NINE

Scarlet Sapphira dragged a sobbing girl and threw her before Akane then asked,"What the heck are you doing?"

Akane, who was applying some concealer, said,"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Planting stuff in my locker? Really? And of course you had to pick someone like her to do your dirty work, first off, if you want something done right, do it yourself, don't find some measley, pathetic wannabe to do it for you, or at least tell them exactly what to do, because if you miss a single detail, they'll be your downfall."

Akane looked at her tightly, smirked then said,"There's more than one way to kill a cat."

"Back at you Red."Scarlet Sapphira said.

Scarlet Sapphira left Akane as she tended to the young girl, passing her tongue through her jaw and biting her lip, she smirked as the next day, the girl was called to...' the office '.

***

Scarlet Sapphira walked through the knee depth snow with her brother after the longest single hour of her life spent during her second Mathlete meeting, she had to quit.

At home, Jack Johnson raced to his mother, who give him some hot chocolate, but Scarlet Sapphira declined the offer, she wasn't that cold anyway.

A young man woke up in a coarse note then looked at the woman silently sleeping beside him.

Barely dressed, he quietly got off the bed and took his clothes then sneaked out of the room, till he got into his motorcycle and rode like the wind.

He got to a hotel and checked in then went into his penthouse, where he removed his shirt, showing his ripped and scarred body the walked forward.

He slumped on the wide, semicircular couch and took out his phone, watching a video with no clear sound effects, he ran his fingers through his spiky dirty blonde hair then licked his slightly elongated and sharpened canine teeth, then smirked as someone placed their hands on his broad shoulders and kissed him on the lips from the back...

Amane then said to him,"You're late."

Lee sat beside him, snatched the phone and said,"You know the temple thing, it was basically impossible to sneak out, but I'm here now."

Amane remained silent till Lee said,"Come on babe, don't leave me hanging, please?"

Amane rolled his eyes till Lee touched him on the chest, then Amane chuckled as he made his way down, then abruptly held his hand and looked into his eyes, before they passionately kissed...

***

Scarlet Sapphira walked into the living room and met everyone looking at her, then got confused, till Junior officially bailed on her, as usual and Luis dismissed the triplets, it was left with her, her aunts, uncle, parents and brother, what did he do this time?

I began to speak,"Scarlet Sapphira, we have been gaining word from your school, not only from teachers, that you have been engaging in, self detrimental behaviours..."

She tilted her head and asked,"Is this about the hurting you in your sleep thing again?"

I fell silent as Rose continued,"You know you could tell us anything right? Well, we want you to be frank with us right now, are you..."

"Honey, let me handle this, Tabby cat, you've gotta stop using the powder room!"I yelled.

"What?"She asked with her feigned confused expression.

"Let me rephrase that, give us all your dough."

"You want me to give you my allowance?"

"You know what I mean, the scratch, candy, powder,..."

"Woah, woah, wait, you think I'm on drugs?!"She yelled.

Her reaction would have said it all, except for the fact that she was a good deceiver, I squinted my eyes as Rose spoke,"Scarlet Sapphira, we are getting worried about you, you don't sleep, you come home late, your entire school's afraid of you and we don't even know where you get your food from."

Scarlet Sapphira rolled her tongue in her jaw, bit her lower lip, then yelled,"You guys don't even know anything about me!"

"Well could you blame us?"Her mother asked,"You lie to us all the time, keep secrets and sneak out to who knows where every single night!"

We realized this was getting heated so wanted to separate the two red heads, but Scarlet Sapphira yelled,"It's normal for kids my age to hide things from their parents, that's just how things work!"

"And what about your cousins or your brother?"Rose asked again.

"Those three musketeers just have a conjoined cerebral cortex, they could never think for themselves, Junior's deficient in the average amount of intellect required for a human to survive and Jack, he's anything but normal, he's a freak!"

The triplets were hurt and Junior wanted to give that his big mouthed cousin a piece of his mind, till Thomasina dragged him along to their room, and Jack Johnson already had his hands over his ears, wincing and squealing in pain, not from the noise, but from all the negative emotions as Luis had it and yelled,"Scarlet Sapphira, go to your room!"

"Gladly, because that's where I was going in the first place!"

She flew up the stairs like a character in one of those bad CGI animated action movies and slammed her door so hard, we heard the floor rumble, then went to apologize to Jack Johnson, as he cried, he then said,"I can't hold it any longer! Scarlet Sapphira got rid of all her perfect test scores and hacked into the school's mainframe and all your phone's to keep you from knowing and got a score of two hundred and twelve on her IQ test but lied that she got ninety six, she's hidden all of this from us."

"But why?"Ruby asked.

"Didn't you hear her? Because I'm a freak and she doesn't want me to feel utterly useless because she's smarter than me, and I have proof..."

***

Scarlet Sapphira threw a walloping cross at a hard surface.

She screamed, throwing several punches and elbows at the tree trunk, till she began ramming it with her shins and knees, then sliced right through the remainder of the maple tree core with a down roundhouse kick.

She sat on the floor, shedding angry tears, then began dragging the crown of several feet in length, while...

A man pulled a string at Akane's neck from behind then she elbowed him in the obliques and when distracted, dropped to head him in the chin and throw him to the floor.

She slipped the wire from his grip, cutting him in the process and dodged a cross a monk threw at her, wound the string around his wrist then turned him backwards and bound his other, then jumped and drop kicked him from the back into another, doing a back butterfly kick to land.

She flowed from the flip into a double leg sweep, knocking one off his feet before he could jump, then did a back handspring and landed on his chest with her knees, before doing a macaco kick with her legs outstretched to the nearest one in orange and dodged a kick, slipping behind him and bashing him in the back of the head with her elbow and giving him a spinning back kick, before she did a b aerial and kicked the last man kneeling in the crown of the head.

She flung her hair backwards...

Scarlet Sapphira sliced through a plank of wood with an axe and grated through it with a hacksaw, hammering everything into place, before using her newly completed equipment, from a salmon ladder, all the way to a pair of uneven bars.

She did a spinning hook kick at the edge of a manikin wound her leg around it and threw herself down, pulling the wooden figure as well and holding it in a leg lock, then slamming an axe kick into the head, snapping the neck.

After an hour at it, she went to cool down in the lake...

Akane bowed before a man with jet black hair and sleek but muscular features and an intimidating look on his face.

He spoke to say,"Your form is flawed..."

She bowed then turned back to continue training as a monk looked at the man and said,"This is too much, even for me."

The man remained silent as he spoke,"Do you think her..."

"Don't you dare say that word, that person means nothing to me anymore..."

The old monk nodded, then left.