City of Light (CC/OtE)

[Glyph]

(Author's Notes: Basically set in the world of Chrono Crusade with a couple of non-canon characters inserted; occurs about a year before the events of the manga.)

New York City; the melting pot, a great, steaming stew of culture and life flavored by the tidal flow of people entering from around the globe. It was a place to pave the way to a better future, a place of first steps and second chances; it wasn't unheard of, in New York, for paperboys to strike it rich; for lowly actresses to grasp stardom; for the most mediocre innovations to take gigantic, bounding leaps into history...

No, when you were in the Big Apple, anything seemed possible.

But beneath the shining glamor of possibility and constant, shifting masses lurked another world all its own, a darker, dangerous realm. Deep beneath the city streets lay a world that spun by moonlight, governed through fear and ambition, a world whose rivers ran with blood. In the back alleys, the old warehouses and abandoned street corners secret dealings were made, with crooks, mob bosses, even the Devil himself bearing witness. Ghastly deeds were performed in this dark underworld; blood spilled free as rain, and it wasn't uncommon for those unfortunate, warring midnight-businessmen to disappear in the dead of night, never to be seen again... If their luck held.

This was a world not far removed from the mundane, a world always in mind, if not in sight; yet it was a world into which only the boldest, the most desperate, dared cross, for the toll was high, and death awaited those too poor to pay...

From beneath the shadows of the old building, a pair of pale eyes shimmered, looking out across the bustling streets, the noisy automobiles... the noiser people. Slowly, they began to narrow, and the chill in the air slipped toward freezing, turning them to chips of ice.

... And now neither world was safe, because the Jersey Devil had returned.
--------------------

... Sounds more like a prologue then an exposition, but it's something. XD

Feel free to start where ever you like, Elf; NYC, at the Order, in the middle of a brawl, anywhere. I'll adapt. :3

[Elf]

“YOU DID IT AGAIN?!”

A small boy winced as the cacophony from inside the office blasted through the door into the hall. He sighed, patiently and worriedly, for his partner who was the receiving end of the blast.

“IT WASN’T MY FAULT!” his partner blasted back. “THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS TO ME, SISTER KATE! IT JUST ISN’T FAIR!”

Chrono let out another sigh, leaning against the wall and scooting down just a bit farther as the shouting match between the two nuns swelled to a crescendo. This was a pretty typical routine for Rosette Christopher…get sent on a mission, do more damage in collateral than the destruction of the target would have prevented, get royally chewed out by her boss, make her partner wait outside and wait for the inevitable—

The door blew open, releasing a fuming mass of strawberry-blonde nun into the hall. She snatched the boy’s wrist and began pulling him after her. “C’mon, Chrono,” she growled.

“Wh-what’d I do, Rosette?” the boy stammered, his purple braid flapping behind him as his blue-eyed partner dragged him down the hall.

“We have another mission,” she grated. “THIS is my punishment this time—she’s not giving us a moment’s rest! She probably thinks were gonna collapse exhausted after two investigations in a row! We’ll show HER, won’t we Chrono?!”

“Um…” The look in the boy’s crimson eyes went from bemused to resigned. “Applesauce,” he muttered. “I was hoping to at least get a bite to eat…”

“No time!” Rosette barked. “There’s no rest for the wicked, Chrono—we have WORK to do!”

*****

“Rosette…”

Chrono’s worried whisper went utterly ignored. The girl’s cerulean eyes remained trained on the sewer entrance, their focus absolute.

The youthful-looking demon let out a patient sigh. “Ros-eeette…”

“Hush!” Whack. Chrono winced as Rosette pistol-whipped him with her Colt .45, adding to his collection of love-tap bruises.

“Ow.” He withdrew from leaning over her while she peered around the corner, putting his back to the wall next to her, and sighed. “Are you sure this is the right storm drain?”

“Positive,” she hissed back, returning to her vigil.

“…we’ve been here over an hour already, and I don’t think our source was all that reliable…”

“This is our best bet,” Rosette assured him, her whisper holding less acid and more determination and assurance. “We’ve got to do what we can with what we have, Chrono. Just be sure to tell me the moment you sense anything.”

“Right…” He let out another sigh. “Will do.”

Rosette scowled at the storm drain, trying to calm her twitchy trigger finger. “Where are you, Jersey Devil?”

