April 13 – 8:30 a.m. – Winter Base

Oliver was having a bad day.

Not that he ever had a good day, but today was especially bad. He wasn't quite sure why he'd felt so terrible waking up, but considering the date was comprised by two unlucky numbers (thirteen for obvious reasons and four sounding like death in Chinese (or so Tianyi had told him)), Oliver wasn't too surprised that he was going to have a worse day than usual.

He just didn't expect his bad feeling to come true in the morning.

Now one thing you had to know about Oliver was that he loved animals, baby animals especially. They were so cute and adorable that he wanted to just sit right next to them and stare at them for eternity. The only problem was that despite being an animal lover, he hated, absolutely hated, having to interact with them. He had always hated physical contact. He just wanted to stare at them, to observe them as one might a painting, and not to actually interact with them.

Just like he hated interacting with most people.

Team Winter wasn't so bad, if only because no one ever tried to be artificially nice to him like some of the people from the other teams did. Having Kaito as a leader meant the teammates he chose weren't always the greatest time at interacting with each other.

Which was why he enjoyed being on Team Winter. Other than the initial discomfort of talking to strangers and getting used to his job, Oliver could be with people who didn't always pay attention to what he did and didn't judge him for the trash he was. More importantly, he got to be with animals while they hibernated or flew away to find warmth, allowing him to spend his quality time with the ones left behind in the winter snow, asleep and unaware of the small blond watching them with unnaturally sparkling blue eyes. Tianyi would always tell him that he only ever looked happy when staring creepily at animals, and like always, Oliver took it as a compliment.

Somehow, his love for animals came up in his conversation with Rin that morning as he brought her breakfast made tenderly with love by Mikuo. Oliver might've been the smallest in the group and the least emotionally expressive, but even he could see the blooming crush in Mikuo's heart. He was a sucker for the nice types as much as he tried not to show it.

"I was wondering, but what's the name of the bird on your shoulder?" Rin had asked as Oliver sat there awkwardly waiting for Rin to finish.

"He's a yellow goldfinch," Oliver tartly replied, readjusting James on his shoulder.

"He's kinda quiet for a bird, isn't he?"

"Well, he's just a stuffed animal."

A surprised look crossed Rin's face. "He is? He looks so real though."

"Kaito got James for me when I joined," Oliver said, smiling a little as he gently tickled James under his beak. He might not have enjoyed physical contact, but he didn't mind it so much with a stuffed animal. Stroking James' featherlike fur was always calming.

"So his name's James?"

"Yeah," Oliver said, glancing up from James to see Rin's smile. Suddenly, his mind connected her words to the question she'd asked before, and he realized with a sinking feeling in his heart that that's what she'd been asking about before. Not the breed name but James' name itself.

Of course he'd answered the question wrong. He'd wasted Rin's time. She hadn't reprimanded him yet but he knew that's how she felt inside. They were all the same, pretending to smile and be nice even though they all knew he was trash. Trash, trash, and trash.

"Useless," a tiny voice in the back of his head whispered. Oliver's hands reached for his bandaged left eye by instinct, scratching at the gnawing discomfort in his mind.

"Hey, are you oka—AHH!"

Oliver snapped to attention. Rin was on her side of the frozen barrier, clutching her wrist tightly as her hand began turning a deathly blue, crystals of ice forming along her fingers.

Oliver just sat there dumbly before suddenly realizing what had happened. Rin must have reached across the barrier without thinking and as a result, the barrier had half-frozen Rin's hand. Normally it was around the room for Rin to move about freely, but Team Winter was well aware of Oliver's dislike of coming into contact with people he didn't know to well. Mikuo had set the barrier up so that it would move in Oliver's presence if he were alone, using the barrier as a means to keep Rin's heat from filling the base, but it also acted as a barrier that kept Rin from leaving and the Winter Team from reaching out to Rin. It was a thin, controlled layer of sublimated dry ice, enough to temporarily freeze Rin's warmth and cause pain, and now she was in pain because of him. She was in pain for wanting to reach out for him, for forgetting about the barrier. Had she wanted him to stop with his bad habit of scratching himself? But what did that mean? She cared? Did she really care?

But… Oliver paled at the thought. That meant he'd hurt someone who was willing to care about someone like him.

When Oliver finally reacted, it was too late. He stammered out "I—I'm sorry! I, I'll go find something and, and—" but the more Oliver stammered the quicker his mind began to shut down, his body instinctively curling up and his arms crossing, hands clutching and clawing at the bandages on his arms until his fresh wounds opened up again, dark red against the white bandages. The voices in his head were starting up again, delighted by his anxiety, eating it up as they whispered, "You're just a monster. A monster. Trash. You don't deserve to be here. Monster."

