{White Rose} HOPSCOTCH

◆ Thy tiniest winds become thine storm, despairing,◆

Whilst the air itself may unravel thought you're bearing.

The marching snow carried by the wind against her cheeks. Everything felt like it was against her.

"Fleeing from the WM, making friends, only to lose them-", she bit her lip,"Only to lose them.."

Blood. Red blot. She felt as if her growth had been sliced, shattered to pieces just like that. Back to zero, so to speak. Nothingness marched with her stomping feet. She had to yank her legs out of the thick snow afore every step forward, deeper into the mountains. Nothingness. Her mother was dead, her skin ripped, her friends gone, her heart ached, she had only herself, now, nothing.

The wounds on her pale skin mixed with the cold, turning scars purplish.

She didn't know where she was, she didn't know what to do with that burning lust of murdering, bound by the ambition to kill. End a life of another to compensate for yours.

That broken katana of hers was stuck in her hand like rigor mortis. It had been so long in her hand,

she must have probably forgotten about it being there; the one item she kept to remember her mother. Her only memento became alike a curse to carry around. Just alike she must have forgotten about her mind, the ability to think rationally.

It's like key chains, the sweet sound of key chains being played right next to her ear. Sounds of shaken chains so loud, that uncontrolled sound ringed and ringed uglily, but it kept going and going, shake, shake, shake, shake, ring, ring, ring-

She bit into her free hand. The teeth went in deep so that when her mouth left the flesh,

deep bite marks made their appearance. They contrasted her paleness. The pain of the bite thankfully overpowered the phantasmal sound of chains, making them go way. "...fuck...", she gasped for air. Breathing seemed to become much less of a passive reflex and much more of an active action.

That however, wasn't the only self harming action she had done within these three hours of idealess wandering. The package of cigarettes she had put in her bosom: She'd take a cigarette out and eat it.

Where had the growth gone? The betterment? A question she asked her herself various times as she'd fall again and again on her face, tripping into the thick layer of snow. Ice crystals formed on her open wounds.

The bandages you'd expect to be wrapped around her body were long gone, actually. She discarded them in the first hour after setting out. Thin, dark red lines with a lighter red encircling them. A white wolf bled. Swollen with snow and blessed upon the Winter's kiss.

Leigh did not care anymore. The air howled into her ears, her nose was running and bleeding, the wounds felt somehow bandaged by the ice, her lower lip was a deep red from the bruise and her legs felt hollowed out. In fact, she checked once in a while if they were still attached.

Her sinister eyes glanced at the top of the mountain, the tips grazing the sky. "So high above all else.." One cough was followed by a heavier.

A swordswoman with a broken sword.

An organism losing its life, slowly.

"Smoke." She looked like a wild beast fixated on its prey. The snow she had grabbed in her hand was thrown at the wolves' eyes after she had jumped up. Howls and pain. The flutes began playing. Wolves with dark fur and yellow eyes which cut like knives into your own. Fangs licked with saliva and panting. Leigh's heart beat faster again, blood was pumped into her limbs as the two wolved jumped at her. Here they came! With a blank expression she struck her broken sword into the throat of one wolf, cutting downward, ripping through muscle and organ, she had used her other arm to cast lightning but it didn't work. Instead, there now was a wolf biting aggressively into her arm, trying to rip it off. She screamed, pulled her sword out of the guts covered in bloody slime and smashed it into the brain of the wolf. He was dead. Both were dead now. She opened his mouth to free her arm and let the corpse drop. Soon they'd be buried by a new layer of snow. A true warrior would pray that those souls find their way back home but Leigh was no such kind of person. To her it was another life-or-death situation she escaped just barely from. She wanted take a breather but her senses told her to do otherwise. Her head flicked to the right to lock eyes with a third wolf.

His humming grew into a growl but a howl from Leigh taught him to leave here. Focus. Blind everything else out and focus on that one..

She smelled smoke, somehow during a snowstorm she was able to smell smoke.

Legs moved, no thoughts. She had accepted her death a long time ago, didn't she? Way before she had met Ray and Leo she was born to be tool of the military. That's right. A lowly slave of the military, a Godsent. But she was moving.

What good was she for, it was not the battlefield? Admittedly, those doubting questions would arise in her mind from time to time, degrading her existence. Truly, where had her growth gone?

Feet moved faster. As she pulled them out of the thick layer in order to take another step forward, she noticed a runny liquid around them. Seemed like, they were bleeding. Why? She did not care.

But a smile formed on her face as she turned a corner and saw what seemed to be shelter.. a Dojo.

"I bet there are people in there. Look at all the smoke for fuck's sake, they must have a hot spring or something in there.. or maybe they're cookin' something." Sure of her thesis, she followed it.

