Division IV: Inner Demons
By EclipseKlutz PG-13 Romance/Action/Adventure Hunter/ToriA/N: Heh, I sprained my ankle for the second time in four months, so if you want my excuse for not updating quickly this time- that's my excuse.
An eight-year-old girl with messy shoulder-length hair and sad eyes sat huddled on the second-floor landing of her stepfamily's small house. With wide eyes, she listened to her stepparents fighting, tears flowing down her face as she heard each of their points.
"Would you just shut the hell up, Maurice?!" her stepfather, Ernie, shouted, and she heard something that sounded like his fist colliding with her stepmother, Maurice's, flesh, and Maurice's slight whimper as an aftereffect.
"Take your own advice for a change!" Maurice cried in her banshee voice, tossing a teacup at the wall behind Ernie. "We could've- should've, gotten a puppy! But no! You wanted a kid! 'That one looks like she needs a home,' you said- like hell! We should've left the girl there, if we were lucky she could've gotten a family with enough money to actually take care of her!"
"So, all of a sudden your interested in her welfare? Then get another job- you've been so damn lazy since you got fired from your last one! It would've been the same with a dog- bed, toys, and food!" Ernie shouted back.
Maurice took a deep breath before countering, "Face it- the girl's only given us bad luck since she got here! It'd be better if she were just dead! Dammit, her mother could've had enough common sense not to commit suicide, and leave her at that orphanage!"
The scene faded away, only to be replaced by a new one of the same girl a few years older, maybe eleven, standing in the back corners of a middle school courtyard after school hours. A few kids approached her, obviously from one of local rivaling gangs.
"Hand over your money," the one who she presumed was the leader (he was the biggest and was wearing the most leather) demanded.
She shook her head in response, the every day routine. He lashed out at her with his fist, and she leaned backwards, and sent her foot upwards. His fist missed by inches, though her kick collided square in the center of his stomach. She jumped up, knowing she'd have to fight now.
Another of the boys, one she recognized as Henry from her homeroom class, threw himself at her. She put her arms out in front of her and grabbed his shoulder, tossing him aside. The last one, who she thought was called Jake, grabbed her around the neck while she had been distracted, and lifted her a few inches off the ground (there were problems with being the youngest in her school, and the shortest).
She pushed her foot back, digging it into his shins, but instead of letting go he tightened his choking hold on her neck. Suddenly the leader stood up, and tossed a punch at her stomach, and another one, and then another one, then a kick, a hook, and so on. Until she got really pissed off and kicked him hard in the place boys hate being kicked.
Grabbing the guy's shoulders who was strangling her, she kneeled over and pulled him over her back and to the floor. And with one last kick at Henry's nose she ran off into the woods, hoping they wouldn't catch her.
The scene changed once again and now she was standing outside the Tsuki-Mizu Academy ruin's, holding a scroll beneath her arm. She glared down at the floor, knowing that the wreckage was her fault. Turning back to the parking lot she climbed into her self-painted car and drove off, knowing exactly where she was going.
Along the way she stopped in a forest and dropped the scroll. Leaving it there would mean that no one else would cause an apocalypse, or accidentally end the lives of the only people who had ever tried to be their friend. Years ago she decide to let no emotions show through her expressions, now for the first time in all those years she allowed tears to fall.
Kit sat up abruptly, and squinted into the darkness so she could reach the lamp on her bedside table. As soon as the light was on she fell back against her pillows and sighed, her brilliant plan of coming back to her cousin and uncle was turning out to not be so brilliant. She climbed out of her bed and limbed down the hallway, trying to get to the kitchens of Ninja Opts.
A light was already on in the kitchen, but she approached anyway, hoping it was Cam. 'Oh well,' she thought when she say Dustin. As she limped over to the fridge she asked, "Couldn't sleep?"
Dustin shrugged, "Not really, now that I know we have an apocalypse on our hands, Tori and Sensei are missing, and that you lost the scroll."
She bit her lip, and grabbed the milk and Hershey's chocolate syrup from the fridge. "I didn't exactly lose it, Dustin, I just left it somewhere where I hope no one will find it."
"So you lied?" He replied simply, watching as she poured the milk into a pan and set it over the stove.
"Bent the truth, more like," Kit answered, searching through the drawers for a spoon. Upon finally finding one, she added, "Want some hot chocolate?"
"Sure- why didn't you just tell Cam? I mean he's your cousin right?"
"He may be my cousin, Dustin, but I've really never told him anything. I was never really around much to do so, I think I've only been around here once or twice since… Can you get the cups? I'm a little too short to reach them."
Dustin shrugged and retrieved the mugs; he set them down beside her and leaned against the counter, "Since what?"
"Nothing really," Kit replied a little too quickly, pulling a few strands of hair away from her face. "Just complications, is all. So, how long have you been a ranger?"
"A couple months, I guess- time flies. Now can I ask you something a little personal?"
Kit smirked slightly as she dumped half the chocolate syrup into the mugs, "As long as you're not going to ask me out, ask away." She began rolling the cups over in her hands, so the chocolate covered all the sides of the cups.
"What have you been so eager to hide since you got here?" Dustin asked.
She paused and glanced over at him, accidentally over-flowing one of the glasses, and for the first time her eyes revealed something- shock. She turned away from him and went to get paper towels, only answering while she cleaned up the mess, "I've had… er… issues in my past, personal demons basically. The things I haven't exactly told anyone."
