Chapter 2
He could scarcely breathe, for fear this moment would evaporate. He hadn’t seen her in well over a year. A year that had been filled with heartache and strife.
Ryo crosses the space separating him from the luggage conveyor and waits impatiently. There wasn’t a spectacular amount of people here, but there was enough to make it a more rational location to wait.
Two female attendants open the terminal door and a few minutes later people begin to stream out. Rahne’s one of the last to leave the plane, looking exhausted and tousled.
Ryo bounds over to her, and catches her up in a fierce hug. She hugs him back just as fiercely, tears welling up in her eyes.
"Hey! What’s with the waterworks?" Ryo teases, both out loud and in sign language, throwing an exaggerated glance at the water spots on his shoulder. "You got my shirt wet!"
Rahne laughs softly and wipes her eyes on her jacket sleeve. The oversize, black denim jacket; he remembered, had been his. Ryo gives his sister a mock-accusing look, and is rewarded with a raspberry from Rahne.
"You told me you didn’t like this one . . ." Rahne retorts comically, her voice it’s typical too soft.
" . . .I don’t, Sis." Ryo chuckles, and then sobering, he grabs her up in another fierce hug. "Jeez, I missed you!"
"Me, too." Rahne whispers, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back tears and she hugs him back equally fiercely and holds on desperately for several long moments. Even through the thick jacket he can feel her trembling.
~ "Rahne, what’s wrong?" ~ Ryo signs to her without verbal words, for privacy. ~ "You’re shaking like a leaf..." ~
~ "Last few days I haven’t been sleeping well . . ." ~
Ryo thinks for a moment, they were both experts on not sleeping well. ~ "What, too much stress? Or just strange dreams?" ~
Rahne sighs exhaustedly, ~ "Nightmares, actually . . ." ~
Wildfire squeezes his sister’s shoulder supportively; the guys and Mia are standing by the column he had been leaning against. He sees Kento and Cye shouldering Rahne’s duffels.
Out loud now, Ryo speaks slowly so she can read his lips, "Well, let's get you home to bed."
"Sounds good to me, Ryo..."
Introductions are short and to the point; with little pleasantries. Sage can’t help but admire Rahne’s face and body; it was definitely going to be interesting living with her in the house. It felt like an early birthday present.
____
Rahne climbs into the cramped back seat of Mia’s jeep with Ryo. As she pulls out of the airport, Kento and the others in his van behind them, Mia wonders what Rahne and Ryo are doing. They were facing each other, not speaking. Then she catches the brief flash of a hand gesture. Sign Language. They were conversing silently in sign language. It doesn’t last too long, Rahne turns in her face to look out the window.
When she looks back a few minutes later, Ryo’s sister is asleep.
"Ryo, does she know?" Mia asks softly. Meaning the armors and their battle against Talpa.
In her rear-view mirror, Ryo, his face outlined in light and shadows, shakes his head, "No."
Wildfire then goes silent and watches his sister sleep. Her features are briefly illuminated by the harsh gleams of passing headlights or the occasional streetlight. With a soft sigh, her head slips a little; coming to rest against the seat edge by the window. Her bangs bobbing slightly with the movement of the car, tinted orangish-gold briefly by another passing lamp. Her lightly shut eyes look almost sunken in, and the dark circles around her eyes appear so dark they look like terrible bruises. Granted, the orangish-yellow light of a sodium-vapor lamp isn’t flattering to anybody, but she looked like she had actually reached the end of her rope weeks ago.
Seized by a sudden urge, Ryo reaches out and brushes her perpetually wild shock of bangs, identical to his own, away from her eyes. She kept her hair long now, and trained into a long braid. When they were children, she had had unmercifully curly hair. Her hair had become soft and wavy now, it’s length pulling the curl out. He wondered why all these old memories of what she looked like kept coming into his mind; they were facts that had become mostly cosmetic in nature.
Ryo sighs as Mia turns onto their road. ‘Maybe now she’ll take it easy.’
