It took me about three floors to get my trap ready. I climbed the stairs frantically, fully aware that Glory might be right on my tail. Finally on the fourth floor, I pulled open the door with all my strength and ran down the hall. The fourth floor hallway looked exactly like the first floor one. I felt like we were moving back in time, almost.

I could feel the bones cracking in my back, just inching for their turn to shine. They shouldn't worry, though. They'll play their role very soon. As soon as Glory walks through that door, they'll shine like none other attack.

As if on cue, a zooming figure came into the hallway through the staircase doors, rushing towards me with amazing speed. I activated my attack, behind forward, my hands and knees on the floor, and back shown upward.

Glory appeared right by my side, attempting to strike his blade through my back, but it was too late for him. Thin and narrow pale bones came bursting out of my back, ripping and tearing through my clothes, millions of them protruding at once like I was some kind of porcupine. Glory managed to duck out of the way and began to dodge each one of them, being pushed back by my needling attack and pressed up against the hall way wall.

"Tricky," he told me in his deep voice. "But it's not going to work," he said, pressing the bone that pinned his scarf to the wall with his purple glowing blade, a huge hole being created in the bone, like it was decaying. The bone started hissing steam out, the purple energy taking over when it finally died out and became nothing but a purple bubbling pool of liquid on the floor while Glory finally got back to the floor.

"Poison?" I asked indistinctively as I watched barely with my head turned forward as far as I could make it forward.

"Smart one," he complimented me with no heart whatsoever. "These bones are nothing compared to my poison," he said, walking forward towards me, the source of the foresting bones. He sliced and cut everything in his path as he walked, more hissing and steam coming from the thin bones, all of them seeming to hiss like snakes in unison and scream in pain, becoming nothing but a chorus of screeching slime on the over cleaned hospital floors. Everything in this scene was pale except Glory, who stood out with his brown scarf and mummified costume, his blonde hair showing out more than anything else.

The forest of white soon melted into a sea of purple, nothing left but smoking pools of poison left on the tiled floors.

"Looks like my attack didn't work out as well as I thought it would," I told him, standing back up to a steady stand, the leftover bone towers that weren't cut crawling back into my back with a cracking sound, turning back into calcium in my body.

"That's what happens when you underestimate me. You die," Glory told him, zooming towards me with an amazing speed. I stared in confusion as I wondered on what to do next. I forgot to make a backup plan this time, I realized. Then it happened.

Stopping Glory right in his tracks, from out the shadows of the hospital, came tens of black, ebony ropes that tied Glory right in his place. I wondered who caused it. I know I didn't. I couldn't do things like that. Then who did?

Glory cursed under his breath and tried to free himself, but the ropes seemed to sticky protruding from the ground that he couldn't move at all. "What is this?" Glory demanded in an agonic voice.

"Like it? I learned it just now," a voice came from the ends of the next hallway. I turned to my right to find the patient who I had just recently worked on standing in his clothes again, out of his room and seemingly controlling the shadow ropes.

"You…" I told him, giving him a knowing stare.

"What? Aren't you happy I saved you?" he asked me, standing tall, as if his bones really weren't broken. He should've taken a long rest after I operated on him. This guy had guts. Other patients I knew with the condition he had would've collapsed and would be spilling out blood intensively. But this guy looked like he had no problems at all.

"I'll take it from here," I told him unthankfully, even though I really was thankful. It wasn't like me to show emotion. I didn't want to show weakness was the reason. I disappeared from sight and reappeared behind Glory, then kicked him the hardest I could, with hard, thorny spikes coming from the ends of my boots that shot him like bullets through his back, the shadow ropes' hold releasing and causing him to fly through the air, and eventually into the window, breaking it into shards that fell to the new fallen snow with his body along with them. He didn't fall with a yell, he actually fell silently and gracefully until there was a loud crash heard below.

"Ooh, you think that's going to hurt?" the patient asked me. What was his name again? I tried to remember. Derek?

