Chapter 9 – The Past (Part II)
"Again!" Taiyou yelled and ran at her for what must have been the millionth time that day.
She tried as hard as she could to predict his movements, but failed and ended up getting kicked hard in the side after trying to dodge a punch and leaving herself open, and flung across the room, landing with a loud thud on the hardwood floor.
"Get up. We are going to continue doing this until you can perform the combination correctly. Remember, dodge, block, dodge, counter." the older man repeated and showed her the correct movements yet again.
It wasn't that she couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it against him. Mostly it was because he was much faster, bigger, heavier and a lot more stronger than her, even though that was only natural since she was only 6 years old and he was a grown man. But all credit to her, she could probably beat up 20 6 year olds in a matter of moments. She was progressing surprisingly quickly, but her physical strength wouldn't begin to appear properly for at least another ten years, so by that time she would be a hand-to-hand combat master and would be able to use that strength very well.
Still, it was surprising how mature she had become in the last month. Since that first outburst where she had pushed her bowls and glass onto the floor and smashed them at the dinner table when she had first arrived at Taiyou's house, there had been no more that he had seen.
In fact, she had barely acted like the same person any more. Taiyou had noticed that she used to watch the younger children's cartoons that most 6 year olds would enjoy when she first bothered to actually watch TV, and now, after a little over a month, she was watching the news and documentaries instead, as well as reading newspapers, and books not meant for her age, but for adults.
She barely even changed her expression any more, much like himself. He wasn't sure whether she decided to not display her emotions because he didn't and he was a Sora Ops agent, but it was more than likely that she knew that expressions and body language could tell the truth when the person themselves could not, or would not. And it was also probably because she didn't want to let herself feel anything at all any more.
Her intellect level had absolutely soared as well. When they were having a break from combat training, he would occasionally come up with various scenarios of missions that she might have to do, and he even threw in a few that he had done himself, and asked her how she would successfully complete the mission, and almost always, she would be dead-on, down to the last detail.
He had also decided to put her back into a regular school when he started taking missions again, because he wouldn't be around as much to have the time to home-school her, not that he did much of that anyway. Not that she needed it either.
In another two weeks, he would begin to teach her about using weaponry and the correct ways to maintain them as well. Maintaining your weapons was just as important as using them properly. In some situations, it could mean life or death.
Finally, she pulled herself together and got up, and he didn't spare another moment to tell her to prepare herself and ran at her. She just barely dodged the first punch by a hair, and she wasn't fast enough to block to second, but dodged instead, then blocked the third and attempted to counter on his fourth movement.
Unfortunately, he was just too strong and fast for her and blocked her counter-attack, and she only just leapt out of the way to avoid his out-stretched leg which was coming at her in the exact same way that it had only a minute ago.
This just further proved his thoughts on her quick progression. It only took her once to see his movement before being able to watch his muscle movement, feet and arm placement to figure out what he was going to do next. Granted, most of the time she noticed what he was going to do and just wasn't fast enough to get out of the way, but her speed seemed to be increasing rapidly as of late, which would eventually of her biggest advantages against him as well as anyone else.
Since he was much bigger, taller, and heavier and she was small, nimble and agile, even though still not as fast as him, once her speed even matched his, she would immediately be able to dodge nearly everything he threw at her, merely because she was so much smaller and agile than he could ever be at his size.
In years to come, her speed would be the only thing that would save her life. Especially when there was a sniper rifle involved...
Two weeks later, Taiyou was just about to start teaching her to use simple weapons, like kunai, shuriken, throwing knifes and senbon. Kunai were the easiest to start with, since a learner never used the actual metal blade to start with, instead, using wooden replicas that weighed a little more than the metal ones, so as to get the hands use to them and increase dexterity before practising with the sharpened weapons.
Within a few days, she had grasped how to use the kunai properly, and Taiyou decided to allow her minimal usage of a mostly blunt kunai, just to see how she went. If she messed up, she would barely give herself a paper cut, but if she continued messing up, it wouldn't be very easy to use them without having the small cuts stinging all the time, therefore debilitating her movement.
For the next three hours, she practised throwing the metal weapon at a target, and the majority of times getting near the bullseye, yet her aim was gradually getting better and better with each time thrown. Suddenly, she hit dead-on the bullseye, and smirked triumphantly.
