Having fallen to the floor with an ornamental thud, the red-striped opponent weakly stumbled to his feet. He rose unsurely, indifferently as his white apparition clothes soaked with blood and sopped with a sick red. The mask's curvy, exposing grin never turned upside-down, refusing to accept pain, refusing to accept defeat. A slouched, inhuman back brought arms limp at its sides, dangling three or four lassos of rusty chains dragging to the floor heavily in a loafing snore. Their shafted bodies nicked each other, shouldering each other for a juicy gossip that could drown anyone who had held it inside their mouths long enough, forcing their lips to separate and tell.
Daniel watched in awe and fear. He feared of what condition this fight might put Teresa in, considering that she had not done much fighting over the week they had spent there. She had always remained quiet, and Daniel had never realized that she had felt this way for so long. However, the awe consumed him, the awe of her skill in her first fight that Daniel had watched over. The crack in one of his lens seemed to widen in the cold. The silvery, tiny and stretched fingers became moist within seconds. Teresa… Daniel thought to himself in awe as he found his inability to use his limbs. They were shaking inside with fear, trembling as if resisting being petrified. Those eyes, he thought to himself. She must be able to see and attack him physically with those eyes. Just what are they? Daniel wondered curiously.
"I'll protect those relationships with my life!" Teresa cried out, almost screaming in a fury of anger, a confident yell. The opponent slowly remained on his feet, the large wound slashed across his body not even making a priority in his conscience.
His wide smile never wore off, that pale, ghastly mask hiding all his features and emotions. Teresa felt like ripping that mask right off his glued face and tearing it into pieces, as well as the rest of the body. Newly made pale eyes like silver, full moons glimmered in the mist. Five sided stars embedded in them seemed to emit its hidden prowess. The sickly feeling finally left her. "So it seems you were able to put a scratch on me after all," the long-life rival muttered in a careless voice, as if acting like the large cut was of no importance.
Teresa's teeth ground harder, only loosening for a few seconds after to conceive and liberate words, hateful words, confident words. "It's not just a scratch," Teresa pointed out bluntly. Her point was easily made.
The opponent sneered. "It'll be the last one you make," he threatened. His voice seemed to croak evilly as he became a blur once again, racing across the grassy field, dragging dust and dangling, thin heads with it. Teresa knew he was approaching, and she saw his every movement. And she enjoyed it.
"Come!" Teresa took the challenge. Her evanescent white eyes twinkled as they narrowed meanly, readily. She, too, became a rush herself. The two opposing blurs came at each other, pumping hot blood through anticipating audience's body with tension packed organs, veins becoming plugs and wires of anxiety. As the two rushes of invisible, trailing colors met, they clashed horridly, both of them stopping at once in the middle. Teresa caught the ghost's thumping fist's wrist in her own. Half Spirit energy burst from the contact, releasing into the air with a bright, ominous purple glow. It seemed to create an enthusiastic aura around them, a background of fight. Strands of hair began to defy gravity as fingers between wrists threatened with tightness. Streaks of purple tresses whipped the air as violet outlined them with force, fingers attacking the mist, threatening them, commanding them, threatening them to leave them be.
Bones cracked from a hateful grudge, a defeat frown grown and blossomed onto the phantom's garden face. Teeth began to grind beneath a white mask traced with purple. Pentacle eyes narrowed. Another punch from the other arm came forward to test its defiance. Another skillful hand blocked with an open palm. More violet energy spurt out, glowing increasingly like a rage waiting to burst. Telekinesis rates were high in the air. Grudges from deep within began to fire up and shoot from the limbs. The frown beneath the white, sinful mask opened wide into a muffled, shocked cry, unheard by society, unwanted by society. Tension was blocked and overtaken by awe, a powerful, shining awe that begged and pleaded to be noticed.
