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Chapter Text

(Drip)

(Drip)

The sewer water dripped from the hanging pipes, and a small flow of the muck moved calmly through the tunnels below Manhattan.

“You are extraordinary, my sons. Unlike anything the world has ever seen, bound for greatness, destined to protect the people of New York.” 

“A dark force is growing. A criminal organization, known as The Foot Clan, so named, because they step over the good people of this city, with no regard. Their leader, The Shredder, will come at you with veracity, his Foot Clan will outnumber you. The people of New York will look upon you, as their only hope.” 

“Eyes focused, elbows locked, stance low. And we begin.”

The subtle swashing of swords, the slicing of thin air, and the blunt of a blow, was never released from the sewer walls.

“Be one with the blades, lead their path.”

“I know you are eager to answer their calls, but your training is not yet complete. The world below must remain your home.”

“As your father, you must trust me. Patience, patience.”

Within the confined bricks beyond the walls, under the cement rocks grounding people’s feet, they were guarded but not caged.  

“You’re not yet ready to go above ground, but I believe when that day comes, and you rise to the streets, you are going to be responsible for amazing things.”

They couldn’t wait for that day.

(Tweet Tweet)

A small bird chirped as its tattered wings carried them from the trees.

A soft gaze stood by a small window, and stared at the beauty of the serene nature of Japan. Beyond the walls of the small decaying dojo, stood a world of possibilities, but also one of dangers.

“My daughters, you are magnificent. Each of you are visions that the heavens have brought to me, and I love you four with all my heart.”

The old wooden floor creaks, and the hush of the wind’s whisper surrounded the open room.

“I’m afraid a dark force has grown in a place beyond our home. Crippling those who fall under its shadow. It is a disease, and I fear one day it will spread, and fester. I train you for this, prepare you for all I can.” 

“You were created from a weakness, but you four are bound for far more than greatness.” 

“I know you are eager. Blossoming buds you are, as you hope to chase the light wherever it may take you.”

The cherry blossoms of four nearby oaks glowed by the sun's rays.

“Your training has grown in strength just as you four have, but know that it is not complete. One day you will grow beyond students, to kunoichis, but you will always be learners. As your mother, I will teach you all I know, give you all I have, but I know that one day you have to live for yourselves, and live for each other.”

It was beyond miles of brush, deep in the depths of forgotten forests, they listened and absorbed.

“I believe when that day comes, together, you four will be ready.”

That day, was imagined as one of hopes and dreams. Together, they would do it, and live it.

Together.

Chapter Text

(BANG)

The window shattered, as the old wooden frame collapsed into the room.

“Guys… weapons, weapons! Weapons now!” The voice was panicked yet controlled, and immediately the sisters dispersed. 

She, however, stood frozen. In a moment Maya had become paralyzed with fear. She watched as the shards of glass, piece by piece, flew from the front window. They sliced the remains of the old chair that sat below, while the rest collected into an unnatural path, trailing across the wooden floor, to the edge of her feet.

An uneven breath she wasn’t aware of escaped her lips, as all Maya could do was stare at the remains of the pane mixed with fabric and colors of decaying wood. A piece of her old home, of their home , crumbled below her.

Then as her ears perked up, she heard a far off cry. A low, dark, and dangerous one. It was accompanied, shouts and screams, that must have been miles away, yet she felt as if they shouted right before her, and they were recognized.

A haunting familiarity passed through her entire body. 

Maya began to tremble ever so slightly, as her heart rate pounded against her lungs, causing even more hitched breaths. 

She felt out of control. 

Maya had never expected something to actually happen, not anymore. 

Over the years now in their past, over the tireless nights she had stayed awake, long after her daughters found peace in their sleep, begging to anyone who would listen for this to never happen, anything to this cruel extent, had all grown into an after-thought. She felt foolish. She realized now how idiotic it was of her to believe that this looming threat had just gone away.

Maya knew she had been swayed by the years of comfort and the facade of security; it had been her new life. Her new life had taken away so many things she had grown with in her old one. Normalcy; it was her primary loss. Never once as a child would she have thought to live a day without the abundant contact of people, of society. But never could she imagine giving up what she had to go back.

She had grown a family, her family . A family that was so imperfect it made it perfect. Maya knew that her family was small, and it would for sure never grow, but it was an idea that was obsolete. She didn’t care. It was her and her daughters now. They were a family that would never fit into a frame above a mantel, and would never have a white picket fence around the front yard. Maya knew her dreams to grow a family of her own in her youth spelled out nothing but, and of which now she felt ignorant. 

Her family was one she would never change, and one she would fight tooth and nail to protect.

Maya never wanted it to come to this. She had tried so hard, she had prepared, she had planned, everything in the grasp of her ability to be done, she had done, and without a second thought, and with that, the best option to her had been taken to avoid this… she disappeared.

She had given up nearly everything, and she had never had a single regret. Her old life had turned to ashes of dust, as it would now never be known of what she was before.

She could remember a day once where in her youth she had wanted a name for herself, and to never have to be restricted or confined. It seemed so juvenile now. 

Maya could remember. 

As a child, and as a growth of a family tradition, she learned an ancient fighting style from her traditional-minded father, and it had been an experience. She practiced ninjutsu in her youngest days, growing further with it and with time. Her father had an elder mind, but the care of a saint. He had seen her in her bests and her worsts. He saw, as she trained and lived on the very floor still holding her now, that she was more than his daughter to be taken as his student. 

She adored her father, and his understanding that she possessed a brilliant mind showed his unconditional care. So she went to school. Maya learned subjects in a different way, but one she put just as much effort in.

With academics, her father had seen her flourish in a new way, and he stayed as supportive as he ever had. Maya knew they had both realized at the time, after her graduations of prestigious honors from schools, it had seemed her days in the dojo were behind her. Her father knew more than she did at the time, and a painful one, was he had to let his daughter go, and to find her own path.

Maya could still remember the very day, regardless of the decades past. Her father had become ill, a sickness weakening him until he could no longer go on. Through times of heartaches, Maya, barely an adult, took care of her father from his bed. She had no more feelings of a hopeful future seeing the man who got her this far fading from her world. It was on one night had he held her hands in his and made her able to see a new hope for a future she could live, a new world she could enter, and change for the better. 

Even through the devastation of his passing, Maya had been only inspired by her father. She wanted nothing more, than to change the world.

In that time she had worked harder than ever before, to find it in herself to leave the country. She would always have Japan in her heart and soul, while her mind had guided her all the way to New York City.

It was so long ago had she come to America. Maya had found a city where she felt she could make a change. Her brilliance had soon sparked the interest of people seeing her potential in the prospects of science. 

It was on a single day she had soon met a man. Another brilliant mind, that had a wealth to ground himself and his research on. She had been promised a worthwhile future in Sacks Industries. And she had been allured. She understood more than she ever had, as she worked with fellow researchers and scientists. She grew smarter. Her aspiring mind had been both a blessing and a curse she realized, when she found a friendship with another scientist. He and his young daughter had been a light in her life that had seemed to be growing uncontrollably restricted. He understood her in a way only a true friend could. And it was that they both understood from each other, that their purpose there had all been a lie. Maya had never felt so betrayed. All that she had done, that everyone had done, to change the world, had been corrupted by those of a diseased, dark force. They both knew, they couldn’t let it be tainted further.

Maya shook her head as she chose not to remember that night. The night her whole world had burned in flames alongside the remains of the project.

Only had that night been the start of her new life. The moment she saw the light in their innocent terrapin eyes, still confined in the glass cage she kept in her apartment, she made a promise to herself that the project would not harm them anymore.

But now things were changing. Her new life on the edge of being as shattered as their front window was now. Deja vu had never had such a purposeful use, as she felt she was about to see it all fall. Every single thing in her power she had done, that she had ever done to prepare for this moment, it all seemed meaningless now.

‘No!’ Maya straightened, and in a flash she became alert again. She turned on her heels; she ran to where she knew she could find them.

She ran through the short halls. The primary training floor wasn’t far, and the weapons wall adjacent to such.

“Girls!” Maya stopped herself by the open arched entry. She had to steady herself at the moment, as she braced the frame, and spotted two of her daughters.

“Mama, good!” Talena saw their mother immediately. “The kunai knives, where are they?!” She hastily rummaged through the metal trunk.

“Talena, Larota—”

Larota, on the other corner of the mat, had quickly grabbed her sharpening stone. She caressed the roughness over the blade of her kama firm in her grip. She proceeded to her other, but turned her head in their mother’s direction, to show respect that she was listening.

“Girls, I—”

“Throwing stars, tape for my bo, extra sparring slide-ons, mat cleaner…” Talena wasn’t fully aware she was speaking aloud. “Still no kunai! Ugh! Since when was this the “throw anything in and not organize it” trunk! I thought, Lara did you–”

“Tally just check another damn trunk! Check the one by Vee’s bonsai, the one in the corner, I don’t care! We just need them, so save your hyper organizing for later!” Larota disregarded the sharpening stone on the upper shelf, before she hurriedly opened the corner trunk. The contents were an unpleasant surprise.

“Seriously?!” Larota’s annoyance was near tangible. “Why the hell did Amy put all her fifty-thousand koma tops in here?!

“Larota, Talena, please–” Maya’s pleas fell soft and silent, in the background of her daughters’ haste.

Her mind had drawn blanks. She needed something now, a plea for hope, a prayer for their safety…no. She had those in an abundance, a plethora of which she could do in another moment. Maya knew she needed a plan, and one in a matter of seconds. To which it was a feat she had never done, and one she had always hoped she wouldn’t need. Yet, one she would do countlessly, without a moment of peace, if she knew it would help them.

“Two-hundred and four last time I counted.” Talena mumbles. She bares the trunk by her eldest sister’s pristine tree, yet still not finding knives.

The elder sister of the two had chosen to hold her tongue, to not remark with a blatant annoyed response for her sister’s correction. Larota slammed the trunk, as she turned to look for an alternative to search for their kunai knives.

At a prolonged moment, Maya took full notice of the absence of two of her children. “Where-Where are Venus and Amoly?!” Immediately a series of unforgiving possibilities swarmed her mind, when Maya realized her daughters had separated. She tried to control her verge of hysteria.

Larota and Talena, about to respond, had paused, as on cue their youngest sister ran into the dojo.

“Ok ok ok ok!” Amoly had come in holding a large crossbody bag around her shell. “I got ‘em, I grabbed all the stuff I could find! I raided the fridge and all the cabinets! I got waters, frozen stuff, Sprites, Orange Crush, gummies, some chips, cereals, oooh and I found all the rest of the Pocky from Tally’s secret stash under the sink!”

“Amy! We get it!” Larota barked

Talena directed her immediate attention to her perky sister, pointing an accusing finger. “I knew you were the one stealing them!”

Amoly made a playful face while rolling her eyes. As if her sister really thought she could hide cookie wafers from her.

“And Amy, the point was for you to grab food we could ration! You grabbed more sugar than sustenance!” Talena emphasized.

“And knowing you, you’ll go through half of that bag on the first night!” Larota saw it as meaningless for their sister to pack rations of junk food that highly, wouldn’t last a full day.

“Hey! And for your information, I got substance!” Amoly reached into the bag, ignoring her sisters mumbling something about a wrong word. “Look! I also grabbed five apples, one for each of us! Huh! What do you call that?!”

“Ridiculous!”

“A for Effort?”

Both sisters faced Talena with a variant of expressions. To Talena’s defense, she thought the subject was losing focus, and didn’t know what to say edgewise.

Larota scoffed. “Leave it to you Tally to give someone a grade. Urgh! Where are the kunai knives?!”

A nearby pounding of multiple heavy footsteps, and the jagged rustling of tires on dirt, passed through the grounds below their home. Maya’s mind and body whipped a previous direction, as she heard the barks of violent intent. Closer, louder. The painful weight on her chest, it swelled with agony.

“What, do I need to pack more?!” Amoly had wanted her role to be useful, but with her sisters’ rebuttal, she felt that maybe it was lacking. When she received no response, she decided to go look again for good measure. “Ooo! Wait, I think I might have seen some bananas! I’ll be right back!”

Maya had stopped her daughter in haste before she could run out of the training room. “No no, umm, honey it’s fine, I’ll pack more in a minute! She quickly took the satchel from her youngest daughter. “Could one of you please tell me where Venus is?!”

While Talena and Larota had still been preoccupied with their search for their combat knives, Amoly began to respond, before she paused. Looking closer, she took a longer look at her mother.

She, she was… scared. 

The youngest sister was one to not always understand complex situations and responses, but she was one to understand more than what was right in front of her. Amoly had been surprised by her mother’s demeanor. Of a woman who always seemed so in control, so able to know just what to say and what to do, in the times to do it, pure fear wasn’t what Amoly expected. It worried her.

Maya could see it in her child. She knew Amoly had always been one to lead with her heart rather than mind; Maya could see all of which now. She stared at her mother with a silent concern, the plea that she was under a misunderstanding, that her mother wasn’t afraid. Maya wanted nothing more than for herself to give the reassurance she could see her daughter craved. 

It crippled her knowing she couldn’t.

Maya looked into her daughter’s eyes for her attention, as she placed a hand over hers. “Venus honey?”

“Oh… oh!” Amoly came to her foremost senses. “Um, I-I think she’s–”

“Right here Sensei.”

The attention of the room was directed to the rightmost entrance arch. Venus had come bearing the addition of multiple weapons of hers and her sisters.

Maya turned her glances fondly towards her eldest daughter. She had always known of Venus’ perplexed habit of retaining the title of “Sensei” when addressing her. Despite her insistence that she was accepting of being referred to as a mother than a teacher beyond training, Venus persisted. Maya only imagined it was out of pure respect. As her daughter so excessively tried to show. Maya had been rather happy when Venus had first begun to refer to her as mother.

Maya still knew a more internal battle, caused Venus to revert in high pressure circumstances. She offered no judgment in appearance nor action. 

Venus upon looking, had been first to notice her mother and youngest sister. An unmatched understanding had seemed to be conflicting between the two of them, yet she decided to guide her focus to the more dire matter.

Venus walked the training room minimally, as she delivered her sisters their weaponry.

“Tally, here's your bo staff.” Talena took her primary weapon with a thank you to her big sister.

“Lara I knew you had your kamas, however I grabbed your far range throwing stars.” Venus had handed her sister the blades, and appreciated the nodding in her sister's reaction, knowing her different way of gratitude.

Venus came over to the two.

“Amy, here are your kusari-fundo whips.”

“Thanks Vee!”

“Goddamnit!!” Larota still had an unsuccessful search. “Vee for God's sake, where are the kunai knives?!”

“Lara calm down! And they're all in the wardrobe of our spare hanging weapons!”

With exhales of annoyance from two, all four sisters immediately came to the brown oak wardrobe on the left wall. Quickly opening the cabinet doors, Venus pulled out the second to bottom drawer, placing it on the table beside the wooden dresser.

Each sister, without hesitation, grabbed their respective knives.

“No, Amy…” Venus grabbed the two kunai her baby sister had chosen. “Look, I’m sorry, but you can't take these two kunai!”

“What why not?!”

“BECAUSE THEY’RE PINK!”

Amoly huffed out at all her sisters’ obvious observation that she painted her knives. “What?! They needed a pop of color!”

“Amy, you have to use them for training only! They’re too bright to use elsewhere, sorry.” Talena said.

“Yeah but–”

“No! Stealth is a dire key that we will need , and those can not be used!”

“Vee come on, they can be stealthy enough!”

“Amy we don't have time for this! Just shut up and take the damn black ones! The ones that don't look like Barbie's badass nail files!”

“Wha– Urgh, fine I'll use the stupid black ones!” Amoly unhappily took two remaining knives. She mumbles to herself in protest to Larota. “ I bet Barbie would like a badass nail file, but whatever floats your stupid boat–”

(BOOM)

The nearby sound of an explosion rung through the thin air. The five women heavily flinched and turned their heads and minds to redirect to the sound. 

Maya’s ears held the deadly pitched ringing, in a moment of utmost uncertainty. An oncoming headache pierced her skull. She could feel it, heavily, wholly… painfully. Not the headache, nor the sheer ring in her ears, it wasn't what she felt the most. The feeling of their presence. The light seemed dimmer, the air seemed suffocating, the approaching threat, it all seemed… too close.

Too close.

‘Too close…’ Maya had felt this before, but never in a long time. Without thinking, she ran. The satchel around her shoulder, flung with her frantic pace. To the closest outdoor viewing window, she found herself staring. She lingered her eyes on the scenery view of miles of forests. It had always enveloped them and their home. Guarded them from the outside by concrete layers of wood that always seemed impenetrable. Maya stared. She squinted her sights, looking for what she never wanted.

