A/N; To understand Maize...you must first understand where she came from...

MAIZE 18 Years Ago

The girl was only five years old. Her clothes were old and dirty, wet too with the downpour of the falling rain. The cardboard cover she sat under—with her knees tucked tight to her chest and her face shied away from everything as she bowed into them—did very little to keep the downpour from reaching her small thin body.

At only five years old she hadn't known to question why she was there. Where her parents were. If she had any. For all the cold knew, she was an orphan—a word that barely held any meaning to her, as it didn't do much to give meaning to her state of being. She could only comprehend was the there and the then, all she knew was what she did have—no parents, no home, no food, and a need to just keep surviving on her own.

She was never born with street instincts, in truth, no one was. It came from experience—and she had picked up that experience before most children even began learning the basics of learning to read and write. She couldn't read or write then, but she knew how to do other things. Like to hide from the rain because the dampness brought sickness. Like to wait until just before the bread man hauled his tray of buns and left to get the other, before she took one. To make sure she only took enough that he wouldn't notice. She was resourceful, and had learned everything about living this way on her own ever since she had been left by the blurred faces in her mind that once must have taken care of her in her infancy years, told her to wait by a pair of steps—and didn't come back.

Left like a dog in the street that the owners could no longer be responsible for. She was no better than a stray.

Not to say she had ever thought of it as a bad thing. The street dogs were regarded as nothing but mongrels to everyone else, but there was one, a young pup, like her, abandoned, like her, and when she saw it, it let her pet it's head. Sometimes she would even give it half of her food.

The rain seemed endless, and despite how tightly she wrapped her arms around her small body, she still shivered. The people that passed up and down the street sidewalks—most holding umbrellas or papers over their heads—no one stopped. No one took notice of the cold little girl drenched in the rain. Until one did.

He was a tall man, hooded by the long dark coat that covered most of his body, but he pushed it down, raining dampening his hair and turning them to black spikes as he studied the little girl shivering in the rain. His skin was tan like her own, though they were of different ethnicity, and his eyes were dark—but not cold.

He gently, so as not to frighten her, crouch down before her, putting enough distance that he would not feel imposing or threatening. He asked, "Little one...are you crying?" His voice was so calm and even, the gentle flow of water with a slightly deep undertone.

She shook her head.

"Why not?"

The question was curious, especially to her. She had answered there was no need for more water, making him stare at her, and then chuckle ever so slightly, a warm sound that seemed to dull out the rain. He then removed the coat from his shoulders, seemingly unbothered as the rain began to soak the black fitted clothes beneath, and handed it to her. She merely stared. No one had given her anything before.

"You are shivering, it would be terrible if you were to catch a cold," he said, as if he could read her mind.

Hesitantly, she took it, still wary though he did nothing else but hand it to her. Then he stood, and with one last look, he turned and walked away.

For a moment her eyes lingered, watching the man as he headed down the wet streets, the warmth of the coat comforting to her cold body. And then she followed, jogging up to him with the jacket still wrapped around her and dragging on the ground as she slowed her pace to a walk at his side, looking up at him. He glanced down at her, but he did not shoo her away.

The rain soaked them both.

After walking down the ends of the street and turning, with her just beside him, he asked her, "Do you like the rain?"

She shook her head.

He didn't seem fazed by her lack of speech. "I like the rain. Do you know why?"

Again she shook her head.

"Because after the rain comes a beautiful sky." The warm tone in his voice had her gazing up at the man, wonder filling her gaze as she met his eyes. He was still staring down at her with consideration. "But until then, do you plan to come with me as I go to somewhere the rain is not?"

She nodded, but then shied away. "But I do not know you," she said weakly. Unknowing to her, he was nodding in slight approval of the young girl's instinct.

"My name is Chen," he said softly. "What is your name?"

"Maize."

Chen Daiyu had been heading back to his renting first-floor hotel room when he came across the little girl called Maize. Their encounter was brief, he was not a man known for showing kindness out of the goodness of his heart, not with his line of work. But in the child, he saw something worth acknowledging—a fighting spirit, a small fire burning within the eyes of the young girl. A little ember.

And what the girl did not know yet as he offered her a warm meal but would soon find out as he became completely honest with her, was that Chen Daiyu was a bounty hunter—a name that didn't mean much to her then, but would in the future.

Even in the home of a stranger, though he meant no harm to her, she was both wary and confident, radiating with an air of fierceness that most children of her age could not possess. She was matured and hardened by her upbringing on the streets, and it showed. He learned from her that she had no family, no last name, no knowledge of exactly where she came from. It was eventually the case when the bounty hunter Chen Daiyu decided he would take the girl in as his own. And when he proposed the idea, she accepted.

* * *

A few years later and Maize had already adopted the name Daiyu as her own. Maize Daiyu. The daughter and apprentice to the international bounty hunter Daiyu, the only name known of him—but she only ever knew him as Chen.