Rahne wasn’t a complainer; in fact, when something was truly wrong, she’d go quiet. Just like he’d do. But on the opposite... Ryo had an aggressive streak where Rahne was passive, for example. But she could be so unlike him...so different in all ways from what was considered normal for twins, that people tended to overlook any resemblance if they were separated. Which had been what he'd been hoping for when he ran away from the orphanage to go battle Talpa. He wanted her safe and protected, and sadly, distance had proven to be the best protection he could offer.
As they pull into the driveway, Ryo lightly shakes her. Her eyes flutter open to a squint, yawns, and unfastens her seatbelt.
Without a word he leads her to her room and shuts the door behind him.
White Blaze blinks at him sleepily as he turns his bedroom light on, then immediately puts his large head back down. Ryo peels off his T-shirt and kicks off his slippers. He flops down on his bed, then rises again in disgust. He empties his pockets of the offending, hard materials and flops back down. He switches off the light and promptly falls asleep.
____
Almost immediately it’s morning. Ryo rolls over with a groan and pulls the covers up over his head. He falls back asleep, ignoring his alarm.
He’s awakened a few minutes later to the sound of sloshing water, and tosses the covers back. Cye’s standing there in his sub-armor, holding a bucket of water: Very typical in this house.
"I’m up, Cye." Ryo grumbles as he climbs out of bed. "Don’t let my sister catch you in that, please."
Ryo pulls a shirt over his head, and follows Cye downstairs for breakfast. He finds the other guys in their sub-armors, shoveling food into their mouths. Kento had foregone the use of silverware and was simply tipping his cereal bowl, drinking his cereal in huge, disgusting sounding, slurping gulps.
"Did I - miss something?" Ryo asks, filling his bowl with Wheat-Chex and milk. If Rahne came downstairs right now, he would have a lot of explaining that he didn’t want to do. He had never bothered to tell her about the armors. And wasn’t going to either, not if he could help it.
"Training, remember?" Rowen raises an eyebrow, staring at Ryo like he was insane. "You scheduled it."
Ryo gives Strata a dirty look over his cereal. "Before I found out Rahne was coming, thanks. It’s not my fault."
Kento swallows his last mouthful before saying, "Look, she’ll probably sleep till noon or later."
"Yeah, she was dead on her feet last night." Cye adds, rinsing his bowl out before he puts it in the dishwasher.
"Fine. Fine. I know when I’m stonewalled." Ryo pulls a chair out from the small kitchen table and sit down to eat his breakfast at a more leisurely pace than the others. Soft, thick fur brushes Ryo’s right elbow a second before White Blaze butts him gently with the top of his head.
"Hey, White Blaze." Ryo says brightly, stroking the tiger’s head. Tiger fur was much softer than it’s coarse looking nature suggested, and thicker than all get out. It resembled dog hair by it's look, but was by far much softer and satiny.
After Ryo finishes his breakfast, they jog on out to their new "playground." About a month ago, the Ronin had cleaned out an old, unused barn at the back of the Koji estate and had repaired it to serve as a small gym. Along the walls they had hung heavy bags to practice kicks and punches -not that they could get too rough on their homemade bags, but it worked. They’d also laid down cement on the inside and then had put a thick tumbling mat under the highest section of the roof. Kento and Cye had made a balance beam and had covered it with a rough textured vinyl. Mia had pleaded with the PE Department of her University to get the worn equipment that usually ended up in the junkyard and had come away with a High Bar, a set of Uneven Bars, Rings, the Tumbling Mat, and a set of weights. Rowen had even somehow managed to rig a nylon climbing rope around one of the rafters.
Now, the only trick to it was that none of them knew what to do with the Uneven Bars, or the High Bar. Plus, yesterday, Kento had proven himself to be a lead-butt, and had removed the climbing rope from the rafter . . . the hard way.
