~Yukine~

"Don't think I won't stab you again." Yato threatened the enemy towering above us. He then turned to me. "Do you think you can handle him on your own? Obviously he's askin' for a fight but one of us should continue going after Hiyori." he asked of me. Honestly I wasn't quite sure but I knew he wouldn't leave if I said otherwise. So I shrugged.

"I guess so."

"Are you sure? I don't want to put you in a whole ton of danger." he said seriously, looking right into my amber eyes. I began to feel a little awkward so I broke off our eye contact and nodded.

"I'll be fine, it beats searching for Hiyori." It did, actually. I was getting real tired of searching for some girl we only had just gotten to know. Plus, I haven't engaged in a battle for quite some time.

Yato nodded. "Okay." he then began to sprint away.

"Hey," the wizard that I was about to fight started. "you can't just run away from me!"

"Yukine is staying here, I have to go get someone. Have a good fight!" he yelled, giving us both a wave and the ran off to get Hiyori.

He sighed. "Whatever, you seem like a good warm up anyway. I'm Isao by the way."

"Yukine." I stated.

"Good to know." he tried to throw a punch to my face, but luckily since I was smaller than average I easily ducked down, making him waste some of his energy. Unfortunately, it looked like he had plenty to spare.

I backed off a little and raised my arm to the ceiling. A magic circle appeared in the palm of my hand and snow began to fall down. Despite feeling cold all of the time, when I was in a winter-like atmosphere with snow falling down around me, I didn't even feel the need to at least zip up my jacket. I caught some of the snow and tried to swirl together some snow. However, I was too focused on what I was trying to create that I didn't even see him coming. Isao punched my left thigh, causing me to collapse to the ground.

I coughed and held my leg for a few seconds, absorbing the pain until I got used to it, then got back up again. While he was smirking about his attack, I got back to creating the snowballs.

He gave a laugh. "Ha! You think you can attack me with snowballs? What is this, a playdate in the park?" I then propelled them at him and he was taken by surprise. "Shit that hurt!" he then punched me again, this time in the stomach and caused me to fall over. I of course stood up after taking a few seconds to let the pain sink in and I put my arm straight out.

"White fury!" I yelled, summoning a bunch of snowballs at once and targeting all of them at Isao. My attack only lasted a minute, but it did make him collapse a little bit. As he was recovering, I thought about the last time I even engaged in a battle. I suppose it was about six months ago when me and Yato had a job that required us to go to the mountains to get some plants and a monster came about us. But that wasn't a battle as much as it just happened to require a few of my magic skills.

"Damn, it's been awhile." I thought out loud. He then punched me again in the stomach, sending me back a little. I then noticed how all of Isao's attacks were from his upper body. He's not using his legs…

I thought back to when Yato stabbed him. I could use that as a weakness. I kept focusing all of my next attacks on his lower body, but he knew what I was up to. Still though, the battle remained fairly even but I had a slight advantage. From an outsider's perspective, it would look like I was going to win. But I couldn't let my guard down too much. Although it looked like Isao wasn't going to last much longer, so if I could just hold out longer than him…

He spat up a little bit of blood, then wiped the side of his mouth as if he had just ate a messy dinner.

"I have to admit kid, you're stronger than you look. Of course, if your annoying friend didn't stab me in the leg than you'd be defeated by now. Having to focus on defense more than just kicking you down sucks."

"If you didn't hold us up in the air like that then maybe he-"

"You could be way more powerful," I rolled my eyes, annoyed by how he suddenly sounded like he was trying to parent me like Yato did all the time. "but your skills were enough to beat me physically."

"Physically?" I wondered.

He laughed. "What? Did you think all I had was strength? You were fun to play with, but now the time has come to show you what else I can do." After his threat or whatever, the lights instantly went out. Panic started to flood through me.

Anything but the dark, anything but the dark.

My hands grabbed my head as I started struggling to breathe. Something took me by surprise as it snuck under my feet and forced me to sit down. The area lite up again but this time I was in a completely new environment.

I sat on a city bench along with a little girl. Somehow I had ended up in a city along a road.

