Light Vs Darkness: The Minds Beginning

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Azra quickly raised his sheathed sword upward to deflect the strike. The sound of wood against metal rang out as the two weapons collided. He brought his weapon to the side, parrying her second blow. She was fast, not leaving much room for counterattacks. If it weren't for the fact that duels were often pure swordsmanship, he likely would've used some light magic to overtake her. However, he was a man of honor, and would not use underhanded tactics to win this duel. Swinging his sword in a low upward arc, he attempted to hit it against her chest. Relentlessly he spun around, performing a horizontal swing.
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India chuckled under his breath as the two fought while following him to a local cafe. It didn't take long to get there, it wasn't far from his home. Upon arriving there, he heard sounds of combat and curiously looked to see what was going on. He wasn't surprised to see that one of the combatants was his own brother, facing down some woman in what appeared to be a duel of swordsmanship. Taking a seat at a table with three chairs, he picked up a menu, ordered his food, and watched the fight, knowing it was likely Azra would be the victor.

 

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After Sombra had her blow deflected, she quickly recovered from the recoil that had followed and then saw what her opponent's next course of action was. Quickly hopping backwards, she managed to avoid the vertical swing, only to bring her wooden blade to her side to block against his follow up of a spin attack. While she managed to block the blow, due to the attack type and her rushed guard stance, she still felt a fair bit of force behind the blade causing her to slide across the ground. Regaining her composure, began to go forward on her assault her once more. Her opponent was one who was very skilled, and one not to be taken lightly. Thus charging in like before would do no good, yet she knew just how she was going to approach this. Attacking much like she had the first time, she charged in, ready to bring the blade down upon him. However, this time, rather than follow through with the swing, she had stopped short, effectively feinting her opponent. After said feint, she quickly brought her wood blade from a downward arc, rather than the original upward one, going for his torso. She then quickly followed her attack up by mimicking Azra and doing a spin attack of her own, going for a horizontal slash.

 

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A few moments of silence passed before Xross gave any kind of reaction to what Dmitri had said. Normally one might respond with equal arrogance or given give in to the whole run option, but what Xross did was what no normal person would do. He started to chuckle to himself at nearly everything that Dmitri had said to him. It all was quite funny. "That's quite the sister complex you have. Are you going to use that sword and scare off everyone that tries to get close to her, condemning her to a fate of loneliness and isolation from the outside world." His laughter died down as he again started clapping. "If so the bravo. Your in the running for the 'Worst Brother of the Year' award, I wonder how that makes you feel?"

Both his clapping and laughter had faded as Xross sighed. The over confident ones were so one sided and easy to toy with. "Your going to beat up a poor defenseless man with one eye to prove yourself to your sister? That just might bump you up to first place." That said, didn't meant that he wasn't going to play along with him. "Tell you want, I'll take you up on your offer. In fact, I'll even take a handicap. I won't even use a weapon against you." To further prove his point, not only did he stand his ground, but he held his arms out to his side. There was little way that he'd be able to grab a weapon while in this position, but he wouldn't need one.

 

Analise's reaction was just as anticipated. Out of fear, out of sheer terror, she struck at him. The punches he had seen coming, and he easily blocked them with his blade while dodging the few that he couldn't manage to block. The kicks to the shins, although he had seen them coming, he was simply too slow to avoid whilst fending off her strikes. The kicks stung a little, but they would do no lasting damage. And then as desperation set into the girl once again, she went with the all-too-predictable crotch kick. Alastor had seen this attack several times; there was rarely a kill that went by without some attempt of it, so he was more than ready for it. Stepping back just slightly out of range, he avoided the attack but lost his balance as Analise's luck seemed to improve. Alastor fell backwards onto the ground, his blade landing on the ground beside him sending a loud noise throughout the alleyway as his target began her escape.

"Gah...that lucky ***** is going to get what's coming to her" Alastor growled as he rose to his feet and picked up his blade. He could feel a mixture of adrenaline and anger flowing through him. This was good. If his brain activity was high, the chances of him stumbling upon some new spell had just shot through the roof. With a sinister grin, an idea came to mind on how best to bring the girl down. Stealth was out of the question now, no doubt people would have seen Analise escaping out of the alleyway, screaming in panic. Now that there was no reason to be stealthy, the man could truly shine. This was part of the fun of assassination; when things went wrong, you truly learned, tested your abilities at their limits.

