Nagisa yawned as he was walking back to the mansion. Classes were incredibly boring to him. Not that the teachers were bad at explaining things, but Nagisa was already used to Kagero's, less talking more practicing, way of teaching.
Listening to someone talking for more than 8 hours was not something Nagisa enjoyed a lot. He felt unusually exhausted, and that meant a lot considering Nagisa had spent his last two years meditation instead of sleeping at night. Speaking of which, after enjoying finally sleeping in a bed for a few days, Nagisa was going to pick that habit of meditating back up again.
Sleeping in a bed was definitely nice, but for Nagisa, catching up to the others was more important. He already had a late start, so he would have to make up for it by working twice or even three times as harder than others do.
After grabbing a quick snack from the fridge, Nagisa went straight into his bathroom, grabbed his assassin gear, put it on, and fastened his dagger on his waist. He then activated his Unique Skill. But instead of changing his appearance into the identity that was now called Yoruhiru, Nagisa only cast an illusion on his outfit that made his pitch-black assassin gear appear as some casual clothes, while also changing his hair color and facial features to ones that wouldn't stand out as much. When he was done, the sun was already hanging low in the sky, which made the shadows a lot longer.
After quickly making sure that no one was watching his balcony, Nagisa took a deep breath and leaped right into the mansion's shadow that crept over the entire wall of the academy. Once he was inside the shadow, Nagisa slowly moved inside the shadow until he was on the other side of the wall, made sure that he was alone and emerged out of the shadow.
After making sure again that his illusions were still on, Nagisa started to take a casual stroll towards the dusk's secret base. To not attract too much attention, Nagisa was walking really slowly while also looking into a few shops from time to time.
By the time he had arrived in the suburbs, the sun had already gone down. Nagisa then took a turn into a small alleyway and by the time he came out, his appearance had already changed into the one of the young dusk member.
After pulling his mask up to cover his face, Nagisa quickly closed his eyes to concentrate and adjusted his mentality. By the time his eyes opened again, his eyes had already turned grey and cold like the ones of a longtime assassin.
After warming up and loosening his body for a bit, Nagisa didn't waste more time and sprinted towards the old well, checked his surroundings again and jumped into it. The entire entry system went on as usual and by the time Nagisa had entered, many people had already noticed his presence.
"Huh? What are doing here so soon again kiddo?" the crowd seemed really surprised. But it was understandable since Nagisa usually only appears once a month and that was already being generous.
"Not really a big surprise, bastard is looking for his little girlfriend," Crow yelled out loud while wearing a teasing smile on his face.
"You know that comment can get you killed if the higher-ups from the dusk hear this, old man?" Nagisa rolled his eyes while taking a seat next to Crow.
"Well, if they hear that I won't be the only one in trouble." Crow grinned while slapping Nagisa on his back, "So, how did it go?" Crow asked.
"How did what go?" Nagisa asked slightly confused.
"C'mon, you know what I mean." Crow had a dirty smile on his face, "Did you conquer the princess?"
"Conquer?" Nagisa got even more confused, "What the hell are you talking about, old man?"
"Hey Crow, the hell is wrong with you!", "Yeah! Don't teach weird stuff to our little boy!", "Why don't you go conquer an animal you swine!" the female members of the branch suddenly snapped at Crow's remark, some even started attacking him.
Nagisa was taken aback a little when a sudden brawl has broken out but the initial shock had turned back into even more confusion after a short second. A brawl inside this branch was nothing new to Nagisa, this happened quite often, to be honest. While the fights sometimes looked dangerous, no one has ever gotten hurt in these. It was more like a little entertainment for all the members who didn't have a mission and were just lazing around in the hideout.
"Hey Tusk, did the princess come to the branch when I wasn't here?" Nagisa shook his head a little and asked a huge bulky man who was not involved in the brawl after he had decided not to think about Crow's comment anymore.
"I TOLD YOU HE'S LOOKING FOR HER!" Nagisa held the bridge of his nose when Crow's voice echoed out of the mess in between all his painful yelps.
"No, she hasn't been here once. Why are you asking?" Tusk also let out a chuckle. Crow might be the head of this branch, but no one really treated him like one unless it really mattered.
"Hmm, nothing. I'll be around, take care." Nagisa nodded and shook his head right after before making his way towards the mission boards. "She's late…" Nagisa frowned slightly while he was scanning through the missions.
Akari was trying her best to move as fast as she could, but with every big movement she made, her muscles started to ache and pleaded her to stop and take a break. Even though her wounds were mostly healed, the mental and physical exhaustion could not be recovered by a spell alone. On top of that, she was late, very late.