The little girl spoke to me. "Hey mister, will you wait with me?" she asked. I studied her face and realized this wasn't real. She was dead. A couple of months ago, me and Yato were wandering around inside a magic store for shelter that day when we heard that a little girl with brown hair and sea blue eyes died due to a chariot accident. In fact, she was killed in this exact spot where we sat.

I looked to my left and saw a little memorial of flowers, cards, and stuffed animals attempting to honor her death.

This definitely wasn't real. But it was like one of those dreams where no matter how much evidence lied in front of you, proving that it was an impossible scenario, it still wasn't possible to fathom the fact that you were in a fake reality. It just felt like this was all actually happening.

"Well, will you? My Mom should be here any minute now to pick me up. In fact, maybe we can take you to your home." she offered. I sighed.

"Sure." I answered, figuring that I had nothing else to do. She cheered and thanked me.

A few times as we waited in silence the street light would flicker, causing me to flinch a little. After this happened a third time, she finally spoke up again and put a hand on my leg.

"Are you scared of the dark?" she asked innocently. I didn't say anything, not wanting to admit my lame fear. "It's okay, I'm sorry my mom is running late though." I nodded, too freaked out to reply. "We all have fears you see. Mine are probably even more ridiculous than yours. In fact, I tend to have nightmares."

"Nightmares?" I wondered.

"Yes. But it's usually either scary dream one or scary dream two."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" This girl was starting to scare me a little bit. I looked around, praying that her Mom would come soon. No wait, her Mom isn't coming, right? The real world and this reality were starting to merge, the difference between them blurring.

"Well, scary dream one always starts out like this; I'm sitting here waiting for my Mom to pick me up. And after hours, she still isn't here. I start to worry as the night only continues to stay this dark and lonely, except I have nobody to wait with me like I do now. But anyways, after a while I finally get up off this bench and try to find my own way home, thinking that maybe she just got caught up in doing something and forgot about me. I don't really know. I never get to know because after about twenty feet, a chariot runs me over." I remained silent, thinking of how awful that would be. I looked over to the memorial for someone who recently died here. It wasn't her though, right? No, that was impossible she sat right here with me. "And scary dream two is when I'm sitting right here as well, and I start to lose who I am."

"Who you are? How can you do that?" I asked her.

"My eyes start to do weird things. Weird things start to form on my body, my voice becomes very weird. No, weird isn't the right word. More like, terrifying." she answered. The whole time she was explaining her second nightmare, I wasn't actually looking down at her. I glimpsed down now and noticed her head was down, and her bangs hanged over her eyes. "And you know what the scariest part is?" she whispered.

"What?" I reluctantly asked her.

"I never wake up." she answered, her heading snapping up to reveal one of her eyes replaced by one that would typically belong to a monster. The rest of her body looked like it was infected too. Spoches of her skin turned purple, and eyeballs were placed all over her body.

I stood up and tried to back away so fast that I ended up falling out of the bench. She tried to keep walking towards me, both of her arms stretched out.

"You said that you'd wait with me. Where are you going?" she said, her voice not sounding like it belonged to a little girl but to a monster.

I conjured up white blizzard and got ready to defend myself. I was about to try and wipe her out when I saw tears streaming down her face. Oh god… was she still human? I couldn't kill a little girl, if she had any hope of being saved I had to help. I let my hands down, releasing my magic. More monsters stood behind her as she still slowly walked towards me.

"When's she coming?" she cried. "Why is she taking so long to get here?" I kept backing up, not wanting to hurt her but not wanting to get hurt myself. She noticed this and quickly took offense. "Where are you going? Are you leaving me? You said you would wait with me! My Mommy will come soon! She has to!" she cried. I started to panic, having no idea what to do. There was no way I was going to hurt her, she had to be saved. But how? She kept approaching me and I had to keep backing up. I knew this wouldn't work forever, but before I knew it one of the monsters behind her charged right for me.

~Hiyori~

"Your wish has been heard loud and clear!"

A smile instantly formed on my face. "Yato! Never thought I'd be glad to see you." I cheered as I glanced up to find him standing right in front of my cell, holding his sword behind him.

"Never glad to see me? That doesn't sound like the words from a person whose king just came to save them." he replied, flipping his hair a little. I rolled my eyes.