"Derek," I told him, turning to him. He looked at me with a kind of "what" face. "You should be in bed."

He laughed. "Yeah I guess so. I'll be back in bed," he said, turning around and waving goodbye, walking down the corridor and into his room again. Wasn't a nurse supposed to be with him? I sighed. What has this hospital come to? I thought deep in my mind as I examined the broken glass of the large window, letting in snow and cold wind. I'll get it repaired later, I decided. For now, I had to check on Derek to see if he had any problems from getting up by himself.

PoVS

More blood continued to pool around various parts of my body, intensely streaking down my skin like I was up against a waterfall that crashed above me. I was lost in the gray sword dust of Minoshi's, my mind feeling light headed.

As I walked indistinctively through the inches of snow, trying not to trip, I soaked the white blankets red with my blood, my body suffocating and feeling like I was unable to breathe. "Your… dust," I choked out in a raspy voice, walking unsteadily, trying to find my way out. "It eats away…skin?" I rasped out, my voice hoarse and heavy like a dead person's.

"Ah, that's right. You've finally figured it out, haven't you?" a voice called out to me from deep inside the cloud of smoke. "My short twin blades, Kawakiretsu, meaning 'Shell Cracker' can eat away any defenses the enemy has just by touching my opponent. After it eats away any shells or shields, it starts going straight to the enemy's skin, and sometimes during the process bits of your clothes are eaten away, too. It even hurts like hell when you try breathing it in," he said, clearing the smoke away from me and towards him. "The good part is that it doesn't hurt me, since I'm the user. Get it now?" he lectured me while I was half dead, my back bent and feet barely keeping my stance steady.

He was right. Holes were in my clothes that let blood streaks be seen, my skin all bloody and red, practically no one being able to tell my skin color anymore just by looking at me. I must've looked like a monster.

"Oh, yeah, and something else. There's another part to my Kawakiretsu. It causes internal breathing while forcing its smoke and dust through the person's nostrils, mouth, and any other openings it can find. Want to see it?" he asked me, the dust being swept back in like a vacuum by the swords again, revealing Minoshi's absent look of sympathy for me, the cigarette still not done. He must've lit another one.

The cold snow and air cooled my bloody body, my head feeling unconscious. I couldn't answer his question, nor could I talk anymore. I was dead at this point. "Chuushin Kentanka! Core Glutton" Minoshi declared, waving his swords in a different pattern this time and sending a stream of smoke in the air, like a powerful blast from a cannon. The dust was thick, it was almost solid, and it was going to eat me alive when, just then, something stopped it.

A huge wall of vines acting like a hand and stopping it from getting any closer to me emerged from the snow. What? I thought in my mind, still unable to speak.

"You think we'd just let you die here?" Dylan's voice behind me said. I couldn't answer his question. His voice seemed so distant, so far away. I couldn't hear anything anymore. Or see anything. I dropped to the floor, feeling dead.

PoVS

"Rick!" Marissa's voice cried out, her eyes welling up with water.

"It's okay," I told her. "We'll get him to the hospital soon."

She was about to break down and cry into the snow when Minoshi called out to us. "Hey! You forgetting about something here?" he asked, turning my attention back to him.

He drew back his attack into his blades, leaving my wall of vines limp and useless on the floor, just like Rick seemed to be. I could feel small tears rise in my eyes, too, as I tried to comfort Marissa and try to make her not have an emotional breakdown.

"Dylan, we have to get out of here," Jeremy said, tugging at my sweater sleeve with bold, wet eyes.

"I know! I just – there's too many things we have to handle right now, all right?" I snapped at him meanly, immediately apologizing after that. What else was I supposed to do? I cracked under pressure. First we had to worry about Derek in the hospital, then we have to worry about finding two more Minors after we all ready found two, and now we have to get Rick to the hospital, too? What, is history repeating itself in a matter of minutes or something? "Okay, Jeremy, just where are those guys anyway?" I asked, a little calmer now.

