The windowless room began to churn stuffy, hot air gathering from different corners of the white plaster walls. Unnatural light filled the room in bright surroundings, the small room filled with eight Minors, chatting and meeting each other, some for the first time. The different toned voices filled the room like jelly did to a doughnut.
In a fluffy sofa chair by the wooden coffee table, Marissa, the Sound Minor looked around frantically. She turned her head many times from left to right, shifting her body, moving quite nervously in her seat as empty space surrounded her. Oh…she thought. Where is she? I thought there was another girl Minor. I need to talk to another girl around here… before I go crazy! Marissa began to pour out nervous sweat drops as her heart panicked, her chest pounding a beat like none other.
She stammered as she looked back and forth again, trying to find someone new to meet, someone she hadn't talked to yet. Her sight stumbled upon Lance, the fifteen year old Metal Minor. He had a cheerful look on his face as he peered into his thin sketchbook, Marissa's ears being filled with the sounds of pencil scribbling. His eyes were so happy and enlightening, he looked like a child. He sat comfortably against the wall in his red sofa chair, his pencil moving artistically from left to right, curving upward and downward.
Marissa's boredom molded into interest as she became curious as to what he was drawing. Well, no reason I shouldn't find out, she thought proudly, getting up out of her seat, her eyes closed with conceit, a confident smile worn under her nose.
Lance continued to make scribbling noises with his pencil in the spiral sketchbook, his happy stare heavy on the paper. "Um…" Marissa came close to Lance. She leaned over to the side, strands of her brown-blonde hair swinging with her direction, her eyes wide in curiosity.
Sensing her presence, Lance shifted his silver steel eyes to Marissa's leaning position. She quickly blushed, not because of Lance's noticing of her, but because of what she saw. There, in the sketchbook was a penciled imitation drawing of Marissa wearing a happy smile and having her hair at the sides of her head, her eyes cheerful and cherry-like, and her cheeks a bit chubby due to the smile. Her eyes seemed to gleam in the picture, like bright stars inscribed into her eyes.
Marissa backed up a few inches as her blushing cheeks became rosier. "Um… is that a picture of me?" she asked, thinning her pose and placing her index finger on her lips, as if shushing herself, her eyes made into a kind of puppy dog eyes.
"Hm?" Lance muttered under his breath, looking up from the sketchbook. "What do you mean?" he said, his voice showing a bit of confusion.
"Oh, nothing, nothing, it's just that…I saw my picture drawn into your sketchbook, and it was really good, so…" she said shyly, something she wasn't used to. Her stance was posed like she had no backbone. She flashed an obvious smile, letting out a forced laugh.
"Huh?" Lance expressed an even more puzzled look on his face. His eyes widened with confusion as he looked back to the sketchbook, to reference what she was saying, and then finally figured it out. "Oh!" he replied, causing her to blush even more. "Oh, no, no, no!" he said, frantically waving his hands, telling her that she was wrong, his facial expression tightening.
Marissa looked at him with a curious stare, as if asking politely to explain. "It's nothing like that," he muttered with a slight smile. "I just choose to draw things that seem… interesting to me."
Marissa's expression quickly tightened and an angry symbol flashed at the corner of her forehead, her eyes lean and narrow, her gritted teeth shaking demonic-like. Lance looked at her with puzzled eyes that wouldn't go away, his expression becoming frantic. "Wha…What is it?" he asked, his face showing growing hints of fear.
"And I'm supposed to be interesting to you!? Why you!" she continued to yell at him indistinctively, never stopping and shouting right in his face as if she were about to kill him.
"Oh, that's it?" Lance said, his expression becoming uninterested. His features became loose and bored.
"What're you saying? Hmph!" Marissa said, turning around and crossing her arms in front of her as a sign of rejection.
Lance sighed and closed his eyes sleepily. "I hate it when people think they're the topic of everything, it's completely conceited and useless to everyone else that's with you at the time," he said, his lips even slanting down lazily, as if trying to fall off. At this point, he looked like an old man that slept all day and night, not caring to complete the final features on his drawing.
"What did you say!?" Marissa shouted at him again, turning around to lock stares at him, face to face, her eyes flaming with demonic anger.
