Lines in the Sand

Arc 1 - A Shinobi

Line 1: A Shinobi

I stared down my nemesis, squared up my shoulders, and took a deep breath to prepare myself for the task ahead.

For nearly two years now, it had bested me in all our encounters thus far. It lorded its triumph on a daily basis, humiliating and embarrassing me at every trial. It left me more than just battered and bruised, it struck down my pride at its core.

What might be this adversary that humbles me so, you ask? It is the stairs. Yes, the stairs.

Every time I wanted to trespass its terrace, I had been forced to acquit to its authority and have been relegated to crawling to proceed. Although I made a breakthrough and managed to walk them last year, it was with great difficulty and with the aid of the railings.

But no more. No longer shall I stand for this disgrace and cower before its might. All of that ends now. Today will be the day I conquer this foe and vanquish this demon once and for all. I will walk down them without assistance.

An overreaction? Making a big deal out of nothing? Blasphemy. Blasphemy I say. My honour seeks satisfaction.

The first several steps came easy enough. But those were always the easiest. Sure, I looked funny going down the stairs, like a penguin on stilts, but surely that was an excusable affair. After all, each individual step was over half the height of my legs.

I made good time too. Already, I had reached the halfway point where the stairs plateaued to round the corner. Taking a glance past the stairs, I spot a brunette woman putting down her newspaper to watch my journey. Returning her smile with one of my own, I resumed my quest.

The distraction nearly costed me as I took a stride too far for one of the steps. However, before it became a problem and disrupted my balance, my other leg already made contact with the next step and I recovered. The rest of my descent continued unopposed and my destination approached rapidly.

Three, two, one, and touchdown. Applause filled the air along with the elation of finally walking down the stairs like a normal person. "Congratulations Yume! You finally did it!" she exclaimed, pride lacing her voice. When I gave a bow to my audience of one, a bit of laugher accompanied her clapping. "You should show your dad when he gets home, he'll be so proud."

I let the pride show on my face and my grin spread uninhibited. "Okaa-san, thank you!" I smiled again and gave another bow, this time of gratitude.

She laughed some more at my flourishing. When her giggles subsided some, she beckoned me over to the table. "Come eat while breakfast is still warm," she said warmly.

Asaki Miyako, my mother figure in this life. She was a pleasant woman. Kind, gentle, motherly. She fit every bill of the person you want in a mom.

However, calling her such still left a distaste in my mouth. It felt wrong, like a betrayal to my real mom. It was as if I were replacing her with another. Still, I couldn't call her Miyako, so I made a distinction in my mind. She can be Okaa-san, and mom was mom. A pedantic differentiation, but an important one for me.

Sitting down at the table I took stock of the food atop it. It was the usual grilled mackerel, pickled vegetables, and rice combination that

seemed to populate the dining table at least once in every three meals.

Although the variety in our meals might've been lacking, I honestly didn't mind. I loved seafood and fish was amongst my favourite protein. And so, eating mackerel often was a boon, not a misfortune. The resultant savings were just a bonus on top.

As I started munching on my food, she gave me a pat on the head before she resumed reading her newspaper. With nothing to do aside from eating, I took another look around the house.

Of the two story house, the entirety of the first floor was composed of a single room. It was multifaceted in the sense that it served multiple purposes, but with the exception of the kitchen, that distinction was largely a matter of formality.

One corner of the room was occupied by the stairs leading to the upper levels. In another was the living room/dining room hybrid. It was adorned with a low square table which I was now eating at and a large drawer in which most of the loose articles of the household were stored. In the third corner was a small cubby and the door that lead out of the house.

The last corner was the kitchen, the only one that was 'separated' from the rest in the sense that it was a step lower and had a cement floor rather than the wooden ones of the rest of the house. It wasn't constrained to a quarter of the floor as it extended a bit into the doorway corner, but it was necessary or else it would never fit all the necessities of a kitchen.

