Your lady friends working the corner were right about one thing, it was getting cold fast. Sure enough, only a few days after that rainy night, the temperature dropped enough for you to feel the biting cold through your thin apartment walls and it snowed. While your apartment had plumbing, it lacked heating and cooling. You had to face that on your own.

It was still better than being out in the elements while you worked, you had to wear clothing revealing enough to entice potential customers. At least you could throw colorful little jackets over the top. You'd be okay up top while your legs would still shake like a new born calf's in the weather. The worst part of it all was the dragon in you despised the cold. That meant in the morning, you moved more like a heat deprived reptile. To put it another way, you were too damn cold to move fast.

Every moment was slow and your bones ached and complained constantly. If you were cold enough, all you could do was shudder and shake uncontrollably. It'd get almost painful some times. You remember vividly how bad it was last year. After leaving Killer, that first winter alone was the worst you'd ever gone through. There were many nights when you cried yourself to sleep, wanting nothing more than to go back to him and curl up in his arms.

It'd be easier this year, you were sure of that, but that didn't mean it'd be easy.

Tonight had you in a sour mood as you marched to your usual spot. The ice under your heels melted enough from the heat you put off to keep you from slipping. You were always radiating more warmth in the cold but it never seemed to stick to you. At least it kept the fat snowflakes that fell from actually meeting you're skin. They evaporated in the air around you before they could reach you, only letting a fine mist meet your face.

You were almost to the other women when you paused. You were a short distance from them, all you'd have to do is cross the street and reach the end to meet up with them. But there was an unfamiliar group of men chatting them up. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except you actually recognized one of the men there. He was always hard to miss.

A perfectly styled mohawk, dark, round glasses, and a thick white coat draped over his shoulders. Hayate, the Kid gang's doctor. He hadn't changed a bit.

He shouldn't have been around here, so far from the rest of the gang and their hideout. And you were sure if he saw you, he'd recognize you. You slowly stepped back until you were at the corner and turned to duck behind it quickly. It was best to go home for now, see if you could figure out why he and part of the gang was around. You hoped he was just recruiting. That would explain all the unfamiliar faces he was with at least.

You made your way back home carefully, checking every alley and shadow as you went, just in case there were others around. That was something you honestly didn't doubt. Hayate never went out of the city by himself. His role was too important to the crew to wander alone. And he and Heat were pretty close friends so you wouldn't be surprised to see the blue haired man close by.

Heat was no where in sight though, neither were any more of the Kid crew. But you'd still be on the look out. When you got home, you quickly changed into warmer clothes since working was out of the question for now. From there, you hopped out your window and lifted yourself to the roof, peering into the city for anything abnormal. So far, it was the usual. The sounds of far off scuffles, stray animals digging through nearby trash cans for scraps, the occasion gunshot. Gunfire was still surprisingly rare around here. Unless there were gangs fighting over territory, that usually wasn't a problem.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask about what happened after you left, figure out what the gangs in the alliance decided to do. You could find an local information broker, pay them the cash you had hidden away for emergencies. It'd make it easier to see if you should pack up and move again or not.

As you debated, you heard the sound of close by footsteps down below. You quietly moved yourself out of view from the street and waited for whoever was down there to pass by. They stopped in front of your little abandoned building and you worried that someone had seen you go in for a moment. But soon they were on the move again, feet crunching through the thin layer of fresh snow. When they got far enough down the street, you frowned.

Heat wasn't around but apparently Wire was. His back was to you as he walked away but his size was unmistakable. Not to mention the all black clothes with the long, billowing coat draped over his shoulders. You didn't like the gang suddenly being around after not seeing them for so long. It brought up memories you'd done your best to forget about until now. It all seemed like a distant dream before. Seeing Wire again, even if it was only his fleeting form, brought them all back like a tidal wave.

You missed them all, so much. But you couldn't bring yourself to trust like that again.

----

It was difficult to get around town without risking seeing someone from the gang. At night, they roamed the streets freely. During the day, fewer were out and about but you'd catch flashes of the two gang officers on occasion. They were never together but if you saw one, the other was never far off. You couldn't tell what they were here for and frustratingly enough, no one else could either.

You'd gone to a couple information brokers and neither could tell you much. The only new thing you'd learned was the city had been claimed by both the Strawhat and Heart gangs, meaning the Kid gang was out of the picture there. They'd lost their carefully planned out fight for the city to the two gangs they'd originally allied themselves with. You didn't feel one shred of guilt about that. If you'd been there for it, you were sure more people would have died.

