彼女の生命を救うこと
(Rescue Her Life)
The moon was a deep red over the village of Bekku, Japan. The wind blew gently on the sleeping village carrying a warning of something to come, unheard by any of the villagers. Out of the forest a black mass moved slowly upon its unsuspecting victims. It soon had completely over taken the village and the trepidation of death engulfed the villager that had hit the warnging gong. And hysteria and chaos ensued. After no more than an hour the darkness vanished back into the forest and the village was nothing more than a smoldering pile of rubble and ash. Only one child survived that night, shielded by a red sword that lay in the ashes in front of him.
Dan jolted up his eyes wide and sweat rolled down his forehead , the hair on his neck were standing strait up and his breath was like that of a panting dog. Why does that dream keep coming back? He rubbed his temples and looked over to where Emi was sleeping; a peaceful look was on her face. Dan turned back and stared at the faint glow of the fire that reflected off the blade of the red sword which lay next to him. The faint glow reminded him of the first time that he'd seen it glow like that. It was when he met Chiyo a girl with snow white hair and ice blue eyes that seemed to cut right through you. At the time both his sword and her medallion had began to glow for a short time then returned to normal. At the time it seemed like nothing, but now Chiyo was missing and that just brought back depressing memories. That morning Dan and Emi started up the steep pass of the Death Mountains. "Do you think we'll find a clue at the top of this thing?" she asked in a somewhat annoyed tone. Her hands were behind her head picking at what seemed to be an imaginary knot.
"No, but it might give us some more answers."
"Well that's reassuring." She replied gazing up at the clouds. Suddenly the air got thick and heavy. A dark fog started to descend on the two travelers who were now back to back weapons drawn, eyes darting every which way trying to see what was causing this abnormal occurrence. Two figures began to emerge from the fog their features resembled that of a hooded person with two spear like arms and one single eye that glowed an eerie green color. These were earth elemental ringz. Emi dashed at one and buried her knife in to the creature's arm and forced the E-ring into the side of the mountain. The creature let out a raptor like cry and flung Emi from its arm and strait into a tree which snapped in half. Emi rolled to avoid being crushed by the tree. "Curse you!" she cried and ran headlong at the E-ring who in turn sent a huge rock flying out of his arm which she sliced in half with ease. Meanwhile Dan was busy dodging rocks the size of mini vans from the ringz's two spear like arms.
"Why does it have to be earth ones? Why not fire or air?!" he muttered as he flipped over a rock and skipped over the next one then stabbing the E-ring in the eye then twirling it around like a shot-put ball and slamming the creature into the cliff side. The E-ring gave out a deafening cry and exploded into a green light and black smoke leaving behind a small emerald ring. Dan pocketed the ring and looked over to see how Emi was doing. She was done with her E-ring and was sitting on the fallen tree her red eyes gazing intently at him. She gave a slight smile, hopped up and started up the path with her hands behind her head gazing up at the sky and watching the clouds. After what seemed like a never ending road they finally made it to the top. A small Buddhist temple stood in the middle of the wide plain with flowers and a Zen garden to the back left of the temple.
"Well we're here now what?" Emi asked looking around at the peaceful scenery of the temple and the other mountain tops surrounding it.
"Well lets go inside and see what we find shall we?" Dan said
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you."
"What? Who said that?!" Dan said spinning around franticly looking for the source of the voice.
"I did." Out of the shadow of a nearby tree a man appeared his brown hair flowing gently in the breeze. His eyes were a hazel color and seemed to be gazing off in to the distance. He wore a black robe with the symbol for death on the right side over his heart. He stepped out into the sunlight and walked over to where Dan and Emi stood. "Why don't we want to go into the temple?" asked Emi.
"Because it's teeming with those ringz creatures," the man replied. He pointed to the entrance of the temple," the minute you get in there they're going to ambush you and there's probably a whole colony of those things in there." Dan turned to him; his gaze seemed to look deep into the man's eyes. He stepped back slightly as if Dan was going to attack him. Dan stretched out his hand and gestured for Emi to do the same. "I'm Dan and this is Emi," Dan said.
Emi smiled "nice to meet you….."
"Daiki,"
"Nice to meet you Daiki" Emi said with an overly happy expression. "So why are you here?"
"I'm here to see if this crystal orb thing that I've heard about is true or not. One of the creatures yelled it at me before it died." Daiki said in a soft and emotion less tone.
Dan looked directly at him "what did you say?"