Overall, the house was small and quite cramped. However, it was cozy, lived in, and somewhere during the three years I've stayed here, it had become home.

As I was finishing up my food, she got up and began unfolding the stroller tucked beside the drawer. Immediately, I let out whines of protest. I hated the stroller for much the same reasons I was so determined to walk down the stairs without assistance. It was a matter of autonomy.

She smirked at me, clearly amused by my distaste for the stroller. "Yume, I know you would rather walk but we'll be going to the hospital today. It's far," she justified.

"Hospital? What is?" I asked, momentarily more curious about hearing and learning a new word than I was upset about having to sit in a stroller.

"A place with lots of doctors and equipment to treat sick people." When I gave her another look of confusion, she laughed gently as if there was a joke only she was privy to before giving a lengthier description.

Oh, a hospital, I realised as she finished her description. When the implications of the word hit me, I narrowed my eyes at her and scanned her briefly for symptoms I recognised. Not seeing anything, I abandoned my place at the table and went up to her to get a better look. By the time I asked her to crouch down so I could feel the lymph nodes under her jaw, she was all but hysterical in her laughter.

"Not funny," I huffed and crossed my arms, trying to show my displeasure the best I can. Let me feel your damn lymph nodes woman.

That only made her laugh harder. "Oh Yume," she squeezed out when her laughter let up a bit, "you're so cute. I'm not sick Yume, we're not even going to the hospital for me."

This left me confused. I furrowed my brows and asked, "Why hospital then?"

"It's for you." The answer only added onto my confusion. For me? Was I sick then? I didn't feel sick. "Don't worry Yume, just a checkup," she said before carrying some of the dishes to the sink.

I moved to help her and before long I was all dressed up and sitting in the stroller enroute to our destination. Despite the extra time it would take us, I would still much rather walking myself instead of being pushed. However, my irritation didn't last long. I didn't have time to be upset, I was too preoccupied with marvelling at the massive trees that were abundant throughout the village.

No, massive wasn't an apt enough description, they were absolutely gargantuan. Easily a metre in diameter, some of them twice that. They had to be the largest in the world. Even more ridiculous than the size of the trees were their placement throughout the village.

Normally, when a tree was in the way of a building you would remove them during construction. Or if you wanted to keep them, replant them in a more convenient location — not that replanting trees this size would be an easy task. Regardless, the idea was that the trees would be secondary to the city plan.

However, in our village it was the opposite. The village was built around the placement of the trees. The roads and buildings would curve and curl around the trees. Sometimes, there were even awkward situations where the tree would be in the middle of the road. Once, I swore I saw a tree go right through a house.

How utterly bizarre.

It was more than just the size and placements of the trees that made so enraptured by my surroundings. It was the fact that I can now appreciate them unassisted. Everything was so vibrant, so clear, and all without a lens separating me from the rest of the world. It was beautiful and it never failed to bring a smile to my face.

As we travelled along one of the busier streets, every now and then I thought I would see a flash of shadow or feel the weight of a gaze. However, there would never be anything there when I checked.

This wasn't the first time this happened. When we would travel to the local market district for groceries, I would occasionally notice the much the same things. I've tried to find the source of it numerous times before, but it would always happen so quickly and never when I was prepared and looking for it.

The one time I thought I caught the perpetrator, it appeared to be a person crossing the street. But he didn't cross it like a normal person, no, he crossed it by jumping from one rooftop on one side of the street to the other.

How utterly ridiculous. I had quickly dismissed it as part of my eyes playing tricks on me. That was simply too great a distance to jump… right?

After the fifth time or so, If only for my own sanity, I was tempted to mark it all up to paranoia and bundle it all as a figment of my imagination. All things considered, it wasn't an unbelievable conclusion. The way the sunlight danced between the trees and leaves could easily fool you into thinking you saw something that wasn't there; however, something about this solution rubbed me the wrong way.