Dustin took the glass she handed him and sat down at the table, "Its not healthy or whatever to keep things locked up, you have to tell some one- and you have it guaranteed I won't tell anyone if you tell me."
A half smile appeared on her face as she sat down across from him, "Fine. My father walked out when I was six, my mother swallowed half a jar of pills a few months afterwards. I got adopted by this poor couple who were constantly fighting. Lived with them until I was eight before I ran away to here. I was placed in a detention home when I was nine for shoplifting a couple times, then I was shipped away to Los Angelus when I was ten. I was in a gang for a few years, until the Tsuki-Mizu academy caught me doing magick and enrolled me. They told me that I had a destiny to change the world, and they handed me that cursed scroll. I tried to focus its energy on the space aliens, and ended up blowing up my school, and that would lead up to where I am now. Cookies? I think there's still some in the fridge."
Dustin nodded still trying to process what she had said. As she plopped down across from him again with a large plate of chocolate cookies he asked, "So you ignored what they said was your destiny?"
"Look- life is a river," she informed him, stuffing the rest of a cookie into her mouth. "Constantly flowing with rapids and sharp rocks to keep you at bay, and it branches off into different courses- your prophesied destiny, or the future you create for yourself, until the waterfall at the end where it buries you beneath all the pain, sorrow, hatred, and joy you left behind."
"Quite the optimist, aren't you?"
"Nah, the glass was always plastic."
~~*~~
Hunter paced back and forth in the hospital's waiting room, making several people dizzy. Finally, a nurse walked in, "You can see Miss Hanson now."
He followed the nurse down the brightly lit hallways and into the room where they had been operating on Tori. He sat down on the chair beside her bed, and tried to ignore all the needles sticking out of her arms.
The doctor sighed solemnly, "She's in a coma, young man. What was she still doing inside that building when the bomb went off? Why did you go back in?"
Hunter grabbed Tori's hand and squeezed it tightly, "She was trying to help people get out."
The doctor nodded and left, having more patients to attend to. Hunter watched him go and turned back to Tori, gently brushing a few strands oh hair away from her face, "I'm sorry…"
As he knew there would be, he received no reaction. He knew that the scorch marks, scratches, and coma were a small price to pay for how near she had been to the bomb, and that she could've lost her life all together, but he still hated seeing her like this.
With one last gentle squeeze of her hand, he stood up and made his way back to the hotel- who was going to find who put the bomb there, and they were going to pay.
~~*~~
Dustin gently poked Kit with the handle of a spoon again, still no reaction. He turned to Shane, "another thing to add to your list about her, she's not a light sleeper."
"Trouble!" Cam called, and the other two awake inhabitants of Ninja Opts. Ran to his side. He pointed at the screen of his computer, showing them the kelzacks in the park.
Shane shrugged, "If this all they're sending, I don't think we'll be needing any help."
Dustin nodded in response, " Ninja storm, ranger form."
A few minutes later, both the rd and yellow wind rangers where running to the park square.
~~*~~
Dawn had also brought Hunter back to Tori's bedside, he had searched but found no clues to who set off the bomb. He leaned back, wondering what he would've done if he'd of found the person.
He heard a small groan and immediately looked over at Tori, though she hadn't moved from where she had been when he last checked, hardly five minutes ago. Another small groan allowed him to pinpoint the noise from the room across the hall.
False hope was going to drive him off the edge someday.
~~*~~
"We won't need help, huh?" Dustin commented as he threw yet another punch. The kelzack's number had increased, and they had driven the two rangers into an abandoned subway shaft.
Shane kicked at an approaching kelzack and shrugged, "how much help could she give us anyway?"
Dustin didn't answer; instead he threw a hooked punch at a nearby kelzack, catching it square in the chin. He thrust out a roundhouse kick at another one, his mind not there but on the conversation he had had with Kit that morning. He was about to tell Shane that she might be able to help more than he thought, but knew that would also mean he was betraying Kit's trust- he had told her after all that he wouldn't tell anyone.
Suddenly the kelzack's backed away, and before Shane could ask why, Lothor stepped into view, with Kapri, Marah, and Blake behind him, "If you need help against them, how'll you fair against us?"
"We can always try," Shane hissed in response.
"How brave," Lothor commented as he leaned against a wall.
Kapri slowly stepped forwards, pulling out a sword and holding it up, "I've been practicing."
"So have I," Shane replied, pulling out his own sword.
Dustin rolled his eyes as Marah walked over to him and stated, "Let's make this quick, okay? I have a show I wanna see in a half hour."
"Whatever," Marah replied in her high-pitched voice as she pulled out her own sword.
"That's uneven," Lothor smirked, "Who'll take on Mr. Navy?"
"I will," Kit yawned as she trotted down the steps and into the subway shaft, careful not to put too much wait on her ankle. "Do you have any idea how much noise you guys make? I mean Cam's drum set isn't even that loud."
"Fine," Blake replied solemnly, knowing why she was challenging.
"Let the match begin," Lothor muttered, and so it did.
~~*~~
A/N: any suggestions? I'm on major writer's block. Kit won't be around by the end of next chapter hopefully. By the way, if I only get like, four reviews this time, I'll start pressing for one hundred!!