Eric and Voyage were now out among the streets of Paris, the morning sun catching gently on the stroller's polished frame as Eric pushed it along at an unhurried pace, still fully dressed as Mike Jackson, every inch the doting new father out for a stroll.
He'd been sent off with considerably more supplies than any single man should reasonably have been able to carry, and to the visible astonishment of the nurses and even Dr. House himself, he'd hoisted the entire haul without so much as a strained breath, muscles flexing just enough to make the moment memorable. The instant they'd cleared the hospital's front doors and turned the first corner, he'd quietly teleported the whole lot away to the abandoned house where he kept the rest of his hidden belongings, freeing both hands for nothing more than the stroller itself.
Voyage lay contentedly on his back, huge, watery eyes tracking the passing sky above him, pacifier bobbing gently between his lips with each soft suck. He wore soft yellowish-white clothes that made him look, to any passing stranger, like the picture of pure infant innocence, one small hand curled loosely around a jingling toy that rattled faintly with every lazy movement of his wrist.
The performance never once slipped.
Beneath that flawless, drooling exterior, an entirely different conversation was unfolding, quiet and private, carried through Meditation Aura where no outside ear could ever hope to intrude.
Your acting is genuinely impressive, Voyage said, tone carrying an edge of grudging respect.
I could say the same about you, Eric returned smoothly. Oh la la, cutie pie baby.
The toy in Voyage's small fist jingled violently as he shook it in outrage. Hey! Don't say that embarrassing shit!
Eric's expression didn't so much as twitch on the outside, though internally, something close to genuine amusement colored his tone. Anyway. Now that I'm officially your papa, he continued, dryly, who exactly are we targeting? Let me be clear up front: I'll help you kill one person, and exactly one person, before I'm done here. So choose your target wisely.
Voyage's suckling on the pacifier grew noticeably more forceful, his tiny brow furrowing in concentration. To any passing pedestrian, it simply looked like an especially determined baby working through some minor discomfort.
There's no rush, Voyage said eventually, his mental tone taking on something almost lazy, deliberately unbothered. No rush at all. Only devils get impatient. We could take our time. Explore the city a little first, don't you think?
Eric let out a short, unimpressed mental snort. Hmph. Don't think I haven't noticed what you're actually doing.
Oh?
You're stalling. Fishing for information. Trying to get a read on me before you commit to anything real.
Voyage's tiny hand shook the toy again, this time producing a softer, more contemplative jingle, as if the sound itself were part of his thinking process.
Heh. Caught red-handed. Something like genuine respect crept into his mental voice now. As expected of the third one. Sharp deduction. Good instincts.
It's not particularly difficult, Eric replied. Since we're both clearly circling the same intentions here, let me offer something a little more direct.
His expression remained perfectly composed on the outside, warm and paternal, but internally his tone carried a distinct thread of quiet curiosity, almost eagerness, the kind he rarely allowed himself to show even in private.
Oh? Now you have my attention. Go on.
A game, Eric said. We each ask the other one question, in turn. Whoever's asked has to answer honestly, though not necessarily completely; concise and true is enough, no obligation to spill every detail. Once you've answered, you get to ask the next question. Back and forth, until one of us decides to stop.
Something in Voyage's small body practically vibrated with barely contained excitement, though outwardly it simply looked like an infant kicking his legs happily at the sky, tiny arms stretching upward as if trying to grab at the clouds drifting overhead.
I like it, Voyage said, delight bleeding openly into his mental voice now. I like it a lot, actually. Alright then, Papa. Let's play.
"So how exactly do we decide who goes first?" Voyage asked.
"That's simple enough," Eric said. "We flip a coin. Whoever calls it correctly goes first."
Voyage pushed himself upright in the stroller, small brows furrowing hard as he glared back at Eric, radiating the unmistakable energy of someone who very much wanted to reach up and slap him.
Shameless. Absolutely shameless. You expect an oh-la-la cutie patootie baby like me to compete on equal footing with a grown man?
Eric laughed quietly on the inside, though outwardly he offered nothing more than a small, indulgent smile, the picture of a patient father amused by his child's dramatics.
He produced a coin from somewhere inside his coat and held it up between two fingers. "Pick a side."
