The Quest Part 3: Terrors in the Night

OOC: IMPORTANT! READ MY LAST COMMENT ON THIS LINK BEFORE POSTING! Plot suggestion page

The night was quiet, but the forest floor was lit brightly by the full moon. Cai had been on watch for a few hours now, ever since sundown. He was starting to get drowsy from not having anything to occupy his mind, when, suddenly, the crack of a branch being stepped on split the still night air.
Cai drew his sword and turned towards the noise, only to nearly drop the weapon in shock. "Mother?" Cai questioned, recognizing he pale woman who had stepped out from a tree, "but you're..." "Dead?" a voice said, but not from Cai's mother. Cai looked to the right, where the voice had come from, and jumped backwards in surprise. His father stood there, a few feet away from him. "Hey, watch where you're going!" another voice said, "You nearly stepped on me!" Cai spun around to the new voice. "Osi?" he said, bewildered, "But you... all of you are... you're supposed to be..." "Dead?" his mother finished for him, "Yes, we are. But ghosts can come back, if they have unfinished business..." "Unfortunately for you, we've come to get vengeance for our deaths," his father continued where his mother left off, "and it just so happens that we can all blame you for our demise." All three ghosts drew weapons and advanced upon Cai. "We can't kill you," Osi said," but we can make you WISH you were dead."

Cai was in total shock, but he was at least able to hold his sword to protect himself. Soon, however, the three ghosts pushed him back, causing him to go strait through the center of camp, stepping over tents and sleeping people as he tried to fend them off. Undoubtedly, he woke many adventurers up as he backed through camp.

Hikari tumbled out of her tent. "C-Cai?! What the hell!?" She screamed. But then she felt a hand on her shoulder. "Hikari, you should calm down." A voice said behind her. She turned around and saw her former best friend Amaya. "...Amaya. Why are you here?! You're supposed to be dead!" Amaya gave her a smile. "Well, I wanted to see my best friend." Hikari looked confused. "But you're DEAD." She said.
"So am I." A voice said. Hikari turned to the voice and saw her father. "Dad!? W-What's going on!?" Hikari's dad smiled. "You've grown up since I've seen you." Hikari growled, because she knew something was wrong. But once she turned around to a flame-red headed boy with eyes of gray, she started to tear up. "Akio..."
Akio gave her a smile. "I missed you. I've thought about you every day." Hikari's tears ran down her face. Akio walked closer. "Every day..."
Hikari stopped crying once Akio started to walk closer. His voice suddenly changed from compassionate to ice cold. "W-What?"
"Every day, I've thought about you." Akio said, his eyes turning red. "And how we should kill you."

OOC: oh Lawd.. this is going to take some time~

Casey had been only half asleep when he suddenly heard the ruckus outside. Instantly he sat up and grabbed onto a small knife that was previously sitting beside his head, but by the time he was able to get up, everything was dead quiet again. "He..Hello?" He called out as he opened up one of the flaps to the tent he was lying inside. "Anyone out there?" Yet all was quiet. Carefully getting up and walking out, he stood in the dim light of the dying camp fire underneath thousands of stars in the clear night sky.

"There you are!" A voice called from behind him. "I was wondering when I would find you!" Running up from behind with blazing red hair was Nathan who quickly draped his left arm around Casey's shoulders.

"Nathan?" Casey questioned, rather confused. "How did you get here? Shouldn't you be at home messing with whatever power you have left?"

Nathan gave him a quizzical look before suddenly he glared at his brother. "Do you think it's fun to have my abilities?" He asked coldly. "It's not just fun and games you know. There's all this hard work with learning to control it and being able to do so without hurting yourself, but you don't know what that's like because you're normal." He spat as if being normal was an insult. "You have it easy!" As Nathan continued to speak, his arm dropped back down to his side as he backed away from Casey. "You don't have to deal with fire randomly blasting out of your hands. You don't have to deal with the urge of wanting to light everything on fire! Besides, Mom and Dad always liked you best. They didn't want me. I'm a freak to them!"

Casey looked appalled. "Nathan, that's not true! They loved you! I--" He was suddenly interrupted by a maniacal laugh from his brother. "If they loved me so much, why did they send me to this dump, huh?!" Nathan's hands suddenly were set ablaze with large heaps of wild flames licking at the sky as if they weren't big enough. "They were the ones that called for the police 'escort'! They love you more. You're the star child; The straight-A student; the Mister Goody-Two-Shoes that never gets into trouble." With a look of pure anger, Nathan raised one arm and shoved it out in front of him, fire in the shape of a large ball flying straight for Casey's face.

The fight had begun.

Cai found himself backed up against another tree, barely able to hold of his three attackers. He was getting tired, his blocks becoming slower and clumsier, yet the three ghosts continued on in a mindless rage of attacks.

ooc: COME ON PEOPLE, POST!!!!! If you haven't posted yet, POST. Even if it's just to say "suchandsuch didn't wake up, and therefore was unaffected" If you HAVE posted, POST AGAIN! DON'T LET THE PLOT DIE!

Hikari nearly was pushed into a sharp rock. "Akio! STOP!" She said, nearly crying. But the three ghosts kept attacking her. "WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS!?"

