#Thursday Photo Prompt: Between
As Ono walked the path towards the cabin she couldn’t help but feel nervous. For several weeks Piper had been here with her computer trying to put the pieces from the story Ducky told her together. Her daily moods fluctuated from happy to angry to flat-out
confused. Ono entered the small home…who was she kidding the huge comfortable home in the Hamptons when she lived with her adoptive mother. She seemed to have arrived at the wrong time.
“ You fucking knew that I had a twin and you kept this from me?” Piper was not in a happy mood today. “OK honey it is not that simple as just not telling you. There are parts of this story I don’t have access to.” Her mother pleaded in her rich BBC accent. Both turned to Ono as she walked in the front door. Clearly, they didn’t hear her ring the doorbell. “Hello, Ono!” Both said in the fakest cheery voices they could. “I’ll make you a cuppa tea. “ Her mother replied. Ono flipped the scripted on both of them. “First, yes I love tea! Second, Piper, you are to be debriefed now. Can we speak in the living room?” Both retired to the very posh, very elegant living room.
Ono, a beautiful native of Osaka was the result of the very bad relationship between a US soldier and her mother Yosoku. Now the story most people here from her is that her father beat her mother daily until she broke and left them to escape to safety. The reality was less than magnanimous. Her mother had hands that danced across her father…Harold’s head day and night. Fearing for his daughter and with an enlistment coming to an end he slipped out of their apartment with their daughter and flew back home to Minneapolis where she grew up. Her mother rather relieved he and their daughter was gone simply went on with her life. Ono developed a brilliant talent for strategy playing online poker to keep her dad’s habit of bankrupting them. After her father got them both banished, he promptly got himself killed on his first mission stealing food. Ono learned from this humiliation and became everything her parent was not, smart, brave, a tactition, and most important a cool operator under stress. That last talent was about to be tested.
“OK, so Ducky gave you the fun news about your twin brother. I am here to compound the fun sit down dear.” She smiled sweetly as she said this. “Your boyfriend almost got me killed!” Ono provided her with the first lesson. “Every man you sleep with isn’t your boyfriend, and you were bait to draw out the agent tracking you.” Piper look right through her. “Well, genius they just put another one on me. He is right down the block.” Ono realized that time was short. Her adopted mother entered the room at that moment looked at Ono and disappeared. “OK Piper your brother, my bestie is now king. You saw it on the internet. We good so far.” Piper nodded agreement. “Alright, by the way, you SCUBA?” Piper nodded again getting nervous. “So your brother being King makes you what?” The piece that mattered clicked into place. “Fuck that makes me the heir until he has a kid.” Ono relaxed. “The bitch can be taught. So you gonna show me that beach house I am staying at before dinner?” Piper looked confused but the appearance of her mother with a large blue bag filled in the details. “ Yeah, we can go right now. Follow me.”
Leaving the back door the trio walked carefree as if just enjoying the grounds. As they walked her mother told Ono the history of the property and all the celebrities who have stayed in the beach house. As they approached the beach house they entered the boat shed and changed into the SCUBA gear in the bag. Ono donned her drysuit and rebreather, double-checked her lighted map and quietly they slipped into the surf.
The agent hearing nothing for quite some time entered the home weapon drawn. As he swept the home all looked perfectly normal right down to the tea service waiting to be poured. It was if they had just disappeared into nowhere.
On board, the submarine Ono finished her story. “Rachael, your birth mom she has a game she is playing. I have no idea what she is doing. Everyone on this team was assembled with the purpose of protecting you and your brother. We thought it was just protecting the throne. I don’t know now. Your birth mom isn’t being completely open with us.” Piper looked at her. She saw in her eyes the feeling of being used she felt as well. “You know we don’t have to play by the script like a bunch of puppets. This bitch just left me in a life that turned out to be fake. That pisses me off. How do we do this Ono?” Ono sat and thought. The anger that she has tried to suppress slowly came to surface and she used it to craft a very simple plan. “Piper, you are going to take my role as Eowyn’s executive officer. You are going to keep him alive and keep him surrounded by advisors who can help him. I, Ducky and the rest of the team are going figure out her goal.” And Ono went onto fill in the details. As they talked Pipers mothers spoke into her sat phone. “Rachael, its Beth, we may have a problem.”
