Hi readers. The story updates are coming at a pretty good clip now, don't you think? Thanks very much to those that have left reviews. They're always a tremendous motivation to keep on hitting the keyboard. As you can probably tell, these first few chapters have been focused around introducing the cast in an organic way, so everyone can get to know them. Soon the plot will start to pick up, so get ready! There's quite a fight in the near future for our heroes. I almost feel bad for what I'm going to be putting them through.
I'd like to thank 4everablackrose for allowing me to tweak Rin slightly for the story, and Morumotto-chi for helping in her creation.
Hori out.
Kyoto, Japan
Rin Fujisaki had long ago abandoned her fantasies of what it must be like to see. Ideas like color and pattern and visual intricacies were beyond her. For most of her childhood, her world was one of darkness and sounds. Smells and tastes and touches that had no three-dimensional anchor to assign them to. Her memory was a series of dark rooms that she mapped with her feet and her hands. Her father and brother were beings of scent and voices and hands that held her. Her mother, dead in the process of giving birth to her, had no form or shape at all. She was an idea that had been relayed to Rin second-hand. When she asked her father what her mother had been like, he used words like 'beautiful' that had no meaning to a girl that had been born blind. He also used words like 'kind,' though, which she had come to learn was the opposite of what the man she called 'father' was.
She could still remember so vividly the first time her mutant ability had changed her life. The exact moment that unnatural muscles formed unnatural sounds in her throat. Sounds that bounced and ricocheted over the world and returned to her, feeding her transforming, newly sensitive ears a wealth of strange and exciting information. Where there was once darkness there was... Not vision, but forms, vivid sketches of a world that existed just beyond her reach in glorious lucidity. Things that were once shapeless took form through her sensitive ears and into her mind. She knew it was not true vision. It was more akin to echolocation. It was only impressions and shades of what real seeing must be, but for the first time in twelve years, she had not been a helpless, small, blind girl.
Her mutation had given her sight.
Of course, that was not all it had given her. She remembered her father and brother's rage as she struggled to control the new muscles of her throat, while at the same time reveling in their use. From her lips would escape shrill, powerful cries that buffeted their small house, shattered glass, and even occasionally made her father and brother's noses and ears bleed from the supersonic trauma. Each time father would insist that she stop, would tell her that her mutation was a curse and a disgrace, and Rin would fall silent for days, trying to make due with her super-human ears by tapping objects objects in the house with her fingers and trying to discern the echos the noises made around her. But father did not know what he asked; To tell someone without working eyes that had been given the gift of sight, even if it were only an imitation, to ignore the world of the visible, to ignore the gifts that made her, if anything, more human than she had been, that was asking for the moon. Consequences be damned, she would not be stopped from seeing, and the elated, high-pitched screams would again find their way past her lips as she greedily took in the visions that bounced back.
Of course, a girl at that tender age had no real concept of true consequence, and when she suddenly found herself without a home, abandoned by her father and brother on the streets of Tokyo, the devastation had been total.
She did not hate them. Not anymore. She knew well now the world she had been born into, and the difficulties a family faced when cursed with an unruly mutant child. Blood and fear and death, the byproducts of the worldwide war on mutants, gripped even the smallest of nations, and every mutant was viewed as just another terrorist, another martyr waiting to happen. She had been among the last generation of mutants to be born on the entire planet, and, now seventeen, was certainly among the youngest.
She supposed a part of her could be thankful to her neglectful and unsympathetic family. In many ways, her abandonment had been one of the best things to ever happen to her, though she did not see it that way at the time. Their leaving her in the streets had probably saved her from an internment camp, where most mutants were eventually sent to die in those days. It was also on the streets of Tokyo that Logan had found her, and brought her into the fold of the last remaining X-Men. The days of her training, and the subsequent battles she had fought in with her fellow students, Logan's hand-picked strike team, though racked with pain and anguish as they were, were the first instances that Rin could remember that she felt as though she belonged. As though she had a real family. With the pain had also come joy, and friendship, and even love for her mentor, Logan.
