Arigatami Sagara's Story

1:24 AM. April, 2013 One day before the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
Summer came early that year. Even in the darkness of night, the heat held its bite. It was business as usual in the Nation’s Capital, heat or no heat. People heading home from a long day of work, others were leaving for the night shift and so on. The moon shone bright and proud that night, full and crimson. The Cherry Blossom Festival was still a few days away so there were not many tourists yet. The crimson of the moon illuminated the Sakura trees in the flat streach of grass and trees that was the National Mall. It was as if even the moon knew the blood that was to be spilled that night.....

He ran, running faster than he had ever run in his whole undead life. He was beyond fast, almost seeming to teliport between rows of cherry clossoms. And yet he seemed to not be fast enough to escape his attacker. He caught a glimps of the would be killer. The killer was like something right out of Assassin's Creed. White cowl that covered his face attached to a cloak that drifted around his frame. Hell, he even had one of those retractable daggers under his right wrist. The killer's frame was rather tiny, not so much short and stocky as average hight and fit build. In that moment the killer vanished from his sight. Nothing short of a ghost could escape the sight of a Vampire!

He was panicked now, his running became more human. How could he be afraid? He was a vampire of Shu! He feared nothing! Yet, he did fear his persuer. His vampire speed was gone. He needed to feed, but he could not. He jumped at a shadow to his left. Nothing.
"Get a hold of yourself, Zuo!" He spat at himself. "You should not be jumping at shadows!" He turned as he spoke to himself.
He did not even feel the wrist dagger enter his throat...

KING/S.W.O.R.D HQ, same time.
The Headquarters of King/S.W.O.R.D was massive. It was like a mix between a giant five star hotel, an office building and a mansion. A really really big mansion. It not only housed multiple office rooms and meeting areas, but also large apartments for every member of the organization as well as mission briefing rooms and other areas meant for researching cases.
Sean Greymore Hiruki was in one such room. The Computer Ostentatioutory, as Sean liked to call it anyway since it was basically an ostentatious observatory with computers. It looked much like Mission Control at NASA and was used in a similar way. Sean was the only one in the room. A headache had kept him horizontal for the past two days with very little sleep in between. Since he knew there was no way he would be sleeping, he decided to finish off the paperwork for a case.
Though his warm bed accompanied by his goddess of a wife, Rui , was tempting as hell.

Closing the laptop with a long sigh, his free hand rubbed at the bridge of his nose. By the Gods he wished this headache was gone...

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She awaits in the darkness of the city. This city was her homeland. It was her new Kyoto. She could remember back in the days when she was still a normal kunoichi under Daimyo Tokugawa Ieyasu. She bounded from rooftop to rooftop with skill and grace. She killed her targets with such ease. At least until she came to blows with a dark mage posing as a Shinto Priest....
Sagara Arigatami place her fingers on the eyepatch that covered her right eye. Etched upon the black of the patch was the alchemic symbol for an hourglass. Her eye was not gone, per-se. In fact it worked better than before. But it also showed her horrors that she could not unsee. That damned mage cursed her with a frightening and painful power indeed....

After a moment of silence, Arigatami got a hold of herself and jumped to the next roof. Arigatami wore standard shinobi garbs with he exception of a hood. She had no need to hide her face. She was skilled enough to kill her targets when no one was around to see. She wore two ninjato swords strapped to her lower back just above her ass. Her auburn hair, which fell to her cheeks, flowed in the wind as her crimson left eye blazed like a hawk in search of prey. Her hair was not orginally such a color. She, like all Japanese women, had black hair once. The curse did something to her, changing the very color of her hair and eyes.

