The sun would not discontinue its constant glowering of insolation, drenching over the life-filled lands and shuffling winds of grass, mesmerizing the lake with a distortion of ripples, a faded, forgotten reflection. The grass ruffled and clapped hands to its rhythmic glows, the soft drums of secret winds hustling by, quickly, swiftly, hurriedly all the while trying to be as sneaky as can be. The incoming afternoon was beginning an early, fresh start, too eager to begin at schedule time, causing an inconformity, misplacement in the fabric of life, time, and all its organization processes. Mere shadows lurked over land, exhausted, bathing in their relaxation of soft beds of grass and hot streams of sunlight fondue.
Joy was betrayed for a much more leisurely feeling, one that complied with a downright sloth inducement, smooth and comforted in people's hearts, begging them oh so well to not do anything and just sit there… and watch. Not a hint of anxiety stirred, not a rush of anticipation, or hurriedness bubbled from below the surfaces. All was calm; all was let go by the controlling hands of fate, and let them be liberated, free to do as they wish, while all they wished for, was to be relaxed. Nothing seemed too much out of place; nature did not see or notice, or sense at the least the early rays of intense sunlight.
Inside, voices counseled. Rooms were dark; corners were, ironically, cornered by darkness; not a speck of light was piqued, not a drop of gold was existent in the shadowy world of ebony rupturing upon ebony, clouding visions of all that was good, and all that was existent. Walls were tinted with orange, darkly, secretly, as if each tiny little atom held inside those stretched plaster walls hid a tiny little piece of gossip, a shard of one dark, and true, rumor that had been forbidden to be spread; otherwise, you'd be spread as well. It was the one thing each tiny sewn string of shadow shared, what each small pebble of plaster held together as an invisible, unmentioned and never-to-be mentioned bond. Halls were filled like conglomerate; stuffed and messily, despite the fact that they were empty, they were controlled, dominated by a thick darkness that put you at unease, stuffing your comforts with discomforts instead and discordant, yet soundless vibrations of fear.
In a certain room, there were more than just silent vibrations. There were real ones, ones that existed and lurked at every corner, trying to dominate and dethrone the shadows from their eternal majestic kingdom that they had no right to earn, nor had they earned at all. It was the sound of adults, the speech amongst peoples and their tasks, their future accomplishments waiting to happen, waiting to exist, as well as their worries that they quite haven't gotten rid of yet, but planned to in the soon future. Hopefully. "It's nearing afternoon," Sound Council Dirondo noted in the darkness. The rest of the Council remained in the large room as well, standing more or less in a circle around a specific object of significance. The Council seemed to like the darkness; it was their only security, despite having their own dimension to thrive from.
"Yeah," Tsukansu agreed quickly. His face was not in sight; his features protruded a bit, a long face, the sides of his triangular side of hair. His dark brown eyes piercing just a tiny bit through the darkness, for they always seemed to be squinted somewhat, to remain intimidating, almost. "Hopefully, when she gets here, she'll be able to help Jeremy," he hoped. His voice bounced off the walls crazily, hurriedly. "For now, we'll have to be on tight security more than ever," he suggested.
"Agreed," soon spoke Hanabikai. His voice, too, bounced off the empty walls, the battles between darkness and vibration. A person's hand reached into a golden disk, fingers seeping into the solid gold as if it were made of liquid, crisping and phasing through it and into it, for it did not come back out on the other side. Ripples slightly formed in unconformity as crackling noises sounded through the air, almost invisibly past the surrounding councils' ears. They waited. The process continued; the hand reached in deeper, and deeper, and deeper… The cracking noises continued through scold the air and discipline it lightly, force-diverging it with a snap.
"Sometimes I wonder…" a new voice came out, delicately, softly and gently, Minoa's. Her voice sounded of one with certain guilt she couldn't seem to hide. "Did we really have to send Jeremy on such a quest…?" There was no answer; she didn't seem to wait for a reply. She just wasn't sure if she should continue talking; it was a hard decision for her, yet she did not know of why it was that way. "A quest to find the Minors, that is," she went on. Still, no reply. Just eyes, circling around, not moving, just watching. She kept herself from clearing her throat for forced comfort. She didn't need pity comfort like that from herself, she decided. "Tsukansu had found the same amount of Minors Jeremy did in a day than Jeremy had done in a week or two."
The last wait for a reply. This time, the wait was answered; impatience was refreshed and restored. "Maybe…" Shintenmaru said, digging his hands into the golden locket that seemed so familiar, so, so, familiar, eerily sticking it in surrealistically as if he were doing it in a dream, and the rest of his body and the rest of the events taking place currently around him were real, all not hallucinated and safe from psychosis. "Maybe we just abused Jeremy's help and strife to help us.
