Eight in the morning, and all was well in The Village Hidden In Silence.
Mary sighed, swinging a kunai around her finger as she watched the ever-present fog curl outside the windows. Vaguely, she found herself why they even had windows in the buildings. It wasn't like they got any sun around here. Even so, watching the grey mist pass by was more interesting than listening to their current lecturer, Sensei Missionary, ramble on about some uninteresting topic she didn't need to know. Even watching the spectacle of the rolls of flesh on his head wobble and his spears scrape against the blackboard grew old after a while.
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she turned around to listen to what her sister- and teammate- had to say. Admittedly getting caught talking in class meant scrubbing out the academy toilets, but compared to the current lesson- an in-depth study of the mechanics of shuriken- she'd take lavatory disinfectant any day. Besides, there was always the chance that the town would decide to go into it's crazy Otherworld phase. And there was nothing more interesting than an Otherworld toilet. Last time someone went in there, they found the key to the old dormitory and a first-aid kit in a cistern.
"Hey, Mary. I bet you twelve bucks that James wants to go training with me this afternoon." Maria whispered into her ear, barely bothering to disguise the oozing satisfaction embedded into every syllable. Mary snarled, her good mood gone. Although she didn't want to admit it, she and her sister had something of a rivalry over their male teammate. But, hell, it wasn't like he was a jerk or anything. In Mary's opinion, he was the nicest guy in their class. Too bad her sister thought that way too.
People always told the two that they looked alike, but to Mary she and her sister didn't have a shred of resemblance between them. It was true that they were female, shared the same facial structure and were roughly about the same height; however, all similarities ended there. Maria was a kunoichi, through and through; her strengths were in seduction, and her dress style reflected that. With equal amounts of fishnets, pink clothing and bare skin, Maria looked like she belonged at the local civilian's strip club than on the battlefield. Which was probably the effect a kunoichi wanted, really. She had even gone to the trouble of converting her forehead protector into a band of leather long enough to wrap around her breasts, showing off her ample cleavage. It made Mary embarrassed just looking at her.
Mary dressed more conservatively, as much as a ninja could dress conservatively. She didn't go in for seduction unless there was no other option, preferring to use a mixture of ninjutsu and taijutsu. Her normal uniform consisted of a pink cotton shift with grey slacks underneath, with their clan symbol- a simplified butterfly- emblazoned on her chest in white. She used her forehead protector to keep back her auburn hair, which had a bad tendency to try and escape the tight confines of the bun she kept it in and obscure her face. Fighting mainly with a thin metal staff, she held extra kunai and shuriken in a pouch strapped to her thigh.
Along with these ninja essentials, she also carried a few otherwise unorthodox items that would be useless outside the perimeters of the Village. A copy of the Seal of Metatron, for one, scrawled in red ink on wax and kept in a locked box. A broken radio, which screeched with static whenever they got near. A match, a stick of red wax and a pin. Someone from an outside village wouldn't understand the use of these, but anyone caught in the village without a 'safety box' was either an idiot or plain suicidal.
Because, in the Village Hidden In Silence, things were a lot different than outside. Nobody knew why, but the town was permanently covered in the thickest fog that made seeing anything more than a few feet away nearly impossible. Fleshy, grotesque monsters wandered the streets as frequently as humans did, and nobody thought anything of it; in fact, they befriended them and coexisted, sometimes even going so far to marry. Twitching, faceless medic-nin kunoichi staffed the hospitals in Alchemilla and Brookhaven, their grotesque appearances and bizarre tendencies belying their innate intelligence and medical talent. Many people kept the skinless dogs that spawned out of the darkness as pets, even training them as ninja dogs. Mary herself owned a small 'Splithead' dog, who was a cheerful little thing even if she did have to keep bandaging it up. There were even a few adventurous shinobi who corralled the enormous, lurching monsters known as 'Carrion's and turned them into mounts. Some monsters were more co-operative than others, but they more or less got along fine.
