The only three man team sent on the task was beginning to diminish in space. They backed up slowly, more and more as the crowd of white garments surrounded them, the walls of impure, tainted white cornering them slowly out of their space. The three were close together now, trapped in a small, imprisoned circle. Breathable air became sparse. Together, they tried to reach a mental consensus, trying in desperation to compromise with each other. Nothing worked. There would soon be a forced compliance, a result of stressed space, timed limits.
"It's been over half an hour!" Zack complained, backing up slowly into the small human triangle that seemed suffocating, uneasy that the three boys had built. "The real one hasn't showed up yet. Where is he?" he asked, as if the other two boys knew the answer.
"Just shut up," Derek scorned almost immediately with certain automaticity. He had gotten too used to using that line right after Zack spoke. He couldn't help it; it was too often when he complained. He could sense the audience of watching, shaded eyes and faces near them, edge toward them. The team was about to be pushed over the edge.
"He's right, though," Mark had to admit. "We have to hurry and find the real one, before we waste too much energy," he suggested. "It would've been hard enough to fight him with a team of three people like us who had full energy. We all know what he's capable of," Mark explained. Especially Derek. The black-haired boy, at the hearing of the sentence, flashed an image of the Hanayuki's doctor's death. He winced, snapping himself away from the recollection. He took a deep sigh. It was time to get over it – he couldn't spend his life worrying about it.
"But how?" Derek asked. He didn't know; Mark didn't know either, and it was doubtful Zack did. Derek eyed the replicates standing before him. They all seemed to lean closer a little more at the same time, a little more threateningly. Their faces were shadowed in their hood's darkness, their bodies placed in the same way as the first, mimicking him. Their cloaks of faked innocence dribbled from their shoulders, and were heavy on their backs. The moving night above, soon dead, watched before it plummeted to its horizon funeral. "They come out of nowhere, we can't stop them from reproducing in seconds," Derek explained.
Mark seemed to stall. Then, snapping out of his own trance of thought, he began. "I have an idea," Mark said, more calmly this time. The tone of assurance lifted Derek and Zack's spirits a little. The brown-haired boy began to speak. "Zack, take Derek," instructed Mark.
"Yeah," Zack said in compliance. The boy turned to Derek, and began to bring the spiky-haired boy's body closer to his, taking him by the shoulders. Derek, almost immediately, pulled away. An angry scowl of confusion growled under his breath.
"What!?" Derek cried in defiance. He pulled away even more, making sure he created space between him and Zack. "Get off," he demanded.
"Derek," Mark said scornfully. "Just let him. Trust me." A long silence fell upon the team. The eerie coolness of unused lips began to show in the crowd. The moon, slowly bringing itself down into morning, stalled, waited for a reply form the black-haired boy.
After many tense, uncertain seconds, a forced indifference came over Derek. A sudden change in emotion fixated upon his teammates. He looked away from them, as if shamed to say what he was about to say and blatantly muttered, "Fine," in a dull, blunt sigh. He crossed his arms as he always did, his eyes staring off towards the horizon to keep themselves busy. He had accepted reluctantly, yet changed it the best he could into a complete indifference.
"You ready?" Zack asked with common courtesy. The Minor prepared himself, too, feeling the drawn Half Spirit energy rush through his limbs and veins, a new blood that felt more refreshing, more different; it was better than the invisible feeling of blood. It felt tingly almost, cooling as the night.
"Whatever," Derek said, not too meanly this time. He gave up, knowing that there was no way to escape what he was about to go through. His eyes narrowed indistinctively as the grip his crossed arms put on each other strengthened. His evenly tanned body tensed up in every muscle, so much that it ached. At the corner of his eye, Mark prepared himself, drawing his Half Spirit energy as well, and into the tips of his fingers, the palms of his hands, the knuckles of his fists.
Zack sighed, remained silent. He inched closer to Derek's waiting body. He could sense the tone of reluctance pour out of him uneasily. Zack gulped; he didn't know what he was so nervous about. Derek didn't move; he acted as if no one was there. Zack inched more closely, dragging his feet a little to make an approaching noise. Derek gave no reply, no signs of recognition or acknowledgment. Then, deciding that he had stalled enough, took Derek through beneath his shoulders and brought him, slowly and carefully, into the air. A look of an ignored scowl painted on the boy's face. Derek's body was well-built for a seventeen year-old, the only reason Zack found it a bit hard to carry. The two drifted into the air by the help of Zack's arms, and stammered. Derek pretended not to notice. The slight pain in his shoulders would wear away soon, he promised himself.