It was the trees and the ground, the brush in the nooks and crannies of every little corner. She still stared. 

She saw.

Within the forests, the beautiful nature of her home, she saw black. A color of darkness, the color to bring anything to the touch of death, the color worn by those under the loyalty of an identical force. 

They moved in closer, and the assault vehicles drove in. Both destroyed the grounds below with everything they stepped over.

Too close… too late.

‘It’s too late…’ Maya knew. Hastily the curtains flung shut, by Maya’s deathly unstable grip.

Heavy footsteps approached hurriedly behind her, these had purpose, but intent pure as gold. The sisters came rushing into the room, but stopped, before their mother.

“Sensei!”

“Mama!… Mama?”

They were words spoken with determination, that faded fastly to words of concern, and fear. All four sisters stared helplessly at their mother. The older woman was rippling with distress, shaking with fear. Her back was still turned, and her body was still rattling.

Maya finally turned around and faced her daughters. 

A hushed gasp of breath was stolen from each of the girls, seeing their mother’s eyes glassy, with a fragile tear cascading her cheek. Their mother had not spoken yet.

Venus, first to approach, reached out for their mother gently. More tears broke the barricade. Afraid a single touch could shatter her, Venus refused to make contact. Her hands were held openly in front of her mother, as she spoke in a voice of silk.

“Sensei–M-Mama, it’s okay.” Venus couldn’t highly believe that statement was true, but all she wanted was to reassure her mother. “We’re ready, we’ve gotten all we can. Tally’s even used an aerial view scan of the forests to lay out our route. We’ll be okay.”

Taking the risk, Venus gently placed her hand over her mother’s. 

Maya squeezed the three fingers of her daughter’s hand, as if committing the feeling to memory. She looked between all her daughters. Despite the tears, she smiled. She then reaffirmed Venus as she reaffirmed and tightened her grip.

“Follow me.” Still taking her eldest child’s hand, Maya gestured for her three younger to follow where she was leading.

The four sisters had been only concerned by the actions of their mother, but now that bled to confusion as she began leading them within the deeper rooms of their home.

The further they went, the more their confusion swelled. After a cross between two rooms, the sisters realized they had been led to a room they had never been in. The room was dusty yet utterly organized, and vintage yet homely.

“Mama what room is this? Where are we?” Amoly had let her curiosity overcome her worries sealing her speech.

Maya had released Venus’ hand and she went onto her knees in the middle of the room, and slid an old patterned rug. “This was my father’s room, but that’s not important right now.”

The sisters were all taken aback by this information. Their mother rarely ever spoke of their grandfather. It had always seemed to them of a pain of her old past. After understanding of a deep internal scar, they held their questions. Despite their deepest desire for inquiries, they didn’t ask, and they didn’t dare go further in the house than they had ever been.

Their confusion held firm, as their mother seemed to be inspecting the oddly new wooden floor, yet the sisters stayed silent.

After a brief moment, Maya had grabbed a small rod against the dirt collecting the unused fireplace. Immediately, she used a forceful jab, and stuck the rod into the floor.

The sisters momentarily gasped in surprise. They watched their mother, as she pried a plank from the floor, before descending onto her knees again. After hearing the unusual sound of beeping, the girls stared in shock as their mother slid open two large doors.

Their select moment of astoundment was interrupted, as their mother stood. “Girls, I need you to hide in here–”

“Hide?!” They all became appalled, for the split moment of their mother’s word.

“Yes! I need you four to hide!” Maya shunned herself for the selfish outburst, but persisted in her explanation. “Please, please, I know that nothing makes sense right now. I know. But please you have to trust me.”

The sisters hesitated… but did not rebuttal.

Venus brought herself behind her sisters, as she made herself last, and kept an eye, as one by one, one after the next, her three younger sisters gripped the wall ladder on the cave in, and plummeted themselves into the bunker.

Venus gave one last glance to her mother. She saw an uncertain look behind her glossy eyes, but all grounded by love. She too descended.

Climbing down the ladder only minimally, brought Venus in close proximity with her sisters, and she left the ladder to stand on their grounds.

While deep, the bunker refused to be spacious. The sisters took tighter breaths, never once in these moments had their anxieties unclenched.

They all looked up to their mother back on her knees.

“There's a small light on the left wall. This vault has plenty of ventilation and has a bulletproof cover in addition to walls–”

(BOOM)

The much higher amplitude explosion rung with the same veracity. And swelled the same fear as the one before.

“I will be back, but girls, please, you have to stay here and you have to stay quiet. Please, please trust me. Please promise me you’ll stay here.”

The sisters, none of them, could find it in themselves to bring their lips to coherent words. They tried and failed. Their lips moved, and some quivered, but did not make a sound.

In a final moment, they nodded.

Maya took one look at her daughters. Beautiful as ever, stronger than before. They had grown so much. She wasn’t going to let their growth wilt. She wasn’t going to let it be poisoned. She promised herself; the project wouldn’t harm them any more.

It was a promise and it fueled her.

“I love you.” Maya spoke in nothing but loving words, before she closed the doors.

Chapter Text

The room had fallen into uncertain silence. The thunderous boom of the bunker doors, they had been the very last of any noise. As the girls fell to be seated on the ground, they felt anything but relaxed.

The words of their mother flashed in their minds. 

“...you have to stay here, and you have to stay quiet…”

It became a joke; a cruel mockery of something that seemed utterly impossible. While they had been confined less than feet between each other, only it could have been minutes ago had their mother left, and all they could see was black; it was bleak.

In a moment they finally seemed not bombarded by their thoughts of a plan of action, when their mother asked for them to hide. 

Now they all sat still… almost all of them.

While the setting seemed eerie enough, it seemed Amoly was having the most trouble fitting with their surroundings.

As she still squirmed, Amoly whined softly. She began to reach out, only for the darkness to become a hinder for what she was looking for, yet eventually she felt a bulge on the left wall of the metal bunker.

Just as quickly as she turned it on, was it turned off.

She shook, before letting go a persistent whisper. “What?! Please can we leave the light on.”

“Amy, I.. I don’t know if it’s a good idea! I..” Venus began but was interrupted.

“But what if the light won’t show through the floor?! Please, please , can we just..”

“Amy..” Talena spoke gently. “We don’t know that it won’t! What if it could show and we could be seen.”

At a tense moment, Amoly’s voice fell… and cracked with mixed fears. “I..I know, but Mama told us about it. And…” She used any ounce of persuasion, more than she knew she had, and she pleaded. “Just, I…! Please! ”

Venus said nothing more and took in a sharp breath, but it trembled; she bit her lip. She looked up as if it was one of her last resorts to keep herself together. As she refused to let her internal barrier be broken, her eyes stung.

Any amount of as much control Venus thought she could have ever had, she needed more. She felt unnaturally panicked. While her breathing had to be the most controlled out of all of them, she felt close to hyperventilating. 

She was unlike herself. She couldn’t find the control she desperately wished for. She couldn’t breathe as steady as she always had been able to. Her hands trembled as they never had. She was confined to herself, more than the four of them were in the bunker. 

Venus looked over, and only could differentiate the silhouettes of her three sisters from her adjusted eyes. Even in the utmost darkness, she saw they trembled. The darkness concealed nothing, of what they felt. The sheer silence of the moment was an open book for the brokenness in the voices that were spoken.

Her sisters sounded so… so…

She shook her head violently. Not even in her thoughts, she couldn’t say it. She wouldn’t say it.

Soon the unnatural quiet was gone again, and Amoly swallowed the lumps swelling in her throat, yet her voice still waivered. 

“Guys, I…I…I’m scare–”

“Lara, can you please turn the light back on?” Talena didn’t dare to argue more, and flung a frantic arm around her little sister seated beside her. Her strategic mind meant nothing to her right now as she heard her sister’s voice. Touch never seemed as simple to her, but she tried, and her touch was her attempt; to ground her sister, to support her, she didn’t care at the moment which it might be. She just wanted to help.

Larota cleared her throat in a silent exhale, it sounded more fragile than they could have known from her. She had so far refused to speak, yet did as asked.

With a split moment of blinding the darkness with the LEDs, the girls blinked, and with a ‘Click’ they could see.

The warm glow of the light lit their bunker, and seemed so unfitting. The darkness left in their sights, but festered in their bodies. Being able to see was practical, yet it didn’t help with anything.

Venus spoke no words as she saw her three sisters. Talena had her arm still around Amoly and seemed reluctant to let go, while the baby sister leaned in for any comfort available. 

Larota refused to speak still, she only looked down while her right hand held onto Talena’s left. Venus’ concern grew more, as she observed her.

Venus sighed and still said nothing, but placed a firm grip on Larota’s shoulder. A prompt to be met, Larota reluctantly turned her gaze up to meet her big sister's eyes.

Venus saw too many things in her sister, yet she knew all of them. Larota’s stare held an unorthodox icy fire, that burned to the very back of her mind. The frigid flames inside her could kill, and send anyone miles underground to their grave with one single look. It was toneless, and deadly. Her glare was aligned with a razored crinkle in the bitter scaley expression. Angry was an ignorant understatement.

Larota’s eyes clashed with Venus’ in the same way water did with fire, and yet neither of them said a word. But in her sister’s eyes, Venus could see through. The solid barrier rougher than a slab of stone rock that was masking her sister, shielding her from any uncertainty, Venus saw through as if it was glass. It was the anger, the bitterness, and the cold-hearted nature to appear to anyone beyond them, was nothing more than her source of security.

In a silent and delicate act of reassurance, the corners of Venus’ mouth rose, and she smiled in pain. And staring at her sister, soon, Larota’s barrier, had cracked. Her barrier seemed as far to breaking as ever, but Venus found the fracture; she saw it in every sense. 

As Larota’s chest seemed to choke her, she blinked, and Venus brought her hand, and brushed away the smallest tear above her sister’s cheek. As soon as it had appeared, it was gone. There was no reminisce left of wetness below Larota’s eyes, and Venus welcomed it as her sister sighed and rested her head atop her shoulder.

Her smile had flattened shortly after, but the struggle in her face in a moment of her inner pain had been worth it. She let her sister rest as she seemed to be catching her breath, and looked again at the youngests. 

Amoly’s eyes were closed, but was far from asleep, as Talena had pulled her into a sideways hug. Venus met Talena’s eyes quickly, but just as soon did Talena turn away. Venus gently took her hand when she reached out.

Unconsciously, Talena returned her gaze. To Venus her younger sister’s eyes seemed more of a window to peer into the turning gears of her mind, that now seemed somehow rusted and unmovable.

She gently squeezed Talena’s hand, and Talena responded with a silent thank you, while her lips moved but made no sound. 

Venus smiled again, while she spoke in only the smallest whisper.

“It’ll be okay.”

For now she chose to believe that would be true, as she herself felt reassured when she heard three distinct hums of acknowledgement. 

For now, they sat together in the quiet that had resumed. She leaned her head back and her smile fell again. She tried to steady her breathing and silence it, and in a moment unlike herself, she crossed her fingers and wished she hadn’t lied.

(Buzzz…)

A vibrative hum of their small light inside, it wasn’t silent. Their hyper gasps of air intake, in an attempt to stay calm, were constant, and consistently heavy.

(BOOM)

As it happened again, the ground shook in anger, and each of the sisters flinched. The explosions had only gotten louder, more constant. Again and again, did their ears ring the same, and their hearts thumped feverishly.

(BANG BANG) (BANG BANG)

Encouraged with the explosive rumbles, came the incessant addition of gunfire. The sisters flinched all the same. It was never in pattern. One would come, then leave. One would leave and then come again before being accompanied by the next, but it was never in a pattern. It only made it harder.

Harder to hide; harder to feel as if their whole world could be being tarnished and torched above and yet all they could do was sit still. Someone wanted into their home, and their thoughts feasted on their minds as they could do nothing more than wonder who.

Venus held her breath, and released it in an attempt for a silent gasp that wasn’t quiet. It seemed as if it was all she could do, breathe in, and breathe out, the matter of how she did it by this point she cared nothing of, as long as she could keep breathing, it kept her from sobbing.

Less of which she knew could be said of her youngest sister. Amoly seemed to have lost against her own internal battle, and reduced herself to heavy tears in the midst of her quiet crying. After the first set of bullets had been heard, Amoly seemed to have succumbed to her fears.

Talena had been trying to reassure her sister in the most impossible circumstance, and Venus was ever grateful she never let go of the youngest.

“Shhh, it’ll be ok. We’re all going to be ok. Shhh, you’re fine, we’re fine .” Talena spoke only whisps, of anything she could ever come up with. She could feel the tenseness in her chest as her body trembled in coherence with Amoly’s cries.

“ I’m fine… ” Talena’s glossy eyes finally leaked, and the broken tears fell from her cheeks. She felt Amoly tighten their hug, and she responded the same. 

As Venus saw she offered comfort, it seemed as if she couldn’t believe her own words.

Venus turned her head again, and couldn’t take in the sight more. She breathed in through her nostrils in an aggressive haste and was honestly glad they hadn’t bled.

(BANG)

Venus turned back, as she saw Larota crumbled into her knees. The pounding she had done against her toned legs, had not held enough volume to pass beyond their bunker, but it worried her just as much. Venus felt empathetic eyes fall to her immediate younger sister, and she quickly grabbed her hand within her own. Whether to comfort her or take the blunt form of the strength of her sorrow, Venus didn’t care, but she knew now she wouldn’t let go.

When Larota’s head came from her knees, and lunged back against the wall with agony , Venus gripped tighter. Her sister let out a rigid gasp, but seemed to have settled ever so slightly from her movements. Venus was grateful for which. Her sister was forever one prone to be put into action by others, or herself, and never worked well in still restraint. Her many workout heavy bags took some of the worst blows from her moments in her years of anger and rage, and the dented walls of their metal bunker seemed to have taken only some. 

Venus' mind flashed in an instant of how Larota, had nearly broken the covering to the mounted light in their bunker in a hasted strike, only to feel immense regret when Amoly panicked about losing the only literal warmth in their confinement. As that happened, Amoly had cried, and Talena quickly covered her mouth in a split second of immediate fear, while Larota leaned back with remorse.

Venus was pulled to her forefront, and observed her sisters again, and saw that what happened in that one moment, seemed to be a defining picture of the painful times as they sat by, but not watched.

Venus hated it. Her sisters seemed in shambles, and Venus knew if she had any stability left in herself, it was thinning like hairs she didn’t have. 

It was all wrong. They weren’t supposed to be like this, they weren’t supposed to act this way, she wasn’t supposed to act this way, nor sit back and watch as her sisters shattered from the inside out in front of her. 

It wasn’t right. They had a plan. A plan that must have almost nearly been forgotten, but one that seemed it would have held true to its purpose, had it been given a chance. 

Their mother wasn’t supposed to leave them. 

They were never meant to be apart from her, as their evacuation plan had been as clear as if it was print, that they shouldn’t separate. But Venus knew their mother only thought of in their best interests. She made it clear in her own ways that she seemed to be forming a different plan. Venus became worried more as she realized that thought.

She had never felt so unmovable, but so ready to spring up on a second's notice, all at the same time.

(BOOM)

(BANG) (BANG)

(BANG BANG BANG) (BANG BANG BANG)

“Move around the perimeter!! Destroy every last thing here if you must!”

That was the first time they heard a voice. It was female, but not their mother’s. This voice held an unsettling power behind it, a force strong, but ill-willed. But as the very time they heard the shout, they could hear it in that callose voice. Fear? A fear of failure, as if nothing could be done unless it was done correctly. A smallest hint of worry in the voice of a failure, to perhaps a higher power?

 “Do as you will, but he wants them alive!!”

A whimper had escaped from Amoly in abundance, and Talena in the quiet. Larota’s grip in Venus’ hand only reaffirmed and tightened.

Them…

It was a haunting word. One that brought the sisters nothing but horrible thoughts as they realized what “them” would have meant.

  (BANG BANG) (BANG BANG)

“Ahh! Bitch!!”

“Karai, there’s someone here!” 

They were jagged male voices the sisters couldn’t help but hear. It was obvious they were screaming.

“Ahh!!”

(BANG)

“Urghh!!”

(BANG BANG)  

“AHHH!!”

(BANG)

(BANG)

“Ahh!”

That last voice…

The sisters simultaneously clenched, as a panicked choke of air escaped them all. Their mother, that was her voice. Something was happening.

(BANG BANG)

Something horrible, dangerous, frightening, and… deadly.

In almost as if it was a final moment, one of the sisters jumped up to move towards the bunker doors.

