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Elemental!
Disclaimer: The characters and situations within this story are owned by me, and are pure fiction. Any relation to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
Quick Note: Hiro’s teacher, Mrs. Baker, will have her name changed to Mrs. Rekab (yeah, pretty corny) from now on. The reason for this change is because when I thought of a name for a teacher, I just chose the first thing that came to my head. Just a few days ago, though, I noticed that there was a Mrs. Baker in my school just three classrooms away from my AP English class…so yeah, I kinda felt it to be a good idea to make a change in this.
Chapter Five: The Missing Sword
“You guys were so lucky!” a male’s voice loudly pointed out, a great deal of disappointment could be detected in the way he had said this with a sigh trailing behind his words.
“What!” another voice rose up, this voice had a feminine ring to it. “You think being inside a school that had a bomb in it is fun?!”
“It was already proven that the secondary bomb was just a rumor that Mrs. Rekab declared over television,” a third voice explained through his interruption of the second voice; this voice belonged to another male as well, but the way he said his sentence gave a little hint that the person was somewhat tired as his voice carried the audible sound of rapid breaths.
“What?!” the female uttered, surprised at what she had just heard, “When did you hear that?”
“The television, right when we got here,” the third voice answered casually.
“Yeah, and I saw the whole thing on television since this morning,” the first voice spoke up with a laugh. “So you can all guess that this story isn’t going to die anytime soon!”
He could hear voices…voices that rang a bell of familiarity once the sounds reached his ears; voices that, somehow, gave him some strength to open his eyes - too bad he couldn’t completely accomplish this task.
His eyes were heavy, and had felt as if they were glued shut in place. He tried moving his fingers, but all he could get was a very slight movement that went unnoticed and came with a slight shot of pain stinging his arm. The same was with his body, but the pain was an even bigger factor here. His body was in pain, so much, in fact, that every slight breath that he semi-consciously took felt as if a sharp knife was jabbing through his lungs.
He was tired, and yet he wanted to wake up.
He struggled for minutes, until the female was able to notice his struggling.
“Hey, he’s moving!”
At this he felt as if he was surrounded as the air around him tightened up. There was a long period of silence which left him too uncomfortable to bare, especially when all he could see was the darkness from his own shut eyes.
Wanting to escape the darkness, he tried opening his eyes one more time. Giving all the strength he had left, he forced open his eyes, but they only opened halfway to his disappointment.
Light broke through the darkness as the instant change of lighting blinded him momentarily. In front of him he could see three different silhouettes looming above him.
It had taken over half a minute for the blurriness to disappear and his eyes to completely open, but he could easily make out who the people by him were in half that time.
“Nice to see that you’re awake, Hiro.” A light-brown haired boy on Hiro’s left greeted.
Hiro, who was on a bed he was not familiar to, could only grin with a small chuckle coming out of his mouth. “Hey Dustin.” He should have known…
“You were in really bad shape when we found you, are you ok,” the female from before spoke up. Hiro noticed that the voice came from his right as he saw the other two people standing next to him. The female, who had brown, highlighted hair reaching just above her shoulders, was Alie and the other male with the sandy blonde hair next to Alie was obviously Joey.
“Hey, y’all,” Hiro greeted finally having the strength to lift himself upright from the bed. The first thing that came to him was an extreme shot of pain that crossed through his abdomen. Hiro’s first thought of mind was that he had a broken rib or two; sadly, there wasn’t any clear way to confirm this. Without any thought, Hiro used his left arm to lightly feel his ribs; unfortunately, that resulted in more pain as he realized that his left arm, his burned arm, was covered in bandages, but even through this, the pain would not go away. Hiro also had noticed that his right arm, the arm that had taken the explosion earlier today, had received the same treatment as well as being put on a house made splint and sling for his broken arm.
“What happened to ya?” Joey asked the rested teenager with curiosity when Hiro noticed how injured he was.
At first, Hiro was about to ask where he was, but noticing the gas-powered remote controlled cars, posters taken from car magazines, paintball guns, BB guns, and extremely flammable items that littered the room, Hiro assumed he was in Joey’s house, no less his room. No matter how many times he had been here, he could never help but think that Joey was almost loaded enough for his own mini war. But as dangerous as some of this stuff was, it still came with loads of fun ways of misusing the items by disobeying what the warning labels had to say.
