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Part Six: Personifications
Chapter One: Warrior – Kina
Princess Kina of Jupiter, her face flushed with a mixed kind of embarrassment and excitement, scurried down the darkened jade hallway to her chambers. She had just finished meeting the famous Prince Shima of The Lord Phoenix, and now she was headed off to write it all down in her journal. It wasn’t every day that a person got to meet the chosen Champion of the Lord Phoenix, one of the few remaining elemental forces in the Realms, after all!
She giggled softly to herself as she hurried down the hall. She hadn’t just been introduced to him, she had also discovered that he was the same older brother named Shima that Reiki-chan had been going on about for so long. One of her dearest friends, the sister of the Phoenix Prince! Kina sighed dreamily at the thought of how close they seemed.
And his skills! He was so far beyond them in pure fighting ability. And that shield! He had thrown it up so effortlessly! No fancy song and dance like what the Senshi had to deal with in order to summon their powers. Just the words, and BANG! A flaming wall just appeared between him and Reiki and the attacks!
It was awe-inspiring to see that. Hades, HE was awe-inspiring just standing still! Those muscles, that confidence! Wow. And so gallant too!
Kina slipped through the large oaken doors into her chambers. Flopping down on her bed, she fished out her journal from its hiding place. Rolling over onto her stomach, she flipped it open and snatched her quill and ink from the nightstand.
_Dear Diary_ she wrote.
_Today the most remarkable thing happened, and I’m not making it up either! Come on.. Guess!
_What? You don’t know? Alright then, I’ll tell you.
_I met with perfection today. Hey! It’s true! Shima of the Phoenix Prince is simply... perfect.
That’s right, I met with the chosen Champion of the Lord Phoenix today. And get this! He told me to cheer up and smile!
_He said that if I cheered up I, and I quote, "shall brighten the world"! He told me that! Can you believe it? He tried to cheer me up. Even after I nearly fried him and Reiki-chan with a thunderbolt, too.
_It’s not like I don’t have a right to be sad. Cause I do! Mother and Father have been gone so long now that there are all kinds of rumors going about that they shall never return. I miss them. I really do.
_I’m getting pretty tired though. And I have a training session with Miechale of the Jovian Knights tomorrow so I’d better get my rest while I can, don’t you think? Well, I guess I’ll see you later! ‘Nite.
Kina of Jupiter.
**********
"Yaaaahh!" Kina screamed as she hurtled through the air to slam painfully into the mats with a loud exhalation.
Sir Miechale loomed over her suddenly, glaring down at her. "Are you ready to give up yet, girl-child?" he growled in his dark baritone.
Kina struggled to her feet at that, her face red with embarrassment as well as a mixture of frustration, exhaustion and pain. "I can still go on, Sir Miechale. Please," she paused to catch her breath. "Continue the lesson, good knight." And then she settled into an awkward training stance awaiting his attack.
Sir Miechale shrugged and stalked off to the middle of the mat again. He just stood there and looked at her. "Well? Do you intend to attack me, or just stand there?" he asked with a nonchalant air as if he were asking about the weather instead of teaching a lesson on unarmed combat to a member of the Senshi.
Kina rushed forward with a wild cry, her fist before her as if it were dragging her towards him. At the last second, he stepped to the side with a smirk, allowing her to fly past him off balance and unguarded. One second later she was flying through the air again and slamming hard into the mats again.
This time Sir Miechale didn’t even bother to go over and ask if the lesson was completed. He simply snorted in disgust and strode out of the room wrapped in an aura of his own self-importance at being able to beat an untrained young woman that had asked him to teach her. Sir Miechale was a very proud man after all and didn’t take well to being defeated for any reason, or lowering himself for any reason. Even if that reason is the training of the most powerful warrioress and his Princess of his planet in the arts of control in battle.
Kina lay there for a while, just watching him stride from the room with a wistful look in her eye. Then suddenly there was another form blocking her view. Turning her head slightly, she noticed that the legendary Phoenix Prince was crouching beside her with a hand roughened from years of swordwork thrust out towards her. Returning to her senses, she grasped his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. As she stood there, she could feel him gently brushing the training room’s dust from the back of her training robe.
"You okay, Kina-chan?" he murmured as he worked.
She nodded at first, then slowly found her voice. "I’ll be fine, Shima." She informed him as she continued to stare down the corridor that had swallowed up her quickly departed ‘trainer’.
Shima noticed the direction of her gaze. "Why are you staring at him like that, Kina?"
"Because he's so good and handsome, and I can never even hope to be that good." She sighed in reply.
"He's not that good. Why do you think you couldn't be at least as good as him, if not even better?"
"I can't learn. He's so fast and good, that I can never hope to learn."
