone going in or out, but there did appear to be activity inside.
Finally, he donned a genjutsu – one that kept him from seeming significant, cast strong because he didn’t like the sound of a ‘guardian deity’ – and entered.
It was almost disappointingly easy.
Inside, most of the people moving about wore long white lab coats. Kakashi, in his mask, headband, and flak jacket, would have stood out a mile without the genjutsu. As it was, he could stride down the hallway without anyone giving him a second look; there were no ninja here.
Still, it took a long time to find the record room, and he had to pick the lock to get in. Not subtle. From there, he rummaged until he found the personnel files.
There was no Uchiha Yuu in the personnel files, which was unfortunate but not a huge surprise. He kept looking, ignoring the worry and disappointment pressing down on him.
Eventually, in the middle of a bunch of very secret-looking research files, he found it. It was part of a group of twenty or thirty, all falling under the banner of ‘The Second Exorcist Project’.
All of them were dead, which was ominous. And there Kakashi had found his confirmation. Uchiha Yuu was dead.
He kept working. Naruto would haunt him if Sasuke left and Kakashi hadn’t done his best to prevent it.
The file describing the Second Exorcist Project was frankly disturbing, just as bad as most of Orochimaru’s. To attempt to bring back the dead, to reverse the natural order – in Konoha, even if such a thing was managed, it would still be forbidden.
Absently, Kakashi took a caffeine pill. Clearly, he wasn’t anywhere near done here.
Most of the exorcists listed as subjects had never woken up, but two had. Kanda Yuu and Karma Alma.
One of the subjects listed had been Uzumaki Alma, which was… too much of a coincidence. Kakashi wondered if chakra augmented the process somehow.
In the way of things, the file ended even more gruesomely than it had begun. A snowball of catastrophic failure led to the death of nearly every researcher involved, and one of the subjects plunged into a most likely permanent coma.
Kakashi thanked his lucky stars that it was the Uchiha who survived, and vowed never to mention this to Naruto.
One last thing. Kanda Yuu had his own file.
And it was a mess.
Disagreeable, withdrawn, known to frequently wake screaming from nightmares and lash out at those around him – damned to fight whether he wanted to or not, having lost everyone he’d ever known, still reeling from ‘killing’ his best friend – God, he was like Neji, Sasuke, and Kakashi himself combined. What a nightmare.
Seeing that, Kakashi wavered, not even sure that bringing Yuu back with him would help at all. It might make things worse, as messed up as the kid was.
However. Sasuke was protective of his teammates. And he had an obsession with family. There was a possibility – remote but vital – that even the most messed-up family member could make Sasuke stay, at least for a little while longer.
Nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Kakashi stood up and stretched. Yuu had been reassigned to the European headquarters. There was sure to be a map somewhere.
It took a boat trip and a train ride to reach European Branch; Kakashi used the time to put together a plan, accommodating his new knowledge of his quarry.
Sasuke, after all, hated not knowing things. And Kanda Yuu had a rather intricate and disturbing history.
They just needed time.
Kakashi dearly hoped that Sasuke hadn’t run away in the time it was taking him to complete this mission. It would be such a waste.
There was far more activity around the ominous-looking European headquarters. It wasn’t constant, but there was a trickle both in and out.
After some contemplation, he kidnapped one of the people in the tan cloaks, knocked him out with a genjutsu, and stole the cloak. When the next group came along, he joined them, ignoring the quiet conversation around him. (His English was far worse than his Chinese.)
They took a lift up, and Kakashi just kept himself from staring, shifting in place as he waited, and then stepping out and splitting from the group smoothly, with none of them any the wiser.
The European Branch wasn’t quite as intricate as the Asian Branch, but it had far more levels. Kakashi wandered for quite some time, becoming increasingly tense, until he finally found a neat room stacked with files and, with a sigh, let himself in.
This time, he had a better idea of what to look for, though not where to find it. But he knew that Kanda Yuu had been assigned to General Froi Tiedoll. He just needed to know where General Tiedoll could be found.
Half an hour later, he could have banged his head against the wall. Of course, General Tiedoll didn’t regularly stay at Headquarters; he wandered the (massive) European continent.
He did, thankfully, check in; Kakashi assessed the location, made a mental note, and, just as the door opened, flash-stepped past the new entrant and away.
He needed to hurry, damn it. He was running out of time.
