Violent Blossom
Part one of Hana's backstory; birth to the results of her Trial. Warnings for Kage, aka ninjas, doing ninja-y thing, which in 15 Annuals' case (and this installment) includes a very vicious Trial. PG-13. Formatted like this because she'd kill me in my sleep if I did it any other way. Okay, now I'm really going to bed. Really.
Violent Blossom
Once upon a time the OZ had a great Queen who, like all Queens, let her name die when she gained the throne. Known as The Eighth Great and Most Majestic Queen of the OZ, her reign began nearly eight hundred years before the current Queen was even born. Plagued by an evil witch that sought nothing but fear, death, and night, she did two things that changed the Outer Zone forever: sealed the Witch and all her power with her dying breath, and created a society to blend into the shadows and protect her realm to their own dying breath.
Of course, things changed over eight hundred years. The society's code language became its native language, its training became a way of life, and as the years passed by, their protection could be bought, although they always retained their undying loyalty to the O.Z. and its royalty. They called themselves the Kage. Shadows.
If one ventured into the Kage Valley, a green and rocky niche in the Northern Mountains, one might find a village of blocky white houses. Venturing further, there is a house with no garden or windchimes, no stone walkway leading to the front door. There is laundry, an open window, and a woman called Hana inside. She drinks tea and lives with pristine hardwood floors and clothing a little boy grew out of, sleeps next to a room once full of magic and smiles. Now, she sits with knives and needles and memories.
Hana's name means Flower, although over her life it became darker and deadlier, just as she did. It was an act of rebellion on the part of her parents, the closest things to pacifists that a society bred to kill can churn out. With a mother named Silence and a father named Strength, it seemed only natural to name their baby girl something gentle and as delicate as they intended to raise her. A happy and welcome surprise to her parents, she already had an older brother by nine years named Hikaru, light itself, who was the only member of the family that could ever make little Hana stop crying. He sang to her while their parents worked the same job every Kage did, and her first word was his name.
By two, their parents had almost completely given Hikaru the never-ending duty of babysitting his little sister. He never complained. He was more than happy to watch her first attempt at running, to teach her how to kick and punch and weave like their parents had taught him, taught her to block out all but the enemy and her surroundings. He called her imouto, Little Sister. He taught her how to fight. How to dance.
Time passed.
Their mother went missing after a mission. Her head was found three weeks later.
Time passed.
Two months after Hikaru's Trial, he and a seven-year-old Hana walked in to find their father motionless on the bed he'd shared with his wife for twenty years.
"Good riddance," whispered some of the attendees as his corpse burned on the pyre. Hikaru held her closer to his hip, but the words stayed in her head, in her soul. "Good riddance."
Hikaru loosened, while Hana hardened, disbelieving of how easygoing her brother had become, so quick to dismiss things that seemed to fester inside her. She loved him with all her heart, but he seems different in ways she can't help but disdain. When they fight, he is more lenient with his knife than before. His knife, strong and made to taste blood, remains cold and clean when they fight.
Time passed.
She’s not ready for it. Nobody’s ready for it, and Hana is only human, nothing special, just another Kage going through The Trial. She knew there’d been controversy over whether or not she should have been permitted to do it, but she’s already fourteen and still unmarked, almost a disgrace to the only family she has left.
Walking into the Hall of Weeping Pillars isn’t something she’d thought would be as easy as it is, just one step after another, the ritual words she’d never known or heard being called out to her. Hana knows she’s just another average Kage, but she needs to make her brother proud.
When the doors in front of her open, she was expecting anyone but Hikaru to be standing there, head tilted to the side with a gash in his forehead. There’s a murmur from the rafters, but she doesn’t pay attention to it, instead staring at her big brother.
“Hikaru?” she calls shakily, noting the knife in his hand. “Hikaru? Are you feeling-”
“Shhhh,” Hikaru whispers, eyes twisting towards the ceiling, and Hana tries to follow his eyes. She can’t see anything but the bright red ceiling, and turns to frown at her brother. He grins at her. “They’re all watching, imouto. All wondering who’s going to survive.”
“Survive?” Hana breathes out, eyes wide.
The laugh that comes out of Hikaru is fit for her nightmares of the brigands that killed their mother, not for her brother. He puts his hands on his knees, leaning forward to look at her like they weren’t in the Hall of Weeping Pillars and were out in the fields making animal shapes out of clouds. “I’m going to kill you, imouto,” he says cheerfully.
Before she can even really register the words, Hikaru had moved forward, his knife slashing into her ribcage thanks to a disgustingly slow dodge. Hana squirms away, staring at her brother and wondering what’s wrong with him. It’s not enough, though - he heads straight for her, knife held expertly. He knows every weak point she has, and he exploits them. He slices low when she’s finished a handspring, nearly slashing through her tendons. He shifts left when she tries to disarm him. When Hana finally attacks, her foot slamming into the side of his head, Hikaru grabs her ankle as he falls and slams her into the ground.
