Slayer Assassin

Since it was pointed out the first bits didn't offer any satisfactory start-middle-finish - I've decided to do a few more, beefing up different points and POVs that I barely touched on. My hopes with the other drabbles was that someone would be inspired to take one point or even just the idea and run with it.

~ ~ S A ~ ~

Giles had watched the girl he had taken on as his charge. It had not taken him long to see that she had the Council completely fooled. That in their egotism they truly believed that they had control of the blond hazel eyed Slayer. They had allowed themselves to be lulled into forgetting that she was a ninja assassin trained.

He had kept quiet, seeing no reason that his 'colleagues' should know any differently. When she had been sent out with Merrick first, the other man had seemed to understand what Giles had quickly figured out. He also knew that the Watcher's death had affected the girl more than even she must have suspected.

This Giles could only speculate about. The kind of training she would have been put through...well the scars that she had over her body told their own story. He imagined that she had seen death aplenty, but-but possibly not someone sacrificing them self for her.

When she had drowned...Giles had been surprised. The Council had been upset and had given him ample grief over not reporting her death once they had learned about the newly Called Slayer. He had taken it stoically and gave no response. It hadn't taken him much to figure out that the young woman had figured out a way to take her out from the Council's guardianship.

He had waited for someone from her clan to come and check on her status for their self. The weeks had gone by and the only hint that he got about the clan's lack of presence was Buffy's behaviour. No one appeared; he supposed that the clan had taken the Council's word as true. Though why they would he had no real understanding of.

Until he had learned this he had always wondered why she had let herself die. He had known that some of the skills she knew would deny all normal bounds of human limitations regardless of Slayer ability or not.

It's been how many years now? Still she remains as Joyce Summers' daughter. She could with her training slip off to never be found unless one of her kin was to search for her. She doesn't; she remains in Sunnydale and continues on with the 'friendship' of the two teens. Remain in the fight against vampires and demons.

He...he can't seem to help the growing regard he has for the younger woman. Even if he knows and sees what the Council and everyone else sends a blind eye to .

~ ~ SA ~ ~

They don't walk away from the siblings or Giles, but they were deep in shock. They look at her and the past couple years of getting to know her run through their minds. They wonder how the same almost emotionless girl before them could be the sometimes ditzy fun loving blond that they had finished off their schooling with.

They wondered about her real abilities.

Are those the eyes of a killer? Is a small whisper in their minds.

She had just admitted to being a ninja assassin from a highly successful clan that went back generations. She also admitted that the man beside her is one of her many brothers from the very same clan.

Her name...isn't Buffy or is it? She no longer remembers and they shudder to think about why that could be. She went or goes by Kamiko – no last name because she no longer sees herself as being Ozunu.

They remember all of the years they were together as best friends. The triumphs and tragedies they went through together. How much of what they went through could have been avoided if she hadn't been putting up a front for all of these years? The doubt, hurt and some anger tinged their thoughts.

Had they been token friends? So that she could fit in better with everyone else? So many questions swirled through their heads as their eyes moved between Buffy-Kamiko, her brother and Giles. Were they ever going to be told her real history if Willow hadn't stumbled across the siblings' reunion?

Did she feel nothing for any of the deaths that she could have prevented?

Would Jesse still be alive if she hadn't been playing her role of a girl wanting to be normal?

Would Miss Calendar still be alive or Kendra...and so the questions went on in their heads.

"I was meant to be an Ozunu daughter like none other. When training got harder and I gained more attention I was told that my future held great things and as such would bring great honour to the clan." Her voice had no inflections as she spoke of her past.

Glimpses of scars that they had known hadn't come from patrolling began to make more sense for them. Their stomachs began to churn for reasons other than growing anger and betrayal they felt by her revelation. Certain little quirks began to make more sense as they looked on the blank faced blond.

"How old?" Willow whispered the question.

"I was barely five when I was taken."

Willow felt tears leak from her eyes as she cried for her friend.

"Have-have you ever tried to find your biological parents?" Xander asked.

"I'm sure they're dead now." No wavering in emotion over the mention of the possible death of her real parents. "I'm not their daughter anyway."

Xander was blown away further by the callousness of the statements. If he weren't a guy he would be crying alongside his best childhood friend. Yeah, sure his parents weren't the best especially after getting into the booze, but he still didn't completely disown the fact that they were his biological parents.

Now, he wonders at the jealousy of Buffy over the fact that the blond seemed to have the best parent out of any of the Scoobies. That's what he understands then, the relationship between Joyce and Buffy had only been an illusion. He wonders if the older blond had been manipulated into the role just so that Buffy would have a stronger background to fit in with her peers and the community at large.

He wished that he could go back to that morning. That time would turn back and everything he had just learned would be unlearned. He didn't know if he would be able to keep looking at...Kamiko anymore. He would rather just believe in the monsters than live in the dark than with the fact that the girl he loved didn't really exist – had never existed.

~~SA~~

Her first punishment was remembered with the kind of clarity that would stay with her until her old age if she lives that long that is.

When she awoke in that strange place that they insisted was her new home she had been defiant. She demanded to go back to her real home, to her parents and most of all her name wasn't Kamiko. Those childish demands had been met with some patient disciplining at first but as days began to go by and she still continued with her insistence their tolerance waned by increasing degrees.

She thinks that in some ways it was this behaviour that had earned her the scorn of her future siblings of her age group. The older ones paid her little mind as they continued with the more advanced training that their father trained them in.

She remembers the pain and exhaustion.

Her hair had been ripped out first. Hair, she remembers clearly matching her mother's hair and her daddy always teased by ruffling playfully. She had cried but had to quickly stop as the punishment got extended. All night, that night she silently cried and at some point she decided that she had really hated her hair.

She hated it because it made her stand out among her siblings.

The next morning when her name, "Kamiko," is called she answers to it and made no more fuss about not being an Ozunu.

She shrugs off her siblings distance as not mattering to her because she wanted to earn their father's meagre praise. She wanted to be a daughter like none other and being close to her siblings would not help her in gaining that goal.

As the years passed by and mostly daughters tried to leave the family. They failed, all of them did. They would be brought back and made into examples of what happens when you go against the family. Kamiko had silently pledged that she unlike them would never be caught.

She would not leave because she was too weak to remember the lessons taught to them. She would leave keeping all of them close to her because they would keep her alive and free of a family that was stifling her not just day after day but hour after hour.

She was choking on the honour that was being an Ozunu.

She refused to think of herself being like any of the failed daughters.

She was different and always would be.