I'll do my best, we thought as I walked through the stone paved paths that spread through Kinotoro City like a web. My straightjacket sleeves were being dragged across the floor, my mind careless to take the whole thing off.
"So, where's the last Minor?" I asked my new friends as we walked the late afternoon road. The air was fresh and cool around us, our shoes clicked against the flat stone, the sun beginning to set while the sky was not yet orange.
"Well," Jeremy began. "Walter, Mark, Zack, and Rick have the ability to track the last one, since they're all Base Element Minors, but they don't know how to do it," he explained.
"The locket won't be able to help you," Tsukansu said, informing everyone of the current situation. We stopped walking and decided to rest on a green city bench. It was cool in shade, and everyone either stood up or sat down.
"Well, if this is the last one and the locket won't be able to pick up anything anymore, then I guess I should give it back to you guys, right?" Jeremy asked, taking the big, golden accessory off and taking it by its glowing yellow string, the circular shied glimmering in the sunlight.
"No, keep it," Tsukansu said, rejecting the locket. "It can do so much more than just track Minors."
Jeremy looked surprised. "I-I see," he told Tsukansu, his eyes in a sort of happy shock.
"Well, I'll be trusting you six to watch out for my Jeremy-san," Tsukansu told us as be put his right hand on top of Jeremy's head, disheveling his hair.
"What do you mean? Where are you going?" Derek asked from his place next to me, his tough eyes a bit widened.
"I'll have to go back to the Inner World," Tsukansu told us, turning his back to the group. "I can't watch after you guys forever, and besides, you guys have to learn to last by yourselves, no matter what happens. Just remember to call us when you're done, Jeremy," he said, turning his head to the small child who nodded in agreement. Then, Tsukansu opened up another portal like before, and gracefully walked in, looking powerful, leaving us with the rest of the responsibility.
"So how are we going to do this?" Zack, the Wind Minor asked, his eyes saddened because he was confused.
"I guess we have to get you guys to learn how to sense each other. But how?" Jeremy's words came out in a hurry, stating the obvious.
Walter thought for a moment. He remembered Eric, that guy who breathed fire and knocked some sense into me that time. Yeah, I still remember it… Walter began to doze off into his memories.
I was panting out of exhaustion, my body feeling hot, releasing water vapor into the cold air above. My feet stuck in the snow like ice cubes, and my cold hard stare locked onto Eric who was still standing tall, giving a mean look back.
"That look," Eric said, being able to talk after finally beating me. "That stare you give off, it's not just for show."
I watched as he continued talking, his arms crossed in front of me, not scared of me at all. "Your pain. I sense it," he told me, knowing something as if he were psychic.
"What are you talking about?" I panted out, still trying to catch my breath with the cold air and snowfall around us, dramatizing the scene.
"You're almost the same as me. Except you have an eager thirst for power. Power you only want to use for revenge," he said again, as if a mind reader.
"How do you know all this?" I interrogated him, becoming unsure of my whole life now. I stood up straight, my breath finally caught, and I stared into his eyes as he stared back on what seemed to be a belittling look.
"I'll tell you one thing," he began, ignoring my question. "You'll get nowhere if you want revenge. Otherwise, you're just the same as the people who have hurt you," he said, beginning to walk past me. I turned around to find him walking away now, ending our fight. Neither of us had really won, but inside we both knew who the real winner was.
He's leaving me alone here, I realized.I sighed as I took his words into consideration for only a moment in time, then I ran off to find Minoshi, my feet stomping against the snow, the crunching of my boots echoing through my mind, Eric and I crossing our different paths. As I ran, he knew what I was thinking. He knew that I began to realize what I was doing was wrong. But I didn't care. There were too many things that happened to me, and I'll never forgive the ones who caused them. But really… I thought as I stopped running for a minute and turned around to see the back of Eric walking away, his steps melting the snow as he walked through the steady flurries. Just who is he? I pondered the thought in my mind as he discontinued his words, disappearing in the decreasing snowfall.
