Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ X ❯ Equation #2 - Unknown Factor ( Chapter 2 )

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Equation #2 - Unknown Factor

By: Melissa Norvell/Revamp

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Nana runs behind a nearby bush, knocking some of the frost off of the branches. It rustles as she conceals herself within the foliage. Slate blue eyes look to me and she speaks, "there are probably people in there. I will have to sneak in."

"I would rather get the job done quickly." We don't need anything tideous. I prefer doing cut and dry mission, myself. Doing things this way was irritating, but I guess I can let the little girl do what she wants this one time. It's not hindering anything too much.

Nana peeks from behind the bush, her sights are plastered on the house. I can see her little expression, laced with determination. There is something about her eyes, the way that they shine. I have seen that look before. It's the look of a ninja, it is the look of a killer.

"So we should just barge in?" The girl asks me the question so innocently, but I don't believe for a second she's not used to this kind of work.

"Either way, they won't be expecting it," that is something I know for a fact. Whoever is in there, is totally unsuspecting. However, if we keep hanging out in this damned bush, they're going to find us.

Nana nods happily, "that's right, I do have an idea, though. Just watch me!" Like a happy child, she darts over to the window, making sure that no one sees her. Her little steps are light on the snow as she effortlessly makes her way over and stands by the corner of it. Looking back at me, then looking through the corner of the window, she nods and launches her small body through the opening.

That is my signal. I dart from the bush and make my way through the snow. It crunches under my feet as I run around the house and advance towards the front door. Drawing back my foot, I deliver a powerful kick to the door and knock it off of its hinges with a mighty crack. The frail piece of wood splinters and cracks as its propelled across the room and smashes into the wall. A bang sounds through the room and the two ninja who are sitting inside of the room wear visages of shock and fear as they lay their sights upon me.

Good. They should be afraid.

Immediately, they get to their feet and desperately feel around for their weapons. Their hands pat their bodies as they try to gather everything they have concealed.

"I don't think so!" I hear Nana yell as she throws her kunai knife and it pierces through one of our opponent's hands. The man screams as blood wells up around the wound and runs down his hand, dripping onto the hardwood floor.

I don't have the time to pay attention to him, as I have my own problems to deal with. There are two other ninja in the room, and those are my opponents. I stare them down, trying to assess them from a suitable distance. They return my glare with hard stares of their own as we stood there, paused in time in a long stare down.

"Well, well, if it isn't the snow demon, Yodomari. I should have figured that we'd meet in this weather," one of them gives me a cocky look through his mask. I guess the little bastard finds me predictable for attacking he and his little friends in the snow. Heh. No matter. He won't have much time to think about that when I'm done with him.

"Where is Hibiki?" I ask him, not hoping for an answer but I want one nonetheless. I'll get one, whether or not it's from them it doesn't matter to me.

"Do you really think I would tell you? Attacking me here definitely isn't a coincidence. You had this planned, didn't you?" He really assumes well. Regardless, if he doesn't talk, I'm going to kill him.

"So, that's what this is about? You decided to come in and hunt us down because we're loyal to Lord Hibiki and you think that you're going to get answers from us? Fat chance. We're not going down without a fight." I'm not sure who is more annoying, the first guy or his little accomplice. They both seem sure that they can beat me. How amusing.

"Actually, the fact that I ran across either of you is a coincidence, like an unknown number in an equation, waiting to be solved. We're just reached the point where one of us goes down by process of elimination," my glare hardens as my voice takes on a deeper, more menacing octave, "this equation only has one solution."

"Too bad you have to be factored out," the ninja says in a cocky tone. I find it funny that he really thinks that he's going to win.

"Your soul is not needed," I say as the two ninja jump into the air. I watch as they quickly act to attack me. One of them takes out their set of shurikens and throws them at me. Does he really think that those little weapons are going to hurt me?

