Ryoko smiled quietly to herself as she started to walk up into the hills and forest around Konoha, holding her sister's fox form in her hands. Aside from a few incidences here and there, today was a very satisfying day. Her sister was advancing in classes and soon it looked like her younger sister would be well past worrying about their family honor issues.
Speaking of said sister, the annoyed growl from the fox in her arms told her that Joseibi was beginning to get…curious about why they weren't going to the apartment just yet.
"Probably something sappy and 'bonding' oriented," Joseibi thought to herself.
"I just want to see the sunset, Imouto-chan," Ryoko said. "There is a spot up here that is quite beautiful to watch from. And then we shall go to a movie."
As they came to a rise above the majority of surrounding trees, Ryoko stopped, looked off toward the setting sun and took a large breath of air. The ball of the sun fading from blinding yellow into a oranges and reds that spread all across the horizon like a batch of paints spilled against wall and not yet completely mixed.
The sky's blues were slowly darkening and thickening together as well, turning into a tapestry of silver beads sewn onto a sable cloth. As the sun finally vanished, Ryoko started to turn back to the path down into the town, humming along.
Joseibi turned her head to the side, ears quirking as she listened to something further out into the night.
Ryoko looked down at her sister.
"Is there something out there?" she asked her sister.
Curiosity getting the better of her, Ryoko turned aside from the path and started to walk in the direction that Joseibi was staring. Struggling, the fox squirmed out of Ryoko's hold and moved to the ground before pattering off into the woods to investigate what it had heard.
"Imouto-chan!" Ryoko said quietly. "Wait for me! It could be a bear."
Ryoko couldn't move through the woods as fast a Joseibi could, not unless she wanted to start leaping about in her kimono.
Joseibi herself was just looking for something more interesting than the beauty of nature around her, and the soft voices she heard ahead certainly qualified.
Granted, some part of her remembered the academy instructions should you find anything strange outside the village: don't investigate, immediately find a ninja and tell them what you heard, no risking yourself.
However, she really didn't think there was anything dangerous around. It was probably just a couple of people out for a midnight stroll like her sister was taking her on. That opinion changed as she pushed her way out of some foliage to see a pair of strange adults with no headband talking suspiciously to one of the academy teachers.
"Just a fox," one of the strangers said, starting to turn back toward the teacher, a bishie guy that Joseibi remembered was named Mizuki or something like that.
The stranger was a slender man of less than average height, but intense muscle tone and wearing several holsters for ninja tools despite his lack of an allegiance identifying head band. Beside him was a another man, about the same height,but much thicker and heavily toned. He was wearing a pair of guardless daggers at his back.
Joseibi was already creeping back into the woods when the silver-haired apparent traitor turned to look to see her small form.
"That's one of the students!" Mizuki-sensei said turning back into the woods. "She transforms."
Joseibi yipped as she tried to curse her bad luck pushed herself forward to disappear into the woods rushing and yipping loudly.
"Get her," Mizuki snapped, pushing one of the two men towards the fleeing fox. "I have a demon to deal with."
Joseibi heard that and tried to remember everything she could about evading pursuit as she dodged under bushes and trees trying to get back to where she'd left her sister behind and get the both of them to leave the area and get back to town.
Though she couldn't hear her sister's calls anymore, though she couldn't quite remember when they had stopped. That worried her.
At least they'd have the same trouble keeping up with her that her sister did.
Then something slammed down in the path ahead of her.
The knife wielding man.
Quickly she gathered herself up and buried herself under the bush she hadn't quite left. Behind her, another landing told her where the other man was.
"You're here somewhere," the slender man said. "We heard you in the bushes. Did you find a burrow somewhere to dig into?"
"Why don't you come out, kid," the other said, drawing his knife. "Fight like a real ninja. Isn't that what you want to be?"
They were trying to rattle her, flush her out, and as much as she recognized it, she still felt it was working. After all, whether she could hear Ryoko or not, any moment now, her sister would be…
"Ano…" the quiet voice cut through the small, tree-shaded area drawing all eyes to where Ryoko appeared standing near the bushes Joseibi had chosen to hide nearby.
"Sumimasen," Ryoko continued. "Ha..ha…have y..you s…s..seen…"
"There she is, she dropped the henge!" the knife wielder said drawing his other blade and charging in toward Ryoko.
"Ah..ah! Ya..yama..te!" Ryoko stuttered as she stumbled backward feet rolling upward underneath the man's stomach.
The flow of chi moved upward from the earth, through where her palms and upper back, twisting through muscles and gathering as it went out through her legs into the man above her. From there, it carried the man with it into the air with a rush of energy.
The flow of chi split around the tree trunk five feet away, the man's body did not. He fell, senseless, at the base of the tree.
"Sumimasen," Ryoko declared nervously as she rolled up to her feet. "I…I tripped."