In her original plan, she would be late for around an hour if she would leave as soon as Karasuma had brought her back. But after arriving, Karasuma had insisted for her to visit the infirmary first before he allowed her to leave. With all her injuries, the treatment alone took almost an hour.
It took her almost another 20 minutes to find a chance to get out of the academy. Even though she did have the authority to leave the academy whenever she wished to now, her exits and entries will still need to be recorded. While the exits were not a big deal, the entry times would definitely be highly suspicious if she came back 3 or 4 in the morning from time to time. It would be even worse if there were only records of her exiting and none of her coming back in.
Now she was on the streets and giving her best to walk as fast as possible while making sure not to catch too much attention, but her body just wouldn't work with her and forced her to slow down more and more. By the time she has arrived at the well, 40 more minutes have passed already.
She was more than 3 hours late… 3 entire hours. She couldn't say for sure, but if the positions were reversed she probably would not have waited this long.
With a quick flip, Akari disappeared into the well and ran into the hideout while going through the security as fast as she could. Naturally, she instantly caught everyone's attention with her barging into the room like this.
"H-Hiru… is he still here?" Akari grasped for air while asking the entire crowd.
"Hi-who?" the branch members were dumbfounded and asked, they have not heard of that codename yet.
"Ehmm, the boy I met the last time." Akari quickly realized what was going on and added, "We were supposed to meet up today."
"HA! See? See? What did I tell you!" Crow's excited voice reached Akari's ears, "I told you something was going on between them!"
"Fuck off Crow, where did the brat go anyway? I haven't seen him for a while now." Tusk laughed as he interrupted Crow and asked, "That little shit has a lot left to learn. Not to be present on their appointed time, tsk tsk tsk." Tusk said seriously.
That comment made Akari's face burn up a little, but I couldn't be seen with her mask blocking it, "Since when has he been here?" Akari asked.
"Hmm? I think he came here around 20:00. More than three and a half hours ago?" one of the female members said a bit unsurely.
- He came half an hour early… -
That only made Akari feel even worse, if Hiru was still here, by now there was no way he didn't notice her with all the commotion she was causing, "When did you see him last?"
"Huh? When we last saw him?" the crowd got loud again
"I think I saw him at the mission boards an hour ago."
"Wait, didn't he take a turn in the ring as well?"
"Oh yeah! Where he shoved his wooden dagger up Leo's ass because he couldn't break through his defense anywhere else." someone suddenly remembered and started laughing, "That little dipshit always has these absurd ideas."
"Hey shut it! I was just a bit careless!" a deep and annoyed voice rang through the hall, "Maaan, next time I won't hold back anymore, that kid needs a beating."
"You do that and I'm gonna beat the shit out of you Leo!" one of the female members called Panther threatened Leo.
"Oh c'mon, you girls can't keep babying him like this, that kiddo's improving way to fast, give it another year and he'll actually be able to beat us fair and square! You gotta let us bully him while we still can!" other members who had also been used by Yoruhiru as his training partners in the past joined the conversation and started complaining.
Seeing the entire branch treating Yoruhiru as if he was their younger brother put a sad smile on Kaede's face. This bunch of shady, underground assassins seemed more like a family than her actual family. It was so ironic that it hurt to think about it. She was also painfully aware that she would never be able to completely merge into this large family because of a simple reason. She was one of the candidates who would be the successor to the entire dusk organization.
It was always her heritage that pushed her away from everything she wanted… she had lost her family because she had inherited and even surpassed her grandfather's talent. She has never had the feeling of belong to some team or group because people only treated her as their superior, as their potential future leader. As for the other dusk princes and princesses, they only saw her as a huge nuisance that they would love to get rid of. Because she was too talented and too young. If things continued to develop like this, she was almost destined to be the next leader of the dusk, and her heritage only added on top of her talent.
"You're late…" a genuinely pissed off voice suddenly broke Akari out of her train of thought, the sound was a bit rusty, but she could hear that it belonged to a boy who was not a lot older than her.
"Hiru?" Akari turned around and asked in disbelieve, he was actually still here! She was almost 4 hours late and he was still here!
"Hey, at least you still came on the day of the appointment," Yoruhiru answered in a sarcastic tone while pointing at the clock on the wall that showed 23:53.
"I'm sorry, I…"
"Aye, kiddo you're being a cunt again!" Crow, who came out of nowhere, scolded Yoruhiru while giving him a slap on the back of his head.
"Hey! What the hell?!" Yoruhiru cried out loud.
"Kid this is not how you treat a lady," Crow said with a serious tone as if he was lecturing Yoruhiru.
