A hidden lake unglimpsed trembled beneath Takeda's feet. The Snow so thick it crunched until it pressed snow still high above the lake's ice. Around him he watched the trees melt into white caps and fade into mountains of snow at their roots, but he watched for different kind of figure. Not a snowflake that danced delicately down to the surface of the earth from the heavens, but a twisted mortal coiled like a cigarette, hidden, and ready to burn him.
His katana at his side, always a hand ready to free it, and his feet always in a defensive stance, ready to block anything. Here he was told to wait and here he was told he would die.
High on the mountain top a lake waited for the snow to melt so that life may breathe from it and into it yet again with the coming spring. High on the mountain top with air so fresh, and air so crisp, his lungs burned with the cold as his heart beat with fire for the exercise he was believed prepared for.
Like veins that reached up into the snow caps of the trees, the roots and trunks all looked the same, like a Ross painting that never moved. He waited for the signature red streak, but no matter how long he stood, how much his lungs were singed by the crisp air, no movement was found amongst those trees. Not a glimpse of life, not a whisper of death.
With air so fresh, in air so crisp, he felt his shoulders and back burn. The linen fabric that loosely hung onto him, held by the armor of the samurai heated and his feet froze beneath him. It wasn't the air, all of a sudden, as he felt flames emerge to scrape their burnt claws down his exposed back with a clean rip of fabric flesh.
Embedded in fire, he turned and carved out a niche in the snow of his panic and movement. His sword flat crisply halted the edge of another.
"Fox Mulder." He gritted through teeth, even in pain he jested.
"That's not my name." The other came in with another strike overhead, then a thrust when Takeda raised his sword to meet the high attack, only to arc it down to beat away the thrust.
"I'm going to kill you for it." Forrest Fox promised.
Dark of skin, short black hair and eyes that pierced Takeda like the dagger he drove at him, the Shirai Ryu member had emerged from the snow like the Shinobi of old and enflamed his charge's back.
With blunt end and parry, side step after step, Takeda was forced to defend and poorly so. His feet had carved deep caverns into the snow that he felt he finally reached the icy surface of the lake. At that point, he was buried nearly to his knees and Forrest had him.
Adorned in the traditional samurai attire of Hanzo's Shirai Ryu clan, Forrest was older and looked generations older by appearance than the youthful Takeda. The young son of Kenshi only wore the colors of the Shirai Ryu, but his gear was modern, military grade even. The little punk still stuck in the west, Forrest lunged with his green pearled dagger and readied to pierce the heart of this arrogant child.
Crunch!
Takeda dropped onto his back, the burn instantly cooled and sizzled in the snow, but it allowed him to escape the thrust. He kicked up and Forrest's left knee gave out enough to bend him to Takeda's will. The young start up pushed himself up and forward and met that extravagant dagger edge to edge with neither willing to move or cease.
He could hear the chisel of metal and the scrape that cleaned his ears of all perfect silence. Never fight edge to edge, always edge to flat so that your sword doesn't get damaged beyond repair.
With a Japanese Katana, Takeda's hilt was small and further down the blade, whereas with a dagger, Forrest could scrape the edge of his along the newly carved groove of Takeda's blade and use the quillions to bash it out of the way. The momentum was good for him and once that blade dropped, his elbow was in the right path to catch Takeda's jaw.
The boy fell back. Blood stained the white snow beneath the bones of his cheeks and Forrest stood over the Shirai Ryu's future. He scoffed at what he glimpsed at the lake that day.
When Takeda finally came to, Forrest was gone.
Warm rice and hot sake was heaven for Takeda. Finally out of his gear into a simple off-white yukata, just like Hanzo and the other members that sat quietly with him. His back haunted him, but the harsh gaze from Fox tormented him.
There was no room to talk, and no breathe dared rise beyond their chest, even as a shadow fell upon hallway outside the room. It was the shape of a conical hat and a man in robes. Takeda knew this person to be Raiden, just as Hanzo would.
Hanzo nodded and excused himself in silence. The sliding door itself was as quiet as their breaths. Takeda watched the shadows flee to the snow outside and far from the ears of the Shirai Ryu.
He thought it strange that Raiden after many, many years of what seemed like being lost in the Chaos Realm had suddenly reemerged days earlier and now like clockwork looked to start to pull the band back together like old times.
He never met Raiden for more than a minute. He knew very little and only stories Kenshi would tell him, or Hanzo.
Forrest had his own stories about Raiden and none of them were good.
Still, he was a member of this clan and he waited. He ate and he drank, and when Hanzo returned, no one asked anything and nothing was said of the visit.
Later in the night as the sky peeled open the clouds and the bright crescent moon fled from the rabbit, Takeda awoke to awkward vibration that coursed from his upper back. He tried to reach, tried to rub that itch, but as he peeled himself from the tatami floor and felt the clump drop from his flesh, it vibrated and illuminated beneath him. The iPhone 3 buzzed an image of his father for him to find below and with as quiet as a step he could, Takeda fled from the dark room.
The snow crunched beneath him, but no new flakes fell upon his near fully bare flesh. No threat of being entombed by the long cold winds of Japan, he answered the phone with a whisper.
His eyes scanned the night and none, to his knowledge, peered back.
"I can try to ask."
He pondered about the name mentioned, but his father's request to bring it up with Hanzo would shed better light. His father seemed to grumble, mumble almost incoherent. When the conversation ended, he had pretended to lose connection with him.
With a deep breath and long stare out into the distance, he took in the cold and the scorpion of cringe stung down his spine with each thought of his childhood, of his father's return, and now what had become of the Special Forces that tried to enlist him.
Hanzo would know everything.
Whether he would help is another question.
He'd ask in the morning.
Come then, as barely rose over the horizon with just a minimalist peak, Takeda was tasked with ensuring the new recruits began their training before it would even hit the sky at all. Fast and ghastly, and unforgiven, the training was harsh and he was admittedly uninterested.
Forrest Fox watched him from one of the windows, Takeda's phone in hand, crushed.
He was cross, flustered, and wanted to hit back, but he would be the one punished for it. His love of technology in this forbidden world, Hanzo would seize entirely and no answers would ever make it to his father's ears.
Takeda's feet wanted out, they needed to escape this dull and dead routine, but Fox always watching, and Hanzo as strict as the master of the Shirai Ryu should, he was trapped in the snow.
Keep your head together.