Venus caught her sister around her torso and pulled her back. “Lara, NO!!”

“No Vee!!! Larota, had lost any remaining patience. “There’s gunfire, there’s explosions, there’s screams of pain happening, out there! We can’t just sit here! I’m not gonna just sit here and wait for one of those cries of agony to be Mama’s!!”

“We promised her!!” Venus heard the desperation in Larota’s voice, but remembered the begging pain in her mother’s seemingly long before.

“I will be back, but girls, please you have to stay here and you have to stay quiet. Please, please trust me. Please promise me you’ll stay here.”

“No!!”

Venus focused again on her argumentative sister. 

“We can’t just sit on our useless asses!!” Larota had to wear down her sister. “We can get out, protect each other, AND Mama!! What, what if she’s…” She silenced herself and didn’t dare even finish that thought.

Venus had sniffled again, and begged her hardest to her inner self to not let her tears slide.

“Vee!” Amoly had choked back enough of her pained tears, to put herself in their conversation. “ PLEASE!! ”

Venus let out a broken breath, and despised the tear on her cheek. “I… I can’t! We promised her!” Venus had forever been fateful in their mother, just as her sisters, but her crushing desire to see her unharmed, had begun to take its toll.

“Please, please trust me.”

They did trust her. She trusted her… but…

(BANG BANG)

“We just nodded! And I’m sure she would understand!” Talena couldn’t take the suffocation of the unknown.

(BANG)

(BOOM)

(BANG BANG BANG)

“PLEASE!!”

“FIVE MINUTES!!” Venus couldn’t take it. “Please, we’re all very upset right now, going out right now wouldn't do us or Mama any good! Please, just give it five minutes!”

Her three sisters stared at Venus. They realized she had been festering in her own mind for too long. She looked broken, and they felt they could do nothing real to help her. She was scared.

But, without any further argument, they agreed.

Larota squeezed her sister's hand, but for her this time. “Five.”

Talena and Amoly had scooted as close as their large bodies and bulky shells would let them, and came to their sister. “Five.” “We’ll be ready in five.”

Venus let out the breath she was holding in her tight chest, as two more tears trickled down her cheeks, before she used her free hand and pushed them away. She tried to think through her breathing again, and tried to focus herself.

Larota, Talena, and Amoly, held her. One way or another, they came into contact with their big sister, and used their touch for consoling, as what they could hope for now was their mother’s complete understanding of the choice they were about to make.

It was for Venus’ sake.

Chapter Text

The sisters stayed rooted in their spots. They remained fixated as they held each other, and refused to let go.

(Boom)

Another explosion pierced the thin air, and the sisters shook with the atmosphere once again. The same fear had only escalated inside, aided to its extent by that of which they had only just realized. 

The explosion had been distinct, but it was distant. Recently, the gunfire had somehow ceased, and the explosions lulled exponentially.

Over the last minutes that felt like hours, that explosion was one of only very few; the only one to be heard of recently. 

Everything had become… still. 

It was an unnatural feeling, and it made the sisters’ incredibly uneasy. It seemed as if there was nothing more beyond their own frightened breaths below the ground that could make a sound.

No more voices could be heard. No more grunts of agony mixed with painful cries. No more sounds; it was eerie.

The world beyond them seemed to quiet, while their inner turmoil boiled uncontrollably. Their thoughts, their worries, and their fears acted as if it was all they had ever known at the moment as it was all they could think about.

A series of rampant scenarios plagued the sisters’ fatigued minds that had done nothing more than only tired themselves out. It felt unnecessary and ridiculous, but they knew they had little chance to stop it.

They worried, and as if it would have any effect, they only worried more. Many thoughts infested the girls incessant insecurities, and each of them had their own concepts, their own what-ifs. They were kept in the dark, no longer literally but highly metaphorically. The girls hadn’t the faintest guesses of what exactly provoked the dilemmas happening beyond the dented metal walls. It only made it worse as their minds teased them with possibilities they didn’t want to think about. 

They hadn’t realized in their moments of silence, but an identical thought played on repeat as if it were a broken record inside their heads.

They began to feel they were… impatient.

It seemed like a childish thought.

They weren’t impatient. The four girls told themselves that in a rebuttal against their own minds. Their traits, their attributes, every last aspect of all of their personalities, they were many things; impatient wasn’t one of them.

4m 13s

The non-existent ticking of the timer hovering holographically from the invention secured on Talena’s wrist however, seemed to have a valid argument against them.

In her mind apparently, five minutes had seemed so simple, so reasonable. Venus knew that. She liked nothing about it, and hated every bit of it. 

But she had realized, she spoke in a haste. In the haste of being overwhelmed by negative emotions, she had panicked on the weary thought in a single moment that, had they left then, they could act impulsive and irrational. 

The thought of leaving scared her, but she would never say it did. Going out on a second’s notice, on a rush of poorly placed adrenaline, it was a dangerous thought. 

She glanced once again at her sisters, who remained in place. 

Larota may be irrational in moments of anger, Talena could be somewhat hyper fixated on details that didn’t even matter, and Amoly would forever act impulsive on untamed levels of excitement, but their morals were grounded inside them; they wouldn’t do something unwise. Venus trusted that thought close to the extent she trusted them.

She said it and they agreed, it was a five minute deadline. 

The words themselves had come out so impulsively and Venus would forever shun herself for her part in doing so. Her five minute barrier had been able to seal them inside the bunker momentarily, yet it seemed not long enough.

3m 48s

Seconds slipped by, and yet they were frozen at the same time. Venus felt their tease, and their mockery against her. They tormented her but did not do a thing. She stared at them, as if it were a countdown to their demise.

3m 04s

She had been trying so hard but felt no different. She hadn’t been able to regain her composure. Calm and serene seemed far beyond her reach. She continued her breathings and adding methods of meditative exercises to assist, but they lacked any real help.

2m 39s

But that had to change. She had to control herself, she had to calm down and she had to do it fast. That thought however didn’t help.

Venus had begun to feel a familiar weight on her chest of clusters of anxiety and overthinking, before she suddenly felt an oddly soothing pressure from her left side.

She quickly looked down, and only noticed her sisters had shifted ever so slightly closer. Specifically Amoly, had seemed to make an extra effort as she had softly nuzzled her upper torso against Venus’ plastron, and wiggled her way under her arm.

Venus reaffirmed her arm’s wrap around her little sister’s shell, silently sending a thank you, and affirmation that there was no hesitance. She smiled in a strained effort, towards her sisters, and in a moment when she saw their gazes fixed down, had she let another hefty tear fall from her cheek again. The cold liquid drop ran her cheek to her collarbone, before drying. Venus had made no effort to remove her arms and hands from her sisters, as she just hoped they didn’t notice.

A smallest shine of a light, Venus felt in her heart, as she saw that in the most dire moments of anxious terror, her sisters had at least the faintest grip of their own composure.

Amoly’s tears had evaporated slowly, but the lack of any more gave the others their opportunity to dry. Talena had quieted in her own tears and frantic jitters, and used her wrist device for a distraction, giving herself a chance for her mind to focus. Venus still felt Larota’s body taught to a cruel extent, but she had calmed herself. Yet regardless of the exact reasons, Venus felt pride.

They might have been physically crowded against one another, but the tight air in their bunker somehow seemed the smallest bit lighter, fresher, more relieving. Despite the fact of their large bodies hovering around one corner, the cave seemed more spacious. Venus felt a sense of some ease, in an unnatural moment, but was relieved for the difference.

Somehow, Venus felt her own breath even, and her vision seemed the tiniest bit clearer. She resumed her exercises, and was grateful to do it without the stifled sobs.

She opened her eyes on a moment of an exhale.

1m 01s

Her sisters had done it for her and she would do it for them. Her composure would be in check, she would make sure of it.

50 seconds

The seconds left sooner. But she remained determined.

36 seconds

Venus knew her sisters put her trust in her, and in the moment of their final seconds, she knew she would never, not trust them.

19 seconds

They would do it and they would all be fine. Their little family had let their lives flourish, she would protect it with her life. Venus knew they would leave, and their mother would be fine.

8 seconds

Her sisters would be fine. No matter what it would take, no matter what would happen, if it took her to the moment of her to breathe her last breath, they would be okay.

4 seconds

She promised herself that.

2 seconds

1 second

(beep)(beep)

Talena stopped her timer immediately. The faint beeping broke the tension’s hold on the moment, but did not relieve it. Venus felt her sisters release each other from their holds and she reluctantly let go as well.

Each of them had shifted enough to break away from their huddle, and turned their attention to each other. Then, six pairs of eyes were directed towards Venus.

She took one last moment for a supposedly calming breath, and knew she may regret this decision, but that thought was only overpowered by one other.

‘There’s no turning back now…’ Her fear didn’t stop her.

Breathing in as to speak in a clear voice, she saw the same determined look in her sisters’ eyes as she felt in her soul, and she spoke. 

“We’ll go.” 

Larota, Talena, and Amoly moved in the direction following their big sister as they stood and faced the short steps towards the exit, before Venus turned back.

“Be careful and cautious, we don’t know what’s been going on up there. We will not split up, and we’re going out to look for Sen-” She took an uneven breath. “-Mama. We’re going out to look for Mama and that is our only priority, nothing else.” Venus met her sisters’ stares directly to make sure she was clear.

There was a moment of diverted looks and contemplations, but eventually Larota, Talena, and Amoly seemed to agree with her orders.

“Yeah whatever that’s good but Vee if someone up there does–”

“Lara!” Venus stopped her sister before she could finish her exception. “We’re going out for Mama. We’ll protect each other, but we’re not going looking for a reason to fight.”

Larota wanted to argue more but she paused, and decided against further banter with her sister. She trusted Venus and her judgement despite her sisters’ occasional quirk to be overprotective and overbearing, but she knew that if it came to fighting or hesitating for a second thought, she wouldn’t even think.

She spoke to Venus in a quick angsty answer. “Fine!”

Venus turned back towards the short ladder, and moved up, coming close enough to the metal sliding doors above her head. She grabbed the handle closest to the corner where she hovered, and stopped.

She hesitated, as the what-ifs seemed to come back to her mind in an instant, she felt as if she couldn’t go further. However when she heard her sisters shuffle in closer to the ladder’s base, she made herself grip the handle, and pull. Ignoring the noise and the cracked metal she felt under her palm, she pulled again to open the latch.

But it didn’t move. Venus’ brow level raised in only confusion, as she tugged again. The same result occurred, and the sliding door stayed as still as ever.

As she pulled the handle by the grip of both of her hands, and nothing more happened again, she realized a quick fact.

She turned back down to look at her sisters, then back at the handle. “I think it’s locked.” She pulled again. “It won’t move!”

“What!?” Her sisters shouted with annoyance and confusion.

“Why?! Are you sure?”

Venus bit her lip and looked back at her youngest sister in annoyance but didn’t speak. She turned back and tried pulling again.

“Wha-No Amy!” Larota did speak. “Vee’s not opening the door because if we stay in this dusty block for 7 minutes we’ll win a prize!”

Amoly turned towards her sister with her mouth held in an ‘o’ and her brows turned down. “Hey! Uhh, rude!”

“Guy’s stop it. Vee, any luck?” Talena shushed her sister’s annoyed banter, before turning to Venus when she noticed she made more attempts.

“No.” Venus pulled again. “I don’t feel any excess pressure on the door so I don’t think it’s stuck, it has to be locked!”

The light click of a button and the direct beam of a small light, cut through the annoyance of the atmosphere like a knife.

“Ahh, Tally!” Venus covered her eyes when her sister’s flashlight shined on her.

“Sorry!” Talena aimed the light away from her sister and off slightly to the right. The LED light attached to the wall of their bunker seemed to prove unhelpful to light the top corners of the room, and Talena pointed her light towards the wall perpendicular to the sliding doors above their heads.

“Ah ha! I knew it!” Talena said quickly. “Vee can you come down.”

Venus, albeit still anxious and confused, came down the steps, only to see Talena climb up as soon as her hand left the ladder.

Venus, Larota, and Amoly, were all consecutively curious when they saw their sister climb up the ladder but made no movement to grab or pay any attention to the handle of the door. 

They saw as she seemed to be working, but couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing, other than the fact that they saw her flashlight turn off, and saw a small headlamp turn on Talena had pulled from a small pouch around her waist.

Talena shined her light directly against something on the side of the wall near the top of the ladder. Venus, Larota, and Amoly, however, realized their vantage point was meaningless and they couldn’t decipher what she was attempting to do.

“Tally what are you doing?” Amoly had been first to mention it.

“There’s a control panel.” Talena spoke as if to her sisters it would immediately clear up the confusion. 

However as she swore she practically heard crickets chirping, she elaborated. 

“If the door is locked, preventing us from getting from the inside to the out, Mama must have wirelessly secured it. Whenever she must have built this bunker she apparently integrated an advanced electronic locking system to keep us in. If the door is locked the controls had to be close to it. All I have to do is connect the interface to my cryptic watch, and hack the motherboard. Simple.”

Glances of varying looks were exchanged between Venus, Larota and Amoly.

“Right, simple.”  Larota’s sarcasm was barely subtle.

Amoly’s confused face didn’t match her awkward smile, however she gave two thumbs up.

Talena hummed quietly as she worked, and tapped her fingers against her lavender colored holographic keyboard displayed above her wrist.

After just a few more seconds, the room was filled with electronic clicking, and then the prominent shift of metal.

As a ribbon of blinding orange light shined into their bunker from the line departing the sliding doors from the floor’s edge, the latch became unhinged.

Talena’s eyes lit momentarily as she saw the doors unlock, and she let out an inaudible gasp, as she let go of the ladder and hopped off to be on the level with her sisters.

“I did it!”

“Tally you did, you unlocked it!” 

“Good! Now let’s ditch this scrap heap!” Larota was now as determined as ever.

Venus saw her sisters move on instinct, and immediately made an effort to be first on the ladder. She was glad her sisters didn’t mention it, when she was sure they must have noticed.

Venus turned back towards them quickly to say something else, with an incredibly serious demeanor, with a silent voice now practically feeling the threat and intensity around them. “Stealth. Silent. And stay behind me.” They nodded.

As it was she was first, Venus held in a shaky breath and released it, and lifted her head, finally, away from their bunker. She cautiously moved her eyes darting around the old bedroom after blinking to adjust to the glow peeking in from the curtains on the window, and searched with exceptional intensity.

She paused her footing from moving on the ladder, however knew her sisters were right behind her.

Venus stared and stared, but oddly, saw no difference in the elder bedroom as it had been when they entered with their mother. Everything was the same. Down to the extent that the new dust had covered the footprints of their mother’s exit, and had created a new layer above the existing bedroom’s ageing furniture; there was no disturbance.

But that was a worrisome thought. There hadn’t been anyone to come into this room. The reassurance that was presented to Venus upon realization that they had in fact been hidden well, and never discovered did nothing to ease her mind.

Her anxieties reappeared, and swelled as before.

They had heard so much. There were explosions. There was heavy never-ending gunfire, from what must have had to have been hundreds of bullets to be shot. There were cries, and wails of agony, and pain, and sorrow. 

There was so much that had happened out there, and yet nothing had apparently happened around them.

Nothing had happened to them.

But, their mother…

They heard their mother. She had cried out. As if it was, Venus felt it as an involuntary call from her to them. Silently asking them to come to her aid, to help her. They heard it. A painful scream, from a woman who gave them every reason throughout their lives to never need to do such a thing. It was something they never ever thought they would hear.

They heard her. They heard her… and did nothing.

Venus’ breathing intakes had quickened suddenly. Only wondering if her choices were wrong, that she made the wrong choice, that she was to be held responsible for–

“Vee…” 

“Venus.”

Her sisters’ immediate words seemed to pull Venus’ mind from its own gutters. Their callings were urgent, but somehow, delicate. Venus forced herself to breathe out, and for her breathings to even. She was now as motivated as she could be, and she made herself move forward.

This time she moved, yet didn’t stall. 

And finally, as her last foot came to contact with the wooden floor, she stood straight, and left the bunker.

As she made sure nothing had changed in her moments of stilled panic, Venus signaled to her sisters to join her.

One by one, they came back to ground level.

As Amoly retained her footing back on the planks of amber wood framing the floor, and quickly slid back the bunker doors, hoping never to see them again, as she stood back, and turned away.

Venus slowly walked towards the bedroom door, and almost felt an irony as for them to pass through another; this time, a real one.

Her sisters had taken a minimally brief moment to glance around the bedroom as well, and were equally baffled by its untouched manner. As they were seeing it without a single change, Larota, Talena, and Amoly, if unmistaken, would have almost sworn as if they were seeing it for the first time, and something felt… wrong about it.