To my frustration, the frequency of it only increased as we moved closer to our destination. All the while, Okaa-san watched and laughed at my futile attempts to catch the supposed perpetrator.

We were deeper in the village now, approaching an area Okaa-san called the central market; as opposed to local market we usually went to for groceries that she dubbed 'the local civilian market'. The distinction was clear, this place was obviously much larger, more populated, and had a much larger selection. However, why the 'civilian' moniker was used as opposed to something else, I had no idea.

After another flash of shadow, one that left me particularly upset as I was so close to seeing what it was, she finally decided to take pity on me and address these strange shadows. "They're shinobi dear."

"Shinobi?"

"Yup," she responded as she pointed to a man wearing a headband and a strange green vest, "he's a shinobi." Pointing to a few more similarly dressed men and woman that I only just noticed. "They are all shinobi."

"And they make the strange shadows?" I asked, more confused than ever before. How did I only just notice such conspicuous looking people. Who were they and where did they all come from? And with so many of them, how did I not see more of them before today?

"Yes," she answered. "They make the shadows when they jump across buildings and tree branches," she said with a straight face, as if it were just another fact of life.

What? Was she pulling my leg? Seeing my disbelieving face, she let out a little laugh. "I'm not lying, look there," she said as she pointed at a rooftop down the road.

Almost as if it were on cue, one of them came barrelling across the rooftops. He moved faster than anyone I've ever seen before and each jump he made covered a stupendous amount of distance. Sure enough, he eventually jumped across the street, soaring through the air like superman. Almost as quick as he came, he disappeared from view, heading off towards who knows where.

What.

What in the bloody hell did I just witness?

Still not believing the sight my eyes were just beholden to, I rubbed them a little more aggressively than I should and gave the world around me another once over. There wasn't anything out of place. No signs of hallucination, no indication that this was some convoluted prank on a live reality show, everything remained much the same as before. This did not spell good things for my hope that what I just saw was fake.

Then, as if that wasn't convincing enough, the world decided now was the time to hammer the point home. One of the shinobi, who aside from her attire looked every bit the ordinary woman she should've been, shot up and jumped 20 metres straight up into the air to land on a rooftop.

My jaw just dropped.

This sent Okaa-san over the hill. Unable to contain her amusement any longer, she bowled over with laughter, clutching her sides. "Oh Yume, you're adorable."

Adorable? Adorable? She thinks this is adorable? I gave her my best unimpressed stare which, unfortunately, only served to send her into another fit of giggles.

She found this situation hilarious. Incredulity oozed out of my very being. Were we seeing the same thing? Did she not just witness the girl shoot up like a rocket into the air? It was impossible, a physical impossibility. The muscles in a humans' legs simply should not be capable of generating that much power. Even the most capable of athletes struggle to get over a metre and a half. She just did over 10 times with the ease of sipping tea.

Maybe if we were on the moon and she had some monster sized thighs, sure. But that was the moon, with gravity a sixth the intensity of earth's. That was why those astronomical leaps were called moonwalking and not earthwalking. With the strength of earth's gravity in play, what she just did was simply unfeasible.

Before I could even finish trying to comprehend the impossibility of the events I just witnessed, more shinobi displayed this superhuman ability. Running, jumping, dashing, they moved onto and across rooftops, each demonstrating unimaginable feats of speed and power.

Clearly, the world was revelling at my dismay. The absurdity of the circumstances sank in. Apparently, the preposterous was not nearly as unthinkable as I thought it should've been. I uttered the only words I possibly could given the circumstance, "How?"

Okaa-san opened her mouth and was about to start answering when the sound of an alarm pierced through the buzz of everyday life, cutting off whatever she was about to say. The siren resounded throughout the air, reminding me a little of those air-raid sirens you would hear in documentaries or film. It wasn't as loud as those, and there appeared to be quite a distance between each source, but it was no less ominous.

