Nintai woke up to the sound of birds. That's odd. They sound a lot closer than usual. Looking up from her spot on whatever it is she's laying on, Nintai sees trees and a dark night sky dotted with bright stars peeking through. In the distance, she can hear the sound of metal clashing. Sitting up, she sees a familiar figure standing next to one particularly familiar tree.
"Sayori?"
The figure starts and turns. "Ane?"
That's her, alright. The sounds of others rousing came to her ears. Nintai checks her surroundings to see Sei, Jinnai, and Rin all waking up as well. With them getting up and Sayori staring at something once more, Nintai decides to check on her friend near the tree. Walking up next to her, she sees what she's staring at.
Below them, and the entrance to a familiar tunnel, is a group of black clad men holding torches and setting up screens to hide the wall. Among them are two men lacking torches. One is also black clad, but missing sleeves and has silver colored hair. He's well-muscled, so Nintai figures him pretty tough in a fight and a hard worker. The other, purple haired and dressed in a style Nintai only saw in pictures of Japanese lords. Where are we?
Behind the pair watching the scene, a scream is loosed along with a bright green light. Looking back, Sayori and Nintai see Rin holding a bleeding arm, Jinnai holding onto his sister and Sei standing protectively in front of them. Across from Sei are four men dressed in black. The pendant that had been found at the dig site glows green a little ways away from me. That sense of frustration reaches Nintai once more.
Black clad and holding swords, the attackers advanced on us. Her eyes focus on something else out of place. Next to the green pendant is another, smaller one, blue in color, and using a piece of string as a chain. Reach for me!
Spurred by a thought in my head, she dash for the pendant, only to be met by another black clad man. Without thinking, she raised her ankle as hard as she could into his crotch, making contact with something she knew would be painful to hit. He falls to the ground, moaning and cursing at Nintai and gaining the attention of his comrades.
Seeing her do damage to one of their own, the four others moved after her, forgetting Sei and the two behind him. Nintai, still feeling frustrated, reached the pendants and picked up both. The blue flashes brightly, enveloping everything, and a voice reaches her ears; I'll guide you. Just flow through the motions.
What she sees once the light subsides is five figures, all bleeding from various injuries. None of the wounds look fatal, so Nintai assumes they're all alive. The green pendant still in her hand flashes next as screams ring out. Recognizing one to be Sayori, Nintai turns to her friend, whose collapsing into Sei's arms. The other, distant but still clear as the word help rides the moving winds, shatters Nintai's heart.
The pendant's glow dies as Sei shakes Sayori, attempting to wake her. Place it on her. A faint thought slips into Nintai's mind and she does as she's told. Taking the green pendant, she forces Sei to stop what he's doing and clasps it around the unconscious girl's neck.
The next thing the four awake teens see is Sayori's body glowing green and dissipating into a dust. In the air, the winds change direction, carrying the floating green particles toward the screens and the torches leaving them behind. Once they've entered between the screens, everything slows down.
Watching the torches, Nintai notices the people starting to walk back… wards. As if in reverse. She sees them reenter the tent, their backs to the entrance as their feet carry them back in. The group then hears groans and movement. Turning back, they see the black clad men going in reverse as well, their wounds disappearing one by one in quick succession as they move faster and faster. Soon, they've disappeared into the trees and the rustling of leaves fades into the distance.
Nintai turns her attention back to the screens and watches as they quickly rewound back into a pile of materials to be carried. Then, the entire group, torches and all, moves quickly along the track they had been walking forwards on only a few moments ago, but this time they're backs are facing the way they're going.
"It's like time is reversing," Sei comments.
"Yeah, it is," Nintai agrees. "Just one thing though. Where's Sayori? And what should we do to get to her?"
Jinnai points out the obvious. "The tunnel."
Rin looks at her brother, arm healed but still cradling it like it was still bleeding. "Easier said than done. Those torches could simply walk through those trees any moment now. With so much ground to cover from this hill to that wall, we'd never beat them if we don't know where they are."
"True, but you won't know until you've tried it." Nintai jumps at the new voice, looking around to see no one there. "Down here, ko." Nintai looks into her hand to see the blue pendant in her hand glowing. "There you go! Now then, just go down there. Times gone back by several hours, so your friend should be safe and you need to go get her.
"Just sneak into the castle and pretend to be newly hired employees on trial runs. It'll be easy. All you'll need is to steal a few uniforms."
"Ummm… Nintai?"
"Yes, Sei?"
"I'm not just imagining that thing, am I? It's talking right," he says, staring intently at the gem, like we wants to tear it apart and study its pieces.
Nintai shakes her head. "I don't know if it's a mass hallucination or if it's real. But I plan on following its advice. So, then, off to the castle and our friends rescue!"
Nodding assent, the other three follow the confident and motivated Nintai down the hill at a jog.