"She came 4 hours too late!" Yoruhiru groaned, "What am I supposed to say, oh wow, hey princess, just in time, I've just arrived myself?! Why did you asked me to stay and wait anyway?!"
"Pff…hehehe." Akari couldn't help but to let out a chuckle seeing the interaction before her, "I'm sorry for being late, it wasn't on purpose."
"…You know that it's not very convincing when you're giggling as if you're having the time of your life after seeing me getting slapped in the back of my head because of you." Yoruhiru rolled his eyes, "Honestly, if Crow hadn't asked me, I would've left an hour ago."
"It's understandable, but I really am sorry..." Akari shook her head, took a deep breath and tried to sound as sincere as she could.
"Good, now that kiddo isn't being a cunt and awkward anymore, you two can hold a normal conversation now hmm?" Crow grinned and gave Akari a wink after tapping Yoruhiru on his shoulder a few times, "Don't be so unforgiving, you have a thing for reading people kiddo. Even I can see that she really is feeling bad for being late, give some people the benefit of doubt, eh?"
"Oh and princess, this kid never listens to me when I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, so him still being here is definitely not just my doing." Crow turned around and said to Akari as if he suddenly remembered something as he was walking away while raising both his eyebrows a few times.
"…" Yoruhiru threw an annoyed glance at Crow but then turned his eyes towards Akari, "So, what's your excuse." Yoruhiru asked with a sigh, even though he only interacted with Akari for a few hours, he could tell that she wasn't the type to just break a promise for no reason. He was genuinely mad that she was more than 3 hours late, so he decided to act coldly to prevent this from becoming a habit. But of course, Crow had to come and ruin everything.
"I got attacked by a high tier bird monster." Akari grimaced and said.
"You know… just because I believe that you didn't come late on purpose doesn't mean you can just give me any excuse." Yoruhiru deadpanned.
"I really did!" Akari protested with slightly puffed out cheeks.
"Yeah, and I was riding on that bird monster, didn't you see me?" Yoruhiru rolled his eyes and answered, "If you can't tell me just say so, it's not like I'm going to force you to tell me."
"It was a training session with someone watching over me." Akari sighed and admitted, this was as much information as she was able to give Yoruhiru. Even though Yoruhiru said that she didn't have to tell him, it would still leave a seed of distrust in their partnership making it ten times harder for her to gain Yoruhiru's trust in the future. And that was not something Akari wanted.
"From dusk?" Yoruhiru wondered, "Why would they let you train with a high tier beast? That's stupid."
"I was just really unlucky." Akari shook her head, "I can't tell you more Hiru, please?"
"…Fine." Yoruhiru sighed, "It's pretty late already and you're injured, so we can't do a mission anymore, let's get out of here first?"
"Alright." Akari nodded and followed him.
Nagisa stopped on a flat roof in the suburbs and laid down with Akari right behind him and doing the same. He was sure that 90% of what Akari had told him was the truth now, he could tell that it was hard for her to get out of the well.
"Isn't that the same rooftop as last time?" Akari wondered after pulling her legs closer to her body.
"Is it?" Nagisa wondered and looked around, "Well it's a nice rooftop." he shrugged casually.
"So what did you want to talk about?" Akari let out a silent chuckle and asked Nagisa.
"I have acquired information about someone who might be involved in the slave business." Nagisa went straight to the point, "Jeremiah Larson, got silently promoted from an Earl straight to a Duke a while ago. I've looked into it a bit and nothing major has happened recently, at least not big enough to justify such a promotion."
"I've heard of something similar, that some earl has been promoted from Earl to Duke. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same person but I heard that his son was called… uhm… Raphael?" Akari was slightly surprised that Nagisa had acquired similar information.
"It's the same person then, Raphael Larson, a former student of the dawn academy, currently grounded in the Duke's mansion as punishment." Nagisa nodded and confirmed.
"Former?" Akari frowned in confusion. "Where do you get all this information from?"
"It was only by chance." Nagisa just shrugged, "But yeah, that's pretty much all I got. Is it possible to have someone from the dusk look into this? It'll be a lot easier if you could get help from the dusk's information network."
"Hmm, that'd be nice but I can't do that." Akari smiled bitterly and answered.
"Why's that? Aren't you the princess of the dusk?" Nagisa wondered, he was certain that Akari had access to the information network.
"I'm being grounded, remember?" Akari reminded Nagisa of the reason she was here.
"Right… guess we'll have to do it ourselves then. I'll try to get an infiltration mission into the duke's mansion onto the mission board." Nagisa nodded, "We still need a way to contact each other though."
"I got this covered already." Akari suddenly summoned two weird looking devices out of her scale. "Hiru?" Akari realized that Nagisa was spacing out and staring at her right hand when she looked back up again.