Taking Joey’s question to mind, Hiro thought back at how he came to be in this condition. Until the remembrance of Raine beating the living hell out of him came to thought was when Hiro became really angry, but he hid the anger from his friends. Instead, Hiro thought of an alternative. “The guy who called for me had some thugs who beat me up when I found them.” Unfortunately, that was all he could come up with. He couldn’t give a good reason as to why he would be beaten up and why the man known as Haretsu wanted to see him besides that fact that he wanted the sword Hiro had taken a few days ago. But how could he tell that to his friends? If he did then they would surely blame him for the incident from today and the one from three nights ago.
“I heard about that from Mrs. Rekab,” Joey said, breaking a short silence that had quickly come after Hiro’s sentence.
This only worried the bruised-up boy as to how Joey had heard about the little confrontation from Mrs. Rekab, especially when he hadn’t come to school today. Fortunately, Alie could somehow read Hiro’s anxiety and quickly answered his unasked question. “It was broadcasted over the news,” she said with a sigh, “And unlucky for you Mrs. Rekab was the first to ‘volunteer’ to give the information to the entire city.”
Joey nodded at Alie’s remark, “Yup, she basically said that you teamed up with the guy who bombed the school and were originally trying to topple the school because you were becoming rebellious,” Joey paused, his hand now on his chin as he stood in thought, “Or at least, that’s what it sounded like.”
Dustin couldn’t help bursting out in laughter after hearing this, but Hiro didn’t like the sound of how things were going. “Then doesn’t that make me some sort of an accomplice?” Hiro stated the obvious, beginning to worry. The last thing he needed was being wanted by the police, even if they weren’t that great of a force in this city. “Doesn’t that make y’all accomplices?”
“Don’t worry,” Dustin began, raising his hands in a way to tell Hiro to calm down, which didn’t work by the way as Hiro’s face was already turning white. “The police did an investigation of the school; when they couldn’t find you, basically, their theory was that the bomber had randomly picked you to spread his false threat across the school. Everyone’s grades, permanent records, and other information had been burned down in the school office…”
“What!” Alie interrupted Dustin upon hearing this. “They were burned!”
Dustin sheepishly grinned, “Yup, everyone’s in the entire school.”
Alie’s face had nearly turned pale when this was confirmed to her. “But what about school? How will we finish the year?”
Hiro could somewhat understand Alie’s reaction, she was one of the smartest students at Cane High School. Having all her good grades burned to ashes couldn’t have been easy for her. As for the three males, they were barely affected by this. Joey was great at mathematics, but that didn’t mean he sucked at everything else. He made good grades and was very smart, too bad he didn’t have the motivations to complete his work all the time. Dustin was obviously strong at P.E. and was also a well-determined student; though the sports Dustin participated in did hurt him in his studies in the long run. Hiro’s only strong point was Chemistry, and that’s not saying much because Hiro still had a hard time understanding the subject. Mainly, Hiro was a B to C student, but in reality the only reason he became one was because instead of doing Raine’s training, he would be studying as an excuse to skip training.
Hiro and Dustin were almost equal in their grades. One day, Dustin could get the higher grade than Hiro, which was only by one mistake and then the next Hiro would be the one to selfishly brag about his amazing intellect. This stirred up some friendly competition between the two teenagers, which in turn, helped both out in the end as they studied to outdo each other.
But even with all of this, it didn’t mean that the three teenage boys didn’t result to cheating. In fact, that’s how they were able to keep their grade almost on par with the other students in their class, as well as close to identical to each other’s. Alie on the other hand didn’t need to resort to the lowliness of cheating. She could easily ace any test given to her and finish homework before school even finished. And because of this, she strongly disagreed with cheating and the way Joey, Dustin, and Hiro sometimes had done their work. Still it didn’t mean she knew about their main cheating connection.
“Well, there are several things going on,” Dustin started, “First, the school board is no doubt trying to find any copies of past files about our grades and permanent records.” This lit up Alie’s eyes, while Joey rudely yawned and Hiro was checking his body for anymore injuries he might’ve had. “The second thing is that they’ll announce an alternative school for us while they’re checking. And the third thing is that they could give us a break from school for now…” At this, Hiro and Joey gave high-fives, giving out small victory cries to go along with it, though Hiro had to endure the pain that shot through his arm while he made his high-five with Joey. “Except that it may cut from our summer,” and at this Joey and Hiro’s victory celebration had been destroyed before it had even begun.
