Kisaki’s head rocked to the side from the blow and she tasted blood.

She staggered back several steps but managed not to fall.

All at once, the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. Pain from the hit, the coppery taste of her own blood, her friend screaming her name, and the huffing laughter of the human who had dared lay a hand upon her – all of it happening simultaneously.

It was the first time Kisaki had ever been struck. She’d often read about such punishments, and much worse, in her studies, but had never experienced it herself. She’d expected it to hurt, and it did. What she didn’t expect, however, was the cold logic that descended upon her mind, nor how the world seemed to grey out around her.

He didn’t hit me that hard, did he?

Before her eyes, the world seemed to change. The sounds around her faded away and she was suddenly no longer in an alleyway. Instead, she stood in a large room. A man was there with her. He was wearing drab green clothes and seemed to be yelling at her for some reason. For a moment, she feared that she’d somehow accidentally activated her last crystal, abandoning the brown-haired boy as well as Tamiko and Shitoro. But then she realized something was wrong about what she was seeing. The man’s lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear his words. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything.

Her body raced forward, seemingly with a mind all its own. Kisaki could only watch as her fist shot out, but it was all wrong. The hand and arm attached to her was much larger and coarser than her own.

None of this mattered to the yelling man, though. He grabbed hold of her and then she was airborne, flying over his shoulder to land roughly on the wooden floor where she...

Just as quickly as the vision had come, it faded away and Kisaki was back where she’d been, tasting her own blood as color returned to the world and sounds started up again.

The world was still moving way too slowly, but that cold logic in her mind demanded that she use the time to study the foes around her. She became acutely aware of everything about them – their size, their weight, the way they moved, how quickly they did so. All of it registered in her senses within the space of a split second, locking itself into her memory with perfect clarity as if she’d spent months, maybe years, studying nothing but these humans.

With that clarity came understanding. She realized how sloppy the attack against her had been. It was a miracle she’d been struck at all, probably more a result of her outrage than any real attempt on his part. If anything, she didn’t feel anger against him so much as embarrassment for herself. Such a blow was easily countered. Everything that these men...

No. Warriors were men. These were boys, peasants, children – warriors in their minds only.

It was time to teach them the error of their ways.

Time sped up again to its normal pace, but still that cold logic remained. She stepped forward again. The male who slapped her saw her coming. He looked surprised for a moment before covering it up with a veneer of arrogance.

“Want some more, bitch? Good, because I’m serving it up all day.”

This time, he balled his fists, but it didn’t matter. Kisaki somehow understood what he was going to do, perhaps even before he did.

She raised an arm and easily blocked the punch. Her attacker’s eyes opened wide in surprise. Then, just as quickly, she threw a blow of her own, an open-handed shot to his throat. It caught him dead on, as she knew it would, and he doubled over, gasping for breath.

As he did, she brought a knee up into his jaw. She heard teeth crack and then he dropped to the ground. Unlike when he’d shoved her, though, it didn’t appear he would be getting back to his feet nearly as quickly.

Kisaki had barely a moment to be amazed at what she’d done. She’d never been allowed to study fighting or weaponry, no matter how much she had begged. Her mother had forbidden it, and Shitoro wasn’t the type to go against her wishes.

But then the moment was over, as the other boy next to Robbie rushed at her. This one was short, but thickly built. He moved as one who knew what he was doing. Not a warrior, but perhaps one in training.

None of that mattered. Kisaki analyzed his moves in the time it took him to pass Robbie and came up with a counter strategy.

She feinted to the right, but he seemed to anticipate that, which was precisely what she expected him to do. She cut hard left, sidestepping him. As he passed by, she shoved him from behind, using his own momentum to propel him into a pile of refuse along the side of the alleyway.

Rough hands grabbed her from behind in a bear hug, lifting her from the ground. Blast! She’d forgotten about the pony-tailed one, Jack. Perhaps sensing she was a greater threat than her friends, he’d come up from behind her unawares as she battled the other two.

“The hell?” he cried. “You some kind of ninja?”

Kisaki allowed herself the ghost of a smile. Ninja had been mentioned in her studies. They were said to be masters of stealth and combat arts. It was something she’d never considered herself to be, but she was currently too distracted to disagree with him at that moment. Instead, as way of response, she threw her head back, catching him on the nose with a satisfying crunch.

He screamed and let go, allowing her to throw a kick back into his leg, which dropped him to one knee.

She immediately realized that these three had been little more than the warmup. The real fight lay before her. Robbie and his two remaining friends had disengaged from the brown-haired boy. She now had their undivided attention. The first two, mere minions, wore uncertain looks upon their faces. Their leader Robbie, however, looked sure of himself, a fact attested to by his wide grin.

