Chapter 16! Thank you so much for the reviews, everyone! I feel so supported!

To Moonbeam- Thanx for all the suggestions, girl! Although the sisterhood is not like the initiation, and more casual friendship than blood-oath type of thing... you'll see what I mean. Thanx for all your help!

Disclaimer- Yay! I own Kigali, Asali, and Ramissa! But not Shaman King. Oh well! I'll settle for the three goddesses

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0 The Birth of a Sisterhood 0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Last Chapter... "I grew up here. I know every secret passageway and hideaway. Even the one that leads to Lanai's room." Asali grinned mischievously as we laughed and followed her through the maze-like palace. This was going to get interesting.

"We are here." 'here' was one of the highest towers in the palace. It had a large brass door with doorknobs in the shape of wild horses. Asali shivered and grabbed my hand.

"I haven't been here since the initiation." She whispered fearfully. At this we all shuddered. Apparently, I wasn't the only one with that particular experience. Lanai opened the door with a creak. It was a circular room with a glowing fire sparkling in the center. Small cushions were set down for us.

"Relax. This isn't another initiation. We just chose the room for the privacy." Tabitha of course. We relaxed a bit as we sat down in the cushions. Zoe climbed on my shoulder in her golden tamari form.

"We have called this meeting to give you some information you will need. This hasn't been taught to you yet because it was on a strict need-to-know basis. Listen to Riana." Riana, the priestess of the Orana Tribe, stood up. She was a beautiful lady that looked a lot like Ramissa. She spoke in a clear, melodious voice. It was the voice of a true storyteller. It had to be her mother.

"Listen my children, for I will tell you about the one whom you have been trained to defeat! The one who has claimed the throne in the last tournament! The resurrection of the god of fire! This time, you three beautiful girls will put a stop to his wickedness, but before you do, I must tell you about him.

"In this lifetime, the god of fire goes by the name of Hao Asakura." Asakura? I had heard that name before. Anna.

"Asakura... in Izumo" She yelled out of the open window.

"ANNA!!!" The car rushed away, taking my soul sister away with it. I tasted the bitter taste of failure in my mouth...

The memories came rushing back with startling force, but I managed to keep my posture. Oh god, what if Anna had been relocated with my archenemy and I had been wasting time all these years while she was being tortured to death??? Horrible images flashed in front of me.

"Key!" Zoe whispered and gripped my shoulder, pinching my skin lightly. That brought me back to earth and to Riana's next words.

"Hao was born in the Patch Village, the cradle of the shaman tournament. But never in his dreams did he imagine that is soul would be split in two at birth." She paused.

"So... what does that mean?" Asked Ramissa, but Asali was the first one to figure it out.

"Twins! Hao has a twin that has part of his soul."

"Exactly. Twins there were. One was Hao Asakura... and the other was a boy named Yoh Asakura. At birth, their grandparents were present to destroy the abomination of Hao before he became unstoppable, but they didn't know which one of the twins to destroy, so they decided to kill both. Just when they were about to strike... the spirit of fire showed up and saved the twin that was Hao. I am aware you are familiar with that, because in one way or another your spirit saved you when you first met. Anyways, Hao was safe. But so was Yoh. He has lived with his grandparents, training for the Tournament. But Hao cannot let Yoh live. He needs his soul back. The meeting place for the preliminaries of the Tournament this year will be Tokyo, Japan." Japan! That's where Anna was! But then Tabitha started to speak.

"Ok girls, listen up. You will be a team for the shaman tournament. As you know, there will be preliminaries in Tokyo, and then the finals in the Patch Village. Listen well to this, it's very important that if they pair you against each other in the preliminaries that you tie. All three of you must be in the Tournament until the very last final. Of course you'll make it to the final. And that battle will probably be one on one against Hao, so then you will decide in one of you to fight against him. You will basically have two very important jobs; destroy Hao, and protect Yoh. But you have time! No worries." She signaled Lanai to speak.

"The plans for more recent events are also very simple. You will be staying in the palace until this alarm clock goes off." She held up Tabitha's black box.

"It's a bomb!" joked Zoe. We all laughed.

"No Zoe, not a bomb. Look." She opened the box wide for all to see. Three eggs lay quietly in a small nest of hay.

"Eggs!"

"But they're all different!"

"Of course they are, they aren't the same birds." Said Lanai, "Each one of you will get an egg of a bird of prey that matches your personality. Asali will get a red-tail hawk." She said, handing her a creamy, white egg. "Ramissa will get a horned owl." She handed Ramissa a tanned egg with white speckles. "And Kigali will get a Gyrfalcon." She handed me a white egg with dark red markings. A Gyrfalcon!!! I had seen those in the tundra. They were one of the only birds of prey that lived in the artic. They were pure white with black in the tip of their feathers. Tabitha winked at me. I laughed.

"These eggs will hatch in about a month, but you will have to warm them up and rotate them so that they survive. If they die, you will not get another one. When they hatch, you will be the first person that they see, so that your image is imprinted on them, and you will have to teach them to fly seven weeks after hatching. When all of your hawks are able to fly, you will be released to Japan. Meanwhile, you will stay here in the palace and train for the Tournament. I think you'll enjoy yourselves."

"So in around two months we will leave for Tokyo?" They nodded.

"There is an incubation room in the north wing of the palace. I will put some cots there, because you will be spending most of your time there. Prepare for a long wait, it will strengthen your patience. Now go to the incubating room, a maid there will give you the basics in egg-care."

