Author's Note: Just a lil warning to the people out there. This story is probably gonna end really really abruptly, but I'll at least give you some fluff or something before I end it off. This story shouldn't take up more than 10 chapters!

Chapter 3: Two times in a row

Hope and an inferiority complex flow about inside me; one day, they'll change into terror

Even when the anxiety you keep pushing aside gives rise to agony again

And it's so painful you just want to run away, you're never alone – Hero without a name

It had been weeks since Kirihara saw Li. She had made a call to Kanami, asking her to keep an eye on BK-201's star. If there was any movement, no matter how insignificant or small, Kirihara would know. She had to find him. She had too many questions to ask him.

Patrols were increased in the area of the convenience store Kirihara had last seen Li. In hopes of catching him herself, Misaki had started patrol duty, adding on to the list of duties she had back in the office. She was strolling down the mildly crowded path now. The dinner rush had died off slowly and only the supper people were walking along the streets. Misaki had passed the same store at least 3 times now, the clerk inside was starting to recognise her as he glanced out curiously every time she went by.

It was now 10.30pm. It was late. The night sky was an unnatural purple and the stars shined, but none of them were the natural Celestine bodies they used to represent. Now they were just gps devices for the police to track down contractors. Sometimes this fact saddened Misaki greatly. She used lay on the grass, up the hill near her old family house in the middle of the night to stare at the stars with her father. The memory was a little too depressing for her to thinking about right now.

The lights flickered erratically. Kirihara glanced up at the road side lamp and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. This was either a power surge from the power plant near-by or the circuits reacting to electrical based contractor power, and by now, Misaki was wiser. It could be another electric based contractor. He wasn't the only contractor out there who controlled electricity, but the odds of that being the case was a little less likely.

There was an occasional murmur from the pass-bys and sometimes a scream or two from the late night solicitors as they ran into the buildings as the lights eventually exploded in waves. She quickly shoved her hand to her belt and retrieved a tactical flashlight from the slot. With a click, the path in front of her was lit up significantly. Misaki quickly swung her flashlight to the roofs. From past experiences, he really liked to gaze out from the roofs, it seemed.

There was nothing. Not even a bird perched on the tiles. Sighing, Misaki tired harder, this time swinging her flashlight towards a scream that caught her attention from the alley way nearly a block away from her. Pumping her legs as high as possible, Misaki ran, hoping that she might finally catch him this time.

He could just end her misery right here, but it wouldn't be him. He wasn't like that, to kill unnecessarily. It was uncouth and besides, he just wasn't the kind of person, contractor or not, to kill a crying child. The little girl was staring up at him now, her wide brown eyes filled with fear as she burned the image of the black reaper into her little brain. She was only curious, she only followed the strange sound that was much more interesting than her parents arguing and ended up seeing a tall, masked man holding the bloody face of a grey suited man.

It wasn't supposed to be like that. She was supposed to have a nice dinner with her mom and dad, and tonight they didn't even talk back at each other, at least until they left the restaurant. But it was good enough for her. The masked man just stared at her and her tears refused to stop. The grey suited man was now lying face down on the alley floor, his blood flowing freely from his eye sockets and nose. The electrical surge through his body also meant that his muscles contracted and relaxed erratically and thus the body twitched every so often, adding to the child's trauma.

As she cried and cried, the masked man took a small step back, almost involuntarily. The child glanced back at the entrance of the alley and saw, despite the darkness, a slim lady holding a gun. She had a flashlight below her gun, but it was turned off so as to not give away her position until she arrived at the scene. The lady stopped at the entrance and stalked in cautiously.

The child continued to yell and sniff as the lady circled over behind her and the masked man tried to stay as far away from her as possible.

"So we meet again, huh, Li-kun," Misaki smiled uneasily as she poised her revolver at his arm, ready to incapacitate him as soon as he tried to lift himself off with that wire of his.

The masked man seemed to snort, but out came only a muffled grunt, "I wasn't planning on killing the child, if that's what you're worried about."

The child stopped crying for a moment when she heard herself being referred to, but after a while, she wailed again. Misaki tapped her gently with her left hand, "Go, go back to your parents!"

She nodded furiously and scrambled off. They were alone now, Misaki and him. It was too dark in the alley without at least the dim lighting from the fluorescent lights from the adjacent buildings. But at least she could make out the white parts of the mask and the shine on his trench coat.

"Officer," he started, his voice velvet and soothing, "If you're planning to take me in, I'm afraid that now is not the time. I have other business to attend to."

Misaki laughed mockingly, a sweat bead rolled down her forehead, "Are you insinuating that I'm just gonna have to wait for you to finish killing all those people, and then I can take you in, Li-kun?"

The man behind the mask tilted his head to the side and chuckled. Kirihara furrowed her brows. It was distinctively his voice, but her brain still couldn't match her jolly, silly Li-kun to this masked murderer.

"Haha... That's funny," he chuckled, his hands were still hovering over his pocket. One of them held his wire and he was ready to use it as soon as Misaki let her guard down, "This man lying on the floor... Do you recognise him?"

Misaki glanced down wearily at the corpse. The blood that ran down all parts of his face was too much for her to really identify the man, "Hmm? Am I supposed to know him? Did you just kill a cop, Li-kun?"

He raised a hand up slowly so as to not startle Misaki, "He's a cop, and also a key member of the Syndicate. I thought I'd throw in that little bit of information, lest I put you in a sour mood."

