The Walk to the Shrine

Kaleb sweeped over his map, hoping that he would be able to find the Ancient Shrine that everyone was going nuts over. It was said that only a few were able to find it and live to tell the tale, but Kaleb knew not to believe in such upsurd stories. If so few people lived to tell the tale, then how come every other teenager on the planet was out looking for it. Maybe the danger was the appeal. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

"Well this is helpful," Kaleb muttered. "This thing is useless. There are hardly any landmarks around here."

Then suddenly, he heard a rumbling in the bushes. Someone who could help?!

"Hello," he called cautiously. "Is anyone there?"

Johnny Ringo wrote:

((Mind if I join you stranger? ^_^))

Johnny sighed. Those pesky bushes, always making noise when their not supposed to...

He stood up, and walked out of the bushes.

"Well hey there." He said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Hope I didn't scare you." He grinned, giving a little laugh.

((Not at all! Just glad someone would like to RP))

Kaleb was still trying to catch his breath from the sudden apperance of this mysterious stranger. He had never seen his face before, so he was a bit weary about talking to him.

"... D-do you go to the school?" He could barely sputter the question forward, suddenly feeling a rush of twanging nerves run up and down his system.

((Hey, Ringo-san, lookin' pretty good! XD For someone to mistake a teacher for a student... lawlz.))

Miyhika, hearing all the people around her, though they were miles off, sat reading at the foot of the shrine.

It was tall and gray, made out of crumbling stone. She'd gotten there all right so far, though she knew: it wasn't getting there that was the problem, though it was very difficult to find.

It was getting in and out alive.

That was why Miyhika waited patiently for people to find the shrine, and to see if they would accompany her in.

A sort of random Umbreon appeared from behind the shrine. In its mouth, it held a black strip of leather/suade with a silver buckle; it looked a bit like a dog collar.

"Get back here, you!" yelled a somewhat distant, and also somewhat familiar voice.

The Umbreon, who had a quite mischievious glint in its eye, suddenly noticed the two people standing near the shrine. "Mischievious" almost seemed to become "alarm", like someone who had accidently told an important secret.

Looking for a place to hide, she saw the shrine, and ran in.

Moments later, a familiar face appeared out of the bushes. Narakun bolted into the clearing, looking furious, yet almost as though she were having fun.

Suddenly, she saw her fellow teachers, Johnny Ringo and Miyhika Haikkodo.

The color in her face seemed to drain away. Narakun looked a bit different without her choker necklace, but there was something else that seemed different...

Something was tatooed into the back of her neck, which was normally hidden by her choker. Part of it looked like a number, or a serial code of some kind-- 2R6AC9H3EL. The other part was a single word: ROCKET.

She turned her head so that the tatoo didn't show as much. "Er... Have either of you seen Sakura? We were playing, and she sorta snagged my choker..."

"Hey Narakun. Sakura went this way."

She disappeared into the bushes, not waiting to see if Narakun would follow.

She closed her eyes, and focused. She had not seen Sakura disappear. But she knew where she was.

She walked a few more paces, a large branch got caught on her shirt. For some reason, she couldn't get free.

Miyhika grabbed the branch, a good six inches thick, and broke it without braking a sweat. She tossed it into the undergrowth, and turned around to make sure Narakun hadn't seen that.

"Come on, Narakun."

"Er, okay," Narakun stuttered. She scratched the back of her neck in a gesture of embaressment, but it was mostly to cover up her tatoo.

She followed Miyhika. She needed to get her choker before anyone else saw her tatoo and questioned her about it.

Miyhika sighed.

"This is getting tiring."

She turned to Narakun.

"Narakun, I need to show you something that you must not tell anyone else about. Will you keep a secret?"

Narakun was quite curious, but didn't show it.

"I can keep any secret," she said slowly. "But if this secret is so important, than I suppose that I should also tell you a secret too. It would only be fair," she continued with a shrug. "But you have to promise to never tell a living soul..." she paused for a moment, pondering something. "...Or a dead one, for that matter."

