Mia watched the others making themselves comfortable in the lounge-like office Danji Kajtim had led them to on the fourth story of Hogo Heart Hospital. The room reminded her of her grandpa's study, the one she'd locked up after he died and never let anyone see but visited whenever she felt overwhelmed or wanted to escape the world for a little while.
The last three hours had been spent by them explaining about the armors and the fight with the Dynasty three years ago. Cye had told them about how he'd felt Rowen and Sage's emotions though he still didn't really understand it himself. Rowen had explained that Zephyr was an elemental, a supernatural being that can control and/or is made of an element, how he'd met her, and how Sage knew and could speak to her. Sage had explained about the telepathic link, and how he'd gotten Zephyr to help him, but neither he nor Rowen could offer an explanation for the whirlwind.
Kajtim hadn't seemed very surprised, but he did seem to believe every word of what he'd been told. When all the explaining was over, everyone realized they were hungry and Kajtim went to retrieve something to eat for them all.
Sage had been fully awake by the time they'd reached the third story and had been leaning against the massive, dark wood desk across from the door in his usual casual manner ever since. Kento had plopped down on the big green leather sofa with his hands behind his head and Cye sat beside him, leaning on his knees with his hands hanging between them. Mia had claimed one of two huge, green leather armchairs for herself and was sitting with her legs pulled up into it, Indian style.
Rowen was sprawled on the other armchair sideways with his legs hanging over one of its arms and his head propped against the other, one arm flung across his eyes and the other just dangling from the chair. No doubt, he'd soon fall asleep if they didn't make an effort to keep him from taking another one of his catnaps.
Mia guessed that was why Ryo chose to sit on the carpeted floor with his back against Rowen's chair and White Blaze's head in his lap. Her guess was confirmed when Ryo started reaching up and yanking Rowen's arm every two minutes or so. Rowen obviously didn't like this and after the fourth yank, he was growling almost as loud as White Blaze could. When Ryo reached up to yank again, Rowen snapped his arm away, grabbed Ryo's upper arm and twisted it behind his head. Ryo yelped and White Blaze got up and growled a warning at Rowen.
"Yeah, yeah. Growl all ya want, but he started it," Rowen snarled at White Blaze, the whole time never removing his arm from his eyes or changing his position further than the arm holding Ryo's behind his head.
The tiger considered this, decided Rowen was probably right, and he went and lay beneath the old desk.
Ryo squirmed and growled, "Let go of my arm, Rowen."
"Uh-uh. Ya had this coming, Fire-boy."
Ryo lashed out with his free arm but couldn't do much in his position. Kento and Cye were laughing themselves to death and Sage was smirking at Ryo's plight. Mia was starting to laugh too when she saw a familiar murderous glint in Ryo's eye; Ryo's legendary temper was firing up. She signaled to the others to be ready to stop a fight. But Rowen knew how to handle Ryo.
Calmly, he asked, "Ey, Ryo, if I let ya go, will ya lemme sleep for a while? I'll let ya wake me up in half an hour, okay?"
Ryo was going to say no but stopped, realizing there was something different about Rowen's voice. He sounded like he was too tired to bother with anything, exasperated, and positively miserable. The intelligence, determination, and sly cunning were still there and they'd almost covered up the rest but, as their leader, Ryo had become attuned to his friends and he heard the depressing content of Rowen's voice anyway.
He stopped trying to get free and let Rowen hold his arm in that painful position. "Okay, Ro, you win. But we're not letting you sleep for more than thirty minutes. Now let go please."
Satisfied, even though he knew Ryo normally wouldn't give up so easily, Rowen released Ryo's arm and settled into sleep almost instantly.
"Umm…did I miss something?" Kento's face reflected his perplexity over Ryo letting Rowen get away with doing what he'd done and Cye couldn't help laughing at him.
"Apparently you did. If you had been listening, you might have heard what we did," Cye said and patted Kento on the back.
"Huh?" Kento was really confused now.
Sage had also noticed the difference in Rowen's voice and though he found it a little difficult, he hid his concern well. "What Cye's saying is that we all noticed, from listening to him, that Rowen's exhausted, miserable, and maybe more than a little tired of how his life is working right now. You just didn't pick up on it," he reasoned.
"Whatever." Kento sat down again, still looking slightly confused but he seemed to understand more than before. A low rumbling abruptly dispelled the following silence and, when all eyes turned on him, Kento cried, "What? So I'm hungry! You guys know long talks about the weird and definitely-not-normal make me hungry. Where is that Doc with the food, anyway?"
Mia rolled her eyes. "His name is Danji Kajtim," she corrected. "And he told you it would be a while for him to get back; you could've gone with him. The closest snack machine's on the second floor and he has to be careful. You know how it is with White Blaze. Wherever that tiger shows up, reporters follow and we don't need all that publicity. So, now that he knows about you guys, Danji is doing his best to help us by evading the media.
"Besides, it would be bad enough for us, but think of how it'd affect Rowen," she reminded him. "Those reporters would be merciless and, at the rate he's going, there's a good chance he'll be trapped in a hospital bed. He's fairly depressed as it is but all that extra stress might just finish him off. Look outside, Kento. There are already a dozen media vehicles out there and probably more on the way. Those snoops won't take long to find out who was involved with the whole tiger incident and from there it'll be easy for them to find out that one of them is a patient here.
"Luckily, Danji said this room hasn't been used for half a year so no one will think of looking for us in here and he's going to try to keep it that way. I'm sure he'll be back soon; he's only been gone about fifteen minutes. And besides that, to apply an overused phrase: Kento, everything makes you hungry!"
Kento opened his mouth to protest but just then the door swung inward and then shut behind Danji. Everyone stared at the bags of food hanging from his arms and the stack of takeout boxes towering in his hands.
"A little help here!" Danji cried as he tipped forward.
Kento was already on it, grabbing three bags and four boxes, and retreating back to the couch to rummage through his prizes. Ryo caught the falling Danji; Sage caught the other two bags and two boxes, and Cye jumped over Ryo and Danji, who were in a pile on the floor, Ryo on bottom, to save the seven Styrofoam takeout cups they hadn't noticed before.
He had to land sitting in order to keep from dropping his catches and ended up doing a sort of balancing act. There was a cup balancing on his head, one on his left knee, one on his left elbow, one on the toe of his right shoe, one in his left hand, and two in his right hand. He struggled to keep any of them from tipping.
"Hey, somebody do something! I feel like a seal performing at a circus here," he cried and Mia grabbed the cups on his knee, foot, elbow, and head, and set them on the desk.
Danji, standing now, watched Cye get up, place the other three cups on the desk, and then drop onto the couch beside Kento, who was still going through his bags and boxes and already had something in his mouth, apparently unaware of the disaster which had been so narrowly avoided.
"That was very impressive," Danji commented and indeed, he did sound impressed.
Cye blushed and stared at his feet but noticed something that diverted his attention. Kento had a burger and was about to stuff it in his mouth; the burger was made exactly the way Cye liked it.
