She strolled through the gardens of the temple, enjoying the chill of the wind. It was a beautiful day to appreciate the world outside the Kinkou temple doors. Even the Kinkou monks had encouraged her to venture the temple grounds. Akali came across a wide meadow filled with grass and a motley flower bed she had never seen before. Naturally, her first instinct was to drop down onto the grass and roll around it like a carefree child. Akali worried about tomorrow, for it would be the day she would officially obtain the title as the Fist of Shadows. She laced her fingers behind her head and decided to watch the fluffy clouds float by, successfully forgetting her duties.
Being that she was the only child in her family, Akali was forced to follow the path of a warrior, just like her parents. The training her mother put her through to be the next successor of the title was grueling, and Akali had hated every second of it. Her acrimony towards her training was eventually directed at her mother when Akali realized that her mother didn't care about her well-being; all she wanted was the honor of possessing the title twice in her family. Akali was just a tool, and discipline was beat into her mind daily as a reminder. Each morning, Akali was risen at the break of dawn and trained until her knuckles bled.
"We must do that which must be done," Akali repeated to herself as she bandaged the day's worth of scrapes, cuts, and wounds. "I must become the Fist of Shadows to appease my mother for good and make dad proud."
Several times she had wanted to quit, but her father, who was a Kinkou warrior, had encouraged her to continue. Unlike the loathing towards her mother, Akali loved the man who constantly showed his fatherly affection by giving her beautiful flowers on rainy days or souvenirs from his travel. It was because of him that she persevered through the torture.
Akali had suffered more than a decade of training, but her misery was rewarded with the recognition of the Kinkou Order. She was promptly accepted into the Order. It was there that she met Kennen and Shen. The inseparable trio did almost everything together for a good three years, when times were peaceful after that incident. Akali couldn't help but think about the orphaned ninja who had been cast off from temple grounds. Zed was his name. The masters had encouraged their students to befriend him. It took a painstaking effort for Akali to open up to him as did Shen and Kennen, especially since every feature on his face was always hidden from view. The mask concealed everything so thoroughly that sometimes Akali questioned if Zed was an actual human. There was never a time Zed went out in public unmasked, so the most she could see was the unnatural bright red gleam that cloaked his eyes. His visor had always unnerved Akali. To be fair, his entire brooding personality had unnerved everyone in the temple, but that didn't change the fact that they were (forcefully) friends. Her mind wandered off to the time Zed had picked a flower for her.
"I, uh, saw this really nice flower in the meadow, and I thought it was a shame that said flower would eventually wither and die, so I brought it for you to see before, you know, it withered and died," Zed droned awkwardly in his usual metallic voice. He had approached her during her lunch hour, and she put down her bowl to gently take the flower. It indeed was a beautiful flower. It had teardrop-shaped petals that overlapped beautifully and a bright yellow center. Akali couldn't help but smell it.
"It's beautiful," she said with awe. His body awkwardly tensed, as if he hadn't expected her to compliment the flower.
"U-uh. Master told me it was a magnolia."
"A magnolia, huh?" She rolled the stem between her thumb and pointer, giving her a better view of the entire flower. "Why did you bring this to me?"
Zed coughed abruptly, not knowing what to say. "B-because I saw the flower in the m-meadow and I thought it was pretty like y-" His stammering stopped, as he thanked the heavens that he didn't finish his sentence.
"You like me, don't you?!" Akali accused amusingly. If Zed wasn't wearing that mask, she was sure he was blushing madly.
"No I don't!" He tried to defend. Akali wore an expression of determination to force Zed to admit his infatuation for her.
"Yes you do!"
"Yeah, well..." His mind struggled to find something to say, so he blurted out something that would nearly have gotten him killed. "You like Shen!"
Akali's face turned to stone, and the flower fell from her fingers. "What?!" She screeched, slamming her palms against the wooden table. Upon seeing her gradually growing angry face, Zed followed his gut instinct and ran for his life, with a very angry Akali chasing after him.
Akali laughed at the memory. It had hurt her to no end when news of his use of the forbidden ways had spread. When she had heard, she felt betrayed, but Zed was forgotten in time.
She let out a troubled sigh, though the wind quickly dissipated her irritation. Akali twirled her kamas into the air for fun. Today, her father, along with all the other warriors, was in the temple meditating with the monks. Perhaps he could bring another souvenir for her! As for her mother, she didn't really care.
