Tony: For whatever reason, this chapter started out slow and then picked up so much speed that it shocked me… Also, Leomitch? I beat you to it. (I'll explain at the bottom.) Anyway, go enjoy. I don't own.

Chapter XX

Disappear

Sirris watched as Luke made his rounds. Jade had explained their plan to her, the whole plan. And, while she had thought it a stupid one at first, she had to agree that no, it wasn't as dumb as it had originally sounded. Of course, with herself and Jade practically grounded in Grand Chokmah, Anise and Ion stuck in Daath, and Natalia busy, the number of people that could search for Roran was significantly less than she would have liked.

"Hey Luke, go take a break. I'm going to take a walk," she called out to the redhead. Luke crossed his arms.

"If Frings comes by and finds out you're not here…" he trailed off. Sirris shrugged.

"Tell him I'm mapping out a new route for you. Lord knows you memorize them fast enough," she said. Luke sighed, but left it alone, which Sirris was grateful for as she stepped onto the streets. She knew where she was headed, and the fact that she was going to let go of the best part of her life like this was something that she wasn't completely comfortable with.

However, she was also sick of seeing the rough transition in her hair between the honey-blonde and crimson. That, and she needed a cut anyway. Her hair was past her shoulders again. She knew exactly who to go to as well.

Guy was surprised to see her when she knocked on his door, but after a short argument and an even shorter explanation, the two of them found themselves in front of a mirror again. Sirris just smiled whenever Guy grumbled about not being her personal hair stylist, but it was all good-natured fun, and both of them were happy for the change in pace.

"So, other than talking another haircut out of me, what were you doing?" Guy asked as he finished up with the majority of her hair. Sirris had insisted upon trimming her bangs herself, which she promptly did the moment the scissors were in her hand.

"Well, I told Luke that if someone from the military came by to check up on me to tell them I'm mapping out a new course for him, so I might as well do that while I'm at it… and then I'm considering going a little more in-depth with his poisons. He only knows a basic few and how they kill," she replied.

Guy sighed. "That you can talk about stuff like that so easily should probably concern me. No offense Sirris, but I miss Topaz," he told her. Sirris's eyes, which had, for the most part today, been a deep emerald green, lightened into the color that Guy had been told her mother's eyes had been.

"Yeah, me too. I wish things were that simple," she whispered. Then she sighed. "Well, I'd best be off before someone decides to start looking for me. Namely, my father."

Guy just rolled his eyes and followed her to the door. Sirris had absolutely no problems with testing the limits of he probation, everyone knew that. He just wished she wouldn't push it quite so much.

Sirris, keeping true to her word, started wandering around town, mapping out a route in her mind. Luke's stamina was doing great, and his speed wasn't too bad. He'd made the run from Grand Chokmah to St. Binah in two days, so she wasn't too worried about that. But what about his agility?

Sirris crossed her arms and looked around. She didn't need him running through the crowds here, but she didn't necessarily want him running through back alleys so much. Some too-observant-for-their-own-good people would notice things like a teen running through an alley in the middle of the day.

The girl sighed. She had been hoping to avoid this, but as she was getting nowhere just standing around thinking, she had to come up with a route the old fashioned way.

Sirris took off running down an alley, using a couple of crates to give her the lift she needed to reach a small overhang. She jumped from that overhang onto the roof, where she stopped a moment to take a look around.

Now that Grand Chokmah was no longer at war, she could get to that one place again. Sirris stopped to consider the sanctuary for a moment, but no such consideration was necessary. She headed off toward the palace, and the waterfalls behind it.

She grinned as she started jumping from the roof of one building to the roof of the next. Her mind wasn't on Luke's training at all anymore. No, it was on the pure feeling of freedom that coursed through her veins while she was in midair above a gap between buildings.

She finally slowed as she reached the edge of the courtyard outside the palace. The large pillars were supposed to be purely decorative, but if you could get up onto the stone semi-circle they held up, you could use that as a walkway. And, let's face it. Who looks up?

Sirris took her time walking along on the stone, holding her hands out to the sides and putting one foot directly in front of the other, as if the walkway was a fifth of its real size and she had bad balance. A smile graced her lips as she reached the point where the waterfalls began. The water bubbled out an inch from each side of the ledge, and while the stone was wet, the unregistered assassin had absolutely no difficulties walking across it.

Where the pillars rose within the waterfall area, a square came up and out of the walkway, disrupting the water and leaving that square area dry. It was in a place like this that Sirris sat, staring out over the ocean as the waterfall raged down below her. Her eyes reflected the light blue of the water from the falls, and for the first time in a long time, she was completely peaceful.

