Most of the stuff here … is pretty much mine. Huh, go figure. Not Saki/Shredder or Tiger Claw though. I own not them. Please enjoy anyway.
She listened running hard and silently as she had been taught. Silence was often sacrificed for speed. Speed was often sacrificed for silence, but Sensei had been obsessed with her learning to do both, to compromise on neither side, and it served her well now. She noticed the absence of sounds from him first.
Before, he had gasped to recover from the shove she'd given him deliberately aimed at literally knocking the breath from him. So, when he recovered quickly and fell silent, and she did not hear following footsteps, she listened harder. She heard more sound from the cloth covering his body than his body itself mostly the leather of his jacket straining.
She stopped and spun. A flash of light and following clang let her know the knife had passed her by. Now she heard a snarl from him. She turned right and kept running.
. . .
She panted and grinned hunched over, black-clad, her feet planted in a circle of pale sand. She had won. It had been hard-fought. She was breathing hard. She was aching. She'd have bruises, but she had won. The worst had not happened, and her Sensei wouldn't give her the harshest punishment she could. She glanced over her shoulder to smile at her.
Her sensei didn't smile back, instead she had that sour look, not her fiercest, but one of disapproval she showed on her face, because she couldn't show it with her cane right then. That look was now aimed not at, but beyond her, however. Rin's eyes widened. She looked behind her.
The big, fat man with the mustache and wide smile from America was helping her opponent up off his back and out of the sand. The older man's grin was huge. He chuckled … warmly, in a way she'd never heard from her father, or her brothers. He wrapped his arm around the younger man's shoulders, who put that stupid hat on that had come off part way through their fight. Her opponent had been defeated. He grumbled. But his sensei grinned and even chuckled at him. He had been defeated, and his sensei was happier with him than hers was with her …
. . .
Some years later, Rin kept running from the warrior she had barely defeated at a convention where they weren't supposed to kill each other. Students had killed each other at Assassin Association conventions, but that didn't happen as often as you might think. After all, you didn't want to put an assassin through the painstaking process of finding, recruiting, and training a new student all before the "next" convention if you were smart. The only worse move you could make was to kill your master.
Rin climbed right up and over the chain-link fencing of the area. Unfortunately, this gave Gordy time to catch up. As he aimed a gun with a silencer at her, she had to give up the notion of climbing down. She threw herself off the fence doing a backflip into the darkness, where she curled herself into a ball and landed only to roll several feet. Good thing she was in workout attire.
After unfolding her body, she began to crawl through the tall grass of the unkept, empty lot beyond counting on his climbing of the wire fence or running around to leave through the door to slow him down somewhat too. Then she heard the snap or wire-cutters behind her. Great. Well, he likely had at least one hand and both his eyes busy doing that. She got to her feet and sprinted forward again.
. . .
She got into the limo with her mistress and, looking down at her own feet, dared to whisper. "What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing. So far. You showed your abilities as a warrior, and mine as a teacher, quite well today."
She turned her face slightly to look at the woman. "What about the Americans?"
Her sensei sniffed. "That 'cowboy' is too soft on his pupil. He will live to regret it in the end."
. . .
Years later, Rin stared at the pool of blood near her sensei's throat, at her open, unmoving eyes and mouth. She took in the absolute silence and stillness of her body, and found herself elated. That made something buried deep within a little sick at the rest of her's reaction, but … A sound from elsewhere in the room made her turn going into a defensive stance as she did.
A body wearing spiked armor, and a head wearing the Kuro Kabuto emerged from behind a corner. "Rin, how good to see you again …"
In that moment, she knew he had done the killing … Dried blood was on his blades. He must have left it there because he "really" wanted to make a point, because otherwise his armor appeared spotless as well as strong. Also, she knew in the Association's eyes she would be guilty unless she killed him, and all she wanted to do was reward him for freeing her. She really, really hated The Association …
. . .
Rin ran into an alley lifted herself up onto a fire escape and, as quietly as a cat could, climbed up into its darkest corner. There she tried to catch her breath. She'd gone through a maze of alleyways. She just had to never go back to that storage unit. Perhaps he really didn't know anything about Kadai and more hopefully nothing about Hana.
It was unlikely the Association was in touch with Saki. He'd killed one of their own. That was a great disgrace. You either got killed or promoted to their place when you did that to reassert The Association's standing. And Saki had seemed "so" super determined to make the Foot Clan the most feared organization on earth with him at its head, it was unlikely he would have pulled a Tiger-Claw after she left Japan.
She stilled her breathing, and thinking, as she thought she heard something deadly familiar. The boots were moving about as softly as heavy boots could, but she heard them still. Only one man could move in such boots so quietly.
She saw his silhouette in the alleyway entrance. He came purposefully toward her. She froze. What ..? How? Then she remembered the way he'd reached out and touched her hair. He hadn't seemed either that compassionate or that playful before, somewhat more so that way than other members of The Association, but not by 'that' much.
She reached up herself to the same place and felt the small, metal object clipped into her pulled back, black strands of hair. A tracking device. If Sensei wasn't already dead, she would kill her.
God Bless
ScribeofHeroes