The Assassin looked up above him at the rooftop he had been on earlier. As luck would have it, it was lengthy enough that he could catch Analise if he was fast and smart, both of which he knew he was. The gears in his brain started working at a tremendous pace, hundreds of ideas flowing in his mind of how he could make the most of this situation. After less than a second, he had it. Leaping up into the air, Alastor shot a humongous fireball at the ground. The Firaza spell hit the ground with a fiery explosion, the force of the explosion sending Alastor soaring into the sky, acting as a massive propulsion device. Landing on the rooftop above, he cast a quick Blizzara spell at the back of his coat, putting the fire out that was there. Phase one of his plan was complete, it was time to move onto the next step.

Alastor began running along the rooftop, hopping up to a slightly higher level every now and then when the rooftop rose. As he ran, he could see Analise ahead of him, gaining ground because of all the jumping he was having to do. Luckily, the scientist had planned for this. In his spare hand, his right one, he formed a small sphere of aero magic. Utilizing this element, a strong tailwind came from behind Alastor and began propelling him forward at a stupendous speed. His legs could barely keep up with how fast he was moving, and eventually he began approaching the end of the rooftop, and with the end of the rooftop came yet another thing Alastor had anticipated; Analise, running past the building he was on top of.

With a slight chuckle, Alastor's confidence surged in him, as did the adrenaline. As usual, his predictions had been right. All that remained now was the execution, and that was what the man did best. Keeping the speed up, he now released the aero magic, ending its benefits as the murderer leaped off the rooftop. Time seemed to slow down as his gaze shifted below. Sure enough, there she was. The one that almost got away. Her escape ended there and then, he was sure of it. As Alastor was above her, the next step began. The elemental scientist spoke a few words as he raised his blade into the air. A purple aura appeared around Alastor as Graviza took effect on his body. With tremendous force, his body shot out of the sky and hurtled towards Analise with the force of a falling meteor. Right as he was about to hit the girl, his right hand began surging with an enormous amount of electricity.

The impact was dreadfully painful for Analise, to say the least. Just as Alastor was about to hit the ground, he released the Graviza magic, but Analise had already been hit. As he connected, he had stabbed the girl's neck with his blade, causing a bloody death, but making sure that his right palm connected with the girl's torso, releasing the entire Thundaga charge throughout her entire body. Analise had been stabbed in the neck, crushed with phenomenal force, and electrocuted with a 2.21 gigawatts of electricity, all simultaneously.

Letting loose a breath of relief, Alastor stood up quietly. There was no doubt people had heard the commotion, if they hadn't seen it. In fact, if they had been paying attention to anything they probably would've felt it too. Perhaps he had overdone it, but it had certainly got his creative juices flowing. He had successfully tested his theory on Thundaga. For a long time he had pondered whether it could be used as a concentrated force rather than over a mass area, and Analise's death had just confirmed that yes, it was possible and easily done. Removing the blade from Analise's neck, Alastor cleaned it on his cloak and then raced into an alleyway. People would soon follow if they weren't already, but by the time they arrived he would be gone, his invisibility kicking in and leaving no trace that he had ever been there, save for the seared, bloody pile of human flesh that was once known as Analise.​

 

Renna followed India to the cafe and sat next to him as she also looked at a menu. Everything was over priced and she wasn't sure if she should get anything. Renna placed her menu down and spoke, "What made you want to come here? They charge $12.00 for for a slice of bread." She gave the menu a frown and leaned back in her chair. She then noticed the fight that had started and looked over at India. He seemed to be amused by the fight but she looked at him with a raised eye brow, "Do you know them?" She asked. [/FONT]​

 

Dain's nose was sore from Renna slamming it in his face. She was digging herself an early grave, and she probably didn't know it. This wasn't the place to take care of her though, wouldn't want to stain India's carpet, he'd never forgive him. For once Dain kept quiet, choosing instead to simply follow India and Renna over to the cafe. Maybe good food would ease the pain. Then again, maybe it wouldn't.

