DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. I'd have screwed it up.

Sorry, I would have uploaded this on Friday, but a) I forgot, and b) when I remembered, I felt too lazy to get back on the computer. I'm incredibly happy that midterms are over *claps in excitement* so I should have more time to write. I already have a Valentine's onshot in the works (to those of you who care to know beforehand XD); romance seems incredibly far away from this story o.O although the Valentine's one has blood in it as well. Weird, I think something's wrong with me.

Anyways, the monster Daichi is introduced. Just for you to get a sense for what its basic structure looks like, look up Regigigas from Pokemon.

Enjoy!

Eight

"Shit," Trey swore as he accidentally slipped, sending a few stones from the path loose. They clattered down the slope that they had just finished climbing, causing more stones to loosen as well… until there was almost a full-blown rockslide heading down the mountain.

At this, Manta, Yoh, and An gave Trey some very 'good going' looks, to which he flushed at. "What?" he asked. "It's not like anyone was down there. We're the only ones here!"

An smacked him upside the head. "Idiot," she hissed, keeping her voice low in comparison to Trey's louder words. "Daichi's somewhere here too. You probably just gave away our position! Do you want him to come and get us?"

"I don't understand," Trey retorted harshly. "Don't we want to battle that… whatever it is? I don't know about you guys, but I want to go h…" He trailed off, face falling to one of absolute uncertainty as he looked towards the ground.

This entire thing was… almost indescribably… suck-ish. Trey couldn't find any other way to put it. Maybe Manta could word it better, but Trey knew for sure that he couldn't. In retrospect, this revelation put him even more in a depressed fog; he knew absolutely nothing about himself, except for the fact that he was a shaman who apparently controlled snow and ice, but he knew that this entire situation was just… terrible. He wanted, more than anything, to know who he was – what his real name was, who his family was – where the heck the strange markings on his headband and jacket and snowboard were from. He wanted to know how he met Kororo, if maybe there was a girl waiting for him wherever home was, if he had a home at all.

"Don't worry, Trey," Yoh said, breaking him out of his thoughts. He looked up and met Yoh's ebony eyes as the boy continued, "We'll get home. It'll all work out."

Trey blinked, but before he could let the words truly sink in, An interrupted them.

"This is all fine and stuff," she huffed, placing her hands on her hips – for the first time, Trey realized that she had shape shifted them into wide, almost paw-like appendages to cope with the rocky climb. Even though he had to admit it was rather cool, he was also a little freaky. "But I think we should get going," she finished.

"I agree," Manta piped up, panting a little (well, a lot) as he finally hopped up to the top of the slope. "We need a place to rest. Hey, Mosuke?" he asked.

His spirit ally appeared beside him. "Yeah?"

"Think you can go ahead a little and scout for a cave or something?" Manta asked. "Just don't go too far or anything."

"All right," Mosuke replied, looking a little unnerved to be leaving his short master, but nonetheless, he shrunk down to his orangey blob-like spirit ball form and zipped away down the path and around a corner.

Yoh stood up fully and stretched. "We should follow him more slowly," he suggested. "No sense in rushing; don't wanna bump into Daichi now, do we?"

Trey couldn't help but crack a grin. "No, I don't think we do. Unless one of us is feeling especially suicidal today?"

Yoh frowned mockingly in thought for a moment. "Nah, not today."

An cleared her throat, catching the boys' attentions while tapping her foot on the ground. "Are we going to go, or should I just leave you all here?"

Trey chuckled. "What, you expect us to let you have all the fun? Let's go."

With that, the group set off down the path, keeping close to the wall of the mountain to avoid the steep drop on the other side. Trey pushed his worries aside. It shouldn't really matter right now if he remembered or not – what mattered here was staying alive.

()()()()()()()

"Seriously…," Ren growled as he tossed another rock to the back of the cave. He was pretty sure that the rough stone was cutting his hands open and causing him to bleed a bit, but he had only made a small oversoul over his Kwan Dao to provide a soft golden light in order to save energy. Plus, he needed to use both hands to sift through the debris, so he was feeding the small amount of furyoku through where his ankle touched the shaft of his weapon. "When I find whoever did this, they're going to wish I killed them quickly…"

He knew that he could very well be being unreasonable, but he had this funny but annoying feeling that this was someone's fault, some bastard who didn't know up from down and needed to be eliminated from the gene pool anyways.

