The night had remained silent, remained stark and eerie, waiting with its everlasting patience, for arrival of morn, the coming of dawn, waiting out the imminence of death. But something would not let its wishes become reality; something tried to fake dawn, create a false interpretation of the beginning of morning. It was a small flame to the side, a flame that brought unnoticed presence, unnoted entrance. A light speck of flame caught Teresa's eye, a low flicker of bright, a soft whisper of flame. Then, it was a hammering pounce of fist, a clang of energy that bounced right of the translucent walls. Cocked heads turned with alarm. The fist had drawn back; the hand hissed with flame.
It seemed a lone star in the sky was beginning to grow brighter, and stand out above the rest. Teresa turned to the side, and found someone – someone familiar with the fists of a burning confidence and passion never giving up, a never-ending pounding against the throttling walls of the invisible hemisphere that was to soon take the lives of two, lost people that had apparently given up. "Eric!" Teresa called out her name in shock. It was as if at the mention of his name even in her thoughts did he come right away; it was like he had heard her thoughts, answered her request, her prayerful suggestion, condition.
He kept attacking the dome of imprisonment, trying to get the two out before it was too late; they didn't have much time left. They had bare minutes, in fact. He managed to get that bone out of his body, Walter realized as he watched, uninterested, carefree. Normally, people would cheer, lift in spirits at the sight of a hopeful sprite come to rescue them. Walter seemed drowned in complete indifference for his life's condition. Teresa was just shocked; she had no time to cheer. "I told you I wouldn't give up," Eric gasped heavily in his exhilarated voice; that distance of slowed walking had worn him out. He picked up his head to let the two stare into his eyes, and find the truth, honesty in him. No change of emotion had come over Walter. Teresa smiled, just a bit. A tired smirk of Eric's hid away his exasperation just barely filling them away with calm-headedness. Although, he couldn't keep his lungs from breathing in heavy pants of breath.
He soon resumed his pouncing of flames, his attacks of confident fire that hit over and over again against the wall, seeming to do no damage whatsoever. However, it was the confidence that drove him, the iron will that never seemed to falter even the slightest, like it was locked, secured from impairment. Walter's eyes were filled with doubt, a long-built impeachment, it seemed, that glared from his brown, secretive eyes that seemed so shallow, so blatant and nothing, as if to say that what you saw was what you got. However, that wasn't the case. For those who knew, even the most barely, there was a whole another world under his eyes, deep into them, if you cared enough to dig. He seemed as if he were to say something of importance, of significance, syllables that meant more than they said. He scoffed, every so slightly below his voice that it was barely heard, even with the magnification of voice that droned from the walls of the echoing, bouncing invisible walls of great master camouflage.
"Why, Eric?" Walter's voice buzzed a bit too closely, as if three voices of his own were speaking the same things at the same time at the same place to the same person. Teresa turned to him, interest piqued. She wondered why he was speaking now. The sparseness of air did not call for such a situation. However, it just remained to fact that he really didn't care, not after all the wasteful sighs he had made in the dome, the normal, uncut breathing and speaking. Eric did not seem to falter; he heard his teammate, he just didn't give up. He had no time to stop, no time to decrease even in the slightest amount of effort, the slightest amount of added power and strength. His throws continued to pounce noisily against the invisible wall that did not seem to break the slightest. "Why are you even trying?" he raised his voice. "Why do you even care!?" he turned into a shout. Teresa noted he had gone overboard with his tone. She wondered if everything would be all right.
The punching continued. There was silence; no sound of voice. Just the clanging of fist against energy, the constant pounding of determination, the pulsing confidence that lingered around Eric, telling him what to say and when to say it. It was just that he was calmly thinking his answer in his mind, taking the answer and the question itself seriously. Walter waited all the same. "Because," Eric began out of the blue. Teresa listened cautiously, as if words were harmful. "You were wrong when you said what you did to Teresa a while ago," Eric answered. Teresa's eyes widened; Walter sneered from disbelief, a sarcastic glare added to his features.
The three had remembered what he said: "Think about it; Eric is wrong. His advice is wrong…. You think just because you're strong enough to defend your relationships with others, you'll be able to escape pain? You're wrong! No matter how strong you are, you'll still feel pain; you'll still get hurt from bonds with others."
"You think power will wash away pain, but it won't!" Eric told him. "You need bonds; you need people, your friends, and the ones that care about you to pull you through, or else you'll just remain stuck in the darkness forever! Is that what you want?" Eric continued to attack the shield. It wouldn't give.