“What…” Joey rose up from a chair he had been sitting on. His voice didn’t carry any strength to the outburst but he felt it was necessary to start something about the topic that had just arisen.
“Don’t get mad at me,” Dustin defended himself, “I’m just going on by facts and it’s all guess work.
A long silence filled the room again; Hiro had wondered why Dustin had explained what would happen with the rest of the school year to Alie. Mainly because everything Dustin had said were things Alie could’ve easily figured out on her own; maybe it was the shock that all her hard work had been temporarily lost. Who knew? Right now, though, Hiro had an even more important question to ask. “Alie, Dustin,” he started, getting the attention the two teenagers. “Earlier you said that the cops couldn’t find me, but how’s that? The last thing I remember was being inside the school.”
Dustin opened his mouth to speak but Alie was first to respond to Hiro’s question, “We found you unconscious on the floor in purple hall; from there we just carried you out of the school…”
“Er-hem…” Dustin coughed, interrupting Alie and getting a sharp glare from her.
Alie sighed and then continued, “Well, Dustin was the one who carried you out of school.”
“And believe me,” Dustin spoke up, pointing at Hiro, “running with you on my back is not an easy thing to do.”
Hiro sheepishly grinned, but pressed on, “And how did you avoid the cops?”
“We found you upstairs in purple hall,” Dustin quickly started before Alie could give off a word, and got a small ‘Hmph’ from her in return. “From there we went to the nearest exit which was downstairs in red hall. But when we got there we found several cops knocked out. So from there we went to…”
“My house…” Joey interrupted, trying to sound annoyed at the inconvenience of unexpected visitors at his house, although a lot of his attitude was forced.
“Why?” Hiro bluntly asked.
“It was the furthest of our houses away from school,” Alie answered.
“We took a taxi and said you needed to see a doctor. The driver insisted going to the hospital but we said we knew someone even better who could help,” Dustin remarked.
It took a little more than a second for this to absorb into Hiro’s mind, but he was now beginning to understand his friend’s decision. “No offense,” Hiro started, keeping his voice a little low, “but isn’t Joey more capable of causing injuries instead of treating them?”
Joey laughed as he over-heard Hiro’s statement, knowing full-well what he had meant by it.
“We only said that to get you as far away from the school, not to mention the police and media,” Alie pointed out. “Besides, you and Dustin are the only one’s who know how to correctly treat the injuries you have.”
Hiro doubted that he had very serious injuries, none life threatening at the very least; and a burned left arm and broken right arm couldn’t be counted as serious…could it?
“You only had a few cuts on your body,” Dustin spoke up, gaining the attention of the bruised teenager. “Granted, you’ll have to check yourself thoroughly since I’m not checking anything beneath the jeans.”
“Thanks Dr. Obvious,” Hiro rolled his eyes. “What about my arms?”
“To be simple, Dustin began, putting his hand under his chin while taking his seat on a nearby chair, “you’ve broken your right and burned your left in first degree burns. We didn’t have any burn ointment to give for your arm so you’ll have to deal with the pain for a while.”
Hiro checked his right arm, which had a house-made splinter and what was supported by a sling. Now that Hiro had checked it, he noticed that the sling was made of a torn up T-shirt and his splint was a thin metal pipe to prevent any movement of the arm. The sling was slung over his left shoulder that held support for his broken arm. With the material used for his treatment, there was no difficulty determining that Joey didn’t have any proper materials to treat a broken arm and that Dustin had to make due for alternatives. Crude…
“You seem pretty messed up to be beaten just by thugs,” Joey pointed to Hiro’s burned arm as he took a seat on a beanbag seat near his bed.
“Yeah,” Alie agreed to the statement brought up, “a broken arm I can understand, but a burned arm pretty strange to me.”
“Care to tell us what happened,” Dustin asked the beat up teenager who was beginning to turn pale.
If Hiro remembered correctly, he had used the sword Raine had brought to him to use against Haretsu. But the strange thing was when he thought he was about to die from the flamethrower earlier today. Hiro remembered that flames had surrounded him, none of it burning though, and lastly, Hiro remembered the sword after that experience. The sword had gotten heavier in his hand while at the time he had noticed that its shape and color had changed.
