Chapter 13: The Kusarigama
AN- Kuma is the Japanese version of a sickle
I laid on my bed with my hands folded behind my head, looking into the darkness that filled the room. I wasn't exactly sure what time it was but I knew that it was pretty late because there wasn't any sunlight left to fill the room. I sighed wishing that I would fall asleep. I wasn't sure why but it seemed like my mind just didn't want to fall asleep. The snoring coming from Nya across the room wasn't helping one bit. I rolled over, taking the covers with me and sighed. "She'd better not do this any more," there was just something about snoring that annoyed me so much. It was probably because I slept in the same room with my snoring sister until I was nine, which would keep me up pretty late. That could also explain why I go to be late, normally falling asleep somewhere between ten and twelve.
In order to ignore the snoring, I tried to just think about what was going to happen tomorrow, or today, which ever day it was at that point. I wanted to see how they'd handle things and if they'd even let me do things. They're the ones to have a long past with them so it'd make sense for them to want to talk to them, and not me. I started to think that they'd make me stay behind them and not do anything at all. Maybe I was just overthinking things and I didn't see them in the right way. I mean, based off of what Nya said to me, it sounded like they only liked to work within the five of them. If that was the case, then why would they let me on the team in the first place?
I shook my head to forget about that, and started to hear Nya's snoring again. "Okay, I can't stand this," I muttered. I was getting really annoyed, so I threw the blanket off of me and left the room. I wasn't sure where I was going to go, or where I was going at all, so I just walked. I ended up in the kitchen, maybe I could just sleep in there? "Nah, it'll be weird to sleep in here," I told myself as a stopped in front of the fridge. "You know what, I'm hungry," I thought to myself. I opened the door and looked inside, scanning the various food. "Nope, nope, nope," I counted off as I ceased to find something I was in the mood food. "Oh my god," If I was seeing what I thought I saw, it would be awesome. And it was! "A. Damn. Cake!"
I moved the foods that were in the way of me reaching it, before taking it out. It was just a small portion of one, but it was good enough for me, any amount of cake was. What was even better is that it was a corner piece! You always got more frosting out of the corner pieces, which was the best part. "If this is someones, I'm not sorry. Nothing's gonna keep me from eating this," I smiled, even though no one could see, and decided to take it to the same outside training area I was at when I first came here, that I sparred with the others at. I sat up against a wall with only small lights around the place to see.
"What a way to start off my time here," I sighed to myself, wishing that the loud snoring of Nya didn't keep me out of the room to sleep. I decided to take the time to think about anything I could, which my mind right away started to think about what was going to happen with the snakes. From what I could tell they we were just going to go and talk to them about it and see what was their problem. Was it the whole group or was it just a few rogue snakes? It was hard to tell at this point, but I had a gut feeling that it was the second one. We'd probably hear of another attack by now, which we haven't, if it was all of them. I could see a few of them getting tired of being good to humans and decided that it was time that they had a little chance. It happens everywhere, there's never going to be one species that doesn't have its' bad guys.
I took a quick bite of the cake that I had resting on my lap, which turned out to be pretty good. "Wow, this is pretty decent. Wonder who made it," I whispered to myself. I bet that it was Zane, he was the only one who I could tell was a good cook. As I continued eating, I started getting a little bored, but before I knew it the cake was gone and in my stomach. "Damn, that was a good cake," it really was, to be honest, one of the best ones I'd ever had. Unfortunately, I still wasn't tired, not one bit. I set the plate down beside me before looking around. Seeing that I couldn't fall asleep, I was thinking that I could train for a bit.
"Well, I've got nothing else better to do," I told myself. I walked over to the weapons rack and scanned through them in hoped of finding the same pair of Kusarigama that I was using when sparring. I only used them once and I could tell that I'd enjoy using them because they seemed to grip pretty well in my hands, and I loved using weapons that worked like that. I finally found them on one of the racks and picked it up, them still being as comfortable in my grip as before. As I was about to go to start training, I saw another pair in the corner of my eyes. I approached them and smiled. "Now this is a better one," instead of it having two blades on the end, it only had one blade on an end with an iron weight at the end. I put the one I was already holding down and picked up the new one, which somehow managed to be more comfortable than the other one. "I'll use these instead."
