When Ryuna returned to her room at the monastery, Hai Tien was waiting outside her door.
“Oh, I thought you already left?” Ryuna asked as she approached the red-clad ninja girl. “Sorry, but they already gave me your room.”
The ninja stood stonestill. Her voice was calm and measured, and, while quiet, did not appear to be obstructed by the mask over her face. “I came to retrieve belongings I left behind.”
Ryuna raised a brow, then snapped her fingers. “Oh, right, there was a little bag of scrolls or whatever in the corner! That what you were looking for?”
“Yes.”
She pushed the door open and nodded her head in the direction of the specified bag — it was a maroon, silk sack tucked up against the wall. The scrolls it carried within gave it a sort of bulbous shape, like an unbeating heart.
As Ryuna dropped her own bags onto the floor and made her way to the bed with her arms outstretched, she said, “When you leave, can you shut the door for me? I’m gonna get some sleep before my match.”
Hai Tien crouched low, retrieving the bag without any acknowledgement of Ryuna’s request. “You cannot defeat him.”
Ryuna, who’d already closed her eyes, popped one open, aiming it towards the ninja’s back. “Who? Billy?” When no clarification came, she snorted. “Psh! Yeah I can. I can beat anybody.”
The ninja stood back up, and turned towards the door, though she did not move towards it right away. “Your chi is beyond your control, and your arrogance clouds your judgment.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m not sure why I’d bother getting advice from someone who didn’t make it as far as I did,” Ryuna shot back. Even if Hai Tien hadn’t been the observant type, she would have easily caught the defensiveness in the other girl’s words.
“I did not come here intending to be the victor,” Hai Tien responded.
Ryuna raised a brow. “Well, good for you for knowing that you suck, I guess? But I’m here to win, so that’s just one more reason not to listen to you.”
The conversation seemingly over, Hai Tien quietly left the room, shutting the door behind her as she’d been requested to.
Ryuna huffed from her nostrils, shutting her eyes once more to hurry along the road to sleep, though a prickling feeling in her heart and brain served as a temporary speed bump.
Why was everyone riding her so hard about her lack of chi control? Wasn’t the whole point of coming out all this way to become Master Kirin’s disciple to learn how to use chi properly? Why make a big deal out of her chi being “unstable” or whatever? She was working on that!
Groaning in annoyance, Ryuna threw her questions out the window, rolled over, and fell into slumber.
* * * *
ULTRA DRAGON
* * * *
Hours later, Ryuna was awakened by a sequence of knocks upon her door.
With an ugly grunt and a scratching of the ass, she crawled out of bed and made her way to the door.
On the other side was Brise, who greeted her with a polite smile. “Good morning, Ryuna. Did you sleep well?” All Ryuna could muster in response was a lopsided nod.
“There’s a guest outside the monastery who wishes to speak with you.”
Ryuna peeled one of her eyeballs open. “Huh? A guest?”
“Yes. You should hurry and speak with them before the match begins.”
* * * *
ULTRA DRAGON
* * * *
“Kiki?!”
Kizzy hunched her shoulders, her eyes darting left and right in search of any bystanders who may have overheard. “D-don’t call me that out here!”
Ryuna laughed, planting her hand on top of Kizzy’s head. “What the hell are you doing all the way out here? I thought you weren’t supposed to leave the village.”
Kizzy shrugged. “I snuck out. Not like anyone really noticed. Everyone’s all sad and stuff.”
She jerked in surprise as Ryuna suddenly started patting at her cheeks, then twisted her around in a circle. “Wait, you came here all by yourself? Did you get hurt?”
Kizzy managed to squirm away and free herself, though not even her dark skin could hide her reddened cheeks. “I-I’m fine!”
“Ha, sorry, just worried about you, dude,” Ryuna said. “Did you run into any monsters?”
Shaking her head, Kizzy replied, “No. I mean, I saw some dead ones, I guess. I figured you beat those ones up.”
Rather than turn to face Ryuna directly, Kizzy instead focused on the giant monastery that had been carved into the mountains. She’d already been staring at it in awe while waiting for Ryuna, but even with her friend and reason for being here present, she still couldn’t pry her eyes away for long.
Noticing this, Ryuna smiled and glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah, the monastery’s pretty cool, huh?”
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“Yeah….”
“Oh, that’s right, since you’ve never left Welca, I guess you’ve never really seen a big building before. Other than in your magazines, anyway.”
“Yeah….”
In order to get things back on track, Ryuna snapped her fingers in front of Kizzy’s face and threw an arm over her shoulder, leading her over to the steps and sitting her down.
“So why’d you drag your ass all the way out here?” she asked, her eyes glancing down at the small bag at the girl’s side. “You running away from home?”
Kizzy shook her head, peeling the bag open and retrieving paper-wrapped sandwiches, and an orange. “I snuck some food for you.”
“Huh?”
The Welcan girl shrugged. “I mean, you said you need food to….give you energy for your fights or whatever, so I brought you some, that’s all….”
“Oh, you heard all that? When I was fighting with the wellers?”
“I’m pretty sure everyone in the village heard you.”
Ryuna paused, her eyes wandering down to the ground as she thought back to that incident. “You heard all that, and you still wanted to come hang out with me?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I was just using you guys and pretending I gave a shit?”
“I mean….” Kizzy began. “I guess that was pretty messed up, but….”
“But what?”
“I don’t think you were pretending. With me, anyway.”
Ryuna broke out into a bright smile, leaning in and pinching at Kizzy’s cheeks. “Awwww, of course not, Kiki! We’re besties!”
“H-hey, knock it off or I’m taking the food back!”
Obliging, Ryuna backed away, making a show of holding her hands up in the air. “Alright, alright, fine! I’ve got my final match coming up; I’m gonna need all the food I can get!”