I hold up my large blade and turn it sideways, deflecting them off of it. I hear them clink against my blade as they bounce off, propelling themselves back at the one who threw them. I feel someone behind me and look over my shoulder to see the other ninja, holding a long sword. He tries to decapitate me with it, but I am quick to counter him. I used all of the force my legs possessed and whirled around, smacking him with my weapon. The blade contacts his body and flung him backwards. As I turned around completed my circle, I manage to hit the other ninja as well. The strength of my blow knocks him off of his feet and propels him across the room.

On the other side of the room, the ninja that Nana is fighting finally pulls the knife out of his hand. It's covered in blood and he looks like it pains him to even function. He looks at the girl with malice in his eyes and growls in pain.

"You bitch!" He curses, but doesn't get anything else out as Nana rushes forward and punches him in the stomach, then upper cuts him in the jaw so hard that the force of her blow pops his mouth.

I'm impressed with her. That's quite a powerful punch for a little girl.

'She's tougher than I thought she would be. She's still no ninja, but I can see that she has more potential than just being able to read people.' It's remarkable enough that the little girl can read me like she does, but now she's a good fighter as well? She keeps getting more and more interesting.

I don't have much time to watch her fight and I see one of the ninjas coming at me. It's that one with the damned sword. He takes a swing at me and I duck out of the way. If that guy thinks that I am going to just let him catch me off guard like that then he is dumber than he looks. I feel the blade barely skim over the top of my head, moving my spikes and cutting off a few strands of hair. As I crouch down, I notice that I have an opening and swing my blade.

My blade goes cleanly through his body and the look of shock that registers on his face is priceless. The sickening sound the blade makes as it ripped through his flesh, organs and bone is music to my ears. I see his body separate and his organs spill out onto the floor. I don't have time to marvel at the slaughter as I swiftly turn and block the other ninja's knife. Does he really think that he can touch me with that little weapon?

His small blade clashes with my large one and I smirk beneath my bandages. My blade has already tasted blood. It's time to bathe in some more. My adrenaline pumps and my instinct to eliminate him is strong. I feel it wash over me like a wave of urges that are unstoppable.

I see him back flip and land across the room, putting space between us. I dig the heels of my zori sandals into the wood grain on the floor, creating dents as I launch myself at him and elbow him in the face. The hit is so effective that it knocks him off of his feet and propels him into a wall. I follow after him and sink my elbow further into his chest cavity, pinning him to the wall with the force of my blow. I hear a crack and I'm not sure if it came from the ninja or from the wall I plowed him into.

The ninja's pupils reduce to the size of pin pricks and roll back into his skull and his body goes limp, sliding down the wall and onto the ground. I turn to Nana and I see her staring back at me with those round, dull eyes.

"It looks like our job is done," Nana tells me simply.

"Let's clean up this mess. Don't forget to make sure that they're dead. You don't want them coming back to kill you in the middle of the night." Some ninja just pretended to be dead, and if they aren't deal with properly, they would come back for an ambush. Neither I nor the girl want that happening.

"What?" Nana looks at me, confused.

Do I really have to explain that? I guess I do.

"I want you to see if there's any food in here. I'll dispose of the bodies. You can cook, right?" Never mind, it's better if I just deal with things myself. I'm tired right now and I don't feel like explaining things to her. I figure I might as well take care of the issue while I still have that adrenaline rushing through my veins.

"Of course," she closes her eyes and smiles.

It always kind of gets to me when she does that. She looks so...cute, like a happy child.

"If you find something, prepare it. I'll be back," I tell her. I don't even care what she fixes. She can go dig dormant grubs and beetles from the frozen ground and make a savory bug stew and I would eat it. I'm starving.

On my way out of the door, I grab the guy that I pinned against the wall. Out of everyone I fought, I am sure that he would be the first to come to life, considering I dismembered that other guy. I grab him by the ankle as a pool of blood smears across the floor and I take him outside.