Ren let out a sudden, almost painful hiss as he cut his finger on a sharp rock, sticking his finger in his mouth in an attempt to ease the idiotic pain that he could've very well ignored but for some reason he decided to attend to. This entire place was ridiculous. First, nothing but fog, then a jungle where the vines attacked you, and now this. Not to mention his semi-failed attempted to kill those two boys.

Ren sighed and rested his forehead on one hand. I need to get out of here. He was getting the feeling that he needed to know where exactly he had gotten the two mantras that were almost always in his head. He needed to remember, he needed to know why this sick feeling kept bubbling up in his stomach. Was he ill, perhaps? It would figure, he thought bitterly, not quite knowing why. Had he always been this cynical? Probably, especially considering the mantras.

He shook his head forcefully. What was he thinking about? It felt as if he was considering himself evil (he hadn't lost, he couldn't have been evil). He needed to destroy, to win; he needed to become justice. That was what he'd been taught…

…hadn't he?

()()()()()()

When they heard the rumbling, Lyserg and Chocolove stopped, looking around in confusion; both of their first thoughts were was that that odd boy was attacking again, or perhaps there was another thing like those vines that was going to attack them.

"There," Chocolove said, pointing. Lyserg followed the black boy's finger diagonally up the mountain they had just come down from. A rockslide was hurtling just about full-force down the mountain towards a vast oval cliff, but luckily the two were too far away for the disaster to affect them. They watched as it slowed to an eventual stop, most of the stones that had been released from their normal positions tumbling over the edge of the precipice.

"What do you think caused that to happen?" Chocolove asked in astonishment.

Lyserg lowered his hand slightly, which he had been holding up in attempt to get a better reading for his dowsing. "I don't know. An animal, maybe? Or…" His green eyes narrowed, and he focused even more of his furyoku into his pendulum. In response, the crystal tugged at the wire, pointing approximately towards where the rockslide had originated.

"It's one of them," he said, unintentionally rasping as he began to run. He didn't care if Chocolove followed him or not – either Hao or Yoh was there, he couldn't tell which, as he had essentially been focusing on the same face when he had been dowsing. But in any case, either one was a good thing; it would get him one step closer to completing his revenge against the boy who had burned his parents to death. It didn't matter which one it was – he would kill them both.

"Wait!" Chocolove called. "Lyserg!"

Lyserg ignored him. He couldn't let anyone stop him now, now that he was so close he could see the blood of his enemies spilling out onto the ground as his pendulum ripped through them, as his wire choked them, as he spat on their shared face…

"LYSERG!"

The ground shook tremendously, shocking Lyserg enough to jump back, which was a good thing, since a second later, an impossibly giant, stony hand slapped the dirt where Lyserg had been just about to step. Panicked, Lyserg backed up quickly, his green eyes wide and fearful at what was appearing before him.

The skin of the giant – giant wasn't even the right word, it was so huge, so unfeasibly huge – was pockmarked and ugly, mixing with thousands of shades of grey and red and brown, so entirely like living rock that it probably was. Another hand slapped the ground yards away from Lyserg, but it seemed like it had appeared right next to him. Much too slowly, but also much too quickly, the giant pulled itself up, and Lyserg saw its torso.

It had no neck to speak of at all. It had massive, round shoulders that were connected to both the face and chest without any identifiable marks except for what Lyserg fearfully assumed was the middle of the giant's head: a muddled grey-brown, glassy eye that must've been at least thirty feet in diameter, if not more.

Unconsciously, Lyserg backed up even further as the monster pulled itself up completely out of the pit, its square, toeless feet now level with Lyserg's own. With a startled, unintentional squeak, the green-haired boy tripped and fell flat onto his butt, hardly feeling the impact as he stared up at the frightening figure.

The monster's eye swiveled slowly around unblinkingly. Unlike a human's eye, which could flicker from one direction to the next in a second, the giant's didn't seem able to move fast enough to follow someone running around it (which, considering its size, would have taken about three minutes or so, even for a fast runner). Even though Lyserg was scared out of his mind, nothing could truly prepare him for the revulsion he felt when the eye moved to its right, and continued to move directly to its right, so that finally, only the sticky-looking white of the eye was visible for almost half a minute until the muddy grey-brown finally came back and rested on the dowser.