"Well, first off, he's an awful person. I mean, anyone with a shred of decency in him would have helped anyone as pretty as you up. Especially if he was the reason you were on the floor. Second, he's not a particularly good fighter and he's an even worse teacher. You can learn, Kina. I've seen you pick up things so fast, it makes my head boggle. He just doesn't want to take the time to teach you." He growled, still glaring down the hall.
"But he's the only one willing to teach me, Shima!" Kina looked like she was about to cry.
"No. I'll teach you, Kina-chan." He tossed back over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back as he spoke.
"Y-y-you'll teach me? B-but you're the Phoenix Prince, Shima!" That got his attention. He immediately spun about and stared at her.
"That doesn't matter! You're my friend, Kina. And I _won't_ let you down."
"You're my friend? I don't have many friends. Only the girls. You're the first boy I've ever been friends with. Hmm. Does that make you my boyfriend?" she wondered quietly.
Shima smirked. "I guess, Kina. I guess." Then he turned back to the corridor. "Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I recently discovered a very urgent matter that needs tending to. So, with your permission?" His angry snarl was barely masked by the sheen of courtly politeness over the top.
Kina nodded once, shyly, and Shima was gone down the corridor his stride filled with his furious purpose. Curious as to what was about to happen, Kina snuck quietly after him.
**********
Shima caught up with Sir Miechale only two minutes after leaving Kina. The fact that he had caught up with the Jovian Knight in the very crowded throne room in front of Queen Serenity V herself didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. Shima was on a most holy of missions. Defending the honor of a maiden.
"Miechale!" Shima roared across the bustle directly at the armored back of the still departing knight.
His voice echoed and rebounded in the sudden silence that had fell over the gathered courtiers. The knight stopped abruptly in the center of the room at the shout, suddenly finding himself alone as everyone had crowded back towards the walls. The center of the room had cleared as quickly as possible when Shima had entered with the snarl of fury distorting his normally handsome features.
"My _name_, FOOL, is SIR Miechale of the Jovian Knights!" The arrogant idiot replied as he turned about slowly, just in time to see what a stupid mistake he had just made.
Shima crossed the intervening distance in four great strides. Then he lifted the offending knight off his feet by crushing a handful of his breastplate in one hand and hurled him across the room to crash into a far pillar and fall to the ground in a great clatter. Shima crossed the room and lifted him again, this time slamming him into the nearest surface with enough force to cause the solid marble pillar to crack. Blood begin to smear across the white pillar before Shima finally stopped and simply held him there.
Then Shima leaned in and got up in his face. "Miechale of Jupiter. Do you know who I am?" he asked with a dangerously icy calm in his voice. It carried easily throughout the room.
Miechale looked blearily into his eyes. "Y-y-you S-s-shima... Phoenix Prince..." he mumbled.
"That’s right, Miechale." Shima continued in the same almost conversational tone. "I am the Phoenix Prince. I will address you as I see fit. AND I see no reason to accord you a place in the honorable Jovian Knights." Shima pointed out. "You, dog. Are completely without honor and hold no place in the Jovian Knights as far as I am concerned."
Shima suddenly turned his attention from the bleeding idiot in his hands to the court at large and Queen Serenity V, perhaps in particular to the Knight Commander of the Jovian Knights who had recently come to the Lunar Palace to attain the Queen’s Blessing for his new born daughter.
"You see, everyone, I just got to watch this filthy dog-man man-handle Princess Kina of Jupiter under the pretence of training her in the arts of combat and control." Shima explained. "Then at the end, he hurled her to the ground like some cast-off piece of clothing and walked away in disgust. Disgust, everyone! This filthy dog-man who _dared_ to call himself a Jovian Knight _beat_ his Princess and then saw only contempt in her untrained efforts! He refused even to offer her a hand in assistance to regain her feet after having knocked her from them to begin with! This filthy dog-man has no honor, no decency, and shall NEVER have respect from myself or ANY who follow my Lord Phoenix!" He glared at Miechale who had by now fainted dead away and hung limp in Shima’s grasp.
"Now, I would like to mention that the Inner Senshi are personal friends of mine." Shima had gone back to that conversational tone that caused so many courtiers to wish they were elsewhere at the moment. "And being my friends, they have the right to call on my assistance at any time. Also, one of them, the Senshi of Mars, is bound to me by blood. So, I would like to inform everyone gathered here that an attack upon the Inner Senshi, ANY of the Inner Senshi in ANY way, shall be seen and treated as an attack upon MYSELF and my Lord Phoenix. I do hope that I have made myself quite clear upon the matter."
Then suddenly, he opened his hand and allowed Miechale to fall to the ground in a loud heap. Crouching down, he wiped his hand on Miechale’s cloak as if to remove all traces of any possible scum that might have remained from touching him. Then he stood, turned and strode to the center of the room where he looked upon the Queen and bowed deeply to her.
