Flower House

Prologue

     A young girl stands before a pile of dead rodents. She's panting heavily, and even her eyelashes have droplets of sweat on them. Too many dead, too many wounded, how will she ever make it out of this war alive? She drags herself over to a large beech tree. The leaves are long gone, cast away to who knows where. The branches stretch like the hands of starving people, begging the gods for mercy. Many townsfolk wonder why that tree, once beautiful and bursting with life, now stands hollow and empty. Airi Ashikaga, member of the second Royal Ishiki Guard division, knows. Of course she does. She's the one who killed it.

     "Never have I seen such remarkable talent, young Airi." A short old woman leans precariously over her, perched in the dead branches of the tree. Her hair is thinning, streaked with white and gray.

     "Thank you, master. It will not be enough, I'm afraid. The front lines of war are our undeniable demise. All I ask is that you let me die fighting for my province." Airi bows her head, the exhaustion weighing on her brow. The old lady leaps nimbly out of the tree, landing with the utmost grace an old woman can jump out of a tree with (surprisingly- a lot) .

     "Now, dear Airi, what did I say about having a better attitude?" The old lady points her staff at Airi.

     "You told me to stop scaring the children in the village," Airi answered, face expressionless. "But with all due respect, I cannot imagine that I am doing anything wrong." The old lady blanks. Usually, glaring at kids when they want to play with you isn't very nice. Especially when you can and would murder a thousand enemy soldiers just to get the best apple from the fruit stand. It doesn't really scream 'Hug Me <3', does it, Airi? The old woman's eye twitches, and she sighs. You can almost see the small cloud of carbon dioxide coming out of her mouth.

     "Not that attitude, you dolt! I mean the one you use to fight with. YOU CAN'T JUST CHARGE INTO BATTLE THINKING YOU'RE GONNA DIE IMMEDIATELY." Airi's face is stoic, even during her master throwing a fit.

     "Of course I could. There are about eleven places an enemy could attack me as I'm getting ready to use Ishiki," Airi lists them off, "Lower calves (that's two), arms (another two), head, chest, neck, upper back, lower back, ankles..." She pauses. Her master is looking at her with a murderous gleam in her eyes. Airi gets up calmly and starts to walk away.

     "HEY! DON'T YOU START IGNORING ME! IT'S NOT GONNA DO YOU ANY WELL IN LIFE." She waves her fist and cane at Airi, following her back to the village.

     Years later, only a few people from that village would ever survive to say they lived in it. Destroyed by war, the Ashikaga family rebuilt another one, closer to the capitol and royal palace. The family grew, and soon took on the surname 'Fujioka'.

     Throughout history, the Fujioka family has served the royal family as Ishiki guards, preventing any harm from meeting them. Ishiki can be used in combat as anything: Defense, offense, a shield, a sword, anything the user would want. Depending on how it's wielded, and who is controlling it, Ishiki can either be a blessing or a curse.

     Using Ishiki- even just maintaining it for a set amount of time- requires life energy. It takes from the surrounding environment, sucking the life out of (at first) smaller beings, then moving on to larger, more plentiful sources. The most skilled users of Ishiki are able to destroy whole forests using only a spider's life potentia. Ishiki users are not all-powerful, though. They cannot just walk into battle and drain everyone of their life potential- armies will all have at least one master, trained to repel the use of Ishiki on any one of their troops. This branch of Ishiki is called Hansha, or reflect, and it creates a force field of life essence around the intended group or individual.

     Soon enough, people from all over realized the danger of letting ordinary citizens practice this art. Some used it for good, others for bad. They learned to take advantage of Ishiki's weaknesses, and figured out how to use it without drawing life potentia. The Fujioka family was quickly outnumbered by enemies, all of whom knew how to use Ishiki. Even though the family fought bravely, they were forced to flee their home village. It was only a few hundred years ago that this group, nicknamed the Locusts, was cast out of the LOP, their numbers dwindling. Since then, no one has ever seen them, but rumor has it that they are still out there, planning revenge.

     The Fujioka family was looked down upon, the shame of running away causing many to commit suicide. The ones who didn't were attacked, their children taken away to orphanages or thrown into the woods.

     Only eight years ago, a small baby was dropped off at the door of an orphanage. The mother's dead body was placed next to the cradle. A single note:

                             'We found another one. The child wasn't worth killing.

                                                      Her name is Yuriko Fujioka.'

     And so started the beginning of Yuriko's miserable life at the Orphanage.