Several minutes later, they were at the cafe. Finally, his stomach would be relieved of its suffering. He watched Renna reading through the menu, and after what seemed like forever she did it. The girl slipped up, giving Dain an opening to make some kind of snide remark. "Dollars? What the hell are those?" he questioned, before stretching across and placing the back of his hand against Renna's forehead as though he was checking to see if she was sick. "Oh god almighty, it's worse than I thought. This girl...oh my..I'm so sorry to tell you this but..you have a terrible disease. I'm afraid that you're a complete dumbass" he said, doing his best to sound as though he were genuinely worried, when it was in fact the opposite. He snatched the menu out of Renna's hands and took a quick glance at it before setting it down on the table.

"Well, I know what I want" he stated. Following India's gaze, he saw the people fighting. He'd seen them out of the corner of his eye before they had arrived, but he hadn't particularly realized who it was. Azra, India's brother. He'd seen him fighting a few times, the guy was pretty tough, but Dain thought he could take him. Then again, Dain thought he could take just about anybody. "Ten munny says Azra's going to win that" he said, challenging either of the other two to a bet. He couldn't resist taking another jab at Renna though. "You hear that? Munny. Mun...ny" he said, spacing it out as though he was teaching a 3 year old.​

 

Lapis was observing as Orbis was trying his hardest to use his wind magic. Creating small burst of wind here and there, Lapis casually noted, "Hey Orby. You kinda suck at this magic thing."

After he let loose an aerora, slightly out of breath he looked at her saying, "Are you trying to start something." With the same smile on her face, she just shook her head. "Listen, you're the one who wanted to watch me do magic so you could see if- what the hell is that?" The 'that' in question was the sound of some woman screaming, which could only mean that someone was in trouble. Lapis looked at Orbis, and he knew what she was thinking, so without any sort of say in what happened next the duo chased after wherever the scream was coming from.

As they got towards the scene, the sight they were greeted with was one that could only be described as horrifying. There was a man unleashing all kinds of various magics to kill a single girl. In retrospect, the entire thing seemed completely overkill. However, Orbis didn't really care about that at the moment. Instead, while they had presumably come to help the girl, Orbis could only think of getting the both of them out of this event safely. "Lapis let's get the hell away from he- what're you doing?" She continued to run towards the scene only for Orbis to continue chasing her down. After seeing him come crashing through the sky and hearing a sickening crack of thunder happen, the two had made it to the crime scene, only for the show offy assailant to be nowhere in sight. Looking around, Orbis wondered where the person went, only to smell something terrible. Looking down, he realized that all that was left of the victim was nothing more than a burnt corpse. Averting his eyes from it, feeling noxious just being around it, he could only manage to let out a, "what the hell?"

"Why do people magic like this Orby?" Lapis continued to look at the corpse, only there wasn't fear in her eyes, only anger. Her hands clenched tighter into fists, as Orbis didn't entirely know how to respond to her. "Why do people have to use something that has so many uses in solving problems within the world, to just kill and commit crimes against others?" After a few moments of silence, Lapis finally stated, "I'm going to stop this culprit."

Orbis could only respond with a look of disbelief as he said, "What?" After awhile the two had left the scene, only for Orbis to ask, "so ace detective, how do you plan on finding this man?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't know yet, but I'll figure something out. The culprit seems pretty unique in the fact that he can use various high level magic regardless, which isn't something that's all that common."

Orbis look to her with a more serious expression and said, "seriously though. Even if you do find him what are you going to do? You saw the shit that guy could pull."

"I'll probably try to convince him to turn himself in, and if that fails, well," she gave a smirk to Orbis as she said, "then I guess I'll just have to be a hypocrite long enough to knock him out and turn him in myself. Plus, I have a knight of the wind on my side."

Orbis rolled his eyes at the comment, and simply looked away, wondering how deep they'd get into this, and what exactly getting into it entailed. Regardless, he said, "well, let's get to investigating later. For now, I'm kind of hungry." With that, the two proceeded towards the town square to get something to eat.

 

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A small sigh sounded from Xross as he listened to what Dmitri said. It was clear that he was either stubborn, hard-headed or a idiot. Actually he was probably all three mushed together. "Not only are you incapable of understanding simple terms, but your a hypocrite as well. Definitely not to best brother." He'd moved his hands behind his back as he walked towards the wooden sword that he'd desperately wanted him to use. "How do you know I'm not just being an ass to you cause your in desperate need of an ass kicking. I may be the perfect gentlemen to your precious Dawn." Well half of that was true. He had no reason to be neither a gentlemen nor a prick to Dawn. Dmitri on the other hand was just giving more reason as to do so.