She’d always know he was fast, but not this fast. She doesn’t have time to talk, only stare and wonder what happened to her brother, only dodge and try to survive. He catches her by the collar and tosses her into one of the pillars hard enough that something cracks. Hana’s fairly certain it’s her and not the pillar.
The moment she takes to try and breathe nearly kills her, Hikaru hefting his heavy knife and throwing it like they’re at target practice. She twists in time for it to do nothing but slice through her ponytail and cut nine inches of hair off.
After that, she doesn’t realized she’s moved. It’s a move born of years fighting him, pulling one of the deadly charms in her hair out and tossing it. He’d chopped her hair off so many times as a mark for her to get her act together - “Stop playing and fight me, imouto,” his voice echoes in her mind - and she expects him to dodge. The people above have finally said something, but she’s barely even looking at anything anymore.
It’s all a dance. She’d always loved to dance, just like her mother, and it’s a strange dance. Hikaru isn’t Hikaru anymore in her mind. He’s near a pillar, and the brooch he gave her two years ago blossoms in her hand as she tosses it at the wood column, hands snapping out. The wire feels more like a thread of silk between her hands than anything else as she dodges Hikaru’s slashes. He was always slower than her when she found this part of herself during their spars.
He’d called it a ‘battle mindset,’ but it seemed more like realizing her enemy’s pulse was just a wild beat to dance to until the music faded. Hikaru seemed clumsy now, the gash in his forehead bleeding into his eye.
He took a moment to wipe the blood away.
The men above shouted something she ignores, only the third time they’d said anything.
Hana took the moment to wind her foot in the wire with a kick, her hands too human to deal with the slice of the wire that the sole of her shoe could survive, and turned backwards, tightening the wire enough to send her enemy into the pillar. The beat of his pulse continues on, weak but still calling her, and she pulls out the final two needles, wrapping them in the wire and sliding to the ground, arms slipping behind her back in the motion. The wire tightened, cutting into her enemy, and the beat stops.
Her head tilts back to stare at the ceiling, wondering what that wispy smoke coming from nearby was, and Hana closes her eyes.
“We always hurt,” someone whispers above her, and it echoes through the Hall of Weeping Pillars.
The building is silent save for a knife slipping from dead fingers and her heavy breathing before her eyes open to see her brother’s dead body sliced and strung up on the pillar, the flower brooch he’d bought her after their father’s suicide resting almost right above his head.
She’s still screaming when they finish tattooing the Hook onto the base of her Mark, and doesn’t stop until someone hits her hard enough that she’s knocked blissfully unconscious, tears still streaming down her face.
Hana had originally been planning on naming her technique Violent Blossom, just to please Hikaru. After murdering him, there wasn’t anything funny about the name. There was no blossoming in it, although it was plenty violent. It wasn’t delicate enough to be a blossom.
They asked for its name, and all she could think of was the wire sliding into Hikaru’s throat, slicing his windpipe straight open. She thought of how she’d been stupid enough to let herself dip into that dangerous mode of fighting where it was nothing but instinct.
She named it Twisting Thorn. When they gave her the option of being Twister or Thorn, she just stared at the man, eyes utterly empty of anything but scorn. “My name is Hana,” she stated, hand going once again to the golden flower brooch. The man paled and nodded before scurrying out of the room, leaving Hana to stare at the wall.
For the first time, she pulls her uneven hair - half of it sliced nearly to the level of her chin, the rest still down to her shoulder blades - into a bun, and clasps it together with the brooch. She looks at the shoes on her feet, focusing on the one still gouged by iron wire, and wonders why she ever liked dancing. She looks at the loose shirt and pants she wears, and feels the pain every time she shifts thanks to the broken ribs and gash on her ribcage.
The doctor had said her upper spine would never be the same. No more handsprings, no more handstands, no more putting her full body weight on her arms. Even push-ups would be hazardous.
She sees herself in the mirror, and sees nothing but frailty. Her face hardens, determination making her shoulders lift.
If she looked frail, she’d use it to her advantage.
Even though she wondered if she’d ever felt more pain in her life, Hana stood up and walked through her silent house, stopping in her parents’ bedroom. Even after four years, they hadn’t been able to get the blood entirely off the flooring, but for once she just walked right over what was left of her father.
It didn’t take long to sift through her mother’s old clothing, her father had made sure of that. Everything had been obsessively preserved and organized.
There was probably something disturbing about putting on her dead mother’s favorite ensemble, but Hana was past caring. The silk slid on with nothing but a muted hiss over her bandages, and the obi was refreshingly painful around the base of her ribcage. When she looked in the mirror, she still looked frail, but she looked elegantly weak, as if she’d been raised for politics and tea ceremonies instead of murder and carnage.