"Hey, HEY!" Rin shouted, hoping to get Oliver's attention. The cold hurt terribly especially because her body temperature was so warm, but she hated how the barrier didn't let her run over to help the boy who was very much blaming himself.

"Oliver, look at me!" Rin shouted, willing all her strength into filling Oliver with a calm warmth. The barrier was definitely obstructing her ability to use magic, but she could tell it was working. As Oliver froze his movements to look up at her gingerly, she put on her best smile and lifted her injured hand up for him to see. "This isn't your fault. Besides, look, it's getting better already."

True, her hand was quickly returning to a normal color, thanks to Rin's ability to warm herself up, but to her dismay, it did nothing to break Oliver out of his trance.

Or rather, she wasn't even sure what Oliver was doing. His actions suggested he was blaming himself, but the look in his eyes suggested the opposite. They were alight with a wild fury, anger directed at her and yet not at her. In the brief moment before Oliver lost his senses, Rin had the terrible feeling that what was reflected in Oliver's eyes wasn't her. It was something more sinister, something much more dangerous.

"Don't call me that," Oliver hissed, so quietly Rin almost missed it.

"Call you what?"

"A monster. I'm not a monster. Don't call me that!"

Rin's response was lost on Oliver. In the midst of the voices taunting and laughing at him, he'd forgotten about Rin, about his new job and friends. He was back in that town, in that park cowering under those leering eyes and giant fists, huddled in a pool of his own blood and tears as he cried salty tears for being so weak.

But not this time. This time he had powers. He had powers to fight back and drive those bastards away. He could fight.

He would fight.

He had to fight!

Rin cowered back in spite herself as a brilliant blue light suddenly encased Oliver, his right eye glowing red and his bandages rapidly ripping to shreds as the small boy grew bigger and bigger and bigger. Rin had seen Luka do something like that before, transforming into animals to approach their kind more easily and nurse any injured animals back to health, but this was different. Oliver had transformed with the obvious intent of attacking, his blond hair sleeked back into ruffled feathers, nose and mouth protruding forward into a formidable golden beak. His blue eyes glinted with a malicious darkness as they stared down at Rin, his arms molding into an eagles' talons, his legs into the hind legs of a lion.

Rin watched fearfully as the Oliver turned griffin ruffled its feathers and fixed its beady eyes on her. The room was deathly quiet save for the sound of her own pounding heart as the griffin silently stalked closer to her. Rin knew the animal was only Oliver transformed, but something about this transformation had somehow robbed Oliver of his ability to think straight as he trampled his beloved James underfoot, eyes on Rin without any sign that he even remembered there was a deadly barrier between them.

So just as the griffin leapt at her, claws outstretched with a vicious hiss, Rin curled back, shut her eyes tightly and screamed the first word that came to mind.

"MIKUO!"

A gush of wind exploded through the room as the griffin smashed into the barrier and shrieked in pain, wings unfurling from its back. Rin prayed that it'd give up from the pain, not because she was afraid the creature might hurt her, but because she knew firsthand how painful it was to come into contact with the barrier. She hated the idea of Oliver hurting himself. What she hated even more was that she couldn't stop him.

To Rin's horror, the griffin crawled up from the ground with an angry shake of its head, hissing louder as it began to smash into the barrier again. And again. Shrieking in pain every time but refusing to let go of the anger in its eyes, anger and terror at something Rin couldn't save him from because she couldn't get past the barrier, the cold, vaporous barrier that kept Rin from reaching out to Oliver and hugging the scared boy in her arms and giving him all the warmth she could muster.

She was crying by the time Mikuo burst in through the door, confused why he'd heard his name yelled so early in the morning and all the ruckus that was going on. He froze there in the doorway, watching in horror as the griffin slowly turned its angry eyes on him.

Mikuo didn't know what was happening.

Or rather, he did know but he didn't want to believe it. Oliver was the only one on Team Winter who could transform into animals. Which meant the angry bloody griffin was Oliver but Oliver was the exact opposite of angry and violent so how could that be? And then his eyes fell on the barrier, now barely visible from strain, cracked like a window pane with Rin behind it crying and huddled in a corner with eyes that were begging someone to stop this, to stop all of this.

