WARNING: You may have to be a little up to date with my "Nightmare for a Ninja" Ninjago series (particularly part two, The Autumn of Twilight, its own separate story in the NINJAGO section) to quite understand anything about the events taking place in this story, but if you're not quite into it, you'll be fine, I'm sure. Just maybe an itty bit left out on some of the Shockers I've got in here for my NfaN readers. :3 But again, you can still read it, you'll be fine! :D
This is supposed to be a one-shot about Cole's younger sister, Seiko Mitsuhide, (who is an OC, not real to the NINJAGO series) who their father sent away at a young age because she wasn't normal. This takes place on the night of the day Rufus McAllister died (yes, this is a date you'd have to know as an NFAN reader to understand which day that is.) So it begins with Cole talking on the phone to his little sister, after which Lloyd passed out after the mirage, before he goes to bed. Okay? Okay. :3 I'll let you read now! XD
No way out
"Oh, you'd love him!" deemed the low, enthusiastic tone of my brother from the other end of this godforsaken voice-monitored phone, clutched tightly in my palms in fear that if my grip loosened just the fraction of an inch, it would run straight from my grasp, miraculously sail through the air, and land a big, fat freaking Call Disconnected! on me once it replaced itself back on the dial. I nervously twirled the old curlicue black phone cord around my finger repeatedly as my brother meandered amongst the luxuries of life outside of bars. No, not the prison bars you may be picturing in your head now, where one sits all day behind the thick, meaty metal rods sticking vertically from the ground, condoning you to cheap twice-a-day meals made of God-knows-what and other inmates a full view of you and your sad toilet. I'm talking about the barred windows, if any and however small, that were my only connection to the outside world. This is also accompanied by a cavalry of security guards just short of two thousand guarding every exit, watching every step you take, eyeballing all peculiar objects. I live in a place where every article of "street clothing" that is sent to you from an Outsider—here, those are people who live outside of the facility—must be inspected four times to remove any potentially dangerous and harmful pieces attached. Leeway isn't a big life rule around here. In fact, the only potential life rule they live by here is "Monkey sees, monkey does; so make sure monkey is blind so it won't make a mistake."
I live in a place called Sunnyside.
Though nothing about Sunnyside is particularly sunny, I cling to a mad hope that one day I won't have to sleep in the small, twenty-by-twenty bedroom on a cot that smells like burned potatoes and can actually, someday, be able to go to the bathroom without a nurse following me in. It's a tragic lifestyle, really, but it isn't too hard to learn how to get past it with the good ol' flip of the bird and pointed tongue in her direction. You can make anything amusing, if you try hard enough, with a specialized, exercised amount of imagination and great knowledge of sick concepts.
My one consonance, however, to force me through the week at a speed that dragged its feet but somehow managed to feel like a second went by after the week's long gone, was my weekly phone call from my brother. It happened every Wednesday, in my scheduled time slot as usual from four to four-fifteen in the afternoon. I had to wait for him to call me, since I didn't have his phone number, nor was allowed to have in the event that I should somehow A) misgive his number to a stranger, or B) "misuse the designated phone number to some degree in which it can end harmfully to others." Sunnyside had laws, as we captives of its unlawful reign called it, that were brutally unfair. The majority of them didn't even make sense, except to whatever whack-job invented them. Still, these unbroken rules and regulations were not allowed to be challenged. The last girl who challenged them was sent away—there were plenty of rumors to fill her absence. Many said they took a cleaver to her body and threw her away in the garbage because poor old Savannah Stone wouldn't be missed by anyone. Others said they put her in a holding cell that was darker than the night itself. Me…I don't naturally have instinct to believe anything I hear.
Except, that is, anything my brother says.
"…He's got a huge sense of humor," he continued like I'd been listening the whole time. "Really funny in the middle of big trouble. Of course, at the time, I think it's really irritating, but later on it's fun to laugh at."
"How exciting," I said. Behind me, I could practically feel the nurse hovering over my shoulder listening in. My feet, clad in fuzzy purple socks, pressed against the wall absentmindedly while I sat as still as I possibly could in my chair, considering 101 ways to kill the nurse behind me silently, stealthily, in ways that no one would ever hear, or notice.