Teresa's death waiting eyes needled against each other with their sharp, pointy tips, pricking each other in hate. The whiteness glowed with a background of purple, a background of power that was ready to release and kill. The violet aura churned and churned and grew bigger; hair and clothes from both sides began to flutter and whip against each other in a growing psychosis. "Die!" Teresa's cry echoed as the purple overtook both sides and exploded in a great burst, sending crazy volcanic eruptions of smoke and dust into the air, fattening the mist with gray. The loud quake plummeted the ground, shaking against the two Minors' spots. Kenneth was still staring into blank space – an eternal petrifying he had caught himself in. Daniel just stared, staring into blank space as well, however, not just staring, but staring in awe.
The smoke erupted above the mist, more powerful than it, more confident than it. Teresa's body tumbled out of the rising smoke, trailing streaks of dust with her, clinging fingers of defeat. She coughed as her rotation stopped. She weakly brought herself to her feet as Daniel muttered, speechless. "Teresa!" he found his words as he brought her weakened state into his arms, feeling her body shake as her lips exhaled strong, choked coughs of inhaled dust. Her feet seemed to crumble towards her upper legs. Her arms held each other as she let out another exasperated hack of sick dirt. "Are you all right?" Daniel asked, emerald eyes full of worry.
"Yeah," Teresa replied to relieve the peridot anxieties. Her voice was choked, but she was getting it adjusted. Her arms shivered against her sides for comfort, to make sure of herself that she was indeed alive. "It's over," she declared from a healing voice. The redhead's face nodded in conclusion. Dust cooled the tension. The mist released. And suddenly, Kenneth dropped to his knees, exhaling a big breath of release, a sense of over and repair filling the new air. Daniel and Teresa watched the mist fade away into invisible wisps, translucent blue into transparent white. They watched it wash away by the invisible waves, and watched – watched as the sunlight began to return brightly into their patiently waiting eyes.
PoVS
"Die!" Eric's enemy cried out as he swung the axe deep into his back. His anticipating smile and eyes seemed almost happy as he slung the axe across the air. Eric turned his face at the last second, catching the enemy right behind him with a dark right eye, a threatening glare – one of indifference of what happened. Walter remained just feet away, watching with nervous marks stretching through him in panic, eyes wide open in a wait of what happened. Time seemed to slow, taking away all the thoughts of the victims, predators, all of them. Freezing itself in an isolation of solitaire, only to speak and work for itself. Yes, time took away everything – until it was freed magically in just a few moments, if you could even have moments with the absence of time.
Blood squirted through the air horridly as a bone-metal crack vibrated the air, streaming out in an invisible bullet to the ear. Nothing was seen. Nothing was heard. Walter's eyes widened horridly, broadening to an inhuman stretch. Mark's body began to stir at the knees of a certain, shadowy tree. His eyes slowly opened themselves, the back of his head suddenly aching with a huge, backward migraine. It was sore and blistered and aching and all kinds of other pain as he slowly made an extreme effort to support himself. It seemed to be the hardest thing he had ever had to do. It took him a while to realize just where he was and what place in time he had caught himself in, but when he finally did, he blinked in confusion, eyes stretching outward like the radiation of an atomic bomb. His teeth froze, skin beneath clothes extremely hot it could make one sweat, unclothed skin cool and calm from the comforting shade of the tree. What? he asked himself, a bit less confused than before. His body became frostbitten with surprise and shock, and dazzle.
Eric, the real victim, who should be filled with even more shock and surprise, which he was, stared behind him with all effort this time, using both eyes to make sure what he was seeing wasn't a mirage. His face froze, as if he had been injected by wrinkle-ridding needles. His eyes were wider than anyone else's, not quite comical but rather not natural, either. They were completely indescribable, his whole expression and position unable to be deciphered. "Really…" a new, yet familiar voice sounded. The voice widened more faces. "How much longer will I have to look after you guys?" a voice said calmly.
