The Perils of Willow

A Shard of Darkness Adventure


Author's Note: There is another part to this story that is not my work. While I have assisted my friend in writing that part of the story, it is primarily his work. He wished me to be the prime author of this introductory tale. He has helped me with editing and grammar tremendously both of which I am horrid at. As such, we would appreciate anyone who reads these stories to kindly point out anything that is confusing, misspelled or worded poorly. We have both tried to skim the works as much as possible, but we are both sure there are errors we have missed.

This story picks up after the chartered end of my friend's story, the story of the Solar Exaltation of a young man named Kashi. Which, due to the prevalence of NPCs in the area from the World of Darkness, notably the computer game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, we chose to set the story in L.A. I wished to share this portion of the story and he agreed that it is more action oriented and more of a hook than his own work.

If this is well liked, I hope to persuade him to share his own work, but for now I am going to share a variation of an excerpt from his work that gives the physical description and small personality insights into two of the main characters of this tale.


Characters

Kashi Kimura - At seventeen years old Kashi possesses very unusual genetics. His father was originally from the Pacific island of Okinawa, hence his Japanese surname. However his mother is a blonde haired, blue eyed American girl. He possesses an eclectic mix of both their traits. He is very handsome and he knows it. Kashi received his mother's blond hair although his is a duller, sandier blond and more of a wild, spiky like mane than her almost platinum tresses. He also possesses her bright blue eyes. However, he is very tan and his face gives away his Japanese ancestry. He stands almost six feet tall and weighs roughly one hundred and eighty pounds. Although his bratty little sister would often insist that he should weigh much, much more the way he ate. He has an athletic and very muscular build that he has cultivated by a lifetime of almost constant physical activity.

Kashi is an affable guy who often looks before he leaps. He is laid back and has an appetite that is almost unfathomable. He can be a tad arrogant and he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He is popular and well liked, at least by the majority of his peers, in particular his female peers. His teachers, on the other hand, range from either indifference to almost disillusionment due to his laid back and sometimes disrespectful attitude.

Willow Kimura - Willow is twelve years old. For siblings, Willow and Kashi look only vaguely similar and act remarkably different. Willow has a very small frame and only weighs about eighty pounds. Her hair is a silky almost luminescent strawberry blonde and it is almost never out of place. Her face sports more prominent Asian features than Kashi's and she is also much paler, although her skin is still darker than her mother's. She also sports a pair of bright green eyes.

Willow is fastidiously neat, despite being only twelve years old. She is also quite intelligent. Most would not apply this adjective to her older brother. She takes pride in all of her work and is far more adept with computers and technology than either her brother or her mother. She is slightly lonely due to the fact that she skipped the third grade, which makes her almost eighteen months younger than anyone in her class. She desperately wishes to prove herself to both her mother and her brother as she is certain, Kashi will eventually 'screw up everything.'


Time

This story takes place roughly a week after Kashi's exaltation as a Solar Exalt. He has absolutely no idea what has happened to him and is still stunned by his newfound abilities. Kashi exalted while attempting to shield another during a shooting in East Los Angeles. When he returned home to his mother and sister, his mother, desperate to shield her child from anything that might have happened to him, has demanded that he lay low and out of sight for the time being, even going so far as to ground him. As ludicrous as it sounds to ground a fledgling Solar exalt, Kashi has been in sort of a stunned stupor in the days following his exaltation. He has been having fantastic nightmares and visions that have cost him sleep. Worried about her brother, Willow has been trying to discover what exactly has happened to him.


Kimura House


Willow Kimura woke up as her MP3 player bleeped in her ear. She sat up and looked around as she flipped the player to another track. She looked at the time: it read 12AM, about the time Kashi normally started Illicitly meeting a girl or doing something else dumb that woke her up on a school night. Over the years she'd not only gotten used to it, she'd learned to utilize the disruptions. Her mother thought she went to bed at 9 every night and slept until the morning. In fact she had developed the ability to sleep in short shifts. She'd go to bed early every night then be awakened by Kashi's nightly rutting or other shenanigans only to get back to sleep a few hours before school started. She'd turned it into a habit that she kept up even when she was out of school for the summer. There was a lot you could get done in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep...or distracted otherwise. Stealing some of Kashi's gas and putting it in her mom's car was one thing. Stealing the next door neighbor's internet was another. Not that he used it much after dark anyhow. She considered it simply utilizing an untapped resource.

Booting up the computer she'd put together, she pondered the recent changes in her brother and worried. He was obviously disturbed by what happened. He wasn't up to anything this evening. It was oddly quiet in his room. She couldn't even hear him watching TV, lifting weights or eating. She assumed he was sleeping. Whatever had happened to Kashi it was similar to, but not quite like, Manifestation. She had searched about the Manifested and learned much about them. Reflexively, she scanned through her e-mails and prepped some pictures her clients from school were ready to buy. If she was lucky she could soon pick up the new hard drive she wanted. She'd almost saved up enough money.

