Empty dimness filled the room, painting its features over much too darkly, layer upon layers of reality paint, shading, blocking, ruining the structures of the widened, prison area. Tambourine gates rattled, shaken and shuddered by hands of strength, hands of thick, energetic air that had forces pumping through them, becoming vital to them, great to them, godly – to them. Coldness lingered in the room, ornaments hung high randomly as if put on a fresh Christmas tree, an exciting act. None glimmered like they should, and one could wonder what was wrong with these ornaments of cold. Nothing but silence remained for a long distance, not even a tiny, miniscule murmur of voice.
Hidden swirls of black and blood, whorled fingerprints and despair lingered, dwelled in the shadows, in every possible corner of the room, every time edge it could sink into, dominate, manipulate, take control over. Orange walls were disgusted by the dark, eaten away, destroyed, also manipulated. Disliked things must die. The long, shadow-dominating hallway which could barely be called a "room" was narrow, walls made of cages, cages of made of walls, metal bars rusty and wet, damp, remembering the eerie, sickening recollection of their victims, their partners. Now they were lonesome, crying. Crying and shedding tears all over their bodies, wetting them, dampening them, soaking them. Stenches of hate, disembodied evil hissed from each and every illustrious rib that wished for one more person to trap, one more person to hold and take care of, to nurture. One more. That's all it asked. One more.
Trailing the path of the hallway, you found a pool of darkness, a hole of hellish plight before you, coming closer and closer as you did the same. Shadowy hands that remained hidden in the darkness beckoned, pleaded for a soul to trap, begged like a peasant with the most raggedy, grayest clothes ever seen. Hands folded into a prayer like hammer-fist of hate, eyes and face distorted eagerly with horrid, discordant cries for help, for gold, for fortune. Then, the darkness into the square blackness bribed, bribed you, holding the only sound heard in the whole entire "room" behind it, past it; holding the only sound, only light. Anyone would accept, anyone would fall into temptation, surely at this point.
Approaching the darkness was seen faint murmurs of light. Blue light. Red light. All forms of wondrous light that filled your mind with a free sample, temptation putting its own hands above your own, taking control of you, infecting you like a virus, a visible virus, one that could scare to death. Then, falling into the darkness, light carried you away, gave you holy, heavenly paradise, illusions of reality. A wide, real room of norm was spotted, orange finally dominant, light finally present, sound finally existent. The faint hum of glowing processes whispered, murmured into the false night. Eerie glows and fingers dark, bloody red and reedy, magical blue swam across the sea of hell, blanket of black. They fingered, they poked the air, shooting across like bullets, right into the wall that stood before them, the wall of thin, metal wires and bars, trapping what was inside, the biggest cage in the whole "room."
"Really," voices murmured, echo after echo after echo. Dominant eyes opened and watched, preparing, looking, glaring. More thick bullets of color swam. "Was it really necessary to tap into these powers again?" the familiar voice of a non-intruder asked calmly. Fellow eyes, all shapes and sizes in their triangles of pale white, nodded, shook their heads, did everything to confuse the one speaking pair. Their actions were ignored. The humming continued and flowed into the gates. Screaming was expected. There was none. Poor ten year old child, few pairs of eyes thought. Was he dead, they wondered? Eyes shot themselves hard past the gates. They found – nothing – but darkness. Once again, they asked: Was he dead?
PoVS
Kahibi Eric walked out from the thick, wooden door and into the broad sunlight. Afternoon was just hours away, two or three, in fact. Smells of lingering breakfast drifted from far, far away. Or was that just his own hunger hallucinating on him? Daylight set him ablaze, more ablaze than a Fire Minor should. Clouds puffed white smoke against the blanket of azure. Trees rattled themselves in an instrumental dance of tambourine, hands doing the jazz gesture eagerly, happily, cheerfully. Grass blades caught the whispering gossip of the winds passing by, wishing they had arms to jot those millions of ideas down. Perspiration pasted this teenager's back to his clothes; he didn't know why. Had he been training recently? No, in fact, he had just gotten up from bed a few hours ago. Most Minors were still sleeping, lazy in their first day back. Everyone wondered the same thing: What next? Only time would tell, Eric knew.
The eighteen year old boy who had been filled with problems and still really wasn't sure if he still was filled with them stepped out into the grass bravely, closing the door behind him, challenge. The sun seemed to greet him, heating him up everywhere, as if he were uncooked food – breakfast of the starving, empty sky. The distant circle of light never failed to amuse and fill Eric with awe with its intense heat and warmth. Light winds showed no sense of time alone and whisked themselves into Eric's clothes. They cooled against his skin, comforting him. He took many steps forward, feet calm and steady.
