***
Arriving in front of her house, Niko notices that Chisai is sitting on the steps in a plain green shirt, dark blue jeans, and ankle high black boots, with her head on her folded arms, supported by her knees. He parks the car in front of the steps, hops out of the car, and runs to sit by Chisai's side. "Chisai, what happened?"
Picking her head up from her arms, tears fall from her face to the ground and on her jeans. Her appearance, along with the darkened spots below her where her tears fell, made it obvious that she had been crying for quite a while.
"My parents found out that I missed part of school yesterday." She says, tears rolling down her face.
Recalling the events from yesterday, Niko remembers running into the school and carrying Chisai out of the classroom in the middle of class.
"Oh, yeah." Niko says, feeling guilty and embarrassed. "I don't know if it will do much good at this point, but I'm sorry about that."
She looks at him with an evil glare. "Sorry? SORRY?" She pushes through her tears and starts to raise her voice. "If this big event was supposed to happen to me, why didn't anyone plan to get me out of there more discretely?" She says a little sarcastically.
Feeling personally attacked, Niko rebuttals. "Hey! Don't kill the messenger! I was just doing what I was told."
Chisai puts her head back on her arms and starts crying again.
Hoping to cheer her up a bit, Niko asks, "Why are you sitting out here?"
"I just needed to get away from the yelling." She says through her arms.
Niko looks up at the house, then back at Chisai, putting a hand on her back. "How about this: I'll talk to your parents and see if I can clear some things up, 'kay?"
Slowly raising her head, Chisai looks at Niko like he's insane. "You? Talk to my parents? No way! You're nuts!"
"Well, maybe, but I can give it a shot." he says as he stands up and starts walking to the front door.
Realizing that he is really going through with this, Chisai turns her head to follow his movement.
As Niko approaches the front door, a faint red light on top of a white opaque bubble appears above the door. The sound of a chime can be heard from inside.
A few moments later, the door slides open. A young boy dragging his teddy bear looks up at Niko. "Hello?"
Niko crouches down to look the boy straight in the eyes. "Hi there. Are your mommy and daddy home?"
"Yeah." Buyo responds.
"May I speak with them?" Niko asks politely.
Buyo turns around. He yells, "MOMMY! DADDY!", then walks away from the door and Niko.
Chisai mother, a woman in her early forties, wearing a comfortable blue button-up silk shirt with spiral patterns on it and dark gray pants held up with a shiny black leather belt, steps to the door. Her shoulder-length brown hair had some minor streaks of gray in them, arranged in a stylish manner. "Can I help you, young man?" she asks with a smug manner.
In the background, Niko can hear her father on the phone. "Is that so? Well, I don't care! She has never done something that before! How could you?" The one-sided questions continue.
Hearing Chisai's father yell on the phone made Niko slightly nervous. Knowing that he has reached this far, he decides to proceed, as if he had no other choice. "Yes, hi. I'm Niko Sakuna. I wanted to see if I could clear up the situation that dealt with Chisai at school yesterday."
Looking him over from top to bottom, she says, "Fine. Come in."
Niko walks through the door, which slides closed as soon as he is clear.
Surprised at the fact that Niko could even start to pull something like this off, Chisai stands up and runs to a window on the front of the house. All of the sounds are extremely muffled, so she can only make out small bits and pieces.
Still not believing that something like this could happen, she tries to get into a better position to hear more of the conversation without exposing herself as an eavesdropper. However, all attempts at hearing more of the conversation resulted in the same outcome: muffled noises.
A few minutes later, the front door opens. Chisai tries to make herself sparse and hides behind the large oak tree in the front yard.
"I'm glad that we could clear that up. Once again, I apologize for the mix-up." Niko says as he walks through the front door, waving at her parents with a smile on all of their faces.
As the front door slides closed, Chisai confronts Niko on the sidewalk by the tree. Wiping the tears from her face, she starts to say what is on her mind. "How....." is all she can say before she tries searching for more words to express her surprise.
"I couldn't have planned that better if I did it myself." Niko responds.
"What do you mean?"
"You know the phone call that your dad was on?"
