Hey there, people… I'm back, altough I'm not very sure why… hmm….
"I don't get it!" Serena whined while walking throughout the woods next to Mina and Lita. They were walking towards a large temple. They knew that inside that building lived the last true shinto monks and that Rei had disappeared inside that place for a week now, starting all over her habits and fire-readings. The evening before, Kane had told the three girls to go and make sure that the brunette was still alive and to bring her home. He was ready to start an investigation over her case. Gladly, the three friends accepted to make that trip without Amy, for she had got a bad cold ever since spending half a night inside the infirmery in nothing else than a pair of bluish pj's covered with mice pictures.
"What don't you get, Rena?" Lita asked from ahead the small group. It could be clearly noticed that the tall woman was enjoying this little trip more than anything else. The truth was that it was pretty hard for Lita to remain hid in their hide-out, although the place was huge and she could get as much training as she wanted. For the amazonian there was nothing like a breath of fresh air, in the middle of a wild forest, where you could even manage to get stalked by bears, wolfes, foxes and other species.
"Why this Darien guy is trying to kill Rei! I mean, yeah, she is different than the others, but I'm sure that she could restrain her visions enough for them not to be noticed. And, plus, Darien is her twin! I mean, don't we always hear about twin pairs having weird abilities considering the sibling relationship to one another?" Kane's sister inquired while walking further.
"Aren't you supposed to be the mind reader?" Lita teased.
"Well, if I managed to get near him and actually be able to pick up some emotions, than maybe I wouldn't ask you this, now and here!"
"Ok, then, from your… experience… What do you think?"
"Hey, if it weren't for Amy, I'd be the baby in here… I'm not sure! So far, I've never met a brother so eager to hide or to kill his younger or twin sibling. In these kind of situations, it's usually the other way around. Being older, most brothers, even the ones in twin pairs, tend to be extremely protective and possessive over their sisters. I mean look at mine!"
"Darien's hate wasn't triggered by Rei's behaviour or abilities. Those merely rose the level of anger inside him. Whatever the reason for his desire to kill Rei is, it comes from something that happened during their childhood." Mina spoke on a serious and mature tone, something very unsual for her. A tough silence followed, the other two women knowing very well that every time Mina used such a tone, things were very serious… almost dramatic.
"How do you know that?" Rena finally found the courage to ask. The elder blonde stopped, looked at her and answered.
"Because a long time ago I met Rei… and Darien… and your brother. I was maybe thireen when my parents went one day to a party, hosted by Rei's father. That's where I met her, Darien and Kane, believe it or not. They seemed rather different ever since then, though their eyes still carried innocence inside. Still, it could be easily told that something was wrong in the perfect picture their father was trying to pull up…" Mina told them, drifting back in her memories.
"So… I guess that destroys any posibility according to which Rei could be a spy…"
"Pretty much! I don't think she even wants to face her brother, but have something to do with him."
"So… back to the story… when you were thirteen you met my brother…" Serena said, gazing at Mina from below her eyelashes, telling her to continue.
"Don't get all kind of crazy thoughts, Rena… it was nothing like that…" the elder blonde fought back a bit annoyed, but knowing that she was going to end up telling her sister-in-law and Lita how she and her hubby met.
"Oh, come on! It's like we get an opportunity like this everyday… or that Kane ever gets to tell us how he ended up with you!" Lita pleaded.
"Yeah… and I really need to know some weird things about my bro' so I could blackmail him!" Rena added with a sadictic sparkle in her eyes. Mina sweatdropped and shouted her surrender.
"Alright! Until we get to wherever Rei is, I'll tell you how me and our fearless leader got together. But I have to warn you… it's looong story!"
"Yey!" a shout of victory filled the entire woods, having come from the amazon and the younger blonde.
