I… begin… writing… this… chapter the day before my first day of school…
Kendal: (pretend sympathy) What's the grade?
Me: (weeps) Eighth…
Kendal: (grins behind my back)
Me: (twitches) Summer vacation… wasn't… long… enough… Nooo…
Kendal: (steals cream pie, begins sneaking up on me)
Sheena: Should we tell him?
Everyone: Nah. (evil)
I looked around. They were still frozen from my death glare, and no wonder- I was doing it with rage as a conviction. It was all I could do to not give them one hell of a thrashing.
"Well?" I demanded. "Say something already!"
Lucky for them, I still had a degree of control over my mouth- I wasn't about to go totally ballistic on them. That'd be a disaster- Sooner or later, somebody would find out, I'd be kicked out of the village, and maybe poked in the butt with a shiny steel Mizuho-crafted sword while running with my tail between my legs.
Speaking of which, why did I say that? I didn't have a tail.
The boy that was attempting to say something finally got his mouth working right. "She… she…"
"What?" I snapped, directing my ultimate death glare at him.
He froze completely. It looked impossible, to be sure- He was still breathing, and if you felt him he would have still had a pulse. But the thing is nothing besides vital body functions moved. Not even his eyes.
"H-hey! L-l-leave- leave him alone!" One girl piped up, attempting to draw attention from the poor guy.
Which I did.
She froze, just like the other kid I had frozen on spot.
Finally, after another minute of silence, another boy spoke up.
"That girl, you're standing in front of, mister-"His voice faltered as I turned my death stare to him.
The final member of the vicious gang, a girl, finished the sentence for him. "She killed our parents, but the Vice-Chief still won't cast her out of the village."
"How?" I demanded. "Tell me already!"
"She set that Summon Spirit that lives in the temple north of Ozette!" The first boy burst out. "She's a summoner; she let the spirit get out of control-!"
"And… just why… would she purposely let… Volt… out of control?" I asked through gritted teeth.
The bullies all looked taken aback by both me knowing the name of the summon spirit and the fact that they visibly saw my teeth clench. Given by their looks of horror/terror, they had obviously realized that I was sooner or later going to exploded completely on them.
And they still couldn't move. I still had my killer death stare on.
"W-well…" A girl stammered. Then, she burst out "But, but it doesn't matter! She let Volt-"
"Can you just get fucked up out of my sight already? Please, or I'll… do… things."
I had officially had enough of these bastards.
VWVWVWVWV
Just like the others, the girl was scared.
The boy, who's voice had seemed just like another teenager, spoke mature words that children should never hear, as her grandfather had told her. But it seemed that this person's laws of what should be spoken to children had snapped completely, given that she could see her ally's arm twitching.
The others, they simply stared as they backed away slowly. They had never heard that term to be sure- Only she might have heard it, as she had heard numerous swearwords being exchanged by ninja attempting to escape Volt's onslaught.
The others, finally getting their courage back, burst into tears and ran. Crying. She couldn't hear them sob, but she sure could see their tears slide down their faces, leaving glistening tracks of liquid where they dripped.
The girl hastily wiped away at her eyes, but it was already too late- The man made turned.
Just by looking into his face, she was stunned. He looked like he was only seventeen or eighteen. There wasn't any hint of a moustache, and there was a childish, young look still in his face.
Or what seemed like the remnants of one. The face was neutral in expression, but for all the girl knew, he could have had the face of an enraged dragon. Because…
His eyes. The gold eyes that seemed to radiate sheer coldness. Suddenly, he shook his head. When he stopped shaking and resumed staring at her, she saw that his cold look was gone. Just a sort of curiosity, as he was tilting his head at her, in puzzlement.
"Were they really attacking you even though you're the farthest person that looks evil enough to purposely let loose a summon spirit possible? Mind you, I bet you don't even have to guts to kill at all."
The girl's face flushed. "Y-yes I can kill, I've killed plenty of monsters in the-!"