Misaki could almost see the reluctant smile behind that mask. He then croaked softly, "And it's not Li anymore. How many times do I have to remind you, Misaki-san?"

She smiled crookedly, her grip on the revolver loosening slightly, "I know Li-kun is in there somewhere."

"You..." he sighed, almost sadly if contractors could actually feel, "You're sorely mistaken. Li is a facade. Another mask I don to hide my true identity. How can you not figure that out, Misaki-san?"

Kirihara chuckled softly, "You're awfully chatty tonight, Li-kun."

"If I gave you my true name," he groaned, "would you please forget Li?"

"Then tell me," she said, her grip on the revolver loosening even more. Her finger wasn't even really hovering over the trigger anymore.

"If you like," he sighed, "It's Hei."

"Hei?"

"Yes. It's mandarin for black, don't you know?" he chuckled softly.

Misaki let out a huff. Hei stopped chuckling and the alley was immediately silent again. The two stared at each other, waiting for the other to make a bad move. Misaki still trained her gun at Hei's arm but once again, her finger on the trigger was barely there, and he noticed.

"You really should stay away from me, you know?" he muttered seriously as he slowed his breathing and tensed his legs, ready to jump out of the gun's path.

He could almost see Kirihara's eyes widen when he said that, but it really was just much too dark, especially with the mask on.

"And what if I don't want to," she said softly. The rest of the world seemed to have been shut out as the silence thundered. Hei simply stared.

He needed to tell her. To remind her that he was not really the man she thought she knew. He was on a mission, far more dangerous than what she faces in her line of work. And that's saying something. He was going after important men and the heat after their deaths would be much too great for even him to dodge. He knew for certain that he would die at the end of it all, but at least he took those bastards with him. And it was exactly because of this inevitability that he didn't want her to be around when the boys stopped playing nice.

Each target would get harder and harder to kill. They would figure out his pattern soon enough to notice that he was climbing up the pyramid, and they would most definitely send people after him. Without Huang and Mao around, this would be hard indeed. Hei couldn't bear to drag Yin too deep either. She didn't deserve this. Misaki Kirihara was another story altogether. She wasn't as obedient as Yin. She wouldn't stay put just because Hei told her to. He figured that it'll be best that he just leave her in the dark and let him be the bad guy. Someone needs to do the job.

"Then I hope you're used to being sourly disappointed."

An alloyed wire sliced the air and a faint zip could be heard as Hei threw his arm up. She knew exactly what he was doing and poised to shoot. She had let her guard down and she cursed softly. Shutting out her panic, Misaki shot. The bullet was too slow, but she hadn't aimed at his arm. Her nuzzle was pointed at his chest, he would be hurting for months, but he wouldn't be out. A grunt from Hei and Misaki knew that her aim was still true, but he continued to fly across without hesitation, as if he hadn't been shot at all.

Cursing again, Kirihara ran up to the spot where Hei had been standing. There was a bullet casing just a little up ahead, prove that she had indeed shot at the man and the grunt told her that she had most definitely hit him, but why hadn't he fallen? Sighing heavily, Misaki wrinkled her nose. She hadn't really pain much attention just now but she finally realised that she was standing in the middle of a dank and smelly alleyway between a red light pub and a low budget hotel, alongside the bloody corpse of a bad cop. This would at least be interesting to report to the office.

He always assumed that Kirihara was an excellent shot, but Hei hadn't really intended to prove the hypothesis first hand. The piece of metal embedded on his (thankfully) bulletproof trench coat was still warm in his hands as he plucked it off with his bare fingers. He had returned home immediately after the confrontation with Misaki. Once again, it was much too close for his liking.

Yin had known where he was, of course. The alleyway had been dank and moist, mostly puddles of unknown liquid and stationary water from the light drizzle just now. He returned to his small, Spartan room and plunged unto his futon. There was a tiny Tv set sitting in front of his futon and Hei thanked Yin silently. She really was too good for him. He turned on the Tv and switched over to the nightly news. There was a report on the blackout, caused by Hei's electric current running through the man's body (who was conveniently standing in a puddle of water), thus causing the entire area to plunge into darkness.

"Dinner," Yin said softly as she stood at his door. Her voice had startled Hei somewhat and he smiled shakily.

"Thanks," he said as he grabbed the warm bowl from her pale hands, "for dinner and the tv."

She flashed him a small but quick smile and left wordlessly. His room was his again and Hei chowed down quickly as he returned his gaze to the tv. They hadn't caught wind of his little disposal at the alley, but Hei assumed that he would probably see it on the news by tomorrow. That man was, after all, a policeman with some very powerful friends.

The night wore on and Hei turned off the tv. He took off his shirt lazily and slipped into his futon half naked. Yin didn't mind it, and since it was getting pretty warm lately, Hei decided that decency was secondary to getting baked alive. He lay in his futon and squeezed his eyes close. Images started to run through his head.

For some reason, the images were of her. Hei flinched a little. It was probably because he had just seen her just now, that he was conjuring images of Misaki Kirihara. The images were starting to range from flashbacks of their time together to fantasies that as a man, he'd not want to forget, but for the sake of decency, should try to erase it from his head when he next see Kirihara.

Author's Note: Alrighty! Thanks for all the reviews! I really appreciate them! Hope you get a kick out of this chapter as well! So you leave a review behind~ Because reviews make me all fluffy inside~