11:28 pm

As she slept peacefully and warm inside her bed, Jazmine could feel herself dreaming about something which was rare for her, because she didn't dream all that much. Her dream was simple enough; she was driving through Ikebukuro on her motorcycle that cried like a horse when it was revving up speed. While she drove through the town, she saw a few of her friends hanging out on the streets. She saw Drew, Nicky, Erika, Walker, Saburo, and Dota-chin (not his actual name but his real name escaped her) all together laughing and joking around as they did every day. She couldn't help but smile at their idiocy and sped off. Within an instant she found herself in a warehouse with absolutely no lights. Everything was pitch black, but a spotlight flashed in the middle of the total darkness and from the shadows appeared an even worse nightmare, Izaya Orihara. He stood there in the limelight with his every day black shirt and pants with his Eskimo jacket and he grinned like a sly cat. He held out his hand to her and chuckled.

"I have a job for you," he sang," my lovely half-breed." His voice echoed throughout her head like an unending song.

The dream ended and Jazmine shot out of her bed like a bullet. Thankfully, she wasn't in any creepy, abandoned warehouse with psychotic boss standing in front of her laughing. No, she was safe at home where, for the time being, there was no sign of Izaya. Suddenly, her phone started to ring loudly and obnoxiously with caller ID shining brightly on the screen and she really hoped it was just her half-asleep mind playing tricks on her, but the longer she glared at the screen the more she realized this wasn't a dream and reluctantly answered the phone.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she growled.

"Well that wasn't a very nice hello. Can't you at least pretend to like me?" said Izaya cheerfully no doubt smirking over the phone.

"No, that requires energy which I don't have at 11:30pm on New Year's Eve." She grumbled still groggy from her rude awakening.

"In any case, I have a job for you, my lovely half-breed. You have to deliver a package, that's currently sitting outside your door, and deliver it to the address on the card. The job has a time limit so you have thirty minutes to deliver it and if you don't make it on time, well, you know how these kinds of deals go down."

Regrettably, Jazmine accepted the forceful job offer and slunk her sleepy body out of bed and about to hang up but was stopped by a last minute detail.

"You've got 29 minutes. Good luck." He chimed before ending their conversation. She closed her phone abruptly and sighed heavily. Why did she even bother running around all over Ikebukuro being Izaya's errand girl? What was the point, other than the fact that the payment was good? The young half Dullahan dressed herself, using her black liquid smoke, in her black rider suit. Although she wasn't full Dullahan like her foster mother Celty, Jazmine could still ride her motorcycle/horse just as fast and that was one of her favorite perks of the job.

11:34 pm

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Jazmine ranted harshly under her breath and with good reason. She was waiting in what seemed like the longest line of traffic in all of human history. It was nearly thirty minutes to midnight and already people were celebrating and trying to get to parties and to their homes to be with their families. Well screw them! Jazmine had some place to go and a person to meet with a package to deliver and a limited amount of time to do it all in. As she tapped away her impatience on her motorcycle, an interesting and very crazy idea popped into her head. She thought about it for awhile and actually started to consider it and grinned confidently.

"Eh, why not? If I die then I don't have to hear Izaya's stupid complaints anymore." She closed the black tinted plate on her helmet and revved her engine and jumped on the roof of the car in front of her and continued to drive over the rest of the cars. Her motorcycle floated gracefully over the hoods of the cars with hardly leaving as much as a mark behind. Pedestrians stopped in the middle of their celebrations to stare in their intoxicated states with shock and aw as the legendary figure zoomed by them in a flash.

11:45 pm

"You must be fucking kidding me?" she grumbled as she stared at the note that was attached to the package. Izaya said that the location of the delivery would be on the note but what he failed to mention was that it was a doodle.

"He never makes my job any easier does he?"

She glared over the child-like doodle of a house with some sort of treasure box inside it and to the left of the house was a demented looking bird saying the word "squawk!" Jazmine felt her eye twitch with irritation and sighed heavily with disappointment. Did he really have nothing else better to do than make her job anymore stressful?