Cye lunged at Kento and grabbed the burger. "Save some for the rest of us, Kento! We're hungry, too, you know!" he said as he wrestled with Kento over it.
Sage, meanwhile, was looking in the bags and boxes he'd saved and had noticed something. He turned to Danji and asked, "How did you know what kind of food we like?"
"What're you talking about?" Ryo asked.
White Blaze had come out from behind the desk and was nudging a bag open. He stuck his head in and pulled out a very large brown paper parcel the size of a backpack. He carried it to the center of the room and started ripping off the brown paper. He was rewarded by the biggest, juiciest steak anyone in the room had ever seen. When Ryo saw his tiger tearing into the meat, he grabbed a bag from Sage and peered inside it. He pulled out a container full of salad and handed it to Sage.
"You're right; he did know what we like. This would be yours. Now, where's mine? Oh yeah, and an explanation would be nice, Doc," Ryo said as he settled down on the floor beside White Blaze with a bag full of his favorite foods.
Danji sighed exasperatedly. "I really wish you'd stop calling me that, I have a name."
"That's what I said!" Mia remarked.
"Sorry. Rowen always called you either that or something rude—he really hates hospitals and doctors and all that—so it kinda stuck. Anyway, explain," Ryo said and bit into a burger made his way.
"Well, you know how you're kind of psychic in certain ways?" Danji said to Sage. "Well, I'm psychic, too, in my own way. I have a healing gift that I can use to save people's lives but every time I do it I have to "touch" the person's mind and that means I learn a lot about them and whatever they're thinking when I do it.
"The first time Rowen came here, two years ago, and his condition was diagnosed, he was closer to death than I let him know and I sensed it was very important that he didn't die—now I know why but back then, I didn't know about your armors or the Dynasty or any of that. So anyway, I "touched" his mind and healed him but I couldn't do much against the disease. However, if I hadn't he probably would have died within a month.
"Once he was in the hospital," the doctor explained, "I was able to have secret healing sessions with him every morning before he woke up, and the disease began to gradually die off. I worked on him harder and longer than I've ever done on anyone and it drained me for about three months after he was released; I even had to take a sick leave for two weeks.
"Anyway, all the info I "touched"," he made quotation signs in the air with his fingers, "from him never registered the way it does with other people; it was there but I didn't know any of it. Then you all showed up here today and for some reason it all started to pour in in waves that didn't quite make sense until you explained everything a while ago.
"It just happens that one of the things I 'touched' from Rowen was what you like to eat, so I called in a favor the manager of a restaurant owed me and had him bring some food for you." He paused and seemed to be considering how to say the next thing best. "I figured you may need it cuz… well, from the way things look downstairs, you may be stuck in here for a while."
Sage listened and watched Danji intently for a minute before asking suspiciously, "What else did you "touch" from Rowen?"
Danji knew from the 'touching' with Rowen how close he and Sage were and that the blond wasn't as cold and uncaring as he seemed. He decided to use an extreme of his psychic abilities to assure Sage that he hadn't done anything to Rowen.
Mentally, he thought to Sage, Don't worry. I didn't do anything to him and I don't know any of his personal or private thoughts. But I do know that you two are very close. He thinks of you as the first real friend he ever had, his best friend, his brother even. When he was here last time, every time he went coma-state and was ready to give up, I'd send mental images of all of you and he'd start fighting for his life again. I wouldn't do anything to hurt him or anyone else so you don't need to worry.
Sage gave him a sidelong glance and then said, "Fine."
Ryo looked from one of them to the other and said, "Oookaaay, now I'm positive today is a record day for weirdness. What did I miss?"
"Never mind," both Danji and Sage said in unison.
Mia spoke up. "What did you mean about the way things look downstairs? How long will we be stuck here?" she asked Danji.
He sighed, not looking forward to giving the news he carried, and replied, "Well, at the moment, the press room is full of reporters and security's having a time of it keeping a few of the snoopier ones out of files and stuff. There's this one guy who's really stubborn and he seems to practically be setting up camp down there so it could be as long as three days before it's safe for you to leave."
Thanks to his new ability of detecting and experiencing others' emotions, though still uncertain and a little frightened by it, Cye could feel that Danji was nervous and holding something back. "You're not telling us something. There's more."
Danji, still unused to the unnatural abilities of these boys, even if he had some himself, blinked at Cye and said slowly, "Y-yeah. Uh…there's a girl who works here who is kinda giving info to that one reporter about you. She's a real jerk in my opinion and not worth a flip. Her cousin's a nice girl though, and she's doing her best to keep that rat quiet, but I don't think even Dice can control Macine for very long. Sorry." He hung his head, feeling like a bit of a failure.
Cye felt that and immediately felt guilty for making him finish his news and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Mia gave him a half-smile, knowing why Cye was fidgeting, to say it was okay and turned to the source of Cye's discomfort. "It's okay," she reassured Danji. "It's not your fault and there's not much you can do about it. It's just too bad I don't at least have my laptop. The whole thing with the Zephyr reminded me of one of those cryptic poems Grandfather used to make me learn and, knowing Grandfather, he probably had it on some file or other and maybe an explanation for Rowen's whirlwind, too. But I guess the chances of me getting hold of either the files or my laptop are pretty slim, huh?"
After gulping down the last of his food, Cye raised a finger to halt Mia's thoughts. "Not exactly…" he began hesitantly.
"What?" Mia asked. When Cye didn't answer immediately, she got up and walked towards him. "What?! Cye Mouri, if you don't tell me how I can get my stuff this instant, I'm going to kill you!" she said, her hands curled to strangle him.
Cye held up his hands in defense and said quickly, "Okay, okay! I'll tell you! I just thought it might not be such a good idea after all. No need to get violent, Mia."
Mia relented and crossed her arms, tapping her foot impatiently. "Well?"
Cye smiled and said, 'The other day, Rowen was complaining to me about not getting to do much flying and I thought maybe he could just go out the window and go get your stuff for you, Mia. Or even better, if he's up to it, he could just fly us all out of here. Except, there's one problem with that idea. I, umm…I'm sorta scared of heights," he finished sheepishly, blushing furiously. He could feel the amusement growing in his friends and knew what was coming.
They held back the amusement, for the moment, and only with effort. "But what about all those times during fights and stuff? You were up way high then," Mia pointed out.
"Well, there was all the adrenalin and I couldn't exactly say 'hey, you guys, I can't fight and help save the bleeding world cuz I'm scared of heights', now could I?" Cye retorted, his accent becoming heavy with his emotion. "But that's not the point; the point is…oooh, never mind!"
Everyone blinked at him once, twice, then burst out laughing. After a little while, Ryo wiped away his tears, stifled another laugh, and said, "Okay, okay, so Rowen flying us out of here's not happening due to Cye's little, uh…problem." That earned some more laughter at Cye's expense.
Ryo choked as he held another laugh back, coughed, and continued, "But maybe he can go get some stuff for us since we'll be here awhile. Then again, maybe that's not a good idea either. He may just not come back once he's out, what with him hating the hospital so much and all."