Dragging him out into the snow and quite a way from the quaint, little house, I lay him in the snow and take out my kunai, slitting his throat with it. That should suffice. I take away the threat of presuming they are dead and replace it with the solace I take in making sure they don't get back up. I do the same with the other ninja that Nana faced off with as well as cleaned the organs off of the floor from the guy that I cut in half. It was a dirty job and his corpse spilled blood everywhere. Part of me regrets chopping him in half like that if I knew I had to clean up my mess.

After I remove them all, I make sure that they are in a pile together and stack them on top of each other. Then, I build amount of snow around them and cover them up. That's good enough for now. Besides, we'll be gone by tomorrow or at least in a couple of days. There is no need to worry with it too much. Now, I can get out of the damned snow and warm myself up.

Trudging back to the house, when I reach the front door, a warm smell of something boiling wafts through my bandages and flows into my senses. It's intoxicating. I go inside and walk into the kitchen to find Nana busily preparing vegetables on the counter with a pot of boiling water on the stove.

"What's that smell?" I ask her.

"I'm fixing boiled tofu and potatoes," she explains as she chops a potato in segments. "There are all of the ingredients to make it here: potatoes, atsuage, chicken, soy sauce, minn, sugar, hon dashi, sake and salt. It should be ready in about thirty minutes," she cups the potatoes and slips them into the pot of boiling water, making sure that it didn't burn her as she balances herself on a stool that she found. "You can help me cook if you want, unless you're tired."

"I'll make a fire for the pit," I decide to decline her offer. I'm not that good with cooking. Actually, I'd rather stay away from that chore all together.

"Good idea," the girl chirps, "we can eat around the fire and warm up!"

-X-

The fire is blazing and the flames rise high, dancing in the middle of the room as Nana and I sit around it. Our forms are bathed in a soft, orange glow as the both of us enjoy our food. I still refuse to show this girl my face, so I merely part my bandages and slip the food in through the hole I made. I don't care if it gets on them or not. I'm going to change them in the morning anyway.

I stare at the girl on the other side of the fire. She is wrapped in blankets that she found in different rooms of the house. I can't help but notice that she's watching me shove food into my mouth. What is she staring at? Why does she keep looking at me like that? She must think I'm being ridiculous by not showing her my face, but I have my reasons.

Finally, irritated by her eyes, boring into my form I pause from eating. "You should pay attention to your food and not my face." It was really rude of her to stare at me anyway.

"I'm wondering what your face looks like under that mask," she smiles at me, and in that moment I wish she wasn't so stupidly enamored in that subject.

"I told you, it's none of your business," I shoot at her coldly. Nana needs to get the hint and stop caring about what I look like so damned much.

"That may be true, but that doesn't mean I can't think of what the true face of my master is. I think its fun to wonder about the unknown, it makes it all the more mysterious." Nana likes to think about unconventional things. The less people understand them, the more she's enamored with them. I guess it makes sense. We met that way, didn't we?

"Some secrets should be kept secrets," I tell her. It's a word of caution more than it is anything else.

"If you don't try to unlock someone's secrets, then you can't have a bond with them. Secrets are discovered for a reason, Mr. Yodomari." I hear her tell me as I finish my food and sit my bowl on the ground. That was good food. Nana sure knows how to cook.

"I'm not showing you my face," I glare at her, hoping that she will drop the subject.

"Someday I'll see it," Nana smiles as she continued to eat her food.

A moment of silence passes between us and the only sounds I hear are the crackling of the flames on the wood and the sound of Nana's chop sticks hitting her bowl as she ate her food. She looks in thought for a few moments, cuddling into the blankets as she stared at me in question again.

What did she want from me this time?

"I heard that other ninja call you the demon," she cocks her head. "Why?"

I say nothing.

I thought I told her to stop asking me stupid questions like that.

"Is that a secret, too?" She closes her eyes and smiles again.

Like hell I am dignifying her with an answer. My reputation is nothing that she needs to know about. It's near to me, it's haunting, it was something gained that day when bodies were ripped through like paper. Blood sprayed through the air onto the fresh snow, and into my clothes. Their tortured and blood curdling screams soon fade away. Over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over. They fell one by one.