She hated him. That was all there was to it. She hated that lying, cold-hearted bastard. All she wanted to do was run. Run, far away from him, far away from Roran, somewhere where people will never find her, where she'll never have to deal with the people who hurt her ever again.

She knew it was impossible, but it was her dream regardless. 'One day,' she would tell herself. 'One day, it'll happen. I'll be free.'

She was still running, but now people were staring at her. She needed to get out of sight, someplace quiet, someplace she could be alone.

She spotted a stack of crates, and a ledge she could use to reach the rooftop. A smirk wormed its way across her face as she jumped up onto the crates, then onto the ledge, then finally to the roof. She looked around. The roof was dingy, but she had this feeling in her stomach, much like the one she'd gotten when she had climbed into the highest branches of a tree in the Fabre Manor.

Looking around, she spotted a not-quite-enclosed circle of pillars that encased the palace and its courtyards. On the far side, the pillars released waterfalls, and the girl examined the area carefully. The pillars and the stone they held up looked sturdy, enough that she could easily walk on it, but how would she get up there?

The answer came in the form of the military headquarters. She had just been there earlier, yes, trying to get… him to change his mind about her. But, that had failed.

A sour, dark feeling came back to her as her thoughts fell on him, so she ignored it and headed around, managing to reach the roof of the military headquarters easily. She then made a very careful jump onto the stone that was supported by the pillars.

Some time later, after crawling along the pathway (she didn't trust herself to walk along it and not loose her balance), she reached the first of the waterfalls. There was plenty of space between the gushing spouts of water for her to continue crawling, but she didn't especially want to get soaked.

Her fear of falling won out over her displeasure at getting wet. She wanted to see the view from the center of these falls, where she could look out over the entire ocean, view unimpeded by buildings and whatnot.

The small, redheaded seven-year-old sat in the middle of the waterfalls finally, and stared out over the ocean in awe. The roaring of the water drowned out everything she didn't want to hear. It washed away the resentment, the pain, the grief, and the longing, leaving only a quiet, awed feeling in its wake.

And Sirris smiled.

Sirris sighed. She had been up here for at least an hour now. Someone was going to start wondering where she was.

She stood and headed back the way she had come. Despite having picked up all of the burdens she had put down upon sitting, they weighed far less on her now that she had had a chance to relax. She smiled.

'Maybe, if this works out, I'll be able to come here more often,' she thought to herself.

A flash of blonde hair caught her attention, and she looked down expecting to see Guy. Rather than the blonde noble, however, she spotted instead the enigmatic blonde whom she had found in a tree in Theor Forest. She crossed her arms, noting his course carefully, and then took off, running now instead of taking her own sweet time.

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop was child's play for Sirris, and as she caught sight of the young man again, she grinned, running to an area ahead of him and jumping down to the street carefully, using a window ledge as a jump board to slow herself down before she hit the stone road.

She then managed to intercept the blonde in question.

"Going somewhere?" she asked. He looked at her in shock, obviously not expecting to see her so soon. He then began a frantic scramble for words, which Sirris held up a hand to stop. "Relax. Although, you might want to get yourself registered before you keep that up," she told him. He gave her a confused look, but before he could reply, Sirris was gone. The redhead-turned-blonde was jumping over the gate into the garden behind the Curtiss manor when she heard the raised voices.

"I don't know!" Jade yelled. Sirris felt sorry for whoever he was arguing with. Jade rarely raised his voice, but when he did, it was scary.

Remaining hidden behind a nicely-sized potted plant, Sirris got to watch the next few seconds of the argument.

To cut things short, since many curse words are used here, Jade was arguing with General Frings over his lack of knowledge regarding his daughter's location.

Sirris decided that enough was enough as she stepped out from behind the potted plant. Aslan stopped arguing the moment she came into view, while Jade, it seemed, was still rather annoyed.

"Where have you been?" he demanded. Sirris crossed her arms.

"I was trying to come up with a new course for Luke. Then I got sick of fighting with that and decided to spend a little while in my special spot," she answered. Aslan sighed.

"You know you're not supposed to leave here without supervision, right?" he asked. Sirris scowled.

"As if I'd let anyone at my special spot. I'd have ditched them the minute I decided to go there. And anyway, I had to run out a course to decide on it, and there's no way anyone other than maybe Luke or Valon would be able to keep up with me," she replied. Aslan scratched the back of his head.

