A/N: Same thing as last chapter. Changed a few things, added a few bits.

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Don't get any money for it.


Chapter 2: A Problem Dealt With and a Problem to Deal With

It wasn't hard to find Zeniba's house. Chihiro followed the train tracks in the air and stopped at the house that was near the sixth train stop: Swamp Bottom. The lantern in the archway over the path to the door waved enthusiastically at her as she landed in the front yard. It was as if Zeniba had been waiting for her; the door opened the moment she was firmly on the ground. Chihiro bowed low and waited to see if Zeniba had anything to say.

"Well, well, Chihiro. I didn't expect you back at all, let alone so soon. Come inside my poor girl." She didn't seem angry at all or even disappointed, as Chihiro had feared she might be.

However, Chihiro was a little puzzled. At her size, there was no way she would fit inside the cottage, but she needn't have worried. Before her eyes, the cottage grew to accommodate Chihiro, Zeniba, and Kaonashi very comfortably. As she lay down on a long cushion on the floor, quite tired from her frantic journey up to Swamp Bottom, Zeniba prepared a drink on the stove, which she shortly poured into a bowl and set in front of Chihiro.

"Now, dear, drink up and tell me what happened. I will see if I can help you."

Chihiro hesitantly drank from the bowl. When she was confidant that is didn't taste like dung or socks, she downed it all. It tasted vaguely of mint, and honey, but its strangest property was its consistency. It seemed quite watery, but as Chihiro swallowed it, it seemed to become stickier than melted taffy, covering every inch of her throat as she repeatedly swallowed to get it down.

"Thank you," said Chihiro. Then she realized that she could speak. Her surprise must have somehow shown on her draconic features.

"Don't be so surprised dear," said Zeniba with a smile. "I am, after all, a witch. Now, tell me what happened to you."

Chihiro suspected that the witch already knew, or at least suspected, how she had been changed, but she proceeded to explain with her newfound voice how she had accidentally ignored Kohaku's warning and how this was plainly the consequence of her actions. When she was through, Zeniba looked at her with the same look of compassion and sympathy as she had the previous night.

"Well, my dear, it seems you are in quite a pickle." Zeniba sipped her tea and listened for a moment to Kaonashi's spinning wheel rhythmically rotate.

"Obaa-chan, please, could you-" Zeniba raised her hand to stop Chihiro's futile pleading.

"I'm sorry dear," she said. "I can't change you back."

Chihiro's body went limp. She lay stretched out, not caring if she ever got up again.

"Not permanently at least. It goes against the rules of our world." Chihiro's ears pricked up slightly, daring to hope.

"There is one thing I can do for you, but it will be painful. I really shouldn't even consider it. In fact," she said, refilling her teacup.

"What do you have in mind Obaa-chan?" Chihiro asked, her voice firm.

"Well, child," Zeniba replied, slowly and deliberately, "I can make a potion. It would give you the ability to change form from human to dragon at will."

"However!" she said, as Chihiro looked like she wanted to dance. "However, there's a catch. You MUST, I repeat, MUST be a dragon for at least half of every day; that is, from midnight of one day to midnight of the next, you must be a dragon for twelve hours or longer. The transformations to human form will be immensely painful, though I think going back to dragon form may be easier, and you will also have no control of your form if you have come to the end of your time for the day. Would you still like to live like this?"

"How long would the potion last?" Chihiro asked hesitantly.

"Your entire life, dearie. As long as you live and that spell is on you, my magic would work as well. I'd rather you think about the things I mentioned-"

"It sounds difficult," said Chihiro, interrupting her, "but I want to do it. How long will it take to make the potion?"

Zeniba sighed in resignation. "Just over an hour. That's how much longer the voice potion will last. Make the most of your voice as a dragon while you have it, dear." And with that, Zeniba went over to her cupboard to get ingredients for her potion while Chihiro had an almost one-sided conversation with Kaonashi.


Kohaku awoke just as the sun was setting. No use putting it off, he thought as he pulled on his pants and tunic, tied the sash, and walked out of his room. It was early, so Yubaba wouldn't be going down to see her customers just yet; she went down regularly for about three hours every day to get compliments and suggestions for improvements from her customers, which she took gladly in hopes of making her bathhouse even more popular. As he went up in the lift to Yubaba's office, he wondered how the dragon he had seen the previous day was doing. Those eyes. So strange. He knew he had never seen eyes like that in his life, yet, for some reason, they were familiar. As the lift reached the top floor, Haku shook his head to stop thinking about the dragon and start thinking about the matter at hand, quitting his apprenticeship with Yubaba. He took a minute to take a deep breath and prepare himself. This wasn't going to be pretty.

Kohaku knocked on the door, still a little nervous, but maintaining an emotionless face. As the door opened, he heard Yubaba's voice.

"I'm glad you came Haku. I was about to call for you."

That can't be good, Kohaku thought. There's either a new task for me to do, or some poor soul who wants a job. By the time he had finished his musing, he was at Yubaba's office door. Yubaba was alone except for the Kashira, those annoying, bouncing, gluttonous heads who were, as always, trying to get into the store of cookies on top of the mantelpiece. Yubaba herself was examining a rather large jewel under her magnifying glass, probably payment from a rich mountain god. After a moment, she noticed him.