He'd come to a stop in front of the sword and instead of picking it up, he kicked it towards the arrogant boy. "First off, how does one kick someone's ass if they haven't even moved an inch. Your definitely not smart enough to have any sort of ESP, so enlighten me if you could. Second, I'll rephrase my conditions so that you can understand them. I...won't...use...a...weapon...to...fight...you...comprende?" Each word was spaced out an given emphasis with hopes that he would get the point. If that didn't work then maybe he would have to resort of other means to get him to understand where he stood. If so then the end result would still be the same.

 

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"Oh your the guardian. I thought you were the overbearing older brother forcing his younger sister into fighting him day after day." After much going back and forth with this it seemed that Dimitri was finally going to make the first move. That took longer than he'd originally plan, but that was a small price to pay. Dmitri then demonstrated that he knew very well how to use a sword by making a stroke towards his ankles. In response Xross too a small jump back. As he did, he snapped his fingers which opened up a portal in the path that Dmitri was moving. Should he continued moving forward, then he'd step right on it and end up landing on his head a couple feet back. This wasn't against his 'no weapon' rule for he was using magic, not a magic weapon. So if he tried to complain, Xross already had a counter argument ready.

 

Wattana placed her hand up to her chin as if in thought. Her request seemed rather simple, but she just ended up giggling slightly and holding up her hands in a who knows? motion and she spoke, "I don't know, we have a lot of gangs around here you see. Some are kind to us, some of them aren't." She placed her hand up to her chin again and made a noise for thought again and just shook her head, "Yeah, I don't know any. Jian would though. He's more into that scene. I'm just the one who busts him out of it."

Wattana spotted something in the shadows out of the corner of her eyes and she looked, but it immediately disappeared. But then something moved again. She couldn't notice anything if there was something in the shadows, and she just shrugged it off and assumed it was a cat or something.​

 

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After continuing their sparring session for a little while longer, despite how much Valken wanted to take a break from it, Sirin too had gotten tired and instead of trying to fight through it like Valken was forced to do, she held up her hand signaling for him to stop. "Geez, finally I can rest." He said with hope in his voice. However those hopes were soon dashed away as Sirin had started speaking.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up just yet, there's still one thing that we need to do." That had earned a groan from Valken, but she ignored him and continued speaking. "Oh you can deal with it long enough till we find someplace to eat." Least now the extra steps that they had to take would be work it in the end. Sirin didn't even wait for a response from Valken as she went on ahead of him.

Before Valken had started to walking after Sirin, he thought he saw something move in the shadows out of the corner of his eyes. However when he turned to look, there was nothing. "Didn't think my mind was as worn out as my body." His train of thought was interrupted when he heard Sirin threated to leave him behind if he didn't hurry up. Pondering whatever he thought he saw would have to wait till after he'd gotten some food in him.

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So far the fight was going within his expectations. His portal trap had worked like a charm and Dmitri had gotten back on his feet and ran towards him again. At first Xross actually thought that he'd learned nothing from what had just happened earlier, but upon seeing the various directions that he was moving in. Least that means he wasn't as big of an idiot as Xross originally thought.

His efforts were valiant, but were futile. Xross was capable of producing more than one portal at a time, so no matter how much he thought that he serpentine strategy would work, it too was destine to fail. Before the decisive moment could occur, a scream could be heard coming from the house. That scream could mean one of three things. 1) Dawn was just killed, 2) Dawn was about to be killed or 3) She was in danger. Stereotypically speaking the first two generally happens when said girl in question is an idiot, which Dawn likely wasn't.

Despite what Dmitri had said, Xross had no intentions on standing there and waiting for him to get back and he definitely wasn't going to run from an unfinished fight. As Dmitri rushed back into his home, Xross took a much easier way of getting inside. He made a portal in front of him and stepped through it. Before the other creature could attempt to attack Dawn, it was conveniently stop under the foot of Xross as he walked out of the other side of the portal. "Hmm, quite an interesting creatures. Shame your not more durable that this." Emphasizing his point, he added a bit of pressure onto the body of the creature and watched it be crushed under his shoe like a bug. The resulting cloud of dust dissipated into the air as another one tried to attack him from behind. The white haired boy didn't eve bother to turn around, he just let it leap into a small portal placed between the two of them. Once it had gone through, the portal closed removing the shadow like creature from the area.

