Three Sisters
Scroll One: Living Hell
Haruka
Rice, seaweed, cucumber, and somehow this time we were able to afford fish. The market was far from home and the sky was becoming darker by the second. My sister and I knew we would have to start high tailing it home if we wanted to get food in our stomachs before the "attack hour" started. Night was hell at our house, sleep wasn't an option. Things were hard since the nearest city with sustenance and shelter was nearly an hour away on foot. There used to be a market right across the street from where we were born, not only food but places to shop and warm houses with welcoming arms. That was before the kidnapping 6years ago, the kidnapping of our family.
I was 4 when it happened, my sister was 8. We returned one day from our training to find our happy home completely empty, and our aunts and uncles in a fall out shelter completely knocked out. It was strange, each week each one of our extended family members woke up one night and left our clan's city until we were the only one's left. Our cousin Mia was the last one to leave us. She was 27 and kept saying she had to find her son, which was strange since she'd had a daughter 3 years before. That was when my older sister Anei and I knew what the next years of our lives looked like.
"Base" Anei said as we approached the abandoned town limits. We paused for a second once we reached the gates. Each of us stood on either side of the entrance and pulled out a pocket mirror, slowly we looked behind the wall to see if there was any movement or a sign of life. We looked at each other and nodded, now there was just a straight dash for the door to our house. "san….ni…." I counted, "ICHI", we took off to the door. Sheep, Tiger, Ram….FIRST BASE! We both stuck out our palms and the door swung open. Anei lunged around and quickly shut the doors, biting her thumb she used her blood to seal the entrance to the head family's house.
"no predators this time?" I said out of breath as I lifted myself off the floor.
"no….not yet…we're good for now. Go start making dinner, I'll start watch" said my sister with a darker tone.
"boiled or wrapped?" I asked referring to the rice
"boil it, we still have a little time before dark" she said as she headed upstairs to the attic.
I was surprised, we usually had to make quick onigiri in case of an emergency, today we had enough time to actually make a rice bowl with fish.
"quite a feast" I said as I began cooking the rice and the fish. We'd learned to cook quickly and leave out luxury ingredients like salt or spices, and the fish was always bought pre cut incase we had to eat it raw. Our food was done in record time, I made two bowls each with two slices of fish and headed up to the attic.
"any movement?' I asked handing my sister a bowl.
"nothing more than some dust blowing in the wind" she said as she began inhaling the food, "damn this is some fucking good fish" she said with a full mouth.
"I know, I love it when we can afford protein"
"Hahaha, remember when mom couldn't even get us to eat fish?"
"yeah, now it's like candy to us…readily available but never affordable"
We both turned back to the scenery. Since our family abandoned us, the underground ninja world had gotten wind of our weaknesses. Within four months of our family's kidnapping, we were being attacked by black ops and rogue ninjas for our family's knowledge of secret and forbidden jutsus. We lived in the land of rivers, in the village hidden in the shadows. We were born into the Mousoka clan. Our family was large and very well known, we lived together in one city. There used to be others besides our clan members, but they became sick of the ninja violence and moved. Eventually, it was just our clan left.
"god I miss them, when are we gonna get out of here and start looking for them?" I asked
"he says we're almost ready…he wants us to meet him in the land of fire" replied Anei
"we've been here for 3 years since we met him…when will we be 'ready'?"
"I don't know Haruka, just stop asking…he's testing our skills."
"I have yet to even see this man, how can we trust him?"
"he's given us so much already…thank him for the food on your plate" my sister snapped at me. Three years ago she had returned with two large bags of groceries, said they were from a guy she met in town. He wanted to hire the two of us, give us money in exchange for killing off people who were suspicious of his "business". He said he'd take us in as his own once we were fully ready as shinobi and had proved our loyalty to him. Since then we've survived off of his payments for blood. Not the richest life, but it bought us food and guaranteed us protection in the near future. Soon we were going to get out of this hell hole.
"dang I miss good food" I said as I sucked down my last grain of rice.
"yeah me…..HOLY SHIT SHINOBI!" yelled Anei
"where?"