((XD 'dead'...))

"I'll swear by anything you like, but whatever it is, you have my solemn word that I won't tell anyone --or anything-- what your secret is."

This was one of the reasons that people thought that Narakun was so strange. She always took everything into consideration-- who on earth would tell a dead person a secret?

Miyhika nodded. She scooped up Narakun, and ran to the shrine. Only, her run was quite a bit different from a normal person's. She blurred, all but invisible with speed. In seconds, they were at the shrine.

It should have taken them about half an hour to get to that shrine; it had taken Miyhika and Narakun less than five seconds. She set Narakun down.

"I promise never to tell another living -- or dead -- soul your secret," she said. She thought for a few moments.

"But I do feel obliged to tell you, before you tell me, that Yuri will find out anyways. We're connected telepathically. But she won't tell anyone."

Miyhika sighed. "You can ask me any question you want about my powers. You might as well know my history."

Narakun was in a daze-- she had never traveled so fast before.

"Uh, o...kay..." she said a bit dizzily.

"Well, you did kinda offer, but before I ask a question, to make things fair, I've had and idea. We can, er, take turns, sorta, ya know, I ask, then you ask, etc."

"To start: What in the name of hell made you run so fast back there?!" she said in one of those I'm-so-freaked-out voices.

"Okay. I like the taking turns thing," Miyhika nodded.

Then she answered Narakun's question.

"Narakun...I..." she sighed, and took off her right shoe and sock. And then she lifted up her foot and pointed to her heel.

There, on the bottom of Miyhika's foot, was a barcode.

"I wasn't born, Narakun. I was created," she whispered. "Now, why do you want your choker back so badly?"

Narakun was quite unprepared for that question.

"'Er..." she stuttered. "Well, you see..."

Narakun took a deep breath. "I was born as a Team Rocket war machine, basically. They tested performance-enhancing drugs on me, even though I wasn't logged in the science lab as a test specimen. They branded me, basically, and they probably still want me back. That's what the tatoo is for. To track missing Rockets. I cover it up with my choker. If they find me --or rather, my tatoo--, they'll take me back and I'll probably end up dead, like the somewhat lucky ones. You're only lucky if you escape or you die."

"Now for one of my questions: if you were created, how can you have a sister? Was she created in the same place as you?"

(( Yes, I have noticed. He eavesdrops quite well. ()>_>))

Miyhika looked around uncomfortably. Not that she knew Ringo-san was listening....she just wanted to make sure that she wouldn't be disturbed once she started talking.

"Yeah. Yuri was created with me. A few years ago, Team Galactic got this strange idea into their heads to make the perfect army."

"They kidnapped kids, but the kids started dying once Team Galactic injected the powers into their bloodstream. Their normal human chemical makeup couldn't handle the strength and the speed and the other things."

"So they decided to make children. I was the twenty-third success. Yuri was the one hundred and nineteenth. But they were making us so fast that we were only a few years apart...."

She sighed.

((Ya know something, Ringo-kun? I dunno what you're like in real life, but I'm actually kinda like your char, just a little. ()>_> I listen to ALL kinds of music, with the exception of rap, heavy metal, and opera. Rap has no tune. It shouldn't be considered music. I see it as a disgrace.

But, anyhow, I love music. I play piano and french horn. I'm not quite as isolated as your char, but I'm not exactly the walk-right-up-and-say-hello type. I'm weird. One time one of my classmates asked me if I was gothic. I told her that "gothic" is when you're emo and you wear all black, like she was. >_>))

Narakun was shocked. Making kids, not sure and not caring if they might die or not...

"That kinda sucks." Narakun said defiantly. "Well...I guess that it's still your turn to ask a question..."

((When I said that Yuri was the one hundred and ninteenth, I meant one hundred and thirty-ninth. Heheh. Sorry.))

