Ballad of the Samurai II: Requiem
Chapter 1: Somewhere, I Belong Pt. I

Copyright© 2008 by Chaos Samurai

2

730

17,520

1,051,200

63,072,000

What is time?

Is it anything but a sequence of numbers and variables designed to tell an exact point?

Could a person be or exist outside of time?

And if so what becomes of them and those they left behind?

Sixty-three million, seventy-two thousand. Does that figure have any heavy meaning on a person's life? What if some variables were added?

Sixty-three million seventy-two thousand seconds.

One million fifty-one thousand minutes.

Seventeen thousand five-hundred twenty hours.

Seven hundred thirty days.

Two years.

David said those words as he rested his tired body on the bench right in front of St. Michaels Elementary. He watched carefully waiting for half of the spark that made his life not so troubled.

Joshua. Joshua was a ten year old boy. He was also David's adoptive brother, though that wasn't exactly the truth.

"David!" someone yelled as they rushed past the crowding parents who patiently waited for their children.

"Stop!" David yelled when Joshua was about to run across the street. Joshua put the brakes on coming to a stumbling standstill before laying one foot on the street.

David looked both ways before crossing the street.

Joshua was jumping in place clutching a paper in his hands. David looked both ways before making his way across the street.

"What you got there?" he asked Joshua.

"It's for you. I know you still can't remember, but I hope you like it," Joshua said.

David took the paper and looked at the drawing on it. It was one of the things that David was in awe of Joshua for, and as he looked at the drawing he could see so many details.

The drawing was of David, Joshua and Rebecca. Rebecca was Joshua's mother and to an extent David's adoptive one as well. They were all sitting on a blanket in a large park. Joshua was being tickled by his mother and brother, a big smile on his face.

"Thanks, little brother," David said.

"We going to pick up mom?" Joshua asked.

"That's the plan, Joshua."

Joshua made a displeased face.

"Okay, what's with that look?"

"I don't like it when you call me Joshua, David. I like JJ better."

"Sorry, I forget sometimes, especially when my mind is everywhere at once. It's Bec's birthday; keeping the secrets we have isn't easy, you know. Did you hide the present where I told you?"

"Yup. I know she found it too. It wasn't the way I had left it before. She can be very sneaky," JJ said with a slight snigger.

"She's your mom, she has to be. Come on, let's get a move on or we will be late," David said taking JJ's backpack and swinging it over his shoulder.

"Mom said he wasn't going to be coming back anymore," JJ said, measuring the expression on David's face.

"Did she? Well, I would bet she is right," David said with no expression whatsoever.

"You made him go away huh?" JJ asked.

"No, he decided that on his own." I just made it painfully clear it would be a bad idea to bother you two ever again, David thought to himself.

"Yeah, and I suck at drawing!" JJ said.

"Hey, watch your mouth. Bec won't like it if you say things like that," David said carefully, making sure not to comment on the accuracy of JJ's statement.


Rebecca Thompson was a single mother. She was also an adoptive mother, sort of.

Rebecca was twenty-seven years old, five-five, and had a slender figure with all the right sized curves on her. She had straight long red hair, green eyes and freckles on her chest and a few on her face in all the places that just made you want to look even more.

She was also JJ's mother. A condom broke while her high school sweetheart was making love to her for the first time, resulting in JJ being conceived when she was sixteen. Her parents were none too happy about her 'situation' and demanded an abortion, which she flatly refused. Her sweetheart's parents were much more understanding. She married her sweetheart and she became Mrs. Adam Thompson.

It was a twist of fate that both her parents and Adam's died within a year of her marriage, leaving the couple alone with a son to raise.

Adam didn't cope well with the pressure of raising a child and becoming a working man so quickly after losing the only other family he had. He started drinking.

It was an oddity of life that Adam could drink so heavily and still be able to keep his job. Perhaps somewhere deep down he knew his family depended on his income as well as his wife's. Whatever the case, he brought home a paycheck, and combined with Rebecca's part time job as a cashier at a grocery store, they made enough to make ends meet.

When JJ was eight, things came to a head.

Adam's drinking had worsened and in his drunken stupor he crossed the line and hit Rebecca. Rebecca was astonished Adam would do such a thing, and tried to forget it. Everyone makes a mistake once, right?