Heads, Voyage declared, mental voice sharp with determination.
"Then I'll take tails."
He flipped the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it flat against the back of his hand. Tails.
Son of a— Voyage's tiny body erupted into a full theatrical fit right there in the stroller, arms flailing, legs kicking, the toy in his fist jingling wildly with the motion. You cheated! I know you cheated somehow!
A pair of grandmothers nearby paused mid-conversation, glancing over with visible concern, and a young woman across the path slowed her steps as though preparing to intervene on behalf of the apparently distressed infant. Eric kept his expression carefully soft and apologetic, bouncing the stroller gently and murmuring something soothing under his breath, the very image of a flustered but devoted new father.
Voyage settled almost immediately, sensing the audience.
"Prove it," Eric said simply, once the onlookers had drifted on, satisfied the crisis had passed.
Hmph. Fine. Whatever. Voyage folded his tiny arms across his chest with a huff, sucking hard on his pacifier in obvious protest. Ask your question, then.
Eric glanced sideways, the Eiffel Tower rising faintly in the distance to his right, and let the first question settle before he asked it.
"Why choose to be reborn in Paris specifically? As far as I understand it, you could have been reborn anywhere on Earth and simply traveled here afterward in a young body. Why go through the trouble of being reborn in this exact city?"
Simple enough, really. Voyage's mental tone shifted into something more analytical now, almost lecturing. First, being reborn here lets me use my Aura far more effectively. My attacks even carry an amplifying effect specifically tied to Earth; it's a quirk of my Aura's nature. Second, feeding on a teenager here to fuel my growth produces results much faster and far more potent than it would almost anywhere else. And third, he added, a faint note of satisfaction creeping in, it gave me a clean, natural way to approach you. Build an alliance. Get close enough to actually talk. Worked out rather well, wouldn't you say?
He rolled his small body over in the stroller with a theatrical little huff, pretending to drift off to sleep.
Eric nodded slowly to himself, filing the answer away. It was, he had to admit, a genuinely efficient use of a single decision, stacking three distinct advantages into one carefully chosen move. Whether that decision had been entirely Voyage's own idea, or whether some higher-ranking figure within Divine Karma had guided him toward it, Eric had no way of knowing.
He also found, turning the thought over, that he didn't particularly care either way.
It was Voyage's turn now.
They kept walking along the footpath as the exchange continued, neither of them stopping anywhere to eat. Aura users, especially ones at their level, could go considerably longer without food than an ordinary human ever could, vitality scaling upward with rank, dependence on food and water shrinking correspondingly, lifespans stretching out further with every step gained. Both of them currently sat at Lysi Nova, Eric holding sixty-five percent control, Voyage sitting at a full hundred. Either of them could comfortably go more than two weeks without a single meal or sip of water and feel no real strain from it.
Voyage took a moment to think before finally settling on his question.
What's your current rate of control over your Aura?
Something in Eric tightened faintly at that, a small flicker of instinctive wariness. Revealing an exact percentage told anyone paying attention roughly which step a person was stuck on, and that kind of insight could, in the wrong hands, become a lever for subtle interference down the line. Still, this was the game he himself had proposed. Fair exchange, or none at all.
"I recently broke through," Eric said. "Sixty-five percent, currently."
Ooh. Voyage's mental tone brightened with obvious interest. Getting close to the third step, then. Interesting. Must be a stubborn one if it's kept you stuck this long. I might circle back to that later, if you don't mind. Haha.
Outwardly, none of that excitement showed at all. Voyage simply looked like a peacefully sleeping little angel in his stroller, occasionally drawing on his pacifier with a soft, contented sound.
Go ahead, ask your second question, Voyage said, tone relaxed now, almost lazy.
"I want to ask about the devil sightings that have been popping up around Paris recently."
Ah. The ones the good doctor mentioned to you, I take it?
"Let me lay it out clearly, then," Voyage said. "After you killed the assassin girl the organization sent, they decided you were far too troublesome to leave to a Lysi Nova alone. So the Hypernova assigned to this city requested a Hypernova-rank relic to level the field. The request went through. An Evil Pathway relic came back. The Hypernova handed it off to the Lysi Nova here, taking on the backlash from it personally."