"My deepest apologies that you had to be witness to that sight, your Majesty. Rest assured that such anger shall not be directed towards you, for thy child is among those I name friend and I shall not see her harmed." He added in his most courteous manner before turning about on his heel and striding from the room in an altogether different direction than he had entered.
Which was a good thing, because if he had he would learn that the young Princess he had been defending had snuck in to watch him. She leaned back against the corridor and stared at the opposing wall for some time in silent shock. Then, suddenly, she straightened up and dashed off back down the hall to the daily meeting of ‘Serenity-chan’s Court’. The others just _had_ to learn about what had just happened!
Kina giggled slightly as she ran. No more would she or the others have to deal with the mean-spirited comments or cruel jokes that had once been passed around about them. Maybe they would still be feared and avoided, but at least the nasty bits could be avoided by them more now.
**********
Shima walked up behind his reading student on silent feet. Kina didn’t even bother looking up.
"Konban wa, Shima-sempai." She greeted him, never looking up from her book.
"Konban wa, Kina-chan." He replied, vaulting over the high back of the long bench to land lightly beside her on the seat. "And how are you today?"
"Good. Thanks." She hadn’t looked up yet.
"And... Manuel, was it? How goes things with him?" he asked idly, staring up at the sky through the branches of an overhanging tree, his arms stretched out along the back of the bench and his legs out before him.
Kina looked up finally with that question. "Manuel is fine, I guess." She shrugged. "I wouldn’t really know."
Shima turned to look at her curiously. "Why not? I thought you two were getting close."
She laughed. It was a rather disdainful sound. "Ah, yes. We were I suppose. But not nearly as close as he was getting with that prissy Cassandra. Ah well. To have loved and lost and all that." She waved it off as if it meant nothing.
Shima wouldn’t have any of it. "And to think that just two days ago you were all Manny this and Manuel that. It’s hard to believe that you could be so completely over him in less than two days." He drawled. "Unless..." His eyes narrowed slightly. "What did you do to him, Kina-chan?"
She at least had enough sense of propriety to blush.
"Oh by the Sacred Fires, Kina!" Shima bolted up right from his supine position as he began to realize what she may have done. "You didn’t!"
"I did. And he deserved it too!" She retorted, holding firmly to her stance. "Evil, evil men like that... they DESERVE to be thunderbolted in the ass!" She snarled.
"You..." His face contorted into a particularly odd expression as he tried desperately not to laugh. "I cannot believe you did that, Kina!" He blurted out, then began to calm down a bit. "Well, at least his leather pants should have absorbed some of it, right?" He asked, in an attempt to pass the subject off.
"Actually... he wasn’t wearing them at the time...."
"Wasn’t..."
"He was fair busy with the nubile Cassandra when I found them..."
"Oh blessed Flames..."
"I sure did..."
"Kina!"
"He deserved it!"
"NO man deserves THAT!"
"Fuck that! Any man that cheats on me and LET’S ME CATCH HIM deserves whatever he GETS, Dammit!" she swore, heatedly.
Shima just looked remarkably pained from her statements. "Such language, Kina-chan..."
"I learned it from Akai. Anyway, maybe THAT will teach him to keep it in his pants."
Shima could only chuckle awkwardly at that.
It was a truly embarrassing moment, but
***********
"Kina-chan?" Shima almost whispered his question as he came up to the younger girl in the marble waiting chamber. His expression was one of a man who found himself with a very unpleasant duty before him.
"Shima-san!" Kina cried in response, her expression one of over exuberant joy. "They said you found Shinouki!"
Shima nodded slowly, his expression changing from displeasure into one of pain.
"Where is he, Shima-san? Where is my brother?" Kina asked imploringly, gazing up into his face.
"Kina-chan..."
"What? What’s wrong?"
"Kina-chan... about Shinouki..."
"You didn’t find him?" her face fell.
"I... I did find him, Kina-chan. It’s just..."
"Just what, Shima-san?"
"Oh... Kina, I’m so, so sorry."
She didn’t make a sound. She just stood there before him as the realization came upon her about what might have occurred. What must have occurred to affect Shima so. Slowly tears began to trickled down from her emerald eyes like rain from heaven.
Shima knelt on the ground before her, slightly awkward and noisy in his Golden Armor, and held his arms out to her in invitation. The suddenly bereft child rushed into the sheltering circle of his armored limbs. He closed his arms about her and held her to his chest awkwardly. Finally, he let his instincts take over, and reached up with a gloved hand to smooth her frazzled hair.
"It’ll be okay, Kina-chan. It’ll be okay. I promise." He whispered into her ear in an attempt to soothe her. "You’ll never be alone, Kina-chan. Not while I live. I promise. I’ll always be there for you if you need me. Always. So will the girls. No one’s going to leave you if they can possibly help it Kina-chan."