"Ah, Haku. There's something I need you to do. I heard that Sen took my sister's seal from you and returned it. I need you to get it back." Yubaba always was short and to the point when giving Haku orders, but this was it. Even if he didn't already know his name, even if Chihiro was still working here, this would have been the last straw. He had just had his insides twisted about by that accursed seal not two days ago, no way in hell was he going to pull a second doomed heist for the thing that had nearly killed him. He gathered up his courage and let his news fire.

"I'll go to Zeniba's alright," he said, "but I refuse to steal again. I quit!" Yubaba was visibly shell-shocked.

"You can't quit! I own your name! I own you! You can't leave! That bug I snuck inside you will kill you! You can never leave!" Yubaba said all this very fast, as if she wasn't quite sure she was right. Haku gave a very small smile and almost chuckled.

"Chihiro killed that bug," he said as Yubaba's pupils got as tiny as pinpricks. "And I remember my real name. You have absolutely no power over me Yubaba." At this, Yubaba did something that surprised even Kohaku. She didn't become infuriated and attempt to strangle, burn, or tear him apart. She simply tipped off her chair and fell unconscious. Kohaku carefully crept towards Yubaba to make sure she wasn't faking and cast a small spell to deepen her sleep while he searched for the appropriate paperwork, namely that horrendous contract with his name on it.

By bribing the Kashira with the out-of-reach sweets, Kohaku soon had his hands on the contract he had signed. There was the name Haku, written in his handwriting. But that wasn't his name and it wasn't the name he had signed.

"My name is Nigihayami Kohakunushi," he said aloud, and the contract blew up in a small puff of smoke and fire. Kohaku coughed and waved the smoke away from his face, then grinned broadly, went to the window, jumped out, and became a dragon. It had been much easier than he thought!

Now to visit my fellow dragon, he thought as he flew. But when he came to the abandoned restaurant, no one was there. The only evidence that something had crashed here that day was the dragon shaped hole in the roof and the deep imprint on the floor where it had lay. There was no blood and no sign of a struggle, so Kohaku figured that the dragon had taken off by itself. He took care to memorize the dragon's scent before taking off again. It was no use hanging around; he needed to visit Zeniba and ask her advice on how to fulfill his promise to Chihiro that they would meet again soon. She had barely been gone for a day and he already missed her terribly. But as he flew to Swamp Bottom he still wondered where the other dragon was and surprised himself when he realized that he already missed the dragon, even though he didn't know anything about her.


"Well dear," said Zeniba as she took a pot off the stove," the potion is ready. Once again, I urge you, consider the pain you will go through. The fear. Are you absolutely sure that this is what you want?" Zeniba loved Chihiro dearly and was very reluctant to let her go through this treatment for her condition.

"Yes, Obaa-chan. I'm positive. I'd rather not stay a dragon for the rest of my life and I think being able to be human at least part of the time is my best chance at breaking whatever spell is on me, if it's possible to," Chihiro said. Something she didn't add was that she wanted to try to leave the spirit world in her human form. She knew that Zeniba would discourage her from doing so and she didn't want to feel as if she were going against her Obaa-chan's whishes. Zeniba poured the potion into a bowl, but she didn't place it before Chihiro.

"Before you drink this, however, you have to promise me one thing," said Zeniba. Chihiro could feel the color in her face drain and her heart sink to replace her stomach, which seemed to have disappeared. Of course. Obaa-chan would think this through entirely before giving the potion to me, she thought. Sure enough . . .

"You must swear on your life that you will not willingly attempt to cross the river barrier between this and the human world."

"Why Obaa-chan?" Chihiro almost whined in frustration.

"Because if you do, you will die."

"I don't understand."

"Child," Zeniba said patiently, "while you are under this spell, you are a hanyou, a half-breed, and no spirit, not even one who is merely half-spirit, can survive crossing the barrier without having something that gives them a tie to the human world, something to be guardian over, and you have to be born with such a tie. There is no way you can cross before becoming completely human again. Do you understand?" Zeniba's look of love was tinted with a stern aura that Chihiro had only seen when Zeniba's shikigami army was attempting to take her seal back from Kohaku. It had been only two days ago, but it seemed like an eternity.

"How long do you think it will take to break the spell," Chihiro asked, finally voicing the main question that had been bothering her. She heard her voice grow hoarse and soft; the potion was wearing off.

"I don't know dear. It might be possible, but it could just as easily be irreversible. No human has ever been in our world and had this problem before, so I doubt anyone knows whether your spell is breakable at all." Chihiro's heart sunk even lower.

Zeniba gave the tiniest of smiles. "Now, I ask you, do you truly want to follow through with this? Don't answer right away. Your boyfriend is coming and, unless I'm mistaken, you don't want to show him who you really are. Go into the shed next to the house through the back door. I will tell you when he's gone." Chihiro nodded, for her voice was now completely gone, and did as Zeniba said, moving silently through the night to the shed, which opened before her. She slipped inside just as a wind whipped around the trees that surrounded Zeniba's house, feeling slightly annoyed at her Obaa-chan for teasing her once again and saying that Kohaku was her boyfriend.