"I can't keep covering for you when you do this kind of stuff, Sirris. I understand not wanting people to know about your special place, but if someone is looking for you and we can't find you, we'll be forced to assume that either you've run away or Jade has sent you out of town," he told her. Sirris scowled.

"If I tell you where my secret place is, you have to promise never to tell anyone else. Oh, and not to try and get there," she told him. Aslan crossed his arms.

"How can I figure out if you're there if I can't go?" he asked. Sirris sighed.

"Promise first, then I'll explain," she said. Then, looking over at Jade, she added, "You too."

"We promise," the two men chorused after exchanging a glance. Sirris turned and headed out of the manor. Aslan and Jade followed her, and once they were out in the garden, she could point.

"Past those buildings are the waterfalls behind the palace," she stated. "Up top, in the middle of the waterfalls. That's my special place. You can see it easily from the far side of the courtyard in front of the palace."

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?" Aslan asked. Sirris smiled.

"Only if you're afraid of heights and have bad balance. Neither of which apply to me anymore, so yeah… The top of the stone held up by the pillars is a really nice walkway. And, sure there's a little water in the middle once you get to the waterfalls part, but it's really peaceful," she told him. Jade sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets.

"Let me guess, you sit facing the ocean?" he muttered. Sirris nodded, and Jade looked over towards where the ocean was supposed to be. Buildings blocked the way, but he had enough of an imagination to allow for that. "Risa… always sat down at the piers whenever I saw her around town."

Sirris stopped and watched the expression on Jade's face. It always seemed to change whenever he started talking about Risa. Of course, normally he'd say one sentence, pause for a few minutes, and then would either leave or change the subject. The feelings she would see swimming in his eyes were never hidden though. Pain, regret, longing, hope, and, surprisingly enough, love. Tiny, miniscule amounts of that, of course, but it told Sirris all she needed to know.

Jade was willing to change. He'd learned his lesson.

And it struck bitter chords within Sirris's heart to think that she had, only two weeks before, been so willing to throw away her own life, when she had an idea of what Jade would feel if she did so.

She left him and Aslan then, heading toward her room. She wanted to stop and think for a moment. Curling up on her bed gave her more than enough space to think.

A quiet noise caught her attention though, and as she turned around, she spotted the intruder immediately. Not quickly enough to avoid the damp cloth he placed over her nose and mouth though. She was about to laugh at the idiot's stupidity when her heart rate quickened. It wasn't a drug on the rag…

It was miasma…

Sirris almost chuckled as her body shut itself down.

(1st Person POV – Cloud)

"Huh? Hey, I thought you guys left."

I turned to see Arashi running through the alley to catch up to me. I shrugged and took the last few steps towards the door, opening it and slipping inside. Arashi managed to slip in with me.

"It's just me. Amai's trying to find something out," I finally told him. Arashi started skipping ahead. Normally, I wouldn't let him, but this was Assassins' Guild HQ, so I didn't bother. I knew he had a friend here.

"What kinda somethin'?" he asked. I rolled my eyes.

"Speak normally or forever hold your peace around me," I grumbled. He grinned.

"I object!"

"You object to a lot of things, Arashi. Although, usually you just say 'no' repeatedly."

I chuckled at that comment as the redhead came down the hall. "Nice to see you too, Luke. I heard your plan to get Sirris out worked," I told him. Luke sighed.

"Yeah, but now we have to find Roran. And what's worse, Sirris has a tendency to push the boundaries on her probation," he replied. I sighed.

"Well, I supposed I could help with that. I've got nothing better to do right now," I told them. Arashi crossed his arms, but the freed one arm from the tangle to tap his forehead.

"Help like that, or help like this?" he asked, tapping right next to his eye once and then poking himself in the eye. A loud yelp resulted from that, while I just laughed. Sometimes, my little brother can be such an idiot.

"Eh, I haven't looked around like that in a while. Might as well, or Skye's going to have no difficulties blocking me," I decided. I looked over at Luke. "Got a nice-sized map somewhere?"

He crossed his arms. "Jade should have a few. Let's head over there," he suggested. I shrugged. I didn't especially care where I was right now. Amai had told me to come back here while she continued to search, but I had absolutely no idea why.

Unfortunately, we never reached the Curtiss manor. Luke was the one to spot the silver head moving away, and once he had shot off, Arashi and I had no difficulties spotting Skye. I growled under my breath and took off after my brother, but not before I saw the black-haired, green-eyed former assassin that was causing so much trouble.