Sayori opens her eyes to a candle lit room. Tatami mats make up the floor and a paper door sits in front of her eyes. As she questions where she is, a man knocks on the door and says "excuse me" before entering the room. She sits up in surprise at the visitor, thinking back to the dream she had just had.
Oh, calm down, Muneshige! Why should I be the only one who behaves while everyone else enjoys the festival!
A caretaker by the name of Muneshige was crouched in front of her, pulling on her arm and telling her to follow him. Just as they exit the room, two ninja rush down the hall, blades unsheathed and arcing towards the Hatsuhime's bodyguard. Luckily, he happens to be one of the best in the Mochizuki clan.
Hearing a commotion above her head, Nintai crawls out from underneath a large tree. Rin soon follows. The boys, unfortunately, were too big to go through the entire tunnel. A little ways in the ceiling had lowered to such a height that the girls could barely crawl through. It had also taken all of Rin's restraint to not scream when a spider web or a worm touched her skin.
As a plan, Nintai and Rin would slip in through the tunnel and collect some uniforms for everyone. Then, the two were to slip back out using the tunnel and get back to the boys. The voice from the blue gem assured the group that Sayori, who was somewhere in the castle, would be there for a few days, hidden somewhere with a man named Muneshige. What they needed to do was find the two of them and help get them out without being seen.
Nintai had convinced the others that planning any further than getting in would be wasting time for them at that particular moment. But she'd told the boys to go ahead and think of some options on their own while she and Rin were away. The meeting point was the clearing where they had woken up.
With everything set, the girls had gotten onto their hands and knees and started down the tunnel once more. The boys had turned around and headed out to hide and avoid the group of what they decided were ninja hidden amongst the trees. Lucky for Sei, Jinnai had experience hiding all sorts of things, from keys, to entire cars.
"We've got nothing to worry about concerning those two, right?"
"Don't worry, Rin. Your brother is good at what he does, and Sei knows how to give credit. They'll be fine. What we need to worry about right now is ourselves. See all those guards?"
Rin nods her head and Nintai goes into an explanation of their patterns. The guards, dressed in black are moving like cats as they search anywhere and everywhere. The girls notice that those not wearing black are just standing at specific points, and that the men in black are avoiding them and the torches that light the area surrounding them.
"Think of this as a game of hide and seek."
Nintai looked at the small pendant resting on her chest. "Hide and Seek?"
"Yup," came the disembodied voice. "Hide and seek. Don't get caught by anyone, stick to the shadows, that kind of stuff. You know, the game that increases sneaking ability if you play right."
"We're well aware of what hide and seek is," Rin snaps quietly.
Nintai places her hand on the other girl's shoulder. After leaving her brother to fend for himself, she is, of course, irritated and itching to get back to him. The two have always worked together, but Nintai believed her skill as bait would make escaping a situation easier. Men will believe anything, after all. And this place is definitely full of stupid boys.
Nintai, tapping what little skill she has in the game of hide and seek, looks for the secret hidden path. Feeling a pressing need to work quickly, she builds the path step by step, sticking to the darkness around them and avoiding the lights, much like the dark clothed men. The difference between her and them, though, is that she sees all the potential hiding spots without bias.
"Let's go, Rin. Stay close and use the front of your feet when moving. I'll go first. Keep to the hiding spot behind me, got it?"
Understanding with ease, Rin shifts off her knees and into a crouch. Where Nintai has her little pendant to guide her through what she has to do during this little 'game,' Rin has natural ability in this, and easily slips into the shadows when she moves. After a few minutes of slipping from patch of shadow to patch of shadow, Nintai slides under the boards of the deck. Moving a little ways in, she soon hears Rin sliding in as well.
"You good, Rin," Nintai whispers.
"Yeah," comes the quiet response.
The two crawl around under the floors above them, hearing the running of footsteps on the wood as if someone's life depends on how fast they can go. Feeling nervous about the pendant, Nintai suddenly stops, startling Rin, and shoved it under her shirt.
"Hey! Don't put me in here!"
"Be quiet," Nintai hisses.
"No way! You don't shove a guy into your shirt!"
Nintai freezes. It's a boy!? Her head is spinning, and the idea of carrying around a boy pendant isn't appealing to her right now. At any rate, though, she has to deal with it, since everything around her is currently hostile and the idea of losing said boy pendant in the mud also didn't appeal to her. Something about it made her want to hold onto it, not to mention the question of what it did when she picked it up.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Nintai continues crawling forward, feeling the blood rushing into her cheeks. Why'd it have to be a boy? She hears Rin behind her, holding in a laugh. I should've come by myself. Rin's muffled laughter, however, wasn't muffled enough. Above them, a man with particularly amazing hearing and long silver hair had heard them.
