"Die!" the opponent's cries echoed within himself. The sun's light lingered in the sky. Traces of the golden rays were found throughout punctured, shuffled holes in the forest roofs. The bright halo was donned by a head of clouds, chest of sky blue world. White puffs of leisure trotted by as well, hooves pouncing over layered, absent grounds. Disturbed winds panicked past, headed trees turning their respective bodies away with rustles. The weather was good, yet tense, unaware of the human, insane lives that these people carried. Intense heat burned scornfully, penalizing the humans' perspiring bodies for claiming power and will over nature and its ways of life.
White smoke hissed against the air as birds fluttered past, leaving trails of ebon innocence, feathers of raining hope. The axe of love cut bodies of wind, splicing invisible splotches of blood into the air. The whizzing, reflecting metal came closer and closer, and eyes began to dilate in hope. Trembling lips couldn't help a joyful grin.
Dodging out of the way, Walter barely missed the axe at his feet. Its head bit deep into the skin of the ground, sucking up its blood. The slight, tense confidence washed away from him as he dropped back to the ground. He kept an eye on the axe, knowing, waiting for it to do something. "Keep an eye on it," Walter told Eric. "It's going to give us the last hit," Walter warned. Eric nodded his head without a word. The two shifted their feet, fixing their skillful stances.
Suddenly, from the whispering, still clearing white smoke came the axe of hate, its first swing. Its potential was equal to that of the love axe, and even whirled the same way. "It's a trap," Eric told Walter as he altered his legs. "Don't pay any attention to the hate one. It won't land a scratch on us, remember?" A deviant grin showed itself from the rising cloud of white smoke. Eric waited, perspiration sliding down the side of his tanned cheek.
Walter watched, looking back and forth at the two axes, one swinging through the air like a crazy, psycho-killer, the other one dining on the blood of the dirt, teeth sinking deep into the ground, waiting for something – something unknown. Something's not right, he told himself as he began to sweat as well. Perspiration dotted his forehead as he gave frantic, tense looks to both weapons, two different ones in so many different ways, yet both exactly the same.
"You should pay attention to what I say," the enemy had warned. "You just might tie with me."
"Love goes first," he had suddenly begun speaking, holding the love axe to Walter's face that was yards away, as if he were threatening him. "… then is replaced by hate, and when it does, it all comes crashing down on you when you least expect it and will follow you wherever you go," he had explained, a random saying.
"I'll tell you one thing. I'll make love give the last hit. I won't even put a scratch on you with the hate axe."
"Ha," Walter had scoffed at him, clenching fists tightly and narrowing eyes coolly. "Telling us such a thing like that will be your downfall," he accused.
"Oh?" the enemy had replied. "Is it?"
"Is it? Is it? Is it?"
The words kept repeating in Walter's mind like a wheel that wouldn't stop spinning, mixing Walter into a hyped confusion, a dazzling of stars, a crazed perplexity and disorder. Are we really supposed to trust him? Walter thought, suspicious eyes narrowing with distrust.
"You should pay attention to what I say," Walter remembered the enemy's words again. "You just might tie with me."
Carrying around such a heavy axe when he's not even going to attack with one of them… "Love goes first, then is replaced by hate, and when it does it all comes crashing down on you when you least expect it," Walter remembered once more. No way! He thought, his eyes stretching to a realization as exclamation points filled his mind. Sharp gasps gave him reality to quickly and swiftly breathe in, a short, tiny vacuum. He couldn't be…! Walter glared nervously from a rising panic at the axe just bare feet away from him. Sunlight reflected off its bare corners, its glowering teeth, threatening with its lusting canines, its luster fangs. The Water Minor gulped nervously. There's no time to waste, he told himself scornfully. "Suidangan!" Walter cried out. Water bullets shot from his shoulders and washed like pressured tears against the hot, heated metal of the metallic, lustrous blade. Three or four drops washed against the blazing, metal screen, expanding like a crashing wave. The cold water hissed as it evaporated, taking the inked kanji letter of love with it.
The love character faded, and Walter's tension grew, the guessed reality becoming more real and real by the second as the letter faded away and formed into hate. "First comes love, and then is replaced by hate."