Hananoshi no Kage smiled, pleased, and went to make herself some tea.
Constantly, time passed.
Violent Blossom
Once upon a time the OZ had a great Queen who, like all Queens, let her name die when she gained the throne. Known as The Eighth Great and Most Majestic Queen of the OZ, her reign began nearly eight hundred years before the current Queen was even born. Plagued by an evil witch that sought nothing but fear, death, and night, she did two things that changed the Outer Zone forever: sealed the Witch and all her power with her dying breath, and created a society to blend into the shadows and protect her realm to their own dying breath.
Of course, things changed over eight hundred years. The society's code language became its native language, its training became a way of life, and as the years passed by, their protection could be bought, although they always retained their undying loyalty to the O.Z. and its royalty. They called themselves the Kage. Shadows.
If one ventured into the Kage Valley, a green and rocky niche in the Northern Mountains, one might find a village of blocky white houses. Venturing further, there is a house with no garden or windchimes, no stone walkway leading to the front door. There is laundry, an open window, and a woman called Hana inside. She drinks tea and lives with pristine hardwood floors and clothing a little boy grew out of, sleeps next to a room once full of magic and smiles. Now, she sits with knives and needles and memories.
Hana's name means Flower, although over her life it became darker and deadlier, just as she did. It was an act of rebellion on the part of her parents, the closest things to pacifists that a society bred to kill can churn out. With a mother named Silence and a father named Strength, it seemed only natural to name their baby girl something gentle and as delicate as they intended to raise her. A happy and welcome surprise to her parents, she already had an older brother by nine years named Hikaru, light itself, who was the only member of the family that could ever make little Hana stop crying. He sang to her while their parents worked the same job every Kage did, and her first word was his name.
By two, their parents had almost completely given Hikaru the never-ending duty of babysitting his little sister. He never complained. He was more than happy to watch her first attempt at running, to teach her how to kick and punch and weave like their parents had taught him, taught her to block out all but the enemy and her surroundings. He called her imouto, Little Sister. He taught her how to fight. How to dance.
Time passed.
Their mother went missing after a mission. Her head was found three weeks later.
Time passed.
Two months after Hikaru's Trial, he and a seven-year-old Hana walked in to find their father motionless on the bed he'd shared with his wife for twenty years.
"Good riddance," whispered some of the attendees as his corpse burned on the pyre. Hikaru held her closer to his hip, but the words stayed in her head, in her soul. "Good riddance."
Hikaru loosened, while Hana hardened, disbelieving of how easygoing her brother had become, so quick to dismiss things that seemed to fester inside her. She loved him with all her heart, but he seems different in ways she can't help but disdain. When they fight, he is more lenient with his knife than before. His knife, strong and made to taste blood, remains cold and clean when they fight.
Time passed.
She’s not ready for it. Nobody’s ready for it, and Hana is only human, nothing special, just another Kage going through The Trial. She knew there’d been controversy over whether or not she should have been permitted to do it, but she’s already fourteen and still unmarked, almost a disgrace to the only family she has left.
Walking into the Hall of Weeping Pillars isn’t something she’d thought would be as easy as it is, just one step after another, the ritual words she’d never known or heard being called out to her. Hana knows she’s just another average Kage, but she needs to make her brother proud.
When the doors in front of her open, she was expecting anyone but Hikaru to be standing there, head tilted to the side with a gash in his forehead. There’s a murmur from the rafters, but she doesn’t pay attention to it, instead staring at her big brother.
“Hikaru?” she calls shakily, noting the knife in his hand. “Hikaru? Are you feeling-”
“Shhhh,” Hikaru whispers, eyes twisting towards the ceiling, and Hana tries to follow his eyes. She can’t see anything but the bright red ceiling, and turns to frown at her brother. He grins at her. “They’re all watching, imouto. All wondering who’s going to survive.”
“Survive?” Hana breathes out, eyes wide.
The laugh that comes out of Hikaru is fit for her nightmares of the brigands that killed their mother, not for her brother. He puts his hands on his knees, leaning forward to look at her like they weren’t in the Hall of Weeping Pillars and were out in the fields making animal shapes out of clouds. “I’m going to kill you, imouto,” he says cheerfully.
Before she can even really register the words, Hikaru had moved forward, his knife slashing into her ribcage thanks to a disgustingly slow dodge. Hana squirms away, staring at her brother and wondering what’s wrong with him. It’s not enough, though - he heads straight for her, knife held expertly. He knows every weak point she has, and he exploits them. He slices low when she’s finished a handspring, nearly slashing through her tendons. He shifts left when she tries to disarm him. When Hana finally attacks, her foot slamming into the side of his head, Hikaru grabs her ankle as he falls and slams her into the ground.