When it happened again, she dismissed it the same way, but when JJ became the target of Adam's drunken haze, she knew she had to do something. What could she do? She was smaller than Adam's 6'5 frame and well under his two hundred thirty pounds.

That fateful day David came into their lives. He was a godsend.


She was coming home with JJ, walking through the shabby neighborhood until she came to her home, or perhaps shack was a better word for it. The place was a little better than nothing at all. She spotted someone passed out on small set of stairs that led to her door.

She half thought it was Adam too drunk to make it inside, but when she got closer she knew it wasn't Adam. The man was well muscled and handsome in a rugged kind of way. He was wearing only some tattered pants, which seemed to be slightly singed. A small bit of blood was dried on his chest and cheek and he looked a complete mess.

"Who's that?" JJ asked.

"I don't know, baby," she answered.

She slowly reached out with her foot and shook the man, who began to grumble. She did it again only with a bit more force this time.

She jumped back when his eyes literally snapped open. They were a barely discernable gray.

"What are you doing here?" Rebecca asked.

"I ... don't know," he said while holding his head in his hands.

"What's your name?"

"I'm ... It's ... I don't know," he said thoroughly confused.

"You have blood on you, are you hurt?"

"Don't think so. Ah, who are you?"

"I'm Rebecca. This is my house you're laying on."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to..." He abruptly stopped and fell to his knees holding his head and cursing at the immense pain he felt.

"Are you alright?" She asked, a tad frightened.

"It hurts... ," he said through clenched teeth.

Rebecca could never quite explain why she did what she did, but she never regretted doing it.

"Can you stand and walk?"

He nodded, still holding his head.

She moved to his side and helped him to his feet, and although shaky, he managed to stand solidly on his feet. Rebecca moved to open the door and guided the stranger in, with JJ leading the way, occasionally looking back at the stranger.

They sat him in a ragged, nearly broken down couch in what could only be a living room. Not much living was left in it, however.

The Stranger leaned his head on his knees and closed his eyes and in no time he was completely asleep.

He was rudely woken up when something or someone small hit him on the side. There was screaming as well.

He opened his eyes to see the little boy that was with the woman, Rebecca, coiled up on his side in the fetal position. He looked around to see the source of the screams and his blooded turned to ice.

An obviously drunken man was roughly pushing Rebecca around.

"You stupiiiid ... sluuut ... cheatin' 'hore!!!!" the drunk would slosh out.

"Adam! Stop! You're hurting me!"

Adam shook her more violently before slamming her into the wall.

It was surreal; she knew that if she hit the wall with the force he threw her with, she would in all likelihood die. Then she felt someone grab her. The stranger had grabbed her before she hit the wall.

Both of them looked over at Adam, who ignored Rebecca and the stranger and was now hell bent on hitting little JJ. Adam raised his fist into the air and brought it down.

Or at least he tried to; as his fist journeyed down, he was grabbed by his wrist and then by his throat and slammed into the opposing wall.

Rebecca eyed the stranger as he held Adam by his wrist and throat; a glance downwards revealed Adam's feet dangling a few inches off the ground.

"Never ... do ... that ... again," the stranger said.

Seeing the stranger so easily dominate Adam gave Rebecca the strength to do something she felt she should have done years ago.

"Adam, take your things and leave. I don't want you here anymore."

Adam made some gurgling noises, since his throat was still in the strangers steely grip.

"You should do as she says," the stranger said while staring into Adam's eyes.

Whatever Adam saw in his eyes sobered him up and he began to affirm he would do as she said.

They all watched as Adam quickly ran into the bedroom and put his clothes into a pair of plastic bags and left the house like a bat out of hell. JJ watched everything from behind the stranger's leg.

Rebecca looked at the stranger; he was a mess.

"Let's clean you up and get something warm in your stomach. It's the least I can do for what you did. I still don't know what to call you. For now, how about David; I always liked that name."

"That's fine," the newly appointed David said.

After a quick shower and a hair trimming, with semi clean clothes, David stood before his newfound family, hoping he could piece together the memory he had lost and that felt so far from him.


Rebecca shook her head to clear the day dream away. It seemed like only yesterday, but in fact two years had passed since that day. Things had drastically changed since then. David had no luck in recovering his memory. He had taken a job in construction to help pay his way while he recovered his memory or someone found him and knew who he was.