"You won't get lucky again, girl!" the other said as he tossed a trio of kunai at the girl in the kimono.
Ryoko shrieked and pulled into herself, letting one kunai past, snatching the second and swinging her bokken across into the third. Before she'd swung the bokken, she'd thought she'd caught the beginning of another ripple of approaching motion, but then her amateurish bokken skills set all the delicate flows to nonsense and her hair's trigger of warning was eliminated.
With just eyes and ears, she only barely caught sight of the five shurikens before they reached her. She spun away two of them completely, but one sliced across her cheek and another slashed through her kimono slicing a line through her shoulder.
The third sunk into her thigh, dangerously close to a lethal injury for even such a small weapon. Some of the muscle tore, and it sent a small wave of pain through her.
Out of that evasive spin the kunai she had snatched earlier was launched back toward the second of her foes. She missed of course, as he launched himself into the air above the battlefield.
Which was what she wanted.
Ryoko jumped up into the air, angling away from the attacker's arc, but not so much that she would successively evade him.
She didn't want to.
"Ite!" Ryoko snapped out as her opponent fired more weapons at her, which, mid air as she was, she could only work to deflect, bokken held behind her this time as she used her free hand to do so.
Then their arcs met and, as a the ninja launched a kick, Ryoko's hand reached out to grip the incoming ninja's attacking limb. In that instant all his momentum became Ryoko's as she anchored against him and flipped up around behind and above, using the acrobatic motion to turn that upward momentum into downward and slamming downward into her opponent.
Gravity, the combined momentum of both warriors enhanced by Ryoko's funneling chi downward through her body into her opponent, all combined with a small eruption of dirt.
Rolling away, Ryoko started to stand but found the previously injured leg unwilling to do so at the moment. Catching her breath, she took the moment to let the chi through her leg and encourage the tissue to heal.
Ryoko felt the knife-wielder coming up behind her as she was still catching her breath, and started to turn about to face the attack, but knew she'd let her guard down too early. Father would have shut her down seconds ago.
She was about to be shut down now.
A small yellow bundle of fur and skin leaped up into the way, growling and yipping as it snapped at the knife-wielding ninja's face. The man snapped angrily before forcefully tearing the fox away and tossing the yellow-furred creature across the scene where it bounced off a tree with a sharp yip sound.
"Imouto-chan!" Ryoko shouted as the fox landed a bit off.
"Oh, she's your sister," the knife-wielder said, a sickening smile on his face as he turned to look back at his original target.
The bokken dropped from Ryoko's hand as she surged forward, fire building already in her eyes and across her skin as tears streamed out into steam and the vegetation around her caught fire with her passage.
Ryoko leaped into a spinning kick that he barely managed to dodge and was followed immediately by a knife-hand into the top of his temple that, had he not rolled at the last moment, would have cleaved into his skull. Even the heavy handed touch she did lay on him rose blisters and burned hair away from his scalp.
He was off-balance as Ryoko twisted about to land in front of him.
The black-haired girl, wracked by fear for her sister, twisted about, refocusing her own chi momentum downward into her feet as she landed. The energy moved out of her into the earth and rebounded back upward, stressing the bones and muscles with the flow as she worked to bring it up her body into her shoulders and down the arms and into the man's chest.
The martial artist wasn't sending the chi back into the flow for now, no, she was going to rebound as much of it back into herself as possible. She would keep gathering more and forcing what she gathered to remain at her direction until the threat to her family was settled.
The man struck a boulder, caught between the stone and Ryoko's burning hands. The enhanced momentum of chi cracked ribs as it passed through him the first time, his skin searing under Ryoko's hands, and then the chi rebounded off the cracking rock, through his chest again and pushing into Ryoko's arms.
The chi swirled down into her feet again as she collected the once again rebounded momentum into a short hop and spin that let her swirl more chi in from the air around her. Twinges of pain worked all the way up her body as she directed the chi build up into her foot which lanced straight out to catch the head of her target between her and the boulder.
Instead the Saotome found her foot firmly gripped and herself being tossed off course. All the chi she'd built up to that point was lost as she had to right her herself in mid air. Without the vicious flow she'd built, Ryoko could feel the exhaustion all throughout her body.
"Now, now," the new fighter said as the figure that had grabbed Ryoko burst into smoke. "We'd like to ask both these men some questions first."
Seeing the familiar image of the man that had originally found her and her sister outside Konoha, and Joseibi's furry, yellow body limping out of the bushes toward her, ears bent back pleadingly and several clones of Kakashi moving about to extinguish the fires spawned by Ryoko.
Panting, Ryoko dropped to her knees, fire dying away from her body and finally her eyes.
"Su…sumimasen, Kakashi-sama," Ryoko said as Joseibi padded over to her and started nuzzling at her hand. "I owe…Joseibi…a…a..mo..movie."
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:21)
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