Derek continued to stare into the enemy, touching him, feeling him with dark, piercing eyes that were now dull with blank-mindedness. He fingered the careful, rock-hard teeth with a gaze full of recognition. He seemed so familiar, characteristics clear and recognizable; his teeth ground together in a playful hate, a skating of frictional white chips. They seemed so ancient, so fictional that they were there, the many features of his face and body matching up perfectly to a lost pinpoint of nostalgia stirring in Derek's mind, teasing his consciousness. He had bright, red-orange hair, shaped exactly like Hanabikai's, as if he had been obsessed with the council. Green, devious eyes seemed to glint and stand out from the dark face, a pair of emerald stars brightened in a masked malevolence. He was Derek's height, Derek's build, like a twin replicate of his body. The two could've been brothers. But Derek spited him, and so the enemy returned. However, the Minor couldn't quite put a finger on his identity, or where and when he knew this boy from. So he just stared, watched, hoping that if he did long enough, something – anything inside him would tell him the anxious answer.
"Derek, you don't have time to doze off!" Mark demanded as he dashed past the hypnotized boy and stirred the action up again. It was a stone blow to the side of the face. Now worn from surprise, the opponent merely stammered, and half-fell to the side. Then, there came another punch. An expectant block reflected. Mark was soon trapped. A smile grew on the scarlet-haired foe. Assistance arrived swiftly. Zack came from behind, brought the opponent's body closer to his in a restraining hug. Then, the two found themselves in midair, one unable to do anything any longer, disabled of his attacks temporarily.
"Looks like I don't have to hold back with you," Zack whispered into the lower boy's ear a bit cheerily. The foe sneered back. "You're real, right?" the Minor smiled. He held his shoulders tighter in a lock of his arms, as if choking the answer out of him.
"Sure am," the opponent answered back, not the least bit worried about what might happen next. It was as if he had the perfect defense in mind, whether he knew Zack's technique or not.
"Well then," Zack began to conclude. "That's great." With an indifferent compliance from the foe, Zack threw the teenage body into the air, above his head. Forming himself into an agile rush, the Minor was able to catch the soaring body while it was still ascending and turn its drift, now turning him and throwing him down instead of up. Zack, left in midair found the perfect chance. A deep breath gained, a concentrated insertion of energy followed. Cheeks puffed up in a powerful bursting encasement. Chest expanded in air, a dangerous splicing of oxygen and energy poured into his cheeks, into his breath as the body plummeted down with no attempt of rescuing himself.
The deep breath poured out, in hurricanes. The chest slowly contracted, and the whistled breath of roaring, shuffling air crashed downward invisibly, thickly. The opponent's body was no lost in a raging mist of reverse eruption; the wind constantly cut the air at the bottom as it made contact with the floor – and the body. All was now lost in a fury of blinding winds and deafening twists. All was white, blurred in agility that was too rapid for eyes, too hasty for feet. It was inescapable; there was nothing that could liberate itself from the prison of bladed currents.
The winds soon put to an impeding end caused by the overuse of time. The hands of clock seemed to speed up in anticipation, numbered eyes of compound life watching the fight, and exciting its soul. Its gears spun horridly, much too quickly for safety. The fight would soon bring to its hype. Zack remained in the air, examining the clearing cloud of white, frothy smoke. It was a gray sky grounded to the floor, unwanted by the society of souls about. And Zack knew that there was one, solitary bird that soared among the gray sky, lost, unmoving now, somewhere just waiting to be found. Had it, too, been banished by society, one could wonder. Or was it his decision? Was it his decision to go along with the cloud of gray and diminished trust for the power and glory? It was surprising how some people considered loneliness to be prowess.
The glassy panes of the broken sky that had confused stars for satellites and clouds for suns soon began to diminish, realizing its horrid mistakes in the past, realizing that it could no longer change it; fantasies stayed fantasies. The puffs of thick air dwindled away and back into the paradise, finally gaining its acceptance. Slowly, a presence was revealed, but much too early. Too early because something was out of balance, not right. A hint of white showed, a faint seeping of dark. It was a dome. A dome, a crowd of white clothed individuals, a rounded wall molded by greedy hands. They were cut; they were horridly bruised, and remained still, a piled grave that could last for centuries. Few replicates faded, diminished from the attack. "He…no way," Zack found himself speechless.
