WIH chapter 4

"Come on!" Ieyasu yelled

"Could you maybe go easy on us?!" Tatsumi asked

It had been a week since Mika had left on his journey and ever since then, Tatsumi, after a lot of prodding from Shinoa, had begun training the boys while Yoichi began helping Sayo with the bow and the boys were making good progress. As for Mika, they had no way of telling what could have happened to him so all they could do was just wait.

"Get up! Your enemy won't give you time to get up! By now, both of your heads would have been chopped off!"

"This sucks!" Ieyasu complained "All you do is beat us up all day!"

"Its how I learned to fight and look how well I fight!"

Shinoa quietly chuckled from her position underneath a tree and watched as the boys got up and rushed once more towards the raven haired boy. After taking in the peaceful moments, she turned her attention once more at the map and the 2 packets of pills beside it and began asking herself the same questions she had been asking herself for the past hour.

How do we get back home and where do we even start?

I have no idea where we are, what type of people we might come across, what enemy might come up, or even where we can find shelter or people we can trust! Shinoa sighed and picked up one of the packets of pills she had on her when they had teleported to this new world. Each packet had around 15 pills, which only made the situation worse as now their trump card was in short supply and she had no way of replicating or finding anymore of the pills if they ran out, making their already bad situation even worse.

And now that Shi-chan hasn't said a word to me and my scythe only gives me headaches whenever I try to use it . What the hell do we even look for?! No one saw what teleported us here and we don't know what or who did it!

Shinoa leaned her head back against the tree and closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to come up with some semblance of a plan or even to remain composed.

What would Guren do in a situation like this?

"Shinooaa!" Her thoughts were broken when Tatsumi, all battered up, trudged towards her and dropped down in exhaustion when he was beside her.

"What happen? Weren't you training with -" Shinoa's voice trailed off when she saw Ieyasu on the ground again and Yuu standing with an almost bored expression.

Ah, I see what happen

"He keeps on beating us up and he says its training!" Tatsumi mocked "Can you please help us? I can barely lift my arms!" Shinoa, already

I need to blow off some steam. A little exercise won't kill him since he seems so bored.

Shinoa innocently smiled at Tatsumi before getting up and taking the wooden sticks they had been using.

"Hm? Shinoa? What are you doing?"

"Well" The purpled haired girl tied her hair back into the familiar 2 knots and started stretching. "Tatsumi asked me for some help and it wouldn't hurt to practice a bit"

"Heh" Yuu confidently took an aggressive stance before holding his sword in front of him. "Then don't complain when you lose to me" He said with a smug expression.

Shinoa didn't respond to his comment and only offered an innocent smile before also getting into her own stance as the sky slowly darkened.

Ieyasu limped his way over to where Tatsumi was sitting and collapsed beside him.

"Who do you think will win?" Ieyasu asked.

"After getting our asses kicked for the entire week? Yuu, for sure" Tatsumi said without taking a moment to ponder. Ieyasu quickly nodded in agreement and focused his attention on the duel.

The two circled around each other, eyeing each other carefully like 2 alpha males facing off, both waiting for the other to make the first move as some dark clouds slowly covered the sun.

"Are you scared, Yuu?"

"What? Why?"

He ran up to Shinoa and quickly swung from his left in order to overpower her. Shinoa leaned back and without skipping a beat, took one step forward and knocked the sword out of his hand with a quick hit to his wrist and hit him hard on the chin, causing him to stumble back . Now off balance and disoriented , Yuu could do nothing but stumble back when Shinoa walked up to him with the same smile and knocked him down on his back with 2 simple kicks to a knee and the chest.

"I think I've won" Yuu looked up to see Shinoa's smug face and could only groan and put his head down in shame at the completely embarrassing defeat he had just suffered while Tatsumi and Ieyasu laughed at him. At this point, the sun had almost been fully covered by the clouds and Yuu only felt worse.

How did I mess up this badly?

The laughing stopped when Tatsumi suddenly stood up, his head looking in the direction of where the black cloud was. Ieyasu looked up to see Tatsumi with a confused look on his face

"Uh, What's wrong, Tatsumi?"

"... I see smoke"

at that moment, everything was quiet. Like sailors witnessing the calm before the storm, they knew what each other was thinking and hearing at the same time. A sudden breeze confirmed to everybody what Tatsumi saw as the smell of burning wood and bodies filled the air around them.

