Author Note: Since I am not even fluent in Japanese (I only know a handful of words and phrases to get by), I will be using the old technique of ' ' to show when characters are speaking in Japanese. I'm sorry that I cannot provide actually conversation pieces in Japanese, but I think this will work quite nicely so that way I don't have to include a translation piece at the end of the chapter later on. If anyone wants to translate the conversation pieces and send them to me, by all means please feel free to do so!
Chapter Eight
Arrancar
"We fear that which we cannot see." - Manga tagline, Bleach
Casey Jones sat staring at the computer screen before him with images of ancient samurai helmets and sporadic pieces of text notes that outlined the brief history and detail of the artifacts. He seemed to be rather focused on the web page, eyes glancing over the images and words a few times before he seemed to pause, sit back in his chair, inhale a breath through his nose, exhale and turn to the teen girl sitting at his immediate right with a rather large bowl of ramen in her hands that of which half had disappeared in a manner of minutes.
"I don't get it." His tone of voice was rather placid, as was the look he bore while staring at the girl who had suddenly become apart of the small strange crowd he himself was involved with. "And secondly, how can you eat so much of that stuff and not get sick?" Casey eyed the crimped noodles swimming about in a pool of dark brown broth that smelled like it could have been some sort of beef stock. He had practically lived off that stuff for a better part of his younger years, and now he almost detested the very sight of the"soup".
Slurping up the trail of noodles that she had hooked with a set of wooden chopsticks she had fished out from a drawer in the kitchen, Sara lifted a brow as she stared at the computer screen. "This is that helmet I was telling you about. The one in Yoshitsune-san's office." Sara pointed at the image of a rather diabolic looking helmet made of leather and iron, the half-face mask was a bright orange red and grinned horribly with jutting ivory teeth. "It belonged to Minamoto no Yoshitsune. He was general of the Minamoto clan during the late Heian Period and participated in the Genpei War." After she finished her little explanation, to which Casey nodded through as he tried to stake a decent hold on the information she was giving him, Sara suddenly jabbed her chopsticks out at Casey while her eyes stayed on the computer screen. "I've been eating ramen all my life, so back off."
While the suddenly gesture in his direction caught him off-guard momentarily and had him near cross-eyed to stare at the broth laced ends, Casey's hands shot up in a sign of submission. "Yeah, hey, no problem." He batted the chopsticks down out of his face and quirked a rather amused look on his face. "You're almost as defense over ramen as Mikey is over pizza."
Shrugging in response to the comment, Sara pinched another clump of the noodles and slurped them up quickly while reaching out with her chopsticks hand to click the computer mouse on the back button to access another photo of the helmet they had been investigating for the passed hour now. "I don't like this Yoshitsune-san one bit." She mumbled over her food while the next photo popped up on the screen.
"Why do you say that?" Casey lifted a curious brow as he watched Sara's expression narrow on the screen, his own gaze soon returning to see this new angle of the same helmet. "I mean other than what you've already told me." The flat glare that he was the target of caused the once former hockey player turned nighttime vigilante to return that same glare. "Come on kid you think I'm blind? I've been dealing with four teenagers long before you showed up, so I know when there's something else bugging someone your age. Spill it. Now."
Sara continued her glare for a bit longer before finally superseding her position and set aside the nearly empty bowl of ramen on the computer desk. Breathing a quiet exhale through her nose, Sara sat back in her chair. "It's the fact that he had this look in his eyes that said he didn't believe was anything smart enough to know about folklore and history." Sara's mouth pulled down in frown as she looked over at Casey.
For a moment Casey held a rather thoughtful look on his face before reaching out and ruffling Sara's hair that was hanging loose down her back for once. "Don't let it bug you kiddo. Besides, what the hell does that guy know about you anyways?" He grinned while winking at her. "It's his fault for judging you without getting to know just how much of an encyclopedia you are." With that said he gently cuffed the side of her jaw as playful gesture to get a smile out on her face.
