White And Black

'Scarlet Strings Of Destiny.'

Night Sixteen...

Wake is in reference to the Mare killing Corps... An Organization not acknowledged by the Government officially. They number in the low one hundreds and live to keep the balance of the world safe fighting off the threats of the New World and keeping Humans and Imps safe from Mares, and whatever else may be even worse then that which takes the form man fears...

Nobody to this day knows who is actually leading this group, or even what the overall goal of them all is.

All that is known is there exist many kind of Wakes as well as ten Squads of them, and there are in total four schools that train Imps to become Wakes...

Many Imps try to get into these schools but only a small population of around twenty to thirty will make it.

And currently Brave Larison was doing her best to prove that she had what it took to get in...

Brave ran forward letting out a loud yell as she did so.

"AHHHHHHHH!" Brave yelled running as fast as her legs would take her.

Two people rested on a large rock in the middle of the icy field over looking the forest Brave ran through. "My... She really is quiet loud isn't she..." A female voice hummed. She spoke in a strange way that almost sounded like a weird mix of a Russian and French accent.

"Idiot girl..." The male voice sighed stepping off of the rock. Just like the girl he too spoke in a strange mix of accents sounding like a Russian with a French accent doing their best to speak English.

"Oh? Are you going to help her?"

"Hmm... Just look at her..."

Down below Brave was still running. Behind her were about twenty Mares all of which wouldn't stop running after her as she ran, and ran, and ran, never once stopping.

"Oh my God, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! I'm gonna die! Why is every Imp I meet an asshole!"

Brave made a jump plowing face first in the snow and using it to roll down the side of the mountain. She wasn't harmed to bad though as she was covered in a white aura like substances that seemed to keep her safe.

The good news was that it have been a few hours and the fear of death and getting devoured had forced her body into a hyper state allowing her to run and run and run, likely also thanks to the aura. The fear had also managed to keep her aura on as it had only turned off twice during the entire ordeal. The aura still hurt to keep on but she felt like she was sort of getting used to it. Still nowhere to the degree that it would be easy to keep on but she could brag about at least keeping it on. During that time as well the heat had drastically improved. She didn't even need to worry about the cold anymore.

However as good as all that sounded it came with the huge side effect of her aura literally calling every Mare on the mountain to her.

"Ahh-" Brave jumped as a Mare jumped at her.

It didn't reach her though.

It never even had a chance as the thing was suddenly sliced in half.

"Uh... What?" Brave asked blinking a few times.

All the Mares stopped as soon as that happened and stared forward with wide eyes. Brave looked up and also felt her eyes go wide. She had been expecting maybe Mr. Laws to have saved her but no... This was someone else. Another kid?

One her age.

Or at least she thought he might have been. He wore a white suit that was allowing him to blend in with the snow and also wore a white cat mask that covered his face but did allow his yellow eyes to be seen. He also seemed to have messy black hair but most of that was covered by his mask. In his hands he held a slick katana which was a little to edgy for Braves liking but she was just glad that it saved her at the moment.

"Idiot girl!" The boy announced pointing his blade at her. A white aura danced across him for a moment. "Watch closely okay."

"What?" Brave asked.

He fired forward and got to work ripping his way through the Mares at a fast pace. Every strike he made was more than enough to cut them down in one or two blows at the most.

"Whoa... Hes fast... Not as fast as Williams or Laws but still." Brave said with wide eyes.

"See. I killed them." He announced slicing the tenth Mare in half.

"Sir... Theres a lot more then ten..."

"What?" The kid in the mask slowly turned around finding several, several, several, more red eyes. "Ahh. So there is. Plan B."

"You have a plan b-" He fired towards her wrapping his arm around her and picking her up off the ground as he began to run with her carrying her. "Plan B is to just run? That was idea!"

"Quiet! I'm not running. This is a legit plan."

"Oh yeah how so?"

"White. Now." He called out. There was a loud crash and suddenly from up above a large rock rolled down the hill and easily squashed several of the Mares. He didn't stop running though still carrying Brave. There was a flash of white light and suddenly a girl was running along side him now. She also seemed to be their age but had white hair tied back, was still in her white suit, and she to had a cat mask on.

"As usual Black, your plans are always loud."

"They worked didn't they!"

Seconds later large Mares began to rip their way past the rock as it didn't crush them all.

"Oh yeah your plan worked so well..." White said rolling her eyes.

"Three... Two... One..." Black hummed.

"What?" White and Brave both asked.

They didn't have to wait very long as a few moments later a tiny amount of sunlight dropped down. All the Mares had times to raise their eyes up as the light hit them and in a flash they all just... Vanished. Like sunlight shinning onto a shadow they were just bent away and ceased to be.

"There..." Black hummed. "They're gone. Though they will reappear as soon as the sun sets."

"Whoa..." Brave said with wide eyes. "So Mares do go away in the light just like Laws said."

"Only the weak ones." White hummed. "Stronger ones don't follow the same rules."

"More importantly..." Black hummed. He let go of Brave dropping the girl on her head in the snow. "Are you an idiot!"

"Oww..." Brave hissed sitting up and grabbing her head. "What the hell..."

"You suck at that. Your aura is so wild. Its calling all the Mares around you. Normally that wouldn't be bad as it would take time for all of them to get to you allowing you to kill them one at a time but thats not what you did. Instead you let them all gather. Did you really think that running away was a smart idea? You're exhausted and running out of power. What on earth were you thinking?"

