Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it {for Criss}

[animefangirl]

Jiro Akiyo had never really wanted to take on an apprentice, despite knowing that there were a limited number of qualified Exorcists for the Black Order since many of them simply didn't survive long enough to be considered skilled enough to train the next generation of exorcists. He had been on his way back from a mission, following up on a lead about a possible Akuma sighting in a city that was pretty far away from the Order, but nothing had come of it except for finding a little redheaded girl who possessed Innocence. Not only did she posses Innocence, but she was one of the rare parasite types and he had immediately phoned back to the Order to report the finding and been informed that Maya was now his apprentice and he was to do his utmost to train her to be an asset when she was older.

Now he was regretting agreeing to do anything of the sort, since he'd found that the child was a spitfire with a penchant for finding trouble for herself. Right at this moment she was on the way to getting herself into trouble if she didn't hurry up. He was standing by the front door of the inn that they had stayed at the night before, and he'd sent Maya on a simple errand to buy provisions for their trip while he saw to the travel arrangements and if the girl didn't hurry back she was going to make them miss their train and have to wait for the next. It was only a couple hour difference but Jiro was the type of person who liked everything to happen on schedule, and that meant on his schedule and the poor people that got in the way of that suffered his wrath. He glanced at his pocket watch for the tenth time in as many minutes and growled under his breath, "If that girl doesnt get her ass back here in five minutes there'll be hell to pay"

----------------

Kai sat in the corner of a dark jail cell, shivering and terrified as he listened to the guards outside talk about his scheduled execution for the next morning. A few days earlier he'd been living a normal life, worried about his best friend who had been acting strangely for a few days. He thought it was just because his friend had lost their father recently and had gone over to comfort him, but them right before his eyes Renji suddenly turned into a monster and tried to attack him. He wasn't sure how it happened but the next thing he knew he was standing there with wings spread out on either side of him, scary wings that looked like those of a demon, and when he flapped them in shock spikes the size of his hand flew out of them and hit the monster, making it disappear. He had no idea that the monster was really an Akuma and that his wings were his parasite-type Innocence activating in order to protect him, all he knew was that after killing the monster the wings faded but it was too late. The villagers had seen what he did and attacked him, calling him a demon and screaming that if he lived he would kill them in the night. The police finally pulled them off of him and dragged him away and now the bruised and terrified child was doomed to die the next morning and he didn't understand why all of this had happened to him, or what had happened to his body and after thinking about it for a few days in jail he had convinced himself that he was a demon or cursed and that maybe it would be better if he did die.

[Chris]

Maya pushed through the crowd of people with a few bags of supplies,a cart had turned over in the middle of the road so the red head had to stumble around town through the busiest street to find her way back,groaning as the clock tower rung out telling her she was already late. It took the seven year old a few minutes more to reach the in out of breath "Sorry sir...there was a turned over cart and I couldn't get around"
Maya of course forgot to mention she had stopped to watch the driver and the pedestrian he almost hit duke it out



Ryo walked into the jail,the word of a supposed demon in the town traveled fast and within a few hours he was diverted from his current mission to go investigate. After talking with the townsfolk he had made his way to the cells and after explaining to the gaurds who he was they opened the boys cell and smiled at him "Well hello you must be the demon who I've heard so much about." He said a somewhat unsettling large smile on his face "Why don't you tell me what happened yourself Hm?"

[animefangirl]

Jiro really wasn't the type that liked to hear excuses for failing to meet his high expectations, whether that was younger exorcists or apprentices it didn't matter he held everyone to high expectations and was not happy if they were not met. So when he finally spotted the little redhead hurrying towards him after the clock struck the hour and it was officially too late to get their train he was not happy and was even less impressed by her attempt to explain why she was late. "Really? Because I heard the noise from that crash fifteen minutes ago, what took you fifteen minutes that you couldn't find another street and get here on time, hmm?" He asked, his voice stern and he crossed his arms as he looked down at her, clearly unhappy with his little charge and he would be even more angry with her if she were to lie to him now.