No way! Then that means…! Walter quickly glanced to the incoming axe. 'Watch out!" Walter cried out suddenly, surprising Eric. The Fire Minor's stance messed up as he gasped slightly. His questioned expressions said everything for him. "That axe! It's going to hit! Just catch it! Catch it!" Walter begged in screaming voices, eager and a bit scared to death.
Eric, noticing the frantic cries of his partner and the urgency he found in them, nodded in agreement and turned his focus back to the whirling axe. Keeping a keen eye for its handle, Eric caught the replicated, or was it original, hate axe in his right hand. He sighed a relieved exhale, calming himself a little. "Got it!" he cried out, victorious. The grin beneath the cloud of white smoke turned to a sneering frown of grudge. Eric cried out as he threw the axe back in the enemy's direction, swinging it with all his strength, as if it were the last one he was to ever give in his lifetime.
The opponent swiftly dodged, torpedoing out of the white smoke from a burst of body. The axe flung into the mist and disappeared, the pale fog eating away at it with its hungry, demonic famine. Flying towards Eric, the enemy sneered as he made effortful kicks to his head. Eric backed up in caution and blocked each one skillfully in the air. The hits of impact against his forearm were nothing compared to what he could've felt.
Slowly lowering in elevation, the antagonist side made spinning, rotating kicks, a horizontal bodied dance. Eric evaded each one with skill, ducking this way and that. Now starting with hand to hand combat, Eric turned and twisted in various ways, Walter forced to watch until he found a right position to assist his teammate. Giving a kick to his stomach, Eric caused the enemy to go flying into the air, the brown-haired boy soon going after him, flying into the air as well.
Fluttering winds like feathered hands smacked against their resistant bodies, clothes like wishing wings flapping around, representative flags of fury. Both in midair, one body horizontal and limp, Eric brought his knees into the enemy's stomach to pin him down as they crashed to the floor, blistering out a fireworks parade of dust and smoke. Clattered rocks spewed everywhere from pitied mouths. Dust cleared easily and soon, no longer wanting to be used for suspense, betraying their boss's word happily, and most important, eagerly. "Eric...!" Walter cried out in care without realizing so.
Flames began to circle the two people as they remained in the same position. Whispering flames rotated like pushed away hands of a clock, spinning wildly as if getting hyped up to do some real damage. They cracked in a happy laugh, an evil witch's cauldron as they snickered with flickering embers. Spiked walls of red and orange flashed bright light, even in the luminescent sunlight. The opponent found himself stuck in a cracked hole in the ground, his back and thighs stuck inside, his limbs hanging out not the least bit comfortably as if he were in a hot tub with no water. Eric's knee remained at his umbilicus, holding him down, making sure that there was no escape. A tanned, sweating hand remained at the discolored guy's chest, blistering with heat ready to blast a huge hurl of flame – a vomit of red from fingers. Hot, surrounding fire burned passionate, confident eyes' dark brownness. Fingernails hissed. No words escaped lips; tension rose. Walter gulped nervously. "What're you going to do now," Eric asked. "Now that your axes are gone? You could be dead."
"Go ahead," a croaky voice pleaded with the least amount of want. A straight, thin line acted as a mouth. Serious dark eyes peered back into each other's faces. Heat seemed to add to the tense, surrounding energy, even thicker than the blazing flames – the cage of hell – and decision. "Maybe I'd rather be dead than to stay in this confused world of wrong judgment."
"No," Eric refused. Tension dropped like hope gone. Serious lines turned into shocked, piqued faces. Then, the shock became hate, disgust even. Eric slowly pulled his kneecap away from the opponent's stomach and got up on his own two feet. He picked his body away from the other, and stared pitifully at the wasted life. No reaction from either side. "I have no intention of killing you," Eric explained. Walter's eyes broadened with a hellish intent. Fingers trembled, as if playing invisible piano backwards, pouncing on the keys as if hate on love, wanting to bleed so badly from the impact. "My purpose is to protect the ones I care for. Not to kill people like you." Eric turned, taking one last, slow glance at the body lying in the hole in the ground. Then, the brown eyes shifted completely, and sandaled feet began to click on the dirt ground, clicking away from the body, clicking slowly, slowly away. The red clothed boy began to fade from sight as he walked towards Walter.