A big wooden dojo in the middle of mountain and snowstorm. Here there were, people living,

in the coldest of Norths. Leigh's cracked smile only grew more infuriating as she got closer to the entrance. Before entering, she thought of other swordsmen inside the building. Perhaps they were eating, training, resting, bathing, or relieving themselves. She thought about all the possibilities and when her own injuries had to remind her of time running out, she pushed herself in.

When humans are irritated emotionally, they tend to abandon their ways of societal norms they have been taught as a child,

to let their own terms and policies out for a while until they cool down. Being ignorant to the well-beings of other living creatures, she placed herself above all else. However within the time period of raging, anything could happen now. Be it self-harm, murder, theft, breaking laws which are agreed upon by most of the world, anything, really. For, when you find yourself in a state of emotional bewilderment, you experiment with new thoughts you didn't know were lurking in the back of your head, naughty, explicit thoughts, be it sexual or crimeful- You find that,

suddenly, there is no feeling of remorse, no, in fact, your instinct keeps encouraging that wildest of lusts of

ecstasy-

You'd expect the whole building to be surrounded by a wall, or guarded but they weren't expecting some traveling, suicidal teen to waltz in on them now, were they?

From their reaction.. guess not. In the middle of sparring, they stopped. A slight shock. Her footprints of blood traced back to her, bringing more disciples into the training room, lining up behind her. All staring at the white girl in the middle of the room, like a white wolf breaking in with hungry eyes and irregular breathing, only the drooling tongue was missing now.

The warmth of the room couldn't pierce her skin, she'd still feel the cold snow, she still didn't feel anything: both hands, and feet were numb, as well as the wounds. Not a single word was spoken. Most of them had their hair in a traditional do so they wouldn't get in the way of their training.

Leigh's golden eyes jumped from one human to another. Everyone was equipped with at least one sword, some had two. Her breath was cut short, but that was okay, she thought. Drops of sweat formed on her forehead, a few strands of her hair cut into her field of vision. But that was okay. Her smile scared them, made them wary, made them prepared for when

Leigh finally decided to let herself go, snap, let go all of her rationality, snap, alike butterflies, her memories of a stable psyche swarmed out of her head, snap, teeth showed, snap- a battlecry.

"She's fast!" Indeed, she was, but how was not explicable for she couldn't make use of Will. Dodging all the swings, she rammed her broken blade into a guy's stomach,"KEN!!", twisted it, pulled it out and kicked him to the ground, blocking the blades approaching her from behind. Sounds of meeting steel and metal. "One at the time, boys! I'll get ya heads off, one by one!", Leigh laughed, The two swords she was blocking with her right arm, she pushed back, making the men fall onto their back.

"Ryuu! Ryan!"

"It's okay", someone help Ken, he's gonna die at this rate!"

"DAMMIT, who is this girl??"

"Look at her features.. golden eyes, white hair.. what does that remind you of..?"

"A Godsent??"

"Godsent? But why, here, of all places-"

"I don't know what the WM could want with us."

"Someone, call Master Rosh while I'll finish this!"

"I''ll bring Ken into the treatment room!!"

"HEY YOU" She slashed two more across their chest, forcing rushing blood to come out and stain the floor and herself in red. Ignoring the rule of chess and knocking pieces over- That's what Leigh looked like in the eyes of the students who are training to understand the way of the sword. She turned around to the man calling her, carefully licking the blood around her mouth with her tongue. Disgust aroused among them. He had a prepared stance; it was trained form against sheer blood lust. "You want me?", she asked and launched forward. He did not carry a sword of metal but wood, a training sword. And one swift motion from high up downward, he hit Leigh's head so hard when she hit the floor it rumbled for a second. A concussion for sure. "Ahh fuck, you made me bite my tongue...", as she got on her knees everyone watched her catching the dripping mix of saliva and blood in her hand and quickly throwing it into the eyes of the man, blinding him. Five other men drew their sword and escaped the spectating circle.

"YURI, NO" Grip in both her hands, a scream to tighten the muscles and a launch forward to stab Yuri in the guts. The pressure rose up from his feet to his head, his senses heightened to a point where even in a blinded state he could tell where Leigh was. A horizontal strike downward of the hard wooden practice sword hit her temple forced her to go down. But not completely: Supporting herself on her right knee, pushing herself up and throwing her sword into Yuri's right thigh forced him into the same position. She laughed aloud and the five came for her neck as it was now upside down.