"You're improving quickly. Keep practising, I'll get us some lunch." the dark-haired man said, and got up from the bench at the side of his own small training area in his garage, and walked back towards the house to prepare them something to eat and restore their strength.
Tsuki had been training almost every waking second since she woke up the morning after she got to Taiyou's. He had woken her at 7AM in the morning and made breakfast whilst talking her through what he would be training her in.
Firstly, basic hand-to-hand combat. She would learn how to defend herself whilst being unarmed, as well as gaining physical strength, discipline, flexibility, agility, the ability to predict an opponent's movements, and learning to cope with pain.
Secondly, basic weapons training, which they were doing at the moment. This would teach her how to aim and throw weapons, use them to be fatal or just to incapacitate a target, and she would eventually become able to use the weapons to become a deadly ranged fighter who used their stealth to complete their mission.
Thirdly, Taiyou would combine the first two together, and teach her how to use hand-to-hand techniques with small weapons, such as kunai and shuriken. More than likely, this was one of the most important lesson for her, since this was the most used style of combat in the Sora Ops.
Fourthly, he would up the difficulty on the hand-to-hand combat training and teach her some of the more advanced movements, combinations and techniques that he had knowledge of. Her physical strength would be pushed to the limits, and even further than she thought possible, as well as her speed and agility.
Fifth, advanced weapons training. Taiyou would teach her to use katana – ninjato, wakizashi, as well as daisho -, sai, kusarigama, naginata, nunchucks, and finally, guns. She hated the idea of having to use guns, since those disgusting weapons were the ones most used to kill innocent people, and took no talent or practice to use. All you had to do is aim and pull the trigger.
She saw no honour, no nobility in that. If you wanted to kill someone bad enough, then at least give the victim the respect by taking the time to learn how to use the weapon you were going to kill them with, so at least you were going to make sure that you didn't miss and make them suffer. But then again, not everyone was as rational as her.
Some people wanted their victims to suffer, to scream, cry, and beg all for their own sick, sadistic desires. Those are the people she was training to stop from acting on those desires and urges, and if they did, she would catch them, and stop them, hopefully before they mercilessly killed innocent people that didn't deserve the torture and pain that they would get.
All in all, Tsuki was disgusted in the modern world and humanity itself. Where were the knights and brave men and women of old that believed in death before dishonour, and that nobility was the most important quality a person could have?
The young girl just wished that people didn't have to be so stupid and feel the need to hurt others. She just wished that innocent people didn't have to die and their families and friends had to suffer with the pain of losing a loved one, just like she had.
Only six years old, and she had witnessed three cold blooded murders, and Taiyou killing the man who committed them. Six years old and she had watched her beloved parents get bullets put through their skulls not a foot away from her, and a complete stranger also. She had already had a gun pointed straight at her, the man holding it entirely prepared to kill such a young child, all for his addiction.
"What a horrible world..." she whispered to herself, and continued throwing kunai at the target...
Eight Years Later...
"Are you ready?" Tsuki heard Taiyou say from the other end of the headset, from his position at the opposite of the town square.
She responded with a small sound of acknowledgement, and now all they had to do was wait. Today, they had an extremely important mission, which happened to be Tsuki's ninth mission. There was a politician who wished to become Prime Minister in town today, and he was giving a speech on what he would like to do if he was to become the Prime Minister.
They were there because the politician had received several threats against his life recently, and the Sora Ops had been called in simply to make sure that everything went smoothly and no important political figures got assassinated.
Taiyou, quite obviously, was completely in control of all the security at the event and the place was absolutely crawling with people in tuxedos, regular police officers as well as other people from other agencies.
Their biggest problem was that their was three large buildings that were in perfect view of the town square, and a sniper would be simple to use to take out the politician. Three days prior to the event, Taiyou and Tsuki had evaluated where the best point where for a sniper to be, and unfortunately the best spot was in an apartment building, and they couldn't get the clearance to evacuate the building completely because they had to keep this operation under wraps.
So, Tsuki had been posted in the building, and she had several other people under her command. Except they didn't listen to her. At all. Taiyou had to keep giving orders because they wouldn't take Tsuki seriously. Were they too stupid to realise that she was in this position at the young age of 14 for a reason? Because she was qualified to be there. That's why.
There was an hour until the event started and they were all just getting to their posts now. Well, Tsuki was, and her underlings were just hanging around chatting in the hallway.