Seeing how Akari took something out of her scale again, Nagisa suddenly remembered that he had reached the third stage as well now. He hadn't had that feeling of having a room in his scale Akari talked about yet, but he had never tried either!
"Hiru?" Akari called him again, but a lot louder this time.
"O-oh yeah. What is that?" Nagisa grabbed the device that was handed to him and asked a bit embarrassed.
"I'll show you, here put this in that slot first." Akari handed him a small dark green crystal that had the same shape as the slot on the weird device Akari had given him.
"What's that?" Nagisa took the crystal and observed it with awe.
"It's a memory crystal." Akari explained, "It can read and store mana or aura sequences. This one has mine in it."
"Okay?" Nagisa didn't understand the point entirely but still followed Akari's orders and put the crystal onto the device, "And now?"
"Give me a second," Akari said while pressing some buttons on her own device and then charging it with her mana.
"What are you…?" Nagisa was about to ask her after waiting for a few seconds but then felt a weird sensation coming from the device he was holding. The dark green crystal started to glow while words started to appear on the screen on the device.
Can you read?
"Yes, I can read, thank you very much." Nagisa deadpanned while still observing the device with interest.
"Hehe, this device is what we call a sequence receiver." Akari explained, "The crystal I gave you allows the device to recognize my mana sequence and receive it, while the device helps you to form your mana or aura into messages before sending it out, these are really rare even among the core members of the dusk." Akari said slightly showing off, "Technically the sending part isn't necessary, but takes too much time and control to do that manually."
"That's interesting." Nagisa nodded while Akari took out another memory crystal out of her scale.
"You try it now, but you have to give me your aura sequence first." Akari gave him the empty memory crystal.
"My aura sequence?" Nagisa blanked out for a second. He had no idea how sequences worked and if his first Unique Skill changed it as well. Because if it didn't, Nagisa's aura sequence would be dark grey and thus revealing him as the shadow dragon. But not giving Akari his sequence now would be a huge sign of distrust and it would definitely hurt her feelings after she went all the way to get these devices.
- What gives… I'll just join the dusk if I'm revealed. –
Nagisa let out a sigh after deciding what to do. He quickly grabbed the crystal and started to send his aura into it after changing the nature of his aura into the one of water.
With his heart almost pounding out of his chest, Nagisa let out a huge sigh of relief when a dull blueish color appeared on the crystal. "Here you go." Nagisa handed the crystal back to Akari while quickly making the sweat on his palm condense with the Unique Skill of his water scale.
"Alright, now type in a message and charge the device with your aura." Akari urged Nagisa not realizing that she was being weirdly cheery, she was drawn into the atmosphere of trying out a new toy with someone she could maybe consider a friend. It was feeling she hadn't had since she was branded as a genius with the age of 6.
"Okay." Nagisa nodded, thought about a message and quickly moved his fingers above the keys with a smirk on his face. "And there, done," Nagisa said after finishing charging the device with his changed aura.
"Alright, let's see…" Akari quickly held up the device but the slightly excited expression on her face quickly changed when she read the message, but it was not the reaction Nagisa had expected.
"Princess?" Nagisa got slightly worried seeing that Akari wasn't reacting at all.
"I gotta go now, just send me a message when you put up the mission." Akari's voice suddenly turned into one of panic and confusion as she stood up and turned around to leave.
"Hey, relax princess, it was just a joke." Nagisa tried to stop her but she was already gone when he finished his sentence. This left Nagisa with a bad taste in his mouth, but it also confused the living hell out of Nagisa.
"What's with that?" Nagisa frowned while looking back at his own device where his message was still displayed.
So you do know how to relax.
New chapter :D slightly longer than usual too. While writing this chapter I wasn't sure if I'm getting everything I'm trying to express across with my words :/ it's been a while since I had this, but I felt like my skill to write was not enough to completely get everything I had in my mind across.
So you probably noticed that I'm switching back and forth with the names of Nagisa/Yoruhiru and Kaede/Akari. And some of you maybe even noticed that Kaede/Akari refers to herself as both Kaede and Akari in her POV depending on which identity she's taking, while Nagisa only refers to himself as Nagisa in his POV.
This is not a mistake, but something I made on purpose. Remember back in chapter 10 (though it's probably more than a year ago by now) Nagisa had asked Akari if that was her real name or just a codename and she had answered "Honestly? I don't even know myself anymore."? That's the reason why I'm writing it like this, and as for the reason why Kaede/Akari said this, you'll have to wait till the story gets there. :D
But yeah, I still think I did the best I could there :S, hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, tell me how you liked it in the reviews and I'll see you in the next chapter! ;)