*English

*Japanese

MOMENTS IN BETWEEN

CHAPTER TWO

Stop Overdoing It, You Moron

It started with a thunk, thunk, thunk…

And then a tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—

It woke me up suddenly at weird hours in the morning.

Madara had really knuckled down since coming out of his depression and could nearly always be found somewhere behind the house working himself to exhaustion. I'd never actually believed it was possible to push oneself so hard at anything, but then again, I guess I could relate… After all, I'd once stayed up for a week straight with not a wink of sleep after getting bit by a wayward writing bug. In that way, I supposed the warlord and I were similar regarding our respective dedications. Or perhaps 'obsessions' was a better word for it. Still, I liked to think I was conscious enough about my own health not to overdo it.

I probably would've ignored it. I should have ignored it. Yes, I should've stayed huddled up in my office, writing articles like a good little monkey, paying no mind to the disruptive flares of chakra in the backyard. But of course, it had to be the most distracting thing ever, inevitably drawing my eyes to the window, at which point I was proven wrong. Indeed, my unexpected ability to sense chakra was not nearly so distracting as the shirtless man outside. I may have skimmed over my teenage-hormone filled fixation on bare, sweat slicked skin, and bulging muscles, but hot damn was it suddenly coming back with a vengeance.

'No-no,' I urged myself internally with a slight dose of panic as my stomach did a funny little flip at the tantelizing sight, 'those are bad thoughts, Rika—bad, bad thoughts! Stop thinking!'

But then there was another tat-tat-tat and I found myself shooting to my feet, the swivel chair falling to the floor behind me at the sudden realization—

"No! Madara, not the cherry trees!"

And so it was I found myself desperately trying to save my grandma's beloved flowering Japanese beauties. I was forced to bring out my old shooting targets from the barn on the edge of the property. I couldn't quite blame Madara for not finding it instantly. My grandma's house was sitting pretty on fourteen acres of land, seven of which were comprised of the vineyards, the barley fields, and the distillery, so it made sense he hadn't noticed the humble looking shed with so much else going on. Outside the clearing I had showed him, he had yet to see even half of my childhood home. My grandma had the barn built a while ago when my cousin Jaime and I started to show a love of the outdoors and other active hobbies. Inside was all the equipment needed to facilitate those hobbies, among other things.

He actually looked mildly impressed at my eclectic little collection hung up on the wall.

"Do you know how to use these?" he asked suddenly, gesturing to the line of bows and arrows.

I rolled my head side to side noncommittally and answered, "Long time—but yeah. Sure." At his continued stare, I added, "My father's cousin teach me to hunt. Hunt is big thing with my father's family. We gather each year, but…not me, not for long time." I walked over beside him to look at the bows, deducing, "You have questions?"

"How does this work?" He pointed out a colorful metal bow with the string threaded through an intricate series of wheels and gears.

It was a familiar question he asked all the time— What is this? What's it for? What makes it tick? —and one I couldn't always answer due to my language limits. This time, however…

"It called a compound bow." I explained with a slight smile, remembering the first time I'd picked up my first compound. It reminded me of something high-tech out of a steampunk fantasy novel, and it didn't surprise me that it was the first one he asked about. "Not so different from recurve—" I pointed out the much less adorned, more traditional short bow beside it, something Madara probably recognized by the look in his eye "—but compound builded for more power, and more…" I tried to think of the Japanese word for 'precise' and failed. "Here, just look," I directed instead, taking the bow off the wall and showing him the scope. I switched it on and held it out for his perusal. While he looked in on his end, I switched the settings on mine to focus right on my bright green eye, which was currently glittering with mischief. With the click of another settings button, I added, "See in dark too. Pretty fancy, ne?"

"That's one word for it…" he muttered, handing it back. "It seems excessive."

I laughed.

"That what Shay say too! He call it my girly bow." I made a mock stern face, mimicking my dad's macho cousin, "'Rika,' he say, 'real man use real weapons!' and I tell him," dramatically placing a hand to my chest and thrusting my nose in the air, "'Sir, I am a lady—not smelly man like you'—but he not listen!"

He chuffed at me derisively, an amused smile starting to be coaxed into existence. Clearly, he disagreed with my statement, but wisely chose not to comment. Instead, he pointed to the next unfamiliar instrument on the wall.