"Okay. How can Mikala be your sister? Was she born to be a destruction machine also?" Miyhika asked.

Narakun paused for a moment. Finally, she said, "Actually, I don't think so. You see, we were originally born like regular humans."

She sighed deeply. "Back at Team Rocket, you were either a grunt, a commander, a lieutenant, the Boss, a scientist, or a test specimen, a lab rat."

She thought back to recall more. "I was to be an average Rocket. Only one thing stopped me from being a normal grunt. I always believed that...well, I never truly knew who my father was, but it seems like he took a special interest in me and Mikala...I think that the Boss was my father." Narakun said, a hint of rage in her voice.

"Anyhow, he saw to it that his children would be better than any other Rocket-- excluding himself." she continued. "But, he saw early on the way I did that Mikala just had a personality that would keep her from ever being truly loyal to the ways of Team Rocket. She was too happy-go-lucky, too carefree."

Narakun was obviously showing a bit of pain as she remembered her harsh life as a Rocket. "While I went into harsh training, learning how to fight and kill and eliminate all of my feelings, Mikala became a toy for the scientists, for them to test all of their cruel experiments and drugs on." She gritted her teeth.

"It was being the Boss' daughter that made me a lab rat as well. They used all these drugs that had already been tested and altered a bit, but they weren't perfect yet. It made me have more endurance, speed, and strength, so that I was just plain better than any normal person."

"After about a month, I got an oppurtunity to escape. I was being trained in how to handle an 8" knife. The Rocket instructing me, er... someone called to him coming through the gate, after a mission. His back was turned, and I..."

Narakun broke off mid-sentance.

She shook her head dismissively. "Well, I took my oppurtunity. I was able to get out through the open gate. I wan't unscathed, though, they tried to stop me. Guns and knives and everything. I'm more than lucky to be here alive." Narakun's eyes looked distant. "I never knew that Mikala would follow me this far, but I'm glad she did, before the scientists half-killed her. I don't know how mush they did to her."

She suddenly "came to", and realized how far she had gone on.

I sure answered more than what was asked, she thought. Why can't I keep my mouth shut?

"Er, anyway...Well, this isn't a question about history, actually, but.... So where's Sakura? I need my choker back, as you know. I caused damage at the Rocket HQ, and I was giving the scientists a lot of information. They'll want me back, alive or maybe....maybe even dead." Narakun said.

Miyhika sighed. "This way," she said, walking into the shrine. She was silent for awhile.

Once they were in the shrine, surrounded by crumbling stone and cobwebs, she said suddenly:

"I know how it feels to be a lab experiment." She said it bitterly.

"Once one of the created children was three months old, Team Galactic sent it to a training camp in the desert. We worked, trained, from five in the morning to eleven at night.

"The kids didn't have names...they had numbers. I was 0023. Yuri was 0139. We got one meal a day, and there was the Yearly Purge."

A hint of fury crept into her voice. "The Yearly Purge was an...event every child five years and older had to participate in."

"It was spread over a month's time. It was where every kid participating had to go through a series of tests and tasks and obsticles to see if they were strong enough to be useful for what they were made to do.

"If they failed....they were killed." Miyhika's voice became sad.

"Then....one day, eight of the children became friends. None of them were content with that way of life.

"They decided to escape. Only...." She took a deep breath. "Only the Team Galactic Grunts in charge of the training facility were growing suspicious of those eight. They caught them in the act of escaping....and killed one of them.

"But the others escaped relatively unscathed. They traveled for years together.....until the day came to separate. I was one of those original eight.....so was Yuri. We're still in contact with the other five....they became our siblings, our family."

Miyhika turned to Narakun. "If you EVER repeat that, you will pay. Team Galactic is looking for us, still....they have spies planted everywhere. If you tell some one, and they tell another....there's a very good chance that it could spread to a spy. And if they know our our names -- after all, we had numbers when we escaped -- we could all very well die."