"Is she break-dancing?" "What an unorthodox-" Her 'dance' turned every four seconds into a kick or punch with her bare foot and hand to hit a swordsman's groin. The supporting body parts switched from left arm, to right leg, to left leg, to right arm to head and back. Making her way back to her sword stuck inside Yuri, she pulled it out, got behind him, pressed the blade against his throat and spat blood onto the floor, moved backwards until her back hit one of the room's wall. Her sight was unclear, she thought perhaps because of the hits to her head from the guy she was holding hostage now. She chuckled at their frightened faces, she laughed at her wounds opening, opening up again and- A ringing in her ears- there it was, at last.

"Dammit, enough of this! Are you challenging our Dojo, or what?!"

"And who are you?!" "Yeah, who??"

"Let Yuri go!"

As she her eyes jumped from one shouting person to another, she had to close her left eye, as blood was flowing down from the laceration on the top of her head.

"She most certainly is not challenging us, or else she wouldn't slaughter, but cut."

Everyone's faced turned to the person entering the wide room. A female, a woman with tied hair to the back, dressed as everyone else, beside Leigh, in traditional clothing. Her bored eyes looked at Leigh, inspecting and judging the young, yet it felt as if she wasn't harbouring feelings of rage or blood lust toward the Godsent. She simply met with the eyes of the crazed who let Yuri drop to the floor, he fainted from the choking blade, but wasn't dead. Ken, as well as the two who had their chests splits open were carried to the treatment room as well. No one was dying in the presence of their Master.

"You are lucky. Some of you could even beat her in her current state. Otherwise, she'd be no match for any of you. She's clearly trained in Will, people, notice at least the obvious!"

Her disciples felt guilt. "But she's in a damaged state, mentally, as well, as physically. I'd say you have your practice rounds with her for today. Now, go and defend your honor!"

The roar of the lot echoed into Leigh's ears. They were coming for her now, alright. Countless swords were charging at her. Back against the wall as the master watched her. Was is finally death

freeing her from the misery? A sudden rush of blood rose from toe to head. Her eyes shortly blacked out. Vision was cut, hearing deafened.

When she reopened her senses, half of the people were on the floor, leaking blood from various slashes across their body. Her katana really acted as a knife right now. The cold shock in the tip of her fingers was enough to remind her of where she was. "Alright.. okay..", she thought,

her eyes reacted to the people swinging at her. This time she wouldn't black out, there was a slight amount of focus she was able to recall although it seemed to be irrevocably until now. The sentences in her head seemed much more of refined nature and eloquence-

She covered her face with her arms, metal touching her bones, she could feel it driving through the fibres and feeling it made her want to freak out but instead all she got out was a little blood while laughing. Insanity helped her to cope with everything. She rammed her foot into the groin of one of them, he went down, Leigh grabbed his sword mid-air and stabbed the other guy's guts with it, she took his sword as well and threw it against the blade that was coming for her next. In one hand, a longer blade, in the other, the shorter blade. Their master rose an eyebrow: "Musashi..?" A strike from above, again. She countered this time with the longer katana. The encounter of blades rang. Her blade scuffed all the way down to the swordsman's handle, where she had closed the distance enough to stab him with her broken-

She got her back cut by two blades the moment she wanted to attack. But she couldn't just turn now.. "What to do..?" Like a tornado she held both of her swords close to with bent arms and spun, making all three of them step away a few.

She was opposite them, now, all three were some kind of line which led up to the master who stood in front of an opened window door. "A chance.." She inhaled as her focus was growing. This was the most natural thing to her, was it not? Murdering. Something most people shy away from, yet to her it was the most common thing she could think of. The weak get killed, the strong survive. She didn't need anyone but herself and her blade. Her mind repeated the word 'kill'. She was already in a fragile state and she needed to cool off and whilst they are better ways to cope with the loss of family and friends, she chose to give in to her desires, her instinct, her personality which was trained to kill. KILL and MURDER.

The sword she had taken from one of them, she simply threw it into the air.

Their eyes jumped opened like she jumped forward with big steps, breaking the wooden floor. She ran up to the first guy who thrusted his sword to pierce into the flesh of her right arm, closed the distance between them, interchanging gasps, using the momentum to ram her broken katana into his throat, blood spilling out of his screaming mouth. Grabbing his pained body after stealing his sword, and pushing him against the second guy as a human shield, even holding him with her pierced arm. The second's eyes jumped to the sword behind the shield's left shoulder, wildly stabbing into the breast; pulling back, bruises of blood, pushing her shield out of the way, having a sword cut her arm off had she not raised it with enough effort, deeply cutting into her rib cage. Sword in mouth- A tight grip on the enemy blade, she pulled it inward, toward her came the second, closer and closer, his eyes opened wider and wider as her broken blade was rammed into his heart over and over again and again until he went down on his knees. The third. Standing there, observing the crazed one's movement as they had no form, no teachings whatsoever. It was pure murderer's intent. She spat, he panicked, he only held out his sword, mesmerized by the defeat of his fellow disciples. She ran. He only watched her close in, any second now was going to be his last. Her laugh echoed in his head as she slashed his guts open. She had jumped, then stuck her blades into his throat, while his sword pierced her belly button, gushing blood leaking from her pulsating stomach. She separated the head from the torso by cutting through the throat.