She shook her head as she turned from that and started up the methods she used to mask herself online when she was doing legally dubious things. Tonight, however, she wasn't thinking about downloading and burning pirated music or movies for schoolmates... or teachers... she was going to do something a bit more risky. The Manifested were large in the public eye. There would be almost innumerable searches on the internet about such people. Her searching about them the last few nights might go unnoticed, but she didn't doubt with Kashi possibly having killed some of his attackers, her searching about what happened to him in greater detail might attract someone in law enforcement. Hence her secrecy.

She also knew the Manifested were barred from competitive sports as their abilities gave them an unfair advantage. If what had happened to him got out he'd be barred from play and lose his scholarship. He might even get locked in a lab somewhere. Willow began to dig. She'd peeped into the fringes of some groups that seemed to really know about strange phenomena and unusual occurrences. There was a lot of speculation in those circles about the Manifested. Some of it was obviously bullshit, in her opinion, but some made her stop and think. People used to say ghosts were fake till the Projector firms proved they really existed.

Willow lost track of the hours as she skimmed these sites. She finally found something real: a chat room with some people who seemed to know about similar manifestation like things happening. She chatted with two of their members.

WillOwhisp:Yes it's like you said happened in Russia only rather than a brassy green light it was a sunny gold light.

Keeper975:And you're sure it wasn't fire? Golden flames maybe?

WillOwhisp: No nothing like that. I stood in my friend's aura. There was heat but not like fire. It was like standing outside when the sun was intense.

Seeker143:Was there any other sensations or manifestation other than visual light and a feeling of heat?

WillOwhisp:Yes. His clothing was sun bleached and smelled...well you know how laundry smells when it had been air dried? That's how it smelled. Which is odd. He normally smells like sweat or too much body spray.

Keeper975: And that is the odd light that was reported a few days ago?

WillOwhisp:That is what he says. It wasn't that bright when I saw it, but I think it's like the Manifested. He didn't use much power when the light came when I was there. But when the Manifested use a lot of power or when they first Manifest it's like a beacon so I believe him. He's too dumb to make this stuff up.

Seeker143:Interesting...

Willow sighed. The two lapsed into "quiet" period with no postings. She was sure they were talking on a private channel, but she had yet to figure out how to gain access to anything deeper than this visitor's area. She rubbed her eyes and wondered if she would gain anything useful from this. She nearly jumped when a soft chiming noise alerted her there was a new post.

Seeker143:Do you have any physical evidence you can share? Something we can test to see if this is worth investigating?

WillOwhisp:Yeah. I can get his clothes. The sun bleached ones. I don't know how useful that will be...

Seeker143:You'd be surprised... Good. Bring them to me. I can give you an address where we can meet.

WillOwhisp:When?

Keeper975:Now.

WillOwhisp:Now? It's... almost 3 AM! I don't have a car!

Keeper975:Who lives in LA and doesn't have a car?

Seeker143:Well it's a few miles from where the light was seen. You should be able to make it just be careful.

Keeper975: She's stalling for time. She needs to fake up the evidence. I told you this is a hoax.

Willow became angry at that accusation. Well, she was mad at the accusation and mad at herself. She realized she should have never let a male pronoun slip earlier since she had Keeper had been a pain, but writing gender neutral was so hard. Keeper had haughtily pointed out that with a mere 1% of the manifested being male her story already felt unlikely. Her keyboard clicked angrily as she typed.

WillOwhisp:FUCK YOU! This is not a hoax! This is serious! But I'm a woman without a car. I'm not hiking my ass out there at 3 AM! It's dark and the crazies will be out! YOU risk getting murdered and or raped, jack!

Seeker143:Easy, Keeper. Okay, look WillOwhisp, you don't want us to know where you live and we have a policy to meet reportees quickly to ensure their stories check out. If you want our help you have to get here. You can call a cab and I'll pay the fare once you're over here.

Willow bit her lip. She had snuck out of the house before. It wasn't too hard. Her brother and mother slept like the dead, but she had never left this late and she never went more than a block or two. This was very different. She looked at her other leads. Most had already dead ended. If this didn't pan out she wouldn't have much else. For once her mother and brother were at a total loss and they needed her. This was her chance to help and prove she could pick up the slack when Kashi screwed up. With a sigh, she typed that she'd be there soon as she could. She knew she'd have to walk a little bit at least. She wanted to get a taxi away from the house so they couldn't get her location from the driver.

Shutting down her computer, Willow slipped out of her room, used the bathroom and collected Kashi's clothes from the night of the event from where she'd hidden them. Just in case of trouble she sadly slipped the only hundred dollar bill in her secret stash into a hidden pocket of her pants. If things went bad she'd still have a way to pay the cabbie to take her home. With trepidation, she slipped out the front door.