"Arashi, turn around and head right! Go after Roran!" I yelled at the boy. He nodded once and turned to run back the way he had been going, while I shot past him. Skye was moving fast, but then, so were Luke and I. To make things worse, I could recognize that shade of pine green anywhere.

"We're not going to catch him before he reaches Nigai," I told Luke. The redhead groaned, seeing that my sister was already singing. By the time Skye was within her reach, the winds were already picking up.

I spotted a figure with short, honey-blonde hair in Skye's arms just before the two of them disappeared.

Luke and I reached the spot where Nigai had disappeared and stopped. "Great. Missed them," I grumbled. Luke looked around, apparently only now noticing the fact that we were short one annoying fourteen-year-old. Or is he fifteen now? I can never remember…

"Where's Arashi?" he wondered.

Yup. He hadn't noticed. "I sent him back after I spotted Roran. I realize he's the biggest problem here, but I have a bone to pick with my brother, so you'll have to excuse me if I find going after him a greater priority than going after Roran."

Luke sighed. "Come on. Let's try to catch up to them," he suggested. I nodded, heading back to where I had spotted Roran earlier. From there, I closed my eyes, looking around me in a way I haven't done in a while.

I managed to lock in on Arashi almost immediately, but as he seemed to be lost and with no indication of why he was where he was, I started searching for someone else instead. I distinctly remembered Jade as having a very dark red aura, maybe if I honed in on that rather than trying to find him in this crowd...

When I couldn't find him in town, I reach out a little further. Finally, the red aura I was looking for caught onto my radar. I smirked when I realized that he was chasing Roran as well.

I drew away and opened my eyes, letting the mild headache that always comes with seeing like that fade away before I started running. Luke was confused, but I didn't have the time to explain, not right now. Jade and Roran were heading for the forest, and the dark, dark blue aura I've always associated with Sirris isn't in Grand Chokmah either. Strange. Where could she have run off to?

It hit me so suddenly that I actually tripped over a drain pipe that I would normally avoid. Luke pauses. "Go!" I yelled at him. He was gone in a moment, whereas I was resting up against the wall and closing my eyes again. It couldn't have been Sirris that Skye and Nigai made off with, could it?

The sight of her red hair giving way to honey-blonde was evidence in itself, but I had to check anyway.

Finding my siblings was a pain, partly because I didn't bother to do this very often, and partly because Skye was blocking me. I've always been pretty good at locating his shields though. His talent with this gift is finding things quickly. Mine is hiding things, which I can do without making it totally obvious.

Wrestling my way through his shields, however, is going to be another story. I groan. I'll be here for a while. Especially since he seems to like reinforcing his barriers around me once I'm part-way in. A valiant effort at first, but now a rather effective method of trapping me.

I finally managed to get past Skye as the sun was dipping down in the sky. Roran was there, which was unsurprising, Nigai was asleep, and Skye, it seemed, had given up trying to fight with me in favor of looking after other people. But, there was no Sirris. Not there, at least, and I searched the whole area.

When my wide search area managed to encompass the Absorption Gate for only a moment, I caught onto something that I was sure did not belong there.

Let me tell you something. whenever I'm searching for something like this, I have pretty much a birds-eye view. However, anything below ground requires for me to go… well, below ground. So the first few times I did this, I got motion sickness.

That, and I'm afraid of falling and turning into a Cloud pancake now.

I felt like I was plunging down toward the ground. As the Absorption Gate reached me, I slipped through everything solid, heading straight down to where Arashi later told me the fight with Van occurred.

Sure enough, I spotted the dark blue aura easily once I was on that level. It was much dimmer than usual though, which meant that either she was dying, or she was comatose. I examined her as closely as I could, but to no avail. My guess, however, was that she was comatose rather than dying. Otherwise, I'm sure her aura would have been flickering, even a little.

I retreated back into my body and took a deep breath, then looked around. The sun had set beyond the walls of Grand Chokmah, but the life hadn't slowed down one bit. I shrugged and headed off to Jade's manor. Hopefully, everyone else would be there.

I walked in on what seemed to be a heated argument.

"I didn't have a choice!" Aslan Frings was yelling. Surprisingly, it was Guy that was arguing with him while Luke stood off to the side. I slipped around the room, carefully avoiding the two men that were fighting in the middle.

"What happened?" I asked Luke. His expression was grave, more so now than it had been earlier.

"Sirris is gone, Cloud. Since we couldn't find her, and the Malkuth military spotted Jade running out of the Theor Forest before returning much later, they're assuming that he helped her to escape…" Luke told me. I sighed and leaned against the wall next to him.