"Okay," Mark exhaled sharply. Make it fast, Derek pleaded of Mark in his mind, watching from above. Mark closed his eyes and rubbed his two palms together in preparation, readying his body and mind. "Maina Tsuchi: -Minor Earth: - Rifuto no Daichi! –Ground Uplift!-" declared the Earth Minor. A visible wave of silhouetted yellow spread from Mark's feet as he crouched to the ground with force. The circular wave of seismic energy was like any regular wave – it spread, and it dominated with great succession. The many White Cloaks were overtaken, lifted from their feet as the ground beneath them crumbled and jumped upward into random elevations.
Their pattern of mimicry was broken, their fragile miming diminished into nothing more but a wiped out replication. The ground below rumbled unevenly, the lithospheric placing only possible by this Minor. Their silence of meticulous watching broken into many pieces, only few of the crowd remained, the boundaries of the uplifting ground finally reached. The earth, now jagged into small, lifted panels from the ground, dark with their natural brown, failed to completely recover itself, and instead, sunk only a bit back to their origins. The rumbling of below stopped. The attack was over.
The three boys waited, suspensively. Derek lingered in the air, nothing supporting him but a boy who seemed to know little but always seemed to do a lot at the same time. Something at the corner of the black-haired boy's eye caught his attention. Below, the White Cloaks began to reform, each new one growing from an old one that had failed to be dwindled by the force of the ground uplift. They grew from every part of the body: the shoulders, the arms, the stomach, the chest, the leg, even their own heads. It was completely random with these replications that failed to speak, failed the process of communication. The shadows had weathered away their faces, including their mouths, ears, minds of glory that failed to react now, failed to respond correctly.
"Damn it," Mark scowled at his failure. The clones kept rebuilding, jumping weakly, lethargically, on to the uplifted ground, slowly walking downward and growing more clones as they approached Mark, and brought themselves down with uneven footsteps that paced themselves closer like they were on stairs. Their ominous shadows seemed to hesitate, falling over Mark yet failing to do anything of significance. Mark looked up, not quite scared, yet not quite feeling safe either. What would he do?
"Zack, put me down," Derek asked somewhat nicer than he usually spoke. Zack nodded, catching Derek's drift as to not make any noise. He carefully brought the boy down as well as himself, and now, all three found themselves cramped between a circle of enemies. "I got a better idea," Derek suggested. Everyone turned to him, watched him carefully. They put their trust in him. Gathering the required energy, Derek created a dome of thick shadow, a giant layer of loyal shade energy that rose from the ground and masked the three presences in a circular half of an egg. Then, the glowing, humming walls began to push, deviously, greatly. They flattened and weathered away the lifted rocks and ground surrounding them, and wiped away the army of White Cloaks that failed to act, failed to lift their arms from their lethargy hold of body.
The blackish dome remained after the attack, bodies slowly fading away from uselessness. They had been shoved just once, and now, they faded into a nothing reality from which they came from. The shadowy orb that encaged them and hid them away in secrecy continued to contain them. They were protected.
From far away, a figure, a familiar being watched them from the high elevated trees. A hand touched against the bark of a thick, short tree. The fingertips hissed disgustingly with a blistering heat. The cigarette fingers hissed white smoke from which they made contact, a sort of hot breath that the bark was just immune to, and reflected distantly instead. He had fully recovered now; his loss had meant nothing. Just a few days of being tired, that was all. He snickered, thinking of vengeance, thinking of the sweet taste of revenge and the honeyed nectar of pride that would soon fill his stomach and cake the corners of his mouth. So wonderful, he thought. So wonderful. It was time to make his entrance, and he was glad.
The hand lifted from the tree, five visible fingerprints charred onto the thick bark as if it wanted to make a memoir of fingerprints, as if a stamp of approval, a signature of some sort posted by the fun-loving being. The two unequal hands pasted themselves together in a small clap that froze in the middle. Heat hissed from between them, too. The hands were fairly toned, not discolored of any sort. They seemed perfectly human in fact, but they did not belong to anyone human. The fingers each held an attempt, a thought of murder, carrying millions, trillions of them inside their small, tiny little whorls of print. He had a great plan, and saw a great chance. If they just lifted the shadow dome they had built, maybe, just maybe, they could escape the blow. But now, now that they have encased themselves with nothing but air, darkness, and the ground, now that they had trapped themselves for him, there was no chance, not even a sliver of thought for escape. And he enjoyed it. He loved it.