Sometimes, though, the fog let up, and the town took a turn for the rusty. The whole town was suddenly no longer obscured by mist, but instead looked like it had come from the depths of Hell. Walls were made of flesh, every lock was broken and there was more metal grating and blood splatters than you could poke a steel pipe at. It happened once, twice, three times a week, for periods lasting for minutes to days. Nobody really thought anything of it. Things got gross, and some things changed around, but at least they could see where they were going. The only real danger was someone falling into an abyss or cutting themselves on a fence.
Once, a ninja from outside had wandered in and got caught in an Otherworld shift. They found him in the park, mentally traumatized and screaming his head off in the middle of a confused crowd of monsters. They did try to convey the harmlessness of the world to him, but he wouldn't listen. They suspected he was a spy, anyway, so they killed him. No big loss.
Anyway, Otherworld or no, Mary had bigger problems on her mood.
"Shove off, Maria. I told you, he's going bowling with me and Eddie." Her response was quick and completely improvised. She hadn't actually made plans to go bowling. Still, anything was better than listening to her sister gloat over James. Pushing back, she sent Maria reeling back in her own chair.
Bad move. Maria bumped into Kaufmann, who- caught unaware- fell sideways and collided with Angela. Being significantly lighter than Kaufmann, Angela had to dive forwards to avoid being crushed under his weight. In doing so, she knocked Cheryl's shoulder. Cheryl whipped around to see what had happened, but forgot that she was holding a pen with the other hand. She caught Travis around the back of the head with the pen, causing the shinobi to yell and lose balance. He toppled forwards, having been sitting on his desk, and- defying all laws of chance- immediately locked lips with a shocked James, who had turned around to see what all the commotion was about.
The chaos was unimaginable. Travis had immediately pulled out of the kiss and belted James across the face with his fist, causing both Maria and Mary to spring to the defense of their crush. Angela was yelling at Kaufmann, who was arguing back and gesturing to a distracted Maria. Cheryl was busy trying to apologise to Travis, who wasn't having any of it. To make matters worse, half the class had just witnessed two usually normal guys kiss. Laura had managed to snap a photo of it. Half of them were giggling over it like schoolgirls, and half of them were thinking up ways to tease Travis and James about it. Or, in the case of the permanently oblivious Harry, asking frantically what everyone was going on about.
"SILENCE! Do you think you're members of the Village Hidden In Noise?! Did you misread the sign on the entrance to town?! Be quiet! Who's behind this?!"
The class immediately sobered up. Nobody wanted to cross Sensei Missionary on one of his bad days. Even so, there was still a bit of calamity. James immediately pointed at Travis (who was wiping his face, trying to get the taste of James out of his mouth), yelling that he had just swooped down and kissed him. Travis offered a heated rebuttal defending his heterosexuality and blaming Cheryl. Cheryl was considerably less outgoing than the other two, so she was close to tears trying to explain that Angela had bumped her. Angela then pointed at Kaufmann, who pointed at Maria, who pointed at Mary, who pointed right back at Maria. It was chaos, to say the least.
Eventually the blame was pinned on Maria and Mary, who were forced on maintenance duty for a week. Kaufmann, Angela and Cheryl got off without any punishment, but Travis and James were both given stern lectures and separated to opposite ends of the classroom. A good thing, too; every time the two boys saw each other, it felt like the temperature of the room dropped several degrees. There was no shortage of loathing between them, that's for sure.
Bowling with Eddie and James didn't come up again, for which Mary was thankful. The situation that would have been produced if Maria had confronted them about it wasn't a nice one to contemplate. They did arrange to go bowling a few days later, but midway through their game the town shifted and their lane was replaced by a strip of flesh, with the pins at the end... well, they couldn't see them too clearly, but they weren't sure they wanted to see them anyway. They gave up and went home, stopping to break up a fight between a Closer and her drunken Scraper boyfriend.
end chapter one