Kento mumbled around a mouthful of his fourth burger, "Flo flend thumbbunny mif bin."
Danji shook his head and asked, "What did he say?"
Cye, used to interpreting Kento's food disoriented words, grinned. "He said 'So send somebody with him'. I agree, too; that might work. But who'll go?"
"How 'bout Sage?" suggested Mia. "At least, Rowen listens to him…half the time."
"Yeah, but he won't let me go with him," Sage told them.
"How do you know?" Mia asked.
Sage tapped the side of his head with his forefinger, indicating the telepathic link. "He told me so."
Sure enough, Rowen's eyes were wide open and he was sitting up in his chair and eyeing Sage with a knowing, mischievous smile. "If yer so worried 'bout me not comin' back, then I'll take anyone here, even White Blaze, but I'm not goin' up with Sage. I'd rather not crash an' I can't concentrate when I'm laughin' my head off at 'im."
Sage growled warningly, "Shut up, Rowen."
Rowen just smiled and continued. "Sage might not be scared o' heights—heck, he actually likes goin' on airplane flights—but he doesn' like the way I fly. Ya know, with nothin' solid, just an aura bubble. Kinda makes 'im scream," he laughed.
Sage lunged and tackled him, knocking him out of the chair to the floor, trying to strangle him, Rowen laughing the whole time. The others pulled Sage off but, try as they might, no one could keep a straight face for long. Sage scowled at the laughter and growled constant threats at Rowen, who was still sitting on the floor and laughing, too.
Just then, there was an urgent knock at the door and everyone shut up. Ryo glanced about the room in search of a place for White Blaze to hide and decided behind the desk would have to do. "White Blaze, get back there quick," he whispered to his tiger.
Once White Blaze was hidden, Danji cautiously opened the door a crack, only to have it knocked wide open from the other side. A brown-haired, fawn-eyed girl in nurse's uniform charged in breathless, and stumbled forward in her rush to enter the room. Kento reached out and caught her before she hit the floor and stood her on her feet.
She brushed a strange, orangish-bronze lock away from her left eye sheepishly and said, "Umm…thanks. I, uh, guess I was in too big a hurry, huh?" She looked up at him and they stared at each other as if in shock. The girl stuttered, "D-d-do I…do I know you?"
Kento scratched his head and frowned. "I was about to ask you the same thing."
Danji stepped up and put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Dice Salem, meet Kento Fuan. Unless you two do already know each other. Do you?"
Both frowned and said in unison, "I'm not sure." Then they stared at each other again, even more surprised and confused than before.
Danji had to know something else, though. "Hey, Dice, why are you here anyway?"
She snapped out of her reverie and said in one breath, "I'm sorry, Danji. I held her off as long as I could. I even locked her in the janitor's closet but she got out somehow and she told him everything and I'm just sooo sorry!"
"Whoa! Slow down, Dice. Now, what happened?" Danji ordered calmly.
Dice threw up her hands in exasperation. "Never mind! Macine's bringing that reporter, Borum, up here and you've got to get out quick! They'll be here any second." She turned to Rowen, who was starting to get to his feet. "She told Borum about you and he's looking to pin you for info. I've seen him "interviewing" patients before and he's the cruelest, most merciless man on Earth, so I suggest steering clear," she warned.
At the word 'patient', Rowen grimaced and made a move as if to jump out the nearby window, but Sage put a hand on his shoulder. "Steady, Ro."
Rowen met Sage's eyes and took a deep breath. Then he turned to Dice. "Well, how much time do we have?"
Dice didn't hear him; she was poking her head out the door to peer down the hall towards the stairs. Suddenly she gasped, "Oh no!" and slammed the door shut, locking it quickly. "Here they come!"
Ryo took charge. "Okay, we've got one option and we've gotta take it. Kento, cover Cye's eyes. Mia, open the window," he ordered. Seeing Sage about to say something, he shook his head. "Sorry, Sage, but Rowen's flying us outta here whether you like it or not."
Rowen was smiling from ear to ear, glad to have a chance to fly without someone automatically giving him a long list of reasons why he shouldn't. "Ey, Ryo, if I have to take 'im up, then yer gonna have to keep 'im from screamin' or I'll start laughin' an' lose my concentration."
Ryo laughed and said he'd keep Sage quiet, while Sage made mental notes to beat Rowen to death once they got out of there.
"Wait, wait!" Dice interrupted Rowen and Ryo. She looked Rowen square in the eyes. "You…you can fly?!"
"Uh…yeah."
"Oh, man. That's…that's—"
Rowen finished for her. "Weird?"
"Uh-huh."
Mia had discovered the window hadn't been opened for a long time, its sill and frame were dusty and rusty, and for all the effort she put into it, it wouldn't budge. Even all the muscle she'd developed through her secret workouts since Rowen's diagnosis all that time ago—which she'd started doing because she'd been so stressed and figured it would help her blow some steam, which it did—didn't help.
She snarled at it, angry, because she knew what would happen when that reporter, Borum, and that snitch nurse, Macine, got here. She loved the boys as a sort of sister, guardian, and just a good friend. They lived with her half the summer and on weekends and holidays but they went home for school and to be with their families, except for Ryo. He lived all but the holidays and an occasional weekend, when he went to visit his grandmother, at Mia's house.
The thought that some fleabag reporter looking for a story was about to wreak their lives with his snooping and maybe expose them was only half her motive for what she did. She was also finding that when living around Ryo's temper, it could rub off if you weren't careful and apparently some of it had rubbed off on her. And she'd been having a really, really bad day—in fact, the whole week had been a living hell—so with all those motives added up, her next action didn't surprise her too much but it shocked everyone else a bit.
She backed away from the stubborn window, lined it up with her right leg, and charged. About three feet from the wall, she jumped and her right foot made contact with the glass, and as the windowpane exploded into a thousand glittering, diamond-like pieces, she planted her left foot against the windowsill and pushed herself away from the potentially dangerous shards.
When she looked at the other's faces, she saw pure shocked surprise, but the only explanation she could offer was a shrug and, "It wouldn't open."
* * * * *
"Stupid rookies," the girl muttered for about the three-hundredth time. "Always gettin' in the way."
The man driving the car she was sitting in the back seat of glanced at the oriental-Hispanic looking girl mumbling to herself in various languages in his rearview mirror and asked again, "You sure you're all right, miss?"
The girl looked up at him with stormy blue eyes, her hair slipping free from behind her ear to cover one eye, and snapped at him in perfect Japanese, "I will be if you start drivin' and stop talkin' like some mother hen!" Then she got back to the business of keeping her shoulder from moving too much, hissing at the pain when the driver took an unexpected turn, and immediately cursing the "stupid rookies" again.
One minute, I'm ridin' the best crest on the coast, easy as Pop's coconut pie, next, I'm gettin' wiped cuz some stupid rookie thinks he can run a pipe! If I ever get my hands on that rook, I'm gonna nail 'em to a palm tree in a tsunami and watch 'em get his skin washed off! she thought.