The… person's face raised an eyebrow. "-Gaoracchia Forest, blah blah. Yeah, I bet anybody can, because they monsters and they are damn abominations, but can you even bear to see a human being killed, much less with your own hands?"
VWVWVWVWV
I could tell from her face that she was surprised at my seemingly unrestrained tongue and also she was a bit scared at what I was saying. So, I did damage control.
"Definitely not, your eyes are the dead giveaway way, really."
Her face lost the offended look. "Wh-what?" She asked, shocked. "How do you see in my-"
I shrugged. "Just an ability of mine, really. A useful one, as well. Ever heard the eyes are the window of the soul? It means whoever gets the ability to see the true expression in somebody's eyes can find the truth of a person's character."
I could see the girl looking awed. Whoops. Why the hell did I have to go into long, complicated speeches about myself when I just wanted to know the real reason behind their seemingly constant loathing of this girl?
"So… what's the deal with you and them?" Then, I mentally punched myself for being stupid. Of course I knew that. "I mean, do they really believe that you did it on purpose?"
The girl suddenly got the down look again, letting a slightly awkward silence commence.
"Err…" I said weakly. "Hello?"
She looked up. "Yes." She said. "They… believe that."
I suddenly realized that she was saying it in a sort of heavy voice… liked, as if, she…
Believed it. She actually believed it. And, from my (hopefully) accurate assessment of her, she just wasn't the type to kill anyone, nor was she the one to purposely let lose control of a summon spirit.
She's just like you, I reminded myself. You take all the blame for killing all of them just like this girl.
Them. The ones that had originally made hell life a sort of minor hell. But, nobody deserves to just die like that, mass slaughtered like you did that. Besides, there's no one to blame but yourself, considering, you know yourself that you're the main and only perpetrator.
You caused that. You know that, don't you?
Okay, there was a second guy in the plot, the root of it all, but you're the one that did it, remember?
"So," the girl said in a sort of timid voice, "Where are you from? You are an outsider, right?"
"Yeah," I said distractedly, trying to clear my session of self-blaming from my head completely. "Yeah, that's right."
"Then…" Her voice sort of brightened. "You're here from the king, right?"
I suddenly remembered that the only people who ever could come to Mizuho were pretty much the ones sent by the king. Which meant, anyone would consider myself an outsider, from the king himself.
I hastily removed my scarf just as the girl turned and began to walk out of sort of alley that were in. She had sounded hopeful that she had made a new friend. Well, that was just a wild guess.
Or maybe not, as I racked my brains for previous/recent events, say the most recent sentence spoken by somebody other than me.
Yep, the tone was definitely a sort of hope. Wonder if I could actually make it real. And I didn't even know her name yet.
So, I just decided to follow her. I walked out of the narrow alley between the two buildings that looked more like huts than modern buildings, and…
VWVWVWVWV
The girl felt her spirits, which had been down since her awakening on this day float up with the thought of this kind outsider. She was slightly stinging from the comments she had made (All Mizuhoans, herself included, were devoid of true emotion when they needed to kill) but he had helped her drive away the other children that had been teasing and hitting her, so what was really bad about him? He had looked sorry for his comments anyway.
She looked back. The man was coming out from the alley, looking around in amazement. She had seen those looks before, seeing whenever envoys entered the village- The look of thunderstruck amazement at their surroundings. Sometimes they were so thunderstruck that they tripped over their feet looking around. And, in some cases, they didn't even notice themselves stumbling. They just picked themselves up and continued looking around.
The most extreme case was the situation for the stranger- He was looking around with wide eyes, an open mouth, and he was constantly stumbling over his own feet or small rocks that a normally aware person would have never tripped on.
That was to be expected. Even if it was a little extreme, of course, until he stepped on a passing girl's foot.
VWVWVWVWV
Distracted from my looking-around-in-amazement-trance, I looked around wildly and fell over, right into yet another person, that, once confirmed by looking around, was another girl. Immediately, people began gathering around. Wow. A scene. Apparently pretty rare in Mizuho, since ninjas were never clumsy. As they say.