"Oh?" the enemy said, piqued in interest. His lips twisted in curiosity as they let out the distorted word in an exhale. An amused smile grew on his lips. Eyes became dark with rolling thunder clouds, a deviant thought of abnormality growing deep, deep behind them in its own, murderous secretion.
Walter's fingers trembled even more, legs shaking furiously in fuming anger. Teeth tightly ground each other as fists clenched, wanting to punch the crap out of his partner. Dark, brown eyes began to heat and fluster with blue sparks. "Damn it!" Walter cried out to Eric as the red clothed boy approached him. His words blurted out in an infuriating rage, a puzzlement of words before the horrid screech of confusion. "Eric, what do you think you're doing!?" Walter yelled, irritated. Eyes narrowed and glowed with eager agitation.
The opponent smirked and scoffed as he slowly, and weakly, got up to his feet. He crawled out of the hole, pulling himself up with one discolored hand, muscles flexing sickeningly as the evil grin brushed away rocks and pebbles clinging to his skin from the impact. He stumbled forward, head bowed in uneasy weakness, trying to get used to his feet once again. He walked on the cracks that webbed outward from the huge, dynamic hole in the ground, outstretched, greedy fingers wanting more and more, wanting, needing to dominate the world. "If you won't kill him, I'll do it for you!" Walter screamed at his teammate as he watched him walk closer and closer by, inching nearer and nearer. His solemn, calm steps seemed to be his only answer as they clung to the ground affectionately with each one. His lips did not give even the slightest impression of speaking.
"Too late!" the enemy's voice cried out wickedly. Now, having the axe of hate in his greedy, selfish hands, the enemy stumbled forward, and that stumbling became a walk. That walk became a pace, and then, finally, that pace became an eager, agile run. He seemed to come in contact with Eric within seconds. Eric glanced back with a turn of his head, but not body. Dark, uncaring and calming eyes stared belittlingly back at the enemy's attempts as he saw him bring the axe up high into the sky, its head shimmering gloriously with sunlight galore. And then, finally, the axe came down. Crack! The axe gave a loud scream as the clouds above lingered like puppets, carefree dances to the sun. And then, as if fired by a water gun, blood squirt into the air, bursting in red glare.
PoVS
"Die!" the apparition's voice sounded in a rasp. An unseen whack hit Teresa hard against her jaw. Her head pulled to her right, the sudden unnoticed attack bursting out saliva into the ground away from her. Her body tumbled to its side. She coughed out, confused, squinting. She remained on her side, scared, thinking that if she tried to bring herself back up, she would just be knocked down again. This was true for her, in fact, true for both physically and emotionally.
Tortured cries from the clouded mind of Daniel echoed through the forest. He was warped into a glowing green circle of light, mythical letters scrambled all over it like a pan of breakfast. The unsorted, flattened letters lay on the floor, an eerie glow hissing loudly. The redhead was on his knees, caught up in the illusion with his head bowed down in exposed weakness and shame, humiliation. Kanji characters were placed around the circle, surrounding it like a shield. They were in orbs of green as well, and burst out two or three thickened, glowing lines connecting to different parts of the redhead's body. Arms were hung out as if he had been crucified, sacrificed for the good of all others. His hands hung limply and helplessly from their respective wrists. Echoing cries gave off the background music of death – tormenting anguish blistering from his screams of hell.
Kenneth, frozen in horror lay helplessly against the body of a tree. His eyes were frozen in ironic ice, his teeth showing themselves ever so slightly, not moving a centimeter, even. Arms and fingers trembled at his side, clinging onto the bark of the tree for support, support that he didn't find. Legs shook unevenly, unsteadily, ready to fall down any moment. But if he should ever fall down, it was sure enough that he would burst out screaming, gone psychotic from the Swamp of Mystery's extreme psychosis. He was completely caught up in his own paranoid trance. The only light were traces of the green, deviant light from the illusion Daniel was put under. Sunlight couldn't even pierce the cold, freezing mist at this point.
