damned_institute | Day 35: Bus 3 (Return Trip)

Falis released Allen's hand after stuffing her other side back deep down, unhappy it had decided to rear it's ugly head. She next took her nail and ran it sharply over the inside of her arm, drawing a thin line of blood for him to see.

"Regardless of whether an akuma is alive or not, destroying them, even to save the soul they supposedly devoured or whatever, is still killing. You may save the soul of the human, but you kill the akuma," Falis replied, wiping a finger across the light blood, smearing it on her arm.

"You are no different than me when you take away your naive righteousness. I am at least willing to admit that I am a monster, though I've become this way through survival, long before an accident forced my soul to switch into this body," she said, with a small snarl.

She might have human traits, but there was still something about her that didn't seem quite right. It was enough to make him doubt, even if he didn't have use of his eye. Her reasoning though, was not enough to change his mind. Akuma were not human. And destroying them was not killing. Akuma weren't alive. They were just the Earl's toys. Some of them might develop personalities if they evolved to a higher level, but they were still Akuma. Nothing could change that.

"You can think what you want," Allen turned away, not willing to listen to her speeches and justification. It would only make him doubt; make him wonder. It wouldn't be the first time someone had called him a monster. Even so, he couldn't change what he was.

"I always do," Falis replied, leaning back into the seat again, wiping the blood on her finger off onto her pants. "I am human despite what you may think. Try and destroy me if you feel the need to, just keep in mind, when you do that, you're going to be trying to kill a human."

"Someone who destroys monsters are still killers; the deaths are simply justified. It sounds as if your King God places bounties on the heads of these akuma in your world," Falis continued, nonchalantly. "If that's the case, we would have been on the same side in your world. Wrap your mind around that."

Allen looked at her skeptically, not liking the feeling of being lectured, especially from someone who was doing the same things he was. "Then why do you want to destroy your own kind? Why are you having me look for others like you just so you can try to destroy them too?" It didn't make sense.

"It's not killing if it isn't alive in the first place. Akuma are just puppets that the Earl uses. It's not my fault if people here look like them. I can't change what my eye sees." He fidgeted in his seat, baffled by her talk about King God. "They're not... bounties, that's not it at all. I don't get paid for destroying them, I have to destroy them before the Earl uses them to destroy all of humanity. It's a war, it's not just mindless destruction."

Falis shot a nasty look at Allen. "I am human. I am a human soul that happens to have been forced into a human body that's not my original one. I am not hunting my own kind," she stated. "I hunt the things that threaten people enough that others want them dead. Vampire, warwolf, goblin, dragon, demon, cyborg, witch... it doesn't matter to me. I'll even kill humans that threaten my kingdom and those I hold dear to me. I am not someone who shows mercy."

She flashed her teeth again. "Besides, I love a real challenge and there are so few around anymore."

"So here's a question... why are you killing the dolls instead of killing the source?" She leaned over toward Allen. "Or is this Earl human and you're too much of a pussy to try to kill him?"

Allen had a very difficult time trying to understand how this girl thought. Even if she was a bounty hunter, she didn't have to classify him like he was one. And of course he'd fight the things that threatened his friends. He just didn't think there was a need to kill other humans. It wasn't necessary. It was also much too hard.

"The dolls are his army," Allen said, not bothering to answer the part about her monsters and goblins and other creatures that didn't exist in his world. "It's difficult to reach him. I've tried to kill him... but he's strong. He got away last time. I won't let it happen again."

"I see," Falis replied, leaning back again. She started examining her nails in a relaxed, yet feminine, manner. "Don't tell me you're going after him with a balls to the walls tactic. If he's the head, you must use means other than a frontal assault to reach him and take him out. I doubt you're as strong as I am, so you need to be more cunning than direct."

The girl had a lot of weird phrases, but Allen thought he sort of understood what she meant. Allen wasn't much for tactics though. He threw himself at each obstacle with everything he had and kept at it until either he or the obstacle was gone. He wasn't a strategist, he was a weapon.

"When I find him, then I attack, that's all there is to it. We found out where his base is, so before I ended up here, that's where we were headed." Allen sighed, frowning at the blonde girl. "And I'm a lot stronger than I look. This place limited a lot of my power, but that doesn't mean I can't fight."

"I never said you couldn't fight; I can see it in your eyes," Falis replied. "And I don't really feel like getting into a 'who's got the bigger dick' contest right now, so I'll pretend you just didn't get defensive about your current strength. if you ever decide to carry through and kill me, you'll learn then."

"The better thing to think about is HOW you fight your Earl. Do you simply throw yourself at him, hoping your strength alone is enough or do you use your mind as well, grasping a hold of every advantage presented to you?"