"So…like I was saying, I met Kane for the first time during one of Darien's father's parties. At the time we were all thirteen, except for Kane, who was three years older and had already a gang of crazy teenage girls following him and drooling over him like he was the last guy on Earth. At that party we didn't have too much interactions, given our age. But…" Mina started and stopped suddenly, noticing the desperate look her companions had on their faces. This time she got scared of their reaction and backed away a bit, making sure to have a run for it in case they didn't like the story. "But we did when we met about three years later. By that time I was the one with a line of teenage guys drooling over me and he was already a college student with eye-glasses and good results at school. I have to admit that he loosend it up already by that time, but still knew how to have fun… Not to mention that he had and still has the body of god!" Mina said, absorbed in her story and blushing. She glanced over at her party again and this time saw a very silent Lita and coughing Serena, trying to hide the colour filling her cheeks. "Anyway, that's when he noticed me the first time!"
"Awwww!" the two girls expressed themselves.
"Not exactly. The first time he adressed to me, he called me a natural-sized Barbie doll, with nothing but a nice face and hair ." Mina shot back and watched her friends' astocnished faces. Their mouths had literally dropped open. "Yeah, well, I didn't react quite the same. I kind of insulted him back."
"How?"
"I called him an over-grown kid who turned into a frigid geek … I know, not one of my best names ever, but I never expected that one from him. I mean, I had college guys all over me and there he was, staring at me as if I was some dumb blonde."
"Ok, so what happened next?"
"Well, after hearing that from him, I stubbornly refused to see him for another two years. And, before I knew it, I was eighteen and found myself in the middle of one-hell-of-a fight, backing you up." She said and turned to Serena, who looked at her still star-struck. "After I got you out of there after using my… powers, I remember losing my consciousness and found myself, hours later, in one of your hide-outs. And there he was… The rest is history…" she ended her convesration, already noticing the wooden roofs of the sacred temple they were approaching.
"Ok, so, it's not that much… I thought you two went back a longer time." Rena practicly whined.
"Theoreticly we do… Now, don't you say I didn't warn you that the story wasn't going to be so interesting." Mina pointed a finger especially at Lita, who simply rose her shoulders in defense.
"Yeah… well, I can still torture my bro'…"
"How?" Lita stared at her in disbelief.
"Over-grown kid who tuned into a frigid geek?" she smirked evily and stared at Mina.
"As I said that was a long time ago!"
"Well, maybe that didn't change…" the younger blonde tempted her in-law.
"You have no idea!" Mina exhaled loudly, staring at the sky and the temple's roofs with dreamy eyes. At least until she understood that something was wrong. Serena had stopped mid-way, behind both her and Lita, staring at the small buildings in front of her. She looked as if she was in trance or something. The tall amazon and the older blonde stopped aswell and looked puzzled at Kane's younger sister, just in time to see her race past them and not stop or look behind for even a second until she reached the construction site. The two ran after her and followed her blonde hair up until they entered the main temple.
The building was pretty tall, but clearly made of wood. It could resist a stronger wind, but not an arson, which was curious, because this happened to be a fire temple. That made the priests out here to be either irresponsible or very loyal to their beliefs. Maybe they could even command fire, like Rei could. After all, she was a born miko. The three girls passed the large opened gates without even noticing the ancient warnings written on the exterior walls with human blood or the stone lions carved right outside the main temple.
They entered a dark hall, with only one huge fire to enlighten all the interior, trapped between some kind of short walls made of wood. Somehow, the wildfire kept itself inside those walls, misteriously not burning them down. Once got inside, Mina and Lita and stopped, staring at the writings on the old walls, trying to descipher something, but not understanding wether the words meant some kind of curse or a blessing. Serena walked up in front of the fire and saw a miko's outfit, formed of a large white shirt and the long red trousers that came with it. Next to them was also laid a cloth piece, once meant to hold one's hair tightly, so that it could be touched by the flames while praying. Rena leaned over to the clothes and grabbed the strange cloth. Without turning back to the others, she said:
"She was here."
"Do you think she was found by her brother?" Lita asked somewhat scared.
"No… out communications are safe and this is not an actually easy place to find… I mean, no one would simply pass these whole woods just to get here." Rena answered.
"One would and could if given the necessary motivation." Mina said while staring at the mysterious writings… which seemed ancient, yet strangely familiar.
