---

 
 
Ninja Girl - Part 1
 
Night was falling, and it was time for dinner at Willow Springs Orphanage. Riley was sitting alone in the attic, eating some bread, cheese and cold meat stolen from the kitchen. Riley didn't like eating with the other boys, and he didn't want to watch TV or play video games with them afterwards either. In fact, he didn't like being with the other boys at all.

The other boys seemed to have the same kind of feelings towards him, too, so they generally just ignored each other happily. Thus, most of the time he spent at the orphanage he was there, in the attic, or in the fields surrounding it. Sometimes, even on the top of a tree.

He sometimes went to the nearest town and spent some time with some of the kids down there, or just sitting in the town's square or the local market, watching the people. Some of the grownups sometimes talked with him, or they gave him some small toy or something to eat, but they were so used to seeing him there that no one really gave him a second thought.

Riley was nine, slender and a bit short, lithe and flexible, but also strong and tough enough to be able to make the other boys at the orphanage leave him alone. He had long dark hair, but so unkempt and tangled that it didn't have any appeal at all. He himself was usually so dirty and ragged that sometimes he seemed more a beggar than one of the boys of the orphanage.

The orphanage was nice, and the carers were mostly okay, but Riley just didn't want to be there, he didn't feel like he belonged there, and he did all he could to make that clear. There had been a time when the carers forced him to behave, to be with the other boys, to follow the orphanage's timetable and its rules. Every time the kid had been forced to behave, he had retaliated angrily, always causing as many problems as he could. He had been punished in every possible way, but that didn't seem to discourage him at all. At last, they had almost given up on him. He was usually left on his own, and he didn't cause any problems to anyone anymore. It was a fair agreement.

Riley was used to moving freely, both inside and outside the building. He knew every hole and hideout, and could move extremely quietly, even climbing or crawling. The other boys said that he could get in and out of anywhere, without making a noise, he agreed with them.

He never had any parents, siblings or any kind of family. The police found him abandoned in a local waste dump, with no clues about his origins, and he had lived all his life in the orphanage. He would really have liked to meet his parents sometime, just to tell them to their face, how much he hated them. But that was probably never going to happen.

He was given the name Riley by the orphanage staff, and the judge had assigned the orphanage's name as his last name. He was, thus, Riley Willow.

He had never liked the clothes provided by the orphanage, they constantly reminded him that he didn't really belong anywhere. He hated everything related to the orphanage, to his parents and even to himself. He used to go to the town and get his own clothes, usually from charity, or hand-me-downs from some other children in town. He liked getting clothes for girls, they usually felt softer and nicer, but, on the other hand, the boy's clothes could usually withstand better the effects of rough play.
 
 
He finished his dinner, and then put on his hiking boots, a pair of old ragged jeans, a comfy t-shirt and a black and pink hoodie and decided to get out of the building. He didn't want to face anyone there. Even though there was no good reason for him to loathe all of them, he just did. He finally went out through a window in the attic, and then down using a drainpipe.

The sky was clear, and a nice crescent moon lit up the fields. He decided to go to the woods, then maybe to the town. He was used to improvising his route, not planning beforehand too much and usually just deciding on the fly where to go. He arrived at a clearing that he knew well and threw himself on the grass. The clearing was, in fact, an almost unused country road. It was a bit cold, but he didn't mind at all. He felt free.

He had almost fallen asleep, when he was woken up by the noise of some motor vehicle. He slid behind a tree and saw a big black van coming along the road. Its motor was unusually quiet, and it had no lights. It was obvious that whoever it was, didn't want to be seen. It wasn't moving very fast, probably to keep the noise low. He decided to follow the van; he could probably match its pace if he walked fast, as long as he used some shortcuts where the road had to take a longer path.

The van stopped near Redwood Manor, one of the most important buildings around, standing majestically on the top of a hill. They were probably closer than a mile from the building, still hidden by the trees.

The doors of the van opened, and several people came out of it. They were dressed in black, with their heads totally covered. He couldn't see them properly in the dark, but from the way they moved they seemed to be women. In no time, they took three motorbikes out of the van, climbed on them, started their engines, which were also unusually quiet, and off they went, without lights, same as the van.

Another woman stayed outside the van, as if waiting for something, or just looking around, while one more person stayed inside it, probably in case they had to get away quickly.

Riley would really have liked to get closer to the van, his curiosity was killing him, but there was no way to do it without being noticed. Unexpectedly, after some quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes, what seemed to be the driver started talking into a walkie-talkie, or something like that.