-----

Kai winced as light flooded the cell that he was in, and he automatically held a hand up to shield his eyes since that hurt after a few days in the dark. He blinked away the pain and looked at the man as he came into the cell, unnerved now since this wasn't something he'd been expecting and the man looked like a priest of some sort so of course the child worried that he was here to kill the demon. The man was smiling though, so that gave him some small hope that his fears were just that, fears. He got a bit teary eyed when the man asked him to tell what happened but he'd already told the story so many times that he had no real hope of it being believed. "Are you a priest?" he asked quietly, waiting to see if the man would answer him before going on to answer the question that Ryo had asked. "I don't know what happened. I was with Renji, then he suddenly burst part and turned into this huge monster thing and tried to kill me" He said, a few tears escaping at that since it still hurt that his friend tried to kill him but he wiped them away impatiently and continued, "These wings just popped out of my back and threw spikes at Renji, I don't know how it happened, it's never happened before" he explained, his voice trialing off at the end and he curled into a bit of a tighter ball as he waited for the priest to kill him or else further question him the way everyone else had.

((I'm changing Kai's age to 8 so he can be the same age as Maya ^^))

[Chris]

Maya was rushing through excuses in her head,best thing she could do would be to mask the truth so it wasn't really a lie "Well yeah there are only two paths,I was right there when the crash happened and the guys started fighting" she said "So I had to be careful not to get caught up in or trampled by the crowd which formed to watch"



Ryo smiled "Hardly I like strong drinks too much to be of the cloth" he said as he knelt down to the boys level to hear his story through to the end "I hate to tell you but that wasn't your friend anymore,he tried to bring someone back from the dead and that person took over his body and became and Akuma which you killed" he explained "What you did was a good thing. You are a special little boy,you have a parasite class innocence inside you" he said before explaining what exorcists were and how they were locked in a war with a man calling himself the Saint who was far from it "Long and short of it is, can teach you how to control it and how to use it. All you need do is say yes" he said offering him his hand

[animefangirl]

Jiro had actually been to this city quite a few times in the years that he'd traveled around doing missions for the Order, so he was well aware of the layout of the city and judging from the direction the noise had come he knew that she was stretching the truth with her attempt to mask the truth and the last bit caught his attention since from his experience with her so far he doubted she tried that hard to get away from a fight. "Uh huh, and is it possible that you were part of the crowd of onlookers and decided it was more important to watch a street brawl than obey your master and get here on time so we coudl catch our train?" He asked, his voice turning sharp and it should be clear from his tone that he was convinced that he was right and was only waiting for her to confirm it for him before deciding what to do about her lapse in judgement.

-----

Even though priests were supposed to be people you could depend on, Kai was actually glad when Ryo told him that he was not one. He would have been scared to talk to Ryo if the man were a priest, for fear that the man would think he was a demon and needed to be killed like everyone else thought. He went on to explain what happened and looked confused and hurt when he was told that Renji wasn't Renji but an Akuma. He didn't interrupt though he just sat there and listened and gradually relaxed as he listened to the story that Ryo was telling him, loosing some of the fearful look to him too until the end when the man offered to teach him to use this Innocence he had and held a hand out to him. That got him to look afraid again and he stared at the hand as if it may be poisoned or something before looking at Ryo, "And...and if I don't wanna learn to control it?" He asked quietly, wanting to know what the alternative was. If his choices were stay and be executed, or go with Ryo now he was of course going to chose to go with Ryo but he wanted to know if the man would get him out of jail and let him return to his parents if he decided that he didn't want to be an exorcist.

[Chris]

Maya was losing her nerve the more the conversation dragged out and decided to see if she could play the duty card "Well I stopped for just a moment in case things got out of hand,I mean its our job to help people an keep the peace" she said "But as soon as I realized it was harmless I left and tried to avoid it as much as possible"



Ryo shrugged "Well I can bail you out,but what happens then? People aren't going to forget what you did even if you did save all of them" he said "What if you were to transform again and this time word didn't reach the order" he said simply "I can't force you to come,but if you don't I can't protect you and I won't be responsible of what happens to you or your family assuming they think they raised a demon"

[animefangirl]