"He… he used the clones… to…" Mark, also finding himself speechless, stared in awe at the dome of bodies, fake bodies. They faded, slowly, one by one. Some underneath remained, some protected. The crowd of white remained.
Then, the small, bodied dome grew red, a hot, stingy light seeping from the small corners and slits of the dome, the space between bodies. "Funka no Aka! –Eruption of Red-!" a voice from inside the barricade of bodies cried out in echoes. The red light grew hotter; the bodies began to sizzle. Then, with a burst of heat and red igneous into the sky like a flaring set of fireworks, the bodies were knocked away, and melted. Their bodies shadowed in the red hot light before them, mindlessly watching, uselessly bathing themselves in the blazing hot lava. They breathed the blaze; they touched the rising magma before their respective deaths, diminishing down to the center as if the lava had eaten them away, their backs darkened from the shadows of the light. Lava soared upward in flares, a fountain of hell. Zack quickly moved out of the way, and fell back to the ground where the monuments were of the lower elevation where the eruption had occurred as well. He swallowed hard, nervous as the red hot liquid from far away even spilled the orange light onto his face, pouring into his eyes handsomely, worrisomely.
"He… he's…" Derek couldn't form a sentence at all. His mind was jumbled, a broken jigsaw puzzle that let the darkness pour in from behind it like a secret that was broken, forced out. Now, letting all of the riches and gossip out, it could not stop, and now, its life was of no use. It was left to die. But Derek wouldn't give up. He would use the tiny, despicable hands that were of bare use to his own mind and mentally, with effort, pick the broken, taken down jigsaws and place them back together, slowly, for it was the only option for him. It was the only option he preferred. It was either give up, or that. And he was hell sure that he wouldn't give up.
At his side, Mark noticed Derek's hyperventilation. He noticed his widened eyes and his worrisome structures. What had happened to his cool-headedness, he wondered. "Derek, you all right?" Mark asked, placing a hand caringly on the boy's shoulder. Carefully, he placed it on him, securely he held him. Derek didn't seem to be there at all; only his bare words that held unsorted syllables and his mind, half his conscious, was there.
Derek unevenly brought a hand to trace over the bandages of colored black, feeling their layered fabric, feeling their foliated alignment. He breathed, once, twice to ensure himself he was alive, as if he had doubts about them. Softly, his fingers stroked the bandages, and strolled downward to find their length. He watched his hand all the while, watched it as if it were being controlled by something else that differed from his will, wide-eyed. He swallowed. Would he be able to go through the night? Derek had to wonder. "Yeah," Derek choked out, finding the first syllable. His voice was choked, forced and sudden. "I'm fine," he told a blatant lie. Mark accepted it, somewhat reluctantly, not knowing what to make of Derek's apparent emotion. He decided to move on, and go to a simpler, more comprehensive thing that he could understand.
The eruption died out. The lava in the air had only lit up the sky for seconds, lit it up in the fake morning for the earth had decided it was too far away; an hour. It had waited too long, it could no longer. However, there was nothing better than the real sunlight; faked halos of lustrous opportunity would be failed to receive recognition and be false of realization. The lava flow died out, the igneous lay there, new rocks created, new land created as well as the lava cooled, hissing, threateningly. The bubbling liquid laid there, like a pool, a pool of existence, of worth. The boy lay in the middle of it all, watching through the rising white smoke he had created himself, waiting in the now broken up ground, weathered away from its formal smoothness.
At the higher elevation, Mark leaned forward, and prepared himself. "We're not done with you!" he cried out, and jumped to the lower elevation. His speed increased; he forced it; even so, he could not defeat Zack's record as the fastest Minor. Mark soon brought a punch to the boy, caught in the enemy's hand once again. Zack appeared behind him, and prepared to bring him up once again for another round. The opponent turned his head, and cocked a smile. A low sneer came with a scowl.