It worked. The right corner of her mouth tugged upwards almost immediately as she batted his hand away. "Yeah, yeah." Her attention returned forward to the computer screen, eyes narrowing suddenly as she stared at the side view of the helmet. There was gold inscribed kanji running along the cheek guard, but the image had not been uploaded in a big enough file for her to zoom in for a closer inspection. I can't read what it says. She leaned forward a bit closer, eyes almost squinting now to pick up anything familiar to her.
Unfortunately the sudden shout of a cellphone going off caused the teen to jump alongside the adult who started looking around like mad to find said object of noise making. Watching Casey scramble about for a bit, Sara finally rolled her eyes and reached across the computer desk to his side and moved a few folders off to the side, exposing the cellphone that was lit up with the flashing LCD screen and thrummed across the solid surface with each passing note. Picking the phone up, Sara merely glanced at the screen before flipping it open.
"Hey April." Sara greeted the caller on the other end of the line and smirked at Casey as he spun about with a hanging jaw and pointing finger. "Yeah he's here, hold on a minute." Holding the phone out to the still gawking adult, she lifted a brow.
"You cheated with the ninja thing again." Casey accused while swiping the phone out of her grasp.
"Yeah, it totally took sixteen years of training to find a cellphone." Sara gave him an even look as she stood up from her seat and headed off towards the kitchen with her empty bowl in hand. It's getting a bit late, guess I better head home soon. She sighed after seeing the bright green digits on the stove clock. It's was pushing eight o'clock, and although her parents were pushy about knowing where she was at all times, Sara knew her curfew was only two more hours away from now.
Running a hand through his hair, Casey glanced over at the kitchen where he could see Sara moving around through the open aired space that that been purposely cut out to give view from either side. "Yeah, she was showing me the helmet and telling me about that Yoshitsune guy. You still gonna try and follow through with his request?"
"I'm not sure. If Sara says those scrolls are locked up in the Fushimi Inari-taisha, I really can't just trounce right on in through the front door and ask for them. Not only would that get myself in trouble with the Haruno Clan, but I can only imagine what could happen for Sara. She's not supposed to reveal that kind of information to outsiders."
"Right. So then you're gonna tell this guy no then, right?" Casey slowly turned himself about in the computer chair. "I mean you guys have another artifact to look for as well."
"We do, but I haven't told Sara what it is yet. I'll do a bit of research on my own before I say anything to her. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about all of this Casey." April's voice wavered a bit as she spoke.
Casey exhaled a sigh and glanced off to his left as he noticed that someone was standing there. Glancing up he met Sara's grey-eyed gaze briefly before he nodded in response to the unspoken statement he knew she was going to say as soon as he got off the phone. "Well if you feel that way babe, maybe you should stop now." Words were exchanged from the other end of the line from April in response, and after assuring her that they would talk when she got home, Casey said a quick good-bye and hung up. "Let me guess," he spun his chair about to face Sara a bit better, "Time to head home?" He lifted a brow at her while offering a rather teasing smirk at the fact that she had a curfew to follow.
"Eh-he, yeah." Sara chuckled sheepishly while scratching at the back of her head.
The ride to her parent's apartment was only around twenty minutes, give or take all the stopping they seemed to have done thanks to an unusual amount of red lights, but the adult and teen pair held a conversation the whole time that covered bits and pieces of both their lives up till now. While Casey and Sara had met a few days after the initial meeting of the turtle brothers and April almost a month ago now, the two were still getting to know one another but were catching up quickly. And as such, Casey became one of the few adults in Sara's life that she actually called a friend.
Pulling up in front of the apartment complex at around a quarter till nine, Casey suddenly felt a bit uneasy as he got from his side of the van. It was incredibly quiet out on the streets, more so than what was the norm for a night in New York. There seemed to be absence of all noise and even motion aside from the heavy thunk of the passenger side door closing. Out of nowhere an involuntary shudder vibrated through his body. Rubbing his arms quickly, even though they were beneath the long sleeves of his shirt, Casey glanced about the street quickly, his eyes soon alighting upon a rather odd sort of fog that seemed to curling down the street. A misty maze began to settle in about the air. That can't be good.