"Taiyou. I've had enough of these meat-heads ignoring my orders. They're just standing in the hallway talking and fart-assing around. Tell them to listen to me, or I get to carve my orders into their torso with a kunai." she hissed quietly, while looking at one of the men who was clearly flirting with the only woman in their group, but was being brushed off.
Suddenly, Taiyou's voice boomed into their earphones and the underlings flinched at the abruptness.
"Group Two agents standing in the hallway talking. If you don't start listening to your commanding Sora Ops agent, I'll let her carve her orders into your torsos with a kunai, so then you won't forget them...ever." Taiyou said loudly and in the most authoritative and commanding voice he could, putting emphasis on the fact that Tsuki was a Sora Ops agent, when clearly they weren't.
After hearing that message, they all looked towards Tsuki, who was standing a few metres away from them with her icy blue eyes that could just be seen through her mask glaring daggers at them all, and one hand resting casually on the handle of the first kunai in her leg holster and feeling proud that Taiyou had used her line.
"But sir, she's like 12 years old. What is she doing here? And how did she become a Sora Ops agent? It shouldn't be possible!" said the man that was attempting to flirt with the female in their group.
"Because I've been trained by Taiyou personally since I was six years old and I'm 14, by the way. I can bet that I've been in this job longer than you've been a police officer. And with all your laid back attitudes, I may as well not bother doing my job either so even if this guy gets killed, it won't be blamed on me. You'll all cop the wrap because you aren't part of the highest ranking and most successful law enforcement agency in this country, and probably the world." Tsuki answered his question all the while stalking towards him slow enough so that he barely even realised she was moving until she was standing right in front of him.
"What will you have us do then, ma'am?" he gulped a little after seeing the cold fury in her eyes and straightened his black suit jacket awkwardly.
"You can look after the first two levels, since your incompetence will require you to be as far away from me as possible because I'll stab you if you say anything else stupid. You can assist him, and continue to turn down his advances while your at it. You two, the third and fourth, and I'll look after the fifth level and the roof." she said, embarrassing the hell out of the male and female, and making the other two men chuckle under their breath.
"And I swear, if this guy gets killed and I find out that one, two or all of you are at fault...I will hand your bruised and broken asses handed to you on a silver platter. Got it?" she spoke with no emotion and only just loud enough for them to hear her.
They all nodded and quickly went off to their positions faster than she could say 'assassination'. Tsuki wandered around the fifth level and the others checked in when they had cleared both their levels. The third group was watching from the windows in the opposite building and making sure that they saw no guns or just suspicious behaviour in general.
Half an hour later, when the politician walked out onto the stage, everyone's eyes became as sharp as hawks. The man's voice over the loudspeakers was nothing but white noise to Tsuki and Taiyou who were watching every inch of the buildings as well as the crowd on the ground.
"Tsuki! Fifth level, window three from my left! Now!" Taiyou suddenly yelled over the speaker, and Tsuki immediately sprinted down the long hallway to the opposite end and reached what would be the apartment that had the window third from the left.
Over the sound of her kicking down the door, she didn't hear Taiyou telling her to wait...
Four days later, Tsuki woke up in a white room and she immediately deduced she was in the hospital. Moments after waking, she got an immense but dull, throbbing pain in her left shoulder. She clenched her jaw at the sudden onslaught of pain. Out of the corner of her gradually focusing eyes, she saw Taiyou getting up out of his seat in the corner of the room.
He pressed a button on a small handle looking object and put it in her right hand. A few seconds later her pain dulled even further. It was morphine. She couldn't really get the strength to speak yet, and her mouth and throat were incredibly and sore from not having anything to drink in so long.
"It's good to see you awake. Do you remember what happened?" Taiyou spoke up, his voice sounding soft and quiet, and almost a little concerned. She shook her head. She remembered kicking down the door, and after that...nothing.
"After I spotted the guy sitting in the window, I told you straight away to get there. I believe that you mustn't have heard me telling you to wait over the sound of kicking down the door, because moments later, I noticed another person in the background. You incapacitated them both on entry, but when you threw your kunai at the second person, he was holding the sniper rifle in your direction, and his muscles tensed up on impact and you received a point blank sniper shot to your shoulder, which is now in pretty terrible shape." he explained slowly, and softly, knowing that she would definitely hate herself for being so stupid as to let herself get shot, even though she saved a life.