"Really, it is." My brother paused. "You okay? You sound…distant."
I glanced at the timer above the dial, counting down the minutes I had left. It said I only had seven, a flashing green number on the tiny, almost invisible screen above the phone hook. "Oh, I'm grand," I said nicely, though really, I couldn't force much more. "Oppenheimer can't get any cooler."
"Uh oh." There was a heavy feeling that transmitted through the phone peace. It was like a plague traveling through this curly cord around my finger. "What's going on, Seiko? Tell me about it."
"Seven minutes isn't enough to explain every little issue I have, Cole," I growled, watching the seven morph instantaneously into a six. Irritated, I felt like kicking the phone box until it burst into a parade of fireworks made of freaking telephone parts.
"Easy," Cole breathed softly. I closed my eyes and pictured him as though he were sitting across from me at the old ratted wooden dinner table in the kitchen back at home, for once not covered in newspaper clippings of the Royal Blacksmiths' victories, provided with pictures by the dozens. Cole would lean forward, elbows pressed to the table, grey eyes carefully examining me from beneath that thick black hair of his. Almost residually he'd hook his ankle around mine underneath the table. It was a ritual repeated between him and me in the act of comfort for more than a decade now. Since I was linguistically challenged, there weren't very many perfecting words for me to be able to say ending in good results, so he'd offer a physical comfort to me rather than a verbal one. It had always been calming in the best of times since our mother passed onto another life. It worked especially well after my father condemned me to this wretched hellhole because I wasn't good enough for him and his stupid performing arts.
Neither was Cole, but somehow, Cole came out better on top than I did when stacking up our issues as a rating of one to ten. Dad always put Cole first when it came to priorities—at least, he did two years ago when I last observed their interactions. I stabbed my foot hard against the wall in a sudden, viral frustration, the intent to murder the wall coming over me. It made a thumping reverberation that made the nurse behind me slap her hand against my shoulder as though smacking away a fly.
"No kicking the walls!" She hollered gruffly.
I scowled and rolled my eyes, a lip curl finding its way negatively to my mouth. On the other end, Cole gave a wowed noise. "Angry librarian?" He asked. "Or PMS-ing teacher?"
"Mmmm," I considered thoughtfully, looking suspiciously backwards at the fat, slick haired nurse frowning at me. "She isn't necessarily teaching me anything other than that if I get jelly rolls as big as hers, the folds of my stomach will bring a whole new meaning to the term black hole."
Cole laughed despite himself. "So…scary custodian?"
"Sure," I said. Because it was forbidden for me to say, I had to keep a secret from him, no matter how many moments in time I could've liked to open my mouth and let the truth roll from my lips like one huge bowling ball. Cole didn't know I was forced into the barred life of Sunnyside, instead thinking I was living with freedom at the Marty Oppenheimer School of Performing Arts, warding off this kind of indecent lifestyle with the flick of my hips and raising octaves of my voice. However, that was far from my case. Cole may have managed to escape the wicked ways of Marty Oppenheimer's legacy-driven school with the clothes on his back and a knapsack full of granola, but in his case there was even the tenancy of actually stepping foot inside the building, an experience I had never been bestowed myself. My ill-fated new home life had been even a mystery to myself before I was given the chance to say cheese for the camera. Dad didn't want to disgrace the Oppenheimer with insanity and irreverent mood swings. Lord knows what would happen if multiple personalities decided to show face in the middle of a dancing lesson? The school perhaps could be forever tainted with the bone-chilling experience that Seiko Mitsuhide brought upon them!
Unintentionally, I snickered, which made Cole get uncomfortable. "What's so funny?" He asked warily. It was unlike me to directly answer, so I shrugged even though he couldn't see me.
"Nothing," I answered finally, pushing against the wall with my foot again. The front legs of the wooden, definitely dollar-store-purchased chair rose from the ground. Almost immediately, the fat nurse pushed my feet down, causing me to fall in a clump back against the floor. I glared at her, but she only raised a penciled in eyebrow at me to match her dyed brown hair, pulled away from her face carrying by no neck. I curled my lip at her. She didn't seem to care.