A few blocks from the house she called a cab and waited. She was pretty sure these guys thought she was older. She might initially get some bad reactions, but she'd never told them she was older, and she had Kashi's clothes. That should tell them something. Maybe it would be enough to convince them to help figure out what had happened to her brother? She hoped so. She'd hate to think this late night cab ride was for nothing.

As her mind frantically ran in circles, she didn't notice as a blur of motion slipped behind her and then reached out. Her first clue of danger was too late as, with iron strength, a hand reached out around her mouth with a cloth. Her first surprised gasp filled her lungs with something chemical smelling and the world went black.


Anaheim


James sat at a diner. It was mostly a dive, but had free wifi. He was still arguing with Keeper about this WillOwisp situation. If the woman didn't show he would have egg on his face, but his gut told him things fit. He looked at the screen of his laptop. The private, Hunter only chat lit up with a few other Hunters asking about his meeting. He hated to tell them he was stood up, but it looked like that was what was going to happen.

He sighed deeply and got up to get a refill of coffee. He'd been sitting here for so long he'd rather not aggravate the wait staff any more. They were clearly on the edge of asking him to stop nursing the coffee and leave. It was starting to get light outside and the breakfast crowd was beginning to file into the small diner.

When he sat back down, he was taken aback. There was a message in a notepad document open on his screen. He looked around the room in panic. Someone had touched his rigg?! security was tight now a days. A non Hunter shouldn't even be able to read the dialog but, it was still an unacceptable risk, he shouldn't have left the laptop open.

His scan of the room revealed nothing odd, worriedly, he read the note.

"They have the girl. She called the Bumble Bee Cab Company to pick her up at the location you'll find in the Google maps tab I opened on your web browser. Good luck saving her. If you don't she may die"

James felt his throat go dry.

"What the hell...?" He thought.

He could get in a lot of trouble but he didn't dare keep this from the others. He hurriedly typed into Hunter chat.

Seeker143:Guys... I might be responsible for a security breach. Something very funny is going on here?

Keeper975:God damn, Seeker! What the hell is it now?

LucyNDskies:Seeker, are you okay?

Seeker143:Physically yes. I got up for coffee and found someone, in the time it took me to walk to the counter and fill the cup, had hacked my screen saver and left a message on my computer's desktop. The message says the girl was kidnaped on her way here. They left a location.

James felt bad about lying, but it was only a white lie and there was no way he was going to admit he'd been so careless to leave his laptop open with no screensaver up. Not with Keeper already pissed at him

Keeper975:Wow this isn't a waste of time...it's a FUCKING TRAP!... stay right there I'll find someone local to trail you. Maybe we can turn the tables on the trappers.

LucyNDskies:Actualy I'm close by already.

Keeper975:I thought you lived in San Fran?

LucyNDskies:I DO! But I happen to be in LA, thank you, and why is none of your business, Keeper.

Keeper975:Easy, easy down girl. Right, okay, well you know Seeker's location. Go help him, but stay out of eyesight.

Seeker143:No. Meet me at the location I'm sending you. I'm going to check this out.

Keeper975: The hell you are! You wait for backup before you head out there!

Seeker143:Keeper, if this chick was kidnaped, we're in a very time sensitive context. If not whoever used my computer is IN THE ROOM with me! I'm NOT waiting here.

LucyNDskies:Go on Seeker, but remember to be very careful. You have one of the new cells?

Seeker143:Yes. I have it with me. While I'm gone, Keeper, wake up Runner88. Tell him to trace the call for a cab pick up at that address.

Keeper975:If there even was a call...

Seeker143:There was! Do you think I've been sitting on my hands while you and Lucy argued? No one was there when the cabbie reached the location. He left thinking it was a prank. Wake up Runner get me an ID on the phone. Even if it was a cell he should be able to dig up something!

Keeper975:Smart, okay, maybe you're not completely hopeless after all. I'll get on that. YOU be careful.

Seeker143:No argument there. Signing off and in route.

James got up and stored his laptop in his backpack. As he left he took one last, long look at the Cafe. Seeing nothing suspicious, he started on his way.

In the corner of the dinner, a slightly weather beaten man in his late 30's pulled his cowboy boots out of the other side of the booth he occupied. He slid his plate of steak and eggs away. He fished around in his faded jeans for a $20 bill. He tossed it on the table casually, despite the waitress never bringing him a bill. He pulled on his beaten, brown leather jacket which he wore despite the heat and ran his left hand through his dirty blond hair. He picked up his old army sack in the other hand. He fiddled with a smartphone which he seemed to have been texting on for the last few hours. It was the only thing that compromised his urban cowboy motif.

He walked out the door without a backwards glance. His cellphone pulled up a mapping GPS that showed where he was and where the young hunter WillOwhisp had been planning to meet was now. He might not be able to break the supernatural protection on to see what they were talking about amongnst themselves, but he sure as hell could bug and follow this lone dipshit. With a casual grace he tossed his army pack onto his Iron Horse and eased the bike out on the road. He hoped the Hunter was up to the task of finding the girl before it was too late.