I felt worry and concern displace the bewilderment of earlier. My body twitched with the need to do something to address the situation. However, I had no idea what was going on. So instead of panicking and potentially putting us in a more compromising position, I watched Okaa-san and waited for instructions.

Her face was ashen, turning more and more pale with every blast of the siren. She quickly began moving towards one of the taller buildings nearby.

At the same time, activity around us began to pick up. People began trying to take shelter, most with concerned expressions and an air of panic around them. Their reactions only made the dread feel more real. As tempted as I was to question what was going on, I kept my mouth shut. Okaa-san appeared to have a plan and I didn't want to distract her.

I observed my surroundings with more interest, trying to piece together what was happening as best I could. The most interesting to see were the reactions of the shinobi. Although they also held the same air of concern as all the other people, they were remarkably more composed. They gathered in groups of three or four before hopping onto the rooftop and headed off to one direction or another.

We were approaching a taller building where a particularly large number of people were congregating when suddenly, the earth trembled. An earthquake then? I thought, trying my best to understand this distressing situation. It would explain the alarm and the terror, but there was something about the unease in the air that told a different story.

Another shake, and then another. Each one growing in magnitude before culminating in a resounding explosion that cut through the air. It was accompanied by the collapsing of a building.

All hell broke loose. What semblance of civility and calmness that might've remained warped into a frenzy, and the populace broke into a stampede. Chaos ensued, everyone scrambling and running for their lives.

We were no different. At first she jostled us quicker towards the building where we would presumably find shelter, but she must've judged we wouldn't make it in time so she broke away from the crowd. Abandoning the stroller in favour of carrying me, she ran as fast as she could away from the source of the tremors. The fear was palpable through her touch. Although she tucked my face into her shoulder which prevented me from seeing anything, I could hear perfectly fine.

In many ways, it only made everything worse. I could hear the panic, the hysteria, the screaming, but I had no way of knowing for sure what was going on. For many long seconds, that was my entire world. Then explosions and metal clashing against metal joined the fray.

The audio fidelity painted an ugly picture for me, and for the first time since this all began, genuine fear gripped my heart. The worst part was that I couldn't do anything about it. There was nothing I could possibly do to aside from rely on the woman carrying me to get us to safety.

I clutched her tighter, squeezed my eyes shut, and hoped we made it out safely.

She ran and ran. The explosions and sounds of fighting got louder and louder. Then a deafening roar erupted from right next to us. It flung her haphazardly into the air. I felt her hug me tighter, holding me close and curling her body around mine to protect me.

She hit the ground moments later with a heart wrenching crack and a scream of pain. She tumbled and rolled a few metres further, unable to stop the momentum that sent her flying in the first place. All the while, she cradled my head instead of her own, never once weakening her hold on me.

When she finally came to a stop, I just stayed nestled into her side. I was too scared to pry myself loose. Too scared of what I would see. Too scared that she'd traded her life for mine. Too scared I would be left alone in this strange place all alone with no one to keep me safe.

And then, I felt it. Her heartbeat. I pressed my ear a little closer to her chest, hoping, praying, it wasn't just my imagination. Ba-dup, ba-dup, it drummed, rhythmically, lively. It was at a quickened pace, but it showed no sign of letting up. No sign of it getting weaker.

I released the breath of air I didn't even know I was holding. She's alive.

Finally breaking out of my shock, I tried to peel her protective arms off of me. She fought back, refusing to let me go until I muttered that it was alright. That I'm safe.

Hesitantly, she withdrew her hold on me. Free from her grasp, light entered my eyes for the first time in what felt like forever, but must've only been a few minutes. Finally able to see again, I checked her over for injuries.

She was littered with cuts and bruises. There was a particularly nasty one on her shoulder where she must've landed on. But there was nothing life threatening, nothing that immediately required attention. Not unless she had a concussion. With a landing like that, it would be a miracle if she didn't have at least a small one.