If the horrid battle sounds had left their hideout and the bordering room untouched, that couldn’t have meant anything good for beyond it.

A metaphorical line seemed to form and each sister prepared for something unexplained, when Venus hovered her hand above the bedroom door’s dull golden knob.

Venus turned around. “Remember, silent and stealth. Be careful .” She turned back, beginning to grab the spherical handle.

As in a moment of confused uncertainty, Larota gripped her kamas, replacing their hold from her sheaths to her hands, and mumbled as she glanced around the room again, practically getting a chill up her shell. “Least no dead bodies on the ground.”

Her sisters heard her but ignored her comment. As they all knew of their mother’s kind and caring nature, even flies were safe around her, Larota’s comment left them unfazed by the absurdity of its reality.

Finally with the stereotypical small creak, Venus applied pressure, and the door keeping them inside, their very last resort shielding themselves away, was open, yet the girls didn’t hesitate now.

Venus pushed the door slightly more ajar.

The subtle creaking, was very soon replaced by disturbed gasping, when the sisters saw the scene that had unfolded in the hallway.

Larota cringed. “ Maybe, I spoke too soon.”

Chapter Text

“No…”

Venus, for once in her life, wished now that she could take back her orders, make them all go in reverse. She never wished so much in one moment, for a chance to redo something. With pain in her heart, she released her hold on the knob, but begged more than anything, that she would’ve made them stay put…

She wished she never opened that door.

“AH–!” Amoly’s scream soon muffled into Larota’s plastron, when she saw the scene. Her sister covered her mouth in panic and turned her body to herself. Amoly couldn’t look at it, and Larota wished she didn’t have to.

Larota stared and her eyes dried as they wouldn’t blink. She shook in horror, but held her sister close with a strong arm, while her other balled into a tight fist. She breathed only through her nostrils in rage.

Talena’s throat swelled and threatened to choke her. She attempted to brace her lightheaded body on the closest wall as she involuntarily moved closer to perform a task she deemed necessary. She swayed slightly as she immediately pulled her hand back from having ripped the torn wallpaper more. 

Talena took a small lead this time. Slowly, she took heavy steps forwards and moved in fear. Her sisters moved the same. 

When she came close enough, she forced her wobbly knees to crouch beside what laid on the floor.

A body.

A male body seemingly built with muscles hidden beneath many layers of black combat padding. He laid haphazardly draped against the wall and on the floor. He was still and dirty. His eyes behind a thick mask, remained closed. A large gun in his hand, bullet casings laid around him.

As Talena made herself crouch lower, she trembled, and her arm she needed to extend, seemed glued to her side.

Venus acted quickly, and came to her sister. She stared at her and not the body, as she only looked at her and brought herself in the same kneeling position.

Larota walked forward cautiously, still an arm extended to her baby sister who was fighting her hardest will not to cry or scream again. Larota said nothing to Amoly, but knew her arm around her would remain in place until her sister could look anywhere but down. She had both of them move forward, however stopped when around their sisters.

Talena seemed to have her eyes fixated on the man in black, she wanted to, but her arm hadn’t moved. The look Venus saw in her eyes spoke nothing but fear, and fear of a conclusion she was too scared to draw.

“Hey…” Venus still saw her sister’s eyes elsewhere, so she delicately took her chin between her fingers, lifting it. “Hey hey, look at me. Don’t look at anything else, look at me. Listen to me.” She spoke and made sure her sister could see purity in her eyes. “You’re okay. It’s scary. I know it’s scary, but we’re here.” Venus took her hand. “We’re here with you.”

While Venus knew this was something only Talena was well versed in, she wasn’t going to let her do it alone.

Talena’s eyes became glossy, as a frightened tear broke below her eye, as she let out a choked sob, but sucked air back in without another. Venus knew she had gotten through to her.

Talena breathed, and her mind’s fog thinned enough for her to do the task. She forced her eyes in the direction of the man, and made her arm stretch out, but it shook as she feared; Venus squeezed her hand.

When Talena’s two main fingers finally touched the man’s neck, Venus felt her tremor, and she gently grabbed her shoulder. Talena breathed out again.

Feeling through the thickness of the man’s armored clothing was difficult, but Talena persisted. She applied a two finger pressure to his neck below his jaw.

It took agonizing seconds, with each sister holding their breath for every millisecond, but Talena soon felt it… his pulse.

She let out her caged breath, and the burning tension in her body released only minorly. “He’s not dead.”

Her sisters exhaled. Larota still held fire in her body, Venus seemed not at all soothed, but ever so slightly less bothered by it, and Amoly finally took the risk as she looked away from hiding in her sister’s arm.

Talena looked at her sisters then back at the man. “H-He’s just unconscious. I, I-I can’t tell if t-there’s a concussion, but based on what appears to be, blunt force trauma, it’s very likely.” 

The sisters’ bodies remained clenched, while their minds swarmed with confusion. Venus helped Talena stand back up on her taught legs, and held her shoulder until she knew she was steady enough.

Talena swallowed a lump in her throat, as she spoke again. “His-His pulse was there, but it was slow and rather weak. He’ll be unconscious for hours.”

Larota’s eyes held a hateful stare towards the unconscious figure on the floor. 

“ Who is he ?!” 

She spoke gravely. The question on each of their minds had come out, and the answer was nonexistent to any of them.

Talena looked back at the man. “I-I don't know! I didn’t see an ID on him, and I really really don’t want to look more for any–” 

“No No Tally.” Venus turned directly to her sister, with a reassuring voice. “It’s ok, you’ve done plenty.”

Talena’s arms wrapped around herself at the thought of going near the man again, and was grateful that she wouldn’t have to, and that none of her sisters seemed the least bit bothered that she wouldn’t.

Venus took another look at Talena; when she seemed not as appalled in terror, she turned to all her younger sisters. “It…” She swallowed. “It-It'll be fine. But c’mon. We still have to find Mama.” 

As she took hasty steps forward carefully, she turned her neck back but kept her body forward to tell her sisters “Be very careful… there’s… debris everywhere.” 

Venus tried not to, but ultimately failed. When fighting her hardest to not look at the rest of the house as they walked forwards, she did.

She took labored gasps of air as her way of breathing, as she rounded the corner and saw, and once again with no less effort from herself, she had to stop. Her sisters closely behind her, whimpered, shook and groveled. They did nothing but stare at the massacre around them. The open floor plan of their one level house, once peaceful and loving, was a horrifying canvas painted in misery, mixed with ashes, char, and blood.

The sisters didn’t need to look, to spot countless more men. Dressed in the same attire as the man back beyond them through a small maze of hallway they had come from, they were all motionless. Some seemed like they must have been thrown, some bent in a way they shouldn’t be, all terrifying, but meaningless to the rest of the scene.

Walls that remained standing were impaled with patches of tiny holes, unmistakingly bullets. Thrown in the ever disturbing mix, small patches of deep red stained wherever they fell. 

Venus never felt more unnerved, in the tiniest ounce, she was grateful the patches of red were seemingly minimal, but nonetheless horrid.

None of them spoke. They only stared. They moved on instinct and not that of want or will.

As if they were walking across minefields, the floors were littered with shards of pieces of everything that was around them. Wooden beams of the home’s structure flew into splinters across the ground. Previously beautiful wallpaper, was torn about in clusters of paper mache and dull confetti. Every last window or effortlessly peaceful sliding doors to their backyard or porch were shattered and cracked with no room for repair. It seemed as if the pieces of the brokenness thrown across the floors were mocking every step they still took.

Walls and doors were busted in, and some burned with the remains of the fiery explosion that now were a haunting memory fresh in the girls’ minds. Every light fixture and hanging bulbs shattered with just as much veracity. 

The only light illuminating the madness, was the sunlight. Shining easily into the remains of their home, as it was high in the sky, it seemed as if it was theoretically a welcoming to a mid-day adventure. Not the cruel highlighting of a never-ending nightmare.

The sun seemed to make its best efforts for comfort and warmth, but all were forever in vain. The sisters still moved, and never once in their lives could they remember their home this… cold.

Dreary, gloomy, dark, and cold. It seemed unorthodox; the sun lit up the designs of destruction, and illuminated everything they saw, every once in a while as they trudged across the floor a beam cast on them. 

It burned more than it warmed. 

Everything was just so… cold.

Venus continued to guide her sisters forward despite their surroundings. She refused to look back at the moment when she felt her eyes shedding more drops of painful tears. She could only think and not speak. It wasn’t a time where her crying would help, it did nothing, but nonetheless it continued.

She heard chokes, whimpers and quiet sobs, behind her; she let out a breath followed by heavier tears.

She glanced around again, and squinted, as if it was a nightmare she could wake up from at its darkest moment, that she could wake up and it would change.

She blinked and stared, and nothing changed. Years worth of work previously put into this home decades ago, beloved memories made at every inch of these destroyed floors, memories she would always turn to in times of strife and need, everything , was left in ruins below their feet. And a hope for its revival, became extinguished like the last flame of a single candle.

What was left of anything… was nothing. 

Every aspect of their home, of something to shelter and protect, something they treasured and cherished, was no more. 

It was gone.

Venus stopped looking around them. She couldn’t take the sight anymore. She wiped her cheeks, and made her steps more purposeful, and kept moving forward; her sisters in tow. 

None of them had the strength remaining, to be able to look around. Even though they hadn’t realized it, they all were turned down, their heads feeling of a painful weight, weighed their gazes down.

(bang)

Only when they heard a clang and a clatter, were they able to look up and straight forward. Venus instinctively stuck out her arm, guarding her sisters by her single limb, as she stalled her pace, but they all took more steps towards a wall blocking their kitchen from view.

Not until they heard a small sigh and soft footsteps, did they tense a different way, when they heard a voice they knew.

“ Girls?”

At a single moment, their mother stepped out from behind the wall, and each and every one of them, froze.

“Girls?!”

“MAMA!!”

Not a single second was wasted, and the sisters ran to their mother. With each of their arms stretched out did they envelop each other and their mother in a crushing hug.

“Mama!” Any control each of the girls had, slipped from their grasps for mere seconds and counting when they felt the warmth of their mother’s body. They cried and sobbed, and at this moment they didn’t care. They’re mother was still here, and she was standing, that’s all they needed at the moment.

Maya gasped in a moment of weakness from fear. When she saw her daughters, a light lit in her eyes away from the darkness that had been clouding them, and could have noticeably shined by the reflection from the wetness leaking from each of her eyes in hysteria when she saw them. All four of them. She had almost lost her breath when they came to her. Squeezing her in a hug she was the center of, and never had she felt so much relief in her entire life. 

“G-Girls…” Maya looked around her. She was surrounded by her daughters by the only things in this world she loved more than anything. They were with her, here… here…

Here. Not there, here.

Maya’s eyes considerably widened. She became horrified as her thoughts tormented her with how exactly they were here with her. At this moment, they weren’t supposed to be here, they were supposed to be there. They weren’t supposed to be here, they were supposed to be safe, secured, hidden .

They weren’t hidden.

Maya involuntarily let out a pained scream in a moment where she felt herself elsewhere, but cut it off. When her daughters’ watery smiles immediately disappeared, she knew she had made a mistake, but couldn’t control her hysteria now.

“Mama!? Are you ok–!!?”

“GIRLS WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!”

The sisters cringed and flinched at their mother, and unconsciously each of them released her from their hold. They stared helplessly at her, and of any emotions they were feeling now, they were taken aback by uncertainty and sorrow, seeing their mother like this.

“How are you here!!? How did you get out!!!? Are you hurt?!! ARE ANY OF YOU HURT?!!!

She looked completely broken. She seemed hysteric and crushed by sorrow and clenching pain that refused to let her go, she continued to wail in agony.

“DID THEY FIND YOU!!? DID THEY HURT YOU?!! Please, I thought I STOPPED HIM! He got close but I thought he was…”

The sisters eyes became swollen to painful reaches as they couldn’t stop their panicked breaths that led to tears.

Him? He?! Was their mother referring to the man in the hallway with her hysteric ‘hes’? 

They didn’t know how to help. They were left standing there helpless. They wanted to reach for their mother again and be with her again ! They wanted to hold her, for her to hold them, they wanted it so badly, but they couldn’t move closer. Their mother was in an attack of her own, and she was panicking  beyond being comforted by a single touch. She shook uncontrollably like clothes on a line in a tough summer wind. Her lips quivered more than the movement that came with her trying to speak.

“Did he… did they …!!!?” Maya cried and wailed. She couldn’t control herself, and she collapsed to her knees.

Each sister broke their helpless trance and came before their mother’s groveled form on the destroyed floors. They couldn’t let their mother succumb to her fears any further.

“Mama MAMA!” Venus grabbed her mothers trembling shoulders and spoke. “MAMA WE’RE OKAY!! I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry! B-But we’re okay, we’re okay, we’re not hurt, none of us are hurt!”

Venus acted first, and pulled her mother into a hug again, and while a tighter one, she felt the force was necessary. Larota, Talena, and Amoly immediately followed her lead, and on their knees they surrounded their mother by their arms, hoping to submerge her in all the warmth their cold-blooded bodies could do for her. They didn’t let any more of their tears fall at that moment; their mother had to get through her own, and they would let her do that in their facade of their peace. They squeezed her gently, their force only used to ground her, and they surrounded her with their love.

It took minutes, and they waited unmoved with no complaint. Each sister couldn’t imagine what their mother would have had to go through to bring herself to this point, but at the time they didn’t care. All they cared about was her. They encompassed her as long as she needed, and it took several minutes, but their mother had managed to calm down.

Her cries and screams had turned to sniffles as she reigned herself in. When her breathing slowly evened out, Maya spoke without thinking. “You girls have no idea how much you do for me.” And Maya meant every ounce of that.

Maya berated herself relentlessly, but in her mind did those thoughts stay, as she refused to let her daughter’s hear any more of her self-remorse of her horrible behavior. Maya stared at her four daughters still holding her with the smallest fraction of their physical strength, but with every ounce of their supportiveness. 

Maya would forever never know how she had ever been deserving enough for them to be hers. She cared nothing of how they came to her from their bunker in this moment. They were with her, together and unharmed now. Now, that was all she needed to know, and that was all that mattered.

They weren’t hidden, but in her arms at this moment, they were safe and secured. Her arms around their shells as tight as she could, she held them so close. They were safe, and that was all she wanted.

When the sisters finally had come to notice their mother controlled again, they let out their own breaths, and in the smallest amount, despite the destruction around them, regardless of the hopeless revival of their childhood home laid with intruders, they smiled. They didn’t care about the men, not with their mother holding them safely.

Venus felt her heart unclench in a surprising amount, before she had to let out the smallest feeling of guilt. “Mama I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Venus, honey, no.” Maya wouldn’t let her daughter berate herself for something beyond her control. “You have done nothing wrong. You have done so much for your sisters and I, and I am forever grateful for it.”

Venus crushed her head back to her mother’s secure warmth at her heartfelt words. Suddenly she could feel the parts of the embrace belonging to her sisters had squeezed her more, and she could’ve cried right there again if she didn’t immediately regain her composure as quickly as she did.

Her sisters each knew, and they silently agreed with their mother, and thanked their big sister and each other silently, with their encouraging embrace.

Maya’s eyes became shiny again, as she spoke more. “You each have done so much. I’m proud of you all.” Maya lightly pulled away from her hold on them, and looked at each of their eyes with nothing but honesty.

Each sister smiled again. As they were about to embrace each other again, did they feel their mother remain firm, and the look they saw in her eyes now, made them realize an again painful but very true fact.

Maya stood, and soon she saw her daughters stand after her. She was ever grateful and would be forever grateful for them, and the blessing they were to her, but in a moment of her coming back to a realization, she knew their moments of relief and loving reassurance would have to be put on hold.

The sisters felt no lack of reassurance from their mother, and they knew she was right. An involuntary look from each of them around their home again, only reaffirmed just how right their mother really was. That the threat surrounding them, may be stopped, but not for long. 

They still had to proceed.

Maya could see the worry in her daughter's eyes, and their reluctance to see the horrifying scene around them. 

“I’m sorry about our home.” Maya knew her daughters were having just as hard a time with this as she was.

Maya had never wanted to, but it was something that couldn’t be helped. She fought and she never regretted it. She did it for them, and she would easily do it again. But with the fighting she had done, and the destruction they had caused, their home lay in ruins. A building giving her life, and giving that to her daughters, was left destroyed by those who didn’t even think twice about it. It made her blood boil, what they wanted to do, what they had come to do, and what they did.