"And that one?"

I grinned widely, taking it off the wall and clicking the magazine into place. Next, I pointed it at Ned—a rather abused, sorry looking scarecrow from my and Jaime's misadventurous youth—and let 'er rip. The magazine carried thirty crossbow bolts in total, and each one sent the dummy jerking with the impact of the tiny airsoft boosted missiles with clouds of dust and straw. After the last bolt was emptied out of the mag, the crossbow reloaded once again, ready for another cartridge to be equipped.

"Shay make 'real weapon' for me." I shrugged as Madara eyed me carefully with a thoughtful, reassessing expression. "His little hobby. He make weapon the government not like, but still not illegal. He like to laugh at them." I shook my head with a sigh, hanging the crossbow back on the wall. "He get into trouble one day if he make them too mad…"

"Your father's cousin, was it…?" he mused, eyeing the weapon speculatively. "He sounds like an interesting man."

"Hah! If you mean 'crazy reckless genius' man, yes—interesting," I laughed, handing him an armful of targets with an admonishing look. "No more destroying grandma's sakura trees, okay? They were gift from respected friend."

He gave me an imperious look at the blunt imposition, but acquiesced easily enough with a nod. That didn't mean he would stop asking his favorite question though, and directed his next inquiries towards a couple of skeet shooters nearby.

I beamed at him in response.

What followed was, without question, going on YouTube.

Unsurprisingly, while the bright orange clay pigeons were fun to destroy while they lasted, they were much too easy a target for Madara. When we inevitably ran out of those, I kept coming up with better challenges until I eventually grabbed my old slingshot and resorted to shooting altoid capsules into the air… The only one he 'missed' was the one we couldn't actually find, so the debate on that point raged on.

"There's no way you could've hit that one!" I protested hotly, and even though it was in English, the message seemed to get itself across through my deeply skeptical tone of voice. The added exclamation of 'Muridayo!' essentially meaning, "You're impossible, stop overdoing it!" probably helped with the context.

Giving me a forbidding look, he pointed out, "Nothing can escape these eyes—I see everything. It was vaporized. End of story."

"You're a liar—and a pervert!"

And on it went, the argument getting more and more ridiculous until neither of us knew what we were arguing about to begin with. Even so, it continued into the afternoon… I don't remember who won. I think it ended in a draw, both of us agreeing to continue the disagreement when we were less tuckered out from continuous disagreements. I didn't think I'd met anyone who liked to argue as much as me. Most people just got annoyed. The fact that Madara turned out to be an active connoisseur of the topic was as much of a pleasant surprise as it was an unpleasant one. Though my treacherous backflipping heart was telling me it was more of the latter…

All this told me that I seriously needed to stop barking up the wrong trees…

Still, reclined on the heels of my palms while my legs hung swinging lazily off the edge of the back porch, I felt compelled to remark, "Today was fun."

The sky was painted in wonderful shades of red and orange as it slowly sunk over the horizon, the blazing heat of summer finally subsiding to its more forgiving balmy nights. There was even a soothing breeze that playfully tangled my hair and made grandma's rusty old homemade forks-and-knives windchime tinkle tranquilly. The cicadas were still going at it like mad too. The chorus of their cries could be heard rising and falling in an endless cycle from the rustling trees not far away. And though the disappearing light brought shadows, silhouetting the hanging bows overhead, the brilliance of the evening remained undiminished.

And though he didn't indulge my presumption with an answer, after today, the conspicuous lack of argument from the stubborn man spoke more than just words. I realized I'd probably derailed Madara's training plan for the day quite soundly by how much of a hassle he made out every interaction with me to be. But the fact stood that in the end, he still hadn't told me to fuck off yet. By his contemplative silence, I thought he'd probably been having just as much fun as I was. And maybe he was only just realizing that.

But nothing good could come of an introspective Madara, I knew.

"I feel like drinking!" I suddenly exclaimed, driving whatever thought-train he'd been on right off the tracks.

He gave me a bizarre look, and asked, "Now?"

"Yeah, why not?" I shrugged, pushing off the porch and headed around the side of the house. Once around the corner, I peeked my head back around and asked, "You coming?"

Assuming that habitual put-upon look he got whenever I asked him if he wanted to do anything remotely resembling fun, he sighed and hopped down from the porch as well.