Hiro discarded the thought, as he soon answered, “I don’t remember anything about it.”
The three teenagers, who had been waiting for an answer, didn’t buy what Hiro said and gave him stern looks to question his answer. Hiro had a bad habit of smiling whenever people stared directly into his eyes, and this would be his friend’s proof that he was lying, and right now, Hiro had the biggest grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear. Though he did try to hide it be putting his hand on the back of his head, it was to no avail against his friends.
Hiro decided to change the subject and quickly asked, “What time is it?” Hiro looked out the window beside the bed he was on and noticed that it was already sunset, but his main objective had been completed as he broke away from the sinister stares his friends were giving him.
Trying to change the subject, huh? Dustin and Joey smirked, noticing Hiro’s desperation to look out the window…
“It’s a little after six thirty,” Alie spoke up, pointing at a clock hung up on the wall.
With no way of using that information to his advantage, all Hiro could say was, “Wow, it’s that late?”
“You’ve been knocked out for eight hours,” Alie informed Hiro.
Hiro inwardly sighed as the question about what had happened at school was about to be revived…he could just feel it in his gut.
As he had predicted, Dustin asked again, “You still haven’t answered our question. What happened when you were called?”
“He doesn’t need to answer if he doesn’t want to,” Alie defended while Joey went ahead and asked the same question Dustin asked Hiro anyway.
“Why do you need to know?!” Hiro nearly screamed out, but held the force in his voice down. “Is it because you guys think I was actually involved in that incident on purpose?!”
No one answered his question. Although he had kept the force in his voice to a low, it was still harsh to hear Hiro nearly break out in his statement. His friends remained silent to the point where Hiro thought that his friend’s actually had that question in mind.
Noticing his friend’s reactions, Hiro sighed. He would’ve told them the truth about what happened today and three days prior to that, but until he found out the real truth from Raine, it would have to wait. Right now the truth Hiro believed was so bizarre that he friends wouldn’t believe it.
“Sorry,” Hiro apologized. He didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but it was another bad habit he had. Alie, Joey and Dustin nodded their heads at Hiro’s apology, dropping the topic that had started Hiro’s forced reply. Sadly, it seemed like that was the only thing they had in mind as minutes passed without any conversation. So Hiro thought now was a better time than any. “Hey Joey,” Hiro spoke up, grabbing the attention of the sandy blonde, “can I have a cup of water?”
Hiro had rested his back on the taxi passenger seat, ignoring what Dustin had just said to him. Hiro hated being told obvious things. Dustin noticed Hiro’s attitude and repeated what he said, which only got a “Yeah, Yeah,” from Hiro with a slight mumble no one was able to hear.
“What do you think Raine’s gonna do when she sees you, Hiro?” Joey asked the teen, knowing full-well what the answer was going to be.
“She’s gonna kill me,” Hiro bluntly stated with all seriousness in tone. Raine had nearly killed him earlier today, what was going to stop her from making a second attempt? In truth, Hiro didn’t know why he was heading back home where Raine was sure to be. He couldn’t ask to stay at one of his friend’s house for a night, not with what had happened today.
“Don’t say that,” Alie spoke from the backseat of the taxi where Joey and Dustin also were, “I’m willing to bet that she is really worried sick about you, what with all that happened today.”
“Until he has to explain why he was the so-called accomplice of the bombings today,” Dustin remarked. Hiro only sunk in his seat as many thoughts of painful punishments from the past came back to mind.
How Raine became the topic of conversation was something Hiro wasn’t too comfortable with continuing. Though she was his Guardian, the things Raine seemed to be doing to Hiro were exactly the opposite of the duty she had promised to take years ago.
Joey’s house was outside of the city; more or less in the country a mile or two away from city limits. But the drive from Joey’s house to Hiro was almost nonexistent as the teenagers had a small chat of the things that had happened until current times. Sadly, Hiro was the only one who couldn’t share the moments like his friends did. But he couldn’t help but laugh when he heard what Dustin and Alie did to Mrs. Rekab after he had left the classroom. He had also learned that Joey had skipped school and had been working on a so-called “secret” project. Though Joey was reluctant to tell what it actually was and kept the ‘secret’ something that would bug Hiro until he could find out.