And an even more terrifying thought, what they would have done. Maya wasn’t going to let that happen. Her meager suspicions of what exactly they had come to do, were easily confirmed. The bullets they had for her, and the tranquilizers they wanted for her daughters, as well as the hatred and the orders, left no room to the imagination.

Maya knew exactly what they wanted. They wanted her daughters. She could effortlessly understand she was left of no value to them anymore, and that thought did nothing to soothe her. Her daughters, were the ones they wanted…

That HE wanted. And she was never going to let that happen. He was never going anywhere near her daughters, and they would never again be around the corrupted man who created them. Never again, would she let that happen. And during the battle, she made sure that the clan understood that, of course she knew they would never act to listen if they had a choice.

Maya knew she hadn’t reigned herself in when they engaged. She struck down these soldiers with power driven by determination and hatred, however none of her strikes she had done to these men shrewd about around their house left them in fatality. None of them she had killed and she knew that. They were only unconscious.

That was one of the reasons she now felt more a need for them to hurry. 

She realized that thought quickly.

Maya immediately caught her daughters’ attentions. “I am sorry about what has happened, but we need to move forward.”

Each of the sisters did not argue, whether they were comfortable with it or not, they knew it was what they had to do. They nodded, so their mother could know they understood.

“Okay…” Maya began again. “Come on.” Being careful of the dangerous scene and the debris left from it, Maya quickly began making her way towards the open doorway facing the rear of their house.

Venus, Larota, Talena, and Amoly, were quick to follow their mother, and close behind her with no complaints. They saw, right before she could take the last step to take herself outside, she hesitated. Before they could even ask her, the hesitation was gone and she walked out onto the grass. They continued to follow, and forced themselves to swallow their own hesitations, before they all, one by one, walked outside, until they were now in the backyard of their home.

To the girls, the outdoors, and the serene nature of their yard and the enclosing miles of forests around them had always seemed so peaceful. Something that could always provide calm to any crazy, but now, it seemed to lack that touch. Still as beautiful as ever, the grass a glowing green, and the mazes of trees and forests standing tall to the reaching of the sun in the sky, now beginning to set, beautiful, but it wasn’t comforting.

The sisters refocused again, and they huddled around each other, as they noticed their mother had stopped.

Venus knew the first thing she was to ask. “Tally, you mapped out the aerial view. Which way is our route?”

Talena had pulled up a display of a three-dimensional map hovering above her wrist in light purple holographics. “The route in our plan is North-East. The forest thins out shortly in that direction and it’ll leave us a better range and possibility for finding a safe haven quickly.”

“Okay, Mama… Mama?” Venus went to face her mother’s direction, but stopped short when she saw her mother facing their home. She stood still as stone.

For moments the sisters worried their mother would become critically distressed again, however their worries were quickly cut off when their mother quickly turned back around, as if the home had shunned her away.

Maya turned away from staring at her forever home. It was hard and she knew that as much as she knew anything right now, but now was a time she had to focus on the present. Her past in this home was something she would always hold dear in her heart, but she knew they had to do this. They had to leave their home behind. Maya knew it was for the safety of her daughters. As soon as that thought was brought to her mind, she turned back around quickly, and made no effort to look back.

As Maya looked directly towards her daughter, before she could even act, did she hear each of their sudden gasps, and she saw concern and fear back in their eyes. Almost in a moment of confusion she was about to ask them of their worries, but couldn’t get a word out before they exclaimed.

“Mama… you’re hurt!!”

Only then did Maya fully come to the complete realization that the sun, now her internal enemy, was fully lightening everything each of them saw, including her body that she came to understand her daughters’ hadn’t noticed in their dim home was battered and bruised. She saw it as nothing of importance at the moment, but was worried as she knew her daughters would panic and feel differently.

“Girls no it’s not–”

“Mama, why didn’t you tell us you were hurt?!”

“We need to stop, we’ll help you!” 

“Are you in a lot of pain?!! I’m so sorry you got hurt!”

“Mama, don’t worry I’ll-I’ll be right back, I’ll go back in the house and get one of our first aid kits then I’ll–!!”

“NO!” Maya panicked at the immediate words that her daughter was about to go back into their home. “Talena don’t! Please honey just don’t, we can’t go back in the house!”

Venus was confused and slightly appalled, just as her sisters were by their mother seeming to be brushing it off. “But Mama you’re hurt! If we had only known–!”

“No Venus!” Maya had to get them to at least understand. She knew they wouldn’t agree but she needed their understanding. “Look, yes I am hurt, but please trust me when I say it’s not as severe as you think. I need to get you four out of here! That is our priority!”

“But–!”

Maya again cut off any rebuttal. “Listen to me, I have first aid supplies. I packed as much as I could in this satchel–”

As their mother said that, each of the girls couldn’t help but notice their satchel their mother still had that they hadn’t realized was still there before. They saw in a small ounce of confusion how it seemed to have considerably at least doubled in size.

“I’m still able to move, and none of my wounds need immediate attention. Please trust me now that this isn’t what we need to do.”

The sisters wanted to argue much much more, even if it was for their mothers’ sake, but she seemed absolutely adamant about it. They had to agree she didn’t appear that phased by what injuries she did have. Each of the sisters looked between each other then back to their mother, they then averted their eyes but made no argument.

Maya took this as just as much understanding as she needed. She knew they disagreed and would have wanted to do anything for her to let them help her, but she knew they couldn’t. She might not have been as eased as she was hoping they believed, the burning in her cuts, and the intense soreness from her many bruises, seemed to be telling her a different story, but one at the time she refused to listen to.

“Okay, now listen please.” Maya spoke to them firmly but with care. “I need you four to follow me, when I start running, stay close behind me. I need you four to trust me, and if I say I need you to do something I need you to do it. Most importantly I need you to stay close, but if I say run, you have to run. I know you four are more than capable. Just stay close.”

As their mother spoke to them, the girls felt they had no room for hesitation or to speak against anything that their mother was telling them. She needed them to trust her. A guilt ridden burden plagued their minds and they knew of the last time she asked for their trust and in some form they felt as if they had cracked it, and they would do what they could now to mend it.

Venus would trust her mother now, in a moment where she was leading them again, she would follow.

The sisters did not speak against their mother, and as she turned back around, as she wanted, they followed close behind her. Their mother quickened her pace, and soon speed walking turned into jogging, and jogging turned into excelled running. The sisters followed her with ease, and as she ran, they ran, and very soon the yard was long behind them, as they quickly broke through the barrier and entered the forests. 

But soon, when they each quickly realized something, they were reminded of the fact they had to trust their mother, and it was something that should be so simple. They hated that they felt it wasn’t, but as of now, they held their questions. 

And as the plan they had embedded in their minds of years ago seemed forgotten again, they were trusting their mother, as they all ran West.

Chapter Text

The girls had always thought that the forests were a kind place. For their entire lives, they were surrounded by the thickness of ever-changing nature, that despite the changes, had always seemed the same. 

It was an option each of the sisters knew they could turn to in a time of need; a place where they could find solace. It was such a gentle place that would provide them comfort in times that weren’t. In times that they were troubled, they knew they could open the doors, feel the fresh air on their scales and hum to the wood’s rhythm, and know that, some things will never change, and under the sun’s glow, everything would be okay.

It was also a place of fun and memories. The sisters would never forget the many times of seeing which one of them could climb their tallest tree first, or which one of them could evade the others the longest in stealth training quickly turned hide and seek. 

Even the simple ones, like the four cherry blossom trees each of them planted in some of their youngest days, and the specific branch of the oak that had just enough room, and was just strong enough to hold each of them safely above the ground, while they all watched the sun set after a day of training.

Kindness was an abundance in their forests for fifteen years. 

But in just those fifteen seconds of crossing the barrier from their yard into the woods, had they never felt the forest be so cruel.

The sun wasn’t shining on them with a gentle warmth, now it was barely enough to light their surroundings, as it was still there, but covered by the dull colors of the leaves. Even the branches, now rigid and unforgiving, made attacks at them as they ran. Now the forest felt oddly cold.

The darkness around them was cruelty itself. It didn’t seem to matter which way they were all running, the light wasn’t there like it should be, and the longer they ran the more it was feeling like luck that they were able to navigate at all.

The path, or even paths they were all running were clearly unmarked. That thought manifested itself into practically insanity the further they went. That they really didn’t know where they were going.

The scratches the branches slashed onto the sisters as they ran, was only proving just how malicious the forests were now. Their scales were getting scraped, their arms by the branches, to their legs and feet by the help of roots and thorns. Each of them tried their best, but avoiding the now evident harshness of the woods proved impossible.

They knew their mother had told them of the overgrowth through the deeper and denser areas of the forests in recent years, and now they felt ignorant for not thinking of it before. Their mother had passed a quick but concerned reminder as they ran to try and avoid the thick of it, but now that was only pointless. Their body size exceeded their mother’s, and while she had been able to avoid some, the sisters were less fortunate, but continued without care nonetheless.

But as they continued down a path their mother seemed to be plotting on a seconds’ notice that they themselves were unfamiliar with, the girls never before had been so unnerved, anxious, and frankly, annoyed.

The minor abrasions, while a true annoyance, were now seeming to be the nicest thing the forests were offering them.

The sisters unfortunately knew their home was long behind them. They didn’t dare to look back now, but they knew through the dense foliage, their home had disappeared. The further they went, the more terrifying it was for them to realize the possibility that their home was becoming a distant memory; something that would soon be forever forgotten.

It was scary, and that thought stung a spot deep in their hearts. The girls, in a split moment of weakness, huffed out a more rigid breath, different from their tired ones of running, but one of grief. Each of their eyes chose to sting like the fear in their hearts, but as they realized, they refused to dwell on it now. They knew they had to keep going, and be tougher than they were, and they pushed down their sorrows, and continued to push their feet forwards.

Venus rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand quickly, before lowering her arm back to the swing of her running. She couldn’t let herself succumb to her inner fears right now, maybe later, maybe never, she didn’t care but knew she had to choke it back. She wouldn’t think of it now. 

Venus had kept up close behind her mother, and made certain her sisters were closely behind her. 

But, despite her best efforts since abandoning their home, she still couldn’t stop her wanting for even just a single moment of clarity she hoped for and craved. She wanted to feel some sense of ease in what they were doing, or at the very least know where they were heading, but she knew that was her own selfish dream. She wasn’t going to stop her mother and pull on her sleeve and bombard her with ‘why’s’ like a child. She trusted her mother, and despite how hard it was, she kept her mouth shut. 

Their mother hadn’t elaborated on what was happening that they didn’t know, but Venus put her trust in her. Venus was sure their mother would elaborate soon enough, and in the middle of fleeing wasn’t the right time and she knew that. 

So she followed her lead. 

She refused to lower herself to rebuke her mother’s orders to keep running forwards just for her questions to be answered, but still somehow, she felt like she and her sisters were being left in the dust. She again knew that was childish, they were all running together, and no one was getting left behind.

Despite also trusting in them that they would, and easily could keep up, Venus glanced back ever so often, and made sure her three younger sisters were close by. She wanted to lead them well, even though she knew her lead wasn’t first, if it was anything at all. Their mother was their lead, and her lead. She was their guide, and she always would be. Venus knew she had to extinguish her tiny sparking desire to take control, but she knew she would never take it from her mother, and she believed that enough for that thought to minimally soothe her worries. Their mother was always their leader. 

Venus knew they would all follow her, and they would all be fine, but couldn’t quench her desire to also assure her sisters of that, as she felt that they all were processing, in ways she wanted to help but couldn’t.

But the five of them ran forwards, and still didn’t stop.

Larota herself didn’t wish for them all to stop running, not in the slightest. The limits of their abilities being pushed and pressured, was only helping her reign in her anger, the same one telling her to go back and choke out answers from the unconscious men, now the only ones occupying their home. 

She knew it was irrational. She would know that feeling inside and out, and she did. It seemed to be one of her defining words if she was bound by frustration, terms that happened more frequently than she would ever admit. 

But she didn’t wish for violence, only for resolve. She didn’t wish for a home invasion, even if it would allow her many opportunities to vent out her anger on intruders she wanted to call punching bags, a case that wasn’t even the reality. 

With their home invasion, came the dangers that something, or someone was forcing onto her family. She wasn’t going to allow it. But even she knew that she wasn’t the one to make those decisions. 

In their family, while she was always included, and considered, she wasn’t the final say. Their mother was their final say in the end. Larota knew she wasn’t going to create an argument to second guess and doubt the woman who had given her and her sisters a life worth living. So she bit her tongue. She clenched her fists, and pounded onto the ground as she ran, but she said nothing.

Talena wanted to say something . But she wasn’t. She was running. 

Surrounded by her family, she was running alongside them, but wasn’t speaking. The only thing in their presence they could all hear were only the quiet gasps in and out of air so they could even run at all. She bit her lip, she bit her cheek, she clenched her lips together so many times while they ran. 

She wanted to say something, anything, to understand, and to ask questions, but despite the deep seated desire for herself to speak, she wanted their mother to speak so much more. Maybe their mother had a plan, maybe she knew exactly what to do and she had it all figured out. Talena believed that to be most likely, but despite it all, whatever she had, wasn’t the one they all agreed upon years ago. She didn’t know.

Talena hated not knowing. All her life she wanted to know, and know even more, she sought for knowledge. She was always a learner, and one who really enjoyed it. But now, she would give up every epiphany she ever had, every idea, every single ounce of her intellect, if her mother would just explain to them why. 

She knew her sisters felt the same, and she felt selfish, feeling such a strong desire to know herself, when she knew her sisters deserved just as much. But if she only knew, she then knew she could help. She could see her mother, and see that it seemed like her plan was too different from the one they had to be anything with a clear answer for her to understand. Talena wanted to know, but now she knew she couldn’t. She pushed that want away, and as many times as it came back, she pushed harder. 

She knew she had to trust their mother, she had never given them a reason not to. She deserved their unwavering trust, and so much more. Talena had to think other than herself, and had to trust their mother. Her questions could wait. 

They all still ran, and the gloomy darkness of the forests had only grown. As the sisters looked up, they realized now that the sun was setting, it was getting dark.

But they still pushed forward, their mother hadn’t stopped, so neither would they.

Amoly wasn’t tired, but she wanted to stop. She knew that was far from happening, but she still hoped it might. 

To her at the moment, the forests already seemed depressing enough, with their frantic evacuation, and the fact that they were running right through leaves, branches and bushes, obviously showing that they were running somewhere they hadn’t planned, it was scary. And with the sun setting, it was now undeniable that the darkness surrounding them was consuming. 

The buzzing in her mind and body acted quicker than her feet were running. Amoly just wanted to stop. This wasn’t right and even she knew that, so she didn’t say anything. Nothing to make the situation worse than it was, and nothing to worry anybody. She believed in her mother, and her sisters. She knew that they had to leave their home, whether or not they wanted to, which she could definitely say without a doubt she didn’t. She knew that their home had been practically left in ruins and destroyed by frightening men none of them knew. But she still followed, and as hard as it was, she didn’t say a word. 

The only thing she could hear, were her own sniffles, all of their huffs of air, and the crack of a cleared throat when she did everything she could, to not cry. She knew it wasn’t the time. She looked forwards and ran with her sisters, and her mother, they were all together. Right now, maybe they were okay. As long as they were together, somehow she still believed they would be.

Maya ran as quickly as she could. She kept a close watch on her daughters as they all ran together. Meanwhile, she kept an eye and an ear out for any dangers, any disturbances. The crackling of the environment as they barreled through it didn’t reach her mind to register, it wasn’t what she was listening for. 

She listened for the dangers, and she made herself persist. She had to. She had to be vigilant and aware, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be anything but. She was on guard with her surroundings as they ran, but was fixated on her top priority that all four of her daughters were still together; that they were safe.

Maya continued to keep a close eye on them while still running. She would make sure they were all safe. She might have lost her balance in the slightest moments on thicker tree roots in the ground as a consequence for looking behind not forwards, but she didn’t care. She only cared if they were safe, that she was keeping them safe. 

Something that despite all odds, she felt she had failed at. Her mind was clouded and despite her best efforts, so was her vision. It was blurred by the tears she tried to keep wiping away. She felt like such a failure. She knew she had tried, and knew she did plan, but still felt fooled. 

Maya knew the entire reason behind the years of training she had taught upon her daughter were for this very specific moment, but still somehow, she was unprepared. 

As she looked back again quickly, spotting her four daughters still behind her, she saw that they were the ones prepared. Through their trekking, she saw that they had kept up with her easily. Where she went, they followed quickly, and the abrupt turns she was making, they did simply. Miles and miles on, their stamina and health proved that their training did in fact help them. No matter which way she went, how far, nor how fast she went, Maya saw her daughters stay with her. She was nothing but proud.

