Her sister always said that she loved her hair. The way it was so soft and the color of the night sky. It worked easily with almost any style you wanted to have. Every morning, her sister and her would get up early so she could put Aya's hair in a new and interesting way. This was their time together, they would spend it laughing and talking to one another. Aya loved these mornings, it was her favorite part of the day. She would not even argue about her bedtime being early because she knew the sooner she went to sleep, the sooner the time with her sister would come.

These mornings lasted until she was about ten years old. When she was ten years old, her sister Keiko got married. He was a man that went to her college, two years her senior. She remember him being a kind man, one who she thought well of. She also remembered the day of the wedding, how her sister sat young Aya down to do her hair once more, even though it was her day. Keiko told her that she wanted to do her baby sister's hair again. Aya loved Keiko more than anyone else in the world, for she was the kindest and sweetest soul that she had ever known.

Aya was twelve years old when she got the news of her sister's death. She was on an expedition, in the Outer Lands. She was a botanist, and they wanted her to see a rare type of plant they had discovered near the southern mountain ranges. Keiko agreed to go because she wanted to see more of the world, get a chance that others didn't.

Her party got attacked by a horde of Lost Ones. No one survived. A seeker discovered the remains of them three weeks later, when a concerned family of one of the members sent them out to discovered what happened to their love ones.

When she received the news, she was devastated. She remembered locking herself up in her room and crying for several days. One day, she looked in the mirror to see her long black hair, unmanaged and no longer kept. She couldn't bare to look at it, it reminded her how her sister could no longer brush it, could no longer run her fingers through it and tell Aya how she loved it. That thought made her want to scream and hate the world. She threw something at the mirror, smashing it into shards. Then she grabbed the sharpest shard and started slicing at her hair, watching as the longs strands of hair fell to the ground into a pile with her tears.

"Aya, wake up." She felt someone shaking her shoulder, bringing her into the present. Opening her eyes, she saw that she fell asleep at the desk in their office. It was dark out the windows, the only light in the room was the small lamp on the desk. Collin had his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her in concern.

"What time is it?" She asked groggily. It was unlike her to fall asleep while at work. Especially at the office, she usually managed to make it home before she crashed. Then again, she had never been offered a hundred grand before.

"Its two in the morning, I came down here to get some more work done and I found you down here." He said as he sat down on the desk. Aya noticed that he was still wearing the clothes from the daytime.

"Two in the morning?" Aya sighed, how could she fall asleep so late? Walking back to her apartment in the middle of the night was not her idea of a good plan. A thought occurred to her. "Why are you doing work at this hour of the night?"

He chuckled. "I'm an insomniac. I have a hard time sleeping at night so I might as well get some work done, and then I sleep when the sun comes up." That makes sense, she thought to herself. She never knew that he stayed up all night, she just figured he was a kind of person that liked sleeping 15 hours a day. Yet again, another piece of information he never revealed to her. "Do you want some cocoa?"

"Um sure I guess." she replied, still not really sure what to think of this.

"Come on, its upstairs in my kitchen." He got up and on gestured her to follow. She slowly got up out of the chair, feeling the pain from sleeping in a weird position, and followed him up the stairs to his apartment.

Aya had only been in Collin's upstairs apartment a couple times. Usually she never went past the doorway of it, just waited for Nadia to retrieve Collin from within it. He never saw her apartment that was half a mile away, so she didn't feel right going into his. Just like the office, it was cluttered and full of stuff. Every corner of the place was full of books or furniture or kink-knack. Aya was surprised that he was able to move around so nimbly in here, while her who was much shorter and smaller than him, could barely move a few feet without bumping into something.

The kitchen was like the rest of the apartment, filled with objects and clutter. The fridge was covered with magnets that held up photos and notes scrawled out in his sloppy handwriting, most of them dated months back. He smiled and scratched the back of his head when she inspected it. "Oh yeah, that was my attempt to get organized a few months back. It didn't work so well." He clapped his hands together. "Sorry about the mess, try to make yourself comfortable! I'll try to find some cocoa."

Nodding, she sat down on an empty chair that was next to the dining table in the middle of the room. She wasn't quite sure why he had chairs in here, for the table had absolutely no room on it for eating. The table was packed with files from the business along with some of his personal papers. One of the pieces caught her eye. It was a photograph that looked like it had been shoved into the bottom of one of the piles, yet a good part of it could still be seen. She looked to see if his back was still turned, and then took the photo out from under the pile.

It was a photo of a woman, one who looked to be in her only a little bit older than Aya. The photo looked as if it had been at one point torn, and then taped back together. She was amazed at how beautiful the woman was. She looked to be a noble, or someone of great class. Whoever she was, she looked very rich from the elegant clothing she wore. She had long dark hair that was put up in a very fancy style, yet still flowed down over her shoulders and down pass where the photograph ended. Her expression was very kind, yet at the same time, very sad and lonely.

"Whose Keiko?" Collin suddenly asked, making Aya jumped. She had been so absorbed in the photo, she had forgotten where she was.