"This relic," he continued, "raises the user's affinity with devils. It also stores evil deeds. Charge it fully, and it can unleash a burst of power that sacrifices every living thing around the user for a massive strength boost."
Eric listened without interrupting, without questioning how Voyage had come by any of this. Divine Karma had the Overseeing Pathway at its disposal, plenty of ways to divine clues, piece together fragments, pass the results down to someone like Voyage.
Is this really just a coincidence? Eric thought, turning the parallel over in his mind. His own relic worked the same way, in reverse, raising his affinity with angel spirits, storing good deeds that converted into blessings when danger arrived. The only real difference was scale. His sat at Rank 0. This one sat at Hypernova Rank 2.
He let his expression shift, brows drawing together, a faint sheen of sweat gathering convincingly at his temple.
Internally, Voyage laughed at the performance.
Once Eric had "calmed down," Voyage moved on to his second question.
Picture this. All of us end up in a fight with no way out. If it came down to choosing between Lumenia or Divine Karma, which side would you pick?
His black eyes caught the light sharply as he asked it.
Eric felt the weight of that question settle differently than the last one. Voyage was sharper than he'd let on, sharp enough that Eric's earlier assessment had clearly undersold him. No wonder Divine Karma had trusted him with this.
He took a moment before answering, keeping his tone level.
"It would depend on which side was weaker, which was stronger, what each offered me, and which one gave me the better odds of walking away alive."
Voyage let out a low chuckle at that, low enough that a couple of passersby actually glanced toward the stroller, startled that the sleeping infant had apparently just made a sound.
Eric asked his third question next.
"What's your plan, once you've finished eating?"
Simple enough, Voyage answered without hesitation. Disappear. Recover. Build up strength quietly in the meantime. Strike when the right opportunity shows itself.
He didn't bother hiding any of it. Anyone with half a brain could have guessed as much anyway.
Then it was his turn again. His eyes had drifted open into thin, thoughtful slits, a small trail of drool sliding lazily down one corner of his mouth, the whole picture of an infant deep in some private dream.
My third question, Voyage said. What's keeping you from reaching the third step?
Eric drew in a slow breath, eyes lifting briefly to the sky above them.
"I still haven't found my ambition," he said quietly.
Something flickered behind Voyage's eyes at that, sharp at first, then softening into something quieter. A flash of old memory surfaced, unbidden, his own long, frustrating search for purpose echoing faintly against Eric's words. A rare thread of genuine empathy settled over him, unexpected in its warmth.
Neither of them asked anything more after that. They simply nodded to each other and let the game end there, unspoken.
The conversation carried on anyway, drifting into easier, less pointed territory, complaints about controlling their Aura, strategies for building strength, the endless grind of earning Aura stones and contribution points. A warm, easy rhythm settled between them as they walked, the kind of rhythm that, to any outside observer overhearing it, would have sounded like two old friends catching up rather than two calculating strangers testing each other's edges.
They'd been walking for nearly two hours now.
Their destination was New Dawn High School. Voyage had already picked his target there, a teenage girl he'd had his eye on for some time, though he'd never managed to actually take her. He'd been too weak until now, forced to stay hidden while the small gang under his command proved too incompetent to help him close the gap.
My original plan, Voyage said, was to grow a little first. Feed on a few younger children to build up strength, then finally take her, mature into an adult, and slip away clean.
He paused.
But who could have guessed things would turn out like this instead?
Voyage folded his tiny arms and slowly turned his gaze toward Eric, brows furrowed in obvious impatience.
Eric didn't answer him directly. Instead, he reached out through Meditation Aura and contacted Mr. Clown.
The target, after all, was nothing more than an ordinary teenager, not even a Nova-rank Aura user, barely worth the effort of handling personally. Eric wanted this dealt with cleanly and quickly, no wasted motion. Mr. Clown was already stationed exactly where Adrian happened to be, which made the whole thing almost laughably simple.
Marie Dubois, the message read, along with a location, a description, and a single clear instruction. Use your Aura; I will handle the rest.
Somewhere in the school, Mr. Clown, still laughing as Adrian stumbled through another one of his clumsy Destruction Aura attempts, Mr. Clown froze for half a second, the name settling into his mind with an odd, almost amusing weight.