It began when a little boy came running into the field, calling out her name, for in that moment, her day would be engulfed by blood, tears, and pain. When he finally spotted her, he breathlessly said, "The temple is under attack!" the boy cried out. Akali's ears instantly perked up as she scrambled from the grass. Father. "Th-They've already killed a master! We need you to help fight them off!"
Akali didn't need to be told a second time. She danced through the gardens as nimble as a shadow with only one concern on her mind. Father is a warrior. He's survived countless battles. He will live. The sound of blades clashing penetrated her ear as she approached the temple. Bright green eyes scanned the dark uniforms that the intruders adorned.
Which country do these invaders hail from? These uniforms were not from any tribes that Akali knew of; it seemed much more recent. Perhaps a newly established clan? Why would they pick a fight with the Kinkou Order? Are they asking for death?
The trespassers had sinister gleams in their eyes that seemed to grow more intense as they saw Akali. However, she remained undaunted and brandished her kamas. Quicker than anyone of those fools could process, Akali sprinted faster than lightning from person to person, driving her weapons into any visible beating heart. She could feel the wind whistling in her ear. The intruders who witnessed her velocity and ferocity gulped as they saw the intention to kill within her eyes.
Get out of my way! She thought, gutting open the abdomen of each foolish enemy that dared to challenge her. With each person she slew, the apprehension grew. Only the sight of her father alive and well could ease her worry, even if it meant she had to tear apart the temple brick by brick to find him. Determined to find her father at any cost, Akali didn't notice the trail of bodies she had left as she went on a rampage.
She had slaughtered countless of people on each level of the temple, only to find that her father was not there. By the time she reached the top of the temple, Akali had already prayed to some unknown holy deity for her father's safety.
It wasn't the corpses of monks and warriors littered on the floor that disturbed her, or the ruthless fashion in which they were killed. In fact, it was the mastermind behind the storming of the temple who made her shiver with unease, a person who should have never came back.
"Zed," she hissed, eyes narrowing. "You're the bastard behind this?!" Her voice thundered through the walls, and a betrayed emotion unwillingly settled in her stomach. The man under the mask turned around to greet the raging fire within Akali's eyes.
"Akali," he said with his metallic voice. The smiling tone in his voice oozed with maliciousness and evil. "I'm home." She wanted nothing more than to thrust her kama into that sick bastard's heart.
"How dare you return Zed, after your banishment!" An aura of pure rage emanated from Akali; her indignant words alone could make the temple quake. "How can you come back after what you did?!" The grip on her kamas tightened as Akali remembered his betrayal to her and the temple. " You've stupidly damned yourself to an eternity of darkness and seclusion!"
"Damned?" he drawled out. "Damned," he repeated distastefully. "No, I don't think that's the word I would use." He lifted up a finger and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Blessed. I'd use the word blessed."
"You asshole," she roared, and adeptly flung her kama at Zed's head. With an ever so slight step to the left, it barely grazed the side of his mask. It clattered to the ground behind Zed uselessly.
"Your coronation," Zed called out to her, liking the way she tensed at the subject. "It's tomorrow, is it not?" The intense heat from the glare she gave him was enough to rival that of the sun.
"Why would such a thing concern you?" Akali bitterly answered, a nerve in her neck bulging out.
"It doesn't," he replied nonchalantly. "But by the time this day is through, this temple will cease to exist, as will your-"
Kama ready in hand, Akali impulsively charged towards Zed, longing to see his blood staining the temple ground. She lusted to see him dead. The formidable power and speed with which she flew was enough to petrify the most experienced warrior. Akali positioned her upper body parallel to the floor, thereby minimizing the amount of friction the air created against her body and allowing her to achieve maximum speed. Upon reaching Zed, she lunged and slashed her kama in a crescent formation to behead him, but the attack merely passed through him.
A shadow, she cursed under her breath.
Blinded by her emotions, Akali had failed to realize that Zed conjured a shadow at the last second and swapped places with it. Humiliation pervaded through her as she picked up the kama she had thrown earlier.
Akali couldn't help the uncontrolled shudder as Zed's howls of laughter reverberated through the temple. "I see you have not changed at all in the three years I've been gone," he barked out. "Still weak and feeble as ever."
Before Akali could bite down her rash tongue, she replied with a patronizing tone, "At least I did not need to use the forbidden ways to gain power. You were weak and succumbed to the promise of power." The sound of his guffaws died down abruptly, causing an eerie silence within the temple walls. Akali clenched her kamas tightly, expecting an onslaught of attacks.
"The rules that prevented me from attaining true power have brainwashed you." He traced the edge of the shuriken in his hand. "The era of a new order has begun, and it will embrace the shadows."