"Hiding in the ramen shop! Quick…seal the house off, I'll get the scroll"
I made my hand signs to seal off all entrances to the house. Biting my thumb I pressed it to the floor and any and all entrance to the house became shrouded in unseen shadow barriers. I rushed downstairs to find Anei pulling out the demon scroll. It was too big to carry in our scroll bag so we had to keep it in the house. We spread it out.
"tiger, sheep, ram, dragon, dragon, tiger, rooster, sheep, sheep" anei chanted. Purple flames began rising from the paper and a form made it's way out of Anei's spine. Her demon alter ego emerged and sat on the other end of the scroll. The jutsu brought out anei's "protector", we each had one, anei's was an alter ego. I still hadn't discovered mine, my family had been kidnapped before I could advance beyond simple hand to hand combat. BANG! The shadow protection was being broken.
"GIVE US THE THREE KEYS!" yelled a voice from outside. I placed myself in front of Anei and her protector until they could complete the jutsu.
"HIIIIII KIYAAAAHH!" the door broke through, "oh look men, a little girl…do you know where the keys are sweetie?" he asked. Half his face was hidden by a metal worked mask that seemed to be attached to his head. It came down to cover his mouth and chin. The tar from his earlier tobacco dripped from his yellow unkept teeth behind his mechanical lips in a maniacal grin. "I have special orders from bossman to get those keys and I don't like hitting little girls so why don't you go play with your tea sets" he said with breath that smelled like gasoline and garlic. Him and his friend were all half mechanical. Probably an underground cyborg gang.
"I'm sorry…my tea party is exclusive invite only…no cock headed ass holes allowed" I took my fighting stance.
"oh so you DO talk, fine then…SHOW ME THEY KEYS OR I'LL HAFTA FOKIN…AGH" he was interrupted by my foot meeting his lower jaw.
"sorry…like I said" I punched his stomach, "no invite.. NO ENTRANCE!" I roundhouse kicked his ankles and rammed him through the door, tripping his two goons on the way down. They got up and ran towards me, I jumped up above their heads and split kicked their faces in two different directions. Head metal man came out of his nap and pulled out a giant curved blade.
"TIME TA PLAY WITH THA BIG BOYS!" he yelled. He threw the blade, it came spinning at me and I barely dodged it. It then went spinning right back into his oily palm.
"YA KNOW SIS…YOU CAN JUMP IN WHENEVER YOU PLEASE!" I yelled looking at anei in a trance. The blade came back and I kicked it in the opposite direction so it got stuck over the door. The goons got up and pulled out a giant katana and several throwing knives.
"WHAT THE FUCK EVER HAPPENED TO REGULAR KUNAI…SERIOUSLY?" I yelled.
BAM! Anei's protector came smashing through the door ablaze in a smoldering purple fire. "FINALLY!" I yelled. The men retreated from the porch to the front lawn. The demon spread her arms out in front of her and began firing chains covered in purple ember at the intruders. The chain coiled around their thick bodies and the men began to cry out in pain.
"WE AREN'T THE LAST ARRRGGHH…AN ARMY OF MEN ARE UUGHH ON THEIR WAY HERE..GGAHH WE'LL GET THAT KEY!AAAAHHHH!". The mechanical trio's cries were slowly smoldered by the pain in their bodies and they became silent.
Anei was half dead on the floor after absorbing her counterpart back in. I looked at her weakened body, the protector is usually a last resort for us but we needed protection too often. I looked at my leg, it had a nasty gash on it from the spinning blade that I kicked into the doorway. I quickly grabbed the alcohol and began applying it to my wound while wrapping it in bandaging. "anei…anei I don't think I can fight much longer without my leg. And look at you, you've used up half your chakra forcing that demon out. How are we gonna take on an army?"
"we aren't…..we're leaving, today…get your weapons, we're going to Konoha" said Anei.
Okay...so that was chapter 1...SWEET! hey there's a pretty blue button at the bottom of this page...click it and type me what you are thinking at this very moment...even if it isn't about my story ^_^ (but really i would love some reviews!)
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