Soon, he found himself among the trees, far away from the darker parts of the Inner World. Now, he hid from sunlight. Now, darkness crept over him, a prize blanket of cooling and comfort around him, unnoticed, unappreciated. His brown eyes seemed cross, muscles tense, or did they just seem like that? He said not a word, not even a tiny whisper of sound. Feet even failed to crunch against the blades of limp, fingering grass. Voices of impact caught his attention, jerking his head like automatic fingers of conceit.
Distant away, he found Walter, the respective Water Minor prodigy. He was training, attacking, marking, kicking, punching against a body of a random, poorly treated tree. It cried its last whispers out before its death. Walter had no sympathy. Its body was soaked from water attack after water attack. Eric, watching, yet only gazing, sighed. He was suddenly reminded of Walter's words not too long ago:
"If you get in the way of my goal, I'll have to kill you, Eric, if necessary."
"Our purposes in life seem to cross. If they interfere like so, it just means I'll take you down."
Few times, Eric wondered, just what was his goal, what was it that he wanted to accomplish? Why was it so important? Thoughts lifted from his mind, dragged away by puppeteer fingers. Her jerked his head back, finding a distant figure toward a shining, clear lake. Attention was caught; feet were dragged. It was past the trees, and into the heated sunlight, but it seemed worth it. A lake was interesting – at least now. Mornings always seemed rather strange, seeing as what they did to your mind. Who was there at the lake, sitting at the uncomfortable rock? No one other than Marissa, the Sound Minor that seemed to receive just too much respect. Trees rustled sympathetically. Eyes wandered, and so did Eric as he walked toward her, hearing the sounds of training impact fade away, slowly, slowly…slowly.
He began to near her. Marissa looked into the lake, and suddenly, feeling a jolt of Déjà vu, she whispered below her voice, whispered secretly in hidden blankets of silence, a minor tone unheard, unwanted, unneeded by the life of nature, the infinite life span of eternity. The lake that she washed and cooled her feet in like two soda cans in a frosty fridge, fidgeted against the new, clear water. It was much more comfortable and easing than the East Lake of Swamp of Mystery. How murky and disgusting and sickening it was. Repulsive in stench and behavior, more revulsion than snot. The rock was even smoother, more weathered, flattened to a comfortable crisp. She stared in, watching her own reflection distort in the reflecting, clear blue waters. It seemed to take her face, her saddened, depressed face, and wanted to change it, shaking it about, shuddering her frown and trying to turn it… upside down.
Grass blades tickled the corners of the unstructured lake, fingers of amusement on this great day that was not-so-great. Her golden hair wanted its turn to tickle the water, too, wanting to lightly kiss it, peck at it with a goldenrod touch. It only ended up caressing and fanning her cheeks, her hot, tearful cheeks, full of cries and complaints that could last one a year, fill one with amazing, awesome thoughts of realization, having no idea she had felt this way. You really couldn't just a book by its cover. She remembered what she had said, what she had told Rick, her last few words to him so far:
"Where does that leave me? Am I some kind of treasure left to be protected? What have I provided to this group? All those weeks and months being Minors, what have I done that benefits us? Nothing. Nothing!"
She had left Kumoyama Rick speechless. Poor pair of blondes. How many troubles they had, how… how un-blonde they seemed to be, doing well as they fought the stereotypes, but in result, fighting each other. Azure eyes hid the translucency of tears. Cheeks pouted upward, becoming hot and guilty. Morning sunlight made splotches of discordant, demented white light. They, too, were distorted and changed in structure by the currents of the lake. They, too, shared the same sadness and mutation of Marissa's colorful figure, reflected but never copied. She stared at her wavy, unstable replica. It seemed to have a better life than she, even if it dispersed and deceased when she left. Everything seemed to be better than her. A leaf was more useful than her. At least it provided the trees some good. What was she good for? Many thoughts like those raced through her mind, pulsing against her temples like mysteries unsolved, unable to be taken off her mind. Oh, how it pained her to see her treat her friends like this. How guilty and shamed she felt. Suddenly, Eric appeared over her shoulders. He stared into the water, and by doing so, stared into her. Her blue eyes widened, surprised, a bit happy. He had never approached, nor had he talked to her ever. What did he want now?