Then, aloud, "Freakin' rookies. Someone's gonna have to either outlaw 'em or keep 'em the hell away from me!"
Why on Earth did I ever agree to come to Japan anyway? This never would've happened back home. At least in Hawaii, people know to stay outta my way.
The driver suddenly stopped and another wave of red-hot pain swept through her shoulder. She sucked in air between clenched teeth. "Damn rookies!"
"Miss, we're here. You need me to come in with you?" the driver asked, turning in his seat.
"No, I'm cool. Thanks for the ride, man. Just help me get my rig off your rack and you can leave," she replied testily as she climbed out of the car. She'd just hitchhiked in from the beach and she didn't trust this guy. The only reason she'd gotten in his car when she'd flagged him down was because she didn't have any other way to get to the hospital.
The man got out, untied the surfboard from the luggage rack on top of his car, handed it to the teenager, got back in his car, and drove away.
He'd dropped her off near a side door and she had to walk a bit of a way to reach it but with every step she took with her board tucked under her left arm, knives of pain stabbed her right shoulder until she had to stop. She was about to start walking again when a sudden rain of broken glass came showering down on her, giving her no choice but to duck and cover her head with her board. "Man, this is just not my day," she complained.
As she crouched there, she experienced a wave of panic without any apparent reason. Absurdly, she felt as if she were too high up and was deathly afraid she was going to fall.
Something made her stand and look up, despite how much it hurt to, and she dropped her board at what she saw. Four stories above her, there was a dark blue sphere floating near a window and she could make out nine silhouettes within it, eight human, one appeared to be an animal. The sphere was moving away from the hospital and she felt an undeniable need to follow it.
She grabbed her board and took off running, ignoring the excruciating pain consuming her entire right shoulder and much of that arm. Years of surfing having made her extremely well coordinated, she pulled a hairclip out of her pocket as she ran and somehow managed to tuck the hair covering her left eye out of the way, revealing the rapidly changing colors of her eyes, always blue but always different shades and hues. Using her peripheral vision to see where she was going, she kept her gaze mostly on the flying sphere. She had to run pretty fast to keep up with it but, luckily, she was in real good shape.
She ran for four streets, turning twice, before she saw the sphere start to gradually fly lower. It descended into a heavily wooded park and she ran in the general direction of where she'd last seen it. As she neared a clearing in the trees, she could hear several voices speaking and she slowed to a stop. Hiding in the shadow of the trees a good ten yards before the clearing, she watched with the ever-growing sense that she was about to meet her destiny.
* * * * *
"See, Cye, it wasn't that bad." Kento patted his best friend on the back.
"Not that bad?! It was awful!" Cye sat on a park bench and tried to make the world stop spinning before his eyes.
"Yeah, well, at least Sage didn' scream or I would have dropped us all an' then ya would've had a good reason ta be scared o' heights," Rowen said solemnly. He was still in his subarmor, which he'd had to don because of how much of Strata's energy he'd had to use to fly them all out and away from the hospital.
Sage punched Rowen's shoulder lightly but admitted, "I may have been scared last time but I've gotten over it. As long as Rowen can keep me from plummeting to my death, I'll be okay with his way of flying from now on."
Dice and Danji just stood a little ways away from the group and stared at them all like they were crazy, Dice still trembling slightly from the shock of the flight.
Mia asked if Rowen could go get her stuff. "Yeah, sure, jist gimme a sec ta rest up. Carryin' so many o' ya really tired me out an' I'd prob'ly crash if I tried ta fly agin immediately," he replied and dropped onto the bench beside Cye.
Cye was a little bit too busy to notice, though. He kept glancing around until Kento noticed and asked what he was looking for.
"I've got the oddest feeling," Cye said distractedly. "As if there's someone or something around her I should know but I can't put my finger on it."
Rowen mumbled, "It's prob'ly yer elemental." He was half asleep, eyes closed, arms crossed, and chin on chest.
Everyone looked at him and Cye asked, "What did you say?"
Rowen didn't answer, already asleep. Sage and Ryo took hold of his arms, pulled him to his feet, and shook him. His eyes shot open and he pulled away. "What's tha big idea?!"
"You said something about an elemental. What was it?" Ryo asked impatiently.
Rowen frowned. "I dunno what yer talkin' 'bout. I didn' say anything." He looked around at all of them and asked uncertainly, "Did I?" Suddenly he smiled and laughed. "Ohhh. It was Zee! No wonder!"
"Zee?" everyone asked.
"Zephyr, I mean. She prob'ly wouldn' mind ya callin' her Zee, too. See, she was talkin' ta me mentally an' I guess I jist said somethin' without realizin' it."
Mia thought of something and asked, "Can I speak to her? Maybe she can help me figure something out."
Rowen and shrugged and yawned. "I guess. She heard ya so she'll be he'ah in a minute."
A few seconds later, Zephyr was standing in their midst and smiling at Mia. "Lady Yagayu, what may I do for you?"
Mia suddenly felt a little nervous. "Umm…thanks for helping us with Rowen."
"He is my brother by soul. If he were to die, it is possible that I would cease to exist. Besides, as his elemental sister I have an inborn love for him and would gladly sacrifice myself for him."
Mia finally got her nerve up again and said, "Rowen said something to Cye about another elemental. What did he mean?"
Zephyr smiled. "Oh, Lady Yagayu, you know the answer to that. There is a poem, which your late grandfather taught you, that explains it, is there not?"
Mia frowned and thought a moment. She sighed. "Yes, but I can't remember it. I thought maybe Rowen could get my laptop and my grandfather's files since we can't go back to the house now that Borum knows our names and probably my address."
Kento shot that idea down fast. "Sorry, Mia, but Blue-boy's visiting dreamland right now."
Rowen was sleeping on his feet, his head on Kento's shoulder. Kento was smiling good-naturedly and holding Rowen steady with one hand. "Guess he wasn't kidding when he said he was tired, huh?" he joked.
Zephyr smiled wanly. "That would be my fault. I am a pure elemental, meaning I'm made of soul and power, and it is difficult for mortal bodies to endure me for very long. Since I used Lord Tenku to take this form and he has been telepathically communicating with me for the past hour that would be the reason for his fatigue. The fact that Lord Korin came in spiritual contact with me is the reason for his earlier exhaustion also. My apologies."
Rowen's head started slipping off Kento's shoulder. "Whoopsie-daisies!" Kento said and had to quickly use both hands to catch Rowen. Grunting, he held Rowen to his side with one arm, moved him over to park bench, and set him down on it. Only then did he notice that Cye was no longer there.
"Hey, where'd Cye go?"
Everyone started looking around but he was nowhere in sight.
Kento shouted, "Yo, Cye, where are ya?"
No answer.
* * * * *
When she saw him get up and start walking towards her, she did the only thing she'd ever known. She prepared to fight.
She retreated back into the trees far enough that she couldn't see the clearing, figuring that way, when she fought him, the rest wouldn't be able to see him and come to his aid, so she wouldn't be outnumbered. She set her board on the ground, out of the way but within sight.