"In other words, Jade's been arrested because Skye and Nigai decided to kidnap Sirris," I muttered. Luke looked over at me in shock.

"Wait, you mean that was Sirris?" he asked. I opened my mouth, but as things seemed to be a bit too quiet, I looked over at Guy and Frings.

"You two done?" I asked.

"You know where Sirris is?" Frings inquired. I rolled my eyes.

"I know where Arashi's pet duck is," I told him sarcastically. Then I stopped and actually thought about it. What had happened to that duck?

"Your brother ate it."

I looked over at Arashi in the doorway in confusion, then realized that I had said that last comment out loud. Then I smiled.

"So he can do something useful," I muttered. Arashi rolled his eyes.

"Just because you didn't like him…" he grumbled, very pointedly taking up temporary residence on the opposite side of the room. I shrugged.

"Whatever…" I replied. Then I turned back to Frings. "Actually, we can blame Skye and Nigai for Sirris's disappearance. And since Roran seems to be… Well, shit." I banged my head against the wall. "I am such an idiot."

"Uh, okay. What did you just figure out that none of us seem to have gotten to yet?" Guy wondered. I growled.

"Roran was the diversion. We need him to get Sirris out of jail for good, so he knew we'd go after him the moment we saw him. Especially Jade. He wasn't trying to get away from Jade, he was trying to lure him out of Grand Chokmah, into Theor Forest at least, and from the sounds of it, past it. Meanwhile, Skye is grabbing Sirris and Nigai is waiting for him so she can teleport them off," I told them. "Brilliant plan, really. Not helpful at all to our cause, but then, I think that's the point."

Frings looked concerned. "If they've framed Jade, we can get him and Sirris out at the same time. We just need proof that they were framed," he said. Guy sighed.

"And that's always the hardest part, isn't it?" he muttered. I ran a hand through my hair.

"They've left Sirris at the Absorption Gate. I'm not sure why, but she's comatose," I told them. Three suspicious looks were directed to me, while Arashi seemed to be plotting something.

"How do you know that?" Frings asked. I bit my lip. I didn't especially want to try to explain my ability, but…

"Everyone in our family has a special ability. Cloud and Skye can find anyone, anywhere, though while they can both find and hide people, Skye finds people better than he hides them and Cloud hides people better than he finds them," Amai explained, stepping into the room with Ellie on her heels.

The attention suddenly turned from me to her.

"What are you doing back here?" Guy asked. Ellie crossed her arms.

"I think I managed to uncover something, and if I'm right, it's exactly what both Nigai and Sirris were investigating. Well, Sirris was attempting to investigate it. Either way, it explains why she kept trying to capture Sync," she rambled. "Oh, and by the way… I've already taken the liberty of calling Noelle to bring one of the Albiores. We'll need one to get to the Absorption Gate, though I figured we'd need it regardless of where we're going."

Tony: So then… First off, I apologize for taking so long. I was going to update on Christmas rather than the day before, but family came over and mom wouldn't let me on the computer. And then I was busy trying to talk Kairi out of… stuff… (she was depressed in a really bad way) And then we had what we thought was a family emergency come up. It turned out to be an aunt over-reacting. So, yes. Insanity hit. Also, it may be hard to believe, but we are in the final stretch here. We'll have chapter 21 on January 7, followed by the final chapter on January 20. Anyone figured out why that date yet?

Leon: You know, it's hard to believe you made it this far through a story.

Tony: Yeah, well, we may be in the final stretch but we're not done yet. Besides, just because we're in the final stretch for this story doesn't mean you guys have to say goodbye to these characters. There's a part II of Bloodline. And a part III. (Although I'm fairly certain that Part III takes place a quite some time after the end of the game… Part II, on the other hand, picks up where Bloody Nightshade is going to leave off. Well, about.)

Leon: Ahem…

Tony: Right, reviewer response-

Leomitch- You know, I wrote up the second cameo appearance, and two days later, you reviewed. I think I beat you to it. But, I'm probably going to stick you in there at least once more before Bloody Nightshade ends. 'Probably' just a random snippet in the last chapter that 'might' involve breaking the fourth wall and seriously confusing someone. (Yes, I've already gotten it written up… Even though the majority of 21 and not much of 22 has been written… just bits and pieces. I can't seem to get it all to come out at once…)

Tony: You know… I… I'm honestly a little scared about finishing this… I think I'm going to have to go back through a fix up some chapters of BN before I can get to work on BH though… Do all authors get like this when they know they're so close to finishing up a storyline?