Author's Note: I'm back again… with this FRESH STORY. Yeah, not entirely sure just where I'm going with this. I just sat down one day and said, "I'm going to write something." And this is what fell out of my mind.

Reviews always welcome with open arms, just please no mindless flames. God knows what that'll do to me.

Disclaimer: Don't own FY, you know, you know.

Darkly Noon

It was a pretty ordinary day. At least, it had been, at the time. Now I was starting to think the sky was beginning to fall in; nothing made sense.

It had all started with the girl falling out of sky. No, it had started before that. It had started when Nuriko, Miaka, and me had set out from the palace early in the morning with the globe that Taiitsukun had given us to find the last seishi. The night before the globe had been acting kind of strange, blinking and stuff, and Miaka had come up with the idea that maybe the last seishi was somewhere around the palace. So, of course, bright and early the next morning, she dragged both Nuriko and me out of our skin until we agreed to come with her. At least, she had been pretty rough with me, seeing as I seemed to be the only sensible person between the three of us, choosing to sleep rather than go out on some wild goose chase. But, of course, Miaka could coax Nuriko into doing anything for her, and once she had him on her side, he pounded me out the door. Don't ask why the others didn't come. I think Miaka said something about not wanting to wake everyone. But why in the gods couldn't she have chosen Chichiri instead of me?

So here I am, trudging along the path with the two of them walking in front of me and hovering over the globe. I guess it must have started to act crazy again since Miaka seemed to be getting all riled up, but so far I hadn't seen it pop any clues to the next seishi.

This is when things started to get a little strange. I was the first to hear it, but Miaka and Nuriko soon caught on as well. It was a faint sound in the distance, but the strange thing was that it seemed to be coming from high in the sky. After a few seconds, it became apparent that it was someone screaming. But from above?

Then everything started playing in fast motion. There was a black dot in the sky, and I stood with my head jolted upwards, eyes squinting to try and make out what it was. Suddenly it started to fall at an amazing speed and I barely had time to open my mouth in astonishment before it hit me.

The collision must have really knocked the life out of me, since I don't quite remember what happened after that. My stomach had a jarring pain in it and it seemed that frantic voices were screeching from all sides of me.

After a few seconds my vision restored itself and I was able to get to my feet. I held a protective hand over my bruised stomach and blinked, still a little out of it. Why were there three people standing in front of me? My eyes trailed over each of them. Miaka… Nuriko… and… who?

Miaka and Nuriko's gazes where also both trained on the newcomer, Miaka's jaw slightly agape. I couldn't even begin to guess what was going through their heads, since my own mind felt so scrambled. I kept my eyes on the stranger, going over and over in my head how it was possible to fall out of thin air.

The alien was a girl. To be more exact, she was a girl who looked around Miaka's age and had the same wide-mouthed expression as Miaka. She was the first one to speak.

"I…" she said slowly, taking a step back. "Am…" Another step. "Sorry?"

"H-Hold it!" Nuriko stepped forward, being the first one of us to break out of silent confusion. "Just who are you?? Where did you come from?? How are you still alive after falling from that height???"

"I… ah…" she took another step back. "Um…"

Nuriko jumped forward, grabbing a tight hold on the black scarf wrapped around the girl's neck, stopping her from making another move. The girl squirmed and flinched at the face, as if expecting a slap.

I was still staring at the girl. She was the strangest thing I had ever seen. Her hair was held back above her head and a long frayed silk scarf was wrapped around her forehead, its ends tailing around the back of her shoulders. She had another scarf wrapped around her neck, dangling down to her sides. At least, I was pretty sure it was a scarf. It was black and apparently made completely of feathers. I wondered how they were staying together. Underneath the black scarf thing she was wearing a short olive green colored dress, an assortment of safety pins hanging all around the bottom and creating a sort of jingling when she moved. I knew what the pins were because Miaka had once showed them to me and explained what they were. Was this girl from Miaka's world? My gaze trailed down to her feet. She had on a pair of huge black boots that stopped just short of her knees. They were battered with age and strung up the front with laces. The girl's overall appearance was that of an old seer and fortuneteller I had once seen in a village. She had the same enigmatic and exotic aura around her. I believed in the dark arts of seers, but I knew they took years upon years to fully accomplish. This girl was hardly as old as me. Was it even possible that she was seer?

