Note From the Author: Heya there folks! *sigh* I seriously wish you would all join my forum, Just Another Forum! Anyways, I'm starting a new project called 'Birthday Fiction Project!', in which a bunch of authors gather together and write a birthday fiction collaboration entirely dedicated to their favorite KHR character!
Want to join? Sure! Anyone can! Just go onto my forum and reply to the topic headed 'Birthday Fiction Project!' and that's seriously all you have to do...other than help write the fiction of course! And who know? Maybe you'll get an idea for another story in the process!
~8~
Water poured into the hole and then swirled away into the drain on the ground. Anna stared silently at the drain as the water swirled away; the hole the water came from was a metallic tube that descended down from the cave's roof. The girl got up from where she was sitting in the fetal position and walked over to put her bloodied and scratched up hands in the water, she cringed slightly at the stinging sensation but kept her hands in the water to get the crusted up blood washed away.
She took her hands out after a few minutes and stared silently at them as new blood began to form on the scratches. A large clunking sound echoed in the cave and then there was a sudden illumination to which Anna quickly covered her eyes.
"Wha...?" she moved her arm slightly so that she could almost see what had opened the door and squinted her eyes, how long had it been since she last saw light...?
"It's time to get up, dear little Grandhart," a voice echoed, it was that...that thing.
Anna had no clue as to the details of how she got in the cave, especially with such a number of injuries, but she did find out that the thing that was walking towards her was not a human. Its eyes were a hollow indigo color, its face was pale, and its smile was possibly one of the creepiest things in the world, and she was a professional hitman!
"Who are you?" she asked slowly.
"Morpheus," it stated while fidgeting with the collar of its shirt, a lavender colored dress shirt, "But you should know that, Grandhart."
Anna surveyed the figure and said, "My name is Grandhart, but I'm pretty sure that you have me confused with someone else."
"Nope, I'm not," it shook its head and waved a hand, "There is a 32.876% DNA match between you and the professor: Daniel Grandhart; and 32.876% is high enough for you to be Daniel Grandhart, you probably just scrambled your DNA a little bit and turned yourself into a little girl to hide from us."
"That sounds far too troublesome to be the work of either me or my brother," she stated while looking back at her hands, "And DNA Mixers are extremely hard to use, plus that kind of technology is far too advance and is only available to a few select Families within the Mafia.
"Heh, not for someone with a mind like you," Morpheus smirked and tapped its head, "Geniuses are hard to come by, but you certainly are one if you are able to make your own DNA Mixer. Therefore you are Daniel Grandhart, albeit shorter and a different girl."
This could possibly be one of the dumbest conversations I have ever had, Anna thought miserably, I don't even think I have a relative named Daniel, my dad's name was Jacob and my grandmother made her maiden name as our family name, and her name was Alyssa.
"I don't even know anyone named Daniel!" she said stubbornly.
Morpheus frowned, apparently not liking this answer, and turned around, "Until you stop lying you won't be able to get out of this cave."
"But I'm not Daniel Grandhart!" she yelled as the door shut.
Anna sighed and rested her scratched-up hands on her blue eyes, she muttered into her palm, "My hands hurt."
~8~
Explosives could be extremely dangerous, but sometimes really useful, such as when ever you are facing a large group of enemies in a narrow place. They were not as useful, however, when it is only two people and they both happen to use explosives. Well...one of them wasn't even a person, but it was still attacking Hanabi with explosions!
Hanabi swerved on the grassy plain as she avoided the falling beads, one fell next to her foot and she quickly withdrew it and jumped out of the way.
"You're quite quick," Loki spoke as it threw even more beads, "Why don't we bring this to the next level?"
"What?" Hanabi looked over to the Box and almost fell when the terrain and surroundings changed from an endless grassy field to a dense forest that was drizzling rain. She stopped herself from almost tripping on a tree root and she exclaimed, "So these are all holograms after all!"
"Not the brightest are you?" Loki mocked, to which Hanabi's eyebrow twitched and she threw one of her sharpest cards towards Loki.
"For your information," she said in a deep tone while the smoke cleared from the explosion, the trees around her were, of course, completely unaffected by it. "I happen to have the highest GPA* in Namimori Middle and I'm also one of the top students at Mafia School."
"They must be lacking in standards then," the voice laughed a shrill cackle through out the light drizzle.
The silver-haired girl took out a leather bound deck of cards, a flaming skull was imprinted on the leather; she slid one of the cards out, revealing that they had the same flaming skull on them as well. Her green eyes narrowed as she glanced over at the cards.
Loki's voice hummed and said, "Those are some pretty fancy looking cards ya got there, are these more powerful than the last ones?"
"Yes," she lied, in all truth all the decks she used were pretty random and she just grabbed as many as she could hold without people finding out about them. And she had just taken this deck out from one of her long sleeves, but she still instantly recognized the deck as the first ones her grandfather gave her.
"You're lying," it smiled.
Hanabi frowned and said, "Really? These cards are made of different chemicals that are extremely potent, that's why they're in a leather packet instead of those paper ones that get wet easily."