Just talking with the blonde girl was tiring. Everything felt like an argument or some kind of innuendo! "I'm not going to try to kill you," Allen said with something like a sigh. At least, he would try to keep from it. Sometimes he couldn't control it and it was happening with more and more frequency.

"What's wrong with fighting strength for strength? If I'm meant to win, then I'll win. If not, I've done my part."

Falis was tempted to slap Allen across the face for his idiocy and she had to restrain herself from doing just that.

"There's nothing wrong with fighting strength for strength if the point of the fight is to prove who's stronger," she spat back. "There is no 'fated' bullshit about who was 'meant' to win or anything like that. We make our own damn destinies and if you think there's some great power out there manipulating your strings like a dancing doll then you're an idiot and your King God isn't any better than your Earl."

"Use your mind, boy. Do you think your Earl is just going to use his pure strength in a battle? Fuck no. He's going to use every little trick he possibly can and a whole lot of dirty tactics. Evil doesn't have honor. Evil just wants to destroy with the power of Angst in one hand and Woe in the other." Falis glared. "You're a sitting duck if you just rush him head on without using cunning or your terrain or any semblance of tactics. You will die then and your Earl will laugh." And so would Falis if she was in the Earl's place.

Maybe he was an idiot, like she said, but he couldn't help the way he was born. He couldn't help the Innocence that was embedded into his flesh or the blood that called to destroy Akuma. It was his place, his calling in life to be one of the Black Order's pawns because he was a weapon. Of course it was fate, why else? Why him?

"What other way is there to fight? If I do as you suggest, then I'm simply sinking to his level. I just have to be stronger, that's all there is to it."

"The righteous never win," Falis growled. "There's a saying that goes All's fair in love and war. You're in a war, so keep that in mind."

"Strength is never enough. Strength also comes from places unsuspected." Falis was getting very frustrated but managed to keep her words calm, her voice low.

"To win a war with a definitive victory, one must dirty themselves with the tools of the enemy. Use whatever is available, take every advantage possible and find your victory. War is not nice and to win war you must harness the monster inside you and use it to destroy your enemy." She paused and held Allen's eyes for a moment. "And when it's over, when you're victorious, you cleanse yourself of the filth and the darkness you've taken into yourself to be the thing, the weapon, the force, that was needed to fight to win."

Her expression got distant and wistful. "And you find someone to ground you... to remind you who you were before so you can return to that when it's time to lay your arms down."

"Don't be absurd!" Allen returned, starting to get frustrated. "Good always wins over evil." Why would God make them fight an enemy they couldn't defeat?

"I will never stoop to his level, not even for an advantage. My strength alone should be enough. And if its not, then someone else was meant to destroy him, not me. There's no way to just stop being what I am, even if I live to see the end of this war, a weapon is all I am."

"And even if she-" he started, but cut himself off before he got any further. He shook his head, "We don't think in terms of before and after. There's just the now. The enemy we have to defeat before we can continue on to the next. As nice as it would be to believe..." He stopped again. "Maybe... maybe it's better if we talk about something else," he said quietly.

Falis was quiet as hr eyes refocused and that momentary soft expression left her face. "You are a sad, pathetic, naive little boy if you believe all that. You will never defeat your Earl. You will die at his hands and place your people in danger if all you think of yourself is as a weapon," she said in a tone that could almost have been considered sad.

"Your King God is a cruel ruler if this is what he has demanded of those that serve him. A proper leader, commander, warrior thinks a minimum of five steps ahead of the enemy, not in just the moment. And she," the blonde said, latching onto Allen's slip-up, "will cry for you before she too dies because of your inability to do what must be done to kill your Earl."

She shook her head, disgusted. "If you do not think of your future, a vision of something you desperately want - something to accomplish that means more to you than life itself - other than the immediate defeat of your enemy... what reason do you even have to fight? You aren't even using half your strength without that."

Why was it sad? He was working to save the human race. Even if he lost his life, there were others to replace him. Every Akuma he defeated made a difference. Bak was the one that said his body was an Anti Akuma weapon and it was true. He could feel it, that was all his body wanted was to destroy them. Maybe that was sad, but it meant protecting his friends too.

"I do believe that," Allen said, though the strength behind his voice had diminished. He'd made a promise to Mana that he'd keep going, keep walking until he couldn't anymore and that was what he intended to do. "And I have my own reasons to fight. I want to save the humans and I want to save the souls of the Akuma. That's why."

Falis did not waver, her tone did not change, nor did her eyes as they searched Allen's. Well, searched the one that wasn't lighting up like a magical torch. "You have no personal investment in your fighting. You want to save humans, you want to save tortured souls, and that's all in good, but that has nothing to do with you. Everyone on your side of the war fights for that."

