Chapter 1: Memories of the past
A black limo could be seen cruising the streets of Tokyo until it finally reached its destination, the Lotus Grand Hotel in Tokyo, a five star, luxurious hotel.
Unlike the rest of this hotel’s visitors though, the slick car drove to the back of the hotel and stationed before the back entrance.
The driver’s door opened and the young delinquent dressed in a black suit that was totally unfitting with his image, hastily made way to the passenger’s door to open it.
Crow and his apt pupil Aria, leisurely got out of the car and made their way towards the back entrance’s doors, where two buffy men were standing guard, only to bow in respect once they layed eyes on them.
“Welcome back Master Crow, Mistress Aria. You can go right ahead, the Boss is waiting.”, they said after paying their respects and opening the door for them.
With a nod of the head, Aria and Crow passed through, they walked through long corridors to finally end up in a busy kitchen. The staff that was only seconds ago running like mad to prepare dishes and deliver orders abruptly stopped all movements once they saw the two figures.
Fear and respect could be seen in their eyes, the only one who seemed slightly unaffected was the chef, who immediately bowed his head and after that silently made his way to the huge freezer, located to the back of the room.
He opened the heavy doors and waited for Crow and Aria to step in before he closed it behind them and then rushed back to cooking and inspecting dishes that his staff had prepared for the esteemed residents of this hotel, as nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Crow walked to the back of the freezer and after sliding away a shelf filled to the brim with meat, he revealed a metal door that had a hand scanning panel on its left side.
After putting his hand on it, a green light of verification came up and after that the metallic door opened, revealing an elevator’s cabin.
They stepped in and he pressed the button with the letter B on it, a machine voice could be heard through the control panel intercom:
“B selected. Iris verification is needed to proceed. Please approach the control panel for the retina scan to begin. Failing to do so within the next 10 seconds will activate the self destruction process.”
Crow closed in and did as instructed, after this, Aria followed suit and had her own iris verified.
“Iris verification complete. Welcome home Master Crow, Mistress Aria”
The elevator went down in a insane speed and they reached the B floor. What the letter B signified was truly simple in its logic, Boss.
The elevator panel had many other buttons on it, it basically had all the floors of the hotel with the only difference, that one would reach the allocated floor through a different entrance, hidden from the public eyes.
Apart from that though the other buttons lead to not so common areas.
- G, lead to the garage where hundreds of cars and of various brands could be seen parked. The cars varied from the average Kia, Mitsubishi, Fiat, etc. , to the most luxurious imported ones such as Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches and there was even a type 10 japanese tank in there.
- I, lead to the intel floor. A floor dedicated solely on to the collection of information as well as the alteration of it. A large room filled with numerous screens and people either talking and giving guidance to people through the headphones’ microphones or quickly typing on their keyboards could be seen. The other areas of this floor consisted mainly of offices where the debriefing took place as well as passports and forged documents in general were given.
- A, lead to the Armory. A floor where all types of weapons were stored as well as some were customed made by this floor’s staff.
- P, lead to the practice area. The whole floor was allocated for practicing martial arts, shooting and there was even a swimming pool.
Aria, followed silently Crow through the dim litted corridor that lead to the Boss’s office. Her mind drifted to how she came to meet him and Crow.
10 years ago
Aria’s family was an average Japanese family, not too poor not too rich, just middle class. Their house that was located in Tama, in Western Tokyo was an old one story house, her mother’s parents used to live there till they died and left the house to their daughter Ayako.
It was a small old house with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and small yard at the back, but for the Fujimoto’s it was perfect and it was what they called home.
Their family consisted of her father Akio, her mother, Ayako and her, Shizu. Yes, her name hasn’t always been Aria, she once had the name Shizu, a name that meant “silent” and was given to her parents after she had been born and seen not crying at all.
Her family was expecting a new member to arrive in a month as well, her baby brother was going to be born in April and she had been so happy at the time to learn that she was soon going to be an onee-chan.
Her parents had been both working at some company at that time, the name was Hasegawa industries if she recalls correctly. The company was mostly into electronics that’s what she remembers her parents telling her once and they were both working in the engineering-designing department.
They were a happy family, her parents loved and cherished her and they would always find time to spend with her besides their busy schedules.
Yet, their happy life soon came crashing down. It was on the 20th March that it all ended. Shizu had been sleeping at the time when her sleep was interrupted by screams and things breaking, soon though the screams were muffled by the sound of music.