"I was gonna apologize till you called yourself a king." I commented.

"Well I'm not a king, right now…" he shook his head, seeming to stop himself from entering his fantasy world. "Right now, we need to get you out of here." he placed his sword under the locks on my cell and yanked back, causing them to snap. He stood and waited for a few moments then frowned. "Are ya gonna come out?"

I pointed with my eyes to the chains binding me to the ground. "Yato I can't." he got my hint and looked down.

"Jeez, looks like you're a very scary criminal if they have to lock you up that much." he smirked. He seemed like he was in a really good mood at the moment...

He broke the chains the same way he snapped the cell lock, and I tried to stand up but fell a little, considering that I was tied to the ground for quite some time. He reached over to try and help me up, and I ended up putting a hand on his shoulder. After getting used to standing, I let go and brushed off my clothing. I felt an empty spot on the side of my skirt and groaned.

"They still have my keys."

"Oh." Yato commented. "Do you really need them right now?"

"I can't just leave all of my keys here!" I answered. "It's bad enough that I lost them."

"We also should find Yukine." Yato added.

"Yukine? He's here too?" I wondered.

"Yeah we both came to rescue you, but we got caught by some big guy and I told Yukine to take care of him while I came to get you."

"You just left him behind all on his own?!" I demanded.

"Hey don't underestimate him!" he snapped, his face coming close to mine, glaring me down.

"Hold it you two." we heard from behind us. We both turned around and found it to be no other than one of my kidnappers, Johnny. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I-" I began.

"Hey just let us be on our way and nobody gets hurt." Yukine threatened, sword in hand.

"Whoa whoa whoa buddy." he started, putting up his hands. "I didn't come here to hurt anybody, I was actually about to let her go myself but it seems like you did that for me."

"Let me go?" I wondered and out of the corner of my eye I could see Yato didn't lower his sword at all.

"Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing actually." he laughed, putting a hand behind his head. "Turns out you weren't the celestial wizard we needed. Boss wanted a girl named Lucy who can be identified by her blonde hair and golden keys, which you have neither of. Juvia and Sol captured her, but she just got away actually. Boss is pretty pissed off about it and if he found out we wasted our time capturing you, well, I don't know what'd happen to me and Jonathan. So you better get out while you can. For mine and your sake." he explained. They took Lucy then too? Why do they need her?

"Why do you guys need Lucy? Is this what this whole war is about?" I asked with Yato's eyes widening next to me.

"Mostly, because we'll probably call off the attack once you guys give her to us again."

"The attack?" Yato pondered.

"Yeah, let's just say your guild is probably gonna have a fun time once we get moving. In fact, like I said, you guys need to leave soon or else you're gonna have to watch your guild get demolished from inside of here."

"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" Yato demanded. He really confused me sometimes. He either acts like he totally doesn't care what's going on, and then other times his pride kicks in and he is suddenly ready to destroy anyone.

Not only did Yato confuse me, but what Johnny just said made zero sense. 'Get moving'? 'From inside of here'?

"Look buddy, I only follow orders. Our boss says that a client has paid big bucks for us to capture and give to him Lucy Heartfilia, so that's all we're trying to do."

"Heartfilia…?" I wondered. She couldn't be a part of the Heartfilias? My parents occasionally worked with the Heartfilias, but compared to them we were considered a far lower class. Now that I thought about it though, Lucy never brought up her last name… "So that's why you took me? You thought I was her?"

"Yes." he said embarrassingly. "But like I said, she got away from us already."

"So Natsu was able to rescue her." Yato mumbled next to me and finally relaxed a little. "Well okay then. C'mon Hiyori let's go get Yukine. I'm sure he's done with that big macho guy he's battling with anyway."

"Your friend got caught in a fight? With a big dude?" Johnny asked.

"None of your damn business." he snapped.

"Hey, I was just curious. Cause if he's fighting Isao, damn is he done for. That guy has not only the physical strength to knock anyone down, but when he pulls out his mind tricks," he laughed. "well, like I said, you'll be done for."