Her shoulder was bleeding again and she cursed it as she ripped a length of cloth from her shorts and tied it as tight as possible around her shoulder. By the time she was done, he was only fifteen yards away. She grabbed a low tree limb, pulled herself up, and hid in the branches.
He walked under her and stood there, looking at her board. From her perch she could see his hair was auburn, he was thin, and a bit small for his age, which she estimated to be around eighteen, two years older than her. Something about him made her want to come down and trust him, when she'd never trusted anyone in her life, except the ocean and her board.
She was about to do just that when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a streak of dull silver. Reacting instantly, she dropped from the tree, knocking him aside, and took the spear in her already injured shoulder.
It pierced the muscle and wedged itself between her shoulder-bone and clavicle. She stared at it, at the ugly metal spear shaft sticking out of her, the head buried within her shoulder, at the life gushing out of her in a flood of dark red blood. Then she looked at him, standing two yards away, and for the first time for as long as she could remember, and for no reason discernable, she felt warm love filling her and at the same time, also for the first time in her life, fear, for she knew she was bleeding to death.
"Run," she said quietly, weakly. Her earlier injury, when the rookie's surfboard had somehow managed to stab her, had caused a lot of blood loss. Now, the spear had refilled the rivers of red that streamed down her back, side, and front and she was beginning to feel rather woozy with the loss of her life fluid.
He took a step towards her.
She got a little angry with him. "They're coming. Run. Now!" she ordered. The edges of her vision were turning black and she suddenly couldn't tell up from down. Her body was numb from the waist down. She fell forward, but he caught her and held the shaft of the spear so the weapon wouldn't further impale her.
Through glazing eyes she looked up at him, feeling fuzzy, dizzy, disoriented, the numbness in her lower body crawling upward. "Please," she said. "Run away." She didn't realize she'd spoken in English instead of Japanese.
"I can't," he told her. There was something different about his voice from everyone else in this country that she couldn't place in her present condition but her foggy mind did realize that he'd answered her in English.
"Why not?"
"Because, I think I know you and you saved my life," he said gratefully. "Besides, no one deserves to die except the damn scum who did this and believe me, they're going to pay," he growled. She sensed that, for him, this amount of anger and hatred was very out of character.
She could barely hear him, couldn't see him. "I think I know you, too," she said. "You're a familiar stranger." She shuddered and closed her eyes, slipping into unconsciousness. Even as she passed into the blackness, she could feel him picking her up and moving her very fast. The last thing she heard was a sound like heavy clanking metal moving nearer. Above all the noise, one sound stood out: his voice, though what he said made no sense whatsoever…
"Armor of Torrent…Tao Shin!"
* * * * *
Cye hadn't seen the spear until it was protruding from the girl's shoulder, who he hadn't seen either until she'd pushed him out of harm's way. He'd felt her pain, thanks to his new ability, and he'd felt the confusing mix of love, fear, anger, and her almost frightening lack of trust. To him, the Warrior of Trust, that was the worst part.
She'd tried to get him to escape but he couldn't leave her. He felt like he knew her and he also felt an oddly familiar emotion that he usually had only when he was around his sister.
Now, when he saw her close her eyes as he held her up on her knees, grasping the shaft of the spear she'd taken for him, he felt a wave of rage sweep through him, boiling heatedly like a tempest in his gut. He growled in hate at the, so far, unseen foe or foes who were responsible for this.
Carefully, gently, he picked her up, doing his best to hold the spear shaft erect so it couldn't do more damage, and broke into a flat run back towards the clearing—or at least he thought he must be running for the clearing, he was a little unsure with everything looking so much the same—and the others. An arrow flew past his ear so he stopped, deposited her gently on the ground, and called the Torrent to him. The moment he had it on, he lifted the girl again and was off like a flash. He would've stopped and fought but he couldn't risk her life in a battle. So he did the only thing there was left to do.
He ran.
* * * * *
Dice had heard something. It had sounded like Cye and without further thought, she grabbed Kento's arm and ran in the direction of the sound. She knew the rest of the group was following them, including Rowen, who'd been rudely awakened to help search for Cye, and Zephyr, who had insisted on staying, but somehow she knew it was more important to get to Cye at the moment than to wait for them to catch up.
"Whoa! Hey, Dice, slow down!" Kento exclaimed. He could've easily used the extra phenomenal speed that Hardrock provided even when he wasn't wearing it, but he didn't think that wise and simply didn't understand Dice's intentions.
"Sorry, can't do that right now. Besides, you do wanna find Cye, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah, but—," he started.
"No buts. I heard him and something's wrong. So we gotta hurry, 'kay?"
"I guess."
"Good." She let go of his arm and ran faster.
He and everyone else followed. Somewhere ahead of her she could hear what sounded like metal against metal. She'd run about a mile when suddenly, out of the dark woods before her, a volley of arrows flew, scattering the group to hide behind any available shelter. One or two of the deadly projectiles passed right through the twist of wind that was Zephyr in shape-shift.
Before anyone else could react, Rowen was up and standing on a tree branch above them. Zephyr reformed on a limb above him.
"Armor of Strata…Tao Inochi!"
A mere second or so after the arrows had flown at the group, countless golden arrows were raining into the darkness. They heard several grunts and then clashes of metal and a sort of hissing sound.
"Way to go, Ro!" Kento shouted and let out an ecstatic, booming, "Yahoo!"
Dice looked up at the branch and gasped at the sight. Rowen was wearing a dark blue, samurai-style set of armor. He was using a huge gold bow and golden arrows with lightning-fast ease and expertise. The phenomenal existence of Zephyr and her abilities was astounding enough but this new development really stunned her. All she could do was stare. Beside her, behind the bush she and Danji had taken cover behind, she was aware that her friend was doing the same.
"Wow," he breathed.
"Uh-huh," she agreed.
Their attention was dragged away from the normal-teenager-gone-expert-samurai-archer as the other three boys stood and followed Rowen's lead.
"Armor of Halo…Tao Chi!"
"Armor of Hardrock…Tao Gi!"
"Armor of Wildfire…Tao Jin!"
Now, there were four teens wearing full samurai battle armor. And all Dice and Danji could do was gape at them.
"I know. It's weird. But you'll get used to it," a voice said from behind the two. It was Mia.
"Huh?" they asked.
"Remember what we told you, Danji? Well, this is it," she explained.
"Oh," he said and continued to stare at the boys.
Dice continued to look confused and dazed. "What?"
Mia smiled knowingly. "I'll explain later. Right now," she said, "we need to get out of here so the guys have some room to do their thing. Believe me, you don't want to be around when they really start fighting. I'm speaking from experience. Okay?"
"Alright," Danji said and grabbed Dice, who was staring from Ryo to Sage to Kento to Rowen and back at each of them again, pulling her up and running after Mia as she headed for the clearing.