“Oh, right, your fighting tournament,” said Kizzy. “That’s today?”
“Yup. In a few minutes, actually. You wanna watch?”
The Welcan girl shook her head. “No, I should get back home before my parents freak out.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
The girls sat in silence for a few moments as they started digging into the sandwiches. But then, Kizzy said, “Hey, Ryuna?”
“What’s up?”
“What did you mean by…. ‘Everyone uses each other’?”
“Hm?”
Kizzy took a nibble of a bite. “Yesterday when you were yelling….You said that people use each other and that that’s how the world works. What did you mean by that?”
Ryuna hesitated. She’d never really expected to have a conversation like this, and certainly not with Kizzy.
With a sigh, she said, “I meant exactly what I said. People use each other to get what they want and need. You have to, otherwise you don’t get anything.”
The words left her lips like a stream breaking through a dam. Thoughts and feelings she’d cultivated over the years she’d lived but never truly put into proper words and ideals, without even taking the time to truly think over them and what they meant.
“People can be nice to each other, sure, but nobody actually cares about helping others, besides their family I guess.” She pinched off a chunk of bread, smushed it into a ball between her finger tips, and flicked it at the floor like a bullet, opening a crater in the dirt and rock. “And if you’re poor or starving or sick or weak, you’re fucked if you’re on your own. The only way to get help from other people is to benefit them in some way, even if that’s a lie.”
Kizzy’s brow furrowed as she tried to take in and make sense of everything Ryuna was saying. “Benefit them how?”
“In whatever way you can,” Ryuna said flatly. “Butter them up, bribe them, use your body….Whatever it takes to convince them you’re worth investing in.”
“And….you do that too?”
Ryuna nodded. “Yup. My family used to be poor. Like, super poor. I mean, we still are, but we’re better than where we were before. And my parents couldn’t really work much because they were always sick.
“I was always trying to get help taking care of them, even when I was a little kid, but nobody really gave much of a shit. Sometimes I could get the neighbors to pass off some leftovers if I acted all sweet and nice and took care of their dog, and sometimes I was able to get the landlady to hold off on evicting us by crying my eyes out in front of her, but that didn’t really get us anywhere.”
“So how’d it get better for you guys?”
“I got older. And luckily, prettier and hotter.” She smiled, although there wasn’t any real joy behind it. “I could get boys at school to buy me stuff if I pretended to like them, and I was able to get a job before I was legally allowed to work because the manager liked seeing my ass in the uniform.
“But what really helped was when I started sneaking into martial arts tournaments. Fighting was something I turned out to be pretty good at right away, so even though I couldn’t afford to take any classes, I was still able to win some prize money from that.”
Waving her hand in front of herself, Ryuna said, “Forget it, now I’m just rambling. Basically what I’m trying to say is, if you need something other people have, you’re gonna have to play the game and take it from them in whatever way you can think of. Does that make sense?”
Kizzy didn’t appear to have a response right away. The girl’s eyes were unfocused, staring off at nothing in particular.
“Hello? Kiki?”
The Welcan girl nodded. “Yeah, I….I guess so….”
Ryuna gave her another empty smile. “You think I’m a total psychopath or something, don’t you?”
“What?”
“No worries, I get it. That’s why I never talk to people about this kinda stuff.” She mounted her elbow on her knee, and dropped her chin into her palm. “It’s better to just put on the act, get what I need, and move on.”
“Even if it makes people not like you after they find out?”
“To be honest, I don’t really give a shit.”
With the conversation seemingly over, Ryuna pushed herself back up to her feet, and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I should head back inside. My match is gonna start soon.”
Kizzy followed her lead, nodding. “Yeah, sure….”
Ryuna patted the smaller girl’s head once more, although this time, Kizzy didn’t pull away. “Thanks for the food, Kiki. And….sorry about all the drama.”
She turned away to head back to the monastery, but Kizzy’s voice stopped her in her tracks. “Hey, Ryuna?”
“Hm?”
When Ryuna turned back to face her, Kizzy wasn’t looking in her direction. Instead, she was looking back out over the mountains; more specifically, towards the side that led down to the roads below. “Is that….is that where all the pastures are? And Ermina?”
Ryuna smiled, genuinely this time. “Awwww, does Kiki wanna see the unicorns?”
“Sh-shut up! Just, animals in general!”
“Tell you what: after I win this tournament, if you want, come meet up with me here, and I’ll take you to go see them before I leave, okay?”
Now it was Kizzy’s turn to smile. “Uh….cool. O-okay!”
Feeling motivated, Ryuna waved her friend goodbye, and peeled the doors of the monastery open, heading inside.
It was time for her final match of the tournament.
* * * *
ULTRA DRAGON
* * * *
Kizzy zipped up her bag and began to make her way back towards Welca. She didn’t know how her conversation with Ryuna would turn out, but she’d been more than satisfied with it.
While she’d been shocked to hear Ryuna’s tirade during her falling out with the wellers, she’d wanted to believe that their friendship was genuine, and after that conversation, she felt confident that it was.
She couldn’t rid her face of the smile from Ryuna’s last promise, either. When she’d snuck away from Welca for the first time, her heart had been pounding with fear and anxiety, but as she took in the sights of the mountains, and came across the wonder of the monastery, that fear had given way to an excitement and awe that she was already beginning to crave more of.
The prospect of getting to see even more of the outside world; the pastures below the mountains, the city of Ermina, the unicorns — Kizzy had never felt a spark within her like this before in her life.
She soon had to come to a stop, however, as she came across someone in her path back to Welca.
It was the red-clad ninja girl of the Dragon Clans, Hai Tien.