His arms were crossed, eyes blank and indecisive, undecipherable, coded and riddled with a hidden secret behind his human mask. It was easy to tell that behind him was something more, something much, much more. And suddenly, Marissa wanted to know what. She wanted to discover the final object to the mystery known as Kahibi Eric, even though she did not know him at all. Her eyes slouched at her face, sad. He immediately took notice of this. "Eric," she muttered his name, making no eye contact with him, even through reflection. Her eyes found their way to his legs' shimmering distortions portrayed on the water. He seemed to take notice of her. "What do I look like to you?" she asked, eager for the answer. He seemed ruffled, confused. Bright sunlight hissed at the ground below them, hot. "Am I pretty? Am I strong? Weak?" She waited a long pause before finishing up the sentence. "…or am I nothing?" Her voice seemed weak, unsure of herself, cracking as they finished the last bit of words, the ones that all her senses pointed to as the answer.
Eric, being indifferent, sighed. "Someone like me is not allowed to tell you who and what you are," he said directly. His answers always seemed truthful. His eyes began to uncross, showing friendliness in him. Marissa sighed at the indefinite answer. She didn't know. Maybe, just maybe, all her senses pointed to the wrong answer for once. Sadly, she felt even more now that they did not.
"I'm useless," she muttered sadly. Her head slouched more, if possible. Edges of the lake began to push away and reject fallen branches and sticks of trees. Kinetic waves of water hugged against them, resisting them, forcing them away sadly as sunlight faded into them, tainting them.
"No matter how useless you think you are, the truth is, you're not," Eric replied. Marissa seemed to sneer. "A being on a team has value, even the smallest one and the most unnoticeable one. It means something to the team."
"Yeah, right," Marissa scoffed in sarcasm. Even she didn't believe that. Eric was showing no signs of help at all. For now.
"Fine," Eric answered. Marissa seemed surprised. She jerked her head up a tiny bit, then slouched back down, sadder than before. "Let me ask you something now," he started right back up. She seemed interested immediately, looking up. "What's your favorite flower?" he asked out of the blue. She curled up uneasily to an uncomfortable ball. His words failed to amuse her, or even make her feel better at the least.
"A rose," she answered unenthusiastically. "What about it?" she asked, suspicious to some level. Sunlight seemed to increase.
"Okay, then, think about it this way," Eric insisted. Marissa's ears twitched, bringing themselves into full attention. She'd take any advice now. Eric seemed to answer to her pretty quickly. "Think of a rose. Its petals are all joined together, all put in unison around the bud, like a team, correct?" Marissa nodded unevenly, ever so slightly that it could barely be caught in the midst of your eyes. Gray winds seemed to pick up, lifting all sorts of plant life into the air.
Pause filled silence. Red, silky petals of Marissa' favorite flower suddenly came showering down in caressing boats, cradles to the air, slowly rocking themselves and the wind to sleep. They spun, twirled, two or three few in the air, swaying unpredictably in a smooth dance of slowly, evanescent hope. Time ran out as they softly dabbed the lake's body, now in the nurturing hands of rippled water. They softly glided, emotionless, empty, full of nothing as they trickled towards each other in the water, tiny, tiny boats of miniscule hope, minimized to an unnoticed being on the face of the earth. They so desperately swam to each other, wanting to hold each other, support each other, because they were the only ones who understood each other; they were the only ones they had. Hot rays of sunlight cried for them, leisurely clouds slowed their agility for them. Grass blades leaned into the water, wanting a closer sleuthing. Trees rattled, shaken and stirred by the scene in front of them, crying, crying for them because they knew that they could cry no more, they had no tears left to shed, because they themselves had cried themselves out. Now they were nothing but emptiness, faking their own tears, their own hopes, their own dreams, their own sunlit eternity – into their heated, blistering plummet of silent, solemn doom. There was nothing left in the world for them, and together, they just held each other's hands, a bare touch with their fingers, the reddish flakes that they were diminished into nothing. Nothing.
"However," Eric went on, using the same, graceful touch with the rose-team metaphor. Marissa seemed immediately helped. Light winds touched with a light serenity to her cheeks, and then, with the same wind, severed the bonds of the petals as they spiraled, slowly, but surely, out of control. "When one petal is lost from the flower, and one petal is gone, then the whole rose becomes defective, inefficient. It becomes, something one would say, ugly, correct?" Subconsciously with thoughts blasting her mind, Marissa nodded. "So, why, in the history of earth, would you be the first petal to wither away? Why would you say that you have no value, but when you shrivel and die, you leave the team incomplete, valueless, empty and incomplete?"
Why did his words make so much sense to Marissa? She didn't know. He could be right about that, though. Maybe… maybe she did have some personal values; maybe she did have some good things about her that let the team be the team. She watched the unbound rose petals soak their bottoms and lightly drift away from each other, lost selves within each other, glimmering brightly in the sunlight, noticed for just a while before everything, everything left them – and everything fell apart. "Eric," she muttered, eyes staring into the lake, watching those three, lonely petals, tiny and microscopic, ignored, unseen in society's eyes. "Thank you," she whispered as she felt the tears well in her eyes. Her nose tingled.