Even before Mikuo felt the griffin's talons grip his body and toss him towards the barrier that he just barely managed to dismantle before slamming into the wall behind it, Mikuo knew this was his fault. Everything was his fault, the barrier, the kidnapping, the now half-berserk Oliver who was always so quiet and sweet and the sobbing Rin who Mikuo had finally started to think might be his ray of sunshine.

It was always his fault.

So he just sat there, crumpled against the wall as Kaito dashed into the room closely followed by an agitated Tianyi. The two of them subdued the raging griffin easily with a big snowball and a whirlwind to tie the struggling boy down. As Oliver's body temperature gradually cooled down, his anger began to dissipate with it, his monstrous body returning to the small meek boy that Tianyi loved to pick on and take care of, but even seeing her best friend back to normal did nothing to rid the anger in Tianyi's heart as she turned her icy blue eyes on Mikuo and Rin.

"Who did this?" Tianyi shouted. "Which one of you did this to Ollie?"

Mikuo was about to lift a tired hand, ready for Tianyi to rip him a new one when Rin spoke up, still crying her eyes out with her face buried in her hands. "I'm sorry, I should've stopped him, it's all my fault."

"What did you do?" Tianyi yelled, about to storm over before Kaito stopped her, yanking at the back of her shirt as he shrunk down in size again. "Why'd you hurt Ollie?"

"I didn't mean to, I just, he looked like he was berating himself and I wanted to help him but then I touched the barrier and got hurt and then Oliver he just suddenly, I don't know what happened! I just, I just wish I could've done something but I couldn't, and now…" Rin was too overwhelmed with tears to talk any further, instead just curling up even further with a whimper. "I'm sorry."

Tianyi frowned even harder, but her anger had been lost in the confusion that was settling in. So was it Rin's fault? From what Rin had said, it sounded like Oliver had brought it upon himself with his wimpy, self-berating and mostly unstable personality, and yet Rin was apologizing because she thought it was her fault? So was it her fault?

"Oh who cares," Kaito snapped, hooking one arm around Oliver's waist and throwing the boy's arm over his shoulder. With the barrier gone, Kaito was just barely taller than the blond, his boyish face glaring at the three before him. "It's Oliver's fault as much as Rin's and now he's going to hate himself with Rin here, but in the end it's all your fault for messing with nature! Now help me get this brat to his room!"

Tianyi cast Rin one more wary glance before hurrying off to help Kaito with her friend, slamming the door shut behind her. Mikuo settled back into the silence that filled the room in his teammates' absence, his eyes resting gently on Rin's huddled figure.

"It's not your fault," he slowly called out.

"It is!" Rin shouted back, her voice muffled with her head still buried in her knees. "I couldn't do anything to help him even though I was right there, right next to him! I could've ignored the pain but I was too scared to get hurt to even think about how to help him, even as Oliver lost control, and now everyone knows how pathetic I am!"

"You're not pathetic," Mikuo said, his heart sinking as those words buried in deeper. "I—"

"Yes, I am!" Rin shouted, cutting Mikuo off. "I never would've gotten this job if Len hadn't insisted and even then they knew better than to make me the sun of summer. That's all I've ever been, shallow and insincere with my desire to help others!"

Mikuo struggled to find words to comfort the distraught girl. Hesitantly, he asked, "Aren't you exaggerating things?"

"I am exaggerating!" Rin snapped back, finally looking up with a contorted expression of anger and sadness rolled up into one. It was a look that pulled on Mikuo's heartstrings, a stinging pain to see Rin so hurt. She seemed to have gotten her act back a little upon declaring that fact though, only sniffling a little as she muttered, "I hate not being able to help people when they need it. It just makes me feel so shallow and worthless inside."

"Well, you shouldn't feel that way since none of it was your fault," Mikuo took the chance to declare. "Oliver's always been over-sensitive, and then it just makes him feel bad so he thinks he has to lash out to protect himself. After he recovers, by most he'll just avoid you until you leave. And I'm the one who kidnapped you and everything, so in a bigger sense it's my fault for keeping you here. I mean, not that I can now since the barrier's gone, so I guess you could just leave."

Rin heard the defeat in Mikuo's voice. There was something in it that brought her out of her self-belittling misery. It never sat well with her to see or hear someone else being miserable, which was why she found helping others a good solution to her own feelings of self-pity. If she couldn't help make someone else's day brighter, she didn't deserve to feel down herself.

"You never told me why you kidnapped me," Rin suddenly remarked.

"Doesn't matter, it's a personal issue," Mikuo dully replied, studying his fingers with a sudden interest. "You have the chance to leave now and make everything normal again, so why care about the little things?"