ARIA
Confused, she got up from her bed and while groggily rubbing her sleepy eyes, made her way to the living room to see what was happening.
The sight that greeted her was one made of horror. Her father was lying there on the carpet in front of her feet, his face had lost all color and was pale, his eyes were gazing blankly, all life lost from them and a warm red substance was soaking the ground beneath him.
Standing there frozen, her father’s blood slipping from his cut neck, making a pool that reached all the way to her naked feet, she watched as a large man with a blood coated knife on his hand made his way to her mother.
Her mother was kneeling on the ground, her hands on her belly as if to protect her unborn child, her face stained by tears that kept flowing as she pleaded for her and her baby’s life.
“Why? Why are you doing this? Please I am pregnant, don’t kill me! Please don’t harm my child! Please, we haven’t done anything to harm you.”
“I don’t care if you are pregnant or not. I was ordered to kill you and your husband. You should have kept your mouths shut, the Hasegawa’s don’t appreciate blow whistlers. Now die and become my paycheck bitch!” he screamed as he pierced his knife through Ayako’s belly.
Ayako screamed in pain but her attacker sadistically laughed and pierced his knife one more time, yet this time through her heart, ending her life as well as her baby’s.
Hearing a gasp he turned on his toes, the sight of young girl standing there silently in fear, her eyes like a deer caught in the headlights, he started to approach her with his blood stained hands. His knife left forgotten in her mother’s dead body.
The scared child was standing there frozen as he was approaching her, she wasn’t running, she wasn’t screaming, she was just looking into his eyes.
The man laughed maniacally
“Ha, ha, ha girl, even though I was ordered to kill your parents there can be no survivors, we can’t have you ratting me to the cops now, can we? You’re smart, you are not screaming nor running. Good! I would be so pissed if I had to chase after you, now just sit like a good girl and it will all end quickly.”
His hands were just about to reach her neck when the sound of a gun shooting was heard.
With a groan the man fell down, his blood from the bullet that had shot through his chest was all over little Shizu’s face. She lifted her hand and touched her cheek, then looked at her fingers, they were blood coated.
She looked at her parents’ murderer lying in front of her and then at the one who shot him. It was a man with a long scar on his left cheek and piercing black eyes.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Turning her gaze from his, she took one last look at her mother and father as if making her mind for something before stepping close to her mother’s dead body and with a hand showing no hesitation at all pulled her attacker’s knife from her chest.
The scarred faced man was silently watching her, his gun still at hand, as she silently approached the fallen man.
She lifted the knife which had taken all that she held dear and with eyes blazed with fury, she pierced through his back once, twice…..
The man’s screams were muffled by the music, but even if they weren’t, they would still fall on deaf ears, the child had lost all sense of sanity and was now interested in ending his life the way he ended her parent’s lives.
“Die, die, die, die” she was chanting like a mantra as she was stabbing him over and over again, his blood had covered her whole face, her pajamas that were once white with cute little unicorns on them where now drenched on his blood.
The man had been long dead yet the stabbing continued, till the child’s hands could no longer move.
The young girl now stood above his corpse, looking at it, her eyes moments ago filled with hatred and fury were now devoid of any feelings.
The man with the gun still in his hand spoke for the first time since his arrival.
“That man who killed your family, I was ordered to kill him. I am sorry I couldn’t come sooner child. I will not harm you, my contract was to kill just him. Yet, for you to kill him in cold blood like that, it’s something I have rarely seen before. Say child, what are you going to do now?”
Her eyes may have taken a look at him before, but it was just now that her mind registered his presence there.
Turning her head ,she blankly stared at him and spoke:
“My family is gone, I have no one else, I have nowhere to go. Take me with you and teach me. I want to take revenge on the one’s who gave the order and are responsible for my parents’ death. As I am now, I cannot hope to take them down, but if you guide me, I promise to do whatever you want as long as I can extract vengeance on them and their families. I will kill them all!”
The man stood there in shock though his poker face didn’t show it at all. For a young girl to speak this way, to speak of vengeance and death so easily as it was an everyday thing and to have already realized that the best way to achieve that was to be taught how to do so by a professional assassin such as him, this child was already showing promise about become one of the top assassins in the world, maybe even greater than him.
Still the man was hesitant, could he take this child with him and derive her from any chance of leading a normal life? The wound from her parents death was still fresh, she had killed their murderer moments ago, her sanity was still fragile, maybe….maybe she was not thinking clearly.