"No problem," Eric said lastly, turning around as he made yet another relationship to protect. He began to walk away, feet lightly and gracefully putting an end to grass blades' lives. They seemed honored to be killed by such a man of metaphor – such a man of grace and talent, a man of pride. How they wished they were him, how they wished they could solve their own ignorant problems like he. This boy was sure one to praise, especially at such a young age. He walked away, his presence soon fading. Ears no longer picked up the light crack of half-dewy grass.
"I'm a rose petal, huh?" Marissa said to herself weakly. She smiled. Then, she scoffed amusingly, smiling, eyes and spirits lifting up, only a little, but that little was still important anyway. Her feet suddenly felt more energetic in the cool water, and suddenly, she felt something trickle against her. It was easily noticed, and she, now being the nicer, bent over to see what it was.
The water was up to her ankles and something new, something fresh was at her feet, pulling itself against her, clinging to her like a child not wanting to let go, purring its babyish cry. She smiled and lightly picked it up, lifting her feet to do so. Her feet, bringing up the silky, smooth material let water fall back to the lake in ripples as the coldness of the outside air sunk into her feet. She brought it the object into her fingers, and felt its smooth, gentle skin. Its red appeal made it all the worth while to have in her delicate fingers. It was soaked, but now, it was saved. Now, it had someone to care for, and someone who cared for it. Then, happily and rejoiced, she easily and subtly stuffed the tiny, finally noticed rose petal into her pocket.
PoVS
Tsukansu paced eagerly and impatiently through the forest. His rush of feet was angry against the ground, crunching leaves hatefully as he went on, feet too fast, using too much energy, unsafe. Trees shivered at his unhappy presence. Damn it, Hanabikai! He cursed his best friend. He was much too stressed. Much, much too stressed for this right now. I can't believe this! Walter… there's no way!
"Tsukansu," Hanabikai had called out to him in the Inner World's presence. The brown haired council turned his head around to meet eyes with his best friend.
"What is it, Hanabikai?" Tsukansu asked, interested, unbothered, unlike what he would feel in just a matter of seconds.
"Eric..." the Fire Council began.
"Your Minor Counterpart?" Tsukansu asked, remembering the brown-haired teenager's name. "What about him?"
"He told me earlier when I went to his team in the Swamp of Mystery that…" Hanabikai couldn't seem to finish his sentence. Tsukansu's eyes begged for conclusion. Taking a deep breath to clam himself, the Fire Council started up again. "He saw Walter use this silver energy to slice an opponent's arm off. It traced his arms like a silhouette, Tsukansu!" His voice suddenly transformed eager. "Can you not tell me that this is a bad, horrible sign? Can you not say that he just used that – that move that White Cloak forbade himself?" Tsukansu remained silent. "Listen, Tsukansu," the Fire Council begged, pleaded almost. "I want you to talk to Walter. I want you to make a promise with him so that he won't repeat history, so that the Minors won't have to go through what we did!"
"How do I do that, Hanabikai? Tell me," Tsukansu said seriously and a bit angrily, beginning to get impatient and a bit mad at what was going on, disbelief filling his every aspect, tightening his muscles in growing stress and memory. I can't believe this, he thought.
"I don't know, just do it!" the worrywart Council said. "If he really is fooling around with that move, you've got to stop it. Or else it could mean the end of everything for us, the Minors, and possibly everyone we know and care for, and tried to help." Tsukansu remained speechless, or, it was more like, his lips were sealed, not wanting to say anything, because he knew of the consequences. It was useless trying to argue with Hanabikai. He always won over somehow. It was crazy how he did it, too. Crazy best friend, Tsukansu thought. "Tsukansu," Hanabikai called out his name in recollection.
"Fine, I'll go," Tsukansu said finally, getting up from his seat. The chair behind him squealed as it was hauled back. "If it makes you feel better, I'll go." Then, Tsukansu headed out for the door, strangely and suspiciously knowing where Walter would exactly be at this time of day, now that they were back from the Swamp of Mystery.
Tsukansu headed for the Minor, eagerly and irritably. "Damn it, Walter," he muttered to himself as he approached the figure of the brown-haired Minor, who trained against the body of a dying tree who still didn't seem to have enough at some point. Tsukansu made a sneering, suspicious face. It was uneasy, strange, in fact. Something was different. His intolerant steps made Walter aware of his presence, saving Tsukansu a few words. Slowly, he approached, and slowly, Walter seemed to tense, both stares intertwined with each other, hatefully, surely, maybe?