"I'm not going to fall for the same trick twice," he smiled. Then, as if on cue, Zack looked to the guy's arm. He looked to the forearm, the wrist, the wrist that was glowing with a sizzling, molten paste. And the hand – it wasn't there. It just wasn't there, like it had never belonged. Zack uttered a low cry of shock. Then, suddenly, just a bare second later came the hand from the back of the opponent's neck. It began to throttle Zack and take his life into strangulation. The hot, molten hand hissed against his skin, eating it away slowly, taking its time for enjoyment, also causing a deep torture and worry. Zack strained in the hold. He couldn't get the hand off of him. The hand burst from the foe's body and sent Zack flying to the body of a faraway tree.
The Minor landed with a clatter, and the tree's limbs rustled in their own shock. The dust around the area reminded Zack of the Swamp of Mystery, the damp bark digging deep into his smooth back. Molten fingers remained at his neck, closing in on him with great heat and growing pressure. The wrist, or, where the wrist should have been, kept leaking molt, dribbling in a hot-glow of lava. He strained, and growled below his teeth. Then, taking the enclosing hand with his own human one, he pried off the mutated monstrosity, and sent the excuse for a human hand falling to the ground. Zack took new, larger breaths of comfort. He savored every second with enjoyment, every bare millisecond with relief. He breathed out in liberation, feeling a tint of leisure before returning to the reality he still couldn't quite catch on that was normal.
He picked himself up off of the dampened bark. His back slouched helplessly, he continued to take deep breaths, looking at the molten hand dwindle into a pool of lava and a pile of sedimentary, glassy black obsidian. He watched it, as if it were to do something else, just in case. He didn't want to overlook anything any more. Damn, Zack thought in exasperation. The exhilaration he had just gone through was not pleasant, or the least enjoyable. He shrunk his own hand into lava and brought it out in a new place on his body, and could even detach it and form a new one later, the Minor recognized. This guy's crazy; he's like, retarded or something. Even as my title as the fastest Minor that I was granted by Madasora, I still can't probably make any hits if the enemy keeps making moves like that. Damn it!
Zack decided not to think about it. If he thought about it, he'd break down. So he chose not to think. He chose to act; he chose to run after the enemy and get back on that horse. The boy shouted out, and rushed himself into a blur, the fastest blur you'll see of someone this age. His blur was just a smear of color, a daub of presence and scent. Another blur intercepted him and knocked him back to the tree with a harder clash this time. Zack cried out, for he had barely seen the new presence catch up with him. He wondered what exactly had happened, and when he picked up his head, he knew immediately.
Before him stood one of the many replications of White Cloak, the ones that were supposedly slow-minded and slow-motioned. Zack brought an arm to wipe his mouth. The false White Cloak brought his own hand to Zack's neck and began to tighten. The real, more definite strangulation began. Zack strained harder, more. He sharply and frantically waved around for air, for just a tiny, small sucking of oxygen from his desperation. He received none. As a reaction to his despair and hysterical frenzy, the gloved hand tightened more, and took away all his air. Light-headedness began to form.
"Zack!" Mark cried out in worry. He rushed into his own blur. It was not quite as smeared and dirtying as Zack's, but that was not the ivory importance. Mark rushed to Zack's assistance, but he, too, was intercepted by another replicate. He was knocked down to the floor as more formed around him, in just a matter of seconds, too. He cursed his luck. He was now completely surrounded by them. He got himself up from the floor immediately, not to waste any time. He breathed a calming breath, knowing the time limit he was on. He looked around, and tried to sense if any of them around him were the real one. They all looked the same. They all acted the same. They all, in actuality, were the same.
Meanwhile, Zack continued to deepen into his caused hysteria. The replicate pulled out a silver dagger from the depths of nowhere and thrust it towards Zack. The boy reacted quickly, bringing one of his hands to the copy's wrist. It was surprising, really; how strong a clone could be despite the false interpretation of a life form. The stabbing was stalled; it drilled on in dread. The two hands locked each other, shook each other in driving force. None of them won over. They barely moved; they vibrated instead. Then, thinking quickly, Zack brought his foot ready and kicked away the double away from him. The body went zooming into the air, and diminished into thin oxygen. Zack exhaled sharply once again from relief, wiping his forehead from perspiration. He began to breathe heavily again, taking only few valuable seconds to repair himself to his norm. Looks like we're trapped in this mess, Zack referred to the cloned Scholars that kept regenerating. He sighed at the tedious job and sight.