Nuriko was still holding the girl tightly by her scarf. She was wriggling and squirming but didn't seem to be putting much effort into escaping. Or maybe it was just Nuriko's cast-iron grip.

"Nuriko," Miaka started, still looking quite shaken up. "Don't hurt her, please…?"

"Don't worry, I won't. I just don't want her running off until she's given us some answers."

All of our eyes were on her again, waiting for the named answers. The girl quit wriggling for a second to bit her lip. "If I tell you…" She finally started, "You'll never believe me."

"Try us." Nuriko said. "Just tell us the truth; whether we believe it or not is a different matter."

The girl's eyes stayed level with the ground, every now and then flickering upwards only to crash back down at the sight of our intense gazes, bearing in on her. Finally she started her story.

"I… came from the future. I… had to come back so that I could stop you from meeting my future-self."

"What??" I exclaimed, all my pains forgotten as her absurd story hit me. "That has to be bullshit… it doesn't even make sense!"

The look on Nuriko's face showed me that he wholly agreed, but Miaka seemed a little less taken aback. "Why do you have to stop us from meeting your future-self?" She asked.

The girl wriggled again. "Because… I accidentally changed the future before. Changed it for the definite worse. So I had to come back and try to fix my mistake."

"How exactly did you change the future?" Nuriko asked slowly, beginning to look a little wary of the girl.

"You see…" The girl started, biting her lip for lose of words. "I know the future; all of it. At least, I know of a future, but that future could be changed if I let anyone know of events before they occur. You see? If I told someone the future, then they could change that future, and completely screw up the coarse of the world."

"Wait, wait, wait, back up a second." I said. "How do you even know the future in the first place?? Are you some kind of seer?"

The girl looked at me oddly before answering. "In a way, yes."

"Okay, let me get this straight," Nuriko started, sounding a little perturbed. I couldn't blame him. "You met us, told us something that would happen in the future, and because of that the world is now… on some kind of crash coarse? So you had to come back in time…" He trailed off and I could see him trying to work things out in his head.

"The world… isn't really on 'a crash course'," the girl started quietly. "It's more… I can't allow destiny to be disturbed this much."

"Wait," Nuriko said, a thought apparently clearing in his head. "You said that you came here to stop us from meeting your future-self, right?"

She nodded.

"But… how can there be two of you? It doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't you be your future-self?"

"That's how you would see it, I suppose…" The girl twisted a ring on her middle finger. "But things work differently…"

I suddenly had had enough of this. "Let her go, Nuriko," I said. "This is complete and total bullshit. I mean, how can we even be LISTENING to her?? It's obvious she's fallen out of her mind! The future? Destiny? Traveling backwards through time? All of it is scientifically incorrect!"

Nuriko seemed to be listening with an open mind. He held up his hands as if surrendering, and stepped back from the girl. "You're right… we should just get back to the palace."

I was about to turn to Miaka to see her reaction, when the girl rounded on me.

"How can you say something like that, Tasuki??" Her face looked almost scared. I could see her withering even more than before. Her hands twisted and knotted so fast and so hard that it looked painful. But I couldn't take my gaze away from her face. She looked truly shattered. Had she been that fragile from the beginning?

"Tasuki." Nuriko's hand on my shoulder broke me away from the girl's pained expression.

"I'm… coming," I started, turning towards Nuriko, but stopped when I saw his face. "What is it?" I asked nervously.

"You didn't… tell her your name, did you?"

And it struck me just like that. He was right. Just seconds ago, when she had called out to me, she had called me by name.

"How-how did you know Tasuki's name?" Miaka asked, more in awe than in curiosity.