Now this was the truth, Hanabi remembered that when she first threw them that they made a small crater in the earth and almost blew her away. She also remembered her grandfather laughing at her and telling her that 'this is nothing!' However she also remembered her grandfather as an egotistic man that was completely and totally full of himself. It wasn't that Hanabi hated her grandfather, she actually loved him very much, but it was just that she didn't particularly like anyone that was older than her, which was a pretty wide range.
She narrowly dodged the red bead as it rolled towards her; she jumped and landed in a puddle of water.
"This may all be holograms," she said while spitting the water out, "But why the hell is the water real!"
"Because it has to be as real as possible!" a voice cackled nearby.
"As real as possible? Why?"
"It's best to train if the situation is more dangerous, right?"
Train? the word clicked in Hanabi's head like a hidden piece to a puzzle, though it didn't seem like it she had been wondering where she was this entire time. Now it was all coming together, she turned on one foot and started in a run while dodging the holographic trees. As she ran, she started to take another card out of the leather deck, a card appeared in her fingers and she threw it forward.
"Trying to blow up the hologram projectors?" a shrill laughter buzzed in Hanabi's ears as the thrown card disappeared into the fake trees, "Are you seriously that stupid?"
"This is a training room right?" she said while still running, "That would mean that the hologram projectors would be protected by some sort of wall or case, so I'm not stupid."
"Then what could you possibly be aiming at?"
"I think the question is," the silver-haired girl smiled evilly, "Are you the stupid one?"
An explosion sounded ahead of Hanabi as she picked her pace up as she ran towards the explosion. It was no surprise to her that more explosions sounded behind her.
"Unlike dynamite, exploding cards won't go off while in mid-air," she huffed under her breath, "They have to hit something in order to explode, so all I have to do is throw these cards as far as I can until it hits something."
Loki's laughter filled the air along with the rain, "So what? You might be heading towards a wall for all you know! And when you do...WHAM! You'll be running head-first into a cement wall! Hahahahah!"
Hanabi ignored it and kept on running, though she seemed slightly more cautious in her running than before now. The explosions still occurred, some of the beads just exploded at her feet, but Hanabi was quick and could be able to pick her feet up fast enough before they exploded.
"I'm not that stupid!" she argued while keeping her quick pace, "You think I'm running in a random direction but I'm not!"
"You're going the wrong way..." she remembered Loki saying to her when she first met it. Loki's high-pitched laughter filled the air as she ran, almost as if either mocking her or trying desperately to scare her off but Hanabi persisted through the rain until she ran into a wall.
She got up slowly while holding her probably broken nose, she spat out some blood that was swirling in her mouth and groaned, "Geez-us! If I knew it was gonna hurt this bad I would have at least held out my hands or something! Ugh!"
"Hmph, so you found the wall, you don't think you're going to be able to find the door out do you?" Loki's voice echoed around the trees.
Hanabi looked at the 'wall' she had run into, it was a bit iffy that the wall was there because it just looked like there was even more forest to walk through, but that was what you would get for running around in a hologram training room.
"If this is a training room, there has to be a way out," she huffed under her breathe, "Most likely some sort of ladder since a door would be too easy to get out of."
It frustrated Hanabi that Loki could have been standing somewhere watching her, grinning ear to ear with that horribly annoying grin and its horribly annoyingly white teeth. Hanabi reached her hands out in front of her until she felt the wall, and she searched with her hands for any bump or crack or anything! She waved her arms on the wall and heard Loki's cynical laughter.
"Hahah! Is that your plan now? Do you even know how big this room is?" the high-pitched laughter annoyed Hanabi deeply.
"No," she said, she realized that her broken nose was making her voice sound nasally, "but I can still try."
This response received more laughter and Loki's voice cackled, "You are hilarious! How about we make a game out of this, eh? Find the ladder and I won't kill you!"
"Let me guess, you'll start throwing those weird beads at me, right?" she said miserably.
Loki made a sound that sounded like it was copying a siren and said, "Wrong! Well...kinda right, since this type of environment doesn't seem to be affecting you, I'll take it up a notch shall I?"
Hanabi blinked and she was now on some sort of bay without any trees bit a lot of sand, wind was harshly blowing and whipping at her hair and the rain now felt like a horde pebbles were being thrown at her.
"And I'll also give you a bit of a head start too!" she could barely hear the voice as rain and wind rang her ears, but Hanabi persisted as she groped the wall for any crack or bar or anything...and then she felt the ground shake, something like an angry earthquake, and for a split second the holograms and storming winds and rains stopped, she didn't see everything but she did see that she was in a huge room and she could see a ladder and a door. But it was only for a split second and she was surprised that she did not see Loki, but that didn't really matter now. She saw the door!
"Oops, sorry about that, Japan has way too many earthquakes now doesn't it?" that annoying Box echoed.