"A crystal orb," Daiki repeated. Dan continued to stare at him, his mind raced with the thought of how this could be related to Chiyo's disappearance at hands of the ringz. "Daiki I would like to ask you to come with us to seek out this crystal orb. I believe that it would benefit both of us if you did."
"Sure that's better than just getting killed on my own." He replied coldly.
"HEY! Be more positive! You don't have go if you don't want to and neither of us would let you die alone anyways." Emi retorted in a more violent and caring tone than Dan had ever heard before. She turned to Dan; her red eyes seemed to have some underlying emotion that he could not figure out. Suddenly there was an explosion from the east side of temple. About twelve fire and water ringz's shot out of the side of the temple and landed in the Zen garden. They were followed by a woman in a pink flower kimono with a gunblade outstretched in front of her. She let out five shots into the group of ringz obliterating most of them. The rest tried to run, but were quickly over taken by her and eradicated till they were all nothing more than glowing rings. "Holy…" Dan started say. But was cut off by a bullet that whizzed by his left check. The woman was quick to follow after the bullet with the blade pointed right for Dans' heart. CLANG! The sound of two metal objects hitting hard echoed throughout the valley. Dan opened his eyes to see Emi in front of him her knife holding back the gunblade. CLICK. Dan eyes went wide "Emi watch out!" but it was too late. The shot cut right through Emis' right shoulder.
"AHHHH!" her cry was blood curdling. She fell to the ground both her hands grasping at the wound. Dan stood there frozen his pallid as his mind flashed back to the night in the village and was inundated with all the cries of the dying people, the blood, the carnage, and the sight of his mother and father dying right in front of him; them being ripped limb from limb and their horrible cries. Dan fell to the ground his eyes widen. Clutching his head, he fell to his knees.
"NO! NO! NOOOOOOO!" he screamed then blacked out. Meanwhile Daiki was dealing with the trigger happy chick. With both Emi and Dan down for the count he had no back up and things weren't looking in his favor, but only for the moment. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! The trees all around Daiki were falling and his cloaks bottom half was almost in shreds thanks to the wood chips and narrow miss by the gunblade. Ok this is not working he thought. He grabbed a nearby branch and spun around it a couple of times with the last time hitting the woman in the chest and knocking her into the tree, stunning her for a moment. "Ok now let's talk," Daiki said as he sat down on the branch above her.
"Sure, what do you what to talk about?" she said with a slight wince every other word.
"First off, what's your name?"
"Hina."
"Ok Hina, what were you doing in the temple?"
"Destroying their crystal thing they have in the basement" she stated matter of factly
Daikis' eyes flashed as he stared at her, his mind racing from what she had just said. He looked back at where Emi and Dan were. Emi was still in the same spot lying in a pool of her own blood, but Dan was gone. Daiki looked around franticly. Where did he go? Hina looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face "umm...excuse me, but what are you doing?" she asked.
Daiki turned back "I think he went to the basement, that temerity fool", he muttered. Dan was in fact in the basement, but not mentally his body was moving on its own as if it were being pulled toward something. He woke up half way to the bottom.
"Where am I?" he looked around, but it was too dark and dank to tell. There was an eerie light coming from the bottom of the stairs. Come to me, come to me. Dan heard it, but he couldn't figure out where it had come from. So he continued to the bottom there he found what he'd been looking for. "CHIYO!" Dan yelled as he ran up to the giant orb. Chiyos' body was frozen in the middle of the crystal. Her arms were held close to her chest and she was kneeling, almost like she was praying. "Hold on Chiyo, I'll get you out of there!" he drew his sword and started hacking at the crystal, but it was no use all he did was make a few innocuous scratches on the orbs surface "No, there must be a way!" Dan shouted as he pounded his fist on the ground. Use the rings Dan! He looked up, "that sounded like she was talking to me," he stared at the motionless form of Chiyo, "if you say so." Dan pulled out all the rings in his pockets. Now place them on the surface. As Dan placed them on the surface they started to glow brighter and brighter until they were blinding, after which engendered the whole orb to shatter. "Chiyo!" Dan ran to her side. She was lying in the middle of the rubble. "Are you ok?" Her eyes opened slightly.
"Where am I?" she looked around, her hand covering one of her eyes.
"I was about to ask the same question.'' Dan replied softly, taking her hand to help her as she staggered to her feet. The two of them stood in the middle of the shattered crystal, they looked deeply into each other's eyes and shared a heart filled kiss.
