A/N - This takes place three years after the anime.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky had been hand painted a swirl of deep purples and greens. Rain soaked the bitumen making it look like an obsidian river, shifting this way and that at a whim. Inside the bar had been thick with smoke and noisy, shrill laughter and low bellowing, chatting and music blasting. A perfect place to nurture a thumping headache. Pushing the heavy glass door open, the irritable man stumbled outside into the cold, wet air and sighed, rubbing his temples in feeble attempt to rid himself of the blasted pounding.
A puff of sweet smelling smoke pooled around his head and he looked to his left. At first his tired eyes found nothing but darkness until he saw the soft red glow of embers.
"Sorry, I didn't see you standing there." the man said slightly startled but desperately trying to recover his demeanour. No reply came from the smoker except for another breath of smoke.
The man, feeling awkward at the lack of response, turned his gaze skyward already feeling better after leaving the bar for a moment. Sure it was dark and wet and cold, but the fresh air was doing wonders for his sinuses. And oddly enough, he didn't mind the sweet smoke in his face in the slightest.
"So, um...Nice night we're having, don't you think?" he asked and mentally kicked himself for saying something so stupid.
"Perfect." the smoker replied. The man's eyes slid to the being to his left, it was a woman's voice - husky and monotone yet something there was something desirable about her tone.
"So you do speak." he said with coy laughter, "For a moment there I thought I was talking to a ghost." The woman didn't laugh but instead took another draw of her smoke and breathed out.
"No, not a ghost." she replied just as lightning crackled in the sky. The flash of light was so bright, the man managed to catch a glimpse of the woman he was speaking with - albeit, a glimpse that was pointless. She wore a brown cloak, the hood covering half of her face so much that all he could see was her mouth, full and curved. She was short, too. As another bolt of lightning cracked like a whip across the sky, she pushed off the wall and turned her head skyward.
"You should go home." she told him suddenly, "There are many demons out tonight."
"Heh, demons." the man laughed, "You sure are a strange one." She didn't reply, though it felt as though her eyes were burning right through him and his laughing subsided. With a sigh and a shake of his head, the man decided his friends would be wondering where he'd run off to and headed back into the pumping bass.
As the door thudded closed, the woman turned back to the grotesque demon she had been following for the past two hours as he stood atop a skyscraper and sniffed the air. Suddenly, his head whipped to the right and he ran off, obviously finding what he was searching so hard for. Tossing what remained of her scent concealing herbs into the gutter, the woman followed the demon, hoping that he would lead her to the object of her true mission.
Chapter one - First Meeting.
The whispers had begun a month ago. A hushed rumor that Satan, the King of Gehenna, was making plans to once again attempt to take over all of Assiah. At first no one had paid it any mind, it was often that he would attempt to do such a thing and fail. However when the knowledge that he had sired a half breed son came into light, priorities were rearranged.
Nana, one of the few Hunters left in the world, had used all her resources to find Satan's son however he remained just as elusive as his own father. Instead, she'd managed to find a servant of Satan's and tracked it down to a certain area of the city and followed it to a particular church. It was across the road from this church is where Nana now stood and watched as demons infiltrated the barriers. This had once been the home of Fukimoto Shiro, one of the greatest Exorcists in the whole of Assiah...and it had been the place of his death. A deep roar echoed out of the church, a signal for Nana to move it. She ran forward and produced two segmented bo staff from within her the sleeves of her cloak and aimed the right one towards the stone wall of the church. She fired the nine inch blade hidden within the staff, it whizzed through the air and sunk into the stone. Nana followed, propelled through the air by the wire and smashed through the stained glass window. Several pairs of eyes stared up at her in surprise as she flipped and landed on the balls of her feet and left hand, her right held the dagger staff half behind her, ready to attack.
"What the f-?" someone gasped behind her but their sentence was cut short by an approaching demon. Nana ran forward and began slicing through the lesser foul creatures in her path to the one she'd been tailing. He had grown substantially in size, his horned head almost reaching the church ceiling.
"You!" he growled when he saw her, "You are the one who has been following me!" As he spoke, more lesser demons formed from the floor boards and shadows to surround her. Nana stopped her approach and shifted into a defense stance. She counted twenty lesser demons around her - simple enough. They charged as one and Nana began her dance. She spun, the blade and the butt sliced and stabbed and bit deep into demon flesh. Thrusting the blade into the face of a demon, she flipped over him as he fell to his knees and struck another on the side of the head with enough force it snapped. In a matter of seconds, she'd cut the demons' numbers in half. One of them caught her in the back of the knee and she dropped, bending backwards she swung her weapons in a circle, cutting at the demons' abdomens, thighs and knees, and batted them over with the other end of her segmented staff. She rolled backwards underneath their tangled legs and kicked at them, sending them further into each other. The demons were a mess of arms and legs, all squirming together. Nana took a step back and waited; sure enough the demons began to meld with one another until they became a great ball and burst. Dirty green smog flooded the room. Nana pulled up the cloth around her neck to cover her mouth and nose, shot the dagger into the wall behind her and ascended up high. The exorcists within the church retreated away from the noxious gas, cover their faces with their hands. However, it spread to those who didn't move fast enough and engulfed them. They screamed, clawing at their skin and faces, eyes bulging and blood dripping from their noses. Nana clenched her fist around the heavy staff knowing there was nothing to be done for them. A hot wind erupted from below, immediately evaporating the smog and blowing her hood off her head.