"And what if you have no one to care for?" Walter snapped in a growl. Teresa froze. Eric's features froze as well; his energy levels were forcefully brought down from shock. Walter's teeth ground each other tightly, hatefully, his eyes flinching a bit, shuddering from his own beliefs that drove him into more and more confidence for his goals. "What if you don't have anyone to care for you, either?" he growled in a whisper, resentfully. Eric didn't know what to say. More or less, there was nothing he could say. It was a close moment of dead silence; no hoots of the runaway owls, no chirping of the imminent dawn birds. "Look, just," Walter turned his head, as if ashamed to face Eric. He scowled to the side, and then turned back to the red-clothed Minor. Eric shook his head, and began attacking the field with his flaming fists of confidence again. "Just, why, Eric, why?" Walter started again. "Why, of all people, are you caring about me!? I don't care about you!" Walter admitted. "I don't care about any of you, any of the Minors! I don't have a reason to! So why!?"
"Because I want to help you!" Eric growled back, now a bit angrily as he continued to blow at the force field. Teresa just stood there, watched, dumbfounded, not knowing which side to take, or if she should take any sides at all. What should she do? She wondered. How would she live her life from now on?
"I told you, Eric," Walter began again in a deeper, more monstrous growl, a more locked sense of hate on him. "You can't help me; you can't," his voice calmed now. His teeth unclenched themselves; his face unstressed their tightened features. He looked depressively towards the floor. "There are just some things you don't understand, Eric," he told him.
"No," Eric resisted, voice still caught in a growl. "You're wrong," he muttered. "I can help you, as long as you let me create with you a relation, a friendsh-" Walter cut him off before he could say the word.
"Stop," Walter said calmly now, seriously. His voice was cross, meaning nothing but emotional and stark genuineness. "Just stop." Eric sighed, stopping himself. It seemed that word was poisonous to Walter, as if hearing it made him sad, made him a reminder, a constant reminder of what he didn't have, the reminder of a fight between what he wanted to do, and what he felt like he had to do.
Eric, too, calmed his voice into normalcy. "Listen," he called to Walter, holding his palm over the surface of the shield, hoping to penetrate it with a burst of pressured flame. "I'll admit it, you may be right." Teresa and Walter jerked their heads up at the same time, eyes burst with shock. "With relationships with other people, at times, we'll succeed in life with them…" Eric began, readying to state the exception. At the same time he spoke those very words of succeeding in life with bonds, somewhere in the midst of breaking night and liberating dawn was two brothers, one redheaded, one intense blue, surrounded by a dead forest of trees. The redhead fell to the ground, exhausted from a job he wanted to think as a job well done, his brother coming to his side and patting him on his shoulder. He smiled from his tiredness, a smile of success.
"Sometimes we'll fail…" Eric went on. At this time, in another rippled world of everlasting sand dunes and swirling winds was a group of elders, elders that gave the appearance of twenty year olds, with two kids, that didn't seem too much younger than them. It was a gray-haired boy, looking sad with disappointment, and a white-haired boy, knocked unconsciousness, on the shoulder of one of the adults. The elder ones walked through a ripped vortex in the dimension, leaving the swirling winds of sand behind, leaving the roaring threat of demon behind in its own despair. And, before the silvered hair boy stepped in, he looked back, looked back at the child-demon with a deep sympathy. He thought of himself as nothing more now, not even able to rescue a poor child in need while something inside him was dominating him, killing him from the inside. Then, as the winds continued to gossip at the weak, helpless strands of hair, he turned, deciding it was no good, catching a last glimpse of a thrown, last-chance needle, and stepped right out of the swirling world of nightmare, out into a world where failure was a more realized feeling.
"But while we have those losses to deal with, those pains of heart," Eric continued pressing his palm closer onto the dome that trapped them. "Who will be there for us if we're alone, who will be there to help us back up from our failures for the next shot at success, who will be there to bring us into realization that we've been nothing but blinded all along, and could've died because of it…?"
As his words sunk into the minds of Walter, of Teresa and seemed to make complete and utmost sense, there was a deep, widened land that was filled with nothing but flattened surface, twelve monuments of gratitude. There was broken up ground, too, filled with lava, hissing with danger that was no longer a threat. There was an area that was webbed with black energy, and two bodies flying in the air, the second, obsidian-ized body wrapped around in the blackest of chains, and swung down towards the ground held by a blade. The blade, carrying the body downward into its plunge was held by skillful, brought back hands of recognition. The tough scowl returned for its owner's presence had been lost, the striking, dashing dark eyes that showed nothing but confidence, but strength and readiness. Those were the eyes that had been missing, until they were brought back by a certain being of idiocy that the fighter was very well grateful for now. And the chain plummeted; the body hammered into the ground with an enormous explosion of gray smoke. The black-clothed seventeen year old fell back down to the ground; the body that lay helplessly was done with, its armor rendered away into crumbs of power with no use left for them. The battle was over, and the brown-haired "idiot" put a hand of recognition on the black-haired boy's shoulder. The teammate looked behind him to catch that wide, friendly smile that he had once labeled as hyperactive. Now, he smiled back, in a small, casual smirk, with a small nod of gratitude, a cool narrowing of eyes representing nothing but acceptance.