Back to the present time, Walter thought deeply. This Eric person… I want to find him more than anyone else does, I realized. Maybe… just maybe I know how to find him, I thought, concentrating hard. I heard the rushing of water around me as I closed my eyes, focusing hard on what I wanted to do. Only a few seconds later did I hear everyone gasp.
"Walter, what are you doing?" Rick said, his eyes definitely in shock. I couldn't see the stare he gave off, but I knew that his stare was shocked. That's just the kind of person he is. Typical, I thought.
I opened my eyes to find a blob of water in front of me, floating in the air like a fairy. It bubbled and moved, and began to form a kind of compass- like arrow, the leftover water surrounding it in front of my place on the green bench.
"This…" I began to explain, everyone listening carefully without any demand by me. The aquatic arrow rotated on its own in the air, floating like it was defying gravity, its transparency shaking the sunlight that pierced through it like god's own arrow. "Is a tracking compass. The water I've ever used is partially stored into my body, and using that water, I can track the location of whomever it touched by creating an arrow made of that very same water."
Everyone stared in amazement as the compass arrow stopped rotating and pointed due west.
Wow, I thought. I can't be as smart as that with my Minor Powers yet, can I? Being an overachieving genius back in school wasn't enough. It'll take some getting used to. According to Tsukansu, my power can be equal to the five Base Elements combined. Maybe even greater. Having this much power… it's scary.
"You comin'?" Mark asked, staring at me along with the rest of the group at the road that lead west, following the water arrow that still floated around them like an accompanying sprite. They're quick, I thought. I've only been thinking for a second and there they are, ready to leave.
"Yeah, I'm coming," I said, keeping my thoughts to myself. I ran towards them and we began walking out of town. I don't know where we're headed, but I don't care. I have to pay off my debt right away. I owe it to the people I've killed, and the people others claimed I killed, back to three years ago. I can finally make a difference. People will actually begin to listen to me… unlike before.
We continued to walk in the suns direction in the sky, eventually passing it to lead our own path, the azure world above greeting us with friendly puffs of white. The hot sun warmed the back of my neck as we exited the city, my mind drifting off to my own memories at the mention of them in my thoughts.
I still remember myself crying, almost everyday in that little corner until I had become tired. I remember myself begging trying to make them believe that I was right, that I wasn't crazy. They wouldn't buy it. It actually made them think I was crazier. It all began when I thought I saw something I couldn't have. Everyone began to turn on me when I said that…
I was thirteen when it all happened. I was walking through these very same steps I walk now in Kinotoro City. Actually more like running, pacing myself frantically. It was a day when my parents when berserk because I hadn't decided what to do with my life, and I was a star student who graduated three years ago. They made me feel so bad inside, so guilty over something I could've very much control.
It was raining that day. Raining hard. But I didn't care. I ran through the city, my hair sopping wet and my clothes heavy with the smelling water. I headed for my boyfriend, Kyle's house. I had met him just recently and wasn't sure about the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing, but he always seemed to comfort me when I needed it.
My feet splashed into another puddle of water, the clicking of my shoes completely drowned out by the pouring rain, the sounds of pitters and splatters surrounding me like a cloud of never ending chorus. The dark drops flew all around, the wind content medium, and the trees in the city swaying with the soft, cool breeze.
There were no human sounds around me whatsoever, the clouds were malevolent and beckoning, the lightning crashing against the rain like a crooked spear, lighting up the whole city. The grim, dark day was cold-hearted and merciless. It had no pity for whoever dared to go outside, faced to force its wrath of never ending rain and moments of crashing light.
Suddenly, as I ran, I felt a presence behind me. Some kind of person that was following me, almost. I kept ignoring it until I could no longer, being forced to turn around and find nothing there. My wet hair blocked my eyesight, allowing only a half-blind person's worth of sight.
I decided it was a figment of my imagination, and kept running. The presence came back again, but when I turned around nothing was ever there. About the third time it had happened, when I turned back around to run again, I came across someone. Someone, or something standing in my way with an evil, crooked smile.
The person looked completely dry standing in the rain, its face painted white, looking like a Mardi Gras mask. The person wore a kind of old Asian hat and robes, looking like something from a Chinese New Year ad. Its evil eyes crept into my skin, crawling through my blood and freezing my heart over.