 

For a good while, Azra battled the girl valiantly. Blocking and parrying her slashes, while delivering counterattacks of his own. She was an immensely skilled swordsman, easily on par with himself. Azra was known for being skilled in the ways of the sword, but his true power lied in his mastery over the element of light. However, he tended to avoid using that unless he sought to take the life of his opponent. It could accomplish that task rather well, but it was difficult to achieve anything less than that with it, so it was deemed unfit for simple sparring matches by its wielder. The duel could have gone in either one of their favor. It was a shame their match would not see conclusion, as another combatant entered the battlefield.

From the shadows nearby, an immensely strange creature leaped from nowhere. Given that Azra's blade was locked with Sombra's at the exact moment of the attack, he could do little to stop it. A set of claws raked across his back and caused him to let out a small cry of pain. It wasn't just the pain of a wound. Something about it in particular just...burned. As though the very concept of the attack fought against the essence of who he was. A mere second later, he heard a zap, followed by a popping sound. He turned just in time to see a scorch mark on the ground and a puff of black smoke around it. Looking to the side, he saw someone he hadn't noticed previously due to being engrossed in his duel. It was his brother, India, who had laid waste to whatever it was which had attacked him. ​

India watched the duel, looking almost bored. He had made a bet with Dain that the female Azra was fighting would be the victor. He tended to be too brash in a battle of swordsmanship. And even if he had managed to begin to overcome her, well there was a saying that a single grain of rice could tip the scales. Someone had to put it on, so why not tip it to be beneficial for him? However, that never happened. The duel was interrupted as a small black creature, which would come up to about the knees of an average person burst from the shadows and raked it's claws along Azra's back. Reacting without thought, India blasted an arc of lightning magic at the creature and disintegrated it without it putting up much else of a fight.

The danger wasn't over yet, though. It didn't seem very threatening in and of itself. Likely the only reason it was able to wound Azra was from a surprise attack, and if it had tried to assault him any other way, it likely wouldn't have gone well for it. And so, when a weak animal went hunting, it generally went by the logic of strength in numbers. Which meant that wasn't the only one. Scanning the shadows in the area, he was able to detect several shadows before they actually emerged. He fired spells at them, but nothing happened. They simply struck the ground the creatures hid on. That's when he realized they weren't hiding in the shadows, these creatures had the ability to BECOME shadows. Fascinating...The thought of simply watching them fight crossed India's mind, but he dismissed it and instead chose to help his brother. The creatures were encircling Azra, and rose from the ground. Throwing his Glaive into the air, he coordinated a bolt of lightning to strike down from the sky, colliding with it directly above Azra's head, and spreading outward from it, forming a cage of sorts from lightning. Rather, in this case, it was more used as a protective barrier. Well, that proved he could manipulate the way electricity left the Glaive fairly easily, but it took concentration to keep a sustained bolt of lightning, so he wasn't able to do much else as long as the cage was kept up. "Dain. You know what to do. Renna, why don't you see if that device works now?"

 

The duo had continued walking towards wherever the closest place to get food was, only to be stopped in their tracks by something completely new to either of them. Some weird black creature that looked pretty small just sort of appeared from out of the ground. Orbis looked to Lapis, pointing at the thing, but she shrugged, saying that she had just as little of an idea then he did. Orbis then started to cautiously walk towards the creature, only for it to leap at him. Orbis quickly brought up his arm to shield himself only for the creature to latch onto his arm, scratching once there. In a bit of a panic, he started screaming, "holy shit! Get off of me! Get off!" He started punching the thing in rapid succession, only for it to stay there until finally he coated his fist in wind and punched with it. When the blow connected, the dark being exploded into a puff of black smoke, only for Orbis to look back to Lapis with confused expression. "Did I just kill it?"

Lapis shook her head saying, "I have no idea. But it doesn't look like it was the only one of its kind." The duo was suddenly surrounded by a group of the same type of black beings. "Are you going to be alright to fight with your arm like that?"