That was when she saw him. The boy in blue flames. Satan's half breed son. He walked forward, unafraid, a long sword drawn and held to the side. As exorcists raced to retrieve their poisoned friends, he ran towards the demon boss and leaped into the air, screaming. He moved so fast her eyes couldn't keep up, but when the demon's blood burst from hundreds of deep cuts, she knew the boy had won. The demon screamed and shrunk down to the man it was possessing. Nana dislodged herself off the wall and landed in a crouch. The boy had skill, skill enough to defeat the demon while keeping the man alive.
"We have to seal him in case the demon tries to possess him again." one of the exorcists said while walking over to the man's body.
"You," said another, a young boy with glasses, and pointed at her, "Why are you here?" Nana stood and then was quickly forced back down to the ground, the demon who had caught her in the back of the knee had managed to sink it's claw deep into the muscle. Adrenaline had kept her moving but now the fight was over, the pain set in.
"You're hurt." the half-breed said gently as he moved to take a step towards her, only to be stopped by the one with glasses.
"Rin, don't." he cautioned, "She's a Hunter."
"Hunter? What's that?" he asked curiously, "Whatever, it doesn't matter. She's hurt."
"She'll kill you, you idiot." Glasses looked back to her then and raised his gun, "That's why you're here right?"
"No." Nana told him staring him in the eyes, "I'm here to protect him."
"Protect me? I don't need protecting." Rin replied shaking his head, "Yukio, let me go." He shrugged out of the other boy's hold and walked over to where Nana was kneeling on the ground, "C'mon, let me look at your leg." He reached down and lifted her arm over his neck, helping her to stand. As they limped past Yukio, he grabbed Rin's arm again.
"Let me do it." he said with a resigned sigh, "I'm the doctor remember?" Rin grinned and handed Nana to him, "You bring the other wounded."
Once she was lying on her stomach on the table in the kitchen, Yukio began his interrogation. "Why are you here?"
"I told you." she replied monotonously. She heard Yukio sigh again as he bandaged her leg,
"Why would a Hunter want to protect my brother?" he asked, "You hunt demons, he's the son of Satan."
"Exactly." she replied, "He is the son of Satan. So far he's managed to avoid his father's grasp, but for how long? You want to protect him too, but you're going to need all the help you can get. You may be a skilled Exorcist but you still have much to learn. Those men who were poisoned, they may die because of their lack of skill and knowledge."
"That wouldn't have happened if you didn't create it." he argued, "If they die, it's your fault." Nana half rolled over, propping herself up on her elbow to look at the boy,
"Do you really believe that?" she asked him, "Demons are known to do things like that, it's basic knowledge. Do they not teach you that in training?"
"Fine." he growled, "You were covered in the smoke too, why didn't it affect you?" She lifted the cloth around her neck up with a finger,
"This is Blessed fabric, taken from St. Peter's robe. It stops a great many things." she told him. Yukio glared at her for a while; he didn't trust her and he had every right not to. Hunters and Exorcists didn't get on. While Exorcists were holy men and women who sought to protect the human race, Hunters sought only the destruction of demons. That was why he believed she wanted to kill Rin.
"Yukio, I brought them." Rin said interrupting their staring match. Nana sat up, swinging her legs of the edge of the table.
"I give you my word," she told Yukio, "I'm not going to kill your brother." Yukio narrowed his eyes once more at her then turned to attend to the other Exorcists wounded in the fight. Rin lingered in the doorway, leaning against the frame and watching her suspiciously.
Nana took the moment to study him; he was tall and lean with messy dark hair and intense blue eyes and around the age of 18. Handsome would be the word she would use to describe him. But since he was half demon, his ears were long and elf-like, he had prominent canine teeth and a tail.
"So," he began, his face turning a light shade of red as he averted his eyes from her, "You got a name?"
"Nana." she replied. Rin cocked his head to the side, "Nana what?"
"Just Nana." she said.
"So like the number, right?" he asked, Nana nodded. She did have a true name once as did every other Hunter, but once they finish their training, they leave it and any life they had behind and, instead, assume a number. She was number seven - Nana. Though, she wondered just how long she would be welcome within the Hunter community when they realized she was helping the son of Satan.