* * * * *
Cye managed to evade most of the arrows and the ones that did hit him were deflected harmlessly off his armor. He was more concerned with protecting the unconscious girl than himself though. More spears flew at him along with the arrows but luckily, the weapons never struck their mark.
Suddenly, a whole bombardment of arrows came showering around him. One managed to get between his armor at the back of his knee and he stumbled as it stuck there. He covered the girl to protect her from the projectiles and was lucky enough not to have any more arrows cause damage.
He'd just regained his feet and was about to start running with the girl in his arms again when a flash of gold dove out of the trees ahead of him and zipped over his shoulder to strike down a Netherworld soldier he hadn't seen about to chop off his head. It only took a second of looking at the long golden arrow with white stabilizing feathers stuck in the now empty moldy green-colored armor for him to know where it had come from. That arrow had come from Rowen's never-ending supply in the Ronin of Strata's quiver. Which meant that not very far up ahead, at least one fully armored fellow Ronin was defending him, with or without the knowledge they were doing so.
That fact gave Cye an extra burst of speed and strength to dodge out of the way just as a countless number of golden arrows as they streaked endlessly out of the darkness and thunked into dozens of Netherworld husk soldiers behind him. Cye made a mental note to show his appreciation to Rowen later, when things…uh…slowed down. Then he ran for it. Before he knew it, he had burst into the midst of the other four Ronins, all sporting their armor with weapons drawn.
First thing he did was locate Sage, who was a few yards away and bearing the sword of Halo readily. He staggered over to the Warrior of Wisdom and gasped out, "She's hurt bad. Help her."
Sage started to sheath his sword when Cye collapsed. Zephyr swept down in wind form and held the girl up, making her look as though she were floating in the air.
"Cye!" Sage, Ryo, and Kento exclaimed. Rowen was too busy firing at the swarm of husk soldiers that had suddenly surged out of the trees in pursuit of Cye to have even noticed what had just happened below him yet.
Ryo's leader mood had set in and he quickly gave orders. "Sage, you and Zee take the girl," he said. "Kento, you take Cye. Get them to the clearing and stay there. Sage'll take care of them while you fight off any threat. White Blaze," he turned to the tiger, "you go with them and help. Now, all of you, go!"
Sage's face remained impassive and he left quickly, Kento following with Cye over his shoulder, and White Blaze covering their backs. As soon as they were gone, Ryo drew the twin Wildfire katanas and fell to hacking away at husk soldiers. He shouted up to the dark blue shadow in the branches, "Hey, Rowen, it's just you and me now and we have to try and keep 'em away from the clearing! Okay?"
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. His answer came in the form of a husk soldier that had been about to slice his back crashing to the ground in a heap. Four of Rowen's arrows were jammed into a three-inch space in the armor, which became empty as a spout of greenish mist hissed out of it. "No problem. You just keep doin' yer thing an' try to keep outta trouble an' I'll do mine an' I'll watch yer back. By the way, there's a bit o' litter behind ya that ya might wanna throw out."
Ryo grinned and struck down the indicated soldier before saying, "Thanks, Ro!"
"Any time!"
* * * * *
Kento didn't know how many soldiers he'd cut down so far but he did know it wasn't anywhere near enough. He twirled his tetsubo, jabbed, slammed the naginata blade into a soldier, twirled again, and five more miniature clouds of green vapor formed and then dissipated and five more sets of empty armor lay half-demolished on the already armor-strewn ground.
"Not so hot now, are ya? Shows you to mess with a friend of Hardrock!" he said and flew into a flurry of quick thrusts and twirls again, leaving another three empty armors behind him. "Takin' out the trash, smashin' down the tin cans!" he sang tunelessly, enjoying the battle.
Behind him, Sage and Zephyr were doing their best to help the girl, while Danji, Mia, and Dice took care of Cye. White Blaze was thrashing the few soldiers who made it past Kento. Cye was awake now and the arrow was out of the back of his knee. He'd only been awake for a minute or so and was completely ready to join the battle.
"Come on, Mia. Let me up already. I'm not hurt that bad."
"Just a second."
"Mia…"
"Cye, I said just a second."
He decided enough was enough. Somewhere inside him something clicked, he felt like he knew something without knowing it, and he spoke firmly and determinedly, "Mia, I'm not in a good mood. That girl is my sister. My elemental sister. Don't ask me how I know it, I just do. They hurt her and they're going to pay for it. Now, let me up before I really get mad."
Surprised, Mia stepped away from him and gaped with her mouth half open. This was a rarity. Cye was angry, not just upset or in his battle mood, but really and truly angry. Without further protest, she allowed him to get up and head straight towards the edge of the clearing, where Kento was busily hacking, slicing, whacking, and all-in-all demolishing every soldier available.
"Hey, Cye! You okay?" he asked absently.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Do you mind if I take a turn?"
Kento grinned and swept his arm towards the charging ranks. "Sure, just save some for me."
Cye swept in like a tsunami, leaving complete devastation in his wake. He used his yari quickly and efficiently, snagging a soldier, piercing it with the center spike of the trident, and tossing it away unceremoniously, never pausing before catching and destroying another.
Then he was whirling his trident, leaping into the air, kicking two soldiers and slashing another as he used it for balance between the other two all at once. Before the three empty armors hit the ground he had the two outer prongs of his yari around another soldier's neck and the center prong buried in its throat. Without a hitch, he continued to wreak havoc on the flood of Netherworld forces.
"Yahoo! Go, Cye!" Kento cheered, watching his best friend at work. A soldier charged him from the side and he simply jabbed in its direction with his iron bo, and it fell in a heap a good two yards away from its intended target. Unfazed, he cheered again, "Go, Cye! Show 'em what ya can do!" Then he dove headlong into the fray and fought alongside his friend.
* * * * *
Sage knew the girl was in trouble. She'd lost too much blood and Netherworld weapons were often tipped in poison of some sort. Apparently, the spear that he'd just removed from her shoulder had had poison. The wound had quickly become infected and he could tell she wasn't going to last much longer. Halo did its best to help, putting almost everything into it. The Wisdom kanji was glowing already, beaming slow and steady. It kept getting brighter until it was practically blinding.
Still, the girl kept slipping away from him. His entire body was engulfed in green-white light as he bent over her prone body, his left hand on her forehead and his right on her heart. He held onto the fragment of life he could still feel in her but it was extremely elusive and he feared that no matter how much of Halo's power he used to try to save her, she was going to die.
Zephyr was adding some of her own power to his but she couldn't do much and told him so. She continued, "I feel something. She is an elemental, not pure, mostly mortal. But she is not the only one other than myself around here. I sense the presence of another. I am going to have to try to concentrate my perceptions on locating the other. Can you continue without me, Lord Korin?"
He nodded and she moved ten yards away to meditate, occasionally holding up a hand and sending flurries of wind into the approaching swarm of soldiers and dispatching them in violent gusts, without so much as opening her eyes.
The girl's slightly damp blue hair held traces of black and brownish-gold and it was cut short, about half-an-inch below her ears. A curtain of hair covered her left eye in much the same way as his covered his right. He wondered if she kept her hair like that for the same reason as he did: to make the intensity of his eyes less noticeable, more subtle.