The girl quickly glanced at Miaka and I swear I could have seen a look of distain glint in her eyes for just a second. But the next instant her eyes were back on the ground. "I told you… I know everything… in a way…"

She was still twisting her hands together. They were pale white. I swear, she must have twisted all of the blood from her veins. I wanted to reach out and wretch her hands apart, but I kept my place.

"Nuriko?" I heard Miaka ask, and glanced over to see her tugging at his sleeve. "What should we do…?"

Nuriko was silent for a moment. Finally he spoke. "I think… we should bring her back to the palace with us… at least for now. Something very strange is going on… I don't like it."

The girl was crying. She had started crying as soon as Nuriko had brought up the notion of bringing her back with us. "But I can't," she kept saying, over and over. I myself was getting a little annoyed with her, but every time I looked at those cold pale hands, rubbing vigorously over and over each other, I felt a knot begin to tighten in my throat.

For not wanting to go, she really didn't put up much of a fight. Nuriko had his arm firmly wrapped around her elbow as we walked, and I stayed a step behind, so that I could grab her in case she tried to run. It was pretty apparent by now that she wouldn't try anything like that.

When the palace came in sight, she stopped crying. But I soon found that her stone-struck face and silent eyes filled with terror was much more disturbing than her tears.

We decided it would be best to talk to the others before we actually showed them this strange girl. We brought her to one of the empty rooms. I volunteered to stay and keep watch over the girl, for reasons I didn't even know.

"Are you sure?" Nuriko asked over his shoulder as he and Miaka started down the hall.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, alright? Just make it quick, okay?" I watched their backs slowly disappear as the door swung them from my view.

Now this was an awkward situation. I stayed leaned against the door, light on my feet, not really sure what to do. The girl had crossed to the other side of the room and had sat down heavily on the edge of the large draped canopy bed that stood there. Her hands were still wrapped around each other. My throat tightened.

"We're not gonna hurt you, you know," I started, just trying to say something, anything, that would snap her out of that distressed state.

She didn't answer me. Her hands moved to her forehead and she began kneading her palms over her eyes.

"Can I ask you something?" I ventured. I caught her gaze slowly slipping in my direction and I took that as a signal to continue. "What's your name?"

"Noon." She answered readily. Her hands fell from her face. "You should know that."

"What?"

She shook her head. "You… knew me. And now you don't." She seemed to be talking more to herself than me. "It's as simple as that, but… how can something so simple be so… terrifying?"

I wondered if she was actually asking me this.

"You don't remember me at all?" She asked, facing me full on. Her shaking had become more apparent.

I shook my head slowly, as if locked in a trance.

"And after all I told you…"

Suddenly I felt the door behind me shake. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Noon had stopped talking. She had just stopped. Her hands had stopped wringing too. It was like something inside of her had suddenly feel silent and all she could do was droop there on the edge of the bed; head down, hands hanging to her sides. Nuriko and me told the others all we knew but that just left us all even more confused then before.

"What are we going to do with her?" Nuriko asked, after all the explanations had been gone over. We all turned to Hotohori, who seemed like the proper person to make the decision.

Hotohori looked around our anxious faces. He raised a hand to his chin. He closed his eyes. He took in a breath. Finally he started. "Well…" We all leaned in to hear the verdict. "…I don't know."

Well… that didn't really solve anything. But Hotohori continued. "I don't feel that it is right to turn this girl out on the streets… she seems to know something that could possible help us. I don't think she is simply insane. On the other hand, I don't know how we can ever figure anything out if she doesn't talk to us."

"She was talking to me, before." I offered.

"What'd she say, no da?" Chichiri asked. Suddenly all the attention was drawn to me.

"Um… she said… that her name was Noon. And that…" my mind traced back to our recent conversation. "That… I knew her… and now I don't. She wasn't making much sense."

"This is indeed a puzzling situation." Hotohori stated the obvious.

I glanced over at the bed. Suddenly Noon dipped her head, pulling herself up, and straightening her face. We all just stared at her for an awkward moment, wondering just what she was up to now.

She suddenly lifted her face. "I'm sorry about this all," she said, a slight smile twitching at the corners of her lips. "Please forgive Noon; she is very foolish indeed."