Sara stepped out from around the front of the van, a curious look on her face as she wondered what had Casey lingering so long. Her mouth opened as if to ask him a question but not a sound was uttered as she noticed the look on his face and the direction of a very concentrated stare. Looking out from the corner of her eye, Sara now also noticed the milky hued mist that was creeping in like the fog roll over the San Francisco bay waters. It was nearing winter, but this kind of weather activity was still long off. Her eyes widened a moment as something struck her train of thought, a glint off in the distance that she had caught sight of at the last minute.
There was no shouted warning or anything of the like before Casey found that the right side of his body was slammed with the extra weight of a teenage girl who had suddenly sprung his way. Shoved the cold asphalt unceremoniously, Casey let out a heavy grunt as his body took the dual blows. He was used to being hit, shoved, smacked, kicked, and even thrown, but for some reason this felt like a whole experience to him as the sharp tack of a metal object embedding itself within a solid surface of similar material struck out in a harsh cry. Twisting his body about as he felt the departure of her weight, Casey pushed himself up into a halfway seated position while a bit of a scowl started to appear upon his face.
"We got a problem." Sara murmured quietly, her gaze remained fixated on the building mist that was now rushing up like a wave at high tide.
"Warn me next time! I like to at least have some sort of forewarning as to when I'm about to become rather close with street pavement!" Casey hissed while rearranging himself up into a crouched position against the door of his van.
Sara shot a rather quick glare over her shoulder at him. "There wasn't any time!" She hissed back before the sharp whistle of another incoming object had her attention and sent her into a combat roll to get up against the side of the van quickly. Two thin roundedbo-shuriken stabbed into the ground where Sara had been crouched not but two seconds ago. "See!" She pointed at the Japanese weapons that had impaled the asphalt of a New York city street.
Casey stared at the two rather nasty looking tools of ninja trade and gulped. Those things had come in fast, and luckily enough Sara could react just as quickly. The bo-shuriken were dark metal with a deep crimson colored ribbon tail wafting gently in a sudden chill breeze that breathed its way in through the street. "The Foot?"
"Maybe, but I can't fully support that theory with this mist." Sara nodded at the tide that had now fully engulfed them in a near impenetrable arena. The mist was thick and it only allowed two feet of visibility in front of those caught within it. "This is a kirigakure no jutsu; a hidden mist technique that's utilized during assassination missions." Sara's slowly followed a direct path from right to left and back, grey eyes watching for the slightest movement from within the dewy wall while her ears traced through the quiet surrounding them.
"I don't ever remember the foot using fog like this before. Normally it's just those annoying smoke pellets." Casey mumbled while silently cursing himself for leaving his things behind at the apartment, then again he hadn't thought about the prospect of being ambushed outside Sara's home either. "So what do we do then? I mean we can't even see who it is that's trying to sneak up on us."
"We stay low and keep near the van, it's our only source of protection right now. If we keep our backs to it, then it reduces the chance of any one sneaking up on us." Sara replied while her gaze momentarily lifted upwards toward the window of the driver side. Embedded within the metal framing out the glass pane was another bo-shuriken that had been thrown the first time before the mist filled the street. Quickly she reached up and yanked the weapon out of its metal cushion and took only a few seconds to examine it, hoping that whoever had thrown it was vain enough to carve a crest or kanji of some kind into the metal. "Kuso." Sara's eyes widened as they fell upon a scratched out crest etched into the metal.
With a double-take Casey turned his attention on the teen girl at his side with a bit of a confused look on his face. "What did you say?"
Waving him off quickly, Sara flipped the hand held weapon about in order to grip it the proper way as the need to protect one's self become horribly evident.
From within the thick mist dull footsteps began to scrap across the pavement in signal to an approach. Both Casey and Sara tensed up in response to the noise, their bodies moving into positions that held half way between the ready for either defense or offense. Neither on moved any further than that as they listened to the steps grow closer until the they halted almost ten feet in front of them. A spot in the mist seemed to suck in on itself allowing a view to whomever it was that had utilized the jutsu in the first place.
They numbered in eight. Dressed from head to toe in shades of deep purple and scarlet red while a single black body enveloping cloak was swept aside over the left shoulder. Masks bearing no expression or facial feature, save for two narrow angled slits over the eyes, were set over their faces to conceal their identity. They stood in a small tactical formation with one at the very front, separated from the others by only several paces.
