The usual disclaimers: I don't own the Ronin Warriors, or anyone else here you recognize. Now Jayeta is mine so please don't use w/out permission. Thanks!

"Separated Repercussions"

Chapter Two

Jayeta walked into her foster-parents' house, quietly running up the stairs. It's not that she didn't like her foster-parents or anything, but when she was gone for a while at night they always screamed at her and gave the 'you could have been raped, and bleeding, and helpless, or you could have been... etc.' speech. They were very overprotective.

I understand where they're coming from, but they need to accept that I can take care of myself. I'm seventeen and I will be on my own in a couple months, on the nineteenth of October. I already had a good job and I have a place ready for me to go to. I finished school early so I didn't have to go to as many classes this year. Oh well, they will get the point sometime. I looked at the half-necklace around my neck; I had to get a hole drilled in the heart shaped piece so that I could thread a chain through so I could hang it around my neck. No one knew about my bro and as far as I was concerned they could stay uninformed.

I picked my new chemistry book up off the desk in my room and sat down on my bed. I hope I can at least have some peace and quiet to read this book.

"SHANE, GET BACK HERE WITH THAT!!" What was that fleeting thought of peace? Oh well, maybe I'll learn one of these days. I better go help my older brother/troubled sibling out of trouble with Mom. I wonder what he got into this time. Hehehe, by the amount of noise, he's going to owe me big time for this one. I got up off my bed and walked out my bedroom door, done the hall, and down the stairs, walking into a chaotic mess of overturned chairs and upset objects. Yep, definitely going to owe me for this. Mom was trying to catch Shane and by what I could see, get a letter of some type from him. Shane caught sight of me as I came into the room. He ran toward me and dove to safety behind me.

"Hold on, Mom. What's going on? I'm trying to read my new chem. book and I think I hear a stampede go through the house." As I spoke I plucked the problem from my brother's hands. It was definitely a letter. But it was addressed to me. "Oh, so this is what the problem is. Thanks for retrieving it for me, brother." I never called him bro. That was a title only for one person, but that was not the problem right now.

"Wait," Mom gasped out, "you were expecting this?"

"What? The letter, or the controversy about who it's from?" I looked at Mom and smiled. "Actually, yes. I was expecting the letter. I just didn't know when it would arrive. I also expected something like the real thing when this arrived." I started to walk back to the stairs when I looked back. "Oh, Mom, please go easy on Shane. He is probably just as curious as you are about who sent me a letter." I went back to my room and started to read my new chem. book.

A little later...

I hated it when I couldn't understand the information the book gave you. It just frustrates you. Well, at least I have a friend that can help with that. I went to the computer to see if a certain person was on-line. Ha, just my luck. He just got on.

=hey blue boy= I sent to see if he wanted to talk.

=hey, what ya need?= bb sent back.

=you know that book you said taught more in-depth stuff about chem.?=

=ya, did you get it yet?=

=yes, but i'm stuck on pg.241=

=oh, cool, let me get my copy and maybe I can help you=

As he looked for the book I thought to myself that he was really cool. I could at least hold good conversations with him. He is a little smarter than I am. So we talked a lot, just to get some type of intelligent brainwork done. It was really fun to fight philosophy on the net, with a friend that is. The one thing Mom wouldn't like is that I've never met him in person. The letter was from him too. It supposedly has a pic of him inside.

I opened the letter and took out a very nice picture of a boy about my age with blue short hair that was mainly being held back by a blue headband, though the headband got most of the hair out of the way there was one little strand that was right across his nose. He's from Han'a High School. That I could tell because he was wearing his school logo on the front of his jacket. I wonder what year he is?

=hey rg, you still there?= bb asked suddenly on the screen. I almost jumped out of my chair in startlement.

=of course i'm still here. I want to know what I did wrong so I can stop pulling my hair out.=

The next few hours were spent on explaining more of the book than she had asked for, but they both enjoyed the talk and banter.

*****

=bye bye blue boy= the girl on the other end sent at the end of their discussion.

