Assassins: chapter one

Okay, here's the new story, as promised. It might be confusing at first, I'm going to try to develop the background as I go along. Based on a book called King's Dark Tidings. The main characters are taking the same lessons at the same times, I just only want to show one example of a lesson from every year so we can get to the main story faster. Enjoy! (sadly, I don't own vocaloid)

Epilogue:

A lone rider walked on a moonlit road, fearfully eyeing his destination: a fortress manned by what he knew were warriors each capable of killing him and a dozen other people like him in their sleep, and easily, at that. And, as a first tier rank one warrior, that was saying something. The man surveyed his surroundings nervously, wondering if they were watching him. Then he barked out a laugh. If they wanted to kill him, he wouldn't know until he met the Maker. If he met the Maker. After what he had done, he would be surprised if he did.

At that thought, he carefully lifted the two bundles he held in his arms: the heirs to the golden kingdom. kidnapping them had been no easy task, but he knew that the strikers would have found it almost laughably easy.

Arriving at the gates, he knocked out the code softly, though he knew that the strikers were already aware of who and where he was. The door opened, revealing a courtyard of sixty strikers and eight training masters, along with two others like himself, carrying the heirs to the emerald and sapphire kingdoms.

At the first fortress...

A scream rang out from the courtyard, suddenly cut off.

Kagamine Len, age 6, was collapsed next to the wall, a hand over his mouth. The instructor, Jeibak, stood over him, giving him a disapproving stare. Len, feeling ashamed, still could not stand, mainly because that one arm and one leg had his bones protruding from the skin, and there was a puddle of blood growing under him.

His mind was fogged by the pain, but he still evaluated what he had done wrong: he had created an opening for an instant, allowing Jeibak to strike his leg. He had broken Rule 7: Ignore Pain, Rule 8: Never show weakness, and Rule 157: Do not get injured. Had this been real instead of practice infiltration, he would have broken Rule 15: do not get caught. He had almost vomited, which would break Rule 17: Do not leave evidence.

Satisfied, he gave a clear and detailed answer when Jeibak demanded for him to describe his mistakes. The master nodded, then consulted with Peircen about whether they should heal the bone of let him learn to fight while injured. "It could end up crippling him if I don't heal him." Piercen said, and their debate turned to whether they should have him set the bone himself. Len listened to the argument, and deemed it inefficient. By the time that Piercen finally convince Jeibak that they should set the arm, Len had gritted his teeth and set his own bones.

(A/N for those of you who don't know, setting the bone can be more painful than breaking it in the first place, especially with complex fractures like Len's where the bone stabs through the skin. BTW, this story will mostly be centered around Len or Miku.)

Peircen healed him, and, once the green blow subsided, Len returned to sparring.

At the second fortress and one year later...

Miku, age seven, stood before two prisoners, one kneeling and one chained to the fortress walls. She held her favorite dagger, a stilleto, as her teacher spoke. "This man is guilty of murder and theft," said Gamar, indicating the kneeling one, "use method 46 of assassination." Miku nodded, and held the stilleto to a spot on the man's throat. He was crying and begging, like all the other prisoners had, and the man chained to the wall stared with wide eyes. The instructor nodded, saying "Yes, right there." and Miku stabbed it in. She knew it was perfect from the almost complete lack of blood, the almost invisible cut, and the instant death of the man.

Then she turned to the chained one, and the instructor simply said "Torture him." Miku nodded, and the man's screams echoed off the fortress walls...

The first fortress, a few years later... (A/N because I pay too much attention to Len)

Len stood in the center of a circle of men, all of them armed to the teeth. These were mostly deserted soldiers who the masters had decided were well trained enough to provide Len with a challenge. The 60 men had been told that their crimes would be forgiven if the killed the twelve year old boy, and they were all desperate to complete the task, thinking that it would be relatively easy to kill a child.

Len knew that they would lose; they had broken two rules already: Separate yourself from your emotions and Do not underestimate your opponents. When the strikers called "START!" Len seemed to flicker in and out of sight, dashing through the soldiers and leaving nothing but blood, gore, and corpses in his wake. He heard the snick of a crossbow firing, and he flipped, grabbed the bolt, and sent it back to the shooter; right through his throat. Within seconds, the spinning, flipping, sprinting boy finished off all sixty soldiers by taking the spear of the last man, snapping the tip off and stabbing the man through the eye.

He hadn't even drawn the katana at his waist; all he had used were his bare hands and the enemy's weapons.

Unbeknownst to him, the strikers watching the fight smiled.

The third fortress, same time...

Rin held her favored blade, the khopesh, hooking the blades of the enemies and snapping them. She was able to easily kill most of the bandits, and she considered those insignificant. Rin wanted a challenge.

She saw five bandits with shields, and decided that she would take out her frustrations on them. Without using any of the techniques that she had been taught, she simply used the khopesh like and axe and rapidly smashed through the shields, then through the bandits' skulls. She decided that she would have to ask the masters for more challenging opponents than 60 bandits. Maybe trained soldiers would be harder to kill...

Rin pondered this as she cut off the leader's head to bring to the masters.

Okay! I took like one hour to type this thing, so please point out any typos so I can fix them, thank you. Remember to review, or I'll get lonely (lol)