"The Kinkou Order will do everything in its power to destroy you and your silly order," she replied with conviction. "It will bring balance to this world whether you like it or not."
Zed's reply made her freeze. "Balance is a lie." Akali had barely any time to react before several sharpened shurikens were sent her way. Instinctively, she flipped backwards to dodge the first few and stopped the rest with her kamas effortlessly. Her eyes couldn't follow the real Zed as he conjured several shadows to surround her, obscuring him from view.
"Poor Akali... Always helplessly stuck in the middle with absolutely no way of escaping," his shadows said in unison.
The world slowed down for Akali as each shadow hurled a shuriken at her. She danced through the shadows as shurikens buffeted her vision mercilessly and ungracefully placed a cloak of smoke on the floor to formulate a plan. Immediately, the shroud heightened her senses.
It's impossible to kill shadows, she thought while weaving through the shurikens. They'll just respawn unless... Under her camouflaging smoke, Akali scoured the floor for the Shadow Master. He was sitting on a pile of dead monks, waiting for the grande finale when his shadows would have killed Akali. Sucking in a deep breath out of nervousness, Akali dashed from the smoke, abandoning the comfort and safety of her shroud. It bothered her how Zed wasn't squirming in his makeshift throne of cadavers.
Perhaps another shadow? Impossible. Unlike his shadows, he had actual color to him.
Ready to plunge her kamas into his heart, she jumped into the air and came hurtling down to deal the killing blow.
"Ah, ah, ah..." his voice cruelly taunting her. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said. Her body immediately loosened, losing all of her momentum and dropping to the ground gracefully. Zed snapped his fingers, and the shuffling of heavy footsteps made Akali turn. The scene before her made her want to vomit.
"Father!" she cried, witnessing the shadows drag her almost dead father into the room. His armor, tarnished with blood and other filth, was dented in every spot imaginable, and lesions spotted his pale skin. As desperately as she tried to run to him, Zed brutally twisted her arms backwards, disarming and incapacitating her.
"Zed, let me go!" She pleaded, not caring how pitiful and weak she sounded, and tried to yank her arms away from his grasp. His crippling hold on her tightened and rivulets of tears spilled from her bright eyes.
"A...Akali," her father tried to say, but a shadow silenced him by lightly grazing his neck with its blade. Beads of blood gushed from the gash.
"No!" Her shrill screams pierced the dim air. She felt Zed move behind her, and helplessly watched the shadows surround her father. "Dad!" All hope had forsaken her when she realized there was no way of saving him. The man she had looked up to, endured her training for, was being savagely tortured right in front of her, and she was too defenseless to do anything against the Master of Shadows.
"Zed. Let him go!" Her voice cracked as she ineffectively convinced him. "No," was his simple, yet dismal reply.
Sobs wracked her body uncontrollably, yet she shouted at him vehemently. "Why are you doing this?!"
"Because I've always longed to see the invulnerable and pure Akali shatter into pathetic pieces," Zed laughed maniacally, making a slicing gesture on his neck to the shadows.
"Zed!"
"Augh!" Her father's throaty screams pierced her eardrums and Akali frantically freed herself from Zed's control. A large black hole in the ground engulfed Zed, dissipating the shadows that had enclosed her father. Time seemingly stood still. Akali's legs had never run so fast as she skidded to where her father lay dying. His body was enveloped in cuts and bruises. How could the man she thought to be invincible look so...powerless?
"Father!" Her shrieks were filled with pain, suffering, and heartache as she watched her supposedly indomitable father dying on the ground. Somehow, even while near death, her father's hands found her own and tightly held them in an effort to comfort his only child.
"D-do not worry about me, my daughter," he said lowly between frazzled breaths. Scrutinizing her father's battered body, Akali looked up at the still sunny sky and yelled with the bitter misery from she felt.
"Why take the life of an innocent man, huh?! Why not take my life instead?!" Akali shouted and pleaded to the sky, as if someone was listening to her. Her cries were unheard as the life in her father's body continued to dissolve. And all Akali could do was helplessly watch.
"Y-you have grown to be a fine young woman, and I am proud to call you my daughter." His chest heaved up and down as he coughed up blood. His life was hanging by a thread, and Akali knew it.
"F-father, you must live! Y-you've yet to see me become the Fist of Shadow. To see me marry and witness my own children succeed the title, so please don't die!"
"I love you, my dear Akali," he said strongly considering his dying state, and his hands grew lax in hers. Upon seeing her father's lifeless, yet seemingly content, eyes stare back, Akali felt a part of her soul wither and die.