Taking another point of view, you could see that what Eric was staring at was not an axe struck through his back. It was not a wound that was deeply cut by the teeth of an axe that he stared at. No, this was not something horrible he was staring at. It was not shocking and surprising because of the terribleness of it. It was astonishing and face-widening for the sole purpose of the sudden presence – a sign of good, and a sign of relief. For what he stared at was a brown-headed Fire Council, eyes blazing with passionate fire, standing right between Eric's comfortable, frozen walk position and the enemy's striking pose. He held the axe's teeth in his hand, fingers tightly gripping around the scribbled blade to ensure imprisonment. A slit kind of cut leaked careless blood onto the plate and down the palm of his tanned hand. Brown confident eyes stared back at shocked ones, Eric's ones. A smile from the council called for a smile back.
"Who…who are you?" the opponent asked, voice croaky and unsteady. His eyes were broad as well, broad as a body-builder's shoulders. Teeth were lightly ground against each other, no use for a gritting with the nonexistence of hate or grudge. The Fire Council quickly turned to the opponent's new voice and swiftly changed his friendly, smiling stare into a mean, narrowed one. It gave a shot of petrifying feeling inside the antagonist. He gasped as he wanted to back away, but his grip on the blade prevented any of that.
"Someone who cares," Hanabikai snapped at the foe's question, his brown, protective eyes narrowing even more. He shifted his position, rising fear inside the foe's heart. It was easy to say that the foe sensed the amount of energy and experience differentiating from him and his new enemy. However, he was not quick enough to escape his attack. Hanabikai's foot dragged behind the other one in ease as he made his available hand fill with his Free Spirit's energy, barely tapping the umbilical part of his body. The touch of a council made the foe pull back, but it was too late. The fingers moved ever so slightly, as if spinning delicate webs around dark, murky corners of the night sky. Then, with a huge burst, flames blistered from the hand and sent the discolored body flying. The fiend was knocked against a tree, dragged by a huge fireball of red and orange flames. His limbs flew limply as they dragged along with the amazing hit that burned against his body like hissing snakes, digging into his chest and legs and arms with venomous crunches. His back hit the body of a tree, rustling its head in disappointment. The fire remained on his chest, never giving up, crawling with dreadful fingers to the tree's body as well, taking it and making it into a cross of blazing crucifixion, that one tree set ablaze with bonfire despaired, surprised screams echoing from the crackling of the flames, a witch's cry.
A-Amazing, Eric thought, speechless, barely able to create a steady thought. "Your goals end here," Hanabikai declared as he clapped his hands together. He was soon set ablaze with crazy, bonfire energy of his inner Free Spirit, showing much, much more quantities of energy at its first released level than Half Spirits did. Suddenly, as a reaction, the fire from that one tree seemed to bind the body with it, a destiny bonding as the fire spread to other trees in the forest, setting those bodies ablaze as well, trying to take all of them down in rejoiced despair. The flames suddenly stopped cracking for a half-second, and for the last bit, exploded wildly, the bonfire taking itself out in suicide, blowing up in a gigantic burst of the forest, flames cracking no longer. The red and orange imploded the trees, all the wood, bushes, ground, dirt, leaves and flowers gone and blown to bits – especially that one "human" body along with it. Black smoke clouded the forest as the sounds of explosion filled the air, plugging in eardrums with extreme noise and uproarious cries. The sound of flaming cinder began to rise and replace the hissing of red-orange and yellow flames. "So…" Hanabikai turned away from the dying smoke and flames to Eric. The Fire Minor seemed threatened and backed up nervously, not knowing what to expect. Hanabikai grinned happily and closed his eyes in rejoice. "Haven't seen you in a while," he stated nostalgically.