The four teenagers had already arrived at the front of Hiro’s house. Sadly for Joey, he had to pay the taxi driver for the ride since Hiro’s money was in his backpack which was still in Mrs. Rekab’s classroom and Alie and Dustin used what was going to be their lunch money to get Hiro to Joey’s place. In the end, this left the sandy-blonde to pay the double-digit fare.
Hiro’s house, more correctly, Raine’s house, was far from amazing. It was located in the city next to a busy road, although not the busiest road in the city. The house used to be a small shop but Raine had rented the place out and made it the home Hiro had been used to since he was a child. What used to be the display window for the old shop was now covered by wooden boards from the inside, hiding the indoor training room Raine had added inside.
Hiro walked to the front door of his house, his friends behind him to help explain what had really happened, though he didn’t know how useful it would be since Raine was at the scene of action today as well. But instead, Hiro thought of his friends as shield for the moment; with them nearby Raine surely would not harm or punish him in any way possible…at least not until they left.
With his eyes closed and a deep breath taken, Hiro swung the door open and entered the house. “Raine, I’m home and my friends are here with me!” he had felt obligated to inform Raine of his friend’s presence in the house, just in case the blue haired Guardian had any sneak attacks or traps ready for him.
No answer came. Hiro invited his friends inside his house for the time being when a sound thudded down the stairs from the second floor. And no sooner had Raine appeared Hiro was immediately caught in an embrace from the blue-haired woman.
“Hiro! I’ve been so worried sick about you!” Hiro’s Guardian cried out loud as she held the teenager in a backbreaking embrace.
Aside from the grunts of pain Hiro was releasing, he was speechless; and so were Dustin and Joey, who had their mouths agape at the sight before them. Alie, on the other hand, had a smirk on her face showing to the two frozen boys her correct assumption.
Raine’s embrace did not last long as she released Hiro when she caught eye of his friends. Hiro was relieved to be released from the backbreaking hug of unwanted affection as he soon regained his breath.
“Nice to meet you all again, Joey, Dustin, Alie,” Raine greeted as she turned to each of her quests.
“Hi Raine,” Alie casually greeted with a bow.
Joey and Dustin remained silent, but nodded at Raine’s greeting, since opening their mouths could easily get them into things they wouldn’t want to be into. Hiro inwardly laughed at his two friends who seemed to fear Raine as much as he did. Though, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for them since they had to go through the same thing he did once; but at the same time, he felt relieved that other people had taken Raine’s training and understood how it could be.
Hiro didn’t have time to comment on Dustin’s remark, he was too busy avoiding a barrage of kicks Raine was throwing at him. He had to be careful too, because Raine was making sure Hiro could see the power she was putting into her kicks.
“You make your training sound a lot tougher than it looks,” Joey laughed out loud.
It was sad that his criticizing spectators didn’t know the rules Hiro had to follow. Raine had made it clear that for this training session he wasn’t allowed to fight back as well as defend with any parts of his body. A major handicap Hiro could barely live through. It was lucky his reaction time was at a high already; maybe it was from all the games he played that gave him the fast reflexes that was now saving now body from dodging extreme pain, but to Raine, she would no doubt take all credit for this development .
“Come on, Hiro,” Dustin called out, “fight back!”
“Fight like you normally do,” Joey tempted.
“Prove to us you can fight!”
“You can beat Raine, we know you can!”
Hiro couldn’t concentrate dodging with all the background noise his friends were creating. He was being distracted!
Raine noticed Hiro’s distraction and gave a strong kick to the teenager’s head to knock some sense into him. Unfortunately for Hiro, the kick he saw coming was too fast for him to dodge; the only thing he could do to escape…the first thing that came to his mind-
THWACK!
-was to block…
For the first time in his life he had caught Raine off-guard; his left hand holding the leg that would have given him a splitting headache. But that wasn’t even half of the enjoyment; Raine’s failed kick had left her in a position that Hiro had never seen before: an opening.
Pushing the blocked leg to the outside and using the momentum of the push to throw his own kick, Hiro aimed for the blue-haired woman’s head, just to give her a taste of her own medicine, gaining the cheers from his friends on the sidelines.
Sadly, the only thing Hiro’s attack connected to was a defense Raine had put up with her arm. The same way Hiro had blocked his Guardian’s kick just seconds before.
By now, Dustin and Joey’s cheering had ceased as Raine had reinforced her defense by wrapping her fingers around Hiro’s leg in a solid grip.
