Once upon a time, there used to be a notorious crime syndicate that would buy children and orphans from the rural countryside to raise as killers.
From these killers, there was one exceptional one that was raised to the very top. It was a girl with a long black hair that blends her body as a shadow when she runs, a pair of cold blue eyes that could see through all sorts of deceptions and lies, and finally a beautiful but extremely terrifying presence to both allies and foes alike.
In the raging climax of the Dragon King War, the girl ran away from the battlefield all of a sudden, thus dramatically changing the tides of the war altogether. Rumor has it that the girl ran away with a woman of ravishing beauty, possibly the one who taught her the true way of life.
A few years ago, another rumor behind the girl's aftermath was spread by an anonymous defector of that syndicate, saying that the girl and the woman both died somewhere before this astounding revelation. I went to the supposed address where the grave was, it was a small little town between a mountain and the wide ocean, with a statue of a young woman with a serpentine dragon draped around her neck, holding her sword up in triumph.
An old lady was kind enough to tell me a legend about this girl - a long time ago, during the Dragon King War era, this place was highly sought over by the different nearby nations for their strategical advantage, and apparently, the place was supposedly an independent state as well, built by the very refugees who just wants to escape the horrors of the war. That was when a black haired girl showed up, sword in hand, and walked to the battlefield where the armies of one particular nation (later confirmed by historians to be Artai) and sat right in front of the cavalry, glaring at them.
When a impatient soldier tried to ride his motorcycle through the girl, that poor rider was cleaved in half along with his bike, the angered commander sent his troops forward, eventually mobilizing all his company. But neither one made it to a yard behind the girl, all of them, including the commander, were all dead.
Then the next happened to the next nation, then a third nation. The girl was still glaring at all of them. And blood started to flow out from her eyes because she never blinked once ever since she stepped into the battlefield. Only when she defeated the fifth nation that tried to invade the place. The girl then turned back, since the invaders are too scared to invade anymore.
The girl was instantly hailed as a heroine, with her mother, probably a surrogate since she was only slightly older than her daughter, welcomed her home with a warm embrace.
At the end of the story, both mother and daughter opened an orphanage.
I looked at the words on the brass plate below the statue, I smiled because I found what I was looking for.
This statue was erected in the honor of the fair and brave Lady Natsuki, who saved this small little town of Jurong from an impending disaster.
I lifted my wrinkled face at the heavens, grinning over the fact that my late sister, Shizuru, who did the right thing by taking that little girl, Natsuki as her husband of sorts, all those years ago.