Any 2 People In The World

Ayrfen woke after her eight hours of rest, still nude and sticky or she might have doubted her own memories of the night that had passed. She pondered the Shinobi, the Ninja whom had come in and taken her work and a share of her virtue. That virtue that she kept to herself since right after graduation and the celebration she had joined with the much older graduates. She had not even asked for her new lover’s name, but gut instinct told her that she and he would meet again, and soon.
She leaped up and pulled the sheets off the bed. Her dancers muscles were protesting the fact that they had been hard used along with everything else. She stuffed the sheets in the laundry basket for later cleaning in the basement laundry. Then came a blessedly warm shower and some soothing rub that eased all her external muscles complaints.
She ignored the minor pings and whines of her more internal ones as a consequence. Ayrfen supposed that they would complain less when properly conditioned, just like the rest of her muscles. That thought of just how the conditioning could be accomplished made her smile slightly. This crack in her self discipline was wide, but no one else would notice it as it was well hidden. Only her Shinobi could or would want to seek it out.
The next thing she must do, she did not look forward to. She braided her hair carefully into a many braided style she often sported in public. Then she put on a severe navy colored woman’s dress suit complete with nylon stockings and high heels that matched perfectly. This outfit did not suit her internal nature but it was what was expected of her when coming in to work. It was rare that she didn’t just do her work at home, but this report required her presence.
One should be present when one is terminated as she suspected she would be. They would not hold it personally against her she knew. They would merely fire her as the project was indefinitely tabled without all her data, and they had no more uses for her.
Ayrfen smiled again in the elevator up to the main offices of the C.E.O. She would merely seek employment with the ones whom had hired her intrepid Shinobi. They would need her in any case since Ayrfen was the only one who could break the coding programs that allowed the actual data to be accessed. She had designed them after all.
Terminated from her former employment she left the building and went shopping to find some more music for her new dance disc. She was growing weary of the old one by now and it needed to be replaced. Despite her purchasing of things that made her life more comfortable she had not wasted any money and could be all right for about eight months before she actually needed to find a job.
Her music shopping over, with a rather dissatisfying result, she went to get food. Ayrfen did not eat her own cooking very often because she would have to keep actual perishable foods in the house if she did. She often did not remember these foods until they went bad, and made her refrigerator smell horribly. The Chinese place down the street from the music store was so accustomed to her visits that they were already making her order up five minutes after she arrived.
“Double the usual please.” She requested. This earned her a raised eyebrow from the cashier but nothing else was said and the double order was presented fifteen minutes later. She went home and set her bag down in the chair by the door. She had put half of every food item into her large eating bowl when he finally appeared.
“Join me? You will have to eat out of the cartons though, I only have the one bowl.” He settled down without a word and accepted the chopsticks she handed him. The food was consumed in silence, just as both preferred it. Nether one felt obligated to make senseless conversation in the presence of the other.
“You were terminated today.” It wasn’t a question but she nodded anyway.
“As I expected I would be, yes.” She added. “Without the project going full speed they had no need of me, and I had not been friendly enough for anyone to wish to keep me around out of concern for me.” She sat down beside him on the pile of cushions that served as her couch and sighed.
“Your place at my own employers has been assured by your cleverness.” She looked up at him and realized that he had a smirk on his face. “I did not even notice all the securing programs. Perhaps before I find myself much deeper in this world of corporate espionage I should have you teach me how to recognize such things.”
Ayrfen chuckled. “If you ever see such things again you will be stealing from me. I do not ever give up the secrets to my encryption programs. However I can show you how to see the programs of other more common types and overcome them.”
“Some other time perhaps. I have a mission I must complete and only a few hours to spend with you until I must leave for a while.” His while would be longer then that of anyone else, she knew. Her newly warmed heart entirely depended on his presence in her life. She told him this with a trembling voice and he acknowledged the facts as she presented them.
“I too have found myself in that place despite the short amount of time we have been personally acquainted. I will only be gone for six weeks give or take.
They will be expecting your arrival tomorrow at my employers. Go directly to the engineering department. The chief there has been authorized to hire you and grant you a four year contract.
Others of my martial group will be watching over you and the other engineers to prevent any retaliation. If I have not returned in twelve weeks consider me lost and do what ever you must to recover.” That said he pulled Ayrfen close to him and kissed her deeply.
Their clothing slid free and the weapons clanked as they hit the floor. Ayrfen dragged him with her to the shower and she turned the water on bone meltingly hot. The touch of his hands and the teasing of his lips and tongue soon had her moaning and purring in pleasure. She rested her head against his strong chest while she allowed herself to feel everything that his touch and his caresses did to her.
