• Mel sighed, straightening up as she served yet another wineglass filled with rich wine. She had never seen so many people gathered into a single large room, and it nearly made her panic. She, after all, was one of the few exorcists that actually volunteered to serve at the Black Order’s Annual Carnival Banquet.
    Out of the cooks in the kitchen, actually, only three were exorcists. Of course, there was Jeryy, the head chief of the kitchen, and his ‘underlings’. Then there was Kanda, who surprisingly was enjoying salad duty. Lenalee cooked biscuits, while Mel was told to serve the wine.
    Now, she was unsure if she was actually allowed to drink any of it at all, considering that she wouldn’t be turning eighteen until summer. “I bet Jeryy made me do this because have an acquired taste for fine wine. Or perhaps because my father own a vineyard, assuming that I’d know something about good wine,” she grumbled, taking over a large glass of Sherry to an exorcist couple who recently got engaged.
    Suddenly, from across the room, she heard the loud and quite drunken shout of her overseer, Doctor Komui Lee. Puzzled, and quite honestly annoyed, she rushed over to the table, wondering what other painstaking tasks he wanted her to perform that evening. Upon seeing his grinning face, she felt a jolt of fear move down her spine, making her walk more awkwardly than ever towards him.
    “Melanie, this is Felicia, the Spanish Exorcist who went on a mission with Kanda a few days back. You remember, right?” Komui replied, with an obvious slur in his voice indicating exactly how much alcohol he had sacrificed his coffee for.
    Melanie shook her head. “I don’t recall ever meeting-“
    “Would you be a dear and go fetch the Amontillado from the wine cellar?” Komui drunkenly interrupted.
    “Sir, are you okay? You’ve had several glasses of Sherry and Merlot already. Do I need to put you back on coffee?”
    Komui stood up abruptly, and the dining hall fell silent. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m Komui ******** Lee and I can hold down wine better than you any goddamn day! PLEASE go get the Amontillado. Oh, and mix it with some Merlot, would you?”
    “But it’s only supposed to be used for-“
    “GO GET IT!” Komui yelled, sitting down once the shaken ‘waitress’ had left.

    Mel angrily pushed open the door. “Jeryy, where the hell are the wine cellar keys?”
    Jeryy pouted. “Well, Little Miss Italiano, why don’t you go take a chill pill and-“ Jeryy stopped talking as a large metal pan came down on his head. Kanda, his left hand wrapped around the pan’s handle, was chopping the cucumbers with his free hand. “I thought he’d never shut up,” he mumbled irritably. “Lavi should have the keys, though I don’t know why Komui would trust such an idiot to look after them.”
    “Thanks Kanda! I owe you one!” Mel exclaimed, heading towards the door on the opposite side of the room, skipping happily into the hallway.
    “No problem,” Kanda mumbled again. He went back to chopping vegetables, with Jeryy lying on the floor next to his feet. He looked into space a little and sighed. “Kids today…”

    Lavi watched as Mel ran up to him. “Hey, slow down! You’re gonna hurt someone!” he exclaimed teasingly. “Ok, what do you want?”
    “I need to get the Amontillado from the wine cellar, but Kanda said you have the keys. Can I use them?” Mel asked, trying to put on her best puppy-dog face.
    Lavi grinned. “You know that doesn’t work on me. C’mon, I’ll open it for you and we’ll go down there together.”
    “Sounds fair.”

    Lavi and Melanie reached the room that bore the door to the cellar. Carefully, Lavi unlocked the old wooden door with a dull, silver key. After twelve locks came undone, he pushed it open, the creaking noise adding to the eerie darkness below.
    Melanie grabbed a candle and they both went down into the cold shadows, squinting a little in attempt to read the labels on the casks. After five minutes of searching, she smiled. “Lavi, my eyes are fine now, I’ll be right back, I know where it is. You look for the Merlot.”
    Mel skipped off before the ginger exorcist could do anything, leaving him alone with nothing to reassure him but his anti-akuma weapon and a candle. He held the candle high and low, looking for a label. He sighed, wondering if she really could see that well. But he didn’t doubt her- after all, his right eye was covered by his leather eye patch, only proving that she was probably twice as good at seeing as him.
    His left eye caught the sight of the Merlot, which was sitting on a high shelf in a long-necked bottle. He reached for it hard, wondering if Mel already knew it was up there. He sighed, only trying harder to grasp the bottle’s neck.
    After a while of groping the air for it, he had a firm grip on the bottle. He quickly pulled it from the shelf, knocking over at least twelve other brands of wine. He winced, but soon recovered, and looked all over the floor. “Well, it’s a good thing that I didn’t break anything TOO important…”
    He was too careless to notice that another bottle of merlot was right in his path, and he stepped on it, allowing himself to slip and fall back onto glass fragments. He felt pain as they cut into the left side of his back, the burning pain of alcohol seeping into his blood and making him dizzy. As he hit the floor, his hand let go of the bottle of rich merlot and hit a tub that sat in the rafters that were right below the floor, which tipped it and spilled a dark red liquid, which smelled like vinegar, all over him. That too seeped into his bloodstream when it mixed with the wine all over the floor, entered his mouth and eye, and drenched his clothes.
    Before he passed out, he felt the pain as his lungs screamed for the Italian exorcist.

    Mel heard the breaking of glass and splashing as she began navigating through the cellar to get back to Lavi. She became focused and alert, which, at the sound of her name being called, progressed into fear and worry.
    As she rounded a corner, she faintly saw the older exorcist, who had passed out on the floor with a bunch of wine poured around him. “Get up, Lavi! You’re being a drunkard again,” she yelled, kicking him in the leg. No use.
    Then she smelled something that wasn’t wine- iron. It smelled fresh and warm. She knew that scent anywhere.
    Blood.
    She screamed, and rolled Lavi over, immediately seeing the bleeding, burning wounds that the broken glass had cut into him. Her muscles kicked into high gear as she carried him, using her coat to keep her dry.
    She hurriedly stepped up the stairs to the back room and entered the hallway quietly. She cussed under her breath, wondering exactly how much he weighed. It felt almost weird- he seemed to slowly be getting lighter as the minutes passed.
    As she lifted the elevator to the hospital wing, she looked at him. It seemed odd- was he always as short as her? Well, she thought, maybe it’s because his hair is wet.
    As she dragged him down the hall of the hospital wing, she grunted, realizing that Komui was probably going to yell. “Forget it,” she said, opening the door and stripping Lavi of his shirt. “I’ll talk to him later about it.”
    She laid him down on the bed and began healing him, first taking out the fragments of glass that were burrowed under his skin, and then using her innocence to close the wounds. She calmed down as she did this, not realizing how quickly she was wearing out her abilities. She yawned as she put Lavi’s shirt and coat back on and covered him with a blanket, and finally passed out on the floor.