"What did I just say about underestimating people?" Yato mumbled, grabbing my arm and turning us around. "C'mon Hiyori, we'll just pick up Yukine on the way out of here."

I didn't want to ask Yato this myself, but I couldn't help if he was the one underestimating people, and by people I meant Yukine. I've never seen him fight before, but I had a feeling he was too on edge and impulsive to always think clearly during a fight.

"Hey wait!" Johnny called out after us. "Doesn't your little friend want her keys back?" he asked, dangling my keys, my life, in his hands.

"Yes!" I answered, releasing myself of Yato's grip and running towards him. He held them out and I quickly snatched them. I counted the five to make sure none were missing. "Thank you!" I bowed, and then caught back up with Yato who still continued to run.

"How far is he from here?" I asked.

"Not too far. In a couple of turns we should reach him. I think, it's hard to remember." he answered.

"Yato! We need to get to him as soon-"

"As soon as what? Haven't seen you two around before." a Phantom Lord wizard interrupted my sentence and our search. The first feature I noticed was his incredibly long hair. It curled all the way to his feet, but at least it looked recently washed considering the amount he had.

"I'm sick of people getting in my way." Yato stated in a very pissed off tone.

"Oh? Well I'm sick of random wizards poppin' up in our place. I don't believe that trespassers should be allowed to simply escape." he threatened.

Yato rolled his eyes. "I have to beat the crap out of you to get to Yukine? Fine, Hiyori you can stand back or watch." I wanted to tell him that he couldn't boss me around like that, but now didn't seem like a good time to argue.

"Of course I'm gonna help you fight." I said.

"You sure? He seems pretty tough for you."

"Yes I'm sure!" I replied. "And you were the one saying not to underestimate Yukine so why are you thinking that I can't help you beat him?" he stared at me for a few seconds and shook his head.

"You're right, sorry. Guess I haven't seen you fight much." he smirked, then got whipped with a lock of dark red hair.

"Sorry, I got sick of waiting for you two to shut up." the enemy stated.

"Yato!" I cried, rushing over to him in a panic. He quickly stood up though.

"I'm fine, it's not me we have to worry about."

"Right." I replied, and then I turned towards him. "What's your name anyways?"

"Mine? If you really care, it's Gorou. But that doesn't matter too much since you'll be beaten to a pulp in a manner of a few minutes." Gorou smirked.

"This guy is a lot of talk…" I mumbled, quietly enough to where nobody heard me. I then decided to go for it and attack him head on myself.

"Jungle Savate!" I screamed, jumping up to give him a giant kick.

Which was a stupid mistake.

By the time my leg got close to Gorou, his hair wrapped around it and threw me to the side, opposite of Yato.

"You idiot!" he yelled at me.

I groaned more than just because of the fall. "Yeah I know that! I don't see you doing anything!"

"Well it's not like we made a plan or anything before you just took off after him!"

"I took off?!" I repeated, thinking about how Yato definitely just ran off to get me instead of helping out Yukine. "Anyways, do you have some great plan to beat him?" I asked.

He thought for a minute and then answered, "No."

"Of course not." I muttered.

"But, we can just continue to attack until I think of something." he stated and I rolled my eyes at his hippocratism.

"Alright."

"You two need to. Shut. Up." Gorou commented, sending a whip of hair to both of us. Yato kept trying to cut off our freakish enemy's hair, which made sense, but he quickly saw what Yato was attempting to do and kept dodging his sword.

"If only I could cut his stupid hair." he mumbled. Meanwhile, I kept trying to use physical attacks but nothing seemed to be working. I still felt hesitant to use my spirits since the guilt of losing them still consumed me.

"Wait I just thought of something." Yato stated as we stood back-to-back.

"Go on…" I asked, thinking that maybe he thought of a good way to beat Gorou.

"A while ago you said that you lived in a big mansion, so did you have like maids, servants...?" I thought back to when I explained that to him. It was after the epic martial arts fight, right?

"Then again, I guess you two haven't lived here your whole lives."

"You have?"

"Yeah, I used to live with my parents in a huge house just a few blocks from Fairy Tail. They were really talented healing wizards, and the they were both in the guild as well. That's why I joined Fairy Tail at such a young age, since they were members too."