A soft noise of someone entering without permission by breaking the lock made her startle. Her Shinobi had heard it also. He stepped out of the shower and found ready to hand a weapon of his that he had missed the last time when leaving her home. The small dagger was not what he would have chosen for facing the unknown foe, but it was better then nothing.
Her arms slid around him at the waist and he thought for a moment she was going to restrain him out of misguided concern for his survival. It wasn’t so however. She merely wound a towel around his waist and tied the corners in a strong knot over his left hip. “Won’t do much against cutting objects but it’s better then going out naked” She whispered against his ear. Then she stepped away from him.
He went out into her bedroom and found that place at least to be secure. He moved to the door and he heard a sound behind him that shocked him. It was the sound of a shotgun round being slid into the chamber. Obviously his lover had taken her own safety into consideration since the early morning. She stalked behind him, covering wherever he wasn’t with the roving barrel of her weapon. Her footfalls were absolutely silent on the plush carpeting. Despite his having nothing to do with her abilities or her grace, he felt proud of his lover and her impressive skills.
They made their way past the office and down the hall to her living area. Standing there grinning, his arms crossed over his chest was Nauterino, a fire Shinobi of his Martial group. “Well Heito it looks like it was getting hot and heavy in here before I showed up to break up the party. You know better to go out and get laid before a mission. You know what the leader thinks of that and how he believes just having had some shatters focus beyond all safe levels.”
His little lecture was interrupted by the angry snarl of his love. Ayrfen stepped around him and hit Nauterino in the jaw with the but of her gun, hard. He flew back against the wall and slid down onto her couch cushions.
“What the hell! What is up with your Bitch Heito! She fucking hit me!” Nauterino snarled as he stood rubbing his jaw to try and slow the spread of the pain.
“You break into my house, interrupt me and my lover, threaten my well being and mental state just by being here now and you wonder why I hit you? Idiot. If I had to kill you in order to continue being intimate with Heito, the only person I have ever met who is enough like me to understand me at all, I would. You had better believe you would be really well toasted wheat little man and quick.” Ayrfen snarled. Her voice was low, deadly, and full of ice.
“Strange that you should mention toasting anything.” Nauterino whispered hotly. His fire welled up in his spirit and he aimed it like a arc of fluid he intended to splash her with. Nauterino’s power was such that she would be melted to the bone by the furious flame Shinobi before she could take her next breath.
Heito jumped to intercept it but never made it, something very cold held him back. The spirit of ice, that by investing a part of itself inside him when he was born had made him a naturally talented Shinobi restrained him and he saw why. Her power had awakened fully at that critical moment. She was indeed more like himself then perhaps any other mortal being on the face of the earth. Her gift was as his, a gift of ice and Nauterino’s powerful liquid flame was frozen by her elemental magic. Ever so slowly the ice was spreading back toward the suddenly cold and shaking flame ninja.
“I told you that I would kill you if I had to didn’t I? Did you think that since I was female I would mean it any less?” His lover smiled a smile that he had often found on his own face during the days of his training. It was nether nice nor friendly as smiles went but more like the smile of a shark. It always appeared just before the deadly strike. Nauterino knew that smile also. He had sassed Heito once when he had first come to train and spent the rest of the day incased in a block of ice with only his nose and mouth left uncovered. That smile had been the only warning.
“Please forgive me Ice Lady!” Nauterino pleaded. He understood well that how skillfully he begged might mean his life. The powers of ice untrained often meant a period of insanity while they were in use.
His love cocked her head to one side and the smile grew more wicked for the flash of an instant. Had he been any less well trained then he was Nauterino would have pissed himself at that moment.
“Hmm? Should I?” She murmured aloud. It was obviously a question Ayrfen asked no one but herself. “Nah!” She finally decided and then she pulled the power back into herself. The last manifestation of her pure power was a ragged blade of ice. She held it in her hands and stared at it for a moment. Then she pressed the blade flat against her torso and it melted into the flesh. It had disappeared as if the blade had never been, without so much as a drop of water remaining.
***
Ayrfen sat on her kitchen stool sipping at her mug of hot cocoa. She had made a pot of hot water and had served tea to the shivering flame Shinobi, the instant cocoa to herself and Heito had hot cider. The blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders to spare the modest ninja any embarrassment made her fell better. It was one of the fleece ones often referred to as Mexican blankets by her college friends. The pattern of a winged horse surrounded by clouds lay over her back so that it’s wings seemed to move with her every breath.