"What's all that banging?" Cole asked. "Seriously. Are you chopping down a tree or something?"
"Of course," I said seriously. "Didn't I tell you it was my lifelong dream to become a lumberjack?"
Cole laughed. "So not a blacksmith, then?"
"What kind of crazy person would I be if I wanted to be a blacksmith?" I laughed at the irony of my situation, even though Cole didn't quite get it. Fine by me; the less he knew, the better, according to my father and every other person he was paying to make sure I kept it secret. Why it was so imperative that this remained hidden still held its willful destiny to be a mystery, but I couldn't help but fantasize moments to which I'd be able to tell my brother what had become of me. Still, my lips sealed the words from ever escaping. I looked at the four minute timer cautiously.
"Cole?" I asked, as I always did.
"Yes?"
"Cole, you love me, right?"
And so it began. The need to know I mattered somehow overcame me. Overriding my systematic thoughts, I leaned forward, turning myself away from the nurse so I could bear myself this one semi-private exchange of words without having her in my line of vision. Seriousness was a focus as I listened for every little creak, every shift of movement, every lick of his lips. I must hear him in every aspect as he responds to me. It was a possession that took me over for every final moment of our limited conversations. Without knowing fully, surely, I never would be complete.
My heart rate sped quickly beneath my skin. I rubbed my bare legs. "Well?" I pressed as I listened harder to his breathing.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"I need to hear you say it," I told him flatly, staring at the hard gray brick wall, examining the crooks and divots forced into the horrendous paint job and poor construction details. I clutched the black phone harder to my grasp with both hands at once as though my life depended on it. My breathing sped up in the seconds that felt like hours tailing my command. "Say it."
Finally, Cole sighed. "I love you," he said, but I could feel the way he said it like I forced him to. This time, when I clutched the phone, it was out of anger. I wanted to strangle him with the phone cord for being so cruelly flippant to me. My knuckles turned white out the corner of my vision. I glared angrily into the corner, puffing smoke out my nostrils.
"Liar."
"I'm not lying, Seiko, just confused."
"Liar!" I said, louder this time. "You're lying to me! You don't love me! You liar!"
Two minutes remained on the timer, but I scarcely paid attention through my rage. Tears raced down my cheeks while I stood, kicking back the penny's worth chair like it was some stupid little kid I was intent on pushing out of my way. It cluttered to the floor behind me in a bounce of angry plastic-y sounds while I dug one set of nails into the concrete bricks at my side, pressing hard against them with all my forceful hatred at the world.
Cole didn't try to sugar coat his tired tones to me over the phone line. "No, Seiko, really, I do. I just don't understand why you want me to say it and promise and then say it again and promise one more time. Just explain it to me! I'm confused. Just want an answer, not to hurt you."
I dug my nails further into the concrete as the skin around them went from red to white. "I want you to promise me." I hissed into the receiver. "How do I know you're not a liar?"
"Answer my question and we'll talk."
My fingernail, forced so hard against the wall, snapped completely off. I gave an irritated howl, more agitated than in pain, as I stared at my bloody, nail-less finger. The nurse grumbled some stupid comment like, "Oh, great," that would get her a black eye later. I watched the blood trickle in constant streams from my finger, dripping subsequently onto the floor at my feet. It dripped in deep red raindrops from my skin, mesmerizing me. It wasn't often I got to see myself actually bleed like that, coming true from the vein in crimson rivers.
The nurse arrived with a wet wash cloth in hand, pressing it to my finger, hiding the lived-for wound from my gaze. Since my distraction disappeared, I remembered why my nail came off in the first place. Rage was restored to my body, though arriving without peace; I decided worse against Cole as he fumbled for some kind of excuse to get him pass through my day. "Look, Seiko, it's not that I don't love you. I do! You're my baby sister. But at the same time, you have to realize I only want to understand—"
I let go of the phone stubbornly. It dangled from the cord in a useless form of capital punishment for the piece of stupid technology that I hated more than I hated my brother at that moment. The nurse roughly pulled me away from it with my fingertip pressed thoroughly between her thumb and forefinger, but likewise, I didn't enjoy having her sausages cutting off circulation in my much-appreciated phalanges. I gave a howl of anger at her, practically spitting in her face. I wrestled my hand from hers. "Pervert!" I screamed at her. "Screw you!"