"...Help!" Everyone at the clearing turned to where the voice had come from. The sounds of crunching

It was Yoichi and Sayo. Yoichi had one arm over the little girl while the other covered his old stomach wound and was limping, his clothes ripped and the two had much soot over their exposed body parts and their clothes as they carried the bows they had earlier.

"Yoichi?" The boys immediately got up and helped Yoichi down while Sayo collapsed and put her head down. Shinoa opened Yoichi's shirt and saw the source of his pain. His old wound had torn open again and with every breath he took, more and blood came out. The only thing Shinoa and Yuu could do was press on it and hope it would stop.

Yuu looked back at Sayo with her head still down and gestured at the boys towards her. The boys nodded and they sat beside her as she began to quietly cry.

"Sayo, what happened?" She wiped her tears off and took a deep breath before answering.

"I, I don't know. We were training with our bows when we heard people being dragged made me go inside with him and we hid while some riders, I think ,were rounding up villagers to the center . The entire village was gathered there and one of them, he told us that this is a new base under some group and that we were to give them any boy who could lift a sword a, as payment to keep us safe. The villagers, they didn't want to so the riders, they took the ones who said no, and.."

"And?"

"I don't know because Yoichi covered my eyes. But I heard screaming. Next thing I knew, Yoichi grabbed me and made me go underneath the bed with him. Some people came in and took whatever we had before they left. Soon, there was smoke and we broke out through a window and we, we just ran. I don't know when but Yoichi, he had to stop but we could hear people all around us so I carried him here but…. The village"

Tatsumi and Ieyasu hugged the girl before she could continue while Yuu processed this new information. He turned back and could now see Shinoa holding down the wound with her shirt, shakely to stop the wound , her hands shaking with every movement and clearly panicking as shown in her eyes as with every moment, Yoichi's life ticked away

Despair and a feeling of hopelessness started to creep in. The peace they had enjoyed had been ripped away and this time, Yuu couldn't do anything.

Mika, if you're still alive, please give us some good news

"Where'd that blonde kid go?!" three men armed with small swords stalked the alley, one of them with a bleeding nose and all were furiously trying to find someone

"Spread out and find him!" The man with the bloody nose quietly walked down the dark street as his other two comrades split off, buildings surrounding the way like long arms trying to drag him into the dark.

He suddenly heard a fwump behind him and the next thing he knew, a blade had ran through his neck and he was down on the ground.

"Jackson? You good?" One of the dead man's comrades walked around the corner and before he knew it, a sword had ran through his chest and bled freely. He collapsed to the ground, looking one last time to see a boy with blinding white skin and crimson red eyes staring blankly back at him before his head dropped back down.

Mika sighed deeply before feeling a blade at his neck. "You just made the biggest mistake in your life, punk." The man was about to continued but before he could, Mika had grabbed his blade with his hand and broke it into 2 pieces. Stunned by the fact Mika didn't even seem fazed that his hand was bleeding and that someone could even do that, Mika punched the man in the gut, forcing him to double over into Mika's knee. The man stumbled back, dazed and confused and Mika took his blade and drove it hard into skull. He fell to the ground with a thud, his eyes still wide open in shock.

Mika dropped the piece of blade he was holding and looted the bodies. After finding what he wanted, he silently walked back into the shadows of the alley way. After confirming no one was nearby, he jumped up and began climbing up the walls before reaching a loose part of a wooden wall.

He yanked out the wood board before entering into a small , rundown room that was littered with maps, drawn pictures, books, and other pieces of paper. Before he put the wooden board back, he looked outside one more time, his eyes scanning the area like a hawk before finally putting the board back.

That was strange. I was sure someone was there just now.

He took one last look back before taking out the sacks of money and a bag of papers. He checked the money inside before tossing it into a small crate filled with money before taking a seat at the crate to check the papers he had just found.

Hm, as I thought. If this is true…

Mika started shuffling around some of the papers before finding what he wanted. He got out a small notebook and a pencil and quickly wrote down what he had just learned from the papers he had stolen or rather stolen from.

So there are other groups who fight this "Empire". It's best if we avoid making too much contact with them. I did take these papers from them after all.

As Mika continued to write down everything he had learned, a pair of amber eyes revealed themselves from the darkness of the alley as they watched the light escaping between the boards.

Authors note

That took some time to write! The story is definitely going to pick up steam now that I've got what I wanted out of the way. Also, I will be going on Hiatus until September so I won't release another chapter until late September or early October depending on the speed of my writing. Stay awesome