"Okay, so there's a bird-I think-, a house, and a treasure chest and when I figure this out it will give me the direction to my drop off where I have to be in…..15 minutes."

She sighed heavily and leaned against her bike and stared intently at the picture hoping that if she stared at it long enough the note would give her the answer. As she held the paper toward the pitch black sky, Jazmine wished she could turn back time to when she was asleep in her bed peacefully without a single hint of Izaya other than her strange as hell dream with the weird warehouse by the ocean and…..

"Oh, come on!" she hollered into the sky, "This has got to be a sick joke. I can't see the future; I'm only half Dullahan, nothing more nothing less."

Jazmine tried to convince herself that a dream is a dream and it would be stupid to actually act upon it. As she tapped her foot furiously against the pavement, she let out an irritated sigh and jumped on her bike and sped off to the "place of her dreams." How stupid.

11:55 pm

"I'm gonna need a hell of a lot of therapy when I'm done with this."

She stared up at a dark brown warehouse that looked ancient and ridged. As the ocean air blew on the decrepit building, the wood seemed to be screeching and crying as the wind blew through the hollow cracks. It stood on an old loading dock that hadn't been used in over 10 years and the only thing it was good for was to hide local gang members and drug addicts. With a horrible feeling in her gut and a slight sense of disturbance, she hoped off her motorcycle with the package in her hand and snuck her way into a wedge between the doors. It was just like dream. She stood there in the pitch black waiting for Izaya to pop out at any moment. She looked at the time and it was slowly closing in on the promised time. The last minute of the new year and she was spending it in the dark waiting for an Eskimo to rear his ugly head and get this unreasonable job over with.

"Izaya, I managed to get here through your crappy directions! I know you're here, you freak!"

At first there was silence but then suspicious beeping noises came from the darkness and so did a flickering spotlight and from that light an Eskimo jacket wearing figure stood.

"Well done, well done," he smirked, "I'm surprised you managed to find this place on such short notice." He was clapping his hands and praised her as if she was some trained dog. She sighed with irritation.

"Just who the hell do you think-"

"How about we just stay quiet and ring in the New Year with opening presents? You already have yours. Open it."

She glared at him suspiciously and dropped the box on the floor.

"Screw you, dude," she said, "I'm cold and tired and it's midnight and you made me carry a box that you could have just given me in the beginning, but you're just a dick so I'm going home."

She kicked the box over towards Izaya and it skid to a halt at his feet. He grimaced at her and gave a look that suggested he had other means of bringing his precious half-breed rider to this warehouse. He skipped over towards her before she reached the exit and popped in front of her.

"What do you want now?"

She was clearly irritated.

"Before you leave there's a riddle I want you to solve. Once you solve it you can go home." He seemed to be enjoying keeping his "friends" at bay.

"Fine what is it?"

"Just like the tango, it takes two to form me

I am warm with a lover but cold with a stranger

Men tell lies so they can have me

Women fall in love just to experience me

I'm easy to find if you look in the right place

Just look at your loved ones I'm right in their face

What am I?"

Jazmine replayed the riddle over and over in her head and thought of any keywords that could give her a hint. She thought of everything that was related to the main subject, she thought, of the riddle itself: dating, perhaps?

"Times up, Jazzy-chan. The answer is…"

He grabbed her hand abruptly and pulled her into his chest and cupped his hand under chin and pressed his surprisingly warm lips against hers. His free hand held firmly around her slim waist and pulled her closer with each second of their kiss. It took Jazmine so off guard that when the thought of Izaya kissing her started to seep through, her mind went completely blank. As Izaya broke off their kiss, she could feel his parting lips spread into a sinisterly sweet smile.

"… a kiss. Thanks for coming out to play today I had a lot of fun. Let's have 365 more days of fun just like today, shall we?"

And with that, he left the dumbfounded Dullahan shocked and stunned in the midst of a partly illuminated room and despite the lack of light, there was still the faintest sight of red spreading across her face.


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