"You'll have to be in here for a few weeks, and they're going to do the best job they can to reconstruct it, but it won't ever be the same again. Part of your collarbone is gone as well, but it's not enough to cause too many problems. The real issue is rebuilding the muscle, and tissue that got blown off and then getting skin grafts over it...If you were any slower, the guy probably would have got you in the head or shot your arm completely off."
Suddenly, a woman poked her head inside the doorway and smiled a little, seeing that Tsuki was awake.
"I heard Taiyou talking, and I thought I'd come in and see if you were awake, and you are. That's good. You certainly are quite a strong one. When we brought you in here, it took me ages to convince you to have the morphine drip. " the woman recalled the spaced out, and half-unconscious from blood loss girl trying to refuse morphine, saying that she would just handle the pain somehow. But eventually gave in after she had just forcefully injected her with some.
"I'm sorry, I'm the Sora Ops doctor. Mitsuho Yui. You had me worried sick when you came in. I thought that you might have lost too much blood. But as I said, you're a strong one and you've pulled through rather well. Your muscle and tissue will take a very long time to fully grow back, and your going to require a hell of a lot of surgeries over the next few months to get it back in shape as best as we can." she continued, and Tsuki knew that this would be a real pain in the ass...or shoulder, more or less.
She just felt so incompetent for letting this happen. She knew that Taiyou had been shot a few times, but not at point blank range with a sniper rifle using a 7.62mm bullet. He'd only been grazed on his arm once by a rifle, and shot in his right leg twice.
The pain started to throb a little harder, and she hit the button on the morphine and immediately began to feel like she was drunk, or what she imagined being drunk would feel like. She could still feel the pain there, and she knew that Taiyou and the doctor were still in the room, but she had no idea what they were saying or if they were even talking to her.
The healing process was definitely going to be a long and drawn out one...
"Well, I have nothing but good news for you." Yui, the Sora Ops private doctor said as she was looking at Tsuki's wound. "It's healing up wonderfully, and the muscle tissue is rebuilding itself even better thanks to that medicine I gave you and the makeshift metal end for your collarbone is doing great too. You'll probably make an almost full recovery, but I'd take it very slow while you are getting back into training, which I wouldn't even think about for the next week."
"I've already had an unpleasantly long time off training and missions. I have no interest in waiting much longer." Tsuki informed Yui with a slightly unhappy tone and a blank expression.
"Yes, I know that. But if you make it worse, it may never heal as good as it can if you stay off it as much as you can until I tell you that it's fully healed. And I have no interest in putting you through more surgeries. They're very complex and lengthy surgeries, and you'll probably have to have more a few years down the track anyway." Yui retorted firmly, letting Tsuki know that she couldn't risk doing even more damage to the already seriously damaged shoulder.
"Fair enough then. I'll stay off it completely for the next week." Tsuki agreed reluctantly. She was sick of sitting around in a hospital bed in pain all the time. All she wanted to do was train and get fit again so she could get back in the game and start taking missions again, even though Taiyou probably wouldn't let her near a mission for at least the next month.
"Alright. Well, you're free to go, but come back next week. I'll give you a call about the day and time." the female doctor helped up her patient from the seat after sticking Tsuki's patch down over her shoulder carefully and led her out the front door to the small hospital, which was really just an extension of Yui's house.
Yui bid Tsuki goodbye and Tsuki thanked her before getting in the car that Taiyou was sitting in the driver's seat of, waiting for her to be discharged. Her shoulder didn't really hurt very much any more while she was still, even though she knew that she probably just got used to the pain, but when she moved it, it felt very stiff and it ached with pain when the muscles tried to be stretched too far.
She was on some good painkillers though, but she hadn't taken any today, and probably wouldn't until she slept, so the pain didn't keep her up, or wake her up as she slept. The young teenager was absolutely going to loathe doing another week of sitting around until she got clearance from Yui to do some very light training.
Taiyou had insinuated that he was going to be very strict on this, and that she would only start off doing some basic kata when she was able to, and he kept to his word. For the next week, she barely lifted a finger aside from getting something to eat, showering – which proved to be a difficult task when trying to wash her back -, and going to the toilet.
When Yui gave her the green light to start training again, he supervised all her training sessions, which she could only do outside of school hours, which she had picked back up on now that she was out of the hospital, and when he wasn't on a mission, meaning that they were very limited.
