Hello once again, everyone. It is nice to see you all again, especially since this is pretty much my only hobby. That and collecting dryer lint... but I digress. Here is chapter four of Ice Freezes. Yes, I know, none of you expected that. After all, this is labeled 'Ice Freezes' and this is the fourth chapter, but logically we could never assume that it was, indeed, chapter four. It could have been an announcement. It could have been a side story. It could have been a commercial. Yup, it's not chapter four unless I say so. Okay...bad attempt at humor, but whatever. Congratulations, all, on sticking with me. Read and, if at all possible, please review.

Fire was everywhere, burning, destroying, greedily grasping anything it could find in its caustic fingers, eliminating it. I ran, but it was truly in vain. How could I hope to outrun something that annihilated all that it came in contact with? In mere minutes I would be tired, and soon after even adrenalin couldn't keep me on my feet. The blaze would consume me as surely as it did everything else. It was only my intense desire to live that kept me on the run, searching for some kind of protection before the flames killed me.

My bangs, soaked like the rest of me from sweat, fully coated my left eye, and my peripheral vision was lost. I no longer attempted to push them out of the way; it only wasted energy, energy that I did not have to spare. I urged my legs to go faster, faster, until I could make it to the vast river that divided Yomi's realm from Mukuro's. They were already going as fast as they physically could, though. I couldn't run any faster than I already was. Despite my knowledge of this, my mind couldn't quite understand. I was in a state of panic, desperately fleeing from the inevitable, Death coming to take me. It was that which I knew that I would face eventually, but I was young, too young for this! I was supposed to live thousands of years, and Death did not seem like something I would have to face anytime soon.

Not having the strength to jump clear over it, I stepped on a large log that had blocked the path, the path that directed me out of this, away from the sure death behind me. The wood, weakened from chewing insects and the rot that had affected it, after Death had already come for the tree, caved in. My foot, securely wedged between either side of the log, couldn't pull free. I pitched forward, hitting the ground face first. Yelping, I wrenched my foot free, staggered to my feet again, and continued running, running for the life that I suddenly appreciated so much.

Coughing horribly from the ash and smoke, I dared to look back and see how close the burning terror was. The fire hadn't caught up to me, but rather, it lazily followed, always so close by that I could feel the heat. It seemed to be teasing me, toying with its prey, the same prey that was dumb enough to think that it could escape. Only a predator sure of the kill would follow in such a manner. This did nothing to help my already frantic mind. I bolted, stumbling every now and then over uneven ground.

The forest opened into a clearing, and I could see running water on the other side. A small smile appeared on my face, as I realized that I would make it to the river in time, that I would be safe.

That was when the blaze, which, unbeknownst to me, had curved to either side, flanking me, closed the circle. A wall of fire sprang up before me, the river mere yards away. I screeched to a halt, looking fearfully around. It was as I had feared; I was completely surrounded, flame on all sides. My heart thumping faster than a human's was said to beat, I fell to the ground. My lungs couldn't take in enough air; ash and soot I had inhaled while running were clogging them. I simply did not have the energy left to remain standing.

The flames closed in, delivering death to all they touched. In seconds, Death itself would be upon me. I closed my eyes and waited for it to all be over…

"Blue! Blue, wake up!"

I jerked back from the touch, imagining the searing touch of fingers of flame, the bony fingers of Death.

"Calm down, Blue! It was just a dream," Shishi soothed.

"O-Okay," I shakily murmured, opening my eyes and sitting up. My clothes clung to my body. Taking deep breaths of the clean, fresh air, I wiped the sweat off my forehead. It had been a horrible nightmare, and it had seemed incredibly real to me, as if it was all actually happening.

"Sheesh, what was that about? Your screaming woke me up, and you were thrashing and flailing about. You seemed to be in pretty bad shape, Blue. You had me afraid for you," the swordsman confessed, staring at me worriedly.

"I'm sorry," I told him. "It was so terrible…fire everywhere, I couldn't escape it…"

"Fire, huh? I'm not afraid of any fire! I'd turn around and fight it myself, if you needed me to," he bragged. "It'd be the one running away soon enough!"

"Yeah… I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Eh, I'd be awake soon enough anyway. Don't worry about it. In the meantime, why don't you take a bath or something? Frankly, you're covered in sweat, and you really don't smell all that great."

I sighed. That was typical Shishi all right.

"Okay."

I stood up, and started to make my way towards the door. My aura seemed unusually restless, and the room spun in my vision. I stumbled, swaying on my feet for a second. My mind seemed foggy, and I couldn't quite think straight. The next thing I knew, my back slammed into the ground, knocking the wind out of me. I had instinctively shut my eyes upon hitting the floor, and as I gasped for breath, I didn't bother to re-open them. I felt dizzy.

"Hey, Blue! Blue! What's wrong? You're sick or something! C'mon, stand up!" Shishi cried out, concerned.

I pulled myself back to my feet, although he insisted upon me leaning on his arm for support.

"I just felt dizzy all of the sudden. It's nothing," I assured him.

"If you say so…" he muttered. "I still think that you're sick."