"I guess it is," Nana settles on the fact that I wasn't going to reveal it to her.

Finally, she gets the hint.

"Should you really be acting to nosey? I just saved your life." This girl already guessed enough about me that's right. She must have some kind of skill to be able to read people so well. I hate the way I feel around her. It's like she can see all of my vulnerabilities, and she's only a child. A dirty, pathetic child that would have froze to death if it wasn't for me.

Suddenly, a wave of nostalgia rams into my senses, and I think about that fateful day that the two of us met. I can still picture it as clear as day. I can still feel the cold snow, falling around me, and I still remember the pathetic little creature she was back then.

"Hey, Mister," the girls speaks to me in a surprisingly healthy voice that seemed all too happy for her predicament. Great, I stick around too long and the little brat wants to talk to me. I could have seen this one coming from a mile away.

"What is it, kid?" I ask, although I don't care what she has to say to me. I'm never going to see her again so I might as well regard her at least.

"I can't help but notice that we are a lot alike," she says it with such gentility and understanding that it makes me want to wretch...and yet, I find myself in a mix of emotions.

The same? How the hell are we the same? What, is she crazy? She is weak and not to mention stupid for staying out in the snow without proper clothes on. Does she honestly think I'll pity her if she thinks that we can identify with each other? She must be joking! Then again, the human side of me wonders if I truly look that pathetic in the eyes of others...If we really are the same do people look at me in that manner?

Why the hell do I care? I know that I'm at least physically stronger than her so if they do look at me that way, I can always kick their ass...or better yet, kill them...

"How the hell am I like you?" I ask, calmly as always but a little more defensively than I had intended.

Then, she utters something that completely stuns me for that moment in time.

"What have the same eyes," the little urchin says it with a smile!

So calmly, so simply, as if it is so obvious...

To this day, that phrase still strikes my soul. Why is it that I am still touched by her words, even now?

The same eyes? Why the hell am I putting thought into this? Why does it strike me so deep? I'm just overreacting.

"Huh?" My sights are redirected to the girl, who is now lying by the fire, curled up in her blankets, asleep. Nana lays on her side, sleeping gently by the fire.

Slowly, as not to wake her, I get up and walk out of the room. Looking through various rooms in the house, gathering a pillow and a spare blanket that had been on a shelf. It is only one blanket, but I can deal with it. On the way back down the hall, I get another pillow for the girl and come back into the room. Gently, I place it under her head. With a small groan, she lightly stirs awake.

"Mr. Yodomari," she grumbles, looking at me with half-lidded eyes.

"You should get rest," I tell her and hope to god she goes back to sleep. "It's best if you sleep by the fire. Why the hell knows what damage you have from the time you stood out there."

"I don't feel numb anymore," Nana tells me through a half-conscious voice.

"That is saying something." I'm actually glad that she doesn't have frostbite. That will only complicate things.

"Mr. Yodomari?"

"What?"

"Did I do well today? Did I fight well?" Oh yeah, she did want to know what I thought of her fighting ability.

"Don't get a big head about it," I tell her coldly. "You still need training. Tomorrow, I am going to get you some better clothes and we'll get down to training." It's bothersome, but if she is to travel with me, she needs to dress properly. I can't have her running around in that rag of a dress that she wore.

"As long as I can be of use to you, that's all that matters," Nana closes her eyes and smiles. She seems so content in just being by my side. I really don't get her. She has every chance to be free, and yet she doesn't take it.

"Just go to sleep. We're going to wake up early tomorrow." I don't want any of her cute business. I really want her to go the fuck to sleep.

"Can I ask you something?"

Why? Just...why?

"Why not? I doubt you'll shut up otherwise."

"Who is Hibiki?"

"Someone I'm going to kill."

"Why?"

"Go to sleep."

For a moment, Nana looked down with a sad expression. "Alright, I guess I'll find out when you go to see him."

Is she really disappointed that I won't tell her who Hibiki is?

"You'll learn, soon enough."