"Well, they're at…" he couldn't finish his sentence. He had a look of surprise mixed with horror, his eyes widened and pupils' diameters shortened. He stared at the golden locket's screen in fear, his voice caught in his throat.

"What? What, Jeremy, what is it?" I asked him, frantic to find out what he was so scared about.

"It says one of them is unavailable, unable to track anymore…. and the other one…" his voice got caught in his throat.

"What? Where's the other one?" I asked in a panicked voice, Marissa watching our horrid chat.

"He's right… here," he told us, turning his look forward, his look frozen in panic, mouth wide open,, ignoring the falling snow onto his nose and hair.

"What?" I asked him, as astonished as he is, my eyes shaking wildly.

"Hey," a voice called out to us. It wasn't Minoshi. He was too busy yawning, I think. It was another voice coming from the entrance.

Minoshi turned around to find a kid our age with brown hair and a black jacket calling out to him. "What? What about that guy? You left him there?" he asked, provoking him with the moving cigarette in his mouth.

PoVS

"Left him there? Well, I'd say he's taken care of…" I told Minoshi, making up the excuse on the spot. If I had told him what really happened. He'd just laugh in my face. I can't tell anyone, I realized. Not one soul. I'm not even sure who I am anymore after that fight. But it's not like I ever did know, actually. I guess I'm just… still lost.

"Jeremy, which one is the Minor?" some guy asked this kid, both looking horrified. Minor? What was that? I wondered. Are they making fun of us? Looks like Minoshi didn't do such a good job here, after all. Even though there was that one guy lying on the floor bleeding like a river, a pool of blood circling him entirely. That should be me, I thought, staring hard with a mean stare.

The kid couldn't talk. He looked like he was in some kind of a shock. Jeez, what's wrong with that kid? He was just standing there, wide-eyed and mouthed, saying nothing.

"Jeremy, are you okay? Don't worry, Rick will be fine. Don't worry about it!" this girl told the kid, leaning down to his height. Rick, huh? That's the name of the guy whote got killed?

"Hey," I turned my attention to Minoshi. "What's going on?"

"Shut up, new kid," he scoffed at me. I gave him a mean stare. "They're just crying over some dead boyfriend," he talked with his hand stuffed into his baggy jean pockets and his cigarette moving up and down as his words progressed.

"It's… that one… that one over there," that kid, Jeremy, said through a choked voice, his eyes still wide with fear. What the hell was wrong with him?

The other two guys looked at me with a strange look. "You're working with Minoshi?" one of them asked me, the boy.

"Yeah, what's it to you?" I asked them. Have I become famous or something? What's wrong?

"This day has gone totally wrong," the blonde girl said, shaking her head with tears streaking down her face, the lighter snowfall than before collected through her tears, hitchhiking.

"What the hell is wrong with you, bitch? Why are you crying like a bunch of babies?" I yelled at them, pissed at their weakness in heart.

"Shut up you!" the girl shot back. Her shriek was so loud, it was ear piercing. It even broke the air like a whip did. I stared in astonishment as she began to tell me everything calmly. Everything about White Cloak and what Minors were, and everything beyond that point in her most weepy voice. Her eyes reflected any light source with the water that came in her eyes. She had to stop between sentences for a short sob and sniffs, but I didn't mind. I didn't pay attention to those. All I paid attention to was her story.

"What… What the hell? You're telling me I'm a Minor? And that White Cloak is out to get me?" I asked them in a rising voice.

"Damn it," I heard Minoshi mumble. I stared at him with shocked eyes, as if I had been shot, having the same look just like that Jeremy kid. "So now you know," Minoshi told me, continuing to smoke his lungs off.

"So… it's true?" I asked, my voice starting to shake as well, my voice cracking. That's how I really got my powers?

"Yeah, it's too bad though," he added, sighing, letting out more smoke out into the air. "Now I have to kill you, before you join them, too." He shifted his blades and swung them in the air wildly. "Die!" he yelled, his voice echoing off the snow.

