Differing Paths...
Chapter Six
The furthest back Sakaki could remember was the explanation of the training when she was seven. Her father, Satou, sat her down in their cabin on the back porch. He looked her straight in the eye, and said to her, "You know how you asked me a year or two, if we would ever be like the heroes in stories?". She gave him a wide grin and a bright "Yes!". "Good,", he replied, with a dry look on his face, a mixture of humor and regret, "because, starting today, you are the hero.". That day, the training began. Her parents had conditioned her all her life for this very experience, in ingenious methods of subconcious influence. They mainly did this through stories. One such story was about the wolf, who was the greatest hunter in the entire forest, but was chaotic and had no control over his emotions. One day, the fox decided to get the largest portion of the food for himself, and so he planned exactly how he would do it, judging by where the rabbits ran every day, and taking into account the wolf's actions. The wolf ran in unprepared, and the fox caught the rabbits. The wolf, in the rage of being unable to eat that day like the fox had so many times before him, swore revenge upon the fox. The fox made another plan, and the wolf's revenge was his own downfall. They taught her the importance of keeping oneself seperate from their emotions, and the importance of rolling with whatever happened. Her father had her training planned from the beginning. It was the once-a-generation training method used by each family of the "Neko-Dorobou-Society", as they called it. The regiment was spending all day, from sunrise to sunset, training. The first day of this was agonizing for Sakaki, still incredibly small, going through strength training and blade practice. Over the years, Sakaki's father had made her strong and agile, and her mother had made her a master of everything from the rapier to the claymore. They pressured her into developing her own style, as each previous member to go through the progress had. When she turned ten, the Second Program began. On the first day of the Second Program, Satou revealed that the woman Sakaki thought was her mother, Yoko, was merely a weapons expert he had brought along to help in the training process, and that he had never really known her mother. He proceeded to reveal every other secret he could tell to scar a child over the course of weeks, ending in his intention to marry Yoko, despite his only use for doing so would be the continued training. Sakaki fell into a severe depression shortly afterwards, mostly from pure overwhelming emotion over time. The tradition amond the clan was to send the child to another of the three families. They traded her to another program, where she learned martial arts, and was subjected to any and all things to let go of her emotions. When she was younger, Satou realized that she had a 'feeling' personality, and was the type who would likely end up being hyperactive without something bringing her down to reality. No one knows what happened to Sakaki at the Second Program with her new master. Fortunately, whatever unspoken horrors took place there, they managed to turn her into the cold paragon of efficiency they always wanted her to be, and a skilled athlete, though she still hadn't developed her own style as of yet. At the age of fifteen, they decided it was alright to have her communicate with the outside world. She went through a crash-course lesson in social skills, and what she would tell people if they asked certain questions, specifically about her past. She entered high school, and remained incredibly shy to prevent having to use her much-too-new skills. She quickly developed one thing that had slipped past her repression: cats. Somehow, the creatures had managed to slip by her air-tight psychological protection. Quickly, she began obsessing over them, and with little capability of loving anything else, why wouldn't she? Satou noticed this, and soon after seeing her newly found obsession, adopted tens of cats, had them declawed, angered them, and set them out into the streets of the neighborhood they were in, hoping to disarm this newfound interest. However, between an incident involving a wild cat in Okinawa, as well as her ever-expanding connection to her friends, she learned to enjoy things again. She began veterinary college, hoping not to get caught up in the family trade. One night, however, that plan was broken. She entered her apartment, looked in, and found a hooded figure, wearing the cloak of the clan. "What's a hero wasting her time in college for? She should be living a life of adventure.". The wildcat, still fairly small, though beginning to show his feral side, growled at the figure. "Father...", Sakaki whispered, "I hope this isn't...". The hooded figure stepped forward, the light exposing his mouth as he wore a smirk, "...Another program.". Sakaki went into her closet, and drew her chosen weapon, a wakizashi. "Well,", the hooded figure said, "it's nice you've at least selected a weapon. But this is the final stage.". He drew a gun on her. "I had to do it, too. Age twenty, the style-test. The mark of a true thief is skill in an impossible situation. I'll give you ten seconds to work out a way to do it. At ten, I shoot, and you draw.". Sakaki, unaware that something like this would happen, stood there and stared at the barrel of the gun. Was this really the end? She recalled one of her classes, about the muscle system of the cat, and the way it extends its legs into a pounce. The pressure points and muscles involved, a similar structure to a small muscle point in the thigh of the human anatomy, which she had learned during her thorough analysis of the human weak points in combat training. "Nine...", Satou whispered, his eyes tearing slightly, "Ten!", he shouted. She moved forward with speed and grace previously unseen by human eyes, unsheathing her blade at an equally ridiculous pace. In a single leaping movement, her father's arm was cut off from the elbow. He fell to the ground, as blood leaked out of the wound like melted ice from a plastic bag. Sakaki stood above him, entirely indifferent, though shocked at her own near-death. "Good...", he said. He could see the second program had done its job, and that she had developed her own style. She was going to be the best they'd ever seen. More blood sprayed out, and Sakaki continued watching as her father bled out. "...", he murmured a breath, before falling over, dead. Mayaa licked up some of the blood, Sakaki cracked a smile, and petted the cat's head. At that moment, she realized the society's role, and her role in it. That night, planning began.