She had thought that Heito and herself might go ahead and make love anyway. Yet now that she thought of it she did not want to unsharpen Heito’s focus in any way. After a long kiss she had gone back and put on her exercise clothes. A clear signal that he wasn’t getting any for a while until he returned.
***
“She’s clever when she isn’t angry. Or is it that she can’t be angry at all just like you eh Heito?” Ayrfen and Heito both nodded at the same time.
“I fit the classic definition of stone cold. If I hadn’t thought better of it a little while ago I would have been a stone cold killer. I really don’t like that idea Nauterino. Please tell all your martial group that unless I am screaming for help or unresponsive they had best knock like normal people and wait to be let into my home.” The mild look of concern on her face would be shaking horror on anyone else’s features. She really was just like Heito, emotionally as well as in the kind of power given to her.
Nauterino nodded and continued to sip his tea. He would not recommend that any others seek to force entry into this particular home. He held no grudge left over from abuses in his training days that would make him wish them frozen solid.
Heito’s woman got up once her cup of cocoa was finished and rinsed it in the sink. She had very few dishes. Most persons even single men had a set for serving at least four, that way they did not need to wash them more then every other day. She had three large mugs one platter that looked like the cross between a bowl and a dinner plate out of which she had obviously recently eaten and her tea kettle which looked to be a copper affair about a century old very well used. There weren’t even any of the western forks or spoons beyond the ones she used for the tea and other drinks. Such a simple life she lived, though he would bet that had he made the bedroom a more opulent taste would have revealed itself to his curious eye.
He and Heito left, slowly going down the stairs like ordinary folk. They left and the cracks in Heito’s discipline were wide to his flame wielding brother. He actually looked back and up when they came out the first floor doors of his woman’s building. Nauterino grinned but made sure Heito did not see it. Once time a day surviving certain doom by the barest of threads was enough for almost anybody, himself included!

Ayrfen found herself tired out. Having only done a few things this day, it had to be emotional stress. From her far distant ice field she had not often been subject to this problem, but she supposed that with her defenses down now it was entirely possible. Not just possible but likely to occur and often. The life of a warrior’s woman was like this. To be troubled, to suffer anxiety and outright fear for the one she loved. She loved him so and had just learned his given name today. Not that she thought names mattered much. It just meant her cries would no longer be wordless in passion with him.
She worked, she danced when she wasn’t at work until she couldn’t stand up and had to crawl aching into a shower and bed. She bent her mind to all the challenges that yet remained in her project. Even so she could not drive the nightmares away. Moments of dark soundless touchless horror that felt like they grabbed her heart with steel fists lined across the palms with barbed wire.
She would wake panting and nearly heaving up the contents of her stomach out of fear. This lasted all of the six weeks he was supposed to be gone. Then she was at work again after a brief hiatus for the construction of the prototypes. They held definite promise. Even Heito’s Martial group leader, the Stone Shinobi Miyoshi thought so. Nauterino had told her his leader was obsessed with weapons of quality and had quite a collection. She now had a prototype as well. Part of her contract was to own one of the weapons she made every time. That was the deal. Usually she got the first fully functional prototype for her own.
“He’ll be back soon. The success report came in a few days ago with a note that he had to mop up then he would be returning home. He hasn’t used that word before. I am led to think that he means he is coming home to you. You are his home now as much as he will try to deny it. Good luck to you both.” Miyoshi informed her.
Ayrfen just smiled softly at her lover’s leader. “Heito and I met on the ice fields last night. He will be here in a day or so to retrieve me. Then we are pulling a good vanish for about a month.”
Miyoshi chuckled aloud. He, unlike Heito and herself, did not allow his element to effect his gentle cheery and kindly personality. It was not currently to his advantage to do so. “Try to not fuck each other into oblivion dear girl. I need him back eventually.” He teased good naturedly. Before she met Heito such a tease would have gotten him the very coldest of cold shoulders. She would have written him off automatically for teasing her about sex or her sexuality in particular. Now she just chuckled evilly herself before flashing a victory hand sign at him and walking down the hall.
“I’ll try not to put to much of a strain on his heart Miyoshi! I promise!” She called back over her shoulder. Then she went around the corner into her cubical style office and prepared to leave for her vacation. For some reason she slid the prototype out from under her computer station, holster and all, and stuffed it into her duffel with her month’s worth of clean things. Gut instinct spoke to her rarely and when it shouted so loudly, as it did now, Ayrfen always listened to it.