Putting my face close to hers, I tried watching her pupils. However, she wasn't a willing patient. Instead of following my finger, she smiled at me. Smiled. Here she was, sent through the wringer, flung several metres in the air like some ragdoll, battered and bruised like a crash dummy without an ounce of concern for her life, and yet she still somehow had the audacity to smile?

She was insane. The lady clearly off her rockers. A concussion was the least of her worries. Who would smile in a circumstance like this?

A mom who knew she protected her child.

I hesitated, my breath hitched. But I persevered and pushed the feeling away. Don't get so attached. She's just being a mother figure, someone who takes care of you. She's not actually your mom.

I continued my test, this time convincing her to follow through with it.

No concussion.

She smiled again, with mirth this time. Clearly she found something about this situation amusing. I shook my head gently, but her smile was infectious, and I soon found a small one forming on my face as well.

Satisfied, I let out a sigh of relief.

She tried to get up, but she was slow to do so. Every attempt to move was accompanied by a lot of wincing and gritting of her teeth to hold in the pain. I tried my best to help her, but by the time she got herself to a sitting position, she gave up moving.

Without an alternative course of action, I settled down next to her. She tried to shoo me away, to run and hide in a safe location, but against my better judgement I stayed with her.

"Yume, please," she pled, concern and care laced every inch of her voice. "Please."

"I'm not leaving you."

"You're not, you're just going to hide for a bit," she urged, giving me another one of her characteristic smiles. "I'll be okay. Please, run. I'll be right behind you, alright?"

"No." I knew what she was doing, what she was trying to do. I wasn't going to let her, this wasn't going to be some scene in a movie where I left her to die while I escaped myself. And, to my surprise, I meant it. She was special now. She may not be my real mom, but you don't get to be the primary source of reassurance and comfort for someone for three years without being someone special to them.

For the first time since this ordeal began, frustration seeped into her expression. She was about to try and convince me to leave her behind again, but then she suddenly went still. Frustration was displaced by fear, colouring over all her features. Seeing that she was staring a little past me now, I spun around to catch a glimpse of what frightened her so.

There was a man there, wearing a road red attire with a brown vest. It reminded me of the shinobi of earlier, which became even more true when I saw the headband he also adorned. However, the symbol looked different. His aura, for lack of a better term, felt different. And, most of all, he was covered head to toe in a red liquid.

Blood.

My eyes widened. The courage from before left my body as terror took over. I wanted to scream or to start running, but before I could do something incriminating, the logical processors in my brain began whirling again. Don't make a scene. Don't make noise. Make yourself as small as possible and don't catch his attention. I was about to start enacting on it and hopefully getting Okaa-san to do the same when he noticed us.

Too late.

He finished running his knife like object through the throat of his current victim and began speeding towards us. I felt a tug from behind me as Okaa-san gripped my hand and pulled me behind her. She hovered protectively in front of me, putting herself between me and our attacker.

I winced, she was trying to be a human shield. The cold rational part of my brain understood why. He was too fast, we couldn't out run him. Our only chance of survival was to hide and that ship has long since sailed.

Two dozen metres, one dozen, half a dozen. I felt Okaa-san brace herself for impact, squeezing her eyes shut. But then suddenly, another one of those knife like objects appeared out of nowhere and lodged itself into his throat.

For a second, it was like he didn't even register the large metal object protruding out of his neck and he kept coming towards us. But then he came to a stop and raised one of his hands to his throat feeling for the foreign weapon. His hand lingered for a while, confusion and doubt entered his features. And then, his eyes glazed over, his mouth gurgled some blood, and he fell over.

Just like that, he was dead.

If the situation wasn't confusing before, it was now. I was still at a loss as to what just happened. It was so far beyond the realm of what I had become accustomed to. Did I just watch someone die?

Okaa-san, who somehow found the strength to stand in her attempt to protect me, sank to her knees in relief. Her arms sagged to her sides as she held herself and shivered, the tension seeping out of her body.