PoVS
Tsukansu paced the dark halls of the Outer World. Webs and webs of darkness fingered sticky, outstretched fingers of green from corner to corner. Orange walls made effortless walls of disgust, caked with dark and shadow, a disgusting, unwashed filth. His brown triangle of hair dangled down the left side of his face as his straight back remained the way it was in confidence. One side of his face remained in shadow, as if it had something to hide, something in the past worth putting away in a box of secretion deep within his inner thoughts, something even the Council did not know of. His Geta slippers clicked against the plaster grounds, the thin, shafted hallways seeming to close in with the absence of fresh air. Dizzy heads were ignored with bliss. Shadows crawled everywhere, dominating every single inch it could, secretly and greedily, when the council members weren't watching. Oh, how the darkness mocked the twelve most "powerful" beings in the world! How they took advantage of these twelve, intelligent minds, able to spy and sneak away at their hidden task, their slowly processing job. Soon, they would take over everything – yet not soon enough.
"So, are you not the least bit worried?" a voice rang, one different than that of Tsukansu's. You'd think the Water Council would have been shocked to hear another voice, however he recognized this clearly, and realized there was no need to be scared. The brown-haired Council stopped the slight clicking of his wooden shoes stopping their twittering hum of the end of the week. His flustered hair stopped in its tracks. All movement wore out, like an unusable battery. The water council sighed in tediousness.
"Hibiyomi," Tsukansu cried out, turning to his backside and looking past into the shadows. He knew he was there. He could sense his presence, his scent. It was exposed everywhere behind him. This was the kind of person his friend was. Always sneaking up on others and talking as if they knew he had been there the whole time. Tsukansu listened to his voice's echo through the hallway before speaking again. He did not like interrupting other things. Even if they were as minor as an echo of a voice through a very, very short hall. "Why are you always spying?" Tsukansu asked, finally getting out his one thought that he had held for many or so years.
"Answer the question," the hidden Shadow Council demanded. His voice was commanding and blunt as ever. He was always so straightforward. His presence remained in the shadows, unhidden, unseen, the way he liked it. It was not for his face being so distorted and unsightly, yet, he liked being sneaky. It gave him a sense of gambit, a sense of advantage and good commonwealth – for all those that maintained him, of course.
Tsukansu sighed once more. He closed his eyes and pretended to think. There was a long, eerie pause. Nothing was heard but a slight hum of scheming darkness and plotting silence. "No, I'm not a worrywart," Tsukansu implied something in his retort.
"I see," Hibiyomi's secretive voice remained. "But, however, if they come back as if they were -"
He was suddenly cut off by Tsukansu's louder, more meaningful voice. "Enough," he demanded of the Shadow Council for once. Hibiyomi had just now lost his sense of gambit. Narrow eyes were easily perceived, even through the darkness. Voices continued to echo. Darkness continued to plot against society and its ways of the world. "It's been years. It's time to let go, don't you think?" Tsukansu asked, piquing an interest in the question inside him and surprisingly, Hibiyomi.
Hibiyomi did not answer. Nor did he want to. It was like he didn't want to admit it, or he didn't have an answer. Slowly, the shadowed Council paced outside of the blanket of shadows, and slowly revealed his face, half of it brightened by the reflective orange walls. His one discovered eye stared blankly and meanly, as if an intent to kill, a death glare. Then, the glare closed in solemnity, emotions calming. Tsukansu calmed more as well, closing his eyes in a trailing solemnity. Then, slowly, he resumed his pace through the forest, shoes clicking past the corner of the hall and leaving the Shadow Council alone, half blanketed by darkness, alone to his thoughts and his thoughts only.
PoVS
Slowly, slits of light began to show. Consciousness drifted back into the mind, flowing slowly like blood, blood you couldn't see, blood that would never, ever show in wounds that spread your body like jelly on peanut butter, or vice-versa, if you preferred. The slits widened, yellow fingers pushing away eyelid walls of concealment and rest. Consciousness finally returned, a hundred percent back to normal. He was finally awake, and his readied thoughts began to organize themselves slowly, very, very slowly, as if cautiously, ready to break apart like a vertical set jigsaw puzzle with thin, thin bodies, slowly building up into succession, fragile to even the slightest movement, like a finger's touch to the ground miles away. "W-What happened?" Rick asked as he quickly sat up. The sudden feeling of being awake reminded him of where he was. He hadn't even realized that he had been sleeping!