Sara's face paled faster than what Casey thought was humanly possible as he caught sight of the stricken look upon her face from the corner of his eye. Her eyes were wide, pupils possibly small at the center of the grey iris, and her mouth drawn into a very small gesture of possibly dropping. The thing that seemed to disturb him the most was the fact that she didn't blink as she kept her gaze trained solely on the figures before them. This isn't good at all.
'What do you want?!' Sara's voice seemed to drop in tone as she spoke to the unmoving and foreign figures in the mist. Her use of Japanese signified to Casey that she at least seemed to know who they might be.
'We have come to take the Great Secret that your clan has made you guardian of.' The lead figure replied back to her questions, an armor-guarded hand lifting to point a finger solely at her. 'Come peacefully jinchuriki, so that your friend may not be harmed.'
Her eyes never once left the figures before her even while the look on her face contorted from momentary anger to sudden surprise. Shaking herself mentally from the fallen stupor she had set herself into, Sara narrowed her eyes upon them. 'Don't mess with me! Who sent you?!'
The other seven figures behind the lead shifted a few steps from one another, creating an arm's length of space between the man on their left. This movement caused a surge of adrenaline to begin pumping its way through Casey. The sound of Sara's voice, the tension he could hear alongside the anger signaled that these guys were not friendly. Even if he was without his normal arsenal of weapons, Casey Jones would be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to protect Sara from these creeps even though he knew this teenager beside him was a trained ninja on par with the turtles.
Sensing Casey's own movements behind her, Sara couldn't spare a glance back over her shoulder after seeing the spread formation the group before them was taking. Her teeth grounded down upon one another beneath her now curled lips, canines showing more profoundly than the others.
'Who we were sent by should not be all to hard for one such as yourself to guess. The Foot attempted an ambush on you, and when it failed we were called in.' The leader dropped the lifted hand to rest alongside the hip holding a knotted scarlet sash tail. 'I will give you one last chance to surrender peacefully and come with us. If you do not accept, we will take you by unnecessary force.'
That seemed to snap the hair trigger that Sara's temper seemed to be hanging by thread upon as he hands flew up before her to hold a crossed seal that two fingers from either hand were needed for. "Kage bunshin!"
Several puffs of smoke from her left side and one on top of the van's hood erupted as Sara fed her chakra into a jutsu that she had used several times over the month already. As the smoke immediately cleared, dopplegangers of Sara's exact image appeared and moved in fight ready positions.
'He did say you were a proficient user in kage techniques, but you cannot win this fight with that alone.' The lead flicked a hand out towards Sara's direction, sending the seven cloaked figures out from behind.
Streaking out like flashes of dark light they came hurtling towards the teen and moonlighting vigilante who was still unarmed. However, they were thrown a rather unexpected curve ball as the teenage girl they sought to take by force hurriedly formed a set of hand seals that almost set them sliding to a halt. Unfortunately for these cloaked beings, their dumbfounded shock would prove to be a near fatal step.
"Katon! Kisoku Hidama no jutsu!" Exhaling a breath she had sucked in during the formation of her hand seals, Sara ignited the spent oxygen with her chakra and sent a fireball the size of a VW beetle tumbling towards her attackers, catching them horribly off-guard.
Although the counter-attack was not foreseen, especially one of such an exploding mass array, the figures were anything but inexperienced as they halted their advance forward quickly enough to spring out of the way of the rolling ball of burning flame. As if in tandem, Sara's dopplergangers sprung from their own positions and jetted forward to engage the cloaked and masked beings in combat. Taking a hidden cue of some sort, the leader of the group inched his body forward in a jerking motion before disappearing like a stretched image that came back into view just feet from Sara's current position, a hand lashing out with three elongated and hooked claws to catch the teen with an injuring blow.
In defense of herself and to keep Casey from taking an unnecessary hit if she jumped out of the way, Sara brought the bo-shuriken she had yanked out of the van door up and used it as a means to stave off the slicing attack. Grunting in response to heavy strike coming down on a eight and a half inch in length piece of metal that was only half a millimeter in diameter, Sara could only thank her attackers begrudgingly for making such a well crafted weapon. Having to use both hands to hold back the claws that were pushing down and coming horridly close to her face, Sara bit back a grimace as the pointed end of the bo-shuriken started to dig into the palm of her hand.
