“What’s going on over there?” Tamiko wondered aloud.
“It is of no concern to us,” Shitoro said before being shushed by Tamiko.
Kisaki couldn’t understand what the group was saying, but the voices of the six were rising in pitch. She didn’t need to grasp their meaning to know that they sounded angry.
She remembered the group who had teased her upon her arrival on Earth, how they’d pushed her into the water. Those had been mere children, smaller than her, and easily chased off by a few words from Tamiko. These males were larger, older, and they seemed far more aggressive. It didn’t appear to her as if mischief was all they had in mind. She watched as several balled their fists against the lone male. He had light brown hair, perhaps a shade darker than her own. Though as tall as the rest, he was lean where they were stocky. He held up his hands in a placating manner to the others, but Kisaki instinctively sensed that wouldn’t do him any good.
The largest of the group, a pale, portly teen with hair as dark as Tamiko’s but much shorter and greasier looking, stepped forward and grabbed him by the jacket. He dragged the lone male between two buildings, out of their line of sight. A moment later, the other five followed.
“Come on. We need to help him.”
“Help him?” Tamiko asked. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Kisaki said, starting off in the direction she’d seen them go.
Behind her, she could hear Shitoro quietly pleading that they should leave well enough alone, but she ignored him. That boy appeared to be in trouble, far more than she had been. Though she doubted her harassers would have done much more than make fun of her, Tamiko had arrived and chased them off nevertheless. Though she wasn’t a warrior, her actions had been those of a hero.
If her friend could do it, then so could Kisaki. She now knew she was half human, perhaps descended from the fine warriors of the past she’d read about. If so, then that same blood flowed through her veins. It was time to test her own mettle and do for this boy what her friend had done for her.
As Kisaki closed the distance to the alley, she heard the voices of the group again, still arguing angrily.
At first, it was just indistinct chatter, but then, as before, she was amazed to discover that the words quickly started to make sense.
“I ... too. I ... doing ... job.”
“...give a damn ... teeth.”
“Get him! ... one for me.”
“Come on, guys. I didn’t...”
“Shut up, asshole. You ... me out for shoplifting. Do you know what my old man did to me?”
“I work there. I can’t just ... oof!”
Kisaki sped up her pace, Tamiko and Shitoro still hot on her tail. Though she couldn’t be certain, it had sounded like someone had been struck.
“Hold him up. Time to teach this loser that snitches really do get stitches.”
Kisaki rounded the corner and saw she’d been right. The brown-haired male the others had been harassing was down on one knee, holding his stomach. Two others flanked him and were trying to drag him back up to his feet. Two more stood in front alongside the large male she assumed to be the one who’d made the attack.
A sixth, a young man with long hair pulled back into a ponytail, stood near the end of the alley she’d just turned down. When he saw her, he stepped forward angrily. “There ain’t nothing to see here. Get moving!”
Kisaki decided to test whether her newfound understanding of this language affected her tongue as well as her ears. “Leave him alone.”
“I said get out of here, unless you want some of the same.”
“Kisaki,” Tamiko warned from behind her.
“What’s going on there?” the large one, perhaps their leader, asked from further in.
“We’ve got an audience.”
“Get rid of them!”
“Help me!” the brown-haired boy pleaded. “Call the...”
He was again struck by the large one, a blow to his midsection that put him back on the ground.
Kisaki had seen enough. She made to step past the one who was trying to block her, but he caught her by the arm and shoved her away.
“Lady Kisaki!” Shitoro cried from behind her.
Kisaki stumbled back a few steps before being caught by Tamiko. She quickly nodded thanks to her friend.
“We need to get out of here,” Tamiko hissed. “We have to...”
“What the hell?” It was the boy who stood guard. He was staring down at Shitoro, his eyes wide.
Kisaki decided to use the distraction to her benefit. She pushed off Tamiko and raced forward, catching the guard with her shoulder and knocking him to the side.
She knew what she was doing was reckless, potentially dangerous, but she’d seen the good in these people through her friend. If there was one human like her friend, then there were others. Tamiko had taken a chance on her. Now it was her turn to even the scales by doing the same ... or attempting to anyway.
One of the boys standing alongside the large male moved forward to intercept her, blocking her way with his superior size. “This isn’t any of your business, bitch.” He slapped a fist into his open palm. “I don’t know you, so get lost before I’m forced to introduce myself.”
“I am making it ... my business.”
“Yo, Robbie, you hear this? Egg Roll here is making it her business.”
“Egg Roll?” Kisaki asked, confused.
“Hey!” a voice from behind her called, the ponytailed one. “I think this cat can talk.”
Kisaki said a silent prayer that for once Shitoro let his ego go and remained silent. She had a feeling this group was going to be even worse trouble for them if they managed to stand out more than they already did.
“What?” the big one, Robbie, asked, ceasing his assault for the moment.
The one blocking Kisaki let out a laugh. “I think Jack’s holding out. Been smoking some of the good shit without us.”
“He better not be.”
“Yeah, man. Say, what do you want me to do with Sum Dum Fuk here?”
