Author's Note: Heh, heh. Almost four months between updates isn't very good, is it? My deepest apologies to anyone who has been waiting impatiently for this story to be updated. (Hey, you never know. There might be one or two people.) For some reason, chapter 5 was difficult to write. I'm still not completely happy with it, but it does what it's supposed to. Fortunately, it turned out that chapter 6 practically wrote itself while I was trying to revise chapter 5 so you get two chapters at once. I hope you like 'em.

"Oh, hi!" I said breathlessly. "You were in the restaurant back in town about an hour ago, weren't you? I saw you there."

The blue-haired man just glared at me. A shiver ran up my spine. He really seemed like just the sort of cold-hearted, nihilistic type I had always daydreamed about! Up close, his eyes were golden and feral, not unlike the eyes of the wolf I had just killed.

Eruk seemed less impressed. He said with grudging politeness, "This is our campsite. My mother always taught me to be polite to guests, even uninvited ones, so you're free to join us, but I can't help wondering where you were a minute ago when we were being attacked by a giant wolf."

"I had to test you," the blue-haired man said in a low, gravelly voice. Even his voice was perfect for his image!

"You sent that wolf?" Eruk and I exclaimed in unison. "How?" Eruk demanded. "Why?" I asked, bewildered.

"I had to know how powerful you are," our visitor said ominously.

"Wow, that's so cool! It's just like in a story where the person tests the heroes before sending them on a quest, or the villain tests them to see if they're worth fighting, or the wise old master tests someone to see if he's worth training!"

Eruk was giving me a disgusted look. Our visitor looked faintly startled.

"Well, it is," I muttered sulkily. I turned hopefully to the stranger. "So, do we pass?"

"I'm still not sure. You obviously have some power, but so far I've seen nothing that couldn't have come from your mother." He spoke the word 'mother' with a sneer of utter contempt.

"My...mother?" I repeated faintly. Somehow I was sure he wasn't talking about the plump, sentimental, overprotective woman who raised me. "You know who my mother is?"

"Of course I do. Did you think we wouldn't find out? That fool who created you didn't even try to hide it. You look more like her than she looks like herself."

"I look like her?" I repeated, dazed. Right now, this man held the keys to my heart. My fondest dream - the one I longed for even more than I longed for adventure - was to find my real family. I had been a complete misfit all my life, but somewhere out there, there had to have been at least two other people like me.

"What...what was she like?" I asked with a dry throat.

"She was...a girl, surprisingly powerful for a human but still not worthy to lick his boots."

"Whose boots?" I asked blankly.

"The general's," he answered impatiently. "I don't know what he was thinking when he created you."

"My...father?" I asked uncertainly. "My father was a general?"

"My master's general and most trusted servant. I don't know why she places such faith in someone so obviously unreliable."

I stared with unfocused eyes into the fire, imagining a mother with my orange hair and violet eyes and a father who commanded armies.

"Who are you?" Eruk asked in a hostile tone I had never heard him use before. I snapped back into focus out of surprise. "What do you want from us?" Eruk continued. "You'd better not just be playing with Lana's innocent heart!"

I loved him! None of the boys back home ever used phrases like "Lana's innocent heart". None of them would ever act so protective of me.

"I have no interest in you," the blue-haired man said disdainfully, "only in the mongrel."

"Mongrel!" I protested angrily. "Who are you calling a mongrel?" He gave me a heavy-lidded, golden gaze of pure malice.

The soup chose that moment to boil over. "Oh no, my soup!" Eruk cried, rushing over to prod it tenderly. He somehow managed to turn it from a bubbling, seething mess back into a delicious-smelling, well-behaved pot of stew simply by stirring it a few times. That sounds simple enough but have you ever tried doing it? I have. Trust me, Eruk had to be a master of soups to make it look so easy.

Eruk ladled soup into two bowls. "Would you like some?" he asked our uninvited guest reluctantly. The man looked bemused but after several seconds of thought he nodded. Eruk dished up another bowl of soup. "You still haven't told us who you are," he pointed out as he handed over the bowl.

"You can call me...Lupin," the blue-haired man said.

Eruk burst into loud sniggers. "Like the flower?" he gasped.

Lupin stared at him blankly.

"I'm Lana Inwards, but you probably knew that already," I told him. "And this is Eruk. He's a healer." I took my first bite of soup. "And a really, really, really good cook!" I added. "Eruk, this is absolutely delicious! I take back everything I said about men not being able to cook!"

"Thanks," he said, blushing with pleasure.

Lupin lifted a spoonful of soup from his bowl and stared at it as if he had never seen vegetable soup before. Without changing expression, he moved it to his mouth, chewed slowly and swallowed.

"Isn't it good?" I prompted him.

"It is...soup," he said blankly. He looked down at his spoon and bowl again for a long moment before putting both down and getting up to leave.

"Wait!" I cried. "Look, you obviously don't like us but we're trying to be nice. Don't go yet. You're the only person I've ever met who knows anything about my real parents! Please tell me more about them before you go. Please?" I hate begging for anything but this meant that much to me.

"You...do not know who your parents are?" Lupin asked in disbelief.

I explained quickly, "My parents - my adoptive parents - found me on their doorstep when I was a baby. There was no one else around. Just me in one basket and a bunch of blankets, bottles and really weird toys in another basket and a note in a language that no one could read. I've been studying mage lore since I was a kid and I still don't know what language it's in. As if that's not weird enough, my hometown is this tiny village in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea why my real parents picked that town of all places to leave me. It's all just really, really weird. I hope you can explain it because I sure can't."

"Wow," Eruk said, wide eyed. "You just get stranger and stranger, don't you? That's the weirdest story I ever heard. Is it really true?"

"Yes, it's true!" I retorted angrily.

"Is it possible that she does not know her true nature?" Lupin asked the air gleefully, showing off his abnormally sharp-looking teeth in a feral grin. He laughed gratingly. "Incredible. What was he thinking?"

I was rather annoyed that he was talking to the air about me when I was right there asking questions, but I tried not to show it. I scratched in the dirt quickly with the handle of my spoon.

"This is the message from the note that was left with me." I had spent so many hours trying to puzzle out the symbols that I had memorized all the strokes even though I had no idea what they represented. "Can you read it?"

Both Eruk and Lupin looked down at the symbols.

"No," Eruk said blankly, "but it looks really old. Like, before the Mazoku War old."

Lupin sneered. "Sentimental garbage. I told them he was losing his mind. Well, little abomination, it looks like you may not be nearly as dangerous as I feared. I wish you all the joys of a mortal life and I hope we never meet again." He strode off into the trees before I could stop him. I lost sight of him as he passed behind the first tree, which I really shouldn't have since it was a sapling. In fact, the whole grove was so thin that I could still see the carcass of the wolf just outside it. But then, I had long since guessed that Lupin was not an ordinary man.

"Well, that was strange," Eruk said, sounding like he was trying not to sound completely spooked.

"Yeah," I agreed in much the same tone of voice. Then I screamed in frustration, "Oooh! The first guy I've ever met who claims to know something about my real parents and he wouldn't tell me anything!"

"He told you a few things," Eruk pointed out reasonably.

"But those things just raise more questions!" I protested.

"Don't get too worked up, Lana," Eruk said consolingly. "He was probably just crazy. He probably doesn't really know anything about you or your parents. He just fit you into one of his delusions."

I hadn't thought of that. "Maybe you're right," I admitted, "but now I'm all upset! I don't know what to do."

"Have some more soup," Eruk suggested, handing me the ladle.

I grinned and plunged the ladle into the pot. "I feel better already."