Orbis looked at his arm, seeing that the creature had broken some skin and clearly scratched it up. While it was in some pain he simply replied in a joking tone, "please, how tough do you think I am? I'll have you know I stubbed my toe the other day and only cried for twenty minutes." Orbis continued to look onward as the gang of shadow like creatures began to advance on them. With one leaping at him again, Orbis quickly spiked it down with a wind covered fist, exploding the creature when it hit the ground. The next two leaped at him, only for Orbis to quickly react by coating his not injured arm in wind and chopping horizontally, to knock both of them away. One more leaped at him, with Orbis reacting by grabbing the face of the thing, and starting to run straight at a nearby wall. Boosting off the ground with his wind, he leaped at the wall, smashing the shadowy thing into it, and busting through the wall itself whilst yelling "Oh yeah!" He reveled in how awesome that was, when he suddenly looked at the inside of the building he had just smashed his way into.

There was a family of dark skinned people sitting at a table with horrified, confused and angered expressions on their faces. "Oh shit." Before they could react, Orbis bolted out of the house towards Lapis. She seemed to be standing just where she was before he did his stunt, though the number of creatures had seemed like a lot less than before. He quickly shouted out, "Lapis, we gotta go! These black things aren't the only problem now."

Looking back at the angered father of the family chasing after Orbis, she replied with, "Orby, that's racist."

"Not the time for this!" He grabbed her and started to bolt off away from the people and the shadow creatures. After a fair bit of running, the two had managed to completely shake off both the black creatures and the black people. Having done that, the two who were somewhat out of breath, looked to see two red headed (and like, actual red, not orange,) girls just walking about. "Yo," he called out to them, "there are some weird monster things walking around, so you should get to some place safe."

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As Sombra and Azra's duel continued, she felt like he was quite the admirable swordsman and quite the correct choice for a sparring match. It was then, as the two were fighting, that her opponent let out a small cry of pain. Looking around to see what had caused it, only to notice some odd black creature having scratched his back. She saw that more of these creatures were coming from the ground. "It seems we have to postpone our duel for a bit to deal with these intruders. Are you okay to fight?" After asking the man, she then noticed that more creatures were starting to leap at the both of them.

She had now started her own counter assault against them, using magic of her own. Imbuing her imitation blade with light, it suddenly turn into a pure white blade, that seemed to be hard as metal. Rushing at them, she started to slash at them, dissipating the shadow like creatures with each strike. It seemed as though the blade of light was a sort of bane to these creatures, as they were getting completely decimated by its strikes in a single attack. Despite this, the light emanating from her blade seemed to still attract the creatures en mass. There was a larger horde coming at her now, and so she acted quickly by picking up a chair from a nearby table. The light then imbued onto the chair, turning the chair pure white and glowing, throwing the piece of furniture at the horde, decimating a fair bit and burning others.

 

Walking through the streets, there was always something interesting to take note of. Whether it be the street performers that hung around, the fights that people got into (both physical and verbal,) and even just idle gossip. There was always something to learn or just plain observe. However today seemed to be a much more interesting and unique day than any and all that preceded it. Some new kind of creature had made its way into their world. Something that had never set foot on this terrain before. Its body was black as the moonless night sky, with two golden piercing eyes and two antennae resting atop its head. He was interested to see how they behaved, and noting that there was a person that they were targeting was not him, he watched as some random person in an alleyway was met with these creatures. The creatures had sprung on the man, and while he could fight back, their overwhelming pressure and numbers that seemed to appear out of nowhere eventually over took, mauling him to death most likely. He couldn't actually see how it ended with the man, as these creatures had approached him, he noticed that their bodies were melded with the ground. They then rose up from the ground and leaped at him.

Sighing, the man took the sheathed katana of his and smashed it down against the shadow like creature. Getting spiked down from the force, of it, he then drew his katana and cut through a few more that were coming after him. The creatures seemed to explode into a puff of darkness as they sustained, what he could only assume was, lethal damage to them. Well that was a new way to go. Turning around, he saw another of the creatures walking around, only to see knives being thrown at it. Looking to see where they had come from, he saw some woman in a dress pulling a knife from her boot. Well this day was just full of fun surprises. As she yelled something about getting to a safer place, he simply walked over and said "given that they seem to melt into the ground and can travel freely there, I don't think a locked door will stop them." After stating that he gave a wave and said, "hello there Miss."

