The Temple of Artemis(Pre-Event/Intro Thread)

[Belle]

Several weeks had passed since Belle had come to the Lady Yuki for aid. Belle was never sure she entirely believed the old woman's insistence that her near-fatal 'initiation' was necessary, but at least since then she had not tried to kill her again.

Belle sat in the center of the courtyard, her legs folded, waiting for Yuki - her 'shishou' - to make her appearance. She wished the old bag would hurry it up - today was the day her friend Lily was set to leave the hospital and return home. She wanted to be there - as a friend, of course, but also some irrational part of her worried that if she wasn't, another set of men would be waiting to finish the job.

She had told Yuki the former. The latter, obviously, she had kept to herself. She wondered if the woman suspected it anyway - she seemed to be able to read Belle like an open book, a trait that the girl found more than a little annoying.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned her head.

Yuki was there, clad in her usual uniform, her conservative martial arts gi looking slightly rumpled, some wavy gray hairs misplaced out of her tight bun. Her eyes, however, were just as impenetrable as always.

Belle stood and turned. "So," she said. "Forms?" The old woman had been running her through 'kata' over the last week. It reminded Belle of ballet class, sort of - another one of those quickly-abandoned career paths her parents had let her experiment with when she was little. She was about as good at them as she was at that, except Yuki liked to reward failure with the application of a stick.

The woman shook her head.

Her heart sank. "Chores, then?"

"No," Yuki said. "None of that. Today you will do something new." She paused, glancing to the side. "Today you will spar."

Belle blinked. "Uh. What?"

"Sparring. It's a mock fight."

"Yeah, I know that," Belle grumbled, suddenly leery. Was there something she had done to piss the old bag off? She thought she'd been trying really hard. Maybe she could read Belle's mind. Perhaps continuing to call her 'old bag' in her head wasn't the smartest idea. "Er, shishou," she amended.

"Don't worry," Yuki grumbled, waving a hand. "You won't be fighting me." She took a breath. "You'll be sparring with your senior."

"My... senior?" Belle repeated the words dumbly. "You teach someone else?" She'd never seen anyone else around the house.

"Yes. In fact, you've already met him."

Yuki pointed to the patio that lined the inner courtyard behind Belle. Belle turned to look, squinting. The door to the house hung ajar, most of the room beyond hidden in shadows. Mister Pickles, Yuki's head-sized dog, looked up from his seated perch on the patio, then back at the two of them.

"So where is he?" Belle asked, looking back at her teacher. She deliberately avoided thoughts of senility - just in case.

Yuki sighed. "He's sitting on the patio."

Belle looked. Then looked back at her. "Are you feeling okay?" she asked, trying to keep the concern out of her voice. "Do you smell anything weird? Like burning toast?"

"I'm not having a stroke, you idiot!" Yuki barked. The old woman's other hand came out from behind her back, whipping a thin branch against Belle's legs. Then, with a prod, she shoved Belle around. "He will be your opponent."

"The dog?" Belle asked, watching as the mutt scratched itself behind an ear.

"It wasn't my idea," Yuki's voice sounded tired. "I wanted to do it, but he ... insisted."

"How- what? That's - you're having a joke on me, right?" Belle blurted. "Look, I know you like to be all mystical and crap, but that's ridiculous!" She blanched as she saw the branch rise again. "Uh. Respectfully. Shishou."

The branch wavered, then lowered without the follow up strike. "You might think it's ridiculous, but it's the way of this universe for the abnormal to be normal."

On the patio, Mister Pickles straightened, his brown-patched white fur shifting as his truncated frame wobbled. Then, to Belle's horror, he stood up on hind legs, his forepaws held up limply in front of him. There was something in the animal's eyes that hadn't been there before.

This wasn't happening.

"He came to me lost, much like you were. I'm not sure who summoned him into this world. Neither is he. But he's intelligent - enough to learn." Yuki gave a heavy sigh, then turned away and started to walk. "You can leave when you manage to land a strike. Oh, and Pickles," she called back, "don't go too rough on her. She still needs to be able to clean."

Mister Pickles barked an affirmative.

"Wait! Hey!" Belle growled. "I told you, I can't be here all day-"

The rest of her words were drowned out a rush of wind as the animal on the patio sprung into action, barreling its head into her gut and sending her flying back, head over heels, into a shrubbery.

~+~+~+~

"The dog," Belle said as she applied a scrub to the toilet. "Of course. Haha."

She was still shell shocked. Bandages were wrapped around her left hand and right forearm, and she winced as she pressed the tool against the composite inner surface of the seat. Of course on Coruscant, none of the materials used in such things really stained, it being a problem they had apparently figured out many millenia ago. Still, Yuki wanted it cleaned anyway.

Belle checked her chrono and felt her heart sink. In twenty-five minutes Lily was going to be released. That wretched old crone Yuki. Belle was positive she had done this deliberately. If Belle had said nothing, she probably would've been fine.

Sighing, Belle lay back upon the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe she could try again in a few minutes. If she rushed the furry bastard, she might be able to get a lucky hit in. It probably wouldn't work, but it was better than sitting around just waiting for the clock to run down, and the soreness in her body had faded enough by this point.

Her vision suddenly distorted, the ceiling appearing to shrink away from her. She pinched her eyes shut and rubbed them. Okay, maybe she wasn't doing as good as she thought.

Belle rubbed a couple more times before opening her eyes again. The ceiling was even farther away... Actually, the entire bathroom was. It was as if the floor had disappeared and she was spiraling into an inky black abyss... Falling... Falling...

She came to a stop abruptly, landing with a smack on something hard and cold.

Belle sat up immediately, then wished she hadn't - now she was both sore and dizzy. She held her head, belatedly realizing that she was still wearing a rubber glove clutching a toilet brush. "Ow," she hissed, blinked. She must've fallen through some kind of trapdoor or something. With the way things were going today, that seemed appropriately ridiculous.

She squinted open her eyes and peered around at her surroundings. That was when she saw the Spirit, and heards its words. She barely absorbed them, her eyes wide. As the glowing blue figure finished, she gaped. Save? Relic? She must be dreaming. She pinched herself. Nope. Well then, there was clearly only one thing to say:

"Holy crap it's a ghost!"