Marie.
He nearly laughed out loud, right there in the middle of the field.
He'd actually considered killing that girl himself, more than once, back when he'd first been assigned to shadow Adrian and had taken the time to map out every person orbiting the boy's life. She talked too much. Asked too many questions. Poked around Adrian's business in ways that occasionally threatened to complicate things Mr. Clown would rather have kept simple. He'd weighed the idea seriously enough, back then, turning it over the way he turned over most inconvenient loose ends.
In the end, he'd dismissed it. Not worth the mess. Not worth explaining to Eric later why some random schoolgirl had turned up dead near his charge.
And now here he was, being told to help in something he had thought would never happen.
What a funny little world, he thought, watching Adrian scramble to his feet a short distance away, still hopelessly chasing an illusion that had already relocated itself twenty feet to the left. The very thing I talked myself out of, and now it's an order.
The irony sat there plainly, almost too neat to be coincidence, though he knew better than to assume it actually was one. Still, it didn't particularly matter to him either way. The order hadn't come from him. The responsibility, whatever weight it carried, belonged to the third one now, sitting comfortably on Eric's shoulders instead of his own.
It is not my call. Not my consequence.
Mr. Clown's grin widened, sharp and delighted, as he glanced once more toward Adrian, still red-faced and furious, chasing shadows across the field.
He had a small errand to run, apparently. He'd get back to tormenting the boy shortly.
...
Marie packed up her things carefully, sliding her notebook into her bag, and turned down her friends' invitation without a second thought. She'd promised herself she'd walk home with Adrian today, and Marie didn't break promises, even ones nobody else knew she'd made.
She spun around, grinning, already halfway through the wave she planned to give him.
His seat was empty.
"Huh?" She blinked, glancing around the emptying classroom. "Where'd he go? I swear I just saw him sitting there a second ago."
She had no way of knowing that the Adrian who'd sat there all class, quiet and unremarkable, had never actually been real at all, just a careful illusion woven from Mr. Clown's Fooling Aura, holding the seat while the real Adrian was somewhere else entirely.
"He's probably just being weird and antisocial again," she muttered, shouldering her bag and heading out to look for him anyway. "Bet he's hiding somewhere near the gate."
She checked the courtyard. The front steps. The little alcove by the vending machines where he sometimes lingered. Nothing.
Eventually, she gave up, sighing, and started the walk home alone, telling herself she'd just tease him about it tomorrow.
She never noticed the small red dragonfly, its wings shimmering faintly with flecks of red and black, drifting silently through the evening air behind her. She never felt it land against the back of her neck, never felt it dissolve seamlessly into her skin and slip quietly into her mind.
She felt nothing at all.
Her feet carried her down the familiar path home, the same route she'd walked a thousand times before, past the bakery, past the little park with the broken swing. Except tonight, guided by something she couldn't perceive, her feet turned instead down a narrow side street she'd never taken before, shadows pooling thick between the buildings on either side.
She didn't notice that either.
Halfway down the alley, something warm trickled over her upper lip.
"Huh?" She reached up, confused, and touched two fingers to her nose.
They came away slick and red.
"Why am I..." She stared down at her own blood, brow furrowing in mild, distant confusion, the beginning of a thought that never had the chance to finish. "...having a nosebleed?"
Those were the last words Marie Dubois ever spoke.
A hairline crack split across her forehead, thin as a strand of hair, and for one full second nothing else happened at all. Then it widened. Split further. Spread in jagged branches across her skull with a soft, wet, tearing sound, faster than thought, faster than pain could even register.
Her head came apart.
Bone and blood and pale, glistening matter burst outward in a wide, violent spray, painting the narrow brick walls on either side of the alley in dark, wet red, the sound of it flat and sudden and horribly final, swallowed almost instantly by the quiet of the empty street.
Her body crumpled where it stood, folding down onto the pavement in a loose, boneless heap.
The alley fell silent again.
Somewhere nearby, the evening traffic continued, oblivious, and the sky above stayed exactly as calm and unremarkable as it had been a moment before, as though nothing at all had happened, as though a bright, ordinary girl hadn't just died alone in the dark without ever understanding why.