He had a confidence about him that suggested he didn’t expect to lose. Robbie had the look of one who was used to having the advantage. Indeed, he was larger than most of the humans she’d met, including fully grown males such as Mr. Yoshida. For all intents and purposes, Kisaki should have been terrified of him. But she wasn’t. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but whatever it was, she reveled in it.

“Leave now and you may go unmolested,” she said to the three still standing. She didn’t expect them to heed her offer. Robbie in particular didn’t appear inclined to parley. However, it gave Kisaki a moment to reach out with her senses, take stock of the situation.

Of the three she’d dealt with already, two appeared to have the fight taken out of them. The third, however, was stirring from the pile of trash she’d sent him into. He was likely to try his luck again.

Four against one. It seemed insurmountable odds, but at the same time did not. Something inside of her had changed. The question was: what?

Alas, it did not appear that answers were forthcoming at the moment.

“You may think you’re hot shit with that karate crap,” Robbie said, smiling a gap-toothed grin. He reminded her of the apes that Shitoro kept comparing Tamiko to. “If you’d walked away earlier, I’d have let you go. But then you had to go and rough up some of my boys. I can’t let that stand.” He turned to the two on either side of him. “What say we send her ass to the hospital with a side of rice?”

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The uncertainty left their eyes, no doubt inspired by their leader’s confidence.

“She’s kinda cute,” the one on the left said. He was second in size only to Robbie, with close-cropped light hair and a bent nose, as if it had been broken before and set badly. “I might want a piece of that.”

“Help yourself,” Robbie said. “I ain’t never been one for Chinese takeout myself. I’m more of a meat and potatoes kind of man.”

His friends chuckled and one cracked his knuckles, no doubt meant as a means of intimidation.

It didn’t work.

Kisaki hadn’t set out to hurt anyone this day. All she really wanted to do was make some new friends and create some good memories for when her unending confinement began again. The cold logic that still gripped her said otherwise, though. She now found herself eager for combat.

She recognized it for what it was: bloodlust, something she hadn’t thought herself capable of.

It seemed this day was full of surprises.

♦ ♦ ♦

Movement registered behind Kisaki – the one in the garbage pile. Even if it hadn’t, she would have smelled him coming. Robbie's words had been a ploy, a means to ensure he had as much of an advantage as he could.

That’s when she realized his confident smile was a sham. She was smaller and thinner than any of them. In human terms, she shouldn’t have been considered a threat. But Robbie was a coward inside – someone who was only brave in the face of certain victory. He’d been attempting to gain an advantage over her but had instead given it away.

“Kisaki, look out!”

Tamiko’s warning was welcome but unnecessary.

The two minions charged her from the front while the short, stocky one did the same from her rear, hoping to catch her in the middle and end this quickly.

Kisaki spared them a quick smile of her own before kicking off with her feet.

Barely believing what she was doing, she rolled backward over the one charging from her flank, his shoulder down as he tried to tackle her.

She landed nimbly behind him, the only discomfort being whatever garbage had rubbed off on her from the maneuver. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said of him or his friends. Neither side could arrest their momentum in time and the three of them collided.

It was a solid hit, but not a battle-ending one. At best, the three were slightly staggered. So she stepped in to remedy that.

It was almost as if she were a voyeur inside of her own body – able to observe, think, and make suggestions while her limbs acted of their own accord. Somehow the blow to her face had woken something within her – a creature of instinct, warrior instinct.

She spun and kicked out low, taking the legs out from beneath the one who had tried to hit her from the rear. He went down with a whoop of surprise and Kisaki followed up by stomping down upon his midsection and knocking the wind completely out of him. He didn’t even have enough left after that to cry out in pain.

The one with the crooked nose managed to grab hold of her arm when she spun his way. He twisted it, which she realized should have caused her pain, but didn’t. If anything, it was like a small child, or youkai cub, doing little more than holding her hand. She flexed her muscles and saw the look of surprise in his eyes as she overpowered him. It almost mirrored the one on her own face at what she was doing.

His friend came in on the other side, grasping her free arm to stop her from driving it into her other opponent, or at least trying to.

She dragged him forward, slamming the two together with considerable force. Blood erupted from the already crooked nose of the first one.

Broken again, she mused before kicking out at the second.

She caught him dead-on in the midsection and sent him airborne, much to her surprise. He landed a good ten feet away, hitting the ground stunned.

Rather than admire her handiwork, she grabbed hold of the bleeding male’s arm, spun, and forcefully flipped him onto his back where she drove the heel of her foot into his crotch.

He let out a high-pitched wheeze and began to actually cry as his hands moved to cradle the spot she’d struck. Kisaki wasn’t quite certain what she’d done, but it appeared that he was likewise out of the fight.

That was five. Only their leader remained.