For a few seconds, I was much the same, frozen in shock and unable to comprehend the events that just unfolded. But a piercing scream shocked me out of it and the reality of the situation kicked in again.

We didn't have time to sit here feeling sorry for ourselves, we had to do something or it wouldn't be just a near death situation. We were going to die.

I gave her arm a tug, and that seemed to snap her out of her funk. She followed my lead and we huddled ourselves into the side of a large cement debris, trying to make ourselves small. It most definitely wasn't the best place to take shelter, but it was better than being out in the open. It was also the only thing close enough that Okaa-san could reach until she recovered from her injuries some more.

Its relative openness gave me a decent view into the middle of the street, but more importantly, the rooftops.

The scene that unfolded in front of me was like something out of a fantasy. People fought each other at breakneck speeds. For the most part, they looked like just a blur. The only times my eyes found definition in them was when they came to a standstill or for the brief pauses they took before leaping into action again.

The shock of that was beaten only when they started throwing what could only be magic at each other. Flashes of lightning arced through the air. Flamethrowers and balls of fire raced through the air wrecking havoc in its wake. Explosions of water and pillars of earth burst through the ground.

As the haze in my mind began to clear, I finally realised why Okaa-san had been so adamant on calling us civilians. At the time I thought the reason was self-evident. Despite its extravagant size and population, we lived in what Okaa-san insisted was a village, and so we were civilians of the village. It was so obvious, so straightforward, so unambiguous, I found her emphasis on the word civilian ridiculous

But now I understood. Why she was so resolute in making that distinction. Why we lived in the 'civilian district'. Why the local market was 'the local civilian market'. Why Otou-san's bakery was in the 'adjacent civilian market'.

Because we were civilians. Powerless, normal, regular 'ol people.

And shinobi, well, they were that.

They were the soldiers of whatever world I'd been reborn in, this obviously wasn't earth, and they weren't anything like the soldiers of earth. They moved at speeds far faster and with strength far greater than any person should be capable of. Muscles that should've been ripped to shreds with the exertion they were placing on them did not. They threw and caught weaponry with pin point accuracy achievable only in dreams.

They were superhuman, they defied conventional logic, and they wielded magic.

We watched, helpless, trying our best to stay quiet and not to catch their attention. Like mice in the realm of humans, you survived by tucking in your tail and staying out of their way.

As I watched longer, I noticed there were two sides to them. One of them wore brown vests with red pants and a one sleeved shirt. The same as the man with a knife lodged in his throat that lay just a few metres from where we hid. They were the other side, the invaders.

The enemy.

Then, there was our side. Our forces. They wore green vests and blue pants, like the shinobi we saw in the market before everything went to hell. Luckily they appeared to be the more numerous of the two.

The two military tore each other apart. More theatrics were thrown. Giant fireballs the size of a car raced through the air, blasting massive craters wherever they landed. A hail of sleeting sharp rocks pelted a building until nothing but rubble remained. And at one point, there was even a jet of water with the shape of a dragon and girth of a train that bulldozed everything on its way.

They wrought chaos and destruction wherever they touched. They toppled trees, collapsed stores, turned entire buildings into a raging inferno. The worst was the screams. The calls for help, pleas for assistance, the begging to be saved.

They went largely unanswered, the shinobi too preoccupied with trying to destroy each other to help the civilians caught in the crossfire. They weren't even wrong to do so, to turn their back meant death. However right it may have been, it didn't make the situation any better.

The devastation and death persisted, but slowly, our forces began to drive them back. The sounds of fighting dimmed, until eventually, it was only the crying that was left.


A/N

Thanks for reading the first chapter of Lines in the Sand. I hope you enjoyed what you saw.

I know the stairs bit had a lot of prose, a lot more than such a mundane situation should warrant, but I figured the contrast would be humorous.

Let me know what you think, your thoughts on my writing and otherwise.

- Muffies