But while proud, she wasn’t blind. The dried tears on her daughters’ cheeks, and the prominent ones she could see in some of their eyes, only brought heavier ones to hers. That's when she had to face forwards again.

Maya could not feel worse. She hated that she had to put her daughters through this, that they were putting her daughters through this. She hated them with every fiber of her being. Maya couldn’t care less what they had done to her, in her years past, or in the past hour. She cared about her daughters, and seeing them so frail, was nothing but traumatizing.

She knew she couldn’t truly understand every thought eating away at her daughters’ minds, but the very minimal ideas Maya thought were possible, were cruel. She felt more sorrow and remorse as they went on. Her daughters deserved better. They didn’t deserve to have their home crumble before their eyes, and have to be forced to leave the only place of harmony and trust, and love they had ever known to be thrown into a world Maya hated for its cruelty against them.

Maya hated it. She hated herself for being so careless. Her daughters deserved so much better. They deserved better than her.

Maya knew they had never once complained of what she had been able to give them, but she still felt, she could only give so much. She wanted to give them more. They deserved more. She felt disappointed in herself that more was not what she was giving them.

But she was proud. Never had they once complained that she wasn’t enough for them, and many occasions only proclaimed the opposite. But on some occasions, the staring she saw they held to their TV showing the life that lived outside of their home, didn’t leave much interpretation. But again they never said anything, at least not to her. She could never express how much she loved each of them, but she had always tried to show it.

She trained them, for their own benefit. She knew sometimes she was tougher than she wanted to be, but she wanted to see that they could understand. Sometimes the world was a cruel place. They were special, but they were different. Different enough that Maya knew they had to be protected, but as time went on, she came to understand herself that they truly didn't need her protection.

Maya knew this was her own fault. She had been the one who took too long to realize, that they had grown up. She had been blinded thinking that maybe they were still her little girls, the same ones who had always looked up at her with big beautiful eyes that took in every word she said. They were still her daughters, but as she could see now, they were more than that.

They were their own. Each of them had grown up, and were so much stronger than she could ever be.

Maya felt stinging tears in her eyes burn with the winds as she ran. She nothing but adored her daughters. Proud, was the biggest understatement.

Suddenly, Maya felt the slightest shift. Not from her, nor her daughters. That’s what scared her.

There was something else; her guard was now on the highest alert.

Why had their mother slowed her pace, the sisters didn’t know. They thought it was for all of them. As she did so, they slowed down with her, but she encouraged them to keep moving and that slowing down was the last thing she wanted them to do.

They trusted that she knew what she was doing and the girls didn’t argue. They ran faster, just like their mother wanted.

Venus huffed from the excelled pace they had started, but kept at it regardless of her exhaustion. 

Their mother had now chosen to run behind the group, the girls still didn’t know exactly why, but they guessed her exhaustion was starting to weigh on her body. They wanted to make sure she was alright, but when they had looked back at their mother, their concerned looks had evidently spoken volumes, and she said she was alright. They were still confused, but said nothing to it.

They picked up their pace, and still, kept running. And by now they really didn’t know what to think. Venus, now in front, continued her own lead now, but was disturbed by the sudden shift from their mother to her.

“Ahh!” Without hesitation the three sisters turned back only to see Amoly had tripped over a much thicker root, and fallen.

“Amy!” 

They came quickly to help her, and gently pulled her back onto her feet.

“Amy, are you ok?!”

“You didn’t get hurt did you?!”

Amoly huffed out from confusion from her fall and her built up adrenaline, but responded as she realized she was unscathed. “No no, it’s ok I’m fine!”

Her sisters were reassured and a breath of relief came from each of them as they turned back around. Amoly turned around with them so they could keep going, but soon noticed…

“Wait, where's Mama!?!”

Each of their eyes widened, as the four sisters completely disregarded getting ready to run again, and turned behind them and didn’t see their mother.

“Mama?!”

“MAMA?!”

They all immediately panicked.

“No, no, no, no!” Venus was on the edge of her sanity, but quickly forced herself to a rational thought. “C’mon, back the way we came! We have to find her!!”

There was no disagreement from her three sisters, and instantly they ran the way they came without a second thought.

They ran, but did not have to run far.

(BANG BANG BANG)

“Urghh!!”

(BANG)

(BANG)

“AHH!”

They heard the sounds before they registered what they saw.

“ NO!! ”

“ MAMA!!! ”

They didn’t think but ran to the scene. The fact that they were running to face to face with two of the men from the army from their home, or that they were on guard and bearing two massive guns, or that the both of them got a clear look at all four of them, they did not care. 

Immediately face to face with one of the men, Larota didn’t think about his gun or any hits he could have made on her. She ran up and moved without thinking. She evaded his blows with swift and ease but didn’t know it. She attacked. And when her vision finally came to a clearing, she saw the man she had beaten, and now thrown through a tree’s now thick and broken limbs, laid on the forest floor unconscious. She didn’t give him a second look, and turned around.

She saw Venus had taken the other, and he now laid high across a tall tree’s branch. 

Venus gave the man no mind or pity, as she was now surrounding her mother on the ground along with her sisters. “Mama, mama please!” 

Tears welled in her eyes as she helped Talena prop her up and they all saw the two bullet wounds in their mother’s hip and leg, now dripping, and staining the grass a horrifying red.

Their mother’s eyes were open, but sporting an undeniable look of torment and pain.

“Girls, it’s—”

“Shh Ma-Mama d-don’t strain yourself to talk. I-I have to fix your wounds!” Talena knew fixing was out of the question, and her tears betrayed the in-control manner she was desperately trying to show.

“Ma-Mama…” 

Maya heard her youngest daughter, even through the ringing in her ears from the shots. She saw her tucked closely to Venus, who was supporting her with anything she could. She knew this was bad and wouldn’t deny it now. She couldn’t just shush her daughters through their tears by promising everything would be okay; not anymore.

Maya suddenly grunted and cringed in pain when Talena applied pressure to her bullet wounds.

“I’m so sorry!” Talena spoke through her tears but persisted in her actions to dress her mothers wounds and stop the bleeding. As she was doing that she pilfered the satchel of their mother’s that had fallen to the ground for medical supplies, and then realized she needed something else. “Guys I need your wraps!”

Without hesitation the three sisters on standby by their intellectual sister, removed all of the cloth wrappings they kept around their arms and legs. Most of which were kept for a quick grab in emergencies, others for more of a style choice, and handed them to Talena.

“Tally, what can we do to help!?”

“Help me lift her up so I can wrap the wound on her hip!” Talena gave fluent orders and the other sisters did as told.

Venus supported her mother’s head and neck, while Larota took her torso and Amoly her legs and feet. All of them while being exceptionally careful to not hurt their mother more, while Talena tied many of the wraps long enough to wrap her mother’s hip fully while applying the necessary pressure to let the bleeding clot by the first aid bandages, then did the same for her lower leg.

Her wounds were now wrapped and the bleeding was far less excessive.

“Girls, I need to tell—”

“Mama we are so sorry!!”

“We should have been with you!!”

“Girls, NO!” Maya stopped her girls from their down spiral further. “You all have nothing to be sorry for! You have to understand that! I heard those two Foot soldiers approaching from behind and I came to stop them!

“Foot soldiers?!”

“What?!”

“What-What are Foot soldiers?!”

“Mama you-you know those guys?!!”

“Please…” Their mother’s quiet and desperate plea silenced the girls. They let her speak.

Maya knew what had happened and she was never going to regret what she did. The only thing she regrets is scaring her daughters when she fell behind. Her wounds meant nothing to her. They crippled her, and she knew that, but she didn’t care.

“I have to tell you, what happened.” Maya knew she had to tell them, she couldn’t keep them in the dark any longer. It was too obvious now, and she wasn’t going to avoid this any more. They deserved to know.

“Yes they’re called Foot Soldiers. They’re the ones who invaded our home.” Maya spoke her story with hatred in her voice for those men. “They are part of a criminal organization, known as The Foot Clan. Their leader, is a man with only cruelty and veracity in his soul. They are under his loyalty and… they didn’t come here after me, they wanted you.”

The sisters were in nothing but shock at her story. A criminal organization was hunting them down. They wanted them, and that’s why they destroyed their home, and chased them away… and shot their mother…

The girls had each never felt guilt so heavy. They were the reasons their mother got hurt. She voluntarily put herself in harm's way to spare them. The sisters had never felt worse as new tears flooded their eyes.

“No! Mama, why would you..!?!”

“Larota this was my choice! And something I will never regret!! Please, girls, please don’t feel remorse for actions that were not your own.” What she said, and the emotion in her voice spoke heavy volumes. Maya knew it was the truth and she would do what she did again in a heartbeat.

The tears still fell, like harsh oceans on the sisters’ cheeks.

“Look, it doesn't matter about those soldiers right now!” Venus exclaimed. “Mama we need to find a way to get you help!” An idea came to her mind. “Tally! Where’s the closest hospital!?”

Talena immediately pulled up a holographic map from her device secured on her wrist. “I found one! It’s North West, and it’s only four miles away, it borders the forests!”

“We’re going there!” Venus was the first to stand from their crouched and huddled positions.

“Girls–”

“Mama, we're going to get you help! Don’t worry!” Amoly tried to offer any such comfort to her mother.

“Tally, tell me how I can hold Mama! I need to carry her but I-I don’t wanna hurt her–!” 

Talena cut off Larota before she could become even more upset and answered. “Lift her up gently, you can hold under her back and her knees. Just be gentle, the fastest way there is running but don’t jostle her too much.”

Larota did so quickly and lifted her mother bridal style and secured her delicately in her arms. Maybe she wasn’t known for being gentle, but when it came to her family in need, Larota acted quickly and was as careful as could be.

“Girls you can’t–” Maya’s tears reappeared, but for various reasons of pain and of worry.

“Mama we can, don’t worry!” Amoly tried to reassure, and wipe away her mother’s doubts. “Tally knows where the hospital is. We promise we’ll get you there!”

And so they went, and ran as fast as they all could. 

Maya had realized she couldn’t change her daughters’ minds, but knew she had to think of a way to make sure they wouldn’t do what she was worried they would. But she knew she had a little time to think, and she refocused her attention on controlling her panicked breathing to ease her pain and the stress on her injuries.

In and out her breathing went, as she looked between her daughters with nothing but love, but looked forwards in worry, as she saw the forests thinning out.

Chapter Text

“WHAT?!”

Rustling followed the abrasive shout.

“Huh?!”

Dropping the bag, and looking abruptly to his right, Kato tried to peer through the thickness of the edge of the forest. Seeing nothing, and now hearing the quietest silence, had only greeted his mind with confusion.

Grumbling under his own breath, Kato picked up the trash bag now laid against the pavement. The explosive shout he had sworn to have heard when previously rounding the corner of the hospital, had startled him to say the least. 

A reasonable explanation, he assumed it was possibly a delinquent teenager hoping to get a kick out of seeing a man jump and drop a garbage bag on his way to the dumpster. Juvenile at best for hoping to see a man have a heart attack just for a laugh. 

Somehow though, as he glanced back, he didn’t see that as the truth.

While glaring at nothing, he turned away from the wooded edge of the back lot, and threw the bag harshly into the dumpster. With his task completed, with an added level of ridiculousness, Kato unconsciously turned back, facing the forest. Walking closer, he tried to look beyond the rigid bushes and the lean trees, squinting to see better in the dark. What he was hoping to find, he wasn’t sure, something to assure him he hadn’t hallucinated most likely. 

“Kato!”

Jumping again , Kato placed a hand over his chest while quickly turning towards the end of the building. Having heard a door slam open, added with an annoyed call of his name, he looked and saw his coworker, turning the corner. 

“Kato, what’s taking you so long?! It’s been like ten minutes and we’re supposed to go find some dinner! How long does it take to throw some shit away?!”

Kato rolled his eyes. His friend’s attempt at sounding the slightest bit worried, was easily beat out by his annoyance and a whiny complaint.

“Calm down Yuki! I was taking out the trash until I heard someone shout in the forests! So excuse me for taking a few extra minutes!” Kato groaned. “You couldn’t wait patiently if your life depended on it!”

“Oh please, everyone knows these woods are empty for miles! That’s a sorry excuse for stalling hoping to get out of paying our dinner check!”

Realizing if he had to roll his eyes anymore they would be stuck in the back of his head, Kato ignored Yuki’s last comment. 

He turned back to looking over the edge of the lot, feeling a chill run down his spine.

He knew he had heard something. He knew he did; a shout, a scream, what technically it was he didn’t care, but he heard something . 

For the split second when he did, it almost sounded like… a woman’s voice. 

Kato knew that was ridiculous. 

He hated to agree with Yuki, but everyone in Tokyo knew that the forests behind this hospital were unused and bare. Maybe he was acting a little crazy, but just the ideas of what he thought seemed unnerving. Maybe it was just a kid playing a prank, or maybe he was a little on edge, regardless, he needed to forget about it.

Kato sighed as he turned back around…

“ Rahhh !”

Only to feel his heart in his throat when Yuki had vigorously grabbed his shoulders just before he could, and shouted in his ear.

“Jackass!!” Shoving his supposed friend off, Kato only felt better when he did it aggressively. “You’re going to give me a damn heart attack! Urgh! And when that happens, your sorry ass is paying for the medical bill!

Yuki hardly heard his friend’s threat as he wheezed out hefty laughs that were clogging his lungs. “Oh man, you’re so jumpy today!” He laughed again. 

Kato’s death glare was easily ignored, while his friend kept laughing.

“C’mon Kato.” Yuki finally had reigned himself in. As he brushed the smallest tear from his eye, he slung an arm around Kato’s shoulder. “Let’s go find some food.”

Kato was practically dragged away from the back lot, but turned his head over his friend’s shoulder. With one last look, he again found nothing within the woods, but the quiet winds.

“Dude, trust me, those creepy forests are boring and empty.”

Kato sighed. “I know, but I could’ve sworn I heard—”

“Ha! You know what, maybe you heard Bambi!”

And with that remark was Kato pulled away from the trees, and towards the front parking lot. By now, he just hoped he was persuasive enough to convince Yuki he didn’t have the budget for alcohol tonight; his friend’s maniacal laughter, at his own joke, was migraine inducing enough.

As the two soon became lost to the crowds in front of the building, the bordering woodlands were encompassed again in hollow silence. 

A silence that was broken with a movement of rustling bushes, the smallest breaths of relief, and an insistent whisper.  

“Lara, are you crazy?! You almost got us all exposed!”

“For god’s sake Vee, it’s not like I did it on purpose! What, you think I thought to myself, ‘Huh what would be the easiest way to blow our cover to some dumbass humans?!’!”

Maya had immediately pushed herself up slightly more off the ground. “Venus, Larota! That is enough!” 

Their mother’s scold silenced the two bickering sisters. Their eyes held an argumentative glare against each other, but they spoke in no more remarks.

Maya had been glad momentarily for their silence as she continued to labor her breaths in abundance with her pain. She had continuously tried to grit her teeth and focus on anything other than her throbbing wounds, but all were proving to be useless. 

She cringed again as Talena bandaged her waist in thicker padding.

Talena felt immediate remorse when hearing her mother’s struggle. “I’m so sorry Mama, it’s just while we were running it seems your wound on your hip reopened a little and–!!”

Maya immediately placed a hand over her daughters, grounding her in the least. “Honey, you have no reason to be sorry! Your skills are substantial in helping, so thank you.”

Talena bit her tongue from more frantic apologies, as she secured the wraps to her mother’s hip, and heard another pained exhale. She looked down as the bandage was secure, hoping to hide her tears, and bring no attention to the tremors in her hands.

As the girls hovered around their mother upright against the dirt, they were ready to act on seconds notice to any order.

Despite the fact they had already reached the hospital, they seemed to have frozen as if in ice from proceeding any further.

Larota had taken a moment to kneel on the shards of pine and dirt, as she attempted to control her clenched breaths. Her mind had then only been clouded by what their mother had said to them.

She crowded ever so closer to their mother, as she begged that their mother spoke out from pain and meant nothing of what she had told them. “Mama, mama!” Larota saw their mother turn to her with a knowing glance, but momentarily ignored the plea in her eyes. “Mama! Please tell me you’re not serious! You-You’re not being serious!! You can’t mean that!!!” Her teeth grinded together as she let out the last sentence.

Venus and Amoly, closest to their heated sister, had quickly crowded her and held her arm and shoulder, anything to help her, to show her that they knew her anger was there, but the worry was not one-sided. They held her firm but not uncomfortable, as they tried to not only support her from hysteria, but themselves.