Riley couldn't hear anything from where he was, but he could sense that something seemed not to be going right. He still didn't know if the driver was a man or a woman, but as the rest of them were women, he expected her to be one too. She came out of the van, talked to the other woman outside, and then they took another motorbike and a small 4-wheeled vehicle out of the van, kind of a quad. They got on their vehicles and left, following the path the other women had taken.

It was Riley's chance. He ran towards the van, opened its back doors, and entered. There were quite a lot of tools all around, as well as electronic devices and what seemed to be different kinds of weapons. He definitely couldn't make out what most of the things were.

He was about to get out of the van to inspect the driving compartment, when he suddenly heard the noise of the engines coming back. He had to run or hide, no time for thinking.

He decided to hide.
 
 
There were some blankets in the deeper part of the van, behind the tools, and Riley was quite small. He was also used to being able to hide almost anywhere without being found. He ran there, hid himself in an impossibly small space, and got covered with the oldest and dirtiest blankets, as it was less likely that they would use them. In a moment, they were already back. They put the quad and the motorbikes inside the van, got inside themselves and closed the door, then the van started moving.

Even though they didn't turn on any lights, they didn't seem to have a problem managing there. They were probably wearing some device that allowed them to see in the dark or something. As Riley couldn't even risk leaving his hiding place to have a look, he just couldn't see anything at all.

They didn't talk very much, they seemed to be concerned about something, but never said exactly what. One of them had been apparently hurt, but it didn't seem to be too serious. Probably by a bullet, but Riley really wasn't sure about it, with all those monosyllables, whispers and unfinished sentences.

The trip was quite long, longer than he would have expected, probably over an hour. Of course, the van wasn't exactly moving at full speed, and they were going through country roads, so it might not have been too far away, after all.

At some point, the van stopped, the doors were open and the women got out. Riley waited. He didn't want to risk being discovered.

Before he even dared to start moving, he heard a voice, and his heart sank.
 
 
"Come on, kiddo, I know you're there. You can get out now."

Riley poked his head out from under the blanket, and looked through a little slit, he was still hidden behind some stuff.

"We don't have all day. Come on, get out. Don't worry, nothing bad will happen."

He finally got out from under the blanket and stood up. One of the women was there, at the door, looking at him. She was still totally covered in black. He tried a little smile, and noticed that she seemed to be smiling back. He got out of the van.

"How did you know I was here?", he dared to ask. "I didn't do anything that could be noticed."

"We're not beginners, you know?", she answered. "We knew you were there from the first moment."

"Come here, let me see you", she added.

Riley got closer to her. She took off her night vision glasses, and looked at him with bright green eyes.

"You don't take very much care of yourself, do you girl?", she asked. He just shook his head and shrugged. The woman seemed to have confused him for a girl. He didn't really mind.

"So, what do we do with you now? Where do you come from?", she asked again.

She seemed a nice woman, but he also knew she could be a dangerous one. He started to explain to her who he was and where he came from. Except that he was a boy. She seemed to think that Riley was a girl, and he thought it might be better not to correct her. As Riley was telling his story to her, she was just listening and nodding. She put a hand on his shoulder and took him away to keep talking. The rest of the women were taking care of the stuff that was still inside the van.

"What do you think we can do with you now, Riley?", she asked.

"Dunno", replied Riley. He really didn't know what options he had. Were they going to return him to the orphanage? Were they leaving him here? Were they taking him with them? Would they kill him? All those thoughts were inside his head, when she asked that question.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's get inside the trailer."

He looked in front of him and saw an enormous truck. The other women were putting the motorbikes, the quad and all the rest inside it. The van was apparently going to be kept hidden inside a fake cabin in the woods. Riley got into the trailer, followed by the woman who had been questioning him. She led him to a small living area and sat him on a couch. He was so tired he almost fell asleep, straight away.

"You want to bring her with us?", asked another of the women. "Are you crazy?"

"At least until we know what to do with her. She's not going to be a problem", answered the first one. "She seems to be a nice girl", she added. "I don't expect her to give us problems. She might even be able to help us at some point."

"Well, she's your pet, you take care of her", replied the other woman, a bit annoyed. "I don't want to spend my time changing diapers."

"Yeah. I'll take care of her, don't worry."

At some point, Riley fell asleep.
 

---

 
 
End of Part 1
 
Thanks to Amrad, Sephrena and everyone that helped me fix most of the grammar and ortographic mistakes in the text, as well as improve its layout. The remaining mistakes are still my fault, and I apologize for them.