"No, I don't think so. My aura was acting odd. It seemed restless, moving about, and I wasn't quite sure what was going on," I admitted.

"Huh…I guess that's just a Blue-thing. I dunno. Anyway, are you sure you can walk fine? 'Cause if you can't, then you're going have to go right back into my room, lay down in your sleeping bag, and wait there until I can bring a healer back."

I nodded that yes, I could still walk just fine. He seemed doubtful, and on the verge of ordering me right back into his room, but my resolute expression made him reconsider. I didn't want to be treated like I was an invalid or something. That was just a momentary spell of weakness, and I was fine now.

My aura was twisting and turning within me, and I felt uncomfortable. I had to do something to make it calm down, and I automatically thought of cooling myself down. Aura, or ki, as it was also called, was not something that I could ignore. If it was restless or such, then I was going to make it stop. It was like feeling hungry or out of breath; I was going to eat something or gulp down air to make the feeling pass. Ki needed to be taken care of as well. Still, my own aura had never acted like this before, ever. I was unsure as to what it meant.

"My aura feels unusual," I told the swordsman. "It's never acted like this before."

"Well, I have no clue. I'm a fighter, not some kind of aura-studier-person."

"Thanks," I sarcastically muttered. "Did yours ever do anything like this?"

"Mine? Nope, never," he replied, still not letting me stand on my own. We were walking to the washroom so that Shishi could grab the tub. He was then going to haul up water from the well to fill it up, and then leave so I could take a quick bath. As he had said, I probably needed it.

I sighed with contentment, liking the feel of the icy cold water on my bare skin. The second I had touched the water, my aura had calmed down, and it seemed to faintly glow with pleasure. This made a slightly lopsided smile appear on my face. My smiles were crooked, not quite straight. The left side was almost always higher than the right.

I lay there, soaking in the cold water for a while. It had a soothing effect on me. Soon enough, though, I got to washing off the dirt and sweat, actually doing what I was supposed to in the first place. After a bit, I stepped out of the water, shaking my hair every which way. Quickly, I dressed in a change of clothes before heading back towards Shishi's house.

His parents weren't as bad as he said they were, not at all. Shishi's father, a feathered bird demon, was severe, yet he let my friend have quite a lot of privileges that the swordsman dismissed with a wave of his hand, such as getting paid every couple of days and being allowed to use the wood stove. Tal didn't want me to get too close to the fire, ever since I had passed out when I was younger. My body didn't cope well with heat, not at all.

His mother, the vampire youkai, was quiet and more than a bit gruff, yet she did care for her son. I always felt like I was intruding whenever I was in the same room as the three of them, even though Shishi assured me that I wasn't. It just didn't feel right to me. They were his parents, not mine.

Opening the door to Shishi's room, I found the half-bird demon lying on his bed, his head over the side of it, so that his hair hung down. It was a comical position, and I couldn't help but smile a little.

"Good to see you're back, Blue," he mumbled from his upside-down position.

I nodded, yawning. My ki now feeling a little better, I sat down on my sleeping bag, crossing my legs under me.

"Now what do you want to do?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Wonderful. You never do. How about we go outside and spar?" he suggested.

"You know I don't like fighting," I murmured. "Why can't we just do something I want to do, for once?"

"Sheesh, you don't have to get all defensive. All I did was offer an idea. What's going on with you? First you faint, and now you're all pissed off at me," Shishi said.

"I really don't know. I'm just fed up with the fact that we only ever do something that you want to do, and I never even have a say in it. It's been fighting and riding giant birds and looking at girls ever since I met you, and you've never even let me have a say in what we do. It's just irritating, you know," I confessed.

"You're not into girls?" he asked quizzically.

"No, not really."

"So…you like guys?"

I quickly drew a sign in the air: two upside-down triangles connected by a horizontal line. It represented a demon's fangs, which were considered a sign of good luck. When captured, oftentimes enemies would pull out the captive's fangs, to forever rob him of good luck. Therefore, without fangs myself, I was considered to be bad luck to be near. Most youkai had them, after all, so I had the potential to be called several vicious insults, such as "half-breed" and "filthy human-kin", since humans didn't have fangs like youkai did. To call someone one of those things without it being the absolute truth was to insult them in a way that could never be taken back. I was lucky that I had never been called such a thing straight to my face. I had heard people murmur that I was "impure of blood", and it hurt, badly. They assumed that I had human ancestry since I was fangless.

Humans were our worst enemies, period. They hunted youkai for sport, just because we were different from them. In turn, we killed humans, but strictly for self-defense, or so I had been taught. No human had ever so much as looked at me, so I wouldn't know. Still, if they would kill another of my race, if not species, then they couldn't be good people. If they would slay a demon for no reason, then killing them was the righteous path. Evil was to be destroyed. That was justice, right?

Still, fangs truly were as important to apparitions as arms. A one-armed demon was subject to plenty of stares, as was a fangless one. I was quite unfortunate to lack them. Some species of demons did not have pointed teeth, as most did. The most notable exceptions were bird youkai, some insect demons, eye demons, and doppelganger youkai, which were faceless. Obviously, I did not fit into any of those categories. Therefore, I was the target of much ridicule. Even so, Shishi had gone too far. Homosexuality was the fiercest of taboos in my village, possibly all of the Makai (I did not know; this was the only place I had ever lived in, and I had little to no knowledge of the rest of the world), and not even in the wildest dreams would I even think of breaking it. For him to insinuate that I would do so was absolutely awful.

