The Dance of the Blades and the Leaves

Chapter Five

I woke up at day break, and I had decided to immediately get a move on. I had no choice but to keep trying to get to The Balsam Village, because beyond my plan I had no nothing. I had no backup, it was just me on my own. This thought rattled me, because my guild had become synonymous with teamwork and unity, and yet here I was out here alone. I wasn't a particularly unique person among Fairy Tail beyond my requip ability, and even Erza could match that. So I was no special outlier, I didn't spend my days alone. Except, now I would, for the time being.

Hours passed, nothing changed. That's how it felt out here yesterday and two days ago. Traveling the woods in solitude was nothing entertaining, but at least I had the quiet to keep me company. It was so much different from the guild at out here,  much more calm and isolated. I may as well have been a world away from Magnolia, I hadn't seen a living person since Amaris, and that was at least two days, potentially more. Was the Balsam Village really that far away? Was it abandoned? Or did Emiko strike it? This was the reality I faced, but I couldn't test any of it.

The things five hours of walking can do to a person is ludicrous. My mind drifted back to a faze memory, something I always kept in the back of my mind and yet I never thought about. One of the few things before I had joined Fairy Tail, but I physically hurt thinking about it. This memory was a brutal and tumultuous thought, something I couldn't forget no matter how much I wanted I wasted to. But maybe it was best to remember, I had to hold on to something. A distant memory perhaps might be it, a reason to keep searching, to never accept complacency.

As I kept walking, I simply got lost in the memory. I never had known my family, or at the least I couldn't remember them, with one key exception. I didn't know who my father was, what my mother looked like, or where we had lived. The only memory I had of them was this one, a painful memory. A rainy day in an innocuous city, It was almost a decade ago at this point. I was nine, just learning the art of requip, I had my kite shield, my long sword, both of which I still have today. But noticeably, someone with the same hair as me, at least in texture and color, but it was longer. She was about three yours older than me, in a gray armor, with her right arm exposed, a green mark, a guild mark of some sort, was there. She carried a huge shield on her back and a short Axe in her left hand. She was talking with a look off terror on her face, but to this day, I never knew most of what she said. I didn't hear it on that day, the day I could hardly remember. The one thing I remember making out was ,"Goodbye ----" before screams in the distance confirmed people were coming.

In the memory, we both ran opposite directions in the soft storm. I couched my sword with a death grip, quite rightly fearing for my life. I knew, for one, that I definitely wasn't safe in a place so exposed. People were chasing, how many I didn't know, but I knew they were there, and more importantly, I knew they wanted to hurt me. I don't what I had done, why they were coming for me, but details didn't matter then. I turned right, down an alley way, and jumped from ledge to ledge slowly making my way towards the rooftop. I ran for a beeline across the roof and slid down the stairs again. After I had hit the ground, I kept running, getting backed up against a cliff, with a decent amount of trees. Something suddenly hit me, and I went flying down the cliff. I was awake until I hit the ground, and everything had went blank.

That memory brought so many questions and so little answers. First off, who was hunting me back then, and why did they throw me down the cliff? That was critical, because it may answer many questions about my family, who they were, and what happened to them. As for the other question: who was that blue haired girl? For me, it was a foregone conclusion. I couldn't see her as anything else but my sister, she had the same hair, eyes, and the demeanor. But that again raised more questions, namely, what happened to her that day? I just didn't know, and unless by some fluke I manage to find her, I never would know.

Without noticing it, I'd walked into a clearing, but I heard a vaguely familiar voice the moment I stepped foot in it. I suddenly paused and looked around the meadow type area, trying to figure out who it was. The voice was feminine, but it wasn't petulant in the same way that Emiko was. It had a serious demeanor. I requipped my long sword in an act of defense, knowing that I was likely being threatened. I would've recognized it if that was Fairy Tail. I pet looking, but saw nothing but thing, narrow trees, in a roughly elliptical clearing. Towards the center of the area I saw a couple of rocks, maybe I could use them as cover in case of an ambush.

Before I could take any action, however, I quickly figured out exactly what it was that had said that. The lady in black walked out, flipping down her hood and stooping just on the edge of the cleaning. I realized fairly fast my mistake, but it was far too late to go back now. I was caught in a zone where she could hit me no matter what I did. Facing this predicament, I decided rather to ask who, or what, she was and why was she hunting me.

I called out," Who the hell do you think you are?! Why do you think its okay to stalk me?"

The woman chillingly responded, "My name is Sakura, and I suppose you aren't bright enough to figure that out, now are you?" She smirked, standing ominously.