Cheshire Smile by 2nd Star to the Right
Disclaimer: Nothing to do with the Gundams belongs to me (but Karu and Ari's souls are mine!)
Author's Notes: ok, ok, I admit I don't know much about senseis or brain scanning, so please forgive my ignorance…
CHAPTER ONE… of kidnappers and the kidnapped
Far down the forest path a man snapped out of his daydream as someone passed several yards away from his napping…er, hiding spot. He squinted trying to see who had passed and discovered a teenage girl dressed in all black.
It wasn't the fact that she was holding a conversation with herself, it was the long braid draped over her shoulder and swinging by her knees that made him smile to himself. This is defiantly the one he was waiting for.
He was glad he had finally found her; this assignment had already gone on too long. He sighed out loud. He couldn't act like the assignment was already over- he had only just found the brat. How in the colonies was he supposed to find out what she herself didn't know? "Well," he snickered to himself, "she doesn't even know her real name so…
"It's Karu," proclaimed a clear voice followed by a clearer punch-kick combination. As his vision decayed into black and white specs, he managed to groan, "How did you know?" Karu knew he was unconscious but answered anyway, "Not many squirrels can snicker."
Karu was slightly annoyed but not worried at the appearance of the spy. It meant that she would have an unforeseen detour and then be late for Sensei. Her sensei would not be pleased.
It had been years since Sensei had formally taught Karu anything, although she still kept an obsessively close eye on the girl. Sensei seemed to feel she'd earned the right to closely follow Karu's exploits; she had carefully trained Karu in several fighting styles, both offensive and defensive. Now Karu taught these styles to Sensei's younger students since the teacher was far too busy to handle everyone personally, and she was probably going to miss her class.
She considered the best excuse to tell her as Karu dragged the man, tied up, down the path. She made no effort to avoid the rocks and tree roots that scraped the man's body. "Maybe next time you'll think before spying on a person," she lectured him, kicking him to accent the point.
He quickly stifled his groan, hoping she hadn't heard.
"Go ahead and whine if it makes you feel any better," she continued," I wouldn't have bothered to kick you if I didn't know you were conscious. It's way too hot out to waste the energy."
"I was waiting for your apology…"
She took his surprised grunt as a cue that the apology would be long in coming and explained," you were following me…don't you think that deserves an apology? It's ok, most of the spies you guys send are seriously lacking in the manners department. When I find out who is sending you, and I will find out, I will suggest a manners training program…"
Her chatter broke of as she envisioned hundreds of potential spies, strapped to their chairs, in a fine dining hall.
An old teacher struts the length of the room and then turns on her boot heel," What would you do to get the salt?" she barks into the face of a nervous recruit. The recruit starts to learn forward and around his fellow dining 'companions' to grab the salt. "NO," screams the officer and zaps him with a handy cattle prod. The officer moves on to the next recruit, leaving the last one to cool, "what do you do at the intersection?" The recruit grins confidently," cover my face so the traffic cameras won't get me on film!" "That's good, smiles the officer, and then laughs- NO, you help the old lady across the street! Fool!" the officer zaps him a good one.
Karu laughed evilly and then realized the spy was staring at her in the way you stare at the Teletubbies. That horrified, mesmerized, brain-washed look. Yeah. She also realized where she was and stopped quickly.
She turned to the spy, "I would have taken your apology, but since I didn't get it, I will take your memory instead." At the thought of having a 15-yr. old extract his memory, he began to sputter apologies.
Karu grinned, "It's too late, and besides I would have had to take out your memory anyway- you know my real name." The last thing he heard that day was her gleeful laugh.
Karu sighed in frustration. The spy thought she had two names. She had scanned his brain, downloaded the relevant information and erased his memory. Ah, the wonder of modern technology!
"But, seriously, why does he think I have another name?"
She was talking to herself again, for lack of a better audience. "It's really too bad that he hadn't found my 'real' name yet… now I'll have to go find it myself."
Karu glanced at her watch and grabbed her baseball hat and the man's unconscious body. She was late enough with out trying to figure out why she would have another name.
After dropping the unconscious spy off at The House of Mercy Insane Asylum, anonymously just like the rest of the bunch, she ran to Sensei's. She was too late to teach her class, but right in time for sensei's lecture on punctuality and a workout with the short swords.
Sensei's lecture actually wasn't as bad as she had feared. In fact it was more of worry than anger, which Karu had known all along.
Her Sensei, which is all she was ever called, was a spunky old Japanese woman. If she ever heard you call her spunky she'd slap you, if she heard you calling her old you wouldn't be walking for a week.
Even if she was violent, Karu loved her sensei, and depended on her, along with Ariella, Karu's best-best friend, for morals, standards, and fashion sense.
They were the only ones who knew about her clumsy spies, and they both worried for her, although they knew that was impractical. They both knew that if any teenager had ever been ready to stop spies it had to be Karu.
Her fighting skills as well as her tracking, stealth, and alertness, impressive to begin with, had all greatly improved since the spies began following her.
As she stretched for a cool-off, she thought about the formula. Every month or so, she would find a spy tracking her. Since she could scan their brains she knew that they did not know much.
She had gathered a lot of information about both 'sides' of whatever conflict was happening, and she knew she was important to that conflict, after all, why would they bother with 30 odd spies if she was unimportant?
After she caught the spy of the month she would scan and wipe his memory, then she would drop him off at The House of Mercy Insane Asylum and go to Sensei's.
At first, she had gone to Sensei's for comfort, and after three years she was competent enough to deal with the spies, but she felt funny when she didn't go the Sensei's, almost like she had forgotten the last ingredient.
'Speaking of food, I missed dinner… but chicken sounds nice.'
She didn't tell Sensei where she was going, she just promised to come early tomorrow morning and said good-bye.
She knew the Sensei would not approve of her 'borrowing' food, but she also knew that she would not eat if she did not borrow. So she borrowed some chicken strips and a soda and fries and went home.
She knew Ari (they agreed that her full name was too fancy) would really not have liked her stealing, but she refused to be fed out of pity, which Ari had found out the hard way.
She was remembering the hilarious argument on that subject with Ari when she got home. It actually wasn't that funny except for the memory of Ari's red face emitting exasperated squeaky noises. Ari was not good at communication when she was angry.
The laughter died in her throat as she opened the door and a bright light clicked on to blind her. There was a deep wanna-be evil laugh from behind the light.
"Hello, I know you weren't expecting us."
As she blindly edged to her phone on the desk the voice laughed again. Still wanna-be evil. "No, no, you can't call little Ari, in fact you'll have some difficulty doing anything for awhile."
She shuddered at the thought of this man knowing Ari, but he misinterpreted it, "We won't kill you, I didn't mean it like that. You're far too useful. You have caught 32 of our men, all that we've sent at you, including this morning's. By the way, he was just a distraction, but it worked didn't it? You weren't even going to think spies for another two and a half weeks. According to the pattern you shouldn't have to. Bet you had it down to clock-work, huh?"
As he was talking her eyes were adjusting to the bright light and she could tell he was moving around her room, putting things in a bag. As he neared the hiding place of her laptop, she spoke, to distract him, "You could have at least done your spy the courtesy of telling him he was only bait."
"Ahh," laughed the man, who she could still not see clearly, "So you can scan brains- you will be very useful, indeed."
She bit back a cry as a needle sank into her upper arm, she felt the world grow fuzzy and dim and her last thought was, 'and I promised Sensei I'd come early…' then her world was black.
do me a favor and tell me if you like it or not...THANKYOU!
until next time!star