Looking past in a reverse of time as to how much he had waited for this chance, he decided to get right to it. The being had no longer the smallest distant star of patience. It did not even flicker; it was just put out. The hands released themselves. White steam breathed out hotly, heavily in a hiss as they brought themselves to the ground, injecting manipulating energy into the high elevation and connecting them like strings to the lower elevation. A smile couldn't help but edge onward over the face for the thought of the nearing success. "Maguma Jama, –Igneous Intrusion-" the familiar voice whispered, reckoned in an unassisted declaration. The ground below stirred with change.
In the deep darkness that the dome of ebony had built, Yomi Derek speculated with his teammates, and got their opinions of agreement in the blinded dark. "Got it?" he asked with assurance, a pair of dark, narrowed eyes turning equally to Zack and Mark, looking at both of them in the same way. Zack nodded.
"Yeah," Mark replied. His voice echoed, bounced off the circular, unseen walls of the cage they had put themselves in, slyly. The air trapped inside was cool, comforting to their perfectly sculpted faces. Along with the darkness, it was refreshing, refreshing to their slight, unnoticed senses. It seemed hard to smile all of a sudden. The darkness remained still, remained undisturbed. Then, the ground beneath them rumbled. They waited expectantly.
The team, feeling the cracks from Mark's earlier move under their feet, began to be overtaken by a slight magnitude. Light began to come in from the ground, a bright, hissing light that poured unsightly from the cracks. The light bubbled, the source filling them with liquidized veins. The three were no longer blind. Their hard smiles were now frozen on their faces, unable to come off. They looked around, eyes jotting back and forth in shock, surprise. Their arms no longer moved, and they tried to run, tried to release the dome, but soon, Derek's feet, too, could no longer move, could no longer run. They felt stony, clogged from energy. The hot, bubbling magma continued to pour bright orange light in their faces. The wide room was lit up, and they just stared, scared at it, fearful. A smirk outside continued to grow. The bright, hot lights began to turbine and disrupt into its horrid, banshee scream as the eruptive cracks on the ground burst with flowing lava, and imploded from the asthenosphere. The intrusion of red-hot magma exploded and screeched a horrid, melting shriek that was shrill with danger, and sharp with mockery and sudden appearance. No screams were emitted; the team was soon overtaken by the lava. The hot, hissing of their bodies remained solemn to their frozen ears. Their look of petrifaction remained stuck, like a mask. Hot, bubbling solution continued to eat at their bodies. And they – they could no longer do anything.
From outside, the blistering lava could be heard from outside. A smile grew on murderous lips. The walls of the shadow wall faded and broke away into nothingness, and the roaring flames and heat and lava poured out and pooled everywhere like the solution of a spilt glass of beverage. The red hot sensations gave the only being left in the area his own satisfaction. He watched for the bodies from a distance, watched for them carefully as he scanned the hot pool of liquid. The night remained solemn, eerie; not wanting to speak, or think of what it had seen tonight. It wished it had just gone plummeted toward the horizon earlier. It could not die with such a thing on mind, it could not. The being sneered. "Too easy," he commented
Then, the individual saw them. Sprawled over the lake of red-hot glower, there they were, lying like stone with helpless, frozen screams over their mouths. They were like statues, lingering there, unable to do anything. They were animated with color, great color that once used to be alive but now, anyone would know that the other half – the half that was inside the lava – was not melted away, and dead. Zack lay on his side, symmetrically cut in half. His eyes were closed, unable to long to open again; unable to long at all. Derek had his hand on a rock, forearm down trapped in the hot liquid, his head and part of his neck emerging from the hot, still sizzling lake. His spiky hair remained perfect, even after his death. His other hand sprawled on a high rock as well, and the rest of his body sunk to its sizzle. Mark had been the worst. He laid face-down, body lying there like a chalked silhouette of a crime scene that had long gone to pass, waiting to be examined by police and detectives. His face was surely diminished and distorted into a gruesome melt. He slowly floated, sickeningly to the shores of the body of hell that had spurted out by purpose.