"Seiko," said the fat woman with her hands held out before her as though she approached an incredibly deadly creature with caution. "You just ripped off your nail. Let us help—"
I picked up the chair and flung it at her in anger, just because it was the nearest object and it was more fun to chuck stuff at unsuspecting bystanders. When she collapsed in a bouncing heap on the floor, I grabbed a broken leg, using it to beat her raw until she was howling like a banshee. My intention was to force her to feel the pain I felt consuming me by the gallons per second, but somehow, I gained more from it, other than the loss of an obnoxious nurse. Plenty more authorized personnel wearing those dreadful yellow smocks came running in prepared with tranquilizers, but it turns out, you didn't have to have perfect aim to get hired to work in an insane asylum. No effort to dodge on my part was needed for the sucky shooters. I wielded my chair leg as a weapon against them, forgetting completely the dangling phone, still bestowed with a minute of silence to listen to the sounds of beating coming from the other end of the phone as the sounds traveled through the black cord to Cole's phone, distant by plenty of miles. Even though he was so far away, he'd be able to hear the sounds of my assault just as clearly as he would've standing at my side.
They flooded in like hordes of gnats preying on death. Their gruesome masks of spite repeated itself over the course of faces belonging to each man and woman, a challenge I took seriously. I threw my chair leg at them. Screw them, I thought. They must die. The word of demise echoed in my mind as I screamed in a prolonged feral rage, picking up pieces of the chair to smack away the fiends closing quickly in on me. I was a caged, crazed lion, stuck in Sunnyside, dying to be free, dying to live just as my brother was given the luxuries of. He'd told me about his escapade from the Oppenheimer as he announced his independence against forced captivity. He'd told me about how he traveled Ninjago with a grin on his face being able to see things he didn't believe he would have the chance to see when instead wasting his time perfecting the Triple Tiger Sashay—which, I heard, he'd already done—in the padded gym of Marty Oppenheimer's best interest rooms. He often asked me why I didn't run away, too.
I would tell him, "I try."
As I was now.
I stabbed the guard with the end of my wooden dowel. He shrieked as it pierced his skin; I wasted a moment to myself with a triumphant, wide grin before I yanked it from his stomach and beat him over the head with it. Cole was a ninja. He had ninja friends. He talked about them a lot: Jay, the talkative one he'd been telling me about for the four hundredth time, the one he thought that I would like because he made people laugh, and Cole figured I still did a lot of laughing. Which was not far from the truth, except that when I laughed it was usually from some sick, sadistic word or nothing at all that I'd previously spoken to myself. People here didn't try and make me laugh. People here didn't care enough.
He told me about what he referred to as a "nindroid," his friend Zane, who they'd found was a robot. Cole always said that I would've been good friends with Zane, too, because Zane was a take-no-crap person, just as I had once been, but now I found dull interest in such childish things. In the background of my thoughts were the muffled sounds of my infamous massacre of Sunnyside cadre of faculty, screaming as I hurt them. I felt it was…fun to hurt them. I was demolishing people by the tens—how was it that I wasn't a ninja and Cole was?
I killed them.
"I think you and Kai, though," Cole had murmured to me once, "would be best friends to multiple effects. He's a lot like you, you know. He listens to the same music you do."
"Does he?" I heard myself echoing in my mind. I remembered that day, so long ago, a sunny day in Sunnyside. I'd woken up with an explicitly jubilant mood. I felt so good that I actually respected the crew working in the facility. They figured I'd done some kind of stupid thing to myself, like tore extra drugs from the fat, short doctor dude named Fat Charley, but I had felt good about that day. They screened me for all sorts of tests but when they all came up negative for more than the specific amount I was given each day, they just figured it was a mood swing for the good. Talking to Cole that evening made me feel just as well. I'd been excited to hear about him and his ninja friends, for once in my life.
"Yeah. He's into that alternative rock stuff that you like. I thought it was kind of funny." Cole had paused. "So, when do you guys get a holiday break? I want to see you."
