The sounds of the city calmed Reisi. Whenever he walked through the streets he suddenly felt as if his Sword of Damocles stopped crumbling. Nobody around him noticed his presence. Secretly, he liked this. He liked not being noticed sometimes. He liked walking through the streets without worrying too much about his responsibilities. For a moment the world was…normal. He even allowed himself to wonder if he'd be married without the Sword hanging over him. But it never stays like that for long. Usually it's a call from his second in command but this time it was a girl who simply wasn't watching while she ran through the crowd of people.
They both tumbled in the crosswalk. Nobody stopped to check on them. Like ants they simply went around them. "Are you okay? Oh god, I'm so, so, so sorry." The girl sat on her knees and held her hands as if she were praying. Her body was shaking. She was scared of something.
Reisi adjusted his glasses and stood up slowly and, like the gentleman he was, held his hand out to her. "No harm done but you should probably watch where you're going next time."
The girl took his hand and allowed herself to be helped up.
"What were you running for, anyway?" He asked not out of curiosity, he could care less about why she was running but intuition told him that he needed to ask. This girl, he thought, wouldn't just go running without a good reason.
She turned around and watched the people around them. The light to walk was starting a countdown so they moved back into place on the sidewalk and had to wait for another walking sign to come on. "I was being chased. I thought they were closer behind than they probably were. I'm sorry, again, for running into you." The words tumbled onto her mouth in one long sentence.
This girl couldn't be any more than a child in high school. She was pretty short for the age he guessed her to be at. Her eyes were perfectly at his chest. Her eyes were a stormy grey but somewhere in them he swore he saw golden pieces that hid in the storm and her hair was a bright blond he'd never seen before.
"Are you in danger?" He watched the signs, never looking at her as he said this.
"I'm not sure. Maybe. I really don't know what they want. I'm not really apart of their war but they seem to want to involve me."
Reisi opened his mouth to ask who but as he asked his perephial vision caught a gleam of a bullet in the sun and by its trajectory he knew it was aimed at the girl. Swiftly, before he could even register the movement, he was in front of the girl and his blue aura protected them and destroyed the bullet.
"I see you got a body guard, gold king." The voice belonged to a woman he couldn't see.
The girl behind him screamed. He turned quickly but not quick enough, she was being dragged away by a red headed woman, toward the traffic that was stopped for the civilians to cross the street.
"No, let go! You have the wrong person!" Her voice wasn't convincing enough but now wasn't the moment to focus on that. The sword he held at his hip released from its sheath. He needed to be careful and not harm the girl. Reisi's speed surprised even himself. By now he should be used to the speed but there were times when he really focused on it.
The speed even surprised the woman and so did his sword. He swung at her arm, releasing the blue aura in a sharp pattern. She was forced to let go and the girl scrambled up off of the ground to half hide behind him. "Who are you?" He demanded of the woman.
The woman smirked and threw down a smoke bomb. He released his aura to blow away the smoke and she was simply gone. There was nothing to be done now except to take the girl with him to Scepter 4 HQ.
"Thank you," The girl took the cup of green tea he handed her. She was surprisingly reluctant to come with him. She hadn't spoken a word the whole way there and now she sat with her head down as if she were staring at her tea but he could see she was watching the world around her. Everything that moved she seemed to hear and her eyes would be drawn to that thing that made noise, whatever it was when her eyes moved. In the storm he saw her plan many escape routes. She'd been running for a long time and because she'd been running for so long she became timid. Her timidness didn't stop her manners, though.
When she followed him in nobody asked questions but they did stare at her and they wondered quietly through their stares if she was a new clansman and if not then how did she know Reisi. Nobody ever said a word.
"Tell me, who are you?" His voice was soft. He didn't want to scare her away.
Her stormy eyes looked at him, it searched his soul. Finally she spoke in a quiet voice. "My name is Yuki Aiko."
Reisi felt himself smile a genuine smile. "Yuki Aiko," he mused aloud. "That's a lovely name," he nearly blushed at saying the words aloud. They weren't words he wanted to say aloud and he had to clear his throat and hoped that Yuki forgot it quickly. "Who were they and why were they after you?"
"Oh that? Well…that's kind of a long story but I'll try to shorten it up for you. When the Gold King passed on and most of Japan was occupied with rebuilding two years ago the Grey clan became active. I don't know why but they're set on finding the new Gold King so they're going after the clansmen of the old King, including me." He could only stare at her with a dumb and shocked look on his face that she laughed at. Her laugh was warm like the sun. "The only reason I became a clansmen was because my parents begged him to make me one. My family personally knew Daikakou. I've had the powers since I was born. That's the only reason I'm involved in this mess." Her eyes watched the green tea as if it held answers. There was something she was lying about and something she was holding back and maybe the answer was the same.
"Who was the woman?" He wanted name and details.
"Yaka, I think. It sounds like a weird name, right? I think it's a nickname and even then I think it's a last name but anyway, she's not the king. I think she's just a small lackey. I don't even think she's a real clansman. She's just someone trying to get in." Yuki never took a breath the entire time. When she was finished she sipped the tea. "You're the Blue King, right? You're Reisi?"
Reisi tried to keep calm, cool, collected. If he didn't he might not frighten the girl but he didn't want to take the chance. "Yes, how did you know?"
"I keep up with the clans still. There's the Red King Anna, she's been king for a little under three years, right? Since her old king died. Then there's the old Green and Grey kings but they died two years ago. The Green Clan still doesn't have a king, as far as anybody knows of, but the Grey King is…a mystery to me. Then…The First King, Silver, he was called Weisman, right? Am I missing anybody?"
He had to admit, and he allowed himself to show, he was impressed with the girl's knowledge. "Silver, Blue, Red, Green, Grey, you forgot the colorless king."
"Oh right. I guess there's no colorless king successor. Then the Gold King, as I've said before, is still a missing target."
No, he thought, the Gold King is not missing and your lying is terrible. Every lie Yuki told he not only saw a flicker of her eyes, moving toward one of her chosen exits, and she pushed away a strand of hair that wasn't there. Finally he had to ask out of curiosity because this girl seemed to have wisdom that shouldn't belong to a high school student. "How old are you?"
"My age? I'm 22. Why?" Yuki tilted her head. "It's because I look really young huh?"
Both her answer and her question caught him off guard and he was rarely caught off guard. He pushed up his glasses more out of embarrassment and ignored the question. "If you'd like, Miss Aiko, you're allowed to used Scepter 4 as a temporary home until the Grey Clansman stop their search."
The girl smiled in a genuine and pure thankfulness. "Thank you, but I wouldn't want to waste space here. Besides, I still have my business and my home is…well pretty far away from the city. I should be fine going home."
"Then, allow me to lend you a few of my men to escort you home." A gleam in her eyes told him she was about to object but he caught her before she could say anything. "If you go out alone you'll just wind up here anyway. At least if someone is around they're less likely to attack you."
Her face softened. He had her cornered. "Okay, that's fine. Thank you, Reisi. But only one. One powerful person should be more than enough to take on the Greys. I don't want to deplete you of power, that would just be a burden on you." They both stood. He knew exactly who would be fit for such a job.