David's job was tough on him, but he never once complained, and his skin tanned but it never once burned.

Rebecca thought about the exceptional young man that had lived with her and JJ for the past two years and she felt a love, a love like she had for JJ.


Colonel Nathaniel Rhodes made his way through the army base in the desert area far from the city streets of Thoran. Colonel Rhodes hated meeting with the scientists. Glorified nerds was all they were, always so uptight if one neglected to call them Doctor; fucking bookworms in his humble opinion. He hated to admit it, but they had produced the promised super soldier.

And what a soldier.

They had increased speed, strength and healing ability, not to mention those freaky abilities with fire and water. They made the Elite soldiers of the government look like rookies, and the fact that they were his super soldiers ... well that just made Colonel Rhodes a despised man and a greedy arrogant one.

He walked into a large conference room where a group of scientist were waiting.

"You better have a damn good reason for calling me, Peterson," the Colonel snarled.

"It's Doctor Peterson, Mr. Rhodes," Peterson said.

The Colonel's eye twitched slightly and his faced colored in contained anger as he caught the shift in tone when Peterson addressed him.

"Doctor Peterson, what's wrong?" the Colonel grumbled out.

"We have an AWOL," Peterson said.

"WHAT!" the Colonel raged.

"One of the SuperSol's is no longer responding to our commands, and he is currently doing what he was ordered to do," Peterson said, clearly worried.

"You mean to tell me that it's currently watching the Michaels family?"

"Well, for now, yes," he said trying to look anywhere but at the Colonel.

"Spit it out."

"Well, there is a remote chance that it may decide to ... eliminate the targets..."

"Well, send out the other SuperSol's to bring its back here, pronto!"

"Sir, it was SuperSol 001 that went AWOL."

"Oh fuck," the Colonel said as he paled.

SuperSol 001 was the absolute perfect soldier. It could easily take on a company of marines and win, in what would amount to a bloodbath. This was one royal fuck up.

"What triggered this?" Rhodes demanded.

"Well, the most logical explanation would be ARSD, Aggressive Reprogramming Stress Disorder. It could be that something we dictated to Supersol 001 went very much against his nature before the reprogramming and it is somehow allowing him to bypass our commands. The problem is, his assignment," Peterson said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, his assignment was to watch the family. It is logical that once he learns what he believes to be the pertinent information, he will either return to us or see the family as a threat and eliminate them."

"SHIT! SHIT!" The Colonel raged.

"Okay, how about we send out the other Supersol's and have them watch the family and keep them safe even from one of their own. Even reprogrammed, I'm sure they understand what AWOL means."

"That will work up to a point, sir. If 001 decides to eliminate them, the other Supersols won't be able to stand for very long."

"Shit! I'm cursing the bastard that found the blood samples on the streets of Old Eden right now."

"Sir, I believe that was you."

"I know, fuck! Get the Supersol's on their way. The longer the family is unprotected, the more danger they are in," the Colonel said.

This was just fucking great. If the Supersol actually went through with it and killed the family, then he would be in a world of hurt as would his project. Hopefully, things wouldn't go down the shitter.


She closed her laptop and sighed.

Two years and nothing.

For two years she had used every resource available and nothing. Arrian's body was nowhere. She believed Larelle when she said Arrian was very much alive, even if they had not found him yet.

Helen was tired. It wasn't from running the company that Arrian had inherited; no it came from lack of clues or tidbits of Arrian. Malcolm ran the company and did a wonderful job. He also tried his hand at winning fair Helen's heart.

He failed miserably at the latter.

She heard some screaming coming towards her office door and smiled; here came her only solace from Arrian's unknown whereabouts.

Her door burst open and in ran two screaming and giggling children; the two were followed by Larelle and another toddler.

"Mommy! We home now!" screamed the excited pair.

"Sorry, but they kinda got away from me... ," Larelle said.

"That's the curse of having twins ... there's TWO of them, all the time," Helen said with amusement.

"You sure you aren't a Tarqa?" Larelle asked with amusement.

 
There is more of this chapter...
The source of this story is Storiesonline

To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account (Why register?)

Get No-Registration Temporary Access*

* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.

Close
 

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...

Storiesonline is for adult entertainment only. By accessing this site you declare that you are of legal age and that you agree with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.