"That won't be necessary right now," a new voice moved into the group. Everyone stared to the entrance as we saw the cloaked man standing there, his cape fluttering with the wind ominously and his hood blocking any view to his identity. A dented red gem was held in place to keep his cloak together at the chest, the white of the garments he wore somehow standing out from the snow.

"White Cloak," Minoshi said in a scoffed voice. "Surprised to see you here," he said, turning to him with an evil smile.

"White Cloak! Tell me!" I snapped at him in a loud voice I never knew I had. "Am I one of those Minor guys that got power from the Half Spirit that you want to kill so you can take out their power and use it for them? Are you really just using me so you can kill me?!"

White Cloak seemed to stall. He just stood their, his cape fluttering to the right with no wind blowing. His mysterious look scared me, and I immediately regretted yelling at him. But I had to find out. If he was really going to take my life away. If he was really going against me just like everyone else I knew, then what? I wouldn't know what I'd do. Everyone stared with me in unison. The two other teens wide-eyed and amazed, that kid Jeremy's pupils so small they looked like tiny dots of snow, my emotionally vulnerable stare, and Minoshi's 'tell him like it is' narrowed look.

"You've finally figured it out, huh?" the ominous voice of White Cloak told me. No! No! Why does everyone have to do this to me! Why? Why can't I find someone who stays in my life, ever!? "No matter," he told me. "Your life will be taken out right now anyway."

"No! I won't let you. I hate you. How could you betray me like that, after I've told you all the pain I've been through?" I screamed at him with all my heart, everyone listening, no tears to show.

"Shut up," he told me. That's all. "Shut up." I felt like punching him out, but I knew I couldn't take someone of his level on. I'd kill myself. "I never cared about your past anyway. It was just another interesting story to keep me busy. If you thought I cared for you and your life, you're wrong." His voice was deep and raw, so scary it could've belonged to an undead demon. "Now, get here you half spirit!"

He ran towards me with not such an amazing speed, but when he jumped into the air, he began floating, and zoomed towards me like a bullet. I knew immediately that I was dead.

"That won't be necessary, White Cloak," another new voice came into the scene.

White Cloak and I looked behind me, White Cloak's flight stoping in midair. I saw a portal of some sort. It was orange and green, and in front of it stood a woman. A girl with violet-black hair, two big things of it going down in front of her ears, the rest of it short and spiky at the ends, her eyes mean and tomboy-like, and her clothes a silver and white robe.

"You…" I heard White Cloak's creepy voice mutter, the sound echoing off the snowfall.

"Yeah, it's been a long time hasn't it?" the woman said. "I didn't get a chance to meet you when you began this whole thing," she said, standing in the snow proud and tall, her thin and slender body looking tough and her face type looking like a person in their mid-twenties. Behind her, there was a sword case, black and curvy; looking dangerous even though it hasn't been drawn.

Behind her and the portal, there was that kid Jeremy, holding some kind of locket thing, looking as happy as ever, a total change from before, and the relief and safety look swept over the other two teens' faces. But now what? Was there some kind of unknown conflict between White Cloak and this girl?

It was a long time until White Cloak replied. He just hovered in the air with the cape fluttering wildly. "It's been a long time…" he rasped out. "Kinzoku Shihou."

"Well, well, looks like you do remember my name after all," she said, taking out her blade. It was released with a dangerous SHWEEENG as Shihou held it in her hands, the metal blade looking as tough and cool as she was.

"Think again if you're planning to kill the Water Minor," she told White Cloak, who didn't reply to her declaration. She knew me? How did she know me? What was going on? Who am I now? Am I Minor? Or some guy who's going to die? Does this girl who's older than me care for me? My mind was filled with thoughts, even though usually they weren't. I was usually expressionless, kind of antisocial. I thought I might gain power through White Cloak. Turns out I was wrong. I was always wrong. Would she be one of the new people in my life I could finally trust?