Back outside the castle walls, Jinnai and Sei are having trouble staying hidden. No matter what try, the two are constantly heard and easily found. It's been pure luck that they haven't been caught yet. Jinnai has been cursing Sei for his clumsiness since they separated from the girls. His feelings mostly came from his separation from his sister, causing misguided aggression.
Sei, on the other hand, is thanking a god he doesn't believe in that he went with Jinnai. The kid is a natural at this, much like his sister, and spots the ninja seconds before they're found. Not to mention that he's corrected several issues in Sei's sneaking already, including how he places his feet and how quickly he moves.
Now, with absolute, not really, ease, Sei keeps up with Jinnai's instructions and pace. As the two slip between bushes and trees, they realize that the hill is within site, and that plenty of time has passed.
The group of men, whom the group of teens had seen going in reverse, were arriving at the tunnel, and the girls still hadn't come back out yet. Which means they're trapped until the group either disappears or the boys hear the scream for help… again.
While hiding in a tree, Sayori stares quietly at Muneshige's features. In the dream she'd been having, she'd heard Hatsuhime's thoughts as he carried her away from the assassins after her life. The girl had fallen for Muneshige first, but her current feelings were a little difficult to understand and comprehend.
Whether or not she loved the man was obvious; she loved him, completely. But the question was, how? Did she seem him as more of a father figure? After all, a father is his daughter's first love. Or, was there some other feeling there? And why on earth is Sayori currently inhabiting the girl's body? It made no sense.
If Hatsuhime really wanted to be rescued, having someone like Nintai or Rin, whose skills saved them from so many disasters, Sayori stopped keeping count, would be more ideal. The two could sneak in and out of anywhere, even the most high security vault if they put their minds to it. The abilities those two have are amazing and unpredictable.
"Hatsuhime," Muneshige whispers, "are you alright? Do you think you can move?"
"Oh. Yes, I can move."
"Good. I want you to do something for me. Go down this tunnel until you reach the outside of the wall." Muneshige, like the secret-tunnel-loving boy he is, points out an open space Sayori hadn't noticed when she climbed under the tree. She recognized this particular event clearly.
"No!"
"Sorry?"
"No, I won't go!"
Holding as still as possible, the girls hold their breaths as a man with silver hair tracks them down. I really should've left her behind with the boys and brought Sei. After they'd crawled to the servant quarters underneath the floor, the girls had slipped out from underneath the floor and slipped into some uniforms.
Walking around with their new uniforms, they'd snuck into the men's section and stolen two of those uniforms. After tearing a sleeve and a pant leg and covering them in dirt, the girls had taken them with the lie that they were to mend and clean them for a pair of male servants.
Unfortunately, the man who'd caught them was not as stupid as some of the guards they'd passed before. Even though Rin had spoken the line perfectly and without flaw, the man had questioned them on why he couldn't remember a female servant with such bright purple hair. Nintai has been cursing her luck and recklessness.
Lee had told her to dye her hair when she went to a new school; now she was paying the price for not listening to her friend's wisdom, regardless of the coincidence.
The girls, still holding the uniforms for the boys, are hiding under the floor boards again, hoping that he doesn't see anything disturbing about the tatami mat in the corner. Luckily for them, some other man calls for the pursuer's attention towards a princess's disappearance and the appearance of several bodies. Oh thank god! Then the two of them were gone, their swift feet carrying them away from the room above the girls' heads.
Rin lets go of her held breath and starts gasping for air, although the stagnant form underneath the floor isn't the best thing to inhale. But, for the moment, the gasping girl didn't care. Nintai, on the other hand, slowly releases the breath she'd been holding and forces herself to breath calmly.
Their relief, however, wears off as they hear more hurried footsteps approach and enter the room. Hearing the slam of a closing door, the girls look at each other in a panic. Next, a flood of fresh air slips underneath the floor as the mat they're hiding under is lifted.
In front of their eyes is a man of mid- to late thirties and a girl around their own age. The two looked shocked to see a pair of girls in servant clothes hiding in the space. But the girl is first to recover as she smiles with joy, recognition clear on her face.
Nintai is the first to recover as the sounds of other footsteps reach her ears. Reaching up, she pulls first the girl, then the man under the floor, letting the tatami mat drop back into place with a small breeze forming from the air displacement.
"What are two servants doing hiding like this," the man says.
Nintai puts her finger to her lips to signal for silence as someone opens the room's door for what seems like the 100th time to the girls. Once they hear the door slam shut again and the footsteps moving away once more, the group lets out a collective breath of relief. Then Nintai answers his question.
"We're looking for a friend who was brought here a few hours back. We've got a few friends just outside the walls waiting for these," she holds up the servant uniforms, "but we've already been caught once, so coming back in with them is out of the question."
The man looks to the girl, who seems to be holding back tears and something else. What's with her? Turning to Rin, Nintai raises an eyebrow, and the girl immediately starts to comfort her like the communication pro she is.