There was a sudden flash of steel to her left. Arigatami acted in an instant, unsheathing one of her ninjato and deflecting the incoming blade. The white cowled attacker was three heads taller than she. Granted Arigatami was only 5'4" so there were many who were taller than her.It was her attacker's strength that surprised her, though. He..or she was powerful. Arigatami was almost brought to her knee.
Instead of suffering the embarrassment of falling to a knee, Arigatami fell back. She pushed backward and nearly flew back a few feet.
"Who are you!?" She growled, he glare stong enough to send most grown men running.
The attacker seemed unaffected by both her tone and glare.
"I see" The Cowl said finally. His or her voice was augmented, probably with magic. It made it impossible for Arigatami to figure out is it was a man or woman. The voice sounded...weird. Like it was coming from a shitty old radio from the 40s.
"You are a quick little thing, Ninja." Cowl hissed. The attacker took a few steps away from the ninja. "It would seem I well need a more indirect way to kill you. Farewell" Before Arigatami could stop him, he hopped off the roof and into the street far below. When Arigatami got the the edge where he jumped...Nothing. There was nothing there.
Arigatami did not stay astonished for long. She had to head back to the others and report what had happened.

Oh how Arigatami hated assassins. She hated when people assumed Ninja and Assassin were the same. They were far from that. She always said, Assassins have targets because they can miss. Shinobi and Kunoichi have no targets ,they had kills. Her good friend, the vampire Liu Fang called them "Deaders" Said he read it in a book once and thought it fit Arigatami. Liu Fang knew her far too well.
Arigatami ran off the roof and jumped into the darkness. The world because black, and yet she could still see where she was heading. That was her power. The shadows were her him...No...She WAS the shadow. She was a Kunoichi., after all. The warrior of darkness. A demon of night. She remembered when she had her home in the wilderness of Boston, back in 1776. She had killed ever Redcoat who dared ever threaten her home. The people outside the wilderness told them not to go in there, for a demon lurked between the shadows of the trees. They never listened....
Arigatami found herself beneath a tree. Damn her wandering thoughts. She accidentally told the darkness to bring her to the forest. Arigatami was about to reach for the darkness once more when she felt a sudden sickness in her stomach. What the hell? She fell to her knees and started coughing violently. It took her a moment to get the coughing under control. I loud ringing in her ears caused a surge of pain in her cursed eye. She looked around and...By the Kami....

It stood tall and thin. A simple black and white suit covered it's Human-like body...but it was no way human. It's face...or, rather, the lack there of, was pure white. There was a feeling of helplessness that Arigatami had never felt before. This was not a simple matter of her opponent being as strong or stronger than her...this was something far different...Far more primal. It just stood there...thing...That nightmare never moved.
Using all the strength she could muster, Arigatami stood up and grabbed the nearest bit of darkness she could find and vanished into it.
It appears she had to the Sean and the others about more than just an assassin....

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Sean stood from his chair and was about to see if Rui was asleep yet, she usually stayed in the Infirmary looking after the wounded , for that was the kind of woman she was, when a sudden energy caused his senses to go wild. The scent of Brimstone and Sulfur entered in his noes as he sensed the magical energy. Said energy was coming from somewhere in the city, but he could not tell were.
Uh oh.
Only two magical beings could make that kind of smell accompany their energy. The Genies of fire, known as Ifrit, or the Ifrit's cousins, The Genasi. The Queen of Ifrit Malika Muhtaal a-NNar (The a-NNar is silent. It means Queen; Trickster of Fire) came into town on a regular basis, but he hoped she did not use her powers in the City Limits. She could burn down a good chunk of DC in seconds.
"Burn" by Deep Purple rang through his cell. It was the ringtone he used for Ashir Fire-Storn, a powerful Genasi. Ah, So that energy came from Ashir.
He picked up his phone. "Ashir! Please do not tell me you just burnt down a part of my city."
As he spoke, he noticed a young man on the security camera monitor. He was standing at the bus stop. Ah. so someone has come to join, eh? Sean grinned a little. If Rui was asleep he would have to wake her. She always liked meeting new recruits. "Listen,Ashir! We got some newbies coming and I want you to meet them with Rui and me, ok?"