“Do you really need me to tell you what to do with a woman?”
The comment caused the others to stop and laugh. Kisaki had just barely begun to understand some of Tamiko’s colloquialisms, much less the ones from this new land. However, she wasn’t a stupid girl by any means. It was painfully obvious that the boy named Robbie had just insulted the one trying to block her.
Perhaps it would cause him to rethink his allegiance.
He stepped forward and gave Kisaki a shove.
Perhaps not.
She landed on her backside on the hard ground, unhurt save for her pride.
“Kisaki!”
“Back off unless you want some, too,” the pony-tailed one warned Tamiko from somewhere behind her. “And take your freak-ass cat with you.”
Tamiko was putting herself in danger for her once again. This was not how Kisaki had envisioned things. She felt ashamed that in trying to help, all she’d managed to do was get knocked down again, same as the last time she’d faced a group of adversaries.
There came a stab of heat from her side. The quill again! It almost seemed to sense her mood when she was in trouble. She briefly wondered what would happen if she pulled it out. After all, Shitoro had claimed it was dangerous.
Kisaki didn’t want to hurt anyone, but perhaps she could use it to scare them off. That seemed a viable strategy to her.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled it forth, imagining it as the sword she’d seen hanging over her mother’s chair.
Climbing back to her feet, she held it out before her. “Behold, mortal, the power of...”
The sword was still merely a feathered quill in her hands. Nothing more.
“Hey, Robbie. Bitch thinks she’s gonna fly away. Drop that thing!” he said, laughing as he slapped it from her hand. “Don’t you know seagulls have germs?”
Kisaki watched in shock
as it dropped lightly to the ground, landing in a puddle. Anger and outrage flooded her senses, and she stepped in close to the man. “That belongs to my mother.”
“Oh? Your mama gave you a feather?” he replied. “Mine just gave me this.” He backhanded Kisaki across the face with an audible crack.
20
Kisaki’s head rocked to the side from the blow and she tasted blood.
She staggered back several steps but managed not to fall.
All at once, the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. Pain from the hit, the coppery taste of her own blood, her friend screaming her name, and the huffing laughter of the human who had dared lay a hand upon her – all of it happening simultaneously.
It was the first time Kisaki had ever been struck. She’d often read about such punishments, and much worse, in her studies, but had never experienced it herself. She’d expected it to hurt, and it did. What she didn’t expect, however, was the cold logic that descended upon her mind, nor how the world seemed to grey out around her.
He didn’t hit me that hard, did he?
Before her eyes, the world seemed to change. The sounds around her faded away and she was suddenly no longer in an alleyway. Instead, she stood in a large room. A man was there with her. He was wearing drab green clothes and seemed to be yelling at her for some reason. For a moment, she feared that she’d somehow accidentally activated her last crystal, abandoning the brown-haired boy as well as Tamiko and Shitoro. But then she realized something was wrong about what she was seeing. The man’s lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear his words. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything.
Her body raced forward, seemingly with a mind all its own. Kisaki could only watch as her fist shot out, but it was all wrong. The hand and arm attached to her was much larger and coarser than her own.
None of this mattered to the yelling man, though. He grabbed hold of her and then she was airborne, flying over his shoulder to land roughly on the wooden floor where she...
Just as quickly as the vision had come, it faded away and Kisaki was back where she’d been, tasting her own blood as color returned to the world and sounds started up again.
The world was still moving way too slowly, but that cold logic in her mind demanded that she use the time to study the foes around her. She became acutely aware of everything about them – their size, their weight, the way they moved, how quickly they did so. All of it registered in her senses within the space of a split second, locking itself into her memory with perfect clarity as if she’d spent months, maybe years, studying nothing but these humans.
With that clarity came understanding. She realized how sloppy the attack against her had been. It was a miracle she’d been struck at all, probably more a result of her outrage than any real attempt on his part. If anything, she didn’t feel anger against him so much as embarrassment for herself. Such a blow was easily countered. Everything that these men...
No. Warriors were men. These were boys, peasants, children – warriors in their minds only.
It was time to teach them the error of their ways.
Time sped up again to its normal pace, but still that cold logic remained. She stepped forward again. The male who slapped her saw her coming. He looked surprised for a moment before covering it up with a veneer of arrogance.
“Want some more, bitch? Good, because I’m serving it up all day.”
This time, he balled his fists, but it didn’t matter. Kisaki somehow understood what he was going to do, perhaps even before he did.
She raised an arm and easily blocked the punch. Her attacker’s eyes opened wide in surprise. Then, just as quickly, she threw a blow of her own, an open-handed shot to his throat. It caught him dead on, as she knew it would, and he doubled over, gasping for breath.
As he did, she brought a knee up into his jaw. She heard teeth crack and then he dropped to the ground. Unlike when he’d shoved her, though, it didn’t appear he would be getting back to his feet nearly as quickly.
Kisaki had barely a moment to be amazed at what she’d done. She’d never been allowed to study fighting or weaponry, no matter how much she had begged. Her mother had forbidden it, and Shitoro wasn’t the type to go against her wishes.