I walked into a clear area, that only had a few training dummies in it, and shifted my feet so that they were in a battle-ready stance, ready to give them a good swing. I took the Kuma in my right hand and held the chain in my left. I slowly let Iron weight start swinging beside me before i brought it over my head, still letting it swing. I took a deep breath and quickly whipped it back and at a training dummy. I watched it wrap around the training sword that it was holding and pulled it out of it's holder, what it's hand would be if it was living.
As it fell to the ground, I took the sickle in my hand that held it against the neck of the dummy, and would claim victory if it was a real fight. I stepped back to get a good look at the other dummies. I grabbed part of the chain and slid my grip closer to the middle before letting go of the sickle. I didn't hesitate to swing it around and wrapped the chain around another dummy. I whipped it to my left and let the thing fly to a wall across from me, which ended up hitting something in the way. I saw that it was someone, and that someone was Cole. "Gah!" I heard him shriek when the large wooden dummy hit him in the stomach.
"I'm sorry!" I ran over to him and helped him get the training dummy off of him, leaving the kusarigama on . I can't believe that that just happened! What was he even doing out here at this time? Who am I to ask, I was here already doing exactly what I was asking about him. "I didn't see you, and I couldn't stop the thing from hitting you in time," I tried.
He got up and put his hand up, assuring me "It's fine, you didn't know I was there. But what are you doing out here, though?" he questioned me.
"Oh, you know, couldn't fall asleep. Nya wouldn't stop snoring and it is so annoying!" I complained to him. He had to understand where I was coming from, right? He had to because no one liked sleeping in the same room as someone who snored, especially when it was really loud. "Plus I was hungry," I added.
"I hope you didn't eat my cake," he laughed "I don't know what I'd do without it. You wouldn't believe what happened the last time someone tried to eat it. Jay almost had to go to the hospital."
My eyes widened for a moment before I glanced over to the empty plate. "Uh, don't worry. I ate something else," I looked back at his hoping that he wouldn't catch on about the fact that I ate his cake. I was debating whether or not I felt bad, it seems like he wanted to eat it himself but I enjoy it so much! "Well anyways, what about you, what are you doing out here?" I was going to ask him the same, so I just did it now.
"I heard someone out here and I wanted to see who it was, and I can put to see you training," he admitted. "It's like one, you know?"
"Really?" I scratched the back of my head. "Didn't notice," I really didn't even think about looking at the time, but it was good to finally find out. I looked around and walked over to the kusarigama that I left on the ground and put them back on the rack. "Not sure If I'll fall asleep or not because I'm not even tired."
"You fall asleep late, too, huh?" he raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah," I nodded. "I guess you could say that. I'm the kind of person who stays up late and wakes up late. Well, at least when I can. Don't know why but I can function on less than six hours of sleep, less than four if I'm lucky," I joked. It's not that I tried or anything but I could run off of little sleep if needed. It didn't have many benefits, the only that I could think of was being able to fight without a problem if I had gotten little sleep. "What about you? You said too."
"Yeah, I stay up late sometimes thinking about stuff. Mostly training, I tend to plan out what I'm going to do before the morning so I can get right to things at the start of training," damn, that was some serious dedication to training. I took training seriously too, but I didn't go out of my way to plan what I did the day before. I was the kind of person who prefered to go with the flow. "Well, uh, I'm going to head back to bed. You should do the same," he finished, pointing his thumb in the direction of the rooms we all stayed at. I agreed, maybe it was a good idea to try to fall asleep.
"Yep, got it," I waited for him to leave, which took a few seconds, before running over to the plate and then for the kitchen. Thank god he didn't see the plate with all of the cake crumbs on it! I bet that he would have had my ass if he found out, which is why I wasn't going to say a word to him. When I made it to my room I tried to be quiet so I wouldn't wake up Nya, who was still fast asleep. But luckily for me her snoring wasn't as loud as before, maybe I could finally fall asleep. With even more luck, I fell asleep in no time, just waiting for morning to come along so we could go see what the deal with the snakes was.