The girl swept her hands frantically along the wall, she knew she was close it was only a couple of feet away and no amount of explosions, or storms, or anything was going to stop her! Her hand hit the iron bar harshly and she gaped at the almost rusted bars that were hanging unrealistically in midair. The wind and rain rippled around her and almost blinded her from anything far away, but she could see the bars almost floating mockingly at her in the air.
"This is so stupid!" she growled as she angrily grabbed the lowest bar and started climbing, when she reaching a point where there were no more bars she waved her hand around the wall until she felt a handle and she grasped at it.
Like going through some other dimension, she yanked open the door and climbed into a dark control room that looked like what the inside of a spaceship would look like, blinking lights, metallic control panels and all. Hanabi huffed and sighed tiredly.
"That was the dumbest battle in the world!" she panted tiredly, "And that was too easy! I wasn't even hit by one of those explosions!"
She wiped the rain's water out of her eyes and her eyes met with red converse shoes.
"Hello there!" that annoyingly white smile pissed Hanabi off.
~8~
The map bothered Hide, the map that had a large red dot that said 'You Are Here' on it. It kept reoccurring in his mind and he had a feeling it was going to keep bothering him until he resolved his suspicion over it, or until he found Reborn. Reborn seemed to have answers for everything.
"Hide!" Morita's voice boomed in the small boy's ear, which in turn squeaked and almost fell.
"Agh, sorry, sorry!" the boxer quickly apologized, "I was just worried since you hadn't been talking in awhile."
"D-don't worry about it," Hide shook his head, "I'm just bit nervous is all, but I'm sure everything will be okay."
"Hide! Sakuraba! I found stairs!" Suzuki called to them, "Their right next to an elevator too!
"Right!" Morita ran towards Suzuki, Hide walked slowly and cautiously.
"Geez, where is that tutor when I need him," he gulped.
~8~
"Holy crap!" Hanabi yelled as she backed away quickly, Loki slowly rose up from its chair.
The outfit Loki was now wearing was drastically different from the one inside the training room. Instead of its white suit, Loki was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with a bright green t-shirt over it. It had a long pair or acid-wash jeans that were so long they became baggy at its waist, and its shoes were the same red converse. It didn't look all that different from when Hanabi was inside the training room, the smile was the same, it was still a deathly looking pail, and its ruby red eyes were also the same. But its hair was not long but it was instead cut and shorter.
"Where did you get the change of outfit?" Hanabi asked.
"You really aren't the brightest one, eh?" Loki sighed as it practically sauntered around the room, "Let me spell it out for you: That-was-a-hologram."
"You mean you weren't in there that whole time!" she yelled.
"Of course not, who else would be managing the difficulty levels of the Storm Room," it said and then added as an afterthought, "Plus, it would be far too troublesome if I actually got hurt."
Hanabi's eye twitched and exclaimed while pointing an accusing finger, "Coward!"
"Oh come on, I wouldn't say coward," the Box smiled in amusement, "And how was I supposed to know that you would actually find your way up here?"
"You practically begged me to come up here!"
"Yes well," Loki shrugged, "You don't have any proof that that was the case."
"Proof!" Hanabi scoffed, "You were all 'Let's play a game' and 'this is best place to train!' You practically gave it away that this was a training room and that the door was high up!"
"No I didn't."
"Yes you did!" Hanabi sighed and groaned, "That's it. I'm leaving."
Loki's Cheshire Cat grin creep Hanabi out, not to mention that the girl believed that her nose was broken from running into an invisible wall, and she was tired. And to Hanabi being tired was reason enough to skip out on a battle that could be called epic.
"Okay then," Loki said dismissively, she did a double-take on the whole thing.
"Wait, what?" she asked.
Loki sat back down in its chair and said, "I never wanted to fight you, you were the one that started this battle in the first place. I just decided to have a little fun, but I'm done with my game now and I have my eyes set on someone else that's in your little group."
"…What…?" the girl faltered.
"You can leave now," the Box swerved away from Hanabi in its chair, "There are stairs if you keep going down the left side of the hallway, your little group should be on the second floor but we're on the fifth so its not that far away, just stay in the stair case and at some point you're going to find them."
Hanabi was silent for a few seconds as she started heading towards the door, "Who are you after?" she asked before leaving.
"A boy," Loki felt like it had to add more, "A black-haired boy. He supposedly plays baseball. Oh, and another boy too, this one has silver hair, much like yours, you could say that I owe him a favor or two."
"What ever," she waved a hand, "As long as you aren't going to attack the Twelfth, and then I'm alright. You can do what ever you want with those guys who you're talking about, even though I don't know who the silver-haired guy is…"
"Then have a good time here," Loki grinned and waved, "But you should really stay away from the ninth floor."
"Why?"
"Hmm," the Box mused and gave a thoughtful look before saying, "I think she'll get really mad if I tell you."
Hanabi gave it a confused look and shrugged, and then she left through the door.
~8~
*GPA stands for Grade Point Average, to put it simply you average all your grades up and that one grade becomes your GPA
Please come to Just Another Forum, we're starting our Birthday Fiction Project! soon and it's not too late to join on our next birthday: Lambo-May 28