I gulped down a large knot of nervousness. "Can I help you?" I asked, staring up to the person in nothing but pure fright.
"Ah, so you can see me?" it rasped out in a scratchy, demonic voice. The monster's robe sleeves seemed to sway lightly with the wind. The smile it wore never seemed to go away, scaring me even more than I all ready was. "You must be one of those damned Mirokus…"
I stared at in horror, backing up with small steps, completely scared with no one else outside to see or help me. How did this… this thing know my last name? "What are you?" I asked it, my voice cracking up.
The thing seemed to laugh at me. "Your worst nightmare," it cracked up. "Meet you at your poor boyfriend's house… boy I wish I wasn't him right now," it cackled. Then, it disappeared form sight, jumping into the pouring rain and darkness.
My poor boyfriend? Did it mean Kyle? What was it going to do to Kyle? Tension raced through my blood stream as I continued my pace to Kyle's house, running even harder, this time with worry and sadness. I drowned out the sound of pouring rain from my mind, my heavy steps against the cold stone pavement becoming louder and louder, echoing through my mind like a dead, monotonous pattern.
Kyle, please wait! Please be okay and don't let that thing touch you! I ran, turned the corner, not finding the thing from before in my path anywhere, which gave me a thought that it actually told me it was going after Kyle just so it would scare me. But how did it know so much about me? It made no sense.
When I finally reached the house, the rain seemed to pour even louder, the clouds seemed darker and deeper, the lightning above crashed in my head like a repetitive cymbal.
I opened the door quickly, which was strangely unlocked. I walked into the living room, and right into the kitchen, where I found the scene that laid right in front of my eye that would soon change my whole life all together, shifting the road I had taken like some kind of train track operator.
There, in the bright kitchen lights, my shoes soaking the carpet floor lay Kyle, his tall, thin body on the floor helpless on his back, his eyes staring into space and his mouth in a wide O of horror. A pool of blood grew continuously from his back, soaking the kitchen floor red with his parents in the corner of the room, making their own pool of blood, their necks slit.
"Oh…" I choked out. I fought off wave of nauseas after wave of nauseas. My stomach churned and hurled, looking at my boyfriend's eyes, the friendly, blue eyes now seeming to stare at me, accusing me that it was all my fault.
I was about to throw up when I found the thing in the kitchen as well, smiling a smirk much too large to be human. "What's that look on your face?" it asked me. "You're not sad are you? Oh boo- hoo, cry me a river," it said, reading my angry thoughts.
"Sh…Shut up!" I shouted, feeling my mind slip away from consciousness. I was about to throw up, but I somehow managed to hold it in my throat until it settled down.
"Hah," it scoffed in its demonic, echoing voice. "Have you figured it out yet…. That I'm a spirit?"
"A what?" I asked in disbelief, wondering what the hell this… this murderous thing was talking about.
"Boy, are you quite slow… Yes. The truth is, I'm a spirit. A deadly one at that," it old me, the wide grin becoming even bigger, the claimed to be ghost standing in front of the kitchen window which blared brightly with light that poured from the thunder above.
The sound of crashing lightning filled the whole kitchen and my ears, brightening the scene with ominous light. "It's not over," it told me. "My reign of terror is not over, Miroku clan," it said as it disappeared into empty space, leaving me with three dead bodies.
I got tired of holding it in, and threw up on the kitchen floor, the hot, sticky liquid mixing with the blood of my boyfriend's family.
I decided to take it to the police. I cleaned myself up, and ran out of the house, heading for the police station. When I got there, we had a big fight. They told me that it was perfectly clear that there was no such thing as a "spirit," and that they were beginning to think I was crazy. I told them the truth, and argued back the best I could. Instead, they chose to get their stupid security and put me in a mental house. My parents were utterly surprised, and grew to not care for me anymore.
I was on temporary hold, since they believed I wasn't that crazy to stay for life, but I knew that the ghost was right. Its reign wasn't over. And then, a year and a half later, its promise came true.