She was beginning to pity this poor boy that could be an amazing warrior but simply chooses to be nothing but a rusting blade. "There's nothing unique in that. It is nothing more than empty words to comfort the people, because you can't save humanity. Once your Earl is defeated, another will arise to pick up where he left off. One person cannot accomplish something so large. You need to scale it down to something that can be won and kept safe. That's the key. Find a personal reason to fight, something that means something special, unique, to your heart. Use that along with your mind and not just idiotic teachings that take away your self identity."

She narrowed her eyes a little. "Then you'll find real strength. Then you won't get her killed nor will you make her cry." Falis kind of wanted to know who this 'her' was.

While some of what she said did make sense, Allen had a difficult time taking it to heart. Why did it matter to her how he fought?

"I don't understand what you mean," he said bluntly. Of course he fought with the same goals and ideals as the other exorcists. Why was that bad?

"But... I don't want to save just one or two people. I have to save everyone I can," he frowned, completely missing whatever it was she was trying to get through to him.

"Her... look... that's..." It was hard not to remember the dreams he'd had. Seeing Rinali crying alone in that fallen tower. But they weren't tears for him. "it's not what you think."

"You can't save everyone. People die, boy - that's a fact of life and it's most definitely a fact of war. That is one thing you cannot change, that can never be changed," Falis stated. "What good is it to save a child from a burning building just to leave her in the care of a rapist?"

"You saved her, yes, but you didn't keep her safe. And in the end, it's not going to be the rapist that she blames, but you for leaving her there. She'll have wished you let her die in the flames. Her virgin blood will be on your hands. That is what your going to let happen if you try to accomplish something that is impossible," the bounty hunter said. The imagery was probably going to be too much for Allen, but she didn't care. it was a fact of war. People took advantage of purely good people whith such righteous, indignant, foolish ideals because they can.

"You don't know what I think when I refer to her, so don't presume to know that. I don't know if she's a lover, a sister, a fellow exorcist, or just a friend. What I do know is that she is the one thing that keeps your core stable, that she's your anchor to the world when you're fighting. She is what keeps you from losing your sanity to the rages of war."

Falis paused, knowing very well who it was in her own life that kept her from becoming a bloodthirsty demon. It was sad... this boy was going to get himself killed once he got back to his war because that was what he wanted, the bounty hunter decided. He had a death wish and didn't know it.

"Does she have a name?"

What was she trying to do, thinking of awful situations like that? Did she not want him to save anyone at all? How could he know what would happen to them after he destroyed the Akuma?

"Just what are you getting at? There's no way I can follow someone around their whole life just to keep save them from every bad thing that might happen. I'm only of any use at fighting Akuma."

And again, people were telling him what Rinali meant to him even though they didn't know him and they didn't know her at all! Saying she was his anchor? She was that to a lot of people, not just him. She was friend to any and all of the exorcists.

"She's my friend. Rinali. But... that's all. She doesn't fight just for me, she cares about everyone."

"You are taking what I say too literal. That's what your problem is. You don't understand symbolism and your notion that I am implying you dedicate your life to keeping only one single person safe is insulting," Falis snapped. "You are a fool with a death wish if all you think you're good for is fighting akuma. There's more to life than that."

Rinali... so that was the girl's name. Falis catelogued that and wondered if she was the dark-haired girl she'd seen Allen talking to once or twice back at the institute. Maybe she'd go talk to that girl and find out. Maybe she wasn't an idiot.

"And I don't fight just for my friend, my anchor, but for my kingdom. Do you feel anything for your enemy?"

Allen let out a slow and frustrated sigh as he tried to understand what she was telling him. It wasn't the easiest thing to wrap his mind around and this girl wasn't the best teacher. At least in his opinion. She thought he had a death wish? Maybe it was so. There was a time, after Mana died, that he'd just wanted to be with him. Even if it meant dying too, but he knew that would make Mana sad. So he'd tried to keep his promise. "It's not... like that. I..."

"What do you mean? Feel anything? I... I'm glad to save them, if that's what you mean. The souls within are always happy to be freed."

"I meant your Earl, not the akuma that stand between you and him," Falis clarified.

"I hate him," Allen said without hesitation. "He's done terrible things, not just to me, but to countless others. I don't want him to hurt more people. He has to be destroyed." It was his own fault he'd gotten cursed, but the Earl preyed on those who were weak and hurting. He made tragedy into massacre, causing so much death and destruction on his path. It had to stop.

That was a beginning. Hate was a powerful force. "Why do you think he does the things he does?" Falis shot Allen a stern look. "And if you tell me it's because he's evil and you don't have to know why, I'm going to hurt you."

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