I had shuffled my feet against that very wall, falling from my mental high to a place very low, very deep, and very dark hidden within myself. "I can't come see you," I had said flatly. "I have studying to do."
"You say that every time! I thought it was just a dance school, not college for your Ph.D."
"Some of us don't get to run away and do away with it!" I had snapped, feeling angry with Lou, my dad, for sending me away like the idiot he was, putting his own daughter in an asylum she clearly didn't belong in, when her brother was out being a hero and enjoying life as it came.
"Okay, okay, yeesh. Don't get your panties in a bunch, Seiko, I was just asking. I miss you."
"Y-you do?"
I stopped breaking the woman's skull, suddenly, frozen. What would Cole think of me? I thought in a moment of frozen realization. What would he think of me if he found out I was hurting these people? I looked at the blood washed over my hands like the tides of the ocean had come in. I dripped the inner vein liquid from the tips of my fingers. My hands trembled violently. I looked around me. The fog of my angerous rage had been blown away by a single memory. Broken bones, bloody noses, pain, even death—these things I had caused in just a time span quickly flying by in seconds. "Oh, no," I breathed when looking to the timer as the one slowly disappeared, and the timer announced loudly that the call was disconnected. It surfed through the waves of the air around me and these people I'd hurt, touching them, but going straight through their bodies without a soul to stop it. I felt my heart begin to shake.
"There she is!" yelled a voice from behind me. My heart was moving so quickly in the shelter of my chest I could only hear their voices as a muffled, distant call, echoing off my skull slowly like in water. My legs felt like jelly when fresh guards (with the unhelpful aide of Fat Charley) rushed towards me. The men I saw I'd never actually seen before. They must've been recruited brand new on the spot, for I've seen every officer this low-down, piece of junk asylum has to offer and these men were of nothing I'd ever seen before. The brown-haired one walking towards me didn't look like he was much over two years older than me, even just maybe Cole's age. I figured, dimly, that Sunnyside was desperate and was hiring anyone who applied for the job, since I was scaring away the staff by the dozens. He watched me fall to my knees before them as they stopped in a huddle around me. He had the most mesmerizing green eyes I'd ever seen in my entire life, the irises almost like they were in a constant swirl surrounding his thick black pupil. He had gloves over his hands, I noticed, that looked like smooth black leather. It looked soft enough to the touch. I reached forward, spellbound, to his extended hand and explored the way the peculiar material felt like it was skin, compared to what the leathery substance appeared it should feel. Soft, like a baby's newborn flesh. I breathed a soft breath of amazement through my parted, dry lips.
"Hello, Seiko," murmured the boy, squatting down low to my side. I looked up into his beautifully emerald eyes.
"Are you here to kill me?" I asked in a small, broken childish voice.
The boy smiled pleasantly. "Of course not, Seiko. We're here"—he motioned to the gang he'd brought with him, made up of pointy, fat nosed men with similar green eyes and huge smiles. The way their eyes were slit reminded me that of snakes—"to take you to a much better place. You don't belong here. We were just coming to release you when we saw all…this."
"And now I don't get to leave, right?" I sobbed. "I'm stuck here now."
Sympathetically, the boy rubbed my shoulder, giving me a soft look. "Oh, Seiko, of course you get to leave."
Startled, I wiped my cheeks, waiting for that totally uncomical, "JUST KIDDING!" from somebody's mouth, but all seriousness remained hovering between the snake-looking men and the boy kneeling by my side. He kneaded my tense shoulders with his fingertips, a core feeling that felt really…good. I took a shaky breath.
"Where…" I licked my lips. "Where, exactly are you taking me?"
The boy smiled again. "It's a place I think you may like," he said quietly. "It doesn't have an exact name, but I am one hundred percent positive that you'll enjoy it. There, you'll have plenty of friends who understand you." The boy took his hand away. "And you'll meet some new friends. Perhaps you will also see your brother again."
At the idea of seeing Cole, my heart soared high above my head. I stood straighter at the mention of him. "But…but what about them?" I motioned to the dead bodies, to the hurt people, without looking to them to scorn myself once more with the sight of my monster.
