A New Threat?! ...or perhaps an ancient one...

[Ladd Russo of the Russo Family]

Darishan thumbed through a crumbly tome, his hair partially spilled over one of the pages unnoticed. He replied without looking up, his voice as dry as the pages:

"If you wish it, though I'm curious as to your reasoning."

Somewhere far lost in the chasms of his essence, faint echoes of surprised registered and were noted down. The ghost of the feeling shock came from how much he had changed these past few months. Normally he felt uncomfortable with change and avoided it as a cat avoids water, knowing that while the substance harbored life, it also caused death at every opportunity. But what had been happening to him recently did not feel much like change. If anything, it felt like a return to how things were, though he would be hard pressed to say when that was.

Even so, like the piecing of a puzzle, the whole the was hidden to him before was slowly revealing itself. In that he was calm and sane.


Zet kept his gaze on them as they left. The heat was boiling him alive, and his headache from his brief moment unblindfolded pounded inside his skull. Briefly he considered leaving for the school, but... watching Cecil and Manami, he decided against it. They were together, a gift for Cecil in his troubled times, and yet Zet felt jealousy that Cecil still had a family to enjoy, still had people that loved him no matter what crimes. An irrational feeling, and a hateful one besides. He would sit out here and watch them as a self-imposed punishment, until he could either look at them and be happy for his student or until the sun blasted it out of his mind entirely.

(Wow, Zawa has the happiest characters, doesn't she? It's just epic. Heh.)

[Arual]

Later on, after they passed out of the ocean- and Zet's view, Manami and Cecil had talked all through the night. There was no rest. Mostly Cecil talked, and Manami questioned, because together; through his questioning and her telling- and her questions and his telling...all those dark murky memories and empty spaces would soon find themselves where they belonged.

The next day, however; was a different story.
"Fans?" Cecil asked.
Manami was unpacking four fans. She handed him two and her self the left over two. "Do not be fooled, Cecil. I understand boys (your age more so) don't do these kinds of things- but trust me, it is an art." She did a fancy trick even Cecil was baffled by. "They will help you will your attacks; the sharpness of your eyes, the fluidity of your steps- your balance, and to have your body and mind focus all at once."
Cecil held the fan up above his eyes, his head bent back. "Aunt...." he put his question aside. "What should I call you?"
"Aunt is fine with me- whatever you would like." Manami said waiting for him to settle his mind and pay attention.
"Aunt, are you sure this is really going to help me?" Cecil spoke out, a bit doubtful.
Manami smiled. "Yes, I know it will." A long pause set in, her glass blue eyes shone, not shut out from that light by the lids. She opened them up again. "Because you are your mother's son, my dear one. You have my brother's strength, but you are souly your mother. You even look like her.....her life- her spirit lives through her youngest child in the most brilliant way."
"Wait, you know my mother? I thought you really never saw us..." Cecil forgot about the lesson which was supposed to have started.
"No, I said I did not see much of you . I was there for their wedding, and when they had your brother. But I wasn't able to visit much; and your brother was at school so young an age I rarely got time to talk to him. But that doesn't matter now, Cecil. We must prepare you for something more evil then you or I could have ever imagined. Standing here and talking- as much as I love it, is not going to assist you. You are a ninja with great strength like my brother; and no doubt you've inherited that raging inner temper like his own as well, but never let that stop you."
Cecil's red eyes looked down. She looked somewhat like his father, and she talked wisely like his mother. Cecil's heart and mind couldn't focus, and the THUMP THUMP THUMP of his heart was more rapid and alive then ever. "I promise."
Manami ruffled the top of the teen's head of hair. "There we are. A center. Very anxious it is- excited even- but center nonetheless...." She smiled. "Now, lets begin you're lesson."

((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGsokg6KVJA&feature=related))
Making their way to the academy, Dali Shan; the unbeloved brother of Cecil, along with his younger brother's best friend, started on their journey. But they were not alone...they had an army behind them that only one person knew about....."Last night, you wanted to know my means for taking us to the Academy. Well, all I can tell you now is this, Darishan," Dali told him in his ever serious manner; though even more so this time then ever before. "Neither of us will be welcomed, and neither of us will be happy to return. However, I do think that the two of us will be surprised in what we see the minute we arrive. "