"Huh?" How did he know that name? Did she ever mentioned it to him before? She didn't think so, her and Collin never talked about things that weren't work related.

"Keiko, you said that name in your sleep. Is she someone important to you?" He asked quietly. She was embarrassed that she had talked in her sleep. She had done that as a kid sometimes, but she thought she had grown out of it.

"She was my sister. She died six years ago." Aya said quietly, looking at Collin. "Some Lost Ones killed her." His face gained a look of sympathy and sadness. She knew that look very well, that was the look she got from most people ever since she lost Keiko.

"I'm sorry," he said that in a tone that made her feel like he truly was sorry. "If you ever want to talk about it..." he started, and she knew what the next line would be.

"Thanks, but its okay," she interrupted. She didn't think she could handle having a heart to heart with him about her dead sister. "It was just a bad dream, I'd rather focus on my work."

"Okay, if you say so," he said in a tone that said he wasn't convinced but wouldn't push. He continued to make the cocoa that he had located. "Any luck on locating our jackpot yet?"

"No not yet. Nadia and I are going to go into town tomorrow morning to ask around. See if anyone heard anything." She said, glad that they were getting off that subject. "You are free to come if you want."

He smiled and shook his head. "I don't do mornings, but thanks." he set down a cup of cocoa with marshmallows in front of her and took a sip from his own mug. "I just hope you guys find something soon. Not sure I'm a huge fan of what I've heard so far."

"You mean how its suppose to be a weapon powerful enough to destroy a horde of Lost Ones? Yeah, not exactly what I call comforting." Though she didn't have to worry, all she had to do was locate it. However Collin would probably be the one to destroy it, so she could understand why he might be worried. "Don't worry, we'll get it." she sipped her drink, which was warm and delightful to her taste buds. "No way there's been no gossip about a weapon that strong."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of all the games in the world he could of challenged Preston to, why did it have to pool?

It was bad enough when he only had his gloves to worry about, how he could not make fine shots very easily. But to top it off, he had a broken hand that was still in a cast underneath one of his gloves. Patrick still knew this, yet he still demanded to play a round of pool.

Sometimes Patrick was a jackass.

"Come on kid, can't you make a better shot than that? I'm ahead of you by six balls!" Patrick laughed at how badly Preston was losing. Preston on the other hand, did not find it amusing.

"Sure, its easy to win when your opponent has a broken hand," he muttered as he attempted in vain to aim for a shot at the number seven ball. "Why are we here anyway?" He couldn't see how playing pool in some seedy bar in the middle of nowhere could be work related like Patrick said it was.

"This is the place to be for gossips and rumors kid," Preston hated when Patrick called him a kid. He was nearly twenty-two after all. "This is one of the top spots that local mercenaries look if they want find information about new events or people in town."

"So what, are we going to see if anyone knows anything about Fumei's whereabouts?"

"Nope, no point in that. No one knows anything," Patrick took the cigarette butt out of his mouth and smoothed the end into the ash tray on the pool table's side. "We're going to be the ones telling where it is."

"What?" Preston looked up surprised, his carefully planned shot went nuts and he ended up hitting the four ball instead of the cue ball. "But we don't know where he is." Thats why they decided to hire that mercenary in the first place. So he could find Fumei, and then die. That was the plan that Preston knew.

"You don't know where Fumei is," Patrick said smugly. "I, on the other hand, have made it part of my profession to always know where my experiments are at all time."

"So why the game with Collin?" Preston demanded. He wanted to see justice be carried out on that monster, but he didn't understand Patrick's point of why he did this. Everyone had an agenda, he knew Patrick was up to something. "If you know where your experiment is, then why not just send in a squad to destroy it?"

"Because from what you told me about this Collin, I was intrigued." Patrick said simply. "What he did doesn't seem like something a normal demon could physically do at that age. I mean I never heard of a demon that could develop that sharp of claws at the age of seven, much less claws that could disappear entirely from their hand." He took aim of his shot, and shot yet another ball perfectly into a hole. "I thought this to be the perfect opportunity to test not only my experiment's capabilities, but your little demon's as well."

Preston watched Patrick quietly for a moment. He wasn't sure what to think of this. To Patrick, all of this was one giant science experiment. Lives, even if they were demon lives that deserved to be put down, were at stake and all he could think about it was his experiments. Was that how he viewed life? Was bringing Preston along with him also part of his experiment?

It was then Patrick turned away from the game. He looked over at an older woman who was at the bar jabbering away with one of the bartenders. He smiled, amused at his own plan. "See that woman over there?" He gestured towards her. "She's suppose to be the town gossip. Let her hear anything and the whole town will hear about it by the following nightfall." He set down his cue and stretched his arms, grinning at Preston "Time for me to get to work. Feel free to come and watch."

At that, he walked away and headed towards the bar, leaving Preston behind. Unsure if he should follow.

Word Count: 2338
Total Word Count: 9212/50000