To Rowen, it looked like one huge mess, and one he would rather not deal with. It’s finally getting warm out; though some mornings are still a little chilly. He leaves the barn, bow and a small supply of arrows in hand; in search of some way to challenge his archery skills. The warm, delicious sunlight beats down on the top of his head and shoulders; he fastens his sweatband around his head. It was too nice a day to be inside.
As he rounds the old silo, he catches sight of his usual target through a foot-wide hole in the brick surface. He knows there’s also a tall-picket fence and a barbed wire fence between himself and the target. "Hmmm.... Through the silo, through the fence, under the barbed wire... nothing but target." Rowen draws his bow. Arrow nocked. Release. >thunk< Perfectly through. Too easy.
Rowen frowns down at his bow, it’s the one from his armor. Maybe if he used his regular, perfectly normal, compound bow instead he could get some real practice. However, it’s back in the house, locked up in it’s case under his bed.
He decides he should probably take off his sub-armor then. If Ryo’s sister wasn’t up by now, she was even worse than he was when it came to mornings. And he sincerely doubted that; jet-lag or no jet-lag.
He finds Rahne sitting on the porch, doing stretches, a pair of running shoes beside her. The moment he steps on the porch, she looks up at him. ‘Must be able to feel my footsteps through the wood.’
"Morning." She greets, smiling, her voice a little quieter than what a normal person’s would be.
Rowen smiles back, her brother had said that she could read lips, "Morning. Going out for a run?"
She shrugs, and then brushes some of the errant locks of her bangs out of her eyes. They spring right back, making him laugh at the look on her face. Smiling back good-naturedly, "Was thinkin’ about it, but I don’t know where I’d go."
Rowen stops and thinks. He’d set up different targets all over the back forty of the Koji estate; maybe some company wouldn’t be so bad. But she still looks a little tired. . . "Well, I’m biking out back to practice archery. If you want, you can come with me."
It takes her a moment or two to process what he’d told her. "Sure." Then for the first time she looks him over. Her gaze stops on his hand, and she brushes her hair away from her face again thoughtfully. "That’s a weird looking bow, what is it?"
Rowen looks down at his hand. He forgot! The bow from his armor..! ‘OH, Crap . . .!’ His stomach ties itself up in a knot. His mind panics, then he forces himself to calm down. ‘Gotta play this through. Hopefully she doesn’t know anything about archery...’
"What? Oh, this. Forgot I still had it. It’s a custom recurve." Rowen tells her. While she’s focused on his face, he slips the bowstring off it's hook and slowly releases it, so it was limp in his hand. He palms the loop in his hand to hide it. "I broke the. . .string, and I don’t feel like fixing it now."
She gets another thoughtful look on her then it becomes slightly confused. "Um . . .I’ll take your word for it. Back where Ryo and I grew up, they never let me handle one. I don’t think I ever saw one up close until I moved to Michigan."
"Yeah, I got into it young. It's more of a show-offish type thing than anything really good." Rowen breathes a sigh of relief and forces himself to relax. "Hey, I’ll be right back with my other bow."
Rowen runs up the stairs and into his and Sage’s room. He plops down on his bed and fills the air with as many obscenities as he knows. Now he understands why Ryo had mandated that Rahne not find out. Lying with those intense, bright blue eyes pinned on you was hard to do: They were like lasers that had painted themselves on you. 'That was close!’
But, she was here and she was waiting for him. Now it wouldn’t be so hard, without his armor’s bow, and nothing for her to see. Ignorance, in this case, was bliss.
With his normal compound bow and quiver full of dull target arrows in hand he jogs back downstairs with a spring in his step.
____
Later that day, he had decided that he had to admit that showing off for a girl was an instant way to make archery practice more challenging. Rahne sat on the bank of the small river that ran through the estate, rinsing off the mud that was splattered all the way up to her knees.
Rowen lets another arrow fly, barely taking time to aim, and grins broadly as it hits the target close to the bulls-eye. His ears feel warm as she applauds him. Make that more challenging and exponentially more fun! Sage had nothing on him right this moment!