Lance let out another, longer sigh. "I also hate it when I'm forced to repeat myself," he added. "You heard me the first time, don't act like you didn't. It's the only reason you're trying to scare me with your indistinctive cries."
"Whaaaaat!?!" she let out a long yell from her lungs, using all her breath to do it, letting out a howling voice that would've forced any regular person to crawl up against the wall. But Lance didn't. He was keeping a cool head.
He got up from his chair and walked past, then turned to look back at Marissa, the blonde girl turning around as well, her eyes stopped blazing with heat. Lance held up his sketchbook again with his pencil and took one look at Marissa, and then started scribbling something across the page now. "This picture should be done now," he said, showing it to her.
Marissa let out a big gasp as she read across the top of the page of her picture, which read, "LOSER" in big, thin letters. She began to fume wildly and her head literally looked like it was going to fall off as it shifted colors into red without blushing this time. Lance gave her a weak, joking smile as he gave the lazy cheerful, closed eyes he always seemed to give. He laughed as he began to exit the room.
"Get back here, you!" Marissa roared, shaking her fist wildly in the air. Her mouth widened inhumanly as she let out her cries of anger.
"Leave me alone," Lance said with the least anger or unpleasantness, walking into the dim corridors, his footsteps pacing away slowly and steadily.
"Ugh!" Marissa fumed again. "Well?" she turned to Rick, who was still sitting up against the wall, resting his body for now. "Aren't you going to do anything about that guy?"
Rick looked up with unacknowledged eyes. "Huh? Why what'd he do to you?" he said, blinking in stupidity. His expression was blank, as if he had just awoken from a long winter's slumber.
Marissa uttered a low cry that grew as she tightened her fists at her side. Then, she let out a battle cry as her face went red with anger and her eyes went triangular white. She began smacking Rick indistinctively with the same hand over and over again as the poor unknowing blonde boy let out confused tears and humorous cries.
Across the room, Derek watched the horrid, yet funny scene with his own disbelieving, abnormally shaped at the moment eyes. She's smacking him for something he can't help so many times… that it sounds like applause, Derek thought, his eyes twitching.
As indistinctive cries of anger mixed with misery echoed through the room as the door swung open and was knocked against the wall with a loud crash, and entered the next Minor-Council pair. "Good afternoon!" Shintenmaru let out with a wide smile and cheery, crinkled eyes.
Daniel, by his side widened his eyes and lowered his lips in shock that it looked like a comedic mask, and muttered softly to Shintenmaru, "Um… Shintenmaru-sama…"
Shintenmaru continued to laugh, and then abruptly stopped, saying, "What? I was in a happy mood there. Um…" he began to realize. "Is someone clapping in here? I mean, I knew that we were powerful people, but really, there is no need of applaud-," his voice was cut off.
"No, you ego maniac, look over there!" Daniel's voice interrupted. He pointed to the deadly scene across the room as everyone else in the room watched.
Shintenmaru's eyes began to twitch, and then he yelled himself in his own demonic voice, which surprised everyone, "Hey you two cut that off right now!" At his demand, Marissa widened her eyes in shock to find the council in the room and backed off Rick, whose cheeks having hand marks imprinted on them, his eyes swirling with spirals in them, his mouth wide open and beginning to drool.
Shintenmaru calmed down after that as well, everyone else in the room silent, the sound of applause ending. Really…these kids…Shintenmaru thought as one of his eyebrows twitched in a horrid pattern, his eyes dilating to just small, chibi-like dots like the ones at the end of a sentence.
PoVS
Teresa stirred in her sleep, entangling the covers in her legs, the comfy inside of the bedspread drenched with her sweat. Teresa opened her eyes and stirred a bit more before sitting up weakly, rubbing her eyes to wear off the tiredness. She found herself in a large bed in a big room surrounded by dark, bare orange. What…? she thought sleepily. Where am I?
She got out of the covers and walked through the dark room, her bed surrounded by other ones that were identical, her bed the only one with the sheets tangled and messy, unorganized into mountains of doze-off. She walked past the darkness, swimming through it like a sea of evil. Where have I gone? The last thing I remember… then, all of it flashed back into her mind like a flood. Minoa telling her the secret of her ability, the truth that she was related to Minoa, the mind council.