=see ya ryosgrl= I sent back as I logged off of the computer. Mia's going to skin me for taking all that time on the computer. She said she needed it to do a report. Rowen got up from the chair and stepped into the doorway to the living room. It was pretty late, but it wasn't that late. Everyone was there, watching TV. Rowen looked at all his friends; Kento was a good friend, always the joker, but he also cared a great deal about others. He had the armor of Hardrock. Then there's Ryo, our mutually chosen leader, a great friend to have at all times, just don't get on his bad side because he has a really bad temper sometimes. He has the armor of Wildfire. Then Sage, also a great friend, he's often called Casanova and 'Flirt King of Han'a High' because he always had some type of girl fan club chasing him. Another ability he has is being a healer. Now he has the armor of Halo. And last but definitely not least is Cye. He's sorta the background guy, he helps Ryo mediate and he's also the greatest cook I know of that could feed that bottomless-pit we call Kento. But without him the group would fall apart. He has the armor of Torrent. And me? I've got the armor of Strata.

Mia saw me almost immediately and got up to go to the study where the computer was. As Mia walked out the guys saw me, and by the look in their eyes I was in for an ear full of questions.

"What took so long? I thought you just had to go to your site and you would find all you needed." That barb was from Sage.

"Ya, you said that it wouldn't take more than ten or twenty minutes." Kento always liked to tease people. I'm guessing that it has gotten him in trouble a lot too.

Mia had turned around and walked back to the door of the room. She was also curious as to what had taken Rowen so long. Usually when he said it would take only so long, it usually was going to take so long. Also just in case the teasing got any worse she could mediate. Most of the time it's Ryo that has that particular job, but he seems in his own world right now.

"Oh, sorry, it's just that RG needed some help in one of the chemistry books that I recommended. So I helped, and then somehow we started on philosophy." I shrugged my shoulders in a helpless manner. The guys looked shocked. It actually looked kinda funny.

"Wait a minute, who is RG?" Sage said it like he didn't believe it.

"RG is a friend of mine on the Internet. She's just a little below me in IQ, which is nice when you want to get technical in a conversation. She's really nice and has a sense of humor too." I smiled when I thought of what I just said. I usually don't even talk about girls or a girl at all. I just have my nose in a book. Well, I have to admit that I was never interested in dating any of the girls I had met. I looked back at the guys, and they looked almost bug-eyed. I couldn't help it, I bust out laughing.

"Hey! What's so funny?" The guys looked miffed while I cooled down. When I could finally talk, I looked back at my friends and gave them a grin.

"You should have seen the looks on your faces when you realized that RG is a girl. You guys looked like... hey, where are Ryo and Mia?" I guessed that Mia went to do her report. But I wonder where Ryo has gotten to. Whatever, he can take care of himself. "Any more questions?" I smiled. Sage looked like he was going to start to interrogate me.

The other guys shook their heads. "Not for you, at any rate. Though I would like to know what is bothering Ryo, he hasn't been his usual self lately." Cye looked really worried.

"That's a question I would like to have answered too. By the way, any idea where he is, I need to talk to him?" Mia asked as she walked into the room again. The guys gave Mia a surprised look.

"We thought that he was with you," Kento said, pointing at Mia. The guys had noticed the feelings that Mia and Ryo had for each other, but no one said anything.

"Well, for a while he was, he wanted to know what I was writing about. But after I told him, he just left the room." She looked at them for a minute. "I thought he came back here, but it seems not. I'll go and check his room." Mia started to leave the room when the guys got up.

"We're going to do a little night-time practice, and I'm sure Ryo would like to join us." They walked out the back door.

Mia had to talk to Ryo so she went to his room and knocked on the door calling, "Ryo, you in there?"

"Ya, Mia. Come in." Ryo was sitting on the bed cross-legged. "Hey," he smiled at Mia in greeting.

"I need to talk to you." The seriousness of her demeanor and in her voice made Ryo lose his smile and he sat up straighter as she sat on the edge of the bed. "I finished my report and I decided to look at some more of Grandpa's files to see if there were any more surprises in store for us. I found another poem on there, and I skimmed it looking for certain words like I normally do. Well, it had something to do with yin-yang," now she looked strait at Ryo, "and by the way the poem went, I think there may be more armors, or at least another one." She got up and was walking out the door. "I just thought you would want to know. Also, the guys are practicing in the back and they thought you would want to join them." With that she was gone, probably downstairs trying to decipher the poem.