Hiro would’ve moved his other foot in hopes to trip Raine, but the blue-haired female was one step ahead of him and had her foot pressed down on Hiro’s grounded foot, also rendering it immobile. It took Hiro only a second to realize that the foot Raine was using to hold him down belonged to the same leg Hiro had blocked and then easily released, a mistake he was beginning to regret.
With one foot pinned down and his other in Raine’s grasp Hiro was a sitting duck, not to mention defenseless as his hands were waving back and forth to keep from falling backwards. “You didn’t follow the rules,” Raine breathed out of her mouth.
Hiro gulped. No doubt Raine was mad at him for breaking the rules she had made for the fight, and Hiro knew that whenever he had made Raine mad he-
WHAMMM!!!
With no possible way to defend himself, Raine had forcefully kicked Hiro in his abdominal area, knocking the wind out the teenager. But it didn’t end there; Raine had not release hold of Hiro’s leg, and her foot was still holding Hiro’s other leg down. The kick would have knocked Hiro back and to the ground but thanks to Raine the brown-haired teenager was still standing and had absorbed Raine’s kick to the maximum.
Quickly, Raine released her hold on the teenager and Hiro began to fall back unable to move from the amount of pain he was feeling at the moment; but before he could get the luxury of falling on his back, Raine had spun around and landed another strong kick on Hiro’s side that knocked the defeated teenager to the other end of the room.
Dustin and Joey watched in awe as they witnessed their friend brutally beaten so easily. But their awe soon turned to fear as Raine eyed the two teenagers who were still standing, to say the least. “You think my training is easy?” Raine said as she slowly walked in front of the two boys.
Dustin and Joey, who had first hand witnessed of Hiro’s defeat still fresh in their minds, didn’t say a word – because they couldn’t say anything really. Fear of angering Hiro’s Guardian any more kept them keeping their mouths shut.
The two boys flinched as Raine grabbed hold of their shirt collars, lifted them up so they’d be in level with her face, and brought them close to her face as she said with a scary look, “From now on, you two will work with Hiro until you’re able to take back your words;” then the blue-haired woman smirked and soon finished, “unless you two are too scared to take a little bit of pain.”
Their pride as males had been attacked by a woman they knew now was serious in her threats.
Their attention was averted to the beaten up Hiro, as he was now beginning to pick himself up from the floor. If he was able to take this type of work out then so could they.
“We’re in,” the duo said in unison.
“So you found Hiro unconscious on the floor and took him to Joey’s house to so he wouldn’t be caught be the police?” Raine summarized what she had heard from Hiro’s friends and said it aloud so they could confirm if she heard correctly.
“Uh-huh, he’d been beaten by the thugs who called for him in school,” Dustin added.
Hiro mentally sighed in relief at Dustin’s testimony; this was now proof to Raine that he hadn’t mentioned anything about Raine’s abusive action at the school.
The final hours of the evening ended with a re-telling at what happened with Mrs. Rekab and some small chat mainly between Raine and Alie. Joey didn’t have anything to say and Dustin didn’t want to talk to Raine, for fear of saying something stupid that would give him more “training”. Hiro couldn’t mention anything about Haretsu until he confirmed the fight with his Guardian.
Sadly, that time to ask Raine wouldn’t be too long as Hiro’s friends couldn’t stay long. Though it had only been several minutes, it was already getting late and the three guests had to go home soon, much to Hiro’s dismay.
Dustin and Alie could walk to their homes since they also lived in the city. Joey, on the other hand, was poor from the payment he had to make with the first taxi up here and had to walk home outside city limits.
With his goodbyes said, Hiro cried inwardly as his so-called “shields” had now departed for home. He now had nobody to protect him from Raine…
Hiro turned around to walk out of the foyer, but not before noticing the indoor dojo-like room that Raine had added the first few weeks after the buyout of this house. That room held so many painful memories: from training and punishments. Whenever he was in trouble, Raine would drag him in the dull wooden room and-
Faster than he wanted it to happen, Hiro felt a chill up his spine as he had a nagging feeling someone was behind him. If he wasn’t so freaked out at the moment he would’ve cried because he knew whom the person with the devilish aura could be.
Hiro’s fear’s soon became reality as a pair of hands literally slapped onto his shoulders. “Well, now that we’re alone I’m sure you won’t mind having a little discussion with me.”