"Oh, Charley will take care of them," the boy said like he had this all figured out. He looked up to Charley with a sudden hard, flat stare, his pupils shrinking and even rising slowly as he glared at the fat man in widened eyes. "Charley," he said loudly, his tone very soothing yet extremely commanding, "is going to take the bodies of these people and bury them in the back of this building. Then, he is going to erase the security tapes of anything the cameras may have seen. If any lawful authorities come questioning of these missing people, Charley will confess that he killed them in cold blood. Charley will not remember that any of this happened, nor will he remember that you ever existed. Right, Charley?"
Charley's eyes fixed dreamily on the boy's through half lids. He wore a blank expression, listening to these commands. "I will do as you have told me," Charley said monotonically, mesmerized. I stared in gaping confusion. Looking back to the boy, I watched his face brighten with the knowledge that he'd won.
"Good. And if you don't do as I say?" The boy asked warningly.
Charley didn't blink. "You will kill me."
The boy nodded successfully. "Excellent. Be gone with you. Pythor, my good friend," the boy turned to look at one of the snakey men behind him, "give me the syringe."
The man produced a deadly looking needle from his pocket, the jar filled with a mysterious emerald liquid matching their eyes. I shriveled backwards, hating the long, thin piercing object that would eject itself into my skin, but the boy only touched my cheek affectionately, like we were old friends. I shook my head at him, muttering noises beneath my breath that honestly weren't words, while trying to shy away from the weapon. "Oh, Seiko, it won't hurt, I promise. You'll be out like a light. From here, we can take you home."
The man called Pythor looked at me disapprovingly from my collapsed kneeling position on the floor. I shook my head at him while these scornful tears ran down my cheeks, accompanied by the classic lip bob, but I had no intention of gaining sympathy. The boy lifted the white sleeve of my white shirt, passing by my admission bracelet to the Ninjago City Insane Asylum, the Sunnyside down. I watched him touch my leg, bare below my pink skirt, in a way that was a patting motion reminding me that I would be okay, like a mother would when calming her child when the doctor tried to stab them with those awful needles. I squeezed shut my eyes as I felt it touch the crease between my forearm and my bicep, squealing hard as it drove itself into my vein, shooting me up with whatever of the green, disgusting drool was stuck inside. I opened my eyes when the needle removed itself, but the world was encased in a foggish blur. I couldn't make out the features of the boy in front of me, just his general outline. I reached forward, swaying, with a last minute weird question on my mind. "You…" I slurred. "Name?"
I fell hard against his lap, trying to push myself up as the virus threatened to overcome me. The boy stroked my silky black hair. "Oh, my dear," he murmured. "I go by many names. But for now, you can just call me…Prince."
I clutched at his shirt, gasping for breath as it left me, soaring from my lungs as though a vacuum cleaner sucked me dry. There was no oxygen left in the world. I made strangled sounds as the deadly medicine inside of me choked me with a hard, iron grip, throttling me. I dug my bloody fingernails into his pants, but found no more thoughts to command my body to respond; my cheek fell hard against the smooth material of his jeans. The force of the impact shuttered my eyes closed, and my heart began to slow within me as I fatally ended that dooming day, laying as a murderer across the linoleum tile in the Sunnyside Insane Asylum while dreaming pretentiously of what it would've been like if I really had escaped with my life. I had enough thought in me to wonder, vaguely, if I had any regrets in life. Did I regret murdering those people? Did I regret not saying goodbye to Cole over the end of the phone? Did I regret lying to him all these years, telling him I was at the Oppenheimer when really I was rotting away here?
No. No, I didn't regret any of these things I've done in life.
I didn't regret them at all.
:3 and that, my readers, is Seiko Mitsuhide! I don't know if this will stay just as a oneshot, or maybe I'll have a little chapter telling you what the, er, "Prince" had done with her before Misako & the other parents found her. (Read THE AUTUMN OF TWILIGHT to understand) :3 We'll see how the river flows! In the meantime, can you guys PLEASE review, give me feedback, and go have an awesome day/night! Thanks for reading!
As always,
Kairi