"Yato! Now's not the time to be asking that!" I yelled. Seriously? He wants to know this as we were battling.

"But I just thought about it cause ever since I've was a kid, I've always had the desire to become famous and have lots of servants working for me, and maybe even praising me and-"

"That's nice Yato." I cut in. "If you really want, I'll tell you all about it later. Right now we need to actually defeat this guy."

"Sorry, you're right." he said, and then started going extra hard slashing his sword. I kept watching him miss, if only I could distract Gorou…

I whacked myself on the head. "Duh!"

"Hiyori! What're doing?!" Yato demanded, seeming to be very confused by my actions.

"I'm gonna give you an opening!" I told him. "Open, gate of the whirling tornado, Cyclone!" Cyclone appeared before us, giving a relaxed stance with both of his arms above his head as if he had just completed a workout.

"Sup everyone. How're you doin' Hiyori?" he asked and before I had the chance to answer Gorou pointed towards him.

"You! You were the one sneaking around our guild the other night!" he shouted. Cyclone chuckled a little.

"Oh yeah that was me."

"How'd he figure that out?" Yato wondered and I shrugged, ready to tell him that I didn't have a clue until Gorou interrupted me before I could even say anything, again.

"I found a few strands of hair on the ground that looked like they didn't belong to anybody in Phantom Lord." he answered casually.

"Uh…" me and Yato mumbled at the same time.

"Normally, that's not what-" Yato began.

"We came here to do." I finished, even though that probably wasn't what he planned to say. "Cyclone, you don't need to go too hard on this guy but give him something that'll tangle the hell out of his hair." I commanded, feeling strangely powerful. I did of course need to apologize for losing his key and the others later, but right now other pressing manners were at hand.

"I got ya covered." he said, snapping his fingers. A few moments later we heard the sound of powerful, dusty winds coming from down the hall.

"Why do you always have to make your attacks come from a distance?" I asked with a sigh.

"It's more dramatic and fitting that way." he shrugged and I rolled my eyes a little. Yato laughed a little, being amused by my spirits like usual. Finally the tornado (that was too small to be considered a real one but large enough to give anyone a spin) reached us, and specifically Gorou. He tried to run from it but he only lasted a few seconds before getting spiraled into it, and as a result he lied down on the ground with a few injuries and his hair tangled up everywhere.

I looked over at Yato to try and give him a hint of what to do next. He didn't understand for a few moments and then his eyes grew a little wide as he nodded.

"That's so simple yet genius Hiyori." he complimented, causing me to blush a little for some reason. He walked up to Gorou and raised his sword. Slash! He had no trouble cutting through his long red hair and he cried out.

"No! My hair! You know how long it takes to grow?!" he demanded, struggling to sit up as he cradled his lost hair.

"Nope, and honestly I don't care much." Yato stated.

I turned to Cyclone. "You did an excellent job as always!"

He smirked a little. "It was no problem, homegirl." he replied. Did he just call me 'homegirl'?

"I'm so sorry for losing all of you guys. I can't believe how easily they took me." I apologized, looking down in shame. He tried to lift my head up a little.

"Don't fret, you got us back, right? No harm done." he said, forgiving me easily. A wave of guilt seemed to wash out of me. He was right, I couldn't linger onto that fact any longer. "I see you have a friend that you need to find, so call me again if ya need me."

he evaporated out of our presence and Yato came up to me as he finished picking off all the hair on his sword.

"Gross." he mumbled. "Anyways, you ready to go find Yukine? By now he has to be done with whoever that guy he was fighting."

I nodded as I wiped off my skirt and got ready to run. "Let's go."

I'm sorry for not updating since the beginning of this month! Life's gotten really busy but to make up for it (or try to at least) I'm uploading double chapters today! Yep chapter 8 should be available to read right after this! Thank you guys for reading/reviewing though, I really enjoy writing this and I hope you guys enjoy reading it too (except for those painful parts ya know).

Anyways, time to put up chapter 8!

(Also chapter 474 of Fairy Tail MY GOD THAT WAS GOOD)

"Shine until your body is melted. Create the shadow in which we will lurk." -Noragami Ch 63