"But we can't sop over that now," Hyoumaru suggested wisely, his voice seemingly blossoming from a stationary state to a sudden decision of speech.
"Agreed," Tsukansu nodded. "We have to focus on what we have to do, rather than what we could've done," he added with his own wisdom. He made a clear and very understandable point. You couldn't help but agree with him.
"Tsukansu's right," Hanabikai admitted from a corner. His eyes glowered a bit in the deep, churning darkness that seemed forever suspended in time. "However, we are powerless over Jeremy's condition at this stage of its growth."
"He's right," Dirondo replied. "We have to focus more on the Minors right now and what they have to do," she added. "… As well as the Guardians," she spoke suspiciously.
"Oh, that's right," Tsukansu muttered a bit excitedly, happily with an obvious smile beneath that thick darkness blanket known as the current room they found themselves all in for two reasons. "Are you the least bit excited, Shihou?" Tsukansu said a bit mockingly, turning to the dark-blue haired Council's silhouette portrayed just barely amongst the canvas of retro shade and mystery. Shihou's eyes darted through the darkness, narrowly. Tension broke through and began to seep through easy cracks of the walls.
Her eyes caught themselves over Tsukansu, staring hardly, unforgivingly as if filling him in disgrace. Tsukansu felt none; he had nothing to be guilty for. "I am of indifference," Shihou forced herself to reply with a normal, not angered voice. It was hard to tell whether or not she was bluffing. There was just a cold, icy look in her eyes, hard and hateful, filled with detestation; either that, or just plain annoyance.
"Ooh, harsh," Tsukansu joked, pushing his luck.
"Tsukansu, that's enough," Hanabikai scolded. "We all know the story; let's not push it," he insisted in a slight commanding voice, a bit scornfully as well. Tsukansu sneered in retort; a scowl washed over his face. Hanabikai sighed from tediousness. He wondered why Tsukansu always bullied others; he supposed that as ages passed by, things of interest became less and less of significance, and lost their pique and inducement. Tsukansu must've lost more pique over the years than the others. His old age was really affecting him; even though he had the body of a twenty year old.
"I think they'll find a little surprise when they meet a few of them," Tsukansu smiled like a bully, a threat almost.
"Meaning?" Hanabikai insisted gradually, demandingly. Tsukansu disregarded.
"Oh, nothing; nothing at all," Tsukansu smiled again, now innocently, different from last time. "I'm just saying. Especially that Guardian and his family's traditions." Others had to agree; they knew which one he was speaking of.
"We've got a rebel there, too," Hyoumaru noted with a careful grin. "And another has problems of his own he has to deal with."
Sighs of stress went all around, imagining the future additions to the team. "I wonder if we can handle them all," Hanabikai muttered under his breath; his voice was only heard by the reflecting of empty, poverty walls.
"Our population, including Jeremy," Shintenmaru began as he continued to reach into the golden locket. "Is about to increase by twenty-four percent," he calculated.
"You have to be so exact?" Hyoumaru groaned a bit.
"He's always been like that," Kakori smiled from a distance away. It was true. Shintenmaru would always calculate anything he could get his hands on from the simplest math problem to the hardest scientific explanation only an expert of the experts could even think to do. Shintenmaru smiled; he was proud of having the serious yet nerdy personality he always seemed to maintain in a balance.
"Even, so, he's right," Raikettei had to admit, and so did everyone else in the room. "However, they don't know yet, the Minors," Raikettei muttered under his breath in a sigh. "We'll have to tell them soon, right?"
"Indeed," Shintenmaru replied before Hanabikai could get a word out. "But for now, we'll focus on our life contracts," he headed for the first task at hand. With that, everyone focused their eyes on his drawing hand, that drew out the first scroll shaded over by the darkness that had been protected for so long, so long. Then, they waited, and drew their hands in again.
PoVS
The ground roared as it was uplifted from the ground, breaking and thrashing into the air with a sudden rise in elevation, expanding their limits under Kumoyama's feet. The ground tumbled and rolled, making loud groans of pain as it thrust upward. Rick jumped into the air before it was too late; the hot sun was now a burden on his shoulders as he went high in midair. The large platform of ground kept uprising and shooting towards him; he had nowhere to go now – he was caught in midair with nothing to hold on to, no surface to walk on. The cloudless sky rained down upon him with the lack of precipitation; the air was fairly dry, not too dry as to induce discomfort.