*****

After Mia left the room Ryo took out the half-locket from his shirt. ~Oh sis, what would you do if you had to suck out your friends' power just to save yourself?~ I laid back and thought of all the things that had been happening in the past couple years. It had been almost half a year since Talpa had been defeated for the second time. No thanks to me. If my friends hadn't been there, Talpa would be ruling the world right now. No one remembered anything from that period of time. I started to think about the battles I had fought in the past.

~Help!!~ That silent scream inside my head felt just like the touch of this morning. My eyes widened. I ran to the window and as I jumped to the front yard I put my sub-armor on. I raced around back but also made sure that the other guys didn't see me. Which wasn't very hard to do considering how dark it gets at night around here. Where do I go? An image popped into my head and I ran to the clearing. As Ryo was running, many thoughts were going through his mind. Who called me? And how do they know my name? I don't know why I didn't tell my friends, but it never occurred to me at the time as I ran toward the clearing.

*****

In another dimension, the next day...

I was in the clearing meditating because, for some reason I felt like I was being watched. I tried to find the source, but all I got was a seriously evil feeling. So right now I'm sorting things out and trying to stay calm. As soon as I was in control of my emotions I probed the area for life. There was the familiar plant life and animal life, but what surprised me was the four boys out training in the dark. I 'watched' for a while, they were good, very good. I opened my eyes and noticed how late I actually was. "Oh no, Mom's going to skin me alive." Too bad I can't go say hi to those four boys tonight; I need to get some good practice in. Maybe they will be there tomorrow. I was jerked out of my thoughts by a sound in the bushes off to my left. I started to get an uneasy feeling.

"Well, she will have to wait in line." I looked up into a nearby tree to see a shadowy shape of a person. Well, at least I'm not going paranoid. I stayed where I was, letting the other make the first move. "Because unless you come with me, I'm the one that's going to skin you alive."

The voice sounded male, and I wasn't disappointed when he jumped down from the tree. The thing that caught my attention was that the guy had green, red, and brown armor on. As I looked at the strange man, a memory came to the surface of my thoughts. My eyes widened in fear. "Ha ha ha ha, well, you seem to have realized how much trouble you are in. But I will be nice to someone who will be a future friend on the battlefield. I will introduce myse-"

"I know who you are, Dynasty freak." And even though I have telepathic, telekinetic, and good fighting skills, I knew I wasn't a match for a Dynasty Warlord by myself, at least not without a weapon. That made me start to panic and 'look' for help. There are those four boys, but I don't want to get them involved in this. Besides, I'm not supposed to tell anyone about my real past, so if I 'call' to anyone there's going to be lots of questions I can't answer. A twig snapped nearby and that alerted me to get my head out of the clouds and into reality. Piety, as I knew him from the time when Ryo had sent me away, had started to walk towards me. I have to do something!

I took a quick look around; ah, there was a downed branch of a good size sitting right behind were the warlord came in. I 'picked' up the branch with my telekinetic powers and threw it at the Warlord's back. It took him by surprise because he had checked the area and there wasn't anyone else there besides the girl his mistress wanted.

As he got to his feet swiftly, he thought that his mistress had no reason to want a totally defenseless girl with no power and doesn't even show respect to those better than her. But one thing still nagged at Sekhmet, How does she know me? He shook his head, she doesn't. Whatever, I don't question my mistress, I just follow orders. Those orders are to bring the girl alive to the palace, no matter if I don't want her to live. No more attacks came from that direction and he turned to see... no one there. Where is the little brat?! "Stupid girl. You're coming with me if you like it or not!!"

