Chrono Crusade Fan Fiction ❯ Hell Hath No Fury ❯ Chpt 1: Descent ( Chapter 2 )

Chrono sat across from Rosette in the cafeteria. He couldn't quite remember when he had given up sitting by her side, he just remembered why. It was very hard to watch someone you were sitting next to. Not so very long ago he would've never thought of the move. Rosette always went nuts over the tiniest things. He smiled sadly to himself, Used to take a pin drop to set her off. Back then if he had wanted to look at her without risking a beating, he had to steal glances furtively while she was otherwise occupied. Occupied with making sure that spoon, bowl, and possibly bits of table didn't make it down her throat like her food did.

 

Chrono chuckled softly at that memory, breaking the uneasy silence that seemed always between them now. He looked up, worried. It wasn't a sound he had intended to make. Rosette didn't even notice. It wasn't because she was busy with dinner, or worrying about foreign objects making it into her meal. In fact, she was just sitting there, staring downward at her reflection in the bowl of soup. At least, Chrono hoped that was what she was doing. Better for her to be gazing at her own reflection than looking back through the past, harboring pains, regrets, and unchangeable guilts.

 

He sighed. No furtive glances were necessary now. The world could stop turning. The sky could start raining fire. Elder could be asking her to model a one of a kind lingerie line designed by him especially for her. She wouldn't have noticed. He could stare unabashedly and she would never know. He wasn't sure how much he liked that.

 

Rosette jumped a foot when she felt his hand touch her shoulder.

 

“Rosette? Hey, Rosette?”

 

“Chrono! God, don't DO that!” she yelled, hand on her chest and breathing heavily. “I was thinking for crying out loud.”

 

A tiny smirk found its way onto the devil's face as he found himself saying a phrase he never thought he would ever utter to her. “Maybe you should think less, and eat more.” A glower was the only response he got.

 

“I was only half kidding, Rosette,” he said as he shifted his weight in the chair, “You really should finish up soon. We have a mission to finish tonight.”

 

“Hmm? A what?” she asked him with a confused look. “But we just finished today's.”

 

“Sister Kate gave this one to us days ago, remember? Said it was no rush. So little rush in fact that she didn't even call us into her office for a debriefing. Just passed us on the lawn with a quick “by the way.” Do you not remember this? Rosette?” Chrono looked at her more closely. She was looking at him, but he was staring to lose her attention. Again.

 

“I must not have been paying attention,” she recovered quickly. “So absent minded you know.” Rosette threw out a wink and a grin. Chrono had been getting suspicious enough for her liking. She didn't like anyone prying too close. She could save the sulking for later.

 

“Remind me, would you?” She took a few spoonfuls of her previously untouched soup and stood, sliding her chair out from under her.

 

A few moments later they were in the car, driving calmly to the mission site. Chrono offering another, obviously needed, briefing.

 

“It's nothing really serious. Actually, I'm surprised we're even on this case at all. I have a sneaking suspicion this has everything to do with the fact that we were the first people Sister Kate ran into. Anyway, it's just a poltergeist, residing in an abandoned building in a fairly populated area. So far as we can tell, it hasn't done anything but make a little noise and scare the neighborhood children. However, since we are the exorcists, the authorities decided to have us take care of it. It honestly probably wasn't even worth bringing your gun. We probably could have come armed with a bucked of holy water and a crucifix or two and been more than set.” He flipped lazily through the pages of the map and pointed Rosette down the right side street.

 

When they arrived, a few people were wandering around the streets, speaking to the lone policeman that had been given the unfortunate duty of staying at the scene until the exorcists arrived. Children were looking furtively up at the dark windows of the long-empty house. Pointing, giggling, and every now and then one of the girls would shriek when someone scared her from behind. More giggling ensued.

 

“I'll wait in the car for this one, then?” Chrono asked her. There was really absolutely no need for anyone other than Rosette to take care of this problem. Actually, Rosette was so overqualified it was ridiculous. This thing would be more docile than the training simulations used for beginning Sisters back at the order.

 

Rosette smirked and joked about his laziness, reaching down and making sure her gun was still in its holster.

 

“Do you really need that?” Chrono asked, eying the weapon critically. “Overkill, don't you think?”

 

Rosette threw a wink at him and patted her little metal friend. “Never leave home without it.”

 

Chrono shook his head and relaxed back in the car, watching Rosette approach the policeman. It was almost amusing. The poor man was afraid of her. Apparently no one informed him that it was required for Sisters to present documentation to any present authorities before completing a requested mission. This was almost insulting.

 

Chrono saw Rosette throw the thumbs up to the bewildered policeman and approach the house. Chrono amused himself by watching the children. He loved watching them play. He always had. How carefree they looked, how unconcerned. As cliché as it sounded, they really were the reason organizations like The Order existed. They witnessed death and horror and destruction on a regular basis so that these didn't have to. The children and their parents, gathered loosely around doors and yards. Making this cleanup job a neighborhood event.