Thinking quickly in the midair, Rick thrust a palm downward in the air; a tiny blue speck of electricity sparked at the middle of his hand. The spark jumped in a second to the surface of the uprising ground. It made no effect. Rick scowled at the failure. "Oh; so that's how you're going to play!" Rick growled intensely. Rick waved his arms through the air once, dramatically, and a wave of unknown force shot throughout his body in an expanding circle. It passed through many objects; the wave made no effect on them. Then, he prepared himself once again. He thrust his arms twice towards the uplifting surface again. Two sparks flew out; it shot with the same energy as the first, but this time, it broke a huge chunk of the rising platform off and sent the sediment falling to the ground, plunging to their doom of dust.
"What?" Mark yelled out in shock from the surface as he watched Rick oppose his risen ground. He scowled a bit himself. He gave up on the rising surface and brought himself a punch. Reeling his fist in, he focused all his energy before the constantly elevating skyscraper of brown rock. The punch sent a huge fault throughout the pillar, and sent it dispersed into many pebbles and cobbles throughout the air, still raining upward towards Rick.
The blonde crossed his arms and sent the circular waves pulsing throughout his body again. He held himself close; he watched the reversed-direction rain shoot closer to him. The rocks that would've hit him were deflected by sudden electrical sparks and pulses of literal, material shock.
"Huh?" Mark asked from confusion as Rick came back down from midair. Mark prepared himself for anything else amazing that the Minor might pull. "How'd you do that?" he asked.
Still plunging downward, seemingly slowly, Rick decided to spill the secret early to give a fair training advantage to his fellow Minor. "Distortion of nearby material using nerves from my own body and electrical currents of the half-spirit energy, creating a mixing and mashing of magnetism for many of the materials, bringing all the ones that make up its hard exterior to the bottom of the rock, and all the soft, fragile ones to the top, where I can break them down with simple attacks that don't waste too much energy," Rick explained in, one could agree on, the longest sentence he had ever spoken.
Rick let out a strained cry as he sent another spark flying to the ground. Mark reacted quickly, noting the motion of hand, the swing of arm. He jumped out of the way, let the spark hit the ground uselessly, without damage. He sighed a breath of relief. But it wasn't over yet. "Like this!" Rick cried out as he brought himself to the floor and skid against the ground; the friction between his slippers and the dirt sent dust spewing into the air. His hands began to glow eerily with an electric yellow palm. This time, a wave of magnetism contracted towards him, pulled from the ends of the horizons and meeting together with Rick as their center. All the surrounding, distant trees moved just a tiny bit closer; the grass blades all tried to huddle up at once, pointing at Rick, accusing him for the disturbance in nature. The early afternoon was now distorted horridly, ruined, maimed by the powers of the Minors and their purpose of "training."
However, they continued on with disregard. Just as everything else had suddenly drawn closer and tilted their position towards Rick, as if he were the object that gave life, as if he were thing that gave birth to everything, Mark did as well, forcefully, straining from the sudden pull of magnetism. He could not have controlled his body for that second, being dragged in towards Rick. Rick, knowing this, prepared himself. Just as he was a second away, Rick launched his ultimate move – the constant blasting of thrusting and arms against Rick's center body, flying sparks all over the place in a parade of blue electricity sparking against his magnetized body.
Meanwhile, Marissa watched from the forest of trees, hiding half of her face so blatantly, as uselessly as she thought it might actually hide her presence from someone as skilled as two Minors, at this level of the game. She seemed sad, dispersed of happiness and all that was known to her as she watched Rick, as well as Mark's pulsing and non-stop confidence. She sighed, letting her hair sway past her face calmly, darkly, secretly. She was caught in her depression, her thought uselessness consuming her into misuse. She felt as if she could do nothing; speak nothing to make a difference. She was completely nonexistent in her mind, like she was constantly absent since birth.
She watched the flying sparks continue and blast around the area, then stop completely as smoke began to pile into the air with a crisp, the sun drenching the land even after the misty clouds of dust and destruction flew about. The pummeling was over. The attack was over. No more pummeling of sparks; no more thrusting of arm. The electricity calmed; lines of leftover blue sparked about the dusting clouds. Cloud surrounded everyone. Yet, Marissa did not lose sight of the two people.
Soon, Mark jumped out of the clouds of smoke. He coughed into his arms, having inhaled the poisonous gas. His skin had peeled into a rocky red texture. He permeated through the first later… Mark noted. He couldn't halt his heavy breathing. "So you had a rocky armor…" Rick gasped, heavily breathing himself.
"I told you I got better," Mark scoffed. "Now I know how to beat you."
"Try it!" Rick answered.
And the tension continued.