"We need friends to make us realize and get back up on our feet," Eric concluded. "That's why I believe what I believe."
"Eric… I know you mean well, but…" Walter still denied. "You're still wrong. You still are unable to help me; it's too late. Much too late now," he told him. "I have my mind made up on what I want to do, what I have planned for my future," Walter spoke to Eric clearly. "And it doesn't involve you," he added.
Eric stopped for a while. Teresa wondered how he would react. Eric, not shaken in the least bit, or, at least, not seeming like it, looked down to the floor, face shaded over, eyes darkened as he bowed slightly, respectfully, pausing for just a few seconds. "And you really think…" Eric let his voice trail off. "You really think that's going to stop me from trying!?" Eric picked up his head in confidence to show his undying eyes, and clenched his fist as he pulled back another punch. Walter widened his eyes in shock. Teresa did the same, and she smiled. Walter had the look on his face of amazement. It never ceased to make him awestruck at the fact that Eric would never give up, despite what conditions he was put under. Then came in the punch. It crashed right into the dome with a clatter, shook the whole thing. Walter and Teresa found themselves surprised at the sudden increase in strength. Still holding that passionate, confident gaze, Eric brought another fist into the dome, fist set ablaze with strength.
Amazing, Walter thought, wide eyed. The punches… they've really grown in a matter of seconds… Walter realized, unable to pull away from his daze of amazement. His features were locked carefully, unable to change to anything else. He could barely swallow, breathe. Eric completely shook me, Walter noted that. He was lucky he could think. Just what is this guy…?
PoVS
The night was growing warmer, if not, definitely not cooler. The Takiato brothers sat together, exasperated out of their minds after their victory of battle. They sat at the closest tree with the shortest distance between each other. Daniel sighed, tiredly. "We won all ready?" he asked his brother, surprised.
"Yeah," Daniel said with a sigh, a tired, drawn out sigh. "It's all over now," the fourteen year-old said. He stared up into the sky; he noticed he had forgotten to catch a glimpse of the sky before night was ending.
"How'd you…" Kenneth began, unable to form completely sentences from the hype not too long ago. "How'd you figure out what to do?"
"Simple," Daniel stirred in his place at the feet of a tree. "After snapping out of my fear, I realized that every time he came back from the ground, he was noticeably stronger, and all his wounds were healed, just like that time I tapped him and turned a portion of his body into stone; when he dug into the ground and came back, that portion was back to normal again." Kenneth nodded in acknowledgment. He prepared himself and pulled himself together for a long explanation, listening to each word carefully so he wouldn't get lost. "First of all, before we began the fight, I was scouting for enemies, right?"
Kenneth nodded, unsure what that fact had to do with anything. "The thing was, I never took them down." Something snapped in Kenneth's mind in realization. A look of continued pique ran over his face. "That way, without him knowing, I was able to predict where he would come from next; I knew even if he came from the behind. Also, while I waited, I wasn't wasting my time, either. I was rearranging most of the strings to the tip of the shortest tree, and connecting the wires to the exact, utmost top of every tree in the thirty miles or so. Using that, every time the enemy was underground and ran under a tree without noticing, the tree would emerge and fall back down ever so slightly that I could pick up the slight motion, getting a piece of his trail underground." Kenneth was all ready confused.
"Now," Daniel continued. Kenneth couldn't believe what he had gotten himself into. "If I were to create a mental graph, or map of the area around us and plot a point on each tree I had detected his trail with, I could form many lines that surround the one spot he gets all his nutrients of power from, one under a specific tree. Most likely, an ideal place for a storage of many minerals, more than any other tree would be the one with the most growth currently. But if I used the map I graphed, there were two points where that tree could be. It was that one, the one with the most leaves," Daniel pointed to a tree towards the west. "Or that one, the one with the most height," he pointed to the east to the tree he was referring to. "After that, the only knowable option left once knowing the two with the most amounts of nutrients to drain from is distance. Whichever one is closer to the user at the time is more convenient, and therefore more ideal to use than the other. Using that information, I made sure I got that guy to go for the closest tree to me, since it'd be more convenient for me to get there. Then, once I made sure he got there to get more nutrients, I sped up the growth rate of the tree so that it would take most of the nutrients under it so that he was forced to go to the next resource – the other tree. That was, why I told you to go to that tree and freeze the ground underneath it from its roots so that we could trap the enemy and put him in a permafrost-style prison without the time required to actually create naturally made permafrost."
Daniel looked to Kenneth, and found him sleeping against the trunk of a tree. He sighed, smiling. "You never were one for smarts, Kenneth," he told his sixteen year old brother. It amused him, really.