"It's obviously not a little thing," Rin pointed out. "I might've only met you once before this whole mess, but Miku's told us plenty of stories about how caring you are to others, so I'm surprised you found the courage to carry out your plan."

"Well maybe everything my stuck-up sister has to say isn't true," Mikuo snapped back, not bothering to hide the venom in his voice. Rin didn't pursue the issue any further, aware of the tension that filled the air every time Miku's name was mentioned.

Rin knew she could just get up and walk out the door of Team Winter's base. It would be so easy. Mikuo wasn't even willing to stop her anymore and she doubted any of the others were too enthusiastic about the dragged out prank either with what had just transpired. But leaving meant turning her back to these people she had never tried to understand before this bizarre opportunity. It meant seeing Oliver's insecurities as they were and leaving the boy to wallow in whatever guilt he might have over this incident and maybe many more before that without at least trying to help him with the strength she had. It meant leaving Rin in bad graces with Tianyi who had up till then looked so humored to have someone new to talk to in the warm months when it was dangerous for them to go outside. And it meant leaving Mikuo and the issues he was clamming up on behind, the unresolved tension between him and his sister, the undisclosed reason for starting this entire mess. Rin wasn't going to leave them behind, not after she'd gotten to know them a bit and seen their brightest smiles and glimpsed at their inner darkness.

Rin knew most people would think her annoying, overly stubborn and persistent, maybe unwanted, but she couldn't help it. If she saw a problem she knew she had the power to fix, Rin was going to abuse that power. Even if it was at the world's expense.

"I'm not leaving," Rin finally declared to the perturbed expression on Mikuo's face, "not until I apologize to Oliver and become friends with everyone."

Mikuo just stared. And maybe stared some more before deadpanning, "You're weird."

"I know, Tianyi already mentioned it," Rin replied with a small laugh. "I just don't like leaving people behind to deal with their problems alone, including whatever it is you have against your sister."

"I don't have anything against my sister," Mikuo meekly protested, knowing his lie wouldn't do much to save him. He continued to stare long and hard at Rin before leaning back against the wall beside her with a sigh. "But whatever. I'm not going to force you to stay, but I'm not going to make you leave either. Actually, you're probably making my life easier since now it's also your fault for being stuck here. At least Kaito gets to yell at you too."

"Ooh, I hope not, he's pretty scary. Though when he melts into a kid he's pretty cute," Rin admitted.

"He's going to hate you for saying that," Mikuo chuckled, surprised at himself for how quickly he'd brightened up in Rin's presence. Normally he'd just sulk there, moping around about his uselessness but around Rin it was easier to cheer up. Maybe it was because she was the sun of spring. Her magical powers probably included something weird like making the people around her cheer up or something.

"I will hate you for that," Kaito's voice declared grumpily as the door opened again to reveal Kaito looking like a ten year old in oversized clothing, his scarf wrapped loosely around his neck and trailing down to his knees. "Please don't tell me I just heard someone say she's going to stay here despite her free pass to leave because she wants to make friends."

Rin felt guilty for admitting it to Kaito, who she probably had caused more trouble than she could ever repay in a lifetime, but she nodded.

Surprisingly, Kaito didn't look too angry. He simply threw his head back and groaned, "This is why I hate kids. You're all so confident about what you want."

"Says the adult who currently looks like he's ten," Mikuo retorted with a smirk, unable to resist the chance to jab at Kaito's physical appearance.

Kaito glared. "You are so lucky you're still capable of sitting next to the sun without burning up, Hatsune. Though mind you, step away from her for too far and I might just accidentally kill you."

Kaito stormed away muttering under his breath, disappearing down the hallway, probably to report on this new development to get the others off his case.

Mikuo pursed his lips before throwing Rin a nervous albeit charming smile. "Mind if I sleep in this room tonight then? I really don't want to get killed."

"No, of course I don't mind. This is your room after all," Rin replied with a brighter smile to hide the fluttering in her chest at the sight of Mikuo's smile.

"Oh, uh, right. Forgot about that," Mikuo shakily replied, turning his head the other way to hide the blush tinging his cheeks. Since when did he start feeling flustered over girls smiling?

A really pretty smile at that.

An awkward silence quickly settled round the two, each lost in their own thoughts about why that one particular smile they'd shared had been so darn attractive.

Meanwhile, the nonexistent rulers of the Seasonal Alliance (aka me) just sighed.

This was going to be one long day.