 

Chrono had seen the loss of so much innocence. His own, ironically, cherubic eyes had witnessed destruction, death, heartache. More caused by his own hands than he could think about anymore. Of all the many things Rosette had given him, perhaps the most important was the beginning of his path of atonement. There was much to regret. But regret is useless if it does not spur you on. So here he was, Kinslayer, atoning for his wrongs.

 

Chrono's musings were cut short by the noise coming from the abandoned house. The harsh clap of gunshots echoed through the quiet neighborhood. Something was wrong. There was no way Rosette needed bullets for this.

 

Chrono jumped out of the car and looked again at the once dark windows. Flares and flashes cracked with every recurring shot. Dusty glass shattered, wood splintered, causing the mothers to seize their children and rush them quickly inside. Chrono started towards the door. Something was wrong.

 

He had no sooner set foot on the street than the shots stopped, the flashes ceased. That silence should have been the final word, and Rosette should be walking out that door right... about....

 

Nothing.

 

Chrono ran.

 

Up the steps, into the house, climbing the stairs as fast as his small legs could carry him. When he reached the second floor, he didn't have to look far for Rosette. The door to the room she was in had been blown to pieces. Dust still floated in the air, in violent swirls that could find no place to settle.

 

One final gunshot exploded. Chrono was shaken from his trance by a swirling vortex that he knew was indicative of only one kind of bullet.

 

Oh God, he froze and stared at the windstorm. Just a poltergeist? A poltergeist would never warrant the use of Gospel....

 

“Rosette!” He rushed in, coughing through the years of previously undisturbed filth. Through the shadows falling in the light of the night's young moon, Chrono could see her. She was stock still, facing downward, her gun hovering still, over a body.

 

“Rosette, what happened?? Are you--”

 

“Fine, Chrono!” She whirled around with a grin. “Just a little extermination. Nothing at all to be worried about. I'm just fine!”

 

Chrono surveyed the damage around her. There was nothing but destruction. Rosette was a reckless person, that's just the way that she functioned. But this... this was something altogether different. In a house where no one had lived, where nothing save the spiritual had been, holes had been blown all through the walls, out the windows, out the front of the house.

 

Chrono remembered the small mass of people that had been accumulated on lawns and porches just moments ago.

 

God, it's a wonder she didn't kill someone. But didn't she?

 

Chrono looked down at the figure on the floor. He had not expected to see anything. Rarely were poltergeists ever corporeal. Though to be fair, whatever it was that was sprawled on the ground didn't exactly look corporeal either. It was there, but it wasn't. Transparent but real. Chrono couldn't really tell.... It appeared to have blood. Or appeared to have lost it, and liberally. Dark spots appeared the boots, the pants, the jacket... why did he look like a man?

Chrono's eyes were drawn to the thing's face, where moments ago Rosette's weapon had been held, and steady. So familiar, even through a gaping hole she had blown through his head. Chrono crouched over the body. He knew that face, knew that style, knew those glasses that were shattered into a thousand pieces, strewn across the floor.

 

No... Chrono choked it couldn't be... not here, not like this, not now....

 

“It isn't him.” Rosette's voice broke his rising panic. He turned to look at her. She was occupying herself by nonchalantly wiping down her beloved weapon before returning it, dustless and dirtless, back in its holster.

 

Her explanation made sense. And was the easiest to believe. The idea that Aion would have his headquarters in the middle of a populated innocent neighborhood was just his style. However, to have it in a dump like this, hiding away, reduced to scaring little children by thumping on the walls at night, certainly was not. Not to mention he was hardly the type of man who would tolerate living in any kind of squalor. And yet....

 

“Shape shifter.” She said, breaking the silence again. Chrono stood slowly and looked at her. She was brushing bits of dust and splinters off her shoulders and dress. “He didn't look like that when I walked in here.”

 

“What did he look like?” Chrono eyed her suspiciously. With an Aion replica at his feet, he could hardly believe Rosette was just patting down her dress.

 

“Translucent. Shifty. Ghostly. The usual.” Speaking of being shifty....

 

Chrono turned again and narrowed his eyes at the shredded walls. “It took this many Sacreds for a shape shifter?”

 

“I missed a few times.”

 

Rosette didn't miss. Not like that. And a quick survey of the shape shifters form proved him correct. He was riddled with ash, scorch marks, and holes. From the looks of it, every bullet that had left Rosette's gun found its mark.

 

Chrono dropped his eyes again to the riddled body at his feet. In the center of its torso was a huge, gaping wound. He could see straight through it, to the floor, and through the hole in it.

 

“Did it really warrant this? Did you really need Gospel?”

 

Rosette had already turned and was walking out the door. As Chrono watched her habit flap around the corner her voice floated back to him.

 

“I just wanted to make sure he was dead.”

 

Chrono followed her out slowly. Something was amiss. Something was wrong. Before she had fired Gospel, there had been only silence, only nothingness where her mantra would've been prayed.

 

There would be no rest for the fangs of the wolf tonight.