Well, most of them.
And so, there I was, apologizing at a manic's pace, while the two girls screamed at me in a language I just didn't damn understand. So, finally, as they began screaming in particularly shill tones at a level of indignation that only bats would be able to hear soon…
I roared "JUST SHUT UP ALREADY!"
That silenced the angry, indignant girls into a temporary state of shock which allowed me to say a hurried "I'm sorry, so, if anybody understands in that crowd" I pointed at the frightened, wide-eyed group encircling the three of us "please" I raised my voice "FRICKIN' TRANSLATE FOR WHAT 'I'M SORRY' MEANS!"
I shoved my way out of the circle, who seemed just plain too shocked to move.
The girl was standing there, just looking slightly awed of me. "How did you do that?" Was the first thing that she asked as soon I was close enough to hear her.
"No idea," I said simply, shrugging.
That's when she tripped.
We were walking to where I assumed was the chief's house, when I realized that she was on her toes of what I now saw was a pair of brown leather sandals, flailing around her arm wildly.
I could only stare at her dumbly. She was a ninja, wasn't she? Every person ever born in Mizuho was considered a ninja. All just rumors, and I had only a few half-baked facts known to me about ninjas, and one solid and fact that just screamed out at you was that they were graceful, and therefore, they never tripped.
I didn't even know what this girl had tripped on. The ground was smooth and even, so it meant…
I groaned. Man, this girl sure as hell had a lack of muscular coordination. I watched as she managed to move her body backwards, and then slam into the ground right on to her butt.
She jumped up with a red face, flustered. I fought back a chuckle that sneaked back in a smile, at which she gave me a reproachful look.
Passing through more roads, between houses, and a bunch of people that had the same dirty look that they all had towards the girl I was following. Well, they had the scowl, until they saw me. Gauntlet that I'd forgotten to wrap. The spiked fins to the sides of the wrist guard part of the gauntlets, a few inches away from the ruby, piercing eyes of the gauntlet's "head" as it was shaped like a real dragon's head. Without, of course, the ugly V-shaped ridge that crested each dragon's head.
And, who could forget the huge, five-foot broadsword which just hovered above the ground? My weird fashion sense didn't help.
Wait, did I say that?
Finally, we found a house that happened to be surrounded with a moat. In other words, a kind of representation of royalty. All castles, A.K.A. all houses, whether a castle, tavern, or whatnot that had royalty or at least a kind of royalty that resided permanently in whatever structure I had described almost always had a moat around it.
Dead giveaway, really.
"The chief's house is over there," The girl said, pointing (unnecessarily) at the house with the moat. "I'll go there and make arrangements."
She ran off, leaving me shaking my head. What else was she, precocious girl, semi-klutz, and a magnet for bullying?
And so, I decided to explore this place a bit. If the guys in the village were well-informed enough to be able to almost catch me (There was a close call a couple of months ago) then I had maybe only a few minutes before I had to run for it.
Besides, I'd planned to get a souvenir for that girl I had befriended. So, without further ado, I decided to search for a shop.
If there even actually was one.
Spotting a guy dressed in blue behind a vendor's stand, I quickly approached him "Excuse me, sir-" I began.
"-Are you looking for a shop?" He finished for me.
I stared at him in surprise, which he calmly put off with a "Everybody who enters Mizuho never expects this village to actually have a shop of its own. Which they are very wrong."
"Oh."
That was all I could say. The guy who had assassinated at least five Popes of the Church of Martel, the guy who could take on 50 people and still win, the guy who could sense mana, the guy who could think up with strategies in an almost constant stream. Me, the guy who did all that, could only say a stupid sounding "Oh."
We both burst out laughing. I, notably, was down on the ground, laughing harder and harder until I was clutching my sides in pain.
And, yes, I attracted another crowd of onlookers who were amused that anybody could get all cracked up about somebody just saying "Oh."
