I'm back! Did you all miss me? Welcome to the sequel of Pretty in Black! If you liked the first one, chances are great that you'll like this one too. This story is a combination of the sequel to my failed Lyserg story To the Ends of the Earth and an idea I had when I was writing Pretty in Black. This focuses not only on Horohoro and Rin, but also on Lyserg. So the points of view will be changing from one to the other.

Let's get rolling!Red Sky at Morning

Chapter 1

London, England

5 years later…

"Here's the accumulative data from the past four years. I don't think you're going to like it." A stack of neatly bound papers was laid on the desk.

"Thank you." Lyserg Diethel flipped through the papers to a chart in the back and frowned. "Is this right?"

"As far as I know, yes. Some of the info we had previously collected was wrong or a dud (those are in the last segment) so I had to go and re-graph everything. So yeah, it's right as far as I know."

Lyserg bit a fingernail thoughtfully as he studied the chart and skimmed through the papers. "The trend is up." He closed the report, rubbed his eyes, and laughed ruefully. "We were such idiots back then. What were we thinking?" He looked up at his assistant, who just shrugged.

"We were kids. It was the Shaman Fight."

"I meant the X-Laws. John should have never activated the X-Laser."

OOO

Amori Prefecture, Tōhoku Region, Japan

Rin drew in a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. Even after four years, the Matsumura compound had more or less remained the same if one did not count the number of young shaman that had gathered there for teaching and protection. After the shaman fight had ended (but what that actually meant, no one knew) Rin found herself back home, once again tending to the house and the other mundane chores that was required to put a large house back in order after being left alone for over a little more than a year.

Did time actually move that fast? She didn't know. The horrors of the Fights and the death of Mitoko seemed to have left her in a state of mind that wanted to forget everything and speed up time in order to put a distance between her and the past.

Horohoro had said that it was important to remember these things, no matter how much one wanted to forget; that stories helped future generations not to make the same mistakes their ancestors did. Rin just wished that she had known that sooner.

Rin watched as a troupe of kids ran past her laughing and bidding her a quick greeting and farewell in the same sentence. She smiled. The kids here were wonderful; happy to be able to be who they were without having to worry about what "normal" humans would think. When most of them first came, they were quiet and close, but eventually bloomed after the first month or two. The first students she had and still remained had given the different age and level groups different names and everyone the overall name of "Children of the Mountain", "The Mountain" their name for the compound.

There had been a big fuss over the name, insisting that it was corny, but it stuck nonetheless and there were few complaints. She and Horohoro were known as simply "Sensei" and "Shihan".

She and Horohoro's relationship, forged from the fires of the Shaman Tournament, was stronger now than it was then. Rin had often thought of marriage, for she was now 19, but that dream seemed unattainable at the moment. Her home was here in Amori, while Horohoro's was is Hokkaido. He was often tending to the Fuki fields he and his sister Pirika kept to help the Koropokur, while she remained in the mountains of western Amori caring for the shaman that had taken refuge there to hide themselves from the persecuting eyes of the world.

He often spent a few months there, helping her teach the older children to Hyoi Gattai, Oversoul, among other battle techniques, and the importance of using their talents for the good of man and nature, while she taught the younger ones the finer points, such as how to behave in public, the oneness of a shaman and their spirit ally, and simple tricks. In return for his help, she went to Hokkaido to help with the Fuki fields, bringing some of her students with her.

She sometimes got together with everyone she had known when she first went to Funbari Hill: Yoh, Anna, Ryu, Manta, and Ren, but never stayed long. Yoh and Anna had married a year after the Shaman Fights and had their son, Hana, who was now four, and Funbari Inn was now Anna's dream onsen. Ryu was employed as a chef, and Ren just came by often. Faust VII was also employed there as a doctor; everyone's lives were seemingly back to normal.

Well, as normal as one gets.

"Sensei."

Rin turned her head to acknowledge the voice. It was one of her original students, Yuki. "Yes?"

Yuki pointed a finger in the direction of the front gate. "There's someone at the front gate."

Rin stepped off of the porch on which she had been sitting and stepped into her shoes to investigate. Yuki followed. It was one of the rules here that when someone new arrived, it was to be reported to her or Horohoro, when he was here, and they would carry on from there. It was a measure that ensured the safety of the compound and its inhabitants.

Rin pulled open a door of the gate and was greeted by a mass of red hair. Her eyes widened in surprise at the face she hadn't seen in years.

"Matsua."

Huh, huh? You like? Good. I liked it. It took me a while to figure out the ages and stuff and they may or may not be right, but just deal with it. I called it "Mountain" because in my thesaurus, it said "a group of things gathered together haphazardly." (So obviously I'm not referring to the landform.) It seemed appropriate. Uhh, nothing more! Review!

Jai Akari