Her opened mouth leaked coughed up blood which dropped like a short waterfall onto the corpse beneath her. Standing up, slowly, it seemed like red clouds of smokes were walking through the room. Their master had been standing right over there, she pointed at the person in front of the huge window that acted as a door to the garden, as well. "The.. sky..", she murmured slowly. Two humans, both users of Willpower. She looked at Leigh with a doubting look on her face. Losing that much blood through that way of suicidal fighting, she was worthless in her eyes. The master decided not to draw her sword.

A crooked smile, golden eyes looked torn up, this was her last attack, she felt it, finally.

Leigh;

throwing her sword at the master, she did not flinch as the stolen blade missed her, smashing the glass of the window with a loud crack, the throw of her own broken katana followed after that, her teeth clenched as she screamed out blood-"DIIIIIEEEEEEE"

The colours went out for a second, candlelight killed, they were exchanged for a flash of a mix of black and white,

a crack in vision; lightning, the beam of sheer energy roared throughout her feet, rose up to her upper body, enveloped her left arm, gripped the broken katana and as if the missing part were restored, her blade reached out to the window, to the master herself; eyes slowly widening dramatically to the seconds in which one may part from life-

.

.

.

That was it, her arm broke, legs gave in, her faced smashed against the bloody floor. After the black smoke cleared and colour returned to all's vision, the master reappeared undamaged in front of the now completely smashed window, letting in the cold wind of the North of the mountains. Her judging gaze felt a tiny bit of sympathy for the girl; looking down on her, on the ground, closing in on death with every further breath drawn.

The master's Willpower protected everyone in this room. All of her disciples were unharmed and well again.

Her graceful figure, stepped down, wanting to take a closer look at the white-haired.

In the moment of her movement, another flash went off which she could dodge just enough to have her neck grazed a little. A thin line of red she saw on her index finger when she checked the wound.

"Master!" "Are you alright?"

"Calm down, you fools.", she inspected her blood, thinking it had been too long since anyone was able to get a hit on her,"Instead of worrying and cowering in the spectator's circle, all of you should feel, at least, shame." "But Master Rosh-" "But John. I think all of you know that a rogue like her defeated the graceful form you all have been trained in. You were defeated with mundane blood lust. That, is truly shameful."

"What in the bloody hell? What's going on?!"

A group of people walked into the room. Taking a look at the staining puddles of red, the ones that had shaky feet, and, of course, the stranger on the ground.

"Back already? How did the hunt go?", the master asked in a way too relaxed tone of voice.

"Rosh-", a clap against the back of his head,"Master Rosh, yes the hunt was a good one, lots of bunnies and a few bears. Karl got some herbs, too-"

"Splendid", did she answer.

"Your turn now-", he stopped the hand which wanted to smack his head again,"Why's Leigh here?"

"what...", she was conscious, moving her head slightly to the side with her blurred vision. Concussion. That voice- "Oh, she's awake, huh? Who would have thought, who would have thought, I bet you thought my master would let you die just like that, huh?", crouching down beside her. Her half opened eyes didn't react to his while silence and the rest watched them.

"Hey Cherrywine, you know her?", a female voice. "Oh do I?", he gave as a response. "So you seem to be acquainted with her, Cherry", the master gave a smile and everyone started muttering,

to which he simply flicked his cap, "Oh I know, I know- Me? Acquainted with a female outside of this Dojo..?", he tapped Leigh's head, to check if there was a reaction and whispered for her ears only:"You remember the lights I showed you?", he waited two seconds,

"The golden lights in my garden?"

Her eyes opened again, a muffled noise of confirmation. "I think she knows me as well, Rosh!",

he smiled brightly at his neutral-toned master.

"You'll explain to me your relationship with her later. First comes dinner, got it? Clean up the room, and practice in groups of three, only strikes, no slashes,

no sloppy ones. You have one hour, should your arms give in, you jog in the snow for another hour and are left with a cold supper for the night. Now, go!"

Affirmation of the crowd emerged, Cherry knew he had to go with his hunting crew to make supper.

"Sheesh, she's got no chill..", just as he wanted to stand up, here were words he heard:

"why are you here..."

On his feet, looking down into her halfway-opened golden eyes, he simply smiled as he saw her pass out again.