But then the moment was over, as the other boy next to Robbie rushed at her. This one was short, but thickly built. He moved as one who knew what he was doing. Not a warrior, but perhaps one in training.
None of that mattered. Kisaki analyzed his moves in the time it took him to pass Robbie and came up with a counter strategy.
She feinted to the right, but he seemed to anticipate that, which was precisely what she expected him to do. She cut hard left, sidestepping him. As he passed by, she shoved him from behind, using his own momentum to propel him into a pile of refuse along the side of the alleyway.
Rough hands grabbed her from behind in a bear hug, lifting her from the ground. Blast! She’d forgotten about the pony-tailed one, Jack. Perhaps sensing she was a greater threat than her friends, he’d come up from behind her unawares as she battled the other two.
“The hell?” he cried. “You some kind of ninja?”
Kisaki allowed herself the ghost of a smile. Ninja had been mentioned in her studies. They were said to be masters of stealth and combat arts. It was something she’d never considered herself to be, but she was currently too distracted to disagree with him at that moment. Instead, as way of response, she threw her head back, catching him on the nose with a satisfying crunch.
He screamed and let go, allowing her to throw a kick back into his leg, which dropped him to one knee.
She immediately realized that these three had been little more than the warmup. The real fight lay before her. Robbie and his two remaining friends had disengaged from the brown-haired boy. She now had their undivided attention. The first two, mere minions, wore uncertain looks upon their faces. Their leader Robbie, however, looked sure of himself, a fact attested to by his wide grin.
He had a confidence about him that suggested he didn’t expect to lose. Robbie had the look of one who was used to having the advantage. Indeed, he was larger than most of the humans she’d met, including fully grown males such as Mr. Yoshida. For all intents and purposes, Kisaki should have been terrified of him. But she wasn’t. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but whatever it was, she reveled in it.
“Leave now and you may go unmolested,” she said to the three still standing. She didn’t expect them to heed her offer. Robbie in particular didn’t appear inclined to parley. However, it gave Kisaki a moment to reach out with her senses, take stock of the situation.
Of the three she’d dealt with already, two appeared to have the fight taken out of them. The third, however, was stirring from the pile of trash she’d sent him into. He was likely to try his luck again.
Four against one. It seemed insurmountable odds, but at the same time did not. Something inside of her had changed. The question was: what?
Alas, it did not appear that answers were forthcoming at the moment.
“You may think you’re hot shit with that karate crap,” Robbie said, smiling a gap-toothed grin. He reminded her of the apes that Shitoro kept comparing Tamiko to. “If you’d walked away earlier, I’d have let you go. But then you had to go and rough up some of my boys. I can’t let that stand.” He turned to the two on either side of him. “What say we send her ass to the hospital with a side of rice?”
The uncertainty left their eyes, no doubt inspired by their leader’s confidence.
“She’s kinda cute,” the one on the left said. He was second in size only to Robbie, with close-cropped light hair and a bent nose, as if it had been broken before and set badly. “I might want a piece of that.”
“Help yourself,” Robbie said. “I ain’t never been one for Chinese takeout myself. I’m more of a meat and potatoes kind of man.”
His friends chuckled and one cracked his knuckles, no doubt meant as a means of intimidation.
/>
It didn’t work.
Kisaki hadn’t set out to hurt anyone this day. All she really wanted to do was make some new friends and create some good memories for when her unending confinement began again. The cold logic that still gripped her said otherwise, though. She now found herself eager for combat.
She recognized it for what it was: bloodlust, something she hadn’t thought herself capable of.
It seemed this day was full of surprises.
♦ ♦ ♦
Movement registered behind Kisaki – the one in the garbage pile. Even if it hadn’t, she would have smelled him coming. Robbie's words had been a ploy, a means to ensure he had as much of an advantage as he could.
That’s when she realized his confident smile was a sham. She was smaller and thinner than any of them. In human terms, she shouldn’t have been considered a threat. But Robbie was a coward inside – someone who was only brave in the face of certain victory. He’d been attempting to gain an advantage over her but had instead given it away.
“Kisaki, look out!”
Tamiko’s warning was welcome but unnecessary.
The two minions charged her from the front while the short, stocky one did the same from her rear, hoping to catch her in the middle and end this quickly.
Kisaki spared them a quick smile of her own before kicking off with her feet.
Barely believing what she was doing, she rolled backward over the one charging from her flank, his shoulder down as he tried to tackle her.
She landed nimbly behind him, the only discomfort being whatever garbage had rubbed off on her from the maneuver. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said of him or his friends. Neither side could arrest their momentum in time and the three of them collided.
It was a solid hit, but not a battle-ending one. At best, the three were slightly staggered. So she stepped in to remedy that.
It was almost as if she were a voyeur inside of her own body – able to observe, think, and make suggestions while her limbs acted of their own accord. Somehow the blow to her face had woken something within her – a creature of instinct, warrior instinct.
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