The Oncoming Storm - D. Brooks

One

The Fire Ninja

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Ellie Hanson liked to pretend she was just your average 20 something year old at college. The kind of girl who went out on Friday nights and partied only to repeat it on Saturday and wake with a killer hangover that made you promise 'never again' only to then repeat the cycle the next week. Every single time. And sure there were certain things about her which were normal for the average college student, she was always behind in her work no matter how hard she tried to stay on top of it, she was always at least one class behind. She left all her assignments until the last moment and had to spend hours working until very close to the deadline working on it. But then there was other things that wasn't so common for her.

Like the fact that her activities outside of college included attending a Ninja Academy she had been training in since she was a little girl. Or the fact that her, not so twin, twin sister also attended along with her other two friends. That most of her friendship group were actually all outside of college none of them having attended and all had jobs whilst she was in education. 

Or perhaps it was due to the fact that the Ninja Academy was super secret in terms of location. The only way her parents had agreed to it was because they were kept in the dark about many of its aspects. This academy did not exist on any maps, never attended any local competitions and there was no such thing as a belt system so the parents could never have to come to see their children pass a grade. 

But Ellie had come to love it more than anything else she did in her life. If college got too hard she would try to sneak into the academy for extra lessons. She supposed she was lucky that they could always accommodate her requests, even if that meant sometimes she had to do one to one sessions with her and Sensei Morai or even the son of the school's other Sensei, Cam Wantanabe. Law was her passion, Ellie wanted to specialise in family law helping children who were like she had once been, caught in the system. She wanted to help those in foster care be reunified with their parents when the time was right, she wanted to help children find their forever homes and legally ensure it would happen. But Ninja school would be forever something she cherished and would probably never give up. It had taught her discipline, respect and most importantly how to value herself. It helped her find herself when she wasn't sure who she was, helped her adjust to becoming Elizabeth Hanson, finding who this new person was. 

Therefore, on the day when her parents had basically begged Ellie to go with her sister to class for once, hoping that by Ellie going along also that her sister would stop being late to class so frequently, Ellie decided she might as well. Her college class finished at 2:15 plenty of time for her to head to class considering it started at 3:30 and was about 20 minutes outside of Blue Bay Harbour. Her sister had given her a meeting spot, the same one she usually met the rest of their friends at, and the time she was meant to meet them 3pm. This gave Ellie more than enough time to switch out of the business casual clothes she had to wear for the mock court case they had been running that morning and into something a little easier to pull off. 

At 2:50pm Ellie stood waiting for her sister to turn up. She was aware Tori had been at the beach for most of the day considering the forecast had been more than ideal for surfing. She didn't blame her sister for wanting to head out and catch the waves in the good weather whilst she had the chance. Though as she had been waiting there for 15 minutes and now her sister was late, Ellie was starting to feel a little anxious. She hadn't been late for a class for nearly a year now, her sessions with Sensei Morai were always started a little before the other students and therefore she normally took herself there earlier. But today she had been told to join the class with the rest of the other branches of students hence the ability to join her sister. If she was able to be on time like ever.