Before he was able to turn around, Hiro was pushed from behind with a good amount of force that he stumbled on his footing as he entered the miniature dojo.
“What the hell, Raine!” Hiro shouted as he soon regained his footing before falling to the ground, “I almost fell because of - ”
SLAMMM!!!
Hiro winced as the blue-haired woman slammed the sliding door shut behind her, sealing the two in the room. This was no doubt bad for Hiro; if Raine wanted to release her unending anger on him he would be in a serious pinch. Not that Hiro wasn’t confident in his ability to fight back; but with all the disadvantages he was facing at the moment, it wouldn’t end very well.
Raine was now walking towards the now defensive boy in front of her, stopping in front of Hiro right when the teenager was about to through his first attack –
“Sorry about that, it’s hard to remember about your broken arm.”
Hiro froze. The attack that would have come never came as some sort of realization swept through him. Even with his friends gone, Raine still intended to act nice in front of Hiro.
But in truth, Raine wasn’t a devil to begin with. Harsh would be a better to word to describe his Guardian. Ever since he could remember, Raine had always had somewhat of a strict attitude and a temper to boot; Hiro had just assumed she hated him because she was the one responsible taking care of him and she was the only one making the income for living.
With his arms in the mess they were in, Hiro doubted that Raine would do anything drastic, now that he thought about it; so he took a chance and trusted Raine to hear her out. His body eased down and his breathing returned to normal as he dropped out of his defensive stance.
Raine noticed the boy’s calmness and soon sat down cross-legged on the floor. Hiro performed the same action soon after.
“How are you feeling?” Raine asked the boy as soon as he was situated on the floor.
Hiro snarled similar to a rabid dog, not wanting to answer his Guardian’s question because of the fact that Raine had been the one who played a large role to the injuries he had received today. But since Raine had actually sounded serious in her question, Hiro thought he could at least give an answer.
“Peachy,” Hiro forced out through gritted teeth. He had tried his best not to make eye contact with the blue-haired woman before him but curiosity overpowered him wanting to see Raine’s reaction to his answer.
“That’s good to hear,” the older woman said in relief with a distorted grin on her face, a look that showed Raine was trying her best to hold in her laughter at the teenager’s smart-aleck remark. If Hiro had enough energy to be sarcastic then there was no doubt in Raine’s mind that he was fine.
Hiro had noticed Raine’s grin and immediately shot a glare which only made the woman speak up. “Are your arms ok -”
“Dammit Raine!” Hiro shouted, “Why are you asking such stupid questions when you already know the answer to them! My left arm was almost burned off and my right arm is flippin’ broken!”
“Listen,” Raine commanded forcefully, gaining the attention of the teenager before her, “I need to know if you are feeling well after today’s experience, and the only way I’ll find out is if you answer my questions.”
“Why don’t you just take me to a doctor?” Hiro stood up, which he found hard to do since he couldn’t use either of his arms to prop himself upward. “If you’re gonna fake kindness then go for it. Be nice and take me to the doctor’s so they can help me.”
The blue-haired woman remained silent at Hiro’s remark before she spoke, but all Hiro could hear was, “The doctors won’t be able to help you out -”
“I beg to differ,” Hiro interrupted, pointing to the splinter of his broken arm. “First of all they could give me a cast in replacement for this. Next they could give me some burn cream for my other arm. Do you know how annoying this burn is when you have nothing but bandages covering it?”
“Fine, we’ll go to the hospital tomorrow -”
“Today!” Hiro had interrupted again, now setting a personal best at how many times in one day he had interrupted his Guardian. “What am I supposed to do to go to sleep? I might screw up my arms even more than what they already are!”
Hiro had to mentally remind himself that he had been screaming at Raine and had not allowed her to finish her sentence several times. Under normal circumstances, Raine would have severely punished him, but right now, she wasn’t doing anything to fight back; something Hiro was beginning to like in this ‘new’ Raine.
“I’m going to get something to drink,” Hiro calmly added, walking out of the training room and out the sliding door; but not before Raine had asked-
“Are you hot?”
“Just a little thirsty,” was the reply from the brown haired teenager.
Hiro cursed himself for leaving his jacket inside his locker, just for the fact that the cold February night was too much for him to bare without his nose beginning to run from a cold that he was beginning to get.