She’d always know he was fast, but not this fast. She doesn’t have time to talk, only stare and wonder what happened to her brother, only dodge and try to survive. He catches her by the collar and tosses her into one of the pillars hard enough that something cracks. Hana’s fairly certain it’s her and not the pillar.
The moment she takes to try and breathe nearly kills her, Hikaru hefting his heavy knife and throwing it like they’re at target practice. She twists in time for it to do nothing but slice through her ponytail and cut nine inches of hair off.
After that, she doesn’t realized she’s moved. It’s a move born of years fighting him, pulling one of the deadly charms in her hair out and tossing it. He’d chopped her hair off so many times as a mark for her to get her act together - “Stop playing and fight me, imouto,” his voice echoes in her mind - and she expects him to dodge. The people above have finally said something, but she’s barely even looking at anything anymore.
It’s all a dance. She’d always loved to dance, just like her mother, and it’s a strange dance. Hikaru isn’t Hikaru anymore in her mind. He’s near a pillar, and the brooch he gave her two years ago blossoms in her hand as she tosses it at the wood column, hands snapping out. The wire feels more like a thread of silk between her hands than anything else as she dodges Hikaru’s slashes. He was always slower than her when she found this part of herself during their spars.
He’d called it a ‘battle mindset,’ but it seemed more like realizing her enemy’s pulse was just a wild beat to dance to until the music faded. Hikaru seemed clumsy now, the gash in his forehead bleeding into his eye.
He took a moment to wipe the blood away.
The men above shouted something she ignores, only the third time they’d said anything.
Hana took the moment to wind her foot in the wire with a kick, her hands too human to deal with the slice of the wire that the sole of her shoe could survive, and turned backwards, tightening the wire enough to send her enemy into the pillar. The beat of his pulse continues on, weak but still calling her, and she pulls out the final two needles, wrapping them in the wire and sliding to the ground, arms slipping behind her back in the motion. The wire tightened, cutting into her enemy, and the beat stops.
Her head tilts back to stare at the ceiling, wondering what that wispy smoke coming from nearby was, and Hana closes her eyes.
“We always hurt,” someone whispers above her, and it echoes through the Hall of Weeping Pillars.
The building is silent save for a knife slipping from dead fingers and her heavy breathing before her eyes open to see her brother’s dead body sliced and strung up on the pillar, the flower brooch he’d bought her after their father’s suicide resting almost right above his head.
She’s still screaming when they finish tattooing the Hook onto the base of her Mark, and doesn’t stop until someone hits her hard enough that she’s knocked blissfully unconscious, tears still streaming down her face.
Hana had originally been planning on naming her technique Violent Blossom, just to please Hikaru. After murdering him, there wasn’t anything funny about the name. There was no blossoming in it, although it was plenty violent. It wasn’t delicate enough to be a blossom.
They asked for its name, and all she could think of was the wire sliding into Hikaru’s throat, slicing his windpipe straight open. She thought of how she’d been stupid enough to let herself dip into that dangerous mode of fighting where it was nothing but instinct.
She named it Twisting Thorn. When they gave her the option of being Twister or Thorn, she just stared at the man, eyes utterly empty of anything but scorn. “My name is Hana,” she stated, hand going once again to the golden flower brooch. The man paled and nodded before scurrying out of the room, leaving Hana to stare at the wall.
For the first time, she pulls her uneven hair - half of it sliced nearly to the level of her chin, the rest still down to her shoulder blades - into a bun, and clasps it together with the brooch. She looks at the shoes on her feet, focusing on the one still gouged by iron wire, and wonders why she ever liked dancing. She looks at the loose shirt and pants she wears, and feels the pain every time she shifts thanks to the broken ribs and gash on her ribcage.
The doctor had said her upper spine would never be the same. No more handsprings, no more handstands, no more putting her full body weight on her arms. Even push-ups would be hazardous.
She sees herself in the mirror, and sees nothing but frailty. Her face hardens, determination making her shoulders lift.
If she looked frail, she’d use it to her advantage.
Even though she wondered if she’d ever felt more pain in her life, Hana stood up and walked through her silent house, stopping in her parents’ bedroom. Even after four years, they hadn’t been able to get the blood entirely off the flooring, but for once she just walked right over what was left of her father.
It didn’t take long to sift through her mother’s old clothing, her father had made sure of that. Everything had been obsessively preserved and organized.
There was probably something disturbing about putting on her dead mother’s favorite ensemble, but Hana was past caring. The silk slid on with nothing but a muted hiss over her bandages, and the obi was refreshingly painful around the base of her ribcage. When she looked in the mirror, she still looked frail, but she looked elegantly weak, as if she’d been raised for politics and tea ceremonies instead of murder and carnage.
Hananoshi no Kage smiled, pleased, and went to make herself some tea.
Constantly, time passed.