Born In Shadows
Wee, look, my fanfics for Tenchu don't suck! Review, pwease, I live for it. ;)
The two kodachi blades were dangerous without training, but in Ayame's skilled hands, they were never less than deadly. The quiet little village remained so, the silence only broken by the sound of flowing water - or blood. Trails of the red liquid shone in the moonlight, marking the hiding place of a deady body. The enemy was clad in grey, their faces masked. Ayame could only see their eyes.
She now crept past a small window, brown gaze fixed upon the solitary figure at the corner. She flexed her fingers around the kodachi handles, breath low and even. Decisions, decisions; how would she silence this man?
Ayame leaped forward, both blades across his throat. He struggled briefly against the metal, his jugular shifting with ragged breath. A tiny trickle of blood slid down from the first blade and silently coursed along the second. Ayame, when she thought that man had been tormented enough, twisted the blades into his soft flesh and pulled them back, slicing the sides of his neck. She closed her eyes as blood spat from the wounds, and when she opened them, she looked down into the pool of liquid and caught her reflection's eye.
Ayame laughed softly. Blood was speckled across her nose and cheeks, like the freckles she had never had. She flicked her thumb over the dots, smearing the red stuff like warpaint. She smiled alluringly at the body, then sheathed her weapons and look up, on an impulse, at the window.
A pair of frightened black eyes stared back at her. Brown hair fell before them, but the child was too petrified to move it aside. Ayame blinked, then stepped forward, meaning to reassure the boy (not realizing what a nightmarish woman she might have seemed), but he darted away from the window and disappeared into the darkness of the house.
Later, as Ayame leaped from rooftop to rooftop, aided occasionally by her grappling hook, her thoughts seemed to keep returning to that stare at the window. The child had to have been familiar with death; that village had not been taken over with pleasantries. What had scared him so? The fact that a mysterious woman had invaded his yard and killed a man right before his eyes (how much HAD he seen?), or was it the display of bloodlust that came after?
Ayame paused on a watchtower, dipping her hand into a forgotten bucket of rainwater. She brought the icy water to her face and splashed it over her cheeks. Sighing, she scrubbed the drying blood from her face with the back of an arm. She crouched there, still dazed. Scaring innocents wasn't part of a ninja's occupation. Assassinate, hide the evidence, and get out. Ideally, no one should witness the entrance or exit. But the boy had seen.
Why did it bother her? Ninjas were trained to have no emotion, trained to kill and feel nothing. Ayame had tried to forget both emotion and feeling, but she was different from Rikimaru and Tatsumaru. She enjoyed the kill. It wasn't neccesary to respond to the violence, but Ayame did. She hid it from Rikimaru with her taunts and wisecracks, yet it never went away.
Why do I love death? she asked herself, resuming her rooftop flight. Am I going mad? And then she began questioning the ways of the ninja. First, there was the expectation for perpetual awareness, and to be prepared for anything. Before she had achieved Grand Master status, her nights had been painful, and she did not get the sleep she had needed. She was further angered as she stopped on a roof, reliving the night when, after a hard training session (she had been learning the tricks of ninja speed, which always came with a risk...), she fell into bed with an amazing pain in her nether regions. Ayame had not been able to fall asleep that whole night. She'd woken up and discovered spots of bright red blood on her sheets. Alarmed, she'd rushed to Shiunsai, as there was no doctor within calling distance. When he broke the news that she no longer had proof of virginity, she was crushed. And angry. If Tatsumaru hadn't begged her to stay, she would have quit. The thought of losing to the goddamned ninja speed still angered her. She clenched her fists violently, crescent moons of blood appearing in her palms.
Then there was the endless training with so many weapons. After a few sessions with the two handed sword (which she liked), it was deemed too hindering for her sleek fighting style. Spears didn't appeal to her, but Shiunsai kept at her, and she became adept with it. But she practiced far more with the kodachi, and though she was skilled with other weapons, the kodachi became hers, and hers alone.
Her last complaint was the expectation of mental training. However, Shiunsai had been murdered before she, Tatsumaru, or Rikimaru could progress with such things. The scar on Rikimaru's eye, as well as the circumstances under which it was aquired, were his constant reminders to be strong, and to conquer emotions.
The loss of Tatsu was what prompted Ayame to gain control, but Rikimaru far surpassed her in that area. Ayame knew that for certain. Thinking about it frustrated her. She was good at her occupation, that was for sure, but there must be something more to do with life, mustn't there?
No, she realized, I am an orphan. Ninjas are born in shadow, live in shadow, kill in shadow... die in shadow. I am an Azuma ninja, and always will be. She knew she would not be complete without this life, and so confirmed her decision to the world, standing atop another watchtower. Ayame lifted her eyes to the stars, and shouted.