It was in those years that she began to learn how to fight. With her time spent being raised by her mentor, she had outgrown shyness and the wariness of the streets entirely, now a lively young girl with an eagerness to learn. Her teacher's time was always divided, for days at a time, he would leave on jobs as he told her, shielding her from nothing. Especially not the truth of his work as a hunter. Nor did she want him to, even at seven, she was fascinated by it all. It was when he would return that he would spend time training her, teaching her the art of martial arts as well as how to read and write.

They travelled much, and she got to see much of the world because of it. He always instructed that while he was away—working—she would be tending to her studies in geography, maths, and language, as well as whatever else his teachings regulated. And when he taught her to fight, she was always too eager for her own good.

"Patience now, little ember," he would always say, calling her by the name that had come as a normalcy for her, one she really liked.

He raised her that way for years. As a parental figure, both he and she knew he was far from ordinary, but that never mattered to her because he gave her a home, and he gave her a sense of purpose beyond just surviving alone. She loved him, and though he sometimes corrected her when she referred to him as father, eventually came the time where he didn't any longer. He told her she was just as much a daughter to him as one born of his own blood. He was not married and had no other children as far as she knew—she was enough.

* * *

"Dammit," she grumbled—now at twelve years—as she once again tried to lodge her blade into the wooden wall in front of her but only managed to have the knife bounce off and clatter to the ground.

"Try again." Chen's voice came from behind, where he watched her progress steadily.

"Why? It's pointless, I can't do it."

His eyes narrowed at those words, and when he strode over to her she knew she had made a mistake in letting her frustration get the better of her mouth.

A blade was in his hands from where he always kept several in his person at all times, and he said nothing as in a flick of a movement, it was across the room and embedded in the wall across from them, striking to wood at eye level. Maize only watched in awe and silence.

"You have seen it, you can do it. There is nothing pointless about practice, you do not learn otherwise." He took a step back and offered her another blade, his entire expression as calm and patient as ever. "Now, try again."

* * *

He said he would be back. And Maize waited.

They were in a state city—Los Angeles—having travelled over the world again for another employment of Chen's. Maize had been thrilled because she had always wanted to see the skies of LA. Based on the movies; that was where a lot of the cool stuff happened. Now at sixteen, she knew more than well not to base all her associations off of what she saw on the screen of a television, but still, Chen had promised he would take her walking around to see the sites.

'As soon as my job is done,' he had said just before he patted an affectionate hand over her head and called her little ember—though evidently, not as 'little' as before; as she had grown over the years and was nearing the age of adulthood. Soon enough.

She had gone on other missions with her teacher before, but he told her not tonight. Tonight was something he would have to take care of alone.

She trusted him. She always trusted him.

It was a few hours later than the time he said he would return—but that was not always uncommon.

He said he would be back.

She trusted him.

And Maize waited.

* * *

November 21st, 20xx, the bounty hunter Daiyu was given a job.

One which he did not return from.

* * *

It was days before Maize even found out—when a man dressed in a dark raincoat and a solemn expression knocked on the door of the place they had been staying. After several tries, Maize finally opened the door and greeted the man—with a knife to the throat. He immediately said he liked her spirit. But then he gave her the news.

The man was an associate that said worked with the organization that her mentor had been employed with and doing important jobs for before his death.

Maize had not let herself cry, not in front of this stranger. But inside her soul and heart were shattering apart.

He said he would be back.

But he hadn't. He hadn't made it back.

The man said nothing as she fell silent for what felt like hours, simply standing by the open door, knife still in hand—encased in a grip so tight as if her life would leave if she even dared loosen her grip. But what was hours to her may have only been a few extended moments. The man said he offered her his sympathies. He said his organization was interested in Daiyu's pupil. He said that they were free to offer her a place with them, to take over for her mentor, gave her a new purpose to follow. She accepted.

He was gone.

She accepted.

Because she was now alone.

When the man asked her her name, she hesitated to answer.

"Daiyu."

And that was the only name she ever went by for the next several years to come.

* * *

The organization she was so-called pulled into working for, was an LA syndicate gang that dealt high on the list of criminal organizations within the chains spread out throughout the city.

And she worked for them. She found a place there. They taught her a few things that Chen never did. Or that maybe he would have eventually had he still been alive.

And since the day she had been brought to them, she had worked loyally for five years. She hunted who they said, was well paid by their accounts, and she met others, some she eventually opened up to. Got close to.

A certain young assassin no older than herself had also been present with the gang. There even before she was. She hunted only—while he killed. But it was all for the good of the gang. In that sense, they were serving for the family that had given them a place. They found similarities between one another, and that gave way for more. A brother she never had. A sister he didn't know he wanted. Each one of them found something in each other.

He was there the day she was brought to the gang, from the very beginning.

And he would be there for the end.