Asali led us to the incubation room in the opposite side of the palace. We opened the big, brass door slowly and peeked into our new home. The incubation room was a hot room with large, with high ceilings and small windows near the top. The room seemed to be divided in two halves, even though there were no boundaries. One side had a gigantic stone fireplace against the wall with a large, black cauldron resting in the scarlet flames. Wood was stacked beside the hearth. Close to the fire, there were two big boxes raised in the air like tables. They were filled with soft hay and other nesting materials. They were both empty.

The other side of the room had already been prepared for us. Three futons had been lined up against the back wall and Ramissa's belongings as well as mine had been brought and put on a low shelf near the beds. A large round table had been set up close by with three chairs and numerous piles of books on it. We stepped cautiously into the room.

"You... must... be... the... new... occupants... of... the... incubation... room... Welcome..." We jumped out of our skins. An old lady had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She spoke in the slowest voice imaginable. She motioned us to sit down at the table.

"I... will... go... over... the... incubation... procedures... with... you... But... first... put... your... eggs... in... the... incubation... tables..." We obeyed and sat back down in the table. I had a feeling that this would take much longer than it was supposed to.

I was right.

It took the old lady three hours to go over material that I could have gone over in twenty minutes. It took my quota of patience for the next decade to keep from screaming and running away as fast as my legs could take me. Ramissa fell asleep halfway through, so when the old lady was gone, we had to catch her up on it.

"The eggs have to be rotated every two hours, so we'll have to take shifts at night. No falling asleep ok? These eggs depend on us. We have to kindle the fire when it gets below the hatching temperature." I said, pointing at the thermometers in each table. "And we can't leave the door open, or the room will cool down. I'll take the first shift tonight ok? You guys sleep." And so it was the beginning of an extremely long month. We stayed in the incubation room 95 of the time, and when we left, someone always had to stay behind to guard the eggs. In the long hours we were stuck in the incubation room, we practiced our shaman skills and studied from the books Lanai had left us. My fortune-telling skills were also an endless source of entertainment for the three of us, but we mostly talked and lay around on our beds, very much as we were doing now.

"Let me see your hand, Asali." She did as she was told. I looked at the lines in her hands. To most people, they're just lines, but to me, they're full of meaning. Every day their significance changes to tell you something new about the person. "What have we here...? A boy in your near future that will take your unwilling heart... I see an apprentice... and... you have a brother? Tell me about him!"

"You're good! Yes, I have an older brother named Todd. He doesn't have ANY sixth sense whatsoever, so he gets jealous that I'm a shaman." She laughed.

"I have a sister." Mentioned Ramissa. "Her name's Sonika. She's only two years younger than me, but she is traveling around with my aunt. She's an actress in popular commercials, but I think she'll star in a movie soon. She has shaman powers too, and three spirits, but she uses them to act, not fight."

"Wow! I've always dreamed of being a singer... maybe a rock star... then I could sing for the world!" I said, looking up at the roof.

"Hey Key, do YOU have any siblings?" Asked Asali. I sighed.

"Yeah. I have an older sister. All I know about her is that she had shaman abilities. I don't remember her, since she ran away from the college when I was two." The usual uncomfortable silence followed. I broke it with a change of subject. "Hey you guys! Maybe we could start a band and sing when we travel to Japan! We could cash in big bucks!" That got their attention.

"A band?"

"Us?"

"Yeah! Do you play any instruments?"

"I can do the drums!" Offered Ramissa.

"I can do bass. Lanai bought me one for my eleventh birthday. What can you do?"

"I know how to play the electric guitar. And we can all sing!" I said.

"What will we be called?"

"We can be called the Angels!" Suggested Asali.

"I think we should be The Sisterhood, 'cause we're sisters!" Said Ramissa, leaning back against the wall.

"No, check this out, we can be... The Sisterhood of Angels!" I announced. They nodded in approval.

"Sounds good to me! The Sisterhood of Angels it is!"

We spent the rest of that month ditching books and using out shapeshifting weapons as musical instruments, and I have to admit, we were pretty good. Around three days before predicted hatching time, Ramissa's egg started to crack, and finally, the next day, became a fluffy owl chick, which she named Luna for her big, round eyes.

Mine hatched a week after that. A tiny, white chick came out of my egg. I named her Liberty. Asali's was the one that took the longest to hatch. Like ours, it cracked to reveal a tiny white fluff chick, whose name became Russet. Unluckily, that didn't quite save us from the incubation room, but it DID give us something to do. Each one of us had to have a different nest, because the chicks had to imprint on their owners. That ALSO meant we got a heck of less sleep.

When the chicks started to grow their first plumage, we were ecstatic. We moved the chicks from the incubation room to the mews, a whole building for birds of prey. I was especially proud of my gyrfalcon. They come in three color varieties; dark, gray, and white. Mine already had snow-white feathers growing from her wings. As soon as they were fully feathered, the birds started to jump off the nests and flapping their wings like crazy, so we took them outside and, well, you know the drill. In three days, they were flying like kites in the Arabian wind. Two months had passed. The alarm clock went off. It was time for us to leave.

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So? What did you guys think? Here I sort of explained some things and introduced the priestesses of the Orana and Leppa tribes!

By the way, I just love the idea of falconers, so I couldn't help having that in my story! Lol! I don't really know how long their eggs take to hatch so I estimated for the sake of their story!

Anyhow, review if you can!

Next Chapter- The Hijacked Balloon