"You are amazing. I can’t hit the broad side of a skyscraper." Rahne says, rising from her spot near the river.
Rowen shrugs and then motions her over to him. Ryo had mentioned something about her learning martial arts with him. "You took weapons with Ryo?"
He was barely noticing her delays in answering him anymore. "Yeah. Why?"
Rowen hands her his compound bow suddenly, not taking time to let her think. Shocked, she takes it from him before it drops. To his experienced eye, her grip is completely inappropriate for the weapon. He gives her a quirky smile, "Obviously, swords or polearms."
Chagrin, she hands it back to him with a blush. "Is it that bad?"
Rowen chuckles and steps behind her. He raises her left arm and wraps her fingers around the grip. He reaches into his hip pack and pulls an arm-guard out and straps it to her arm over the inside of her elbow. When he was learning, he frequently would get a burn from where the string would catch the inside of his arm when he released. It wasn’t pleasant. He pulls a release clip out of his pack next and puts it in her right hand. He takes an arrow out, puts the clip on, and helps her draw the bow.
She’s almost as tall as he is, so his mouth is just a little higher than hers. Her dark hair smells good -almost intoxicating- like wildflowers. Hanging from a thin, gold chain is a small, oval, crystal pendant; resting at the base of her throat and perilously close to the top of her shirt. If he leaned over just a little more. . . 'No, Hashiba!' She was so close to him. . . 'Ryo would kill me...' He shakes himself free from these stupid and almost lecherous observations. ‘Remember: She’s off-limits and don’t you forget it!’
He bumps her hip with his leg, "Left Back Stance, Rahne."
She must have been able to figure out what he wanted, because her stance shifted. Left leg in front, knee slightly bent, right leg behind, her right foot perpendicular to her left, feet about shoulder-width apart.
"Hey, Rowen!"
Rowen glances over his shoulder to see the guys in their civilian clothes standing on the embankment behind them. "Just a moment . . .!" Rowen places his hand over Rahne’s to help hold the bow. "Sight over my thumb..." Rowen calls loudly, so she can feel the vibrations his voice makes as the air from his lungs brush the back of her neck.
"Okay...But it’s hard to hold this. . ." Rahne’s arms are shaking, but she’s still keeping the bow drawn all by herself.
"When you’re ready, squeeze the trigger . . ." Rowen says, steadying her arm.
Rahne holds it a few seconds longer, then her body tenses. Her fingers squeeze the trigger on the clip. The arrow sings through the air, before crashing impotently into a tree next to the target.
All the guys applaud her as they jog down the embankment. Rowen smiles and pats her shoulder in congratulation. Rahne stares at them in disbelief, as if wondering if she was wondering what they'd been smoking.
"But I didn’t hit the target!" Rahne finally protests as Rowen takes the bow back from her.
"Hey, I’m not great with swords. You can at least still hit stuff." Rowen tells her with a wide grin.
____
An hour later, before lunch, Rahne gets a better introduction to the guys. She seems to be enjoying herself and conversation bounces around the table.
When they’re served however, Rahne stares at Kento with something akin to horror. The guys laugh at the look on her face. When Kento winks at her, however, her horror turns to embarrassment.
"Watching him eat is like watching a train-wreak! It’s so disgusting you can’t look away." Rahne protests.
Sage grins at her from across the table, "Yep. Just wait till he says starving. Then you’ll see some action."
"Uh huh. In other words: ‘Stay out of his way’?"
Cye puts a hand on her shoulder, "You got it!"
Kento swallows his immense mouthful, and knuckles her shoulder playfully, "And, hey, we’ll get your room into better condition this evening."
"Yeah, It was kind of a last minute thing." Rowen adds, in between mouthfuls.
Rahne looks at all of them with the most sincere smile they’ve ever seen. "You know this place makes me feel like I’m finally home."