It was only a split second before the fire was to hit him that Casey jumped out of the way landing straight into the dirt. "Nathan, calm down!"

"Calm down? Calm down?!" Nathan echoed as he now towered over his brother, his shadow falling right across Casey's face creating an eerie glowing effect around Nathan. "How can I calm down? I'm so sick of you! You don't get how annoying it is to always hear 'How come you aren't smart like Casey?' or 'Why can't you be more like your brother?'" He quoted as he threw his hands up and waved them around to make his mockery of the questions obvious. Then, as he grew quiet, he dropped his hands back to his sides and grinned down at Casey who was too frightened to move. "But now, I won't have to worry about that because you're going to be dead and I'll be the best; I'll be the one that everyone loves!"

"Nathan don't! I.. I still love you! Isn't that enough? Forget Mom and Dad! We can help out each other!" Casey tried to appease as involuntary tears stung the corners of his wide, horrified eyes.

"No! If you're still around, then nothing will change. Everyone will still love you, give you more attention; completely forget about me." Nathan, with a large and unnatural evil smile, stepped down on Casey's stomach as his hands were set ablaze once more. "So now you die," He exclaimed as he raised both of his burning hands for the final blow.

ooc: ohwell, whatever, Zack and John are officially asleep for this part of the plot...moving on ^^

bic: Cai felt himself sliding slowly to the ground, each blow that hit driving him closer to the earth. Then, he became angry. With each attack, his rage grew, building up inside of him. Then, when he couldn't hold it in any longer, his anger and frustration became a powerful red light that radiated outward, making it seem as if the sun had just come above the horizon. As the light hit his foes, they vanished, as if they had never been there (Hikari and Casey's visions also vanished). When it was over, the light lingered, shining outward from Cai, who was bent over and breathing heavily from exhaustion.

Hikari dropped to her knees, fell over, then curled into a ball hugging her knees. She started to cry and shiver as if she were a sad lost puppy. Her best friend, father, and older brother just tried to kill her. And she could do nothing.

(Thats not very nice! D: I was up in Virginia at the mall looking for a suit for the 8th grade formal, the thing cost $200 something dollars and we need to get it tailored, plus I need new dress shoes and a white dress shirt that fits.)

John finnally woke up after Cai's little burst of light, he had been having some nightmare of his own about his missing wife and dead siblings but nothing as bad as what Cai, Hikari, and Casey had experienced. Yawning he looked over to Cai, "Have a night mare and decied you needed a nightlight?" He said before he noticed Hikari on the ground in the fetal postion, "What's wrong with her?" He asked.

ooc: Sorry, but you could have posted sooner, considering that it was a few days ago that I last asked everyone to post, giving you PLENTY of time to see it, and I asked people WAY before that as well.

ic: Cai looked at John, then at Hikari and shook his head. "I've no...idea... what just... happened...but it sure... was...crazy," he said in between ragged breaths.

The last thing Casey had seen was Nathan standing over him with blazing hands before squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the blow that would either instantly kill him or make him suffer. As the bright light suddenly grew in his vision, Casey could only fear for the worst. Letting out a cry of desperation and fear of his brother, he only stopped shouting when the light had vanished and yet, he felt no pain or heat indicating that he was being burned alive. Quickly opening his eyes to see the dim light from Cai, he just lay there in the dirt staring up at the night sky with horror. What.. What just happened? He asked himself. Did Nathan really feel that way, or was it all just some kind of nightmare? Either way, Casey's limbs suddenly felt like two ton weights as he sat in the dirt, wide-eyed and filled with shock. He couldn't get up. He could only sit there until the terror and adrenaline pumping through his veins passed.

"It seems like we've all had nightmares, I wouldn't be supprised considering this island is the sorce of our problems, I even wonder if what's causing all this has a concionseness." John said as he started to ramble on phylasophically.

Hikari stood up with tears running down her face. An orange glow radiated off of her body.

ooc: MYSTERIOUS OWL TIME :D

ic: "Yeah...the islands alive...very...funny," Cai muttered, trying to be sarcastic, but it didn't work out to well, as he was still out of breath.

Just then, a loud hoot from above signaled the arrival of a large owl, possibly the same one from earlier. It landed on a branch and looked down upon the adventurers. "First trial, you have faced, and survived you have. But many more await!" and with that, he took flight again and soon disappeared into the night.

"No, not the island, The thing that's causing the problems, this island is just whe- Did anyone just hear that owl talk again?" John said confused.

When Casey finally recovered, he sat up, out of breath. Quickly inhaling and exhaling, he glanced around at the other campers before the mysterious bird started to talk. As he tried to focus, he could only think about that horrible hallucination. Did Nathan really feel that way? Shaking off the thought, he decided it was practically normal to experience strange things. "It said something about a first trial. If this is only the first, and it was this bad, does that mean the next trials are worse?" He asked, throwing in his speculation.

Cai finally got his breath back as he thought about Casey's statement. "Possibly. They do say that the bad gets worse before it gets better," he said after a few seconds.

"Oh great," he muttered before standing up on shaky legs. Before he fell, he quickly caught himself on a nearby tree, grabbing onto it and using his arm as a support. "This is going to be quite an adventure..."

OOC: okay, I believe that it is time to end this topic. the next part will be up soon.