"Don't worry yourself," a new voice suddenly answered him, an unexpected one at that, too. Rick suddenly turned his head, catching a glimpse of Lance, who stood comfortably against the body of a prickly tree. One foot lay against its body, knee protruding like a missile ready for fire. His eyes were closed in a sleepy happiness, crinkled in hidden joy. Arms crossed each other as thoughts raced through his mind, as well as words through his tongue. His cheeks were to burst any second now.
'Lance-san!" Rick formally addressed his silver-haired teammate. The blonde boy found himself sitting on the floor, skin beneath clothes hiding under warmth, hot, drowsy warmth. No covers lay over the naked parts of his body, like his face and feet, which remained cold with the dying afternoon. Slowly, a deep thought began to form in the corners of his mind, somehow refusing to meet at the center. None of the four pieces approached the middle first, and therefore, the thought was never made. Broken shards remained broken, unhappy that they were isolated from the pieces that completed each other.
"Marissa's fine," Lance joined the four shards of thought together. He could tell what Rick was thinking, even in the deepest corners of his mind, from just the look on his face. Oh, the wonders his eye for detail did for him! It was his one power before molding and making metal! "She's making the fire," he said casually.
"Fire?" Rick asked, as if he had never heard the word in his life. It took him a while for his mind and body to adjust to the new weather conditions he found himself in.
"Yeah, it's evening. We won the fight, buddy," Lance used a friendly address jokingly. His eyes were as calm as ever. No tension filled his body, and his personality was back to normal. Stress was washed and wished away.
"Oh, I see," Rick muttered quietly. He turned back to his own hands and legs, watching them, examining them as if sleuthing them for something more, something else that he knew they hid from his mind. "But…" he began. A finger trailed to the slash on his chest. It stung him and caused him to wince when he fingered it. He was forced to take a sharp breath as he brought his fingers down, leaving the bandaged wound alone. His eyes began to depress.
"Why did you do it?" Lance suddenly asked, calm. Rick gave a widened, curious glance. It was as if he forgot other words of English other than his own, which, evidentially, made no sense. "Why did you just jump in front of Marissa? Why did you take the hit for her?" Lance blurted out his thoughts from the past few hours in just a few seconds at once. Rick sighed. He began to think, s4earching the deep bottoms of his mind for the answer, the truth, honest bottoms of his mind, and not the fake tears that were shed upon them from the past.
"I don't know," he muttered, coming up with nothing. His glance began to fix on his legs again, begging them for more even though they solely knew that they held no secrets. The feeling of just waking up did a lot to the mind, it sure did. "It was instinct, I guess," he said, pulling a random note from the honest bag of feelings inside him. The bag seemed to rustle, shaking its head in disappointment. Rick's eyes seemed shamed. Lance seemed to stir, seeming to fix unevenly, uneasily. Rick got up to his feet as he spotted a bright flicker of red and orange from far away. The thick scent of medicine filled the air, medicine that Lance had made to help cure Rick's cut with the herbs found in the forest. The coldness brushed against him as he stood up straight, finding it somewhat hard.
'Don't move around too much," Lance warned as Rick began to start away, all ready much past Lance, yet not far away enough. Rick didn't look back. His feet stopped in their tracks, waiting patiently for Lance's last words. "You'll just widen the wound I worked so hard to help heal."
Rick made no signs of agreement. No nods, no words, no shakes. He just resumed walking, taking his words into consideration, and then finally, into acknowledgment. His steps were unsteady as he walked toward the gated lake, looking towards the murky, olivine waters far away. And as he walked unstably with weak, adjusting feet, Lance watched, staring at his efforts all the way, thinking a deep thought he couldn't very well interpret on his own.