She Who Walks With Spirits (Tinder and Elflady)

[Tinder]

Hanako listened to his words, looking down as the ground as she began to take deep breaths to steady herself. This was complete insanity, but she couldn't deny what she had seen with her own eyes. Shin had made water move without touching it and this man had been ready to run her through with a katana. It didn't make sense, but those were the facts. She'd learned long ago how to cope with the illogical. It had followed her for her whole childhood. Not only the little things she noticed in her own life like the whispering and glimpses of things that could exist, but there had also been times when her father made her question a few things. The thought of him now brought the fear back, but she pushed it back again, taking another breath. She could still clearly recall an incident in grade school when her father had let her attend a regular school for a year; she'd gone with a few girls she'd met to a festival the town held annually near the town shrine. It had been fun, more fun than Hanako had remembered having before that time. It was also the night when she began to hear the whispers. Her father had been furious and began walking her to and from school after that. He made her promise never to go near a shrine again, offering no explanation why.

The more she thought about it, the more sense this situation was beginning to make. Ryou had always turned a blind eye to the odd things she'd noticed and yet seemed to be highly superstitious. Maybe he had known more than he'd been telling Hanako. She didn't like the idea of her father lying to her, but she couldn't ignore facts right now. Sitting her swinging wildly from one extreme to the next wasn't going to help her situation. She need to ground herself and move forward. It was what Ryou would have wanted her to do if he were there.

She shifted her legs from beneath her and stood, using the wall for support. Her head swam as she did, but she kept herself standing. She had recovered enough to get moving and that would have to be enough for the time being. Her legs weren't shaking at least and her vision cleared after a few moments. She could rest again when they were in a more secure location. Reality was now that, however insane it sounded, someone out there wanted to kill her. They were near enough to send to two men after her. Whatever she'd done to the other man, she was likely too weak now to repeat. Shin was her only hope for protection, even if she was uncertain if she could trust him completely.

After a moment, she looked at Shin again, her face as confident as she could make it despite the past few minutes of falling to pieces. "I'm fine," she replied to his question, moving away from the wall, "And I agree with you that we should go. Do you have a plan?"

 

[Elflady]

"Not really." Shin wished that the answer to her question was a different one than the one he had given but he had never been the strategic type, that was also a trait that seemed to have passed him by. "I haven't really thought this whole thing through exactly, I found you by accident in the first place. I mean I was looking for you, or not you personally but you get the point, anyway, I didn't expect to be so lucky and not so unlucky that I wasn't the first one to do so." Now he was off rambling again and most likely doing very little for making the human feel safe, as safe as she could feel at the moment with a total stranger as her only aid against an unknown threat.

Pulling a hand through his hair Shin stopped talking to take a breath before continuing, this time a bit more collected. "Well, to start off I would like to leave this place, preferably as quietly as possible, if the clans think we are still here it will keep us safe awhile longer." Shin meant to leave this world and enter his own, although he didn't think to specify that to Hanako, having rarely been to the human world he still had a hard time remembering how clueless the humans were at times.

He would also like to return to his own world purely because he missed it, he was feeling very cramped and uncomfortble among all these tall buildings and all the people that made the city even more cramped. In his home, even markets during harvest times were nowhere near as filled with people as a single part of a small city were in the human world.

"Besides I highly doubt someone in this world knows enough to teach you how to use your powers, it's only the odd magician or fortune teller who have enough power for it to even be worth mentioning. I think our best chance is finding a spirit who uses fire, and luckily I know of someone we can start with." This time he actually had some sort of a plan, however it was a good one or not he had not decided on yet.

 

[Tinder]

Hanako attempted to follow Shin's train of thought, though it wasn't easy. He said that they should leave quietly, but he seemed to mean more than merely leaving the city. She wanted to ask him to explain, but she knew there was no time now. Still it was hard to just accept that the spirits she'd heard about in fairytales existed and that they lived in a world all their own. Not only that, but now she was supposed going to go there and learn how to do…whatever it was that Shin believed she could do.

As childish as it sounded, she just wanted to run from it all. There had to be someone out there who could help her. If she went to the police perhaps they could take her somewhere far away, at least until her father reappeared. Then they could move again, maybe to a different country. She could go on pretending like she was no different than anyone else and maybe even live out a half-way decent life without having to face whatever this all was. But then again she'd thought the policemen from earlier had been there to help her and they had tried to kill her. Was there anywhere that was really safe to go now? Whoever these people were, they seemed to have a long reach. Without any money or a guardian, Hanako was defenseless. Shin really was the only hope she had at the moment.

Seeing no other answer to give him, she sighed and replied, "Alright, then lead on. I assume you know where we're going to have to go to find this person." This was no time for pity or giving into fear. This was a time for action. She could wallow in self-pity once they were safer. Her father had always drilled into her the importance of acting fast in an emergency situation, no matter what the emergency. Perhaps he'd been preparing her for a day like this. It didn't really matter. Staying focused on the task at hand was all that counted.