Jiro snorted when she tried the duty card with him and shook his head, giving her a bit of a frustrated look since he had just had the child with him about a week now and she could barely control her innocence right now so even if he had bought her excuse he knew she wouldn't have been able to do anything to help anyway. "No, our job is to track down and kill Akuma. Its the police's job to keep the peace, and it's your job to do as you're told and you already know that we've been over it enough times Maya. Lets go." he scolded her then reached down and grabbed her hand, pulling her along with him towards the train station since they would have to go that way anyway though now it would be a few hours until they were able to depart. "You made us miss our train, we can't afford to make mistakes like that. What happens if there's an akuma sighting in the town we were supposed to be headed towards right now? The Order would call me and say to handle it and I'd be too far away to do any good and by the time we got there a lot of innocent people could have been hurt. Did you think of any of that, Maya?" He lectured her as he walked with her, sort of trying to make her feel guilty and think about the sort of consequences that came from exorcists making bad choices.

-----

Kai hadn't thought about the way that the people would treat him if he were to try and go back to his parents, or even how his parents might react to what he'd done. They were religious people, and his father had seen the demon wings on his back and hadn't done anything to help him when the people were attacking him and calling him a monster. When the man went on to point out that it could happen again his eyes widened and he shook his head, he never wanted it to happen again and didn't like hearing that it could. He was silent for a few minutes then, thinking about his situation and about the fact that no matter how much he may say otherwise everyone here would look at him and only see a demon, something to be feared and hated and possibly killed. So, after thinking it through he tentatively reached out and took the hand that Ryo was holding out to him, silently accepting the mans offer to go with him but he didn't look happy about it.

[Chris]

Maya had all but tuned him out once he went into lecture mode......again...this is what she had been trying to avoid,the girl was very aware of the situation but she also knew there was a outpost a town or so away according to Jiro so there has to exorcists on standby. She didn't completely ignore him filling in pauses with "Yes Master,Sorry master" in order to keep him happy and hopefully get him to stop ranting

Ryo gave the boy a warm smile once he took his hand "Good choice,we will leave as soon as" he said digging into his bag and producing the trainees robe "Put this on and keep the hood up at all times,we don't need people getting wild. We need to hurry if we are going to catch the train" he said pulling the boy to his feet

[animefangirl]

Jiro didn't have much experience with children so it took him a little while to realize that the girl had actually stopped listening to him as he had been lecturing her about her carelessness but he did eventually notice and it just made him even angrier with her. It was true that there was an outpost nearby, but his point was that if this happened in the future there may not be so she needed to be more responsible now so that things didn't go wrong later, which he would have explained to her had she actually listened to him and asked about it. Instead he just went quiet until they got to the train station, which was empty at the moment, and he sat down on one of the benches before pulling her over his lap. "Alright, girl, if you want to act like a brat after disobeying me then I'll treat you the way brats are treated" He said to her, his voice a bit dark and waited for the words to sink in since he had yet to raise a hand to her so he was expecting this to be a shock.

-----

Kai nodded when the man told him that he made a good choice, not really believing it but it was what he thought that Ryo wanted so he did it. He was a bit startled by how fast things were happening now though as the robe was handed to him and then Ryo told him to wear it and that they had to hurry. He made a soft sound of protest as he was pulled to his feet and made no move to put the robe on as he shook his head and pulled his hand away from Ryo. "Wait, I gotta tell my parents dont I? My mom will worry about me..." He said, his voice a bit panicked but it was more fear of the choice he'd made and leaving with Ryo to go learn to control the power he didn't even want, than a real desire to talk to his parents. Though he did think that his mom would worry he doubted his dad would so he would be sad if he had to leave without telling his mom goodbye.

[Chris]

Maya had actually stopped paying attention to anything at all but quickly snapped back to reality when she suddenly found herself staring at the brick floor of the train station and realizing her panties were well on display due to her choice of a short skirt "M-Master....what are you doing..." She asked nervously

Ryo sighed and stuck his head outside the door passing a small coin purse to one of the gaurds who ran off "I sent someone to go get her and meet us at the station so you can say your goodbyes now come on and get dressed,we need to move before people start questioning why I came in here on the first place "