"Looks like they'll be busy for a while," the real enemy, who wasn't fake, said. He turned to the higher elevation, and found Derek, still wide-eyed, staring at him. He had been in the same position as before. He hadn't moved a bit. The opponent smiled, recognizing Derek's face. "I think I heard one of them call you Derek," he shouted upward, making sure the boy heard him. Derek didn't answer, he didn't do anything; he just stared. "Funny; I never took the time to get your name last time. Oh well, this just means there's one left to go." And Derek stared; and didn't stop.
PoVS
The sun was bright; hot in fact. It had been faked, illusionary in this surreal paradise of desert. Despite its surreality, it seemed perfectly normal on the outside. Dunes of sand covered everywhere, swirling in the rising, sucking wind of the imminent black holes, the clear, blue sky of hot, blistering air that sizzled your feet even though you were wearing shoes that didn't conduct heat well. The hot sun ablaze pounding on your shoulders and being carried on your tiresome backs; your perspiration pouring out of you as if you were being strained by motherly hands over a sink. It was too much to take in all at once. Some say you just had to keep telling yourself it wasn't real. That it was just an illusion caused by the Miroku family. How wrong that would be; everything here was real, created just recently, and able to be detonated into a diminish that would never be heard of again at any time, anywhere.
Dylan was feeling this so. He ignored the heat in desperation and pounded his palms against the uneven sand. It was hot to his hands, sizzling against them uncomfortably. His fingers were now boiling hot. They seemed to be red in his eyes. He was not satisfied. Shadows were sparse in the hot, sun-drenched desert. The rays of golden halo possessed every single being, every single soul and speck of fine-grain dust and sand with its heat. It dominated everything, everyone. It brought full-trained warriors and armies to their knees at its presence. It was god to this world, a god that did not do anything but let the world suffer. Dylan's sympathetic hands showed this, without him knowing. The swirling sand became unbearable, darting into people's faces, eyes, noses, mouths. They went inside your clothes, made you itch and heated up your skin. The swirling winds that carried them helped, lifting up your clothes and fluttering them about into an unorganized waver, giving many entrance to sand.
The umpteenth black hole was about to form again, was about to take place. Swirls of black and green began to form in front of Jeremy's worsening condition. Dylan's palms, still on the hot sand, waiting, began to pour out many specks of light. They were each their own little star of their own individual group color, one little wish for every little soul in the world, including adults. They sparkled with beauty, even in the swirling sandstorm that buffeted everyone continuously. The parade of four-sided colors began to surround and swirl in suspense slowly around Dylan. The preparations for the technique were beginning, and Dylan just hoped he would be in time. The Councils watched, Shihou and Lance both watching for a good chance to strike, a perfect chance to attack so they wouldn't interrupt Dylan's process and wouldn't end up killing themselves as well. All waited, in a way, even Jeremy. Not this Jeremy that continually roared and screamed in agonized detestation that one could see now, no. It was the Jeremy inside, the Jeremy that the Council, the Minors knew was in there somewhere, that waited for their success, that waited for its freedom.
"Hanabikai, it's about time," Shintenmaru shouted out over the whorls of sand. The hot sun brightened his rectangular glasses; the roaring winds seemed to try and take them away greedily. "Do you want to -?"
He was cut off early. "Sure," came the hoisted voice of Hanabikai. "I'd like to head him off," he suggested, making sure his voice was loud enough so that Shintenmaru could hear over the battering sandstorm. It was like a new form of pummeling precipitation. "Yeah," he repeated differently.
"All right," Shintenmaru turned to Minoa. "Minoa!" he shouted over the whirling death around them. Their senses were clouded. They could not do anything. The woman whose name was called turned, and nodded. She immediately turned back to the fight, to pay close attention, for she was the only one who could defend the team from the black holes if it got out of hand, out of control. Then, waving a hand backward, an opening lit up. Hanabikai nodded in thanks. Shintenmaru nodded and went back, his hair constantly flying about, as if it were to jump off his head any second like it were a wig.
Hanabikai struggled to walk. The wind ate away the sand at his feet. He almost tripped several, small times going through the portal, that was purely invisible in Minoa's world. It was complicated; why had she done that? Specific reasons. Hanabikai quickly walked out the "door" and headed into the old world that he had loved so much.
He left with a sigh; a final sigh. "When will this day end?" he asked himself