[Glyph]

There was blood everywhere; splattered over the grimy walls, tracked across the maintenance path, pooling around the bodies and dripping into the sluggish water as it chugged tirelessly down the corridor...

Epitome eyed the scene from above an upturned lip, the scent weighing heavy in his nose, and then cast a glance at the corpses. By the looks of their discarded blueprints, they were maintenance workers... Or had been, when they were alive, and not in twenty pieces scattered along the sewers.

He snorted, and swung his icy eyes back to the decidedly dead low-level demon hanging at arms-length. It's bestial head lolled at an impossible angle, face drawn in a snarl, eyes still glassy with the final throes of terror.

Pathetic. It didn't even have the barest indentation of a third eye, probably hadn't had a single coherent thought in its entire life, and yet these humans had succumbed to it without even offering up a proper fight for him to watch... What a waste of time.

Not that he expected much from humans anyway.

In the middle of a growl, the silver-haired demon's ears twitched suddenly, and all at once an irritated expression settled over his icy stare.

Jersey Devil... It was faint, but he'd heard it, echoing down the tunnels on a whisp; the voice had a carrying presence to it that he found vaguely, obnoxiously familiar...

Damned paparazzi. They'd been hanging around out there for a while now...

The dead demon goggled at his clenched jaw, head flopping sideways to get a better look; he glowered back and bristled, claws extending. Another drizzling of darker blood joined the rest on the floor, trickling down into the water...

Epitome smirked sharply, and the demon joined it with an ugly splash; it bobbed, blank eyes seeming puzzled, before going on its merry way, ducking around the bend and, consequently, in the direction of the voice.

Lazily, the Jersey Devil reached down and wiped the former-demon's blood from his claws on the tatters of one of the corpse's shirts, smiling coldly.

Come in, come in.

[Elf]

Chrono stiffened, inhaling sharply. His partner beside him immediately noticed, switching her piercing gaze to the demon.

“What is it? What do you sense?”

The boy’s face folded into a scowl that no twelve-year-old should have been able to manage, his crimson eyes tight with knowledge and dread. “Disdain,” he whispered, “and anger. A boundless supply of rage and bitterness. The desire to destroy, but not the drive…”

The tension in her partner seemed to filter over to the nun. Her lips set in a thin line. “Sounds like our mark,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Rosette stiffened as Chrono’s hand gripped her upper arm. She whipped her gaze back around towards him, startled. Something was wrong; he seemed far more uneasy than usual.

“This demon is stronger than the ones we normally fight,” Chrono cautioned, his tone low and grave. “He has intelligence, and might even have a rank.”

Determination blazed out of Rosette’s eyes like blue fire. “He’s been killing people left and right, Chrono,” she hissed. “We’ve gotta put a stop to it. Plus…” She looked away, an annoyed expression fighting through her resolve. “This mission’s my penance…Sister Kate’ll never respect me unless I do something right. I’ve gotta ace this one!” She leaped up from her hiding place, guns at the ready.

“Rosette, wait--!”

But Chrono’s hissing warning wasn’t needed to stop the nun in her tracks. She went as rigid as if her time had been frozen, gaze fixed on something floating in the little river at the bottom of the asphalt-lined ditch.

Chrono saw it too, and paled. It was a demon—or used to be, anyway—a low-level one, its neck snapped, its body still oozing dark blood from deep gouges in its hide.

Rosette half turned, giving Chrono a tight smile. “Looks like we’re fighting a killer of his own kind.”

Chrono swallowed. Those words prompted thoughts he did not want to dwell on—but Rosette couldn’t have known that. She probably was just implying that that was a good thing, drawing similarities between Chrono and their quarry, trying to say that their battle might not be as hard as it seemed…but he knew better. He got the distinct impression that this creature wouldn’t be reasoned with.

“Be on your guard,” he told her. He emerged from their cover, tightly gripping the straps of his massive backpack.

“Right.” Together, they surged forward into the darkness.

*****

Huff. Huff. Huff.

Rosette’s panting and the echo of their footfalls over the stone were the only sounds to be heard as the Exorcists dashed through the sewer tunnel. It had only been a few scant minutes, but of course Rosette dashed towards their fight at a full run—her specialty was encountering enemies head-on, guns blazing.

But the quiet was starting to get to her. Had they gone the wrong way? Had the Jersey Devil already given them the slip? Had they—

All her doubts dropped from her mind as she rounded a bend in the tunnel and caught an eyeful of the grisly scene spread out before her feet.

