DISCLAIMER: I don't own Darker Than Black and its sequels. This fanfiction is NOT for profit, only for fun.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews, InflatedChimp, Dear4Life, tityuio and A.J Sawyer.

Ages: Xing/Bai: 9 years; Hei: 12 years

Names: Xing means star; Bai means white; Hei means black; Tian means sky

OC description:

Chiang Linh: middle-aged Chinese woman; long black hair; blue eyes

Chiang Fa: middle-aged Chinese man; brown hair; blue eyes


Chapter 12

Day 27

The children were at the attic, looking for an old star atlas, Tian thought might come in handy for his paper presentation the upcoming week. The wooden floor creaked beneath their steps and small clouds of dust made the already hot air in the room even more unbearable. So the boy went over to the roof-light and opened it, only to take immediately a few steps back. He really hated heights and the lower brim of the window only reached his tights and gave the impression that there wasn't anything between him and the high-angled roof. Not in a lifetime would he look down from a roof of a high building, not for all the money in the world.

His heartbeat was slowing down as he calmed and the boy concentrated his attention towards the stack of cardboard-boxes labeled with books. He approached them with his sister in tow. While Tian lifted the boxes down and placed them next to each other, Xing was looking inside for the desired book. When he just placed yet another heavy box down, a large spider crawled up from the cardboard's side and on top. Tian's eyes widened. He wouldn't scream like his sister used to do – which she didn't do at the moment – but he wasn't fond of those creatures either. The boy was looking around and was about to reach for and old rag in a corner when his sister's calm voice stopped him.

"I'll take care of it, oniichan." Xing said and approached the animal, her old self had despised and feared. Under the watchful eyes of her brother the little girl stretched her index-finger towards the insect until she was almost touching it. Then her eyes glowed in an eerie red and her in blue wrapped body lighted up the dim room when a lightening jumped from her fingertip over to the moribund spider.

Just as quickly as those lights had appeared they were gone and his sister was staring at him like nothing special had happened. Tian swallowed hard, his eyes pinned to the zapped insect. Did this just really happen? Fear was knotting his gut and he carefully looked up to the girl, his kind sister had become. What the hell was she?

A few minutes must have past by and he was still staring onto her while Xing was already back at looking for the atlas. The boy contemplated the situation as calmly as he could. She didn't make the impression to want to harm him and she seemed to have known of this power. So, if she had wanted to use it on him, then she would have had plenty of opportunities. His stunned state slowly lightened up, yet he kept his distance to the girl. "What… Sinc-… How did you do that?" He eventually brought out.

The girl looked first up to her brother than back at her hand and shrugged her shoulders. "Dunno… I simply do it."

She seemed as clueless as he felt and Tian dared to approach his supernatural sister a few steps. He looked at her with concerned eyes and marveled anew what had happened with her the night the moon and stars had vanished. What was it that had made the Gates appear while it had taken his sister's soul away? Maybe the expedition into the Hell's Gate in two weeks would bring answers on how to return his beloved sister to the kind and happy girl she used to be.

There was no reason to tell his parents about this ability, they would only freak out – they had enough to worry about already - and Xing seemed to have it under control just fine. "Xing, don't use this power again."

Then there came her favorite word again. "Why?"

"This is not normal. You know that you normally can't zap a spider with your finger, right?" People would surely take her away from them to find out what made her different, or worse they would kill her in fear of her. She was still his sister – at least Tian hoped so.

"I'm not normal?" Xing contemplated this information while yawning. It was true that humans didn't possess such powers – only in mangas and comics – and she hadn't done so until recently, but it felt so normal having this ability. It was a part of her.

Tian made a face and hugged his sister tentatively. "You are my sister and I love you. It doesn't matter to me." Though a part of the boy felt uneasy about this entire revelation. "If someone would know, they would take you away and make horrible experiments with you." He knew those weren't only made-up scenarios by Hollywood.

Xing understood this and nodded, her head resting on his shoulder. She would be extremely careful from now on, but this feeling or knowledge that came along her ability kind of gave her the hunch that there was even more to her powers than just electrical currents. She wanted to know what she was capable of.


From then on, an incredible weight lifted from her parents' hearts as Xing would return to a normal sleep pattern – the naps were only exceptions anymore. Her behavior didn't change, yet her mother decided it was now fine to work longer at the observatory. Her daughter seemed to be better and at her work were great changes underway.

The government had started to build another building adjoined to the observatory. Not even the boss of the observatory, Fa, had been told the reason for the new room or the modification of the inner of the already existing building.

After Fa's theory about the star's behaviors and the tornados was verified, his team was even able to pinpoint the other two novas to earthquakes in Africa and gravitation anomalies in Chile. But they also found out that some shudders of the usually inactive bright stars would match in timing with other phenomena like a series of fires in Chicago and especially cruel deaths of Hungarian people by something the crime scene investigators determined to be a vacuum – with children's bodies nearby that had bleed to death.

It had taken almost three weeks, many sleepless nights and overtime – not to mention the countless phone-calls and emails to news-stations and local authorities all over the world – but they were sure that those new stars were more than just shining cosmic bodies.

The Japanese government seemed to be impressed by his team's findings and was indeed believing in the correlation. Therefore, Fa got the order to monitor all stars – of course with the help of the other Japanese observatories – and report all activities immediately.

Pushing the fascination of the new stars and the strange phenomena aside, Fa had a really bad feeling every time he saw one of the thousands of stars shudder and sparkle in different spectra.


A/N: This was short, yet I hope you liked it. At least a little zap-zap in front of Hei.

Thanks to InflatedChimp and Dear4Life for pointing out a mistake.