"That was uncalled for," I whispered.

"I…I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking when I said it," he admitted.

"You know for a fact that you're my only friend. That isn't a coincidence at all. None of the other kids will treat me as an equal. With that being so, do you think I even have a chance among the girls, when they have so many others that aren't social outcasts to choose from? Hardly. You're lucky that they still consider you an option, what with the fact that you willfully associate with me. With no chance at all, I've rather lost interest. I know better than to dwell on something that couldn't be."

Shishi shook his head.

"If you truly wanted to, you could have the chicks falling all over themselves to please you, Blue. I mean, a quick haircut, fighting in a few brawls, putting a bit of meat on you, and you'd be just fine. When it all comes down to it, if you have enough strength to throw around, no one gives a damn if you're a bit on the skimpy side and happen to not have sharp teeth. Just build yourself a rep and no one will screw around with you."

I once again made the fangs symbol in the air to ward off the bad luck his words carried.

"Don't say that! Just because you have fangs, you make these statements. I don't, and it won't make any difference how strong I am."

"Yeah, well, whatever. Anyway, all you want to do is sit inside and read. You know I hate doing that, right? Then why bother?"

"You know I don't like spending time outside," I pointed out, although I didn't have the courage to say it to his face. Instead, I merely said it too quietly for him to hear, or at least I had thought so.

"Yeah, well, at least you can do all that. I can't even-" he started, stopping abruptly. Actually, it had been far too abruptly. I wanted to know why.

"What, hm?" I asked. "You promised me, back when I told you that I was claustrophobic, that you'd answer anything I asked about you. Now please, tell me what you were going to say."

"I'm illiterate, okay? No one ever taught me how to read. So…there," he growled, managing to turn an embarrassing fact about himself into what sounded like a threat.

"I… I'm sorry," I murmured. It sounded lame even to my ears. "I could…teach you?"

"No thanks. I'm fine as is. Anyway, Sir No-Fangs, I think you should be going home around now," he said, an annoyed tone in his voice.

I could tell that telling me that had really irritated him. He had always told me that fangs were just another part of the body, and that I didn't see his ass bringing him any good luck. The half bird demon always was more than a bit vulgar, but he was the only one who would be my friend, so I usually ignored it. That being so, his comment about my fangs, or lack thereof, was for the sole purpose of being spiteful towards me.

"I'll be going then. Bye, Shishi."

He didn't even reply.

Sighing, I left his house. I hadn't meant to upset the swordsmen, but I couldn't exactly have avoided doing so without knowing. His anger at me, then, was completely irrational, I bitterly realized as I walked into my house.

Shaking my head, I opened the door to my room, throwing myself down on the bed. The dumb swordsman was getting all in a blood frenzy over nothing. So what if he couldn't read? I couldn't swim. What was his problem with that?

I couldn't help but notice that the more aggravated I got, the more turbulent my aura got, until it was practically flowing out of me. In fact… I was glowing a bright, neon green!

So…my aura's color was a faintly glowing shade of green. All demons had an aura-color; I had never known mine, though, since I couldn't use it. Without the ability to, I had never known the color. I was bright green…

My face cracked into a crooked grin, even as my ki quieted.

"I'm green! I'm green!" I yelled out, leaping into the air. I was rarely one for shows of emotion, but this was just incredible! I knew my own aura color. I knew my own aura color!

I think I went into a bit too much detail on the whole fang-thing, but I felt that I needed to show just how much fangs mattered to demons. Also, Touya's rather superstitious, in case you couldn't tell. Still, demons have different superstitions than humans do, as well as different sayings (such as 'getting all in a blood frenzy over nothing' as opposed to our 'getting all worked up over nothing'), so he can do whatever. I had someone worrying about the fact that Touya's aura is neon green and so was Karasu's, but I can guarantee you, I didn't make that up. Look at when he uses Shards of Winter. They're these glowing green spheres of his energy, so I figured that that's his aura color.

Oh, and just to clarify, the reason why, in the dream, he capitalized the word 'death' sometimes and not others wasn't a mistake. Writing it as 'Death' is like saying 'The Grim Reaper'. He's thinking of the entity that would bring you to the afterlife. Writing it as 'death' is just the generic term as we usually use it. For the record, I have nothing at all against homosexuality, it's just that it was considered wrong in ancient times (except the Greeks, but wow...look at some of the other stuff they've done that was considered illegal in other countries back then), so I figured in the backwater parts of the Makai, it would be as well. Yes, some parts of Demon World, like Yomi's realm, have technology and are more tolerant of things others will not, but Touya's little village is a bit too removed for it. So, people there, so far from anything resembling technology, would also, logically, think more like those ancient people... Don't blame Touya or Shishi! Neither had much of an education. Well, sorry if I offended anyone. Anyway, thank you for reading! Happy birthday to me!