"D-dad?" She whispered gently, desperately wishing her father would wake up and deceive her like he had many times. Her hand flew to find any sign of a beating heart, but the nothingness she felt confirmed her worst fears.
Is this a dream? Rather... a nightmare?
Akali could not do anything but cling to her father's lifeless corpse, as if to grab any part of his soul. His armor glistened with his daughter's tears as Akali sobbed her heart out. No amount of training could prepare Akali's emotions as pangs of every emotion hit her body. Despondency, loneliness, desolation... Through the midst of her lamenting, light footsteps in the distance grew louder until Akali noticed her mother beside her.
"M-mother," she greeted sobbing, "d-dad is d..." She could not for the life of her say the word "dead." Perhaps it was because she was trying to deny his death.
Expecting comforting words, her mother's warrior voice monotonously said, "The weak always die first."
It was at that moment Akali had stopped to think, really think. The only reason she had put up with her mother's training to become the next Fist of Shadow was because of her father, who was one of the rare ups to her generally down life. What had more than a decade of training amounted to? In the end, she still failed to save the person she loved dearly. What did the title "Fist of Shadow" even mean to her anymore? Her only incentive all these years was to make her father proud, but now that he was gone, why was she still here?
In a brusque manner, Akali wiped her tears with the back of her hand and stood up, staring at her father's body for the final time. Then, she gave her back to her mother and headed towards the door to leave.
"Where are you going, Akali?" that woman dared to ask. Akali knew if she looked into her mother's eyes, she'd lose control of her wrath completely.
"I'm leaving." Her mother scoffed in response.
"No, you are most certainly not. You will stay and succeed my-"
"No." The word hung still in the air until her mother finally registered what she meant. "The years of training I received have taught me nothing but to be a heartless, ruthless murderer. They have taught me how to shed blood mercilessly." The following chuckles from Akali were dry and sarcastic. "I am done being a killer. You can keep your beloved title, mother. It's insignificant to me now." Without another peep, Akali retrieved her forgotten kamas and walked through the door, abandoning her parents, the temple, and the past.
The battle had lasted from sunrise to sunset. A number of monks and students had escaped with the help of Shen and Kennen, but it was unfortunately very low in comparison to the number of casualties suffered. The sacred temple had been thoroughly plundered by Zed's minions, and the remaining survivors had only managed to salvage morsels of food. They were currently roaming the outskirts of the forests.
"What will the survivors do?" Akali asked her friends. After a day of sorrow and laborious battles, she could finally sit back and enjoy the sunset, like her father and she did. Just the thought of her father made tears sting in her tired eyes.
"They will rebuild the temple elsewhere, deep into the forest where no shadow can penetrate," they replied, making Akali forget her troubles.
"Good," was all Akali could say.
"And what are your plans for the future?" Shen questioned.
"I don't know," she replied truthfully. "I can't stay here though. Despite trying to be the Fist of Shadow, I long to help others, not hurt them." Her shoulders sagged at the thought of being alone in an unpredictable, bleak future. "You guys have brightened my life considerably, and for that, I will never forget you." The group hug that ensued was inevitable. Akali tearfully bid them farewell, and proceeded to walk the forest's paths alone.
"Who said we were going to let you go alone?" Shen called out to her, with a furious nodding of agreement from Kennen.
For the first time that day, the tears that rolled down her cheeks were from happiness.
Bright green eyes shot open as Akali awoke from her flashback. Sweat lingered on every part of her body, and her heart pounded audibly against her rib cage. Akali reached up to touch her face, which was sticky from her evaporated tears.
I can't believe I reacted so strongly to a flashback. I must be going insane, she thought as she realized she was safe in her bed. The moon glimmered high in the sky, and contrary to her chaotic flashback, the night was ominously tranquil. Not even the chirping of crickets could be heard. Trying to comfort herself with the reality of the present, she lied back down on her bed and drifted into a fitful slumber.
Nom, nom, nom. Trying to describe a fight scene was extremely difficult because I had no idea how to interpret Zed and Akali's abilities realistically. Writing her father's death was even harder because I felt so evil for making Akali go through the pain of losing someone close. :c I would hate to lose anyone close, especially if I couldn't do anything to make their passing easier.
Longer than the last one. #improvement
I changed the lore of pretty much everyone (i.e. Akali, who has no control over her emotion in this story unlike in her original lore, met Shen, Kennen, and Zed through the Kinkou temple), but some things remained the same.
Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this chapter. x3 Have a great sunshiny day! c;