Interestingly enough, the smug look was gone from his face. He was their leader, their general, but he was also a sham. His expression told her he relied on his troops to do all the work for him. Without them, he was nothing.

Kisaki folded her arms and glared at him. Multiple history lessons played out in her mind, telling her that surrender was imminent. Then it would be up to her to decide how to proceed, to be wrathful or merciful.

She honestly wasn’t sure which she wanted at that moment. It was as if her higher brain functions had been pushed to the side in favor of that cold logic, and that logic was apparently equally as fine with breaking this human’s neck as it was with letting him go.

That sudden realization scared Kisaki – to think she might be capable of such violence when she’d never so much as hurt a fly before today.

“Listen, I was just kidding before about that side of rice crap,” Robbie said, his hands up in supplication. “It was just a joke.”

Kisaki struggled to push that coldness within her away, back down to whatever dungeon of her mind it had originated from. While it remained, she was uncertain what she might do. This man-child before her was a worm, unworthy of her consideration, but she had friends nearby. If she let the coldness stay, it might eventually begin to influence her with regard to them.

She didn’t let the war raging inside of her show on her face, though. To do so might embolden her foe again. If that happened, she was almost certain whatever befell him would make the beating his friends had suffered look tame by comparison.

Instead, she reached up and touched her jaw where she’d been struck. “A joke, you say?” Kisaki took a step forward, enjoying the way he flinched at her approach.

“Please! I have money.”

“I have no interest in your money. I...”

“Sure we do,” Tamiko said in his language, running up to stand by her side. “How much?”

Kisaki fell silent. She wasn’t certain what her friend was getting at, but was curious to see what would happen next.

Robbie pulled something from his pocket, some kind of folded pouch, then tossed it to the ground in front of him. “That’s everything I’ve got.”

“Good,” Tamiko said. “Now get lost. Don’t let my friend here see you again.”

They stepped to the side to let him pass. He didn’t even pause long enough to wait for his friends, who were just now struggling to get back up.

“Heed the human’s words,” Shitoro said as Robbie drew near him. “Pray we do not cross paths again.”

Robbie’s eyes opened wide as saucers as he looked down at the little tiger demon. He let out a screech of panic and ran.

Seeing their leader broken, the rest of his group pulled themselves to their feet and ran after him. Kisaki and Tamiko watched them wordlessly until they were gone from sight. Then Tamiko strolled over, picked up the pouch Robbie had dropped, and looked inside it.

“Why did you do that?” Kisaki asked. “We do not need anything of his.”

“I beg to differ,” Tamiko said, counting green-colored paper. “We’re in a new land with no money. American money, anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to want lunch at some point.”

Kisaki couldn’t discount her logic even if it felt a bit petty to have done so. Still, she’d heard of warriors taking trophies from their defeated foes, so perhaps this was customary.

“Hey, um, thanks.”

She spun as quickly as she could. In the heat of battle, she’d completely forgotten about the young man she’d been intent on saving. He was back on his feet, leaning on the wall of the alley for support. Though a bit disheveled, and with a bruise beginning to color his cheek, he seemed otherwise unhurt. “I am pleased you are okay.”

“I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t come along. That was ... incredible.”

“I’ll say,” Tamiko added, stepping once again to Kisaki’s side. “How come you didn’t tell me you could do that?”

“I...”

“We should get out of here,” the boy said. “I’ve known that dickhead for years and he doesn’t give up easily. He’s going to want some payback. He and his idiot friends are probably going to convince each other it was a fluke and then come back for round two.”

Kisaki nodded. She wasn’t particularly worried about a round two, whatever that was, but was curious about the person she’d just saved. It would be difficult to learn anything about who he was, where they were, and where they could find her father, if she was busy picking fights with the local populace.

“Agreed,” Tamiko said, pocketing the money and discarding Robbie’s pouch.

“Great,” he replied. “Follow me. We can go back to my house. At the very least, I can offer you guys a place to clean up and maybe a glass of lemonade.”

“One moment,” Kisaki said, remembering she’d dropped something very important. Now where was ... there! The Taiyosori was lying in the puddle where it had fallen, looking like nothing more than a simple feather quill.

Such ado about so simple of a thing. Whatever it was, though, it still belonged to her mother. She was in trouble enough already without having to confess she’d lost it.

Kisaki picked it up, gave it a quick shake to wring the water out, then stuffed it back into her jacket before turning to follow the young man, who seemed quite eager to leave this place.

He led the group out of the alley, stopping at the entrance and looking around, perhaps to make sure his tormenters were no longer in the area. After a moment, he waved them on. “The way you took care of those guys was seriously awesome.”

“Thank you,” Kisaki replied.

“By the way, how did you manage to throw your voice so it sounded like your cat was talking?”