"Why would she go!" Lita was almost going to have a fit. "I mean, we didn't seem to have scared her and we did tell her she is more than welcomed to stay with us… Why would she just disappear like this?" the Amazonian burst out, ready to kill someone or destroy something.
"Maybe she felt scared and ran away, thinking that we were probably either going to treat her like her brother did… or that we were going to ask something from her, in exchange for allowing her to live with us." Mina suggested and glanced from a puzzled tall woman to a very focused young blonde.
"Or maybe she saw something in the fire…" Serena said with her eyes captured by the flames' dance within the four wood walls. She seemed so absorbed by the magical burning dance that she didn't even hear when Lita asked her if she was feeling alright.
"Rena!" Mina shouted in her face and positioned herself between the wildfire and the Serena, but the girl was still transfigured, having almost blacked out.
"Fire…" she heard Lita mumble one moment later. Feeling already sweaty and still trying to wake her sister-in-law up from her dangerous day-dream, Mina spoke back to Lita, while shaking the younger blonde as hell.
"Yes, Lita! I know… we are in a fire temple after all!"
"No!" the tall woman's voice suddenly gained energy. "Outside, the temple is burning! As in the whole bulding!" she said a bit scared and ready to carry both the blondes out if necessary. Aware all-of-a-sudden by the drowning air, Mina glanced outside and saw the whole garden and the other walls on fire. Still, instead of running outside, she grabbed Serena and started pulling her deeper in the temple with all her forces. "Mina, what the hell are you doing?"
"If I am right, than we will be safer inside the temple than outside it!" she shouted back and signalled the auburn-haired woman to come next to them and give her a hand with their younger friend who was still stuck inside a dream. As soon as Lita reached them, the two started pulling together and even managed to motion the absorbed girl further inside the temple and from the wildfire that was now reaching almost the ceiling, as if something had commanded it to grow stronger and taller. That image scared the hell out of Mina, but for the sake of her two friends she had to keep herself calm and to seem to be controlling the situation.
They had almost reached the furthest wall, when, suddenly, the fire simply exploded, uniting itself with the flames outside, in what used to be the gardens of a fire temple. The blow sent both Mina and Lita through a thinner wall and outside in the forest. Still, Serena had remained in the same positioned, still trapped in her dream, not noticing anything from what was going on around her.
Regaining consciousness, Mina found her wounds pretty bad, for they hurt like hell. She managed to get up a little and look in the former temple's direction: instead of three large roofs and walls of wood she saw a huge fire that was consummating everything and was already heading for the woods that had once hidden with so much success the temple.
Trying to get rid of her blurred vision, Mina managed to distinguish the fire dividing itself and allowing a dark man to pass inside it, to the place where Rena stood unmoved, captured by the burning view. Mina recognized the man on the spot and would have wanted to scream something to him, it the carbon dioxide hadn't made her dizzy and brought her near to faint. She fell almost unconscious back on the solid ground, only after noticing Lita few metres away: she was in worse shape than her because she had hit a tree and she had a bleeding head wound. She glanced back to the flames just in time to see Darien Shields, Rei's infamous twin brother taking the blonde in his arms and passing through the flames together, appearing to be some sort of fire lord and the fire his servant. Before passing out completely, she heard his word only words inside her mind: "Kane's sister for mine. Tell him that we'll be in touch!" His voice sounded ordering and Mina would have shot back at him if she had had the necessary strength. She would have also noticed his sarcastic tone if she hadn't blacked out completely, falling in the dirt of the burning forest. This had definitely not been a good day!
"Get one of the infirmery beds ready."
"Everything ok, Darien?"
"No. She wasn't there, but, thankfully, I've run into some old friends of mine."
"Shall I also send a team down there?"
"It would be preferable."
"Alright, they're on their way! See'ya soon." The male voice ended and a continuous beep announced Darien that Zack had closed his phone. He closed his too, threw it on the car seat in his right and then glanced on the backseat, where a young blonde woman slept almost peacefully. Darien returned to the view in front of his car, started the engine and drove away from the forest and back into the city. It was finally time for old "friends" to reintroduce each other.
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