"I'm only going because I have a feeling you're going to make a fool out of yourself," he informed me perfunctorily.

Sending him a side-eyed glare, I muttered, "You have no faith in me, do you?"

Smirking a little morosely, he answered, "It's not just you."

I rolled my eyes. "Isn't that the truth…" Next, I made a face at him and admonished, "Stop being like grumpy old man. Madara, need act your own age."

Amused, his smirk widened, becoming something slightly on the sadistic edge as he asked, "How old do you think I am?"

Balking a bit at the loaded question, I looked at him in astonishment and deduced, "You going to hit me if I guess wrong, right? Why I play that game? I not stupid."

"You don't look old enough to drink," he baited me craftily with that same smirk, daring me to get into another argument with him.

And of course, me being me, I fell for it hook-line-and-sinker.

"I'm twenty-three, you moron!" I exploded at him, hands balled into fists at my sides as I rounded on him.

I was sensitive about my baby face. I still got carded all the time.

And of course, Madara then did the absolute worst thing possible by outright laughing at me, claiming, "Liar. You're clearly no older than sixteen."

Infuriated, I shot back, "You look old enough to be my grandma—and she's dead!"

An overexaggeration, sure, but the look on his face was worth the following lump on my head.

"You shouldn't speak ill of your predecessors, brat," he rumbled at me somberly, masking his underlying irritation with an authoritative expression.

"Why not?" I growled, rubbing the newest acorn on my head bitterly. "She's dead. She not care."

"Is that why you live here all alone?"

He could've stabbed a kunai in my chest, and it would've hurt less.

"Not alone…" I murmured petulantly, biting my lip hard, feeling tears gathering ominously behind my eye sockets. "Momo lives here too."

Madara narrowed his eyes with dwindling patience.

"Momo, your pet cat," he pointed out needlessly.

"My grandma's pet cat," I corrected stubbornly. "I hate cats. Make me sneeze."

Madara just looked at me expectantly.

In the end, I threw up my hands and demanded, "What do you want? Yes, I live alone. What it matter to you?"

This argument had quickly turned down a road I didn't like.

"It must be lonely…" he remarked, sending another searing pang through my chest as he eyed me critically. "A young woman living on her own in the countryside, where anything can happen… Are you not afraid?"

His words had me all twisted up inside. And though my crippling loneliness was something I didn't like to think about, I answered him as truthfully as I knew how when I adamantly insisted, "I'm not afraid of anything—not anyone. If they try to mess with me, I make them sorry." Perhaps unwisely, I added, "Same goes for you, jerk."

When Madara's hand came up—probably to smack me upside the head for overstepping my bounds again—I winced, bracing myself for the impact. But instead of another lump for my troubles, this time his rough hand merely ruffled my hair obnoxiously. Alarmed, when I opened my eyes to stare at him, it was to see the startling image of Madara's crinkly eyed grin.

"You've got some guts, talking to me like you always do," he laughed. "So I'll believe you this time."

"G-guts, huh?" I muttered with a funny little laugh of my own, looking away. "Maybe… Maybe I just stupid, like you always say."

"Maybe," he agreed with amusement. "But that's not always a bad thing. There's no lack of passion for all the lack of brains." He went on to detail, "In battle, the stupid ones are the heaviest hitters. The smart ones just point them in the right direction."

That made me laugh.

Shaking my head at him, I pointed out, "You're terrible."

"Clearly," he answered, still smiling grimly. "But you still haven't told me to leave yet."

The sentiment was so similar to what I had been thinking earlier that I laughed again and remarked, "I really need that drink now."

"…Yeah," he finally agreed with me on something. "A drink sounds good."

A shorter chapter this time, but it's just a quick interlude.

Learning a little bit more about the area and our OC's name, among other things.

It's also an introduction to alcohol! Which is very important in this story. Not for the reason you'd think, either. It's more the human sentiment behind alcohol that's important—not the cliche plot devices associated with it, lol.

I'd also like to state for the record that I do not advocate for the creation of homemade weapons. Especially not automatic repeating crossbows. (Rika's cousin is fucking crazy. More on that in future chapters). I would also like to point out that Rika is NOT nor will she EVER become the equivalent of Van Helsing or Robin Hood within the entire course of this story.

Thanks for reading!