"No I'm not Piety. Not unless you can catch me first!" I know I was taunting him, and I would probably pay for it later, but I wanted to get him away from those four boys I had sensed. I checked them to make sure they didn't hear Piety and me; I cringed when I hit a new presence. I got a flash picture from one of the guys. It was Loyalty, damn! "Piety! Tell Loyalty to leave those boys alone!" I jumped down from the trees right in front of the warlord. I did a roundhouse and kicked Piety right in the head. He didn't have his helmet on because when I hit him with the branch it had come off. Strangely when I looked at his face I had a flash of recognition but I pushed it away since I couldn't figure out who it was. I flipped back into the trees to escape. Piety got slowly to his feet and looked around.

"That was very stupid, little girl! Do you even know who those four boys are? They can take care of themselves more than you can!"

"Not with that many Dynasty soldiers coming at them!" I looked towards were they would be and saw a flash of blue light. That's not Loyalty's sure-kill color-

"Now I got you! Ha ha ha!" Piety laughed while he grabbed my hair and slammed his fist in my face.

I cried out in my mind ~Help!!~ just before my world turned black.

*****

Ryo and Sekhmet reached the clearing at almost the same time, but Ryo got there slightly ahead of the Warlord and he hid behind a tree trunk. He watched as Sekhmet, carrying a girl about Ryo's age over his shoulder, walked into the clearing. Ryo could barely hear Sekhmet, but it sounded like, "Stupid girl... knew she... going to be beaten... why fight..." and so on, while Sekhmet was rubbing his jaw like it hurt a bit.

Ryo looked at the girl as Sekhmet dumped her on the ground. That must be the girl that called out to me. I have to help her. "Hey, Sekhmet, how are you?" Ryo stepped out of the trees.

Sekhmet jerked his head and looked at Ryo. "Oh, it's just you." Sekhmet smiled. "Where are your friends, Wildfire? Did you leave them to fight my colleague alone?"

"They can take care of themselves. You should know that much by now."

Sekhmet, for some reason, started laughing. "Yes, but that was before our mistress gave us more power. Ha ha ha- (uhg)" Sekhmet folded in half from the kick delivered by the supposedly unconscious girl.

Wow, she's strong; and now that I look at her, she looks kinda familiar. I shook my head, whatever.

"F'got about me, didn't ya, idiot." The girl back-flipped out of reach. "Oh, and why does your mistress want me? Just out of curiosity?" The girl had coal-black hair in a half-up, half-down look. She was about 5'4 tall and had tan skin.

"I have no clue why she would want an ill-mannered brat; I just follow orders." With that Sekhmet lunged at the girl. She back-flipped and connected with Sekhmet's chin, sending him back into a tree. Sekhmet gets up immediately, jumps into the air and lands on a tree branch so he could see both of us. "Say goodbye to this world, girl! SNAKE FANG STRIKE!"

The energy that came at him and the girl was almost more than the amount of energy that came from the inferno sure-kill. I have to protect her. Ryo started to run to get in between the girl and the blast but it was to late. "No!" The sure-kill hit her full force. She was thrown through numerous trees before smacking up against a boulder and collapsed to the ground, unconscious and bleeding severely. I turned back to Sekhmet and called my full armor. "Armor of Wildfire, Tao Jin!" Cherry blossoms surrounded me as pieces of my armor formed on me. I put my hand out and the helmet appeared with two horns on each side. "you killed her!" Ryo glared, "and you're going to pay for that, Sekhmet!"

"Oh, really?" And before I could blink Sekhmet was in front of me, one of his swords ready. "Then let's fight. I've been waiting to beat you for a while." He grinned as he started the fight with a slash across my chest plate. I jumped out of range and in the process I pulled out one of the Wildfire swords.

"Bring it on, Sekhmet."

Sekhmet was faster than I remembered and I was losing badly. I had too many cuts and they were draining some of my energy from me. Finally Sekhmet stepped back. "Ha ha ha, the leader of the Ronin Warriors is beaten by me. Ha ha!"

"It's not over yet, Sekhmet!"

"Fine, let me end it. I must get back to my mistress. SNAKE FANG STRIKE!!"

I was too close to dodge, so I tried to block , but it was too powerful. I was pushed back into a tree and fell on my face, unable to move, but still conscious. Barely.

================= That's that for corrections. Like I said not much difference. Ja! Akoya