Sage could see Cye glancing over at him every few minutes and each time the only thing he could do was shake his head. Cye's reaction to the news of no progress was to practically shred ever soldier within a four-yard radius.
Sage was getting weaker. His body wasn't used to dealing with this much of Halo's power; it would kill him. His gut was clenching and his lungs felt like they were on fire. But this girl was important. Cye had said she was his elemental sister. That meant that she might have the kind of power Rowen's elemental sister, Zephyr, did. And if the Netherworld was attacking again, they needed all the allies they could get. Besides, as he grasped what was left of her, he could feel some hint of the future that suggested she would be vital somehow.
His eyes rolled back and he clenched his jaw. He could see a wisp of rapidly changing blue power twisting and fighting its way through the darkness and he reached for it. He caught it and held it but nearly let go at the wave of electric-like shock that swept through him at contact with it. He continued to hold onto it, knowing it was the girl's last hope. Zephyr had said that if Rowen died she might cease to exist. So if this girl, Cye's elemental sister, died, would Cye die, too? Maybe not, but no sense in taking chances. There was no way Sage would let that happen.
He struggled to hold onto her, feeling her power and
Halo's slowly tearing him apart from the inside out. Finally, he reached along his link with Cye. Cye, I'm losing her. You have to help her.
How? Cye wanted to go to her but he wanted to keep fighting.
Remember how I told you Zephyr and Rowen are
linked and she helped him?
Yes. You
think I should try to do the same with her?
It's worth a try.
Cye sighed and flipped up into a tree branch. "Kento, cover me!"
Below him, Kento lifted a soldier and heaved it into four others, disabling all five. Then he gave Cye the thumbs-up sign and shouted up, "No problemo!"
Cye leaped from branch to branch until he cleared the direct vicinity of the battlefield. Then he closed his eyes and felt for her. He didn't have to wait long. A surge of power touched him and he called out to her mentally, I'm here. You have to hold on. Please. Sage is trying to help you but you have to try and help him help you. Try. Please try. I'm here and I won't leave you.
To his surprise he heard her. I know, bro. 'Sides, ya didn't think I wanted to die and never have a chance to whip a couple of those metal hulks that tried to trash you, did ya?
He smiled. No. Just hang in there, okay?
Hey, like your orange human machete friend said, 'No problemo!'
Cye laughed aloud. He wasn't all that surprised that she knew what Kento had said to him; it seemed perfectly normal. He disconnected with her and thought out to Sage, How's she doing?
Believe it or not, she's doing okay, though she's
not out of the woods yet. Good job,
Cye.
Just save her, okay?
I'm working on it.
Cye was off in a flash, back to the battlefield, back on the ground, and slicing and dicing soldiers as if he'd never left.
Sage felt the girl grow stronger and steadier so he held on even tighter to the strand of her life. Slowly, he drew the strand back with him, waiting for her to catch it. She did and it snapped taught. Instantly, he was thrown back and opened his eyes to see her gasping and trying to stand up, already in a sitting position. Safe in the knowledge that she was alive and, as a glance at her shoulder told him, healed from the intense concentration of the Halo power, he let go of consciousness, crumpling over. The girl caught his head before it hit a rock.
"Sage!" Mia cried and she, Danji, and Dice rushed over to him.
"What's wrong with him?" Dice asked.
Mia looked him over, found no wound, and told the two doctors, "He used too much power to save her. It might've killed him."
Danji's face was set and grim. "Not if I can help it," he said. "Is there any way to get the armor off of him?"
Mia shook her head.
"Okay, then we'll have to wake him up."
"How do we do that?" Dice questioned.
The girl spoke up. "Water."
"Huh?" three voices asked.
"My clothes are still wet from surfing. Let me do it," she commanded.
The others moved aside and she pulled her top off. She was wearing a tank top underneath. She twisted her surf-top over his face, wringing out a small waterfall of saltwater. It splashed on him and he asked groggily, "What happened?"
"Never mind that. These people," she said and gestured to the other three, "need ya to take off your armor or whatever ya call this big hunk of metal. I suggest ya do it before ya pass out again."
The Halo vanished and Sage lapsed into unconsciousness again, weaker than before.
Danji and Dice went to work fast, Danji using years of medical experience and his healing gift and Dice using a natural talent. Mia watched them meticulously doing their best to keep Sage alive.
He'd used a lot of power before, astonishing amounts on several occasions, but she knew the power of the armors was extreme and intense, and it was all too easy for the Ronins to overdo it. The battles against Saber Stryke, Sun Devil, and Saranbo had nearly killed them at times. On the few occasions Sage had used the healing power of Halo, it had only been small amounts but this time he'd used so much.
"Is he going to be okay?" she asked.
Dice spared a glance at her. "Well," she said, "we can keep him breathing, that's easy. What he needs is for us to oxygenate his blood. That armor stuff kinda messed up his blood content a bit. I just don't know how we're gonna do that, is all."
Zephyr left her meditation, throwing a couple more wind gusts into the melee at the edge of the clearing, and came over. "I can do that. I am made of air after all. Just stand back."
They did so and her hand shape-shifted, becoming transparent but holding the form of a hand. She gently opened Sage's mouth with her solid hand and then slid the other one in. A few seconds later she pulled back and said, "All done. His blood's oxygen content should regain its normal levels within the next few minutes."
Mia noticed something. "Hey, where'd that girl go?"
If they'd thought to look in that particular direction, they would have seen her…fighting alongside Cye, with no more than her fists and feet.
* * * * *
Ryo sliced two soldiers in half, each one receiving a quick swipe from a katana, and the husk-armors fell in a harmless heap. Ryo grinned wickedly and charged another soldier, spinning around and using a low kick to bring the soldier's legs out from under it. A quick thrust of a katana and the greenish mist leaked through the fresh hole in the chest-plate of the armor. Instantly, Ryo was attacking more soldiers.
There was a large group of soldiers nearby on the crest of a rise with a strange weapon that looked like a cross between a bazooka, a catapult, and a cannon. They were lining the weapon up with the clearing, slowly and deliberately, and though he didn't know just what the thing would do, Ryo wasn't going to take any chances.
He snapped his katanas together and prepared to use his special attack to permanently disable the weapon. Not to mention sending every one of the soldiers handling it to what, if—impossibly—they had souls, they'd consider an early hell.
"FLARE…UP…NOW!!!"
* * * * *
Rowen fired arrow after arrow after arrow, nearly twenty within one second, each one hitting its mark. He was fully immersed in the battle and wouldn't have noticed if a grenade went off somewhere near him. A group of Netherworld archers were doing their best to shoot him down, but he either blocked their shots with his bow or shot them down with his own arrows.
"That the best ya can do?!" he taunted them, and fired another fifteen arrows at the group, forcing them to scatter.