He was so happy, so happy to have them so easily killed when, until – something happened. Something…different. He noted certain differences in their body, slight imperfections, and jotted his stare to the left, to find Zack's body. A low crumbling began to emit from their bodies. A crumbling of…what? Of bone? No, it would just melt and incinerate; it would not crumble. Then, the individual who had caused the triple murder of massacre, not quite manslaughter looked to Derek. He saw his hands remain perfectly still, perfectly not in pain. Shouldn't the heat have melted away their bodies as well? It had been extreme temperatures. There's no way their bodies still remained. Then, he looked to Mark. Slowly, his floating stopped. Slowly, his features began to discolor. Slowly, the tan of the back of his neck and the once beautiful brown set of hair and all his clothes began to turn to the same color, and began to deform into a depressing, fine gray. Their soft skin became solid, hard with difference. Something was definitely wrong! An error of some sort – an overlooked scene, or plotting! But they had been trapped, trapped themselves into their own doom, and encased themselves in that non liberal dome of shadow energy. How could they…?
Then, Zack's body began to discolor, too. And so, Derek's followed suit. They all began to crumble more and hiss louder and louder. Derek's perfect spikes of black hair began to weather away itself, and turn gray like a melted monument. His frozen eyes of stare hidden beneath closed eyelids discolored as well, and then, suddenly, horridly, his face cracked, his rough, no longer smooth, and gray, no longer dark with tan and sun, and began to crumble into his own interior. Then, it was clear to the individual what had happened, he just didn't know how. The bodies that lay in the lava – they weren't bodies. They, in fact, were stone replicates
Realizing this, he wanted to turn, expecting an attack from the back, a sneak attack. He turned, eyes still widened with shock and alert until – it had been too late. He had taken too long to realize. "Now!" a voice shouted from behind him, the one who had made the ground move intentionally. The voice filled him with alarm. A punch was made to the side of the boy's face. The punch was hard as stone, strong as steel. It pulled him away, and made him wonder if his teeth were missing, bleeding. He pulled himself together, and brought his hand to comfort his jaw. He cried out in agony as the pain seared throughout his head for seconds, even lasting a few minutes and on.
"Damn it!" he cried out. "That hurt!" he said blatantly.
"Obviously," Zack's healthy, unharmed voice commented, appearing from the side of a tree behind the detected enemy.
"You can thank Eric for the inspiration," Mark commented secondly, clenching and unclenching his stony fist that had been layered with a rocky armor. It slowly cracked, and the stone fell to the floor, no longer of any use. Mark opened and closed his fist one more time to check if he could use it well again. The results pleased him. Then, he looked at the enemy expectantly, and waited.
Suddenly, a hand took the boy from the ankle that seemed to reach out from the ground, and shout out, "Sinful Greed!" It was the familiar voice of the Shadow Minor, who thankfully was not dead, and thankfully could still live on. As a sign of his own revenge for his apparent death, Derek brought the ankle into the ground and surprised the being. The opponent's feet began to sink into the ground, his eyes hard on the hand dragging him in, unable to figure out a way to escape it when – just then came another hard punch of stone to his face. The shadow technique had been a diversion to keep the enemy's attention away from the stone punch. Pain seared once again, on the same side of the face, too! The enemy cried out as he tried to prevent himself from falling hard to the floor behind him.
"You," Derek said as he slowly rose from the ground before the new opponent. His arms were crossed meanly, his eyes narrow and unforgiving. A low scowl gave way from his eyes and teeth. A hateful grudge that was miniscule at the moment wanted to break free and grow, and dominate, but it remained encaged, and harmless. "You're behind all this, aren't you?" the black-haired Minor, revived, asked.
"Yeah, you're smart," the lone foe commented in a scorn as he brought a hand to wipe his mouth, as if it would wash away the pain. He smiled, smirked at their attempts to attack him. They were so sneaky, so unexpected that they were amusing!
This guy… Derek thought, keeping his stare close on the boy. He seemed the same age as the Minors, but something about him just stirred Derek. Why does he look so…? He failed to finish the rest of his thought; his train of recollection had overtaken his train of thought. He had a sudden flashback, a sudden image of past events. He remembered a crashing fist. Blood. Pain. He gasped, sharply, unnoticeably. That was good, one could guess; gasping from shock wasn't really Derek's way of doing things. But he just couldn't help it. He didn't expect someone like… like him. Then, he thought, he realized. They could be in major trouble. They could die. And he, he could really die this time. Really.