Teresa shuddered in sudden shock. It can't be true… can it? She held her arms together close to her chest, her body still donning the beige straightjacket with long sleeves, her hair brushing her cheeks delicately. My wounds…! She realized. I have to have wounds! I went on an outburst again, didn't I? Where are they? She felt around different parts of her body in search for any scars or cuts, but couldn't find any. What happened?
Then, another, new voice came into her head. Thank Jeremy. He got you healed, the voice in her mind said, echoing off the corners of her mind.
Teresa let out a sharp gasp, and then turned around. "You're here," she said, peering into the darkness to find a figure.
"And you read my mind," the voice answered back, stepping out of the blackness. It was Minoa with her pale white eyes and hair, giving a friendly smile to Teresa.
"Is it true? Is it true that you were born ninety seven generations before me, and that you can see spirits just like me?" Teresa cried out, indecisive about whether or not she could believe her if it really were the truth at all.
"Yes, that's right," she said, closing her eyes and reopening them, revealing pentacle inscribed circles of pupils. "Need you further proof?" she insisted.
"No, I… I don't. It's just… I'm related to you? You're actually? My great great great great great great grandmother or something?" Teresa asked, her body warm and sweaty from the long resting sleep she took, her arms sweating.
Minoa twitched, her neck nodding off to one direction. Then she rose back up and said, "I'm not that old!" She sighed. "But yes, it's true that we're related. Are you shocked?"
"I- no, it's just that…" Teresa began, trying to figure out where her words went. She thought about it carefully in the surrounding darkness. "I have one request," she said finally.
Minoa looked at her with considerate, sympathetic eyes. "Teach me how to use those eyes," Teresa said confidently, slanting her eyebrows. I want to do good, Teresa thought. I need to be able to do more things to help pay my debt off to the people I killed when Jeremy came for me. And I need to start… now.
PoVS
"So what's your talent?" Daniel said in the circle of Minors after stating his, which was analyzing and trick mastering. Everyone sat in a circle except a few people, sitting with legs crossed on the cold plaster floors.
"Talent? Don't really have one except… would graduating from school after only two years count?" Derek asked, piquing everyone's interest, even when he didn't mean to. He placed a finger on his chin as he tried to figure out the answer on his own.
"Two years?!" indistinctive cries came about the room. "No way!" more voices came. Then, more mumbling came from the circle.
"Ha, it can't beat my one year graduating though," Daniel boasted, shuffling his red hair.
"You guys are crazy," Mark, the Earth Minor told the two of them. "The only thing I graduated in two years was tai arts class. That's all," he boasted yet mocked for himself in his own weird way.
More wows came from different directions. Eric and Walter, however, weren't in the circle, and were not speaking to anyone. They sat in two separate chairs in opposite directions of the room. Eric sat in a chair against the wall while Walter sat in a corner, alone with his thoughts.
Eric watched the three boys talked since Marissa and Rick had to be excused by Shintenmaru. He watched as the trio bonded, showing off their talents and telling stories of their wonderful pasts. Too bad mine isn't like that… Eric thought. An easy past is something I wouldn't know. But I'd rather have it that way. Plus, I like who I've become, he thought as he continued to watch the three. Will these three… become part of my new family? The new people I'll protect and swear my life to? I hope so.
At the other side of the room, Walter watched as well, peering to the three people in their conversation, talking like old friends who haven't seen each other in decades. Another part of him seemed to come from his body, another conscience, or split side of his came out and began talking to him, something like his inner thoughts and personality speaking to him.
"What's wrong?" the inner him said, his voice echoing only in Walter's mind. "Are you beginning to thirst friendship?"
Walter tightened his expression outside. "No," he told the other him inside, his voice echoing off his own minded walls as well. "Things like friendship are useless. The only thing I'm here is for revenge. It's the only place I have anyway."
"Good," the voice replied. "But make sure it keeps that way. I can sense that you're half lying all ready…" The split personality sunk back into the depths of Walter's mind and emotions, not being heard from until later when Walter needed him. Outside, Walter let out huge sigh of disappointment, and at that point, Walter, at some level, admitted to himself that, he too, was beginning to feel lonely.