Besides doing that, you pretty much just stayed home. The corner you usually worked at was a hot spot for the gang so you couldn't go and ask the other girls what the men were wanting. It wasn't sex, that much you were sure of. You lived close enough to the spot that you'd see the women passing by occasionally to get to the hotels if that was the case. That meant the gang had to be asking them questions, talking to them about things they didn't need to.

People didn't share what secrets they knew around here. If a stranger started asking for someone, they'd have better luck finding a needle in a haystack. Folks around here knew how to keep their mouths shut. That is unless they were threatened, something you wouldn't put past Kid. He loved threats and torture. But for now, you'd just have to hope if they were asking about you, the women wouldn't say a word.

It helped that you didn't go by your old name anymore and you refused to give out your real one. Around here, you were simply Doll. It was a name the girls decided on when they first met you. They cooed over you constantly, comparing you to a China doll and the name stuck ever since. It worked in your favor from the get go, you wanted to stay as anonymous as humanly possible and the name helped with that greatly. You'd never told them about being called Blue in the past and they never asked. That meant if by chance, the gang was looking for Blue, they wouldn't find her here.

That was the hope at least. You were out on the roof top once again, pacing back and forth as you watched the streets. Most of the city's buildings weren't all that tall and you could see if anything important was happening from here easily enough. And since you'd first seen Hayate, you'd been watching everything very carefully. If no one else had information on why they were here, you had to keep an eye out and hope they'd give up on whatever they had going on and leave.

It had snowed continuously the past few days, finally stopping tonight. You'd left a neat trail through the snow covering the roof that you walked through again and again, packing it further down until it was slick from your body heat melting it with every pass. You barely heard the sound of footsteps crunching through snow over the sounds of your own movements. But you stopped as, just like before, they paused in front of your home.

This time, instead of moving on like you hoped, the person went inside. You cursed softly. They'd find your "apartment" if they went upstairs, along with the open window. You were hoping they'd be too dense to check the roof but you were searching for a place to hide at the same time. There was an old air conditioning unit not far off you could duck behind. The problem was getting there without disrupting the snow and leading the person straight to you.

For a second, you actually contemplated doing a partial transformation and using your wings to move yourself behind it. Your inner dragon was itching to follow through with that, the urges you'd long since buried suddenly making a small resurgence. But even for that, you refused. If it was only a single member of the Kid gang, you could take them out no problem, you didn't need to get feathery for it. Even in your human form, you had access to inhuman strength and speed.

Footsteps reverberated through the building, letting you know they were making their way up the stairs. Whoever they were, they sounded heavy. Most of the men in the Kid gang were pretty beefy so that came as no surprise to you.

You didn't move a muscle as you watched the edge of the roof, right above the window. The steps inside slowed down as the person made their way slowly through your room. It felt personal, even if you didn't have much. Whoever they were, they were getting to see the part of you that no one else had seen, the part that did the bare minimum to take care of yourself, just enough to get by.

Something Delilah always told you was a home was a reflection of a person's well being, of their mental state. You wondered what she'd say about you if she saw how you lived now. Your hands balled into fists as you grew angry that someone had just let themself in to your only personal space. Drawers from your dresser opened and closed, the bathroom door creaked as it was moved. They were searching the place.

Finally, they stopped directly below you, at the window. You'd never felt more ready to whoop someone's ass. Cold or not, you'd get the jump on them, possibly chuck them over the edge of the roof. The possibilities were really endless. There was silence and you could only assume they were looking outside, maybe trying to figure out where you were. Leaving a window open in this weather was strange but the place wasn't exactly warm to begin with. An open window couldn't really do much more to make the weather worse besides letting the snow in.

Then there were the tell tale sounds of feet scrabbling against the window sill. Of course they'd come check the roof. It never hurt to be thorough. Fingers popped into view as they grasped the edge and you had half a mind to stomp on them. But the person was quick. They had hopped up before you could truly consider it and you stumbled back to avoid them bumping into you.

They wore a thick, lined leather jacket that was open to reveal a white shirt underneath. Well fitted black jeans and a scuffed pair of boots were worn below. You watched the man push back his hood, revealing short cropped, green hair. A single, onyx eye stared back at you, the other permanently closed from a scar stretching from the side of his forehead down to his cheekbone. He smirked when he saw the surprise written all over your face.

"Found ya Blue."