Okay, guys, I've got two potential names in mind that I like. So when you review this chapter, could you add a one or a two in your review, to help me decide fairly?

Azlea – yes, Natsuki has cracked. And I agree; she might be more deserving of the straight jacket and padded room she wanted to use to solve Izaya's 'problems' early on.\

Alwaysblu – that remains to be seen~

Erika Karisawa's Apprentice – I figured it was you.

Shan-kun – that happy, huh?

Disclaimer: what's mine is mine and what's part of DRRR! is not mine. Unfortunately.

Izaya kept his expression neutral. He wasn't sure how to respond.

She said she loved him. Did she mean it? And if so, why would she then reject his offer?

Why had she rejected it in the first place?

"If that's all…?" she prompted. Izaya nodded, silent. He'd known she was unpredictable, but he still hadn't considered the possibility of her rejecting his offer if she understood what he was trying to tell her. He should have, but she didn't.

One of the reasons he saw her as above humanity, one of the reasons he was beginning to value her for herself, was the fact that she was so impossible to predict. Yet he still tried to predict her, and he was still surprised – and maybe a little offended, but surely that was all it was, nothing more, nothing deeper, or at least that's what he told himself – when she didn't react the way he thought she would.

Apparently taking his nod as a dismissal, Arlua stepped around him and walked down the hallway. He turned to watch her go, expression still blank, hiding his emotions.

"I love you too, but my answer is still no. I don't want to be your technician."

She couldn't have meant it, not the first part, because if she had, she wouldn't leave, would she? She wouldn't reject his offer – reject him – would she?

"I don't want to be your technician." Had he imagined the emphasis on your?

But then, trying to figure out what she would do was what had gotten him into this.

So he didn't consider calling her back. He didn't stop her from leaving. He watched her go, and decided that he would focus on more immediate things, like confronting the woman who had so tidily exposed his files online while ignoring the issue of the woman who had taken those same files down for his sake.

Arlua emerged from the building, glad that he hadn't followed her.

"I don't want to be your technician." It was true. She didn't want to be his technician. And the first part was true, too. She'd intended to say it jokingly, but it had come out completely honest.

"I love you, too."

She wondered if the affection and loyalty she felt was really for him, really a true emotion, if her feelings included the cruel, manipulative parts of him that she knew existed but had never been really aimed at her, or if she only liked the playful, challenge-providing side of him. That was why she didn't want to be his technician. She didn't know for sure if she wanted to be his anything, but she knew she didn't want to work for him, for the reasons she had told him and for the reason that she didn't know how she felt, and she didn't like that her personal feelings had become entangled with her work.

She couldn't afford to take a private contract with him, anyway, she reasoned. Natsuki's threat hung over her. Over them both, though Izaya didn't know it. Arlua grimaced.

Maybe I should have told him…

Her phone buzzed. A text from Shizuo, Arlua saw when she looked at the device's screen.

'Why the hell did you help the flea?'

Tania and Shizuo had just finished their meal and were walking back toward her neighborhood, where Shizuo and Tom had been working before the blond asked Tania to eat lunch with him. They talked about nothing important, just recent events in Ikebukuro – the Dollars, the Yellow Scarves trying to make a comeback, the rumors that were beginning to trickle away about the woman who had kissed Izaya Orihara, whom both of them knew to be Arlua.

With anyone else, this wouldn't have been a very noteworthy conversation, but Tania rarely spoke to people casually, and Shizuo didn't have many people who would actually talk to him instead of irritating him or being afraid of him. Tania knew she was being more open and comfortable with him than she'd been with pretty much anyone. Even teasing the technician the day before, which was more friendly than Tania had been in a long time, hadn't been like this.

This was…right. Walking with him, talking with him…it was comfortable and felt normal in a way nothing else had. Maybe it was the fact that he seemed able to distract her from anything, including her usual guardedness.

"Hey, Shizu-chan! Who's that?! Another date? Are you building a harem?!" Shizuo groaned and turned to the group of three people who had come up behind them without him noticing. Tania blinked in surprise and looked over the woman in the gray dress, who had been squealing at them at the top of her lungs.

"Erika, Walker, Kyohei," Shizuo greeted the three newcomers. "And what was that crap about a-"

"Shizu-chan, you were with another woman last week, and now you're with this one! Are you trying to make Izaya jealous?!" the woman babbled. Tania hid a grimace, feeling her guard go back up with the addition of strangers to the equation.

"Erika, shut up about that already," one of the men – he was wearing a gray hat and baggy clothes, Tania noted cautiously. Could he be hiding a weapon?

"Kyohei? You okay?" Shizuo asked, frowning. Tania studied the man, then Shizuo. Perhaps snapping at his companion wasn't part of the man's usual behavior. From the way the woman and the other man blinked at him, the teacher was willing to bet this guy was usually calm, patient, and understanding.

"Did you hear about Izaya?" the man with the hat asked instead of answering the question. Shizuo scowled.

"If he's done anything to Arlua again-"

"Teki's fine," the man interrupted. "If she had anything to do with this, it was probably taking the stuff down," he added. Tania blinked. This man knew Arlua? And what stuff would she have taken down, and what did it have to do with that information broker?

"What stuff?" Shizuo demanded. The three faced them solemnly.

"The contents of Izaya Orihara's hard drive were hacked, stolen, and posted on the Internet last night. Someone – presumably Arlua Teki, though not many people would know that – took the information down about an hour ago," announced Supai Orihara as he seemingly materialized beside Tania, Malcolm at his side. "I personally think it was her, since the stuff went down pretty quickly after I texted her to tell her what was going on."

Shizuo and Tania stared at him in shock.

"What?" the bodyguard managed.

"It's all over the Dollars site," piped up the other man who had arrived with the gray-clothed woman. "Izaya's files – all of them – were online. But now if you try to access the site…" He held up his cell phone. A simple blank white page with strong black lettering filled the screen.

Error 404: File Not Found

"That's why we came to find you," the guy with the hat explained. "We wondered if you knew anything."

"Why would I know anything?" Shizuo demanded. "And…did you say Arlua took the information down? She helped him?" Tania saw his jaw and fists clench and instinctively reached out and laid a hand on his arm.

"I'm sure she had her reasons," the teacher said soothingly, keeping her voice soft. The bodyguard sighed and nodded, visibly relaxing.

The woman – Erika, Tania was pretty sure she'd been called – squealed incoherently, something about calming him down and even better than Izaya riling him up. The non-hat-wearing-man with her looked like he was holding back his own excitement as he covered the woman's mouth.

"Easy," he muttered. Shizuo rolled his eyes.

"Anyway, I don't know for sure that Teki did anything. Have you heard from her?" the hat-wearing one asked. Shizuo shook his head and pulled out his phone. Tania saw that his expression was still dark, but he wasn't angry enough to throw things, or even smash his phone as he sent a text to the technician.

Everyone waited, watching the bodyguard as he waited for a reply.

What he got wasn't really helpful unless you really knew Arlua.

'It was a challenge.'

But Tania knew – just as she was fairly sure anyone who knew that she was the one who had kissed Izaya would probable guess – that the challenge of taking down a Web site was more than likely not the real reason she had helped the informant. Or at least not the only reason.