“Larota I understand your frustrations, I truly do understand, but–”

“ But?! Mama there’s no but, you cannot mean what you—!!”

“Larota! I do! I spoke what I meant and I meant what I said!” Maya never meant to let the tension around her breach her feelings, but she felt she didn’t have control.

“Girls you have to listen to me and you have to let me explain!” Maya tried her hardest, her very hardest to not let the dams of tears built up to break, but as she felt dampness running down her cheeks, she knew that battle had been lost.

Venus, Larota, Talena, and Amoly, trembled. They twitched in fear as they saw their mother in shambles. She was always so in control, she always knew exactly what to do, and knew it enough that she was never worried. She was always so composed. 

The girls' lips quivered as they let the thought fester that somehow her shattering had been their fault.

Maya saw her daughters, and she saw they shook. She hated that she had let that happen. She stared at them with nothing but a loving, begging plea behind her glossy eyes, as she took a breath.

“I’m sorry girls.” Maya bit her lip as she felt her head throb. “Please let me explain.”

With nothing else they felt they could do now, the sisters nodded.

Maya exhaled, as she inhaled through her nostrils while her jaw became stiff. She let her tension release momentarily, as she began. “I know I told you who they were.” She spoke in acid, not to her daughters, but to the mere thought of what had been done. 

“In such a way that haunts my soul, yes, I know those men. Personally, no, but I know them.”

Maya looked down as she expelled a disturbed and fragile puff of air, as her life’s mistakes seemed to be spelled out before her.

“It was so long ago.” She spoke her story. “When I was younger, after my father died, I had wanted to start anew. I left Japan, and my old life behind, and I went to New York City to create a new one. I wanted so badly for a chance to make a difference in the world, that I became naive.”

The girls listened. The four of them didn’t dare say a word, not even to expel their mother’s self-doubt, all they could do was listen.

As if the night had been yesterday, Maya remembered clearly as crystal, what she had done. “I helped in a horrible cause. In that place…” She hesitated, and couldn’t finish.

What she had done in that place, every horrible thing that happened on that fateful night, Maya couldn’t say.

As Venus had begun to reach for her mother, hoping to comfort her, Maya had spoken again.

“I had wanted to help the world and instead I nearly helped destroy it, corrupt it by those who would use it for nefarious purposes!” Maya saw it in her memory, and she could never forget it.

So much had happened to her on that night, to everything she had tried her hardest to build. Her blood, sweat, and tears put into that work to prove just to herself that her life altering choice hadn’t been a mistake, had been charred with the remains of that lab.

“Mama, we’re so–”

As they spoke, despite everything, Maya looked to them, and smiled in her pain. She stared at them with the most wholesome pride and love.

“Girls, that night my entire world I thought had crumbled before my eyes, but then I saw you four. The purity, and the love in your beautiful eyes, and I realized, you were what I needed.”

Maya had to let more tears cascade her face, as she continued. “But somehow, now, the life I thought I had left behind in that city has caught back up to me, and I will not let it drag you girls down. You will not pay for my mistakes.”

The girls' heavy breathings continued, but before they could input in the conversation, their mother kept going.

“Please, please understand, I know it’s hard, but you have to leave me here.”

“Mama-!”

“No, we–!”

“You four have to go to New York City yourselves! It’s the only way you can stay safe. Lay low and blend in. You four are more than capable. Far beyond anything I have ever seen, you can keep each other safe.”

After that was said, Venus had been first to respond. “Mama, how could– But we– Mama! What about you?!”

“We can’t do something like that to you Mama!” Larota spoke out in confusion based anger.

Venus frantically spoke again. “We couldn’t! Mama, we can not abandon you like that! I-I know things aren’t safe right now. I know things are dangerous, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon you!!”

“You’re not abandoning me!” Maya couldn’t let her daughter’s think that was what things were resorting to. “You could never abandon me–!”

“Then why?!” Talena couldn’t hold her stunned silence any longer. “Mama, why, why are you telling us this like-like it’s the last time we’ll.. ever… hear from you!?” 

As Talena finished, her breathing had caught in her throat mixed with gasps accompanied by tears. Just the very thought of that possibility scared her beyond limits.

As the implied meaning hung in the tension surrounding them, the girls were haunted by the thought. The thought that if the ever impossible possibility of leaving their mother, their guiding light behind were a reality, and the implication that they would never again be within her warm, nurturing, and loving presence, had been beyond the force that pushed the four girls to stifled sobs.

Maya became choked, as that malicious thought feasted on her daughters’ worries and her eyes were filled yet again with heavy tears. As she wanted to reach to her daughters, she felt a loving but trembling force hesitating to embrace her before she could.

She looked ever so slightly down, and Maya saw her youngest daughter doing everything in her power not to squeeze her like a lifeline. Maya delicately placed her arms around her frightened child’s shell, and pulled her in closer. 

Maya’s eyes swelled more at the thought that Amoly had resisted the urge to hug her tight to soothe herself, only so she wouldn’t hurt her mother with her injuries. She was the sweetest soul. Maya would never know what made her deserving enough for her to call the four of them her daughters.

In a moment, as she tried her hardest to choke her sobs enough to speak, Amoly spoke, but only in the smallest and most scared voice. 

“Please Mama, don’t make us leave you. Please don’t go… ”

“Oh honey…” Maya’s tears fell fiercer, when she heard her baby girl’s broken whimper. “I know. I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry to put you four through all this! I know you’re scared.” 

“But-But you just have to believe me. Believe me when I say, when I promise you that this is what you have to do”

As she still held her daughter against her body, Maya looked up, and saw Venus begin to speak, in a voice contorted with overwhelming emotions.

“Even—” Venus had to suck in a rigid breath through her swollen nostrils. “Even-Even if , there was the smallest possibility that we would ever do something like that to you, how are we even supposed to get to New York?!”

Talena chimed in in agreement with her oldest sister, rambling in hysterics. “Vee is right! It’s not possible, and it’s not probable! It’s not right! There’s no way for us to be able to get to the airport and find a way to board a plane! Even if there was a miracle that we could, by-by the time we would get to New York City, it’d be daylight and we’d be seen! There’s got to be a better way, Mama—

“This is the way!” Maya was forced to raise her voice to cut through her daughter’s hysteric speaking. “It is! I promise it is if you just please listen to me!” Maya's words were forced to come out in choked pleads and she was ripping herself apart just to try and explain to her daughters what she needed them to understand.

As she adjusted her position from the ground, Maya had reached to her side, as Amoly removed herself from her torso. Quickly feeling in her bulky satchel, Maya grasped what she was looking for, and pulled it out for her daughters to see.

The sisters were filled with a swarm of confusion and misunderstanding, as they saw their mother held a large vial bottle of an opaque deep purple liquid.

“Take this! You can use this!” Maya handed the vial to Talena.

Larota’s spoke out as her confusion outweighed her silence. “What? Mama, what-what is that?!

Maya knew that question was inevitable, but she chose to speak minimally on its specifics. “I cannot fully explain it now, but it’s something I’ve been working on for years. It’s how you can get to New York City. It’s how you will be able to blend in, and how you will be able to stay hidden!”

The girls were only more confused, until their mother spoke again.

“It’s a mutation regression serum.”

“What?!”

“It reverses our mutation?! But that would only–”

“No!” Maya decided to elaborate more. “It does not reverse your mutations, but it does alter your appearances. With it you will be able to appear human.”

The girls' reddened eyes exponentially widened, as they heard the seeming fantasy of what their mother had just told them.

“How is that possible?!”

“As I said, I cannot explain it now.” Maya said. “I know this seems fantical and unreal, but it’s true. It will be able to make you four appear to be human, but you must know that, it’s not finished.”

Maya had berated herself that she had not completed it. Times where she would end a nights’ work, or push the project to another day to partake in anything else, seemed to be a crucial mistake now. She had only been minorly soothed with herself that she had made the substantial effort to bring it before she and her daughters had fled.

Maya pulled herself away from her burdened thoughts and looked at her daughters again. “Talena.”

Talena looked directly towards her mother.

“I need you to finish it.”

She spoke out immediately. “Wha-Wha-What?! But Mama there’s no way I can-”

“You can! Talena you are the most brilliant and gifted mind I have ever known, I need you to see that in yourself. You can finish the serum.” Maya spoke to her in nothing but loving and truthful words.

“Bu-But how can I…”

“Take my bag.” Maya reached back and pulled her satchel forwards as she handed it out to Talena. “It has everything in it you will need to complete the formula.” 

“When she finishes–” She faced Venus, Larota, and Amoly. “I need you four to take it. It won’t take much - you only need to swallow a tiny amount.”

The girls were on the verge of disbelief of what all their mother was saying, but she still continued.

“But you have to remember this: it’s not permanent. The serum when completed will only last for 24 hours, after that the effects will immediately wear and you will revert back to normal. Take it to blend it. Take it to get there and find a safe haven.”

“Wha- Regardless of this potion-serum-thing! Mama, we can’t leave you behind! And injured of all things!? We-We can’t –” Larota’s rebuttal was interrupted by again their mother’s wanting pleas.

“You’re not! Please girls, please listen to me! There is no possible way that you could ever, ever, leave me behind, you’re not leaving me behind.”

Maya looked back at her four daughters with heartfelt love, as she told them “I will always be with you no matter where you go. I promise.” 

Each of the sisters’ eyes swelled again to a painful extent, and the woodland breeze irritated their glossy and tired eyes.

Their mother continued. “I’m injured, I know.. I can barely move, and I’m fully aware of that.”

Maya had to take a breath. “But I don’t care! I care about you four! You four are all I care about!”

“I need you girls to see it. You four were the reason I came back all those years ago. The reason I was finally able to see what truly mattered. Since then, you girls have been the only things that mattered.” 

The love spoken in their mother’s desperate voice had been enough to reduce each of the sisters to even heavier tears; the way their mother had spoken of them, had been speaking to them. They knew their whole lives that their appearance had never mattered to her, but hearing her speak of them in that manner, they had never felt more loved.

As Maya saw her daughters in tears, she let a small watery smile stain her face, as she said. “I love you four more than anything. Please, I just need you to trust me.”

Their mother’s declaration was followed by painful speeches from the girls.

“We do trust you!”

“We promise we trust you!”

“Of course we trust you, but-but this–!”

“Then why can’t you trust me now?!” Maya was truly using every ounce of her power to persuade her daughters to understand. “I know! I know this isn’t the plan we made years ago. I know this isn’t what any of you want, but please , as your mother, believe me that this is what you need!”

“You need to go. The serum needs to be finished, and you four have to go to New York City!” And as Maya saw the nightly darkness of the sky begin to dim with the ever so slight touches of an orange glow, she fully realized how crucial their time was now. “And please, you have to do it now!”

“But, Mama, what-what if we can’t make it on our own!” Amoly had been the next to speak, with worries coming from hypothetical thoughts.

Talena added on. “What if something happens, and we can’t handle it?! What if–”

“You can! I know you can! And you will! You four are so much more capable than you know! You four are so strong, and strongest when together, I know you can do this, together!”

Together…

That word stung each of the girls, coming from a place in their hearts of nostalgic hope. They had each wanted one day to explore, to venture out into the world and be ready for any challenges that they would face, together . To be able to experience it, and live it, together…

But this wasn't the lifelong fantasy they had let fester in their childhood. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

But, just maybe… 

Maya knew she had to give her daughters the push they needed. This was what they needed. “I know you’re scared.” 

“But I know you can do this.”

Amoly had violently trembled again, as she came to her mother, clinging to her once more. “I don’t wanna say goodbye!” She clung harder, afraid to let go.

“No, no!” Maya spoke quickly. “Sweetie, I promise you this is not goodbye, not forever! I promise!”

Maya sniffled in her cries, and sighed. “It’s going to take time, a lot of time, but one way or another, I promise you, all of you, that someday, I will come for you.”

Maya looked between her daughters’ eyes, seeing the emotions behind them she knew they never deserved. But she needed to give them this push. 

She begged. “Please!”

Venus sucked in a frail gasp of air, as she looked between her younger sisters, and their mother. She noticed the red stained bandages, the begging cry, and her mother so, so gently pushing Amoly off as she let out the smallest grunt of pain Venus knew she wanted no one to notice. 

She needed to be treated. She needed help, something they couldn’t give her. Venus did not fight as she let her eyes sting with rivers of tears down her face, as she felt they truly could do nothing else. 

She looked back between the red eyes of her sisters, and saw the understanding she needed for her to relent to their mother.

“We-we will do what you say… we will go to New York City.” 

Venus looked at her mother, and guided by the love and pride in her eyes, she promised. “We promise.”

Maya leaned forwards, ignoring the harsh twinges in her pain-filled body, and she placed a hand over Venus’ cheek, lifting her groveled head, and spoke in purity. “I love you.”

She then looked to the rest of her daughters. “All of you.”

The sisters cried out in a hushed consecutive whimper, as they willed themselves to not envelope their mother, to spare her more pain. 

“We love you too Mama!!”

Maya let out the smallest sigh of content, as she wiped her eyes with her kimono sleeve, and brought herself up from the ground.

Each of the girls came up with her, offering her any and all assistance to help her stand.

Maya held onto Venus and Larota’s forearms, as she balanced herself to stand on her uninjured leg. She turned and looked past the wooded barrier’s edge, mentally spotting her path to the hospital’s entrance.

She turned back to her daughters, hoping the remaining darkness of the night, disguised the sadness hidden behind her renewed tears. “I have to go. Stay back, and make sure no one sees you. Stay safe, my loves.”

Maya willed herself to relinquish her hold to her daughters, and as quickly as she was able, began to limp herself forwards.

As if still in a disbelieving haze, Amoly had begun to follow. Accompanied by her three sisters, they went after their mother. Only when the edge of pavement and lack of dense woods became uncomfortably obvious, did Venus, Larota, and Talena, force themselves to stop. Venus reached out and grabbed her baby sister from continuing, and seeing her broken look upon being forced to stop, pulled her to an embrace she gladly took.

They could do nothing more now, as they watched their mother force herself to stay upright, as she continued to move forwards.

When finally she was in close proximity, did the girls see their mother fall to the ground.

Each sister let out small but fear filled screams to no one but themselves, as they had to use everything in their power to stay behind. Venus felt Amoly squeeze her tightly, and she easily accepted it as Larota grabbed Talena, and the two of them joined.

Only when they saw someone from inside the hospital rush out to their mother, did their inner anxieties momentarily soothe.

“Oh my god!” They distantly heard the personnel by their mother, as he assessed her condition. “Anika! Get the stretcher! Ma’am you’re going to be alright, we’ll help you.”

The girls stared forward as they watched professionals surround their mother. And they refused to let their sights go anywhere else. Not until they saw her carefully be placed on a stretcher, while being offered words of assurance and care, and disappear through the doors the sisters couldn’t see, did the girls allow themselves to look between each other.

As Venus saw her sister’s crying in horrendous pain, she reaffirmed her hold on their hug.

As Amoly tried to speak again, she was merely only able to get out a single question from her sobs. “Do we have to?”

Venus looked back forwards, where their mother had disappeared, and regretfully spoke. 

“Yes”

As she saw Amoly bury her head into the embrace with an expulsion of grief, did she force herself to believe the mantra repeating in her head of what their mother had promised.

“It’s not goodbye.” Venus hoped by her saying that it would be reaffirmed as the truth. But the pain swarming her body was reluctant to believe. She however forced herself to know it as truth, knowing she wouldn’t be able to continue if she hadn’t.

As time moved forwards, and not long had passed, the sisters stayed within each other’s arms, crying together over what they felt like they had lost, but forcing their minds to remember what they still had. 

Eventually they released each other, and wiped their swollen eyes. 

With nothing more they realized they could do, they turned away from the hospital, willing themselves to believe there was no reason now that their mother could not be okay.

She was within the care of trained professionals now. She could now be helped, and be properly cared for. She would be okay.

They had to believe that.

As Venus took one last look towards the building, she let herself succumb to a moment of inner weakness, and she let a thought enter her mind, before she joined her sisters as they retreated back towards the forests.

‘Goodbye Mama. Stay safe’

Chapter Text

As the mid-day sun began its descent into the lower skies, the forest was quiet. Eerie silence encompassed the trees and the grounds of the miles and miles of bark, bushes and leaves.

Not until the reach of a small secluded clearing, could the small sound of a fire’s dying crackling be heard by no one. Soft whimpers, and exhausted groans came from the four small bodies that were laying around the shallow warmth.

The girls laid unconscious, guarded by the branches under the falling sun. Their bodies curled in, as they tried to shield themselves from the empty surroundings while they slept in discomfort.