 

Samantha Pleygian was walking with her sister, both of them walking to get ice cream, when they saw Orbis and Lapis and heard them call out to them. The little girl stopped for a moment, trying to hear what they were saying. As she finally understood, her jaw dropped in a combination of shock and horror. They thought Mr. Bear...was a monster? They called her best friend, her only friend, a monster. How would he feel? He would feel alone and hurt, like someone had left beat him up and left him all by himself, wouldn't he? Samantha wanted to turn around, to run back inside and close the door before they started calling her names too, but she couldn't. She had to be strong for Mr. Bear. Putting on her best brave-looking face, Samantha took a step forward.

She had only just made that step, prepared to go and make them say sorry to Mr. Bear, when all bravery left her body. She couldn't talk to them, people scared her to no end. Stepping back beside Alexandra, she reached up and tugged at her arm gently, calling her sister's name out quietly as she did so.


Alexandra was already bored of the walk, but still enjoying it to an extent. It wasn't all that often she spent time with just her and her sister, more often than not Samantha was in her room playing with her stuffed bear. That damn bear caused so many problems. Her sister spent all her time hiding away with it, refusing to even try to talk to the people in the outside world, always using it as an excuse to not leave the house. Her attention was brought back when she heard Orbic and Lapis call out to them. "Monsters?" she echoed, the word itself not used much by her. She hadn't seen anything on the way there, what could they possibly be talking about? It was then that she felt Samantha tugging at her arm and calling to her, trying to get her attention. Alexandra looked down at her younger sibling. "What is it, Sammy?" she asked.

"Make them say sorry to Mr. Bear. He doesn't like being called a monster"
"I don't think they were talking about Mr. Bear"
"They were! I saw them looking at him when they yelled"
"Maybe they were trying to warn him of the danger"
"Alexandra, make them say sorry"
"I'm not going to make them say sorry for something they haven't done" the older sister said, standing her ground.

Well, that settled it. If Alexandra wasn't going to make them apologise to Mr. Bear, then like it or not Samantha was going to have to do it. Even if she was scared, which she very much was, she had to go after them and help Mr. Bear feel better. Letting go of Alexandra's hand, Samantha took off after Lapis and Orbis, yelling out for them to say sorry to Mr. Bear as she ran.

"Sammy, come back!" Alexandra called out to her sister, before she too hurried in that direction.


"Dain. You know what to do."​

The moment the words left India's mouth, Dain was up and moving. He did know what to do. For a second he had hoped India meant to throw Renna to the creatures, to use her as a distraction, and he was all for that, but common sense (yes he does have some) told the boy that wasn't what his friend had meant. He had grabbed his axe, which he left leaning against the table they had been sitting at, and had taken off towards the creatures.

His battleaxe was a whirlwind of destruction as the warrior went to work attacking the heartless. He had no idea of their attack patterns, no idea how agile or defensive they were, but they seemed to be rather fragile. In a matter of moments, he had killed two of them, causing them to disperse into a kind of black vapour. Interesting, wonder what that is Dain thought to himself. He didn't have time to wonder about it any more though, as one of the creatures approached the cage around Azra. Acting swiftly, Dain leaped forward and swung his axe at the creature. It dove into the ground to avoid the attack, surprising the hell out of its attacker, and in that moment of confusion hurried behind the boy and lunged at him.​

Thankfully, the axe wielder was no stranger to battle. He hadn't been in many life or death situations, but he sparred on a regular basis, and had a killer instinct inside of him that refused to die down at the best of times. This saved him, telling him to guard behind him, which he did so. The block staggered the heartless, knocking it onto its back, and Dain followed it up immediately by spinning around and hitting the creature with a three hit combo attack, making it turn into the black mist just as the others had been. "Phew, these things are quick. Not quick enough though. Hey, Azra, how about you pull your finger out of your ass and help? Be careful though, I've got munny riding on you beating that other chick once this is over" he stated, completely serious with how he spoke.​

 

Renna was about to punch Dain in the face and then suddenly noticed something black appear behind him. Then another and another, they were everywhere. She frantically looked around and one jumped at her only to be thrown back by a concussive blast of gravity. Renna began to levitate off the ground about 3 to 4 feet and the monsters began to run toward her. She kept throwing them back with gravity blasts, or making them rise into the air then to be crushed by the sheer force of the weight of gravity focused around them. She fought against the creatures, only for more to come at her and attack. Renna saw a hoard of the monsters jump up at her and quickly cast a Stopara on the group, then quickly focused an epicenter on them, making any objects around them suddenly fly toward them and hit them. ​