Even still, it was probably better off that way so that she didn't do too much and tear a muscle or a tendon or something. As frustrating as it was to wait and take things slow, eventually her shoulder didn't feel so stiff or sore when she moved it and Yui told her that she could start increasing her training intensity and a month later, things were mostly back to normal except for when she tried to push a little too hard and then it would be sore for a few hours.
Most unfortunately, the pain would eventually flare up years later at the worst time possible...
Tsuki woke to throbbing pain in her left shoulder. She hissed quietly and sat up straight away, her right hand clutching the area. Her jaw was clenched tightly, but other than that she showed no sign of pain on her face, being quite used to this happening.
"Are you alright?" a voice in the room asked softly, startling her a little since she wasn't paying attention to anything aside the pain in her shoulder.
"Yeah. I'm fine, Ryuzaki. Just an old wound..." she trailed off and sat staring at her lap for a moment before getting up walking over to her bag and pulling out a small medical box that she carried around with her everywhere. "Where's Ame and Kumo?"
"I'm not sure. They are more than likely still resting since I haven't seen them." Ryuzaki said as he looked down and to the left as if he was trying to remember if he'd seen or heard anything of the other two men.
"How long has it been?" Tsuki asked, wondering how long she'd been asleep for.
"Only about 6 hours. I got up 30 minutes ago...What is that?" his voice was confused and curious, and Tsuki followed his gaze to the small tube of numbing cream that she used to rub on her shoulder when it had random aches and pains in it.
"Cream. For my shoulder." she answered and pointed to the large messy scar which he could now see perfectly clear after she pulled down her shirt and bra strap to get at it better.
His jaw actually dropped at the sight. The scar was several inches wide and stretched from just below where the end of her collarbone was all the way to the top of her shoulder blade. It looked absolutely terrible, and he became exceedingly curious as to how it happened. Without thinking, he asked.
"How did it happen?"
"The scar?...Uh, on a mission several years ago. I got shot by a sniper rifle that was about the same distance from me as you are right now. It tore off half my shoulder, luckily it missed most of the bone, except for the end of my collarbone, which is metal, and most of my muscle which took months and months to reconstruct. I think I was out of action for almost 6 months." she answered his question, even though she wasn't entirely comfortable doing so, but at the moment, she just wanted to pain to stop.
She went to lift her right arm up to put cream on the scar, but a stinging pain across her tricep stopped her. After a quick inspection, she saw that she had a small laceration on her arm, more than likely from when she was fighting with the Aka Sora last night.
Thinking that it wasn't that bad, she again tried to lift her arm up, but it stretched the cut apart too far and she deduced that she wouldn't be able to do it herself without tearing the cut further open. Hesitantly, she looked over to L, who was watching her intently, and had too already deduced that she wouldn't be able to do it herself.
"Would you mind?" she asked very awkwardly, but it was almost cancelled out by his quick response of 'Okay' that sounded a little strained.
He walked over to the side of the bed she was sitting on and sat behind her after she passed the tube of cream to him. As soon as he started very nervously rubbing the cream on her shoulder, she remembered that you were supposed to wear a surgical glove whilst applying it so that your hand didn't go numb. She resisted the urge to crack up laughing at the mental image of L looking at his hand in that odd way he does, and wondering what the hell was going on.
Feeling like she needed some amusement, she didn't bring it up, and as he gently and quite nicely rubbed in the cream, she felt it begin to work as the pain died down gradually. A minute later he was finished, and he began to walk over to the seat by the small window but stopped halfway there, when he noticed his hand felt a bit odd.
After a moment of wondering why, he guessed that whatever effect the cream was supposed to have, it had also quite obviously affected his hand too. He felt a little silly, and turned to Tsuki who had something closer to amusement in her eyes than he had ever seen. The cream quickly took effect more, and soon enough he couldn't feel the whole front of his hand at all.
Exactly as Tsuki had pictured it, he lifted his hand up in front of his face and looked at it like it was some sort of foreign object, or that it was just magically growing a face on his palm right before his eyes. He shook it from side to side a bit, but still felt nothing and looked back to Tsuki for an explanation.
She was almost smirking now. "It's a numbing cream. Probably should've mentioned that."
"Yes. You should have. I now can't feel my hand." he said whilst looking between her face and his eyes with such a weird look on his face that her smirk grew into something closer to a smile than had ever graced her face for 17 years.
And then, she laughed.