They regrouped in another area and he jumped from the branch he was holding as his perch to let loose some more of Strata's golden arrows. There was no way in hell he could've expected it. A sudden unbearable fiery pain engulfed his legs, causing him to scream loud enough to be heard a mile away. He barely had time to whirl and send seven arrows shooting into seven soldiers on the rise behind him, killing them dead, before his world began to tip and tilt and spin.
He dropped his bow and stood there with a blank look on his face, his eyes just as blank, knowing subconsciously that this was the beginning of shock. He couldn't even feel his legs, though he knew he was standing on them. He saw a group of soldiers coming, spears ready in hand, and he was helpless to defend himself, just like on an occasion in the Netherworld years ago when he and Ryo had been fighting for the others and Kayura had struck him down. Sure, he'd been playing possum in the hopes the soldiers would take him to wherever they were keeping the others, but they had still mauled him.
Déjà vu, he thought. Then he collapsed.
* * * * *
When he heard Rowen scream, Ryo knew his mistake. The soldiers he'd been aiming for had tricked him. The rise they'd been on had been blocking his view of what was on the other side. Rowen had been over there, out of Ryo's sight. The soldiers had simply moved aside and allowed Ryo's sure-kill to pass on through the rise, cutting a scorched wound through the earth, and pin Rowen.
"Oh gods, please no…" he whispered and ran for the now charred and blackened area.
* * * * *
Zephyr screamed. She fell to her side and began to writhe about. Sage had just sat up a minute ago and now he rushed to her side. He looked her over and was startled to see her legs covered in burns.
"Oh, gods, Zee. What happened?" he asked.
She stopped muttering in Greek long enough to speak in Japanese. "I believe my Lord Tenku has obtained serious injury," she gasped. "My form is reflecting his condition."
She cried out in Greek, "Oh, gods on Olympus, help me. Oh, dear, mighty Zeus, great, wise Athena. Save my Lord."
Mia managed to translate most of the wind elementals last three sentences. "She's praying to the ancient Greek deities. You know, Zeus and Athena and all those things. I think she just asked them to save her lord?"
"That would be Rowen," Sage said. "Well, I hope her gods are listening."
Zephyr had lost control of her form, her arms continuously shifted from wind to flesh. She screamed again and a new wound appeared in her side, looking as if blood should stream from it in a flood, but since she wasn't human, none did. That didn't stop the pain, though.
Danji, Mia, Dice, and Sage tried to help her but nothing could be done. Two more wounds appeared as she screamed yet again, one in her left leg, the other on the back of her right shoulder blade. Sage stood and looked towards Kento and Cye, surprised to see the mysterious girl fighting at Cye's side but with more urgent concerns than stopping to think about that.
He called out to the other Ronins, "Guys, something's wrong with Rowen! Whatever it is is killing Zee. We have to do something!"
Kento glanced over at Zephyr and nodded in agreement before striking down two more soldiers. Cye called over his shoulder, "What do we do?"
"Cye, you go find Rowen. Kento you go with him in case you need to bring Rowen back."
"What about me?" the girl asked and used her fist to flatten the face of a soldier.
"You come back over here. That way, if Cye gets hurt, we'll know."
She looked confused but said, " 'Kay."
Cye and Kento took off towards the last place they'd seen Ryo and Rowen. The girl ran over to join Mia and the others; Danji was trying to use his healing gift without much success, while, with White Blaze, Sage took up the battle against the soldiers, already fully armored again. And the whole time, Zephyr was screaming and more wounds were appearing.
* * * * *
Ryo ran faster than he'd ever run in his life, simply swinging his katanas from side to side to dispatch any soldiers in the way. He came to the top of the blackened rise sparing a glance at the armors of the soldiers he'd been aiming for—and missed—when he'd made his mistake. They each had an arrow sunk in the very center of the chest-plates, as if to make up for his mistake. He ran past them. On the other side of the rise, he saw something that made his worry boil and burst into his renowned fury.
A crowd of husk soldiers was packed in a bunch and jabbing weapons downward at something—or someone. The crowd parted for a moment and he saw a glimpse of dark blue then a white hand guard, freshly stained with red. Just outside the mob, lying as if abandoned on the forest floor, was a great, unique golden bow. That was the only motive Ryo needed before he let loose an inhuman, animalistic half-growl, half-scream of rage.
"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM, YOU DAMN BASTARDS!!!"
He plunged into the swarm, screaming at the soldiers, striking them down mercilessly, rage fueling the fire that the Ronin of Wildfire's spirit was. For every armor on the ground, freshly emptied and now coming apart at the hinges, another soldier stood there, fighting him for no reason other than that was what they was supposed to do.
The last time Rowen had been down like this, it hadn't been Ryo's fault and besides, Rowen had been faking. Oh, but what a guilt trip he went on anyway! Kayura had still been evil to the core at the time, unaware of her lineage, and Rowen had continuously saved Ryo's butt by willingly sacrificing himself, each time barely getting out alive. Then, in an attempt to buy them some time to save the others, he'd done it again. And it had worked…sort of.
Kayura had struck Rowen down, out of the sky. Ryo, helpless to intervene, had watched as Rowen fell too far away for him to reach his friend. Rowen had managed to land on his feet, but he'd fallen to his knees anyway. Nearby soldiers had pounced on him in that split moment of vulnerability and speared him to the ground. Ryo had tried to get to him but the soldiers had strung Rowen up on a Netherworld barge like a prize catch and gotten away. Ryo hadn't been able to help Rowen then, and he'd wallowed in the guilt afterwards, but he could do something, now.
And he did do something. Oh, boy, did he do something!
"Nobody, and I mean nobody messes with my friends!" he shrieked at the inhuman, monotonous-lived soldiers. They went down impossibly fast, falling in piles, heaps, masses, tons. They didn't stand a chance.
Ryo couldn't see past the red war-rage filling his mind and heart and soul. They'd tricked him into hurting one of his friends, possibly killing him. They'd pay, as sure as he was living, they would pay.
More soldiers kept coming in floods. He hated to admit it but…I'm outnumbered. I can't take on this many.
But that wouldn't stop him. A sideways glance before continuing to shred the soldiers showed him Rowen lying on his back, staring up at the sky with a dazed look. Ryo didn't know much about medical science or any of that—heck, he hardly knew anything!—but he'd heard enough during the visiting hours at the hospital years ago, and half-listening to his teachers at school and Rowen and Sage discussing odd things like they did, to know that Rowen was in shock.
And why not? His legs had been hit by a supernatural fire, countless spears, swords, daggers, and other assorted weapons had been repeatedly, mercilessly driven into his body, and knowing Rowen, he'd probably figured out where the fire had come from, that it had been Ryo's sure-kill. What was going through Rowen's mind now? Did he think that Ryo had betrayed him?
Oh, man, Ro. I didn't mean to. It was an accident. They tricked me. I'm so sorry, Rowen. I'm so sorry, he thought to the downed Ronin. There was no reply. Just silence. And that scared Ryo. Rowen? Answer me. Still no reply. Another sideways glance told him why Rowen couldn't respond.
Rowen was gone.