All characters belong to Cho Jung-man except for Yun-Hee Park.

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"NO. Give it back!"

I bounded into the crowd without thinking and ended up being pushed back by the wave. Finding an alley, I ducked into it and realized that my supporter was nowhere to be found. Not her, too!

"That stupid girl! Every time she pops up I lose something!" Sighing, I looked for another way out of the dead end that I had ended up in and noticed someone above me. A young girl with red hair had managed to jump down from the roof and crouch in front of me, her face slightly pink and her breaths shortened. Well, one of the things I'd lost had found me.

"Tasha," she started, standing up and frowning. "I'm not sure we'll be able to catch her this time. We've been pretty unsuccessful for the past month."

"Halloween, you know how much that money means to me."

"It doesn't matter, you're just as attracted to a dollar lying on the ground as you are a castle. Moth to a candle."

"Fine, then. This whole chase is to finish the mission…and then get the money from her. Happy?" I turned and began climbing the wall to gain a higher vantage point.

Although I hate to admit it, it was a pretty accurate description of my love for money. In any case, this one girl had stolen at least half of the money I'd carried around with me on each mission. She just came out of nowhere and disappeared like a shadow; she was so fast that I still had no idea what she looked like. HQ had told me to find her because, apparently, she could be useful to us. They never told me if she was a witch or not although they had a fairly good idea that she was.

My supporter and I leaped from rooftop to rooftop, searching in vain for our target. I wasn't sure why they picked me to search for her when Tarras had his earth tracking ability and Xing was probably twice as fast as I was with his abilities. However, when I think back to it I vaguely remember something about volunteering.

It was about a month earlier, like Halloween mentioned. I stomped off into the building and headed over to Linda, complaining about the "Shadow Girl" and how she'd made off with so much of my money that my funds were now insufficient in sustaining me. She only laughed, but she abruptly cut it off and found an interesting little mission that could've possibly been related to her and I immediately dashed off, telling her that the mission was mine. Ahem, yeah, I did volunteer.

"Tasha!" I was jostled out of my little flashback by the sound of my supporter's voice. Looking up, I quickly found out why. It looked like we'd found our culprit. The young kleptomaniac was filching from Cougar's pockets. The poor idiot had it in for him, but I wanted my money back so it looked I was going to have to help him out.

"Cougar! Behind you!" At the sound of my voice, the two of them turned and looked up at me. Unfortunately, we were in for a bit of a chase. Shadow Girl immediately darted off, neatly pocketing Cougar's wallet and sprinting towards the docks. I jumped down beside my rival, and the two of us darted off before she could get away.

Suddenly, she stopped and turned and the two of us skidded to a halt. That was when I was finally able to get a good look at her. She was wearing a scarlet midriff shirt with the sleeves rolled up and shorts that ended above the middle of her thighs. A patterned, white scarf covered her mouth. Her hands were gloved, and she had a holster on her right hip and a small knife at the other. She was very small, standing no taller than five foot three, had a very athletic build, and scars laced her arms and legs. Her flowing hair was raven coloured and pulled back into a fishtail braid. She owned a pirate hat that sat slightly lopsided and had a golden feather sticking out to one side.

But what was most striking about her was her eyes. They were a bright violet colour that gradually faded into a darker sapphire, and she owned cat-like pupils. Glaring at us, I wondered how it was possible that I'd missed her.

A whistle sounded, and she perked her head up at the obvious signal. She made no move to try and escape toward the sound making me hesitate in my decision as to how I should capture her. Instead, she studied me, Cougar, and Halloween before whistling back.

"Have fun trying to chase after something you'll never be able to reach," she said. As she turned, I started running again and tried to reach her. With her walking, I should've been able to reach her within a few strides. This wasn't the case, however, as I noticed that she was lengthening the gap between us.

"Tasha, you're just wasting energy," Cougar called, several yards behind me. I turned to see what he meant by that when I realized that he was staring at my feet, my supporter beside him with the same astonished mask on her face. When I looked down, I saw my feet hovering about a foot off the ground. It took a moment to process this before I was gently let down and I could feel solid earth beneath my soles again.

Screaming in frustration, I looked up and found that Shadow Girl had already left. I was so close to the money! I was so close to taking the witch! I was too close to have let her slip between my fingers!

But I let her get away. Again. The only thing about her that I could hold on to were her fiery eyes.