If today could any worse Hiro had no idea what it could be. So far he had experienced the worst, as well as the weirdest day of his young teenager life! At least things would get better when he made it to the hospital.
Raine had forced Hiro to retrieve the sword Haretsu was after today, just in case the police would check the lockers for any more suspicions of bombs around the school, especially with Mrs. Rekab’s claim that there had been more than one bombed planted in the school. While Hiro was retrieving the sword, Raine had promised to make an evening appointment with the hospital to have Hiro’s arms checked up and mended to.
This was a fair deal to Hiro, just because at the same time he would be able to retrieve his jacket and backpack he had left behind at school today. But in truth, the only thing he wanted out of his backpack was his lunch money, just because he could save it for something else besides lunch at the moment, like video games or mangas.
It didn’t take Hiro a great deal of time to arrive at the closed school, but it did surprise him that he wasn’t the only student sneaking inside. He had noticed a group of students, or so he thought were students, entering the school through a broken window of a classroom. Whether these kids had made the entrance or not, Hiro didn’t care, but he still used this as his only way to enter the school.
Once inside, Hiro was again amazed to see a fair amount of students taking things out of their lockers and chatting to friends about today’s bombing. Only several people, and by several it was more like four or five students, had recognized Hiro and gave him uncomfortable looks that made Hiro feel guilty down the bottom of his stomach, though he really didn’t know why. After what had happened today, it was only fair for the students to thank him for the school’s temporary shutdown.
A small trek across dozens of students lead Hiro to blue hall, the hall his locker was in. It had only taken him a minute to find his locker, enter the combination, and retrieve his jacket, and when he had finished that, he soon made his way to purple hall. After an upstairs climb and a thorough searcher for locker ‘3950’ Hiro had found his target. Unfortunately, it had hit him that he had nothing at the moment to pry open the locker like he did with the sword, and without the correct combination, he wouldn’t be able to open it easily. This lead to one option: to try his best to open the locker by any means necessary.
Sadly, a trip to the janitor’s room came up empty for any crowbars he had hoped to find. It was until Hiro became desperate that he began kicking the locker with as much strength he could muster, which wasn’t much thanks to today’s injuries. This also led to an unsuccessful attempt opening the locker.
“So, you must be the person who was with the guys who blew part of the school, Hiro Tsuwamono, right?”
Hiro cringed at the announcement of his last name as he turned around to find no one in particular in site. If only his mind had been playing with him at the moment, but alas, Hiro could tell someone was nearby.
Finally, proving his suspicion, a blonde haired girl walked up the stairs that was adjacent to the locker Hiro was trying to force open. Her hair was long and combed neatly with small berets of butterflies clipped onto the side of her hair. Bright sapphire eyes stared Hiro down, inspecting the injured boy. If Hiro was to judge, he would say that this girl was from the cheerleading team that many guys would go after to have as a girlfriend. He avoided any people who acted like that. “If you’re looking for your sword, I’m sorry to tell you that you won’t find it in there anymore.”
“And who said I was looking for a sword?” Hiro laughed calmly, hiding his fear of someone finding the sword he hid.
“The fact that you’re trying to break into my locker is proof enough, don’t you think?” The blonde said with a smile.
“Your…locker…” Hiro gulped, having a feeling this was not going to end well.
The girl smirked evilly as she saw the look in Hiro’s eyes, “Yup, my locker, and if you want your sword back, you’ll have to do something to help me with a little problem I’m having.”
I’m disappointed with this chapter because no matter how many times I’ve proofread it, it still felt like I forced the entire thing throughout the chapter. Although I may already have future chapters planned out, it’s still hard for me to get the first ten up and running. The reason for this is because I just want to rush to the fight scenes but have to hold back so no to screw up this story. Sadly, at the pace I’m going things won’t pick up till Chapter 7…hopefully.
For people still reading my story, I thank you for your support and will try to update Chapter 6 during Spring Break. But for now, I’d like to have some people’s opinions on this chapter and see what you thought about it and what I should fix.
Next Chapter: Against the #1 Rule
Voice of Hiro: Even though Raine may make my life miserable from time to time, there is one rule she has taught me that I completely agree with and will follow for the rest of my life; but now I have to go against that rule just to get a stupid sword back. If I don’t get the sword back for Raine, then she’ll kill me, but if I go against her main rule, then that witch will still kill me…DAMMIT! What am I supposed to do!