Finally getting up, I saw the seller getting up as well, looking sheepish. Just like me- We were both embarrassed to be in the center of attention in this rather… unothorodox…. way.
"So," I said, hoping desperately that I didn't draw anymore attention, "You have anything that I can write on?"
"Are you talking about guardians, sir?" He said politely.
I just looked at him if he was insane. "since when did…. These guardian things become affiliated with… what ever they are?"
He calmly pulled something thin from under the vendor stand (Which now had some more of that weird text) and produced a gray card.
I stared at it. There were runes written all over it, in a language that I couldn't understand. The same kind of language on the top of the vendor stand and the entrance archway to Mizuho. "Here," he told me. "Slash the edge along that tree over there."
I looked doubtfully at the card I was holding, but I just decided to go along with whatever he was saying. I just walked over (Thankfully, nobody was looking at the two of us like we were deranged anymore) and swiped the edge.
Immediately, the card sort of glittered in a flash. Blinking away the light imprints I was seeing, I discovered that the card wasn't bent, or twisted. It had just gone straight through.
I quickly slashed off a piece of bark with one of my daggers- I had to see if what had happened was true or not. Jamming my dagger back into its sheath, I tossed up the piece of bark which I had swiped in midair, and…
The card went straight through the bark and kept going. The bark though, it shattered in two the moment it struck the dirt ground.
I stared at the gray card I holding in wonder, while the vendor guy was looking at me, amused. "See, sir?" He told me. "these cards are not normal- These are razor sharp thanks to the runes inscripted on the card itself. This gives it the ability to cut through most things. There are much more powerful cards than that one you happen to be holding" He pointed at what I was holding "And in fact, that one is the weakest."
I whistled. "Seriously?"
"He just nodded. Nothing needed to be said.
"Okay, then I'll buy that," I said. Then an idea hit me. "Uh, mister…"
"Puninja."
"Okay, then… uh, are these runes a sort of power-giving words? Like prayers to a summon spirit or something?"
Puninja stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Yes, they are. But, apparently, they are not the most powerful. The truly power guardian cards are ones inscripted with ancient elvish prayers."
Ah ha. That was why I had noticed a certain kind of card in the Meltokio Coliseum that had writing on it. Ancient elvish. It was a prayer to the source and beginning of all.
A.K.A. Origin.
Seriously…
"Anyway, I'll buy this" I said hurriedly, remembering that I only had a little while to go before the peeps at the Chief's house or whatever it was called recognized me.
"That'll be 135 gald," Puninja said smartly. I quickly dug through my second pack that contained the 100-gald notes when I remembered something.
"You don't happen to have a load of Mizuho potion, do you?"
"Yes, but-"
"GIVE IT TO ME!" A short silence. "PLEASE! PRETTY PLEASE!" Another short silence. "OKAY, FINE! I'LL PAY FOR IT! JUST GIVE MEEEEEEE!!!!"
VWVWVWVWV
She reached the chief's house, where a ninja who didn't blame her for what had happened- He had been there at the Volt accident, to be sure- was standing on guard.
"There's another person from the king that's arrived," She told him. Immediately, he frowned.
"There's already another person from the king inside talking with Tiga. Why would the king send a second envoy when there is already a first?"
Me: There you go! Oh, and sorry about the disclaimer issue. I don't own anything even remotely related to Namco. Otherwise, you wouldn't want to know.
Kendal: S'cuse me...
Me: What?
Kendal: (evil) This. (holds up pie)
Me: WTF? Since when did you ever-
Kendal: Look! Raine is coming at you for bad language!
Me: CRAP! (looks around) Hey, where'd she-!?
Kendal: (smashes pie)
Me: ...
Genis: Yay! That was cool!
Sheena: Uh, you might not want to say that again...
Genis: What? (looks around) Okay, you're right. (backs away)
Kendal: Oh, sh...
Me: MEGATON PIE CANNON OF D00M!!11!!!1!
(censored for pie-ish pwning and lots of cream)