Their faces scrunched, and their heads were tucked, as they were plagued by what happened to them.

Defeated, the girls’ trekking was finally over. As their heavy footsteps came to a stop, Venus examined the area they found with a small glance, and deemed it fit.

“We’ll stop here. It’s enough of a clearing, so it should work.”

Amoly sniffled as she lifted her tired head off her sister’s shoulder. 

“Tally, can you really finish this potion-thingy?”

Talena was far more than uncertain.

“Serum. And… I… don’t know.”

“Firewood?! Seriously, it’s the middle of the day and the sun’s out! What the hell is firewood gonna do?!”

“Umm, should me and Lara go look for some?”

“No Amy. It’s still not safe.” Venus inhaled with a tense jaw, while she tried not to relive the memories of why. “We’re not splitting up. We’ll just have to search for some together.”

“Search?! Forget it! Tally how much do you need?”

“Well, to build a small fire, it shouldn’t take much. Why–”

Larota didn’t wait for an answer.

(BAM)

“Here – firewood.” She ignored the small splinters in her hand.

Next to a broken and bare tree, the sisters were still and unmoved. 

The piles of bark and tree trunk shards still went by for hours untouched.

While the day went on, the trauma was still left in the girls’ minds. It was disturbingly potent and vivid.

Amoly had been the first to say it. “I hate this! I hate this so much!! I want to go home!”

It was left unsaid, but implied; the three oldest knew home had a deeper meaning.

“Amy, we can't go home. I’m sorry.”

As she saw not only her youngest sister suppress the sadness and sheen of her eyes, Venus knew with a heavy heart, that it wasn’t just about returning home.

The fire fueled itself quickly with the heavy gust of a breeze at just the wrong time. The sisters had managed to quench it with extra water before it spread.

“What the hell Tally?! Is your experiment to catch the entire forest on fire?!”

“I’m sorry okay! Some of it splashed into the flames! It was only a small reaction!”

“I thought you were tryin’ to finish, not roast us in a bonfire!” 

“Lara!”

For the fifth time, Amoly interjected with a question.

“How long does this potion take? Have you stirred your little cauldron enough?”

“Leave it alone Amy–” Venus was interrupted quickly.

“Cauldron?! Potion?! I told you it’s a serum! What do you even think I am, some kind of witch?! What’s next?! You’ll ask me where my broomstick is?!”

“Hey! I was just curious!”

“Well your ‘curiosity’ is about to drive me from civil to insane!”

“Geez! And you guys say I’m short tempered!”

“I’m stressed, okay Lara?! I feel like I’m under a lot of pressure, and feeling you guys breathing down my neck doesn’t help!” Talena took a short breath, as she refocused. She chose to ignore the stares she could feel. 

At least they moved enough so their breath wouldn’t give her neck chills.

“Tally, you okay?”

“I...I think it's done”

“Really?!”

“You really did it Tally!”

“No! I mean– I tried, and I’m almost certain it’s complete, but the chemistry just seemed so– I just, I don’t even know!”

“Tally…”

Talena acknowledged the hand on her shoulder, and the reassuring smiles from Larota and Amoly. She turned to Venus.

“Tally, you did good. Thank you.”

Talena smiled.

The empty capsules, and small cylinders were tossed away and remained dry. Any reminiscence of their previous chemicals were gone as the day had continued so far.

The girls unconsciously adjusted their bodies on the grass, but they still did not wake up.

The four sisters stood together. They had discussed, argued, and worried to no end, but had finally found it in each of them, to do it.

“Here we go. Three, Two–”

“Wait!!”

“What Amy?!”

“What is it?!”

Tense and panicked expressions softened, when they saw Amoly’s lips quivered.

“I just, maybe we should, or shouldn’t…it’s just that… the thing is…I, I’m…”

“Scared?”

Amoly responded with wide eyes to Larota’s understanding, but nodded.

“Don’t worry. We’re doing this together.”

“It’ll be okay.”

She softly smiled at Venus and Talena. When she looked back at Larota, she saw her slightly turned away, and her face still. Amoly accepted it. As she inhaled. “...okay…”

“Three.”

Amoly suddenly felt her hand embraced by another. Larota was still stoic, but the smallest look from her, was more than the reassurance Amoly needed.

“Two.”

“...One!”

They swallowed.

…

“Nothing happened?”

Not more than mere seconds had passed.

“Ow, my… AHHH!!!”

“My head!!”

“ARGHH!!”

“Make it stop! It hurts!!”

“Tally what’s happening?!! AHH!!””

“Why is it doing this?!!”

“ARGH!! OW! Ow! I don’t know! I don’t… know…”

There, suddenly, was a terrifying thud.

“TALLY!”

“Ughh..” Amoly came to her knees, before she fell.

(THUD)

“AMY?!”

“Vee, Vee I, I don’t feel so…”

(THUD)

“LARA!”

“Augh!”

Venus fought, but she collapsed to her side and her vision blurred nonetheless.

‘Have to, stay, awake…’

As she managed to turn on her plastron and look up, she saw her three sisters. In her fuzzy haze, they were on the ground, unmoving.

‘Lara, Tally, Amy… no…’

When she tried her hardest to reach them, her vision and body succumbed. 

‘Wait, what? My-my hand? It’s…? One, two, three, four, fiv–”

(THUD)

The forests were swallowed in silence once again.

After a few hours, her face had turned in her sleep, and Venus’s eyes began to flutter. The setting sun glared at her harshly, as she began to wake up.

Uncomfortable would be modest for how she felt. She turned on her back, and felt like her body was crippled.

Finally, finding the strength in her tired body, Venus pushed herself up from the dirt. Her vision was fogged, but it began slowly adjusting to the brightness in her surroundings.

While giving herself more force up from the ground to be stable, she groaned as her sweltering head began to throb.

“Ughh…” Venus couldn’t remember the last time she had a headache to this extent. She brought her hand up and clenched her forehead in pain.

However, as she touched her head, her fingers felt delicately as they felt something odd. Venus immediately pulled her hand down on reflex, but unintentionally brought down the texture she was feeling with it.

Only when the textured material hung slightly off the sides of her forehead, and gently cupped her face, did she finally see what exactly it was.

‘Huh?! Hair?! What the–?! I HAVE HAIR?!’

Venus began to panic when she realized the fact. While her supposed hair cupped her cheeks, she instantly brought her hands up to feel her scalp. The smooth and scaly head she would have known, she felt was now covered in thousands of tiny frail strands.

Touching her scalp, the feeling suddenly becoming too intense, she quickly flung her hands away, only to be dumbfounded, when she saw them.

“AHH!”

She screamed unintentionally. Venus wasn’t even able to register the groans and yawns that shortly after came from her sisters, as she stared at her now shaking hands.

She stared, and couldn’t be sure if she was able to believe what she was seeing. Her usual moss-like skin was replaced by a fair and pale lightness. Her hands, each now petite and thin, showing herself five fingers instead of three.

As if trying to escape from herself, Venus fell back against the forest floor and quickly backed away in shock. As she did so, it only allowed her to see fully the rest of her body.

‘This-this can’t be real…’ – “Ow!”

Her own panicked thoughts were abruptly hushed as she realized somewhat painfully that she had backed herself into the trunk of a tree. While she looked behind, as the tree itself shook from the forceful slam, while the green leaves fell, she felt her stiff back. She now realized there was nothing there, that would have otherwise muffled the heavy impact on her.

‘My shell! My shell’s gone!’

Once again, her wide eyes stared down at her changed body. When her seemingly lost memories came back to her frantic mind, she couldn’t believe this was real.

‘The serum… the serum Tally had… it really, it really worked! Oh my god! I’m a… I’m actually a–’

“AHHH!!”

The hyper scream, Venus recognized as her sister’s, sprung her quickly from the ground. Venus ran forwards to her sisters immediately. As soon as she was, she saw in disbelief that they had changed just as she had.

“Amy?!–”

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” Amoly’s squealing volume was easily matched by her pure excitement that was just as evident on her face.

“Look at us!!” She spared quick secondary glances between her sisters as her eyes practically sparkled with stars. “We’re humans!! We look like humans!! Can you believe this?!!”

Larota, who had been easily alerted after her sisters’ screams, turned to her. “Amy! Maybe I could if you’d STOP SHRIEKING IN MY EARS!!” She had been just as surprised by their apparent transformation. She quickly however became increasingly annoyed when she was sure Amoly’s pitch was about to make her tone deaf.

Amoly cringed, as she leaned away from her sister when she screamed towards her, then rubbed her ear. “Touche..” Yet she was not deterred.

As the sisters still tried to process their new forms, their initial shock began to give way to a mix of new and varying emotions.

Amoly, still buzzing with excitement, remained in awe. She twirled around as she marveled at her new appearance. “I can’t believe it! Can you guys believe it?! We actually look human!” Her voice was filled with wonder. “This is amazing!!”

Larota, however, less thrilled by their looks, remarked. “Amazing?! Amy, this is far from amazing!” Her expression was tense. “May I remind everyone that we are in the middle of the forest - we’re in the middle of nowhere! Mama is not with us! And for god’s sake we’re not even wearing real clothes!”

As Larota brought it up, Venus, Talena, and Amoly reluctantly couldn’t argue the hard fact that they felt somewhat exposed.

It had become obvious that during their transformation, their bodies shrunk down. Their previous torn cloths and fabric scraps they had around their bodies before, were practically useless now in keeping them fully covered.

Their cloths now acted as oversized sashes and wraps while they covered the girls in most areas, but left them all with red faces as they felt rather bare.

“So what if now we look human?! We have no clue how to act around actual people! And if someone saw us like this we’d probably get arrested for indecency!!”

“Calm down Lara. I’m sure we’ve got something we could make work. I’m sure Mama must’ve left us with something.” Venus kneeled down as she began to shuffle through their bag their mother had given to them.

She tried to steady her own nerves, as she looked for anything that would help them with their immediate problem. Despite believing that their mother surely gave them something, Venus did not expect she would dig through the bag, and discover what she did.

As she pushed items aside, Venus was able to find four separately bundled outfits of different colors.

‘Wow, she really planned for everything. Thank you Mama!’

“Perfect!” Venus pulled them out.

Talena was curious to know what Venus had. “What’d you find?”

Venus stood. “Mama packed each of us a set of clothes. They look like they’ll fit us.”

“Really?! That’s awesome!” Amoly chimed in, still sparking with energy. “OOH! I call the pink one!” She quickly took it from her sister.

“Tally yours is the purple.” Venus handed the specific outfit to her.

Talena took the set, as she inspected the clothing with curious and fascinated eyes. As she began to try it on, she saw that the outfit - a long sleeve purple blouse and a pair of black shorts - seemed to fit her new body nicely. However, she couldn’t help but feel odd, as her body became covered in something she’d never known, but fabrics that were more comfortable than that of which she did.

Venus then turned to Larota, and tossed her, her pair. “Lara, red is yours.”

Larota took her clothes with apprehension. She began putting them on, but didn’t take as much of a liking to them. She knew it was a necessity and nothing else.

Venus, last to wear hers, felt nothing more than unnatural.

Everything that was happening, it just felt so unreal. From their new appearances enough, to the clothes, that just made it seem like the possibility they never knew could really be true. 

Venus so far had never fully allowed herself to relax. While her sisters took in their new forms, and sought the details in everything, from their hairs to their clothes, she only could remember why this was all happening. The memories that only reminded her that this wasn’t a time to wait and wonder. She couldn’t care less right now about her blue blouse that she thought was flattering to her form. 

She could only worry about a promise they had made, and hadn’t yet fulfilled.

“Guys, we need to get moving.” When Venus saw her sisters turn to her with foul looks at that moment, she took a breath, and elaborated. “Look, I know how you feel. I know how we’re all feeling, but we made a promise to Mama, and we need to keep it. We need to find a way we can get to New York.”

Talena, who had still been quietly examining herself and her sisters, spoke up. “You’re right Vee. Also, the serum worked, but we don’t really know anything about it. We don’t know how long it will last. So we should hurry.”

“But wait, I thought Mama said the serum lasts for 24 hours?! And do I have to remind you guys that that serum made us all pass out from pain?! What, we just have to collapse every 24 hours when we take it?!” Larota spoke in.

“No, I think we’ll be okay.” Talena highly doubted the effects would continue to be as severe. “Our bodies re-mutated, but I think the transformation was only painful because we were intolerant.”

“What do you mean? We can drink milk.”

Talena’s face turned stone still when she heard Amoly. She rolled her eyes, as she let out an exasperated breath. “Amy, not lactose intolerant, pain intolerant. Our bodies were processing a foreign new compound that they weren’t used to. Now that our cells have been exposed to the serum, we should be actively building up a tolerance that should keep the pain stable.”

“And the 24 hours? Didn’t Mama say it would only last for–”

“She did. But until I can get more research done and study this serum more, I can’t be sure.” Talena was hesitant to believe the effects the serum might cause, and its wear, without solid proof. “But trusting Mama, yes-” She took a pause as she tightened her wrist device, and set a countdown. “-we have 24 hours.”

Venus quickly grabbed their duffle bag, and the vial of serum, securing it inside, and slung the bag over her shoulder. “We need to hurry. 24 hours isn’t forever, and we can’t waste any time. Tally, do you still have a map? We need to figure out the quickest way to an airport.”

Talena acted fast, and pulled up a holographic map displayed from her wrist. Her fingers trembled slightly, as she navigated the complex interface with more appendages than she was used to. “There’s an international airport about 21 miles from here. The best way out of the forests is South-West. If we can stick to the outskirts of the city and avoid the crowded areas, we can get to the streets and get a taxi. That’s our quickest bet to get to the airport.”

Venus’s nervousness and intensity turned into determination. “Then that’s what we’re going to do.”

Amoly then spoke. “Then when we get there, we can totally blend in! No one will ever know we’re not human! We got this!”

Larota scoffed. “Blend in?! Amy, we’ve never been around humans in the real world! Blending in?! We’ll be lucky if we don’t stick out like a sore thumb!”

Venus placed a comforting hand on Larota’s shoulder. “Lara, it’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out together. We can do this.”

Venus saw her sister inhale, and she knew she was very reluctant to believe. But when she also saw the fierce look rooted deep in her eyes, she knew with certainty that they would do this together, as a family - as sisters.

While Talena began to take a small lead, as her analytical directions were their guide out of the forests, all of the sisters exchanged a determined glance. An inner bond was only reaffirmed, as the woods became thin, and the lights of the city buildings were clear.

Each of them couldn’t help but hesitate. The world they had never known was only a step away, and the life they knew and loved now seemed to be the furthest of all.

As Venus closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and hoped for the best, she made the first move, and breached their barrier, as she stepped onto the pavement. Not long after, once Venus had scanned their environment, did Larota, Talena, and Amoly join her.

As their feet seemed to move them, while their minds were blank, the sisters began entering the outskirts of Tokyo.

Venus took the lead, her voice steady despite the unease and delicate fear she felt beneath. “Stay close. No matter what happens, we stick together.”

Her sisters responded in unison, so easily, the reminder had seemed unnecessary, to something they all knew was a given. 

“Together.”

Whether this was what they wanted, or what they needed, they knew they would live it together.

As it seemed as if they were all trapped in a trance, they continued forwards without thinking.

Before they knew it, the sisters were on a curb, with a taxi pulled up in front of them.

Before they knew it, they were all cramped in the small backseat of a car driving them away from the outskirts, and into the city’s heart.

Venus could only watch as her new world was continuing around her, yet she felt she hadn’t moved yet. Before she knew it, a driver was paid, and four tickets were bought.

Only when her buckle clicked, and her airplane seat finally felt palpable, did she take a moment to breathe, and to notice. As her sisters were all close, her youngest next to her, and her other two in front, and in the smallest bit, she was comforted.

When Amoly had asked, and she grabbed two small bands from their bag did she see something else inside.

She saw four bandanas - light blue, maroon, lavender, and pink. Each of which were something that stung her eyes with small tears.

They had wanted, when they were children, a mark of something to give themselves normalcy. Finally, their incessant conversations and arguments over what, were stopped when their mother had given each of them a bandana; each one of them in their favorite colors, and each she had sewn herself. When each of them had designed their own bandana tails to a pattern that was resemblant of a human hairstyle, they felt normal for the first time in their lives.

Venus knew that that was many years ago.

But somehow, as she gently pulled out her own, she felt warmth spread inside her heart; a feeling of familiarity, yet new hope.

As she distantly noticed the city view from the window fading away, she braided her brown hair, tying it off with light blue, and thanked her mother one more time.