Rosette didn’t need more than a glance at the blood painting the walls, at the pieces of human meat spattered over the stone, before righteous fury lifted her guns and leveled them at Epitome.

“Hold it right there!”

A step behind, Chrono skidded to a stop beside his partner. His face set in a grim mask as his crimson eyes trained on the Jersey Devil. Yep, they were in for one hell of a fight.

[Glyph]

Epitome waited, unmoving amidst the carnage, seeing no reason to leave, feeling no obligation to vacate the grim surroundings and give the deceased their peace. He hadn't been the one who'd killed them, after all. His trailing coat slowly drew in the gore around him, dying the fringe nearly to black, but he made no indication of any objection to that, either. Quite the contrary, actually; he seemed eerily comfortable with it, losing himself in the scene, carving it into his memory and filing it away next to the etchings of so many previous.

Sniffing past the blood-rich air, he cocked his thrumming head and listened. Being a beast-subtype had its perks, and the acoustics in here were simply marvelous; he could hear their every squelching footfall, their every breath, used their heartbeats to count the seconds as they passed, skidded to a stop...

"Hmm."

It wasn't thoughtful, or indignant, or even curious. It was just... a noise, as bland and simple as that; as if he didn't care that a human and another demon had just rounded the corner on the damning scene and set their sights on his guilty back. He didn't appear interested in setting them straight; the dead worker's shirt was still pinched between his foreclaw and thumb, and it didn't look like he was going to drop it any time soon.

His head tilted further, lolling on his shoulders, but he didn't turn to face the pair, nor did he rise from his crouch. The demon didn't see the point. Blocks or not, they were young and he'd lived with Empathy nearly his entire life; he could feel them out just as easily as if he were watching the expressions play upon their faces.

The demon was tense. There was a slow, grating anger, and wariness. He wasn't a fool, had some idea of what they'd stumbled upon.

The girl was saturated in outrage, sinking horror. There was a furious nobleness in her that made his vision blur dangerously with hair-trigger memory.

Teeth grinding, Epitome spoke, voice teetering somewhere on the border between light, irritated tenor and dark, brooding baritone.

"Can I help you?"

[Elf]

A shiver coursed through the nun. This demon...standing so calmly in a river of carnage, having just slaughtered both humans and his own kind, and now speaking to them as casually as inquiring about the weather...Horror was quickly chased away by a fresh surge of fury.

But earlier revelations halted her trigger finger, as did the look on her partner's face. Even though she'd only seen the expression there a handful of times, there was no doubt about it: Chrono was afraid. His grimace was tight, his gaze fixed, and bead of sweat skittered down his brow. He gripped the straps of his backpack tightly enough to turn his tanned knuckles white.

If their enemy was really that strong that Chrono was this anxious...then maybe Asking Questions First was a better idea this time.

"Turn around!" the girl barked, her order bouncing around the tunnel walls in an echoing cacophony. "Hands where I can see them!"

Her teeth set and began to grind. The longer she stood with the blood of innocent people flowing around her boots, the stronger her fury surged. "Just who do you think you are, murdering all these workers?! Most demons at least eat their prey, but you--you kill for nothing! Why?!"

[Glyph]

A laughing voice, the gleam of large eyes and an even larger grin.

"Turn around!"

Epitome bared his teeth into the gloom, face wrinkling into a silent snarl while those words skated around his head on razorblades, inside and out, blaring from the past as clearly as in the present.

His grip tightened on the shirt, claws shredding it beyond recognition in response to the familiar heat that had begun to lick the backs of his eyes.

He would not--could not--be cowed by the pair of ridiculous weapons this ridiculous human had trained on his back, or the demon waiting on edge at her side. Fear was pain, and pain meant weakness; weakness had to be eliminated if he wanted to see the next day, and so he let the familiar, blessed anger begin to bubble back to the surface, roiling as the lesser demon's blood had as it had touched the torpid water and numbing the deep cuts the demand had reopened.

Compared to Epitome's voice, the sewers glowed radiant. "Unless you are prepared to find that out for yourself, I would advise you leave."

With a feral sharpness the demon rose, but made no move to turn; he was already teetering dangerously close to the edge. One misstep was all it would take to send rational thought tumbling.

He ground his teeth again, at the maddening throb and the blinding haze, and gave a low hiss. "Nothing is everything when it's all you have."