“Child, are you sure this is what you want? If you take the path of the assassin you can never go back, your life will change forever, you will learn to kill and be ordered to kill. The training will be tough and you might not even survive, you will always live in the shadows. If it’s revenge you want, you can pay someone to do it for you, you don’t have to stain you hands with blood for that, you still have a chance for a normal life.”
Shizu stood there slowly taking in his words, before her gaze steeled with resolve met his once again:
“I have no purpose in life beyond revenge. Why should I leave it to someone else to avenge their deaths when it was my responsibility all along? I am the only to survive that’s why I will be the one to do it. You say, my life will change? Well, look around you! I have no life, those bastards took it from me!” she screamed.
“I see you have already made your mind, but don’t say I didn’t warn you though. By the way what is your name, I can’t keep calling you child any longer.”
The music that was turned on just to cover all the sounds of screaming, had just ended, but it’s ending marked the beginning of something new.
“Aria, just call me Aria, Shizu Fujimoto died today along her parents and her unborn brother.”
“My name is Crow. Let’s go then Aria-can” he said as he offered his hand to her, while with his other hand he spoke through the phone to someone.
“It has been done. Send a cleaning team to the place and burn everything to the ground. Tell our guy in the morgue to prepare death certificates for all including one Shizu Fujimoto.”
Back to the present
That was the last time she had seen her house, after that Crow had taken in to this place where the ways of the assassins were taught to her.
The Lotus Grand Hotel was just a front for the biggest underground assassins organization “The Black Lotus”. The organization specialized in taking high profile killing contracts their targets being, Ministers, Prime Ministers, Senators, Mafia Bosses, Presidents, it the client had the money they would take down any target.
Apart from that though they also specialized in gathering Intel, and industrial espionage, after all information could be as valuable as gold these days.
Crow wasn’t lying when he said that it would be tough, she had barely survived through training, the only thing that kept her going was the thought of revenge.
She had mastered several martial arts through the years and she was taught how to use and maintain all types of weapons. Her amazing aptitude with knives and sniper rifles was one of the things that separated her from the rest of those recruited by the Black Lotus.
All these years as she grew, she had been collecting information about the Hasegawas, slowly but efficiently she was beginning to wear them down, her objective wasn’t just revenge any longer, no, her goal now was utter and complete annihilation.
Just killing them would be too good for them, they deserved to be punished and suffer the way she did.
She would take all that they held dear, their reputation, their money, their status, their family, she would make them crawl before her and beg for mercy the way her mother did.
She was known among the members of the organization as Bloody Aria, due to her short temper and the fact that sometimes she got lost in killing her targets leaving them in a pool of blood.
It wasn’t that she was messy in her job all the time, but sometimes when the contract was about someone who had killed a family, murdered or abused a woman or a child, she would flip and take him down in the most painful and gruesome way.
It’s as if Aria bared a grudge of some sort towards guys like that. Yet, no one apart from Crow and the Boss knew anything of her past and the rest didn’t dare to ask anything about her. The last guy who did after all was a rookie who was to accompany Aria on a job that involved killing a dirty politician who had a fetish for young boys. The rookie was supposed to just watch from afar and learn from his senior and help a little bit with the cleaning.
Aria disguised herself as a boy and lured the fat politician back to a hotel room where they had previously installed video cameras. The rookie was in the next room watching, yet what he saw in that room take place, made him have nightmares for many years to come.
The fat politician was not just killed, no, he was butchered by Aria. It was not a clean kill, the cleaning team had to come and clear the room from all the blood that had soaked the carpet , the sheets, and spilled on the walls. They took his dismembered body and dispose it to god knows where, only for one of his hands to turn up several weeks later.
Needless, to say that after that everyone was wary to approach Aria and she didn’t have many people that were close to her. Hell, apart from Crow, no one was close to her.
At the end of the dim litted corridor stood a large mahogany door, knocking silently and hearing a faint come in from the other side the duo stepped in.
A luxuriously furnished room with warm yellow light coming from heavy golden chandeliers greeted their eyes. On a leather armchair by the fireplace an old man approximately at the age of 75 years, with white hair and eyeglasses before his green eyes, could be seen sitting holding a glass of brandy on his right hand. Lifting his gaze he motioned his two visitors to come and sit on chesterfield sofa across him.
He started by saying “Welcome home, Crow and Aria. I am glad you came to visit as soon as you arrived”
Aria mentally barked back ‘As if we had a choice damn geezer. Your lackey grabbed us as soon as we stepped out of the place! '’