Rin sighed and allowed her meditation to break, though she still sat on her knees on the wooden floor, her black kimono tucked beneath her. Even now, going on two years since Logan's death, the mere thought of him brought back a well of emotions that made it impossible for her to master the art of self-reflection that he had tried to teach all of them. There was not a day that went by that she did not miss him, did not wish he was here by her side. His demeanor and methods, though rough and callous in his old age, were not without fatherly warmth. His guidance, though short and terse, was always honest and true.
He had been their sensei, their protector. For a long time after he'd left, Rin had felt naked and exposed without him, as though all the demons of the world would crash through their walls and take them all as they slept. She still fought that ghost of a fear every night. She supposed in her youth she had even harbored some girlish crush on him, as ridiculous as that was. But now... Now she would just give everything to have him back for only a moment, just to tell her in that hoarse growl of a voice what it was they were supposed to do. When Hunter had received Vascha's message, she had become a well of emotions. Excited and angry and terrified all at once. She still had not fully sorted out how she felt. Of course she desired recompense for what had been taken from her, but with that desire came a swell of anxiety and dread, the source of which she could not completely understand.
She heard Hunter's footsteps long before he entered the room. Even if she could not identify most people by the sounds their feet made as they walked, which she could, the ambient echos produced by the sounds of his walking painted a picture of him in her mind. Tall, well-built, with a heaviness to his steps that was only amplified by the boots he wore. It annoyed Rin slightly that he was not dressed in his traditional kimono in Logan's dojo, but would say nothing to him about it. Hunter was as tense and manic with nervous energy as she since they had been given the news that they would finally pursue vengeance for Logan's death.
"Hello, Hunter," she said.
Most people who did not know Rin well were sometimes put off by her ability to recognize them even when they did not announce themselves, but Hunter was long past that. Avoiding the nightingale floors out of habit, even now when the tatami mats were gone and they needn't train any longer, he crossed the room to her. He lowered himself to his knees next to her and bowed deeply to the small shrine that Madam Yuriko had placed in the dojo after Logan had died.
"You can't sleep either?" he asked.
"I've been thinking about him more than usual," she replied.
Hunter made a small grunt of agreement, "Tell me about it."
She felt him shift and raise his arm to his face. He was looking at a watch.
"The others will arrive soon. Vascha said that SHIELD will pick us up from here."
"From here?" Rin asked, "Is that wise?"
She felt Hunter shrug, "It was Madam Yuriko's idea, actually. She thinks if SHIELD means to abduct or arrest us, that they'll be less likely to do it in the house of a Yakuza family."
Rin considered that for a moment and then nodded. "The Yakuza clans are stronger than most governments in Eastern Asia. SHIELD wouldn't dare provoke them."
"Well, I don't know if I would go that far, but it's a nice thought," Hunter said, though not unkindly.
They sat there for a minute or so, both enjoying the peacefulness of the room and the memories contained within. Rin recalled with a smile one of the first Kendo sessions in which Logan had paired her with Hunter. They had barely known each other then, and though he had been in Logan's fold longer than she, they were both hopelessly novice in their training. Rin, having been a shy and demure child, had barely even spoken to the other students, and was treated with as much avoidance as curiosity.
"Sensei," Hunter had protested, "I can't fight her!"
"And why not?" Logan had asked. It was a surprise to Rin; Logan rarely answered anyone that questioned his training so directly.
Hunter faltered, searching for a polite way to say what Rin knew was on his mind.
"He doesn't wish to fight me because I am blind, Sensei," Rin said to Logan in Japanese, hoping to save Hunter some embarrassment at having to state the obvious. She had known that the tall, muscular boy's Japanese was not yet very strong, and he would not understand her.
Logan grunted and spoke to Hunter in English, "She said she can mop the floor with you, Alumni."
She had felt Hunter wince. Not so much at what Logan had claimed Rin had said, but at the nickname he sometimes bestowed on him. Hunter had made the mistake of mentioning to the other students one too many times that his Grandmother Ororo and his Uncle Evan had been X-Men, and Logan took it as bragging. Rin rather liked hearing Hunter's stories of his relatives. They were like the stories of ancient samurai long dead. Hunter made them sound like mythical warriors, strong and noble, and she had been entranced by the tales. Of course, Hunter had to later admit that he had never actually met them, and his stories were all passed down to him, not first-hand accounts, but Rin still liked to hear about them. About all of the X-Men, actually.