"Casey move!"
Not needing to be told twice as he snapped out of the staled sense of shock from the first fifteen seconds that explode in front of him, Casey scrambled to his feet and darted back towards the rear of the van. There, he yanked the back hatch open quickly and blessed the day he never listened to April when she told him to clean the van as he yanked out a wooden bat and hockey stick that had possibly fallen out of his golf bag of goodies at some point.
With Casey at the rear of the van, Sara shifted the distribution of her weight to the left foot as she kicked up her right while still in a crouch and planted it square in the middle of the masked being's chest. In one smooth motion, Sara used the weight of her attacker and fell backwards, head tilting off to the side enough to miss the sharped claw hooks that pierced the asphalt, and pushed herself into a backwards roll while guiding her planted foot through an extended kick. Lifting the claw wielding figure backwards overhead, Sara rolled forward once the heavy body had been tossed off her and twisted about quickly once on the balls of her feet.
Colliding with the ground and giving off a dull thud, the leader of the masked group rolled sideways and managed to push themselves up into a kneeling position. Shaking their head to regain a sense of balance, the leader was distracted from the at hand task as a heavy blow struck the back of the shoulders, a loud crack echoing through the mist ridden streets.
A deep vibration thrummed through the wooden bat, the polished and waxed wood cracking in fine lines upon contact with the shoulders of the bad guy. Casey's hands felt almost numb from the vibrating like shock that traveled up his arms to the elbow. "Now that's really not good." He muttered while taking in the damage struck upon the bat and the slowly standing dude he had attempted to further put out of commission in aid to Sara. "Definitely not good." He edited his early comment as the figure he had looked to bring down started to turn towards him.
No! Sara felt a sense of panic flood through her at the prospect of Casey being hit with those claws and reacted on the instinct her grandfather and others of the family clan had ground into her at an early age. The quick flick of her wrist sent the bo-shuriken singing through the air straight for the leader, aimed for the front of the right shoulder.
The high pitched ping of metal striking metal rang out as the back swipe of claws connected with the flying bo-shuriken, deflecting the hand held blade elsewhere. Returning attention on to Sara, the masked leader shook a rather disappointed gesture of the head at her. 'How many times must you be told before it gets through to you? Friends are useless distractions that will get you killed in battle.'
For the second time that night, Casey witnessed a look on Sara's face that he soon wouldn't forget. Color that had once returned momentarily during the rush of battle and adrenaline pumping rush, was now completely gone to the point that she looked like a porcelain doll. Her facial expression was akin to the "deer caught in the headlights" stare as something else swam within the depths of her eyes. 'It...can't be...' She could feel her body quiver slightly beneath a building pressure of various mixed emotions that threatened to consume her. Both hands curled slowly into fists at her sides, the nails on her fingers bitting into the soft flesh of her palms, the first injury from bo-shuriken causing a god awful ripple of pain through her.
Confused, Casey stared with a rather valid look that expressed his sense of lost understanding to what was going on. Judging by the look on Sara's face, he could only venture to guess that whatever the leader of the attacking party said had struck a deep nerve. What I wouldn't give to know Japanese right now. However, his thoughts would go elsewhere as he realized the need to scramble out of the way yet again as the masked leader stumbled backwards in a quick recoil.
Sara had lashed out, her fist connecting with the mask that covered the identity of the one who had come looking to take her. The heavy piece of painted armor gave out a hallow echo in response to being struck, a dent centering upon the place of impact that what needed force it would have taken to deal such damage. As the leader stumbled backwards, caught by the sudden blow, they recovered hurriedly in time to dodge another thrown punch that this time promised to take a head completely off the shoulders. Another swing, and another, expertly dodged and avoided. A leg lifted and shot out in a side swiping motion to catch the temple of the one behind the mask, but quickly lifted arm guards blocked the blow and held the teenager still for a moment.
'Too easy.' The voice of the leader was dry, suffering no embarrassment to the first connecting hit taken. 'That look in your eyes, it's not yours now, is it?'