"What?" a voice came at Teresa from all directions. Teresa gasped, her chest breathing heavily and nervously, making extra careful to show that she was alive - a new discovered habit of a situation like this. She didn't know what else to do, she just made sure whoever was watching her knew that she was alive – knew that she was paying attention. Maybe it would hit her if it thought she hadn't. "Are you so forgetful that you can't even remember me?" the voice asked from up, down, left, right, forth, and behind. Teresa's mouth continued to drool out her scared, paranoid saliva subconsciously as her violet eyes trembled in fear. Heavy breaths could not wash away her growing emotion.
"Who-no…" Teresa said through a whispering voice. "No way…" she said halfheartedly, barely realizing that her lips were moving and making sounds. A punch brought her upward again, this time coming from the left. It brought her back sitting up, and now, both cheeks pulsing with pain and blistering heated poison – poison from the touch of a long memorable enemy, she waited. Waited for the pain. Waited for her death, because she knew she couldn't do anything. Her breathing was forcefully stopped. It had done nothing, yet she felt like she needed to do it again, at least something – anything normal would be nice right now. No, she thought. Nothing was normal. Not now, not ever. How saddening. Her purple hair did not fall to her face anymore. They kept themselves hidden behind the head of a girl who tired to keep herself from trembling crazily, as if she were a bomb ready to explode.
The booming voice scoffed. "I should've killed you back then," the voice scolded. "But… that won't matter when I'm done with you," the eerie, creepy sound echoed through the tall grass and patches of dirt with no hair – bald spots, carrying a dewy mist on them, showering its hair – the presences living in it, lice. Teresa completely froze, yet she paid attention, not wanting to get hurt again. Not from him. Not ever again. "Why do you suffer so much, time and time again? It is because you carried so many relationships," the voice pummeled against her ears. Her eardrums pulsed in pain. Her eyes squint, and she thought that from that, she would get another punch, another kick. She waited. Nothing. Yet, she still waited. "But… you learned that over time, too, haven't you? However… even so, you cannot escape me." The demonically charged voice sneered evilly, belittling. "I'll save you for last," the voice said lastly as it wandered away, giving Teresa some areas of comfort as she sensed its presence walk slowly, slowly away from her. "You claim to no longer have relations with others," the sound blistered from afar now. "However, I see two, right before my eyes."
The Minor peered to Daniel's eerie green glows and bowed head and Kenneth's trembling, frozen figure. Teresa frosted over more. Yet, somehow, her lips broke their iced gloss. "No! Don't!" she begged suddenly. She waited for the extreme punch for speaking. For talking back. Her eyes began to plead helplessly. Violet glowers of a night sky shuddered in sadness, in resistance, wanting to stop everything but knowing that she couldn't. Everything seemed lost. Out of place.
"Yes," the voice went against her. "Die. Miserably," it declared loudly, scaring the hell out of the purple haired girl.
Suddenly, unseen, Daniel's finger twitched. The rest of his body remained the same, and nothing changed.
Rattling from his large, oversized sleeves, the apparition's invisibleness shot out three shattering chains, the trio of them holding their respective, diamond shaped daggers, shooting them out like bullet trains across their invisible, camouflaged tracks. They shook like a train's feet did as its millions of wheels chafed the laid down fences of metal and wood. The three daggers choo-chooed with a deathly clatter in the air as they reflected nonexistent blue luster. The three of them targeted Kenneth's unmoving and unnoticing body, and Teresa was forced to close her eyes as the enemy's invisible ones stretched even more with the same old, crescent, psychotic grin. "No!!" Teresa yelled out, squinting her eyes, not wanting to see anything that happened. She wanted to bring herself away, away, away from this world! Blood rushed to her shut eyelids as her teeth gritted each other like broken lawnmowers, trembling every now and then, sharp teeth grinding against each other.
Cracking of metal points and sharpness against bone filled the misty, dreadful air. Redness shot into the oxygen, contaminating it with its horrid, horrid scent. "Oh?" the opponent asked, piqued. "How interesting."
Slowly, Teresa opened her eyes in a dreadful flash. Suspense lingered in the air, and slowly, slowly, but surely, she discovered the hell that lay before her. Soon enough, heavy breathing filled her ears – until that breathing died and withered away, like a whiteout winter dropped upon on a lone lily.