Chisai nods.
"That was your school. They called your parents and said that you came down with a severe illness that had some very unusual side effects. Based on that, I told your parents that I was the intern at the hospital, and the hospital tasked me to take you into special care, along with my medical team. Since I said that I would personally take care of you, I brought you home last night because you got out extremely late. I then told them that I was here to bring you to your followup, to make sure you were okay. There were other details, but they're not important."
"That's.....that's insane! They'd never believe that!" Chisai exclaims.
"Apparently, everything fell into place and it worked out. They believed everything I said and didn't question any of it. The call from the school helped set the scene, though."
"That's.....suspicious." She says as her tears dry up, but slightly paranoid.
"I know, but I don't want to go back there and clarify any more details that I have to." Niko shivers. "Your dad creeps me out."
"Yeah, I know. He can be a little intimidating at times. That's just the way he is."
Knowing that Tora needs them to be at training soon, Niko decides to move the conversation forward. He claps in front of him and says with an upbeat attitude, "Well then. Let's get you to your 'followup.'"
Chisai looks at him with caring eyes. This person, whom she just met less than twenty-four hours ago, rescued her, helped her, gave her a ride, educated her, and now saved her from her parents wrath (at least for now), doesn't have any negativity among him. He's always so focused, so cheery. And now he's strong for me. Another tear falls from her eye as she shows a slight smile.
A twinkle from the tear catches Niko's eye. He stops in his march to the car and looks at Chisai. "Something wrong?"
Chisai pulls over a sleeve and wipes her face. "No. Nothing's wrong. Let's go!" She says as she marches towards his car.
Following right behind her, Niko walks her and jumps down the staircase, landing between her and the car. He reaches down to grab the door handle and opens it for Chisai.
And so kind. She thinks as she sits down in the passenger seat.
Niko closes the car door and runs around to the other side. Quickly getting into the driver's seat, he pushes the start button. "Off to training!"
The car drives off into the distance. As soon as the car is out of view of Chisai's house, Niko turns to Chisai, who is still trying to wipe her tears away.
Breaking the silence, he asks, "So, what do you think we will do for this elusive 'training' that Lord Tora has planned for us?"
Chisai, trying to contain her emotions, is unsure and didn't expect a question like this to come up so soon. "I don't know. What are his training sessions like, anyway?"
Shuffling through his memories, Niko tries to recall all of the sessions he had been through. "Most of them are fairly simple. You know: meditate, target practice, balance techniques, sparring – most things that you'd get in any martial arts area, except these are for demonic abilities."
"What's the difference?"
A bright light appears in front of Niko's car. The light is so bright, both of them have to cover their eyes.
"What the hell?" Niko says as the li
ght grows all around them, engulfing the car.
In the blink of an eye, the light is gone, and Niko tries to regain control of the car. Taking his arm down from his eyes, he feels slightly relieved. "What was that?" He looks over at Chisai. "Are you alright?"
Chisai slowly lowers her arm from her eyes. As she sees something that alarms her, she quickly throws the same arm in front of her and points at what she sees. "WATCH OUT!"
Niko turns his head to focus on the front of the car. His car is now driving on a grassy and sandy rock face, quickly approaching the edge of a cliff. "HOLD ON!" he calls out.
Stomping on the brake and pushing it as far as it could go, the car starts to skid. He turns the steering wheel, hoping to increase the amount of wind resistance the car has against the oncoming cliff.
Unfortunately, the car turns all the way around and starts sliding backwards towards the cliff.
Chisai tries to think of a way out of this. Thinking back to some action movies that she had seen, the hero always opens the door and rolls out of the car to save himself. However, with the car sliding backwards, opening the doors and rolling out would catch her anyway and be pulled along with the car.
With the amount of time decreasing before they fall over the cliff, Chisai yells "This is the last thing I would have expected!"
The brakes aren't working, which means only one thing, Niko thinks as he takes his foot off of the brake pedal and stomps on the gas pedal.
The tires quickly spin forward, but aren't overcoming the car's inertia. Niko looks over to Chisai. "I'm sorry."
Chapter 5