The pupil had since tightened into a small black dot, a darker streak of grey blazing down in a vertical line that cut the light grey with a jagged edge. There was a blood lust behind those eyes that only the leader of the masked group of seven could see at the moment, and beneath that now dented mask, lips pulled into a proud smirk. In a move unseen and hard to even describe of Casey's point of view, Sara pushed with her held right leg and jumped off her left. An awkward twist of the body brought her left leg up and around behind the right as Sara dove into a tuck and roll, heel hooking behind the masked head and yanking down like an extra hand.
In a rough tumble the two hit the ground; the leader slung back towards the other seven who had finally struck down the three dopplegangers that had worked together to stay their advancement, and Sara kicking back up on to her feet with relative easy. As the group moved to rush for her and overtake her with their sheer numbers, they froze immediately at the lifted hand gesture that came from their leader. There was a dull thrum in the air that ripple out and pushed the mist conjured up through the use of chakra. It pulsed with each ragged and hampered breath that Sara inhaled and exhaled in an uneasy rhythm.
To Casey it felt as though someone had cranked up the base in an outfitted truck as it vibrated straight through him in a heavy near smothering manner. Setting a hand upon his chest he stared down for a moment before looking towards Sara with furrowed gaze. The vibration was coming from her, but as soon as he realized the source, his whole body started to waver as if it were being pushed down and squeezed at the same time. It was an oppressing sensation that had the grown man near buckling to his knees as a dark presence seemed to slowly move its way out from somewhere near Sara. "Kid...?" He near wheezed his muttered confusion before sinking to one knee, the wooden bat clattering upon the ground at his side. It was becoming a bit difficult to breathe now.
The group exchanged looks with one another even though their faces were covered by masks, their leader taking a small sliding step back as if to coax them to stand down in response to the unpleasant feeling that ate away the covering mist and inched towards them.
'What is this horrible chakra?' One to the far right voiced aloud the question that the others nodded to in want of an answer.
'It's the Great Secret we came looking for at his request. This is the power of that damn creature of Inari.' The leader sounded as though a loathing detest hung with its words. Hands tightening into fists beneath the cloak that now covered the purple and scarlet garb beneath.
As if on cue to the last sentence end, Sara disappeared like a flickering image cast by a desert mirage, only to reappear a mere two feet before the leader of the group a curled fist pulled back and shooting forward like a spring loaded battering ram. While the intended target had been the leader, a subordinate slid into the way and took the blow that had unfurled fingers hooking into the metal as the victim began to fall backwards in momentum to the heavy punch in the face. As the masked being fell, her hand yanked the secured mask from the face, exposing a half mask beneath that covered the face from the bridge of the nose down. Closed eyes and recognizable male features were all that remained unveiled.
Springing backwards in response to several swiping defense pushes from two others, Sara landed on the balls of her feet near Casey's van, the metal mask crunched partially beneath her grip.
The gargled choke of the one who had taken the hit muffled out from beneath the half mask as his comrades caught him before the strike against unforgiving pavement. The leader made a retreating gesture with a flick of the wrist, and in one explosion of a smoke pellet they were gone, leaving Casey Jones and Sara Reeve upon the streets of the city in a state of subsiding puzzlement and anger.
Regaining his breath, Casey got back up to his feet with a hand still upon his chest as he leaned against the rear of the van, eyes fixated upon the teenager who was staring down at the mask in her hands. What was that?! It was...terrifying...I've never felt that afraid before in my life! "Sara...?"
"I'm sorry Casey." Her head turned to look back over her shoulder, the horrible thrumming that had been coming from her now gone along with that oppressing and vile feeling. Grey eyes now slack with what looked like sorrow and pleading apology. "Were you hurt at all?"
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm fine. But I would like to know who those trick-or-treaters were." An inclined tilt of his head and lifted brow prodded for an immediate answer.
Turning to face him, she lifted the mask enough to hold it level at her waist, the blank face tilted to stare at him and her at the same time. Her eyes fell downcast upon its crumpled body beneath her still dug in hold. "They don't have an official name, but I've seen them before. The Faceless Ones." Her hand clutched even more tightly upon the mask.