Her sad faces aren't going to get the better of me. I'm not giving in to her.

"Thank you for saving me," she murmurs. "Goodnight, Mr. Yodomari." Soon, the little nosey urchin drifts off to sleep.

Thank god. Now I have some time to myself.

After I make sure that the little brat is asleep, I walk over to my bloodied blade and sit down. Taking the weapon, I begin to clean the blood off with a piece of cloth. Before I sleep tonight, I want to make sure that this sword shines like the rays of the sun.

The demon that lives in the darkness, and as I am plunged into the void of night, I feel this sensation the most. There is blood on my hands, the blood in them, and it is all-consuming, the reason I continue on. After all, monsters feed off of the blood and carnage of others. Their pain, sorrow, grief and anger.

-X-

Morning soon comes, and the rays of the sun beat down on me as I sleep for a while. The rays beat into my face, causing me to stir awake. Sitting up, I wiped the crust of sleep from their corners and looked across the fire pit at the still slumbering girl. I glance to the corner of the room to see my blade, standing against the wall. I am pleased with the job that I did, and the rays made the metal shimmer and shine.

Then my eyes go to the bloody rag below it. Quickly, I take my eyes away as I look back to Nana, who is still curled up in her blankets. Lifting myself up off of the ground, I stretch and yawn, then walk down the hall into the bathroom.

A shower seems nice.

I enter the bathroom and lock the door behind me. Like hell I am letting that girl see my true identity, much less see me totally exposed before her. I remove my bandages, and take off my clothes, letting them hit the floor as I turned on the water for the shower. The bathroom was soon flooded in a white, warm smoke from the hot water, contrasting with the cold air in the house.

Stepping in, the beads of water run down my body. It feels soothing against my tanned skin. I nearly want to go to sleep again. Looking down, I watch the blood-diluted water swirl around and go down the drain at my feet.

Finally, I am alone and away from Nana and her constant questioning. I sigh to myself in irritation just thinking about that girl.

Sometimes, I have to remember the little shit is only twelve years old. Then again...things were a lot different when I was a kid.

I have to plot my next move from here on out. Hibiki is going to know that I've slaughtered some of his men. I know that he has his eyes on me. I'm going to have to make sure this kid doesn't get in my way.

At least she isn't completely defenseless. She held her own against that enemy ninja with no problem. It's like she's had some kind of training beforehand. She doesn't have a last name, or rather she abandon it...What the hell am I doing, anyway? I told her not to try and figure me out and there I go, thinking about her life.

Reaching down, I turn off the water and step out. The warm fog kisses my body as I dry off and put my clothes back on, wrapping up my face. I walk out of the bathroom and into the living room to see that Nana has the fire blazing again, and the bed sheets folded. The pillows lay on top of them, stacked nearly in the corner.

I can smell the faint scent of food cooking and I walk into the kitchen to see Nana, turning from her current task as she smiles brightly and tells me good morning. She announces that she's making breakfast.

"After you do that, bathe and I'll get those chains off of you. Today, we're going to get you something that doesn't look like vegetables resided in it and I'm going to put you through some training." When I think about it, we do have a lot to do today. It mostly has to do with her, but I can't really avoid it.

This damn kid is consuming my life.

Nana's face lit up in a brilliant smile. "You mean it? I can have new clothes, and I don't have to wear chains? Can I buy a nice weapon too, Mr. Yodomari? I would love it if you taught me how to use one."

This kid acts like she's never had new clothes before. Then again, when I think about it, she probably hasn't. This is probably a new experience for her.

Wait...are you kidding? She actually wants to use a weapon other than those knives? This kid just keeps delivering reactions I would never expect. What the hell kind of twelve year old is this?

"I'm not going to make you any promises," I tell her. "Remember, we can't stay in one place too long."

"As long as I can be by your side, then there is nowhere I'd rather be. I want to learn all of your secrets, and maybe you can help me as well," Nana is content with my answer, and still as determined as ever to find out about me.

I need to break her of that habit.

...To Be Continued