Hunter resigned himself and raised his shinai, a bamboo sword that simulated a katana, in front of him. Rin responded in kind, not bothering to inform Hunter that she had not actually said that she intended to wash any surface with him. She was not even sure what that had meant.
I must practice my English more, she made a mental note as she took the appropriate stance.
Rin knew that, traditionally, Kendo was practiced with a variety of protective garments, but Logan had forbade it.
"You ain't trainin' for sport," he snarled, "You're training to stay alive. When you practice Kendo with me, pain means you're dead."
And so it was that they wore only a kendogi and hakama, little more than thick robes to protect themselves from the harsh sting of the bamboo mock-swords.
"I'm sorry about this," she heard Hunter say, and he stepped towards her, pointing his shinai at her chest. He meant to simply jab at her with the sword, not to level a slash at her. It was a gesture of kindness, Rin knew, but the delicacy with which he wielded his weapon at her suddenly made her angry. She decided then and there that she was quite through with being treated as though she were helpless.
She sidestepped his lunge easily and brought her shinai down on his back with a hard two-handed swipe. Not hard, but harder than he had intended to hit her. It was not a traditional Kendo strike, and in a match she would have been awarded no points, but she did not think Logan would correct her on that basis. Besides, for a reason she could not fathom, the strike had come to her easily. It felt... Good.
Even with the layer of cloth, the bamboo sword snapped loudly against his body and Hunter gasped with pain. He turned, lowered his sword, and put one hand on his back where she had struck him. He might have been wincing, but Rin could not see his face in fine detail without the sharp sounds she could make in her throat.
Rin felt the urge to apologize, even lay down her shinai and prostrate herself to the boy, but she fought it away. She tried hard to think as though she were Logan, and do as he would do, and Logan most certainly did not seem the type to bow to an opponent simply because his opponent might be angry with him.
To her surprise, Hunter began to chuckle.
"Where did that come from?" he asked.
"You're dead, Zephyr," Logan snarled, "Now what are you gonna do about it?"
Hunter had spent the majority of the afternoon trying to hit Rin, and never once succeeded, receiving only red welts on his body for the trouble. When the time came, Rin gave the same treatment to each of her fellow students, earning her nickname "Un-hit-able" from Logan.
Rin knew that, in those early days, her proficiency in Kendo had earned her a bit of jealousy from the other students, just as much as it had earned their respect. Vascha in particular had insisted again and again that she spar with Rin until her skin had bled from the repeated blows Rin gave her. Over time, though, it had become obvious that Rin was not simply good at swordplay, it was the area of training that she thrived in. When Logan had discovered that the harsh vibrations from holding a gun as it fired made Rin's echo-location ability cut out completely, he had reformatted her training to center almost completely around edged weapons. Rin and the rest of the students had been thankful for that. It already made them nervous enough giving a gun to a blind girl.
Hunter bowed again to Logan's shrine and stood. Rin bowed as well, and accepted Hunter's extended hand to help her raise to her feet.
"It's really happening," she said to him, and did not need to explain what she was referring to.
"Yeah," Hunter replied, "Hard to believe."
"We might die," Rin blurted out.
She felt Hunter study her with a long gaze.
"We might," he admitted, "But whoever this Sinister guy is, Logan went after him for a reason. Maybe we'll find out what that was, and maybe we won't. But if Logan had a beef with him, that's good enough for me. If it was important to Logan that this man be put in the ground, then it's important to me too.
"We took an oath that night that Madam Yuriko told us what had happened," he continued, "That whoever took our sensei from us would be repaid more times over than he could count. I plan on seeing that oath through. We owe Logan that."
Rin nodded gravely and hugged her arms, fighting off a sudden chill.
"I should get ready," she said and began to leave the dojo, walking delicately, not disturbing the squeaking boards whatsoever.
"Rin," Hunter called to her. She turned.
"I've got your back, Un-hit-able," he said.
Rin let out a sharp chirp from her throat. The sound bounced off of Hunter's body and returned to her. She could see his face, solemn and strong of features, but with a warm and gentle smile. Rin returned the smile.
"Thank you, Hunter."
"Before you go get your gear ready," he said, "Madame Yuriko wanted to see you."
Rin nodded and turned to leave.