"I... Was kind of trying to prove a point." Brave said sheepishly. "I told this guy named Laws I could run away and I can't be killed if I escape right-"

"You're an idiot. Now get up."

"Huh-"

"Get up!" Brave's eye twitched but she did what the boy told her standing awkwardly. "We arrived on this Mountain to train under Laws." Black announced pointing his sword at her. "We made it our mission to get him to teach us but he refused to help since we don't wish to go to Heaven. During that time we saw you."

"Wait. You don't want to go to Heaven? Then why are you training?" Brave asked.

"There are others schools." White stated speaking up. "There are plenty of schools that can train New Bloods to learn to manage their aura letting them back into the human society if they want but there are only four schools in the world that train Imps to become Wakes. Heaven is the school here in the Red Nation. We aren't from this Nation though. We're from the White Nation and want to get into the school known as Valhalla but it can be hard to get into. In some cases even harder then Heaven."

"S... Seriously." Brave frowned. "I heard Heaven was hard to get into... Why is it always so hard to be a Wake... I get not letting just anyone get in but having tests so hard they can kill people? The Wakes go out of their way to save New Bloods like me risking their lives but then they turn around and try to get us to join a school that could get us killed off just trying to get into it... Seems a little counter productive doesn't it..."

"This is all because of the man who runs the Wakes... Or at least the closest thing to a leader..." White hummed. "See... Nobody actually knows who the leader of the Wakes are but what is known is there are ten Squads in total. And around one hundred Wakes that exist. A Wake is technically not apart of the Red, White, Blue, or Green Nations, and exist as something else serving humans, and the Presidents who are all themselves Imps. Most people in power are Imps. The closest thing to a leader would be Venefectus... A mad fool he is... I don't know why the Wakes follow him but they do... He's the one that decided how the tests in all four schools will work... That crazy fool can make any rule he wants and the Wakes follow it. Thats why Black and I will become famous Wakes. So famous we can take the leadership away from that man and end this violent game he plays. Someone like him is insane. No. Beyond insane-"

"Gah! Who cares!" Black yelled in anger his annoyance reaching its peak. "Idiot girl." He announced pointing his sword back up. "We're going to fight."

"W... What." Brave asked with wide eyes.

"You have ears no? I told you we're going to fight. You went and pissed me off."

"I... I did?"

"Thats right you did. That damn man... Laws. He refused to train us but he agreed to train you. Even after you gave him such a stupid and cowardly answer. He asked you what you would do if a Mare was going to eat you... And your response was you would run..."

"Thats right. And I stand with that notion." Brave announced. "I'd rather live than hold onto some foolish pride and kill myself. I have a family I care for deeply. One that I can't die for no matter what!"

"Idiot girl-"

"Stop calling me that!"

Black stared her down his eyes shinning through the cat like mask he had. "Listen you foolish girl. You say you would run so that you can live another day. That Pride doesn't matter. I agree with you on that term. It is better to live than die. Even if one has to give up pride to live... But... To just blatantly run away without even attempting to fight. That is what I can't stand for. You don't run away in a losing battle. You run away from any battle. You claim you want to keep your family safe. That you can't die for them. Well then I ask you. If they were in trouble what would you do? You wouldn't be able to save any of them as all you're good for is running away. It doesn't matter if you can escape. Will they be able to? If you never attempt to grow and fight you'll never be able to keep any of them safe. Running away from those that are stronger than you... Yes. That is the right call. But only so you can go and become so much stronger! If you can't fight, and you can only run away, then you aren't someone that will ever be able to help a single person!"

Brave was silent as his words echoed around in his head. "I... I... I guess you're right..." She deflated. "I suppose I could have at least tried to fight the Mares before I ran away... I was certain I wouldn't be able to though..."

"You won't know until you try." Black hummed. He entered into a stance with his blade. "Now. Pick your knife up. You will need to learn to use it. You said you have a month until the test. Forget Laws. That old man isn't any teacher. Someone like you won't need him anyways. If you can't defeat me before the month is up, and you still aren't able to even fight a single Mare then you never had a chance."

"Y... You're seriously going to fight me with that sword?" Brave asked with wide eyes staring at her knife. "Seems... A little unfair."

"Hmm..." Black spun his blade around and stabbed it into the ground. "White." He said holding his hand out.

"Right, right." White reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a simple wooden baton. It was only about two feet long and was circular being a blunt weapon. She handed it to Black who took it.

Brave let out a small sigh but took the knife in her hands. "Here I go then... I'm... I'm going to at least try!" She announced loudly as her aura flared up greater. Blacks aura also flared up covering his body and the stick.

What happened next could hardly be called a battle.

Brave thought that her knife would make short work of his stick but it simply bounced off of the wooden object as Black twirled it in his hands using it to block her strikes. She was tired and as such swung wildly with her weapon, also being untrained and not having used a knife for battles before. The weapon was awkward in her hands.

Black on top of that just seemed to be faster and stronger than her parrying her strikes and slamming his stick into her again and again and again. He didn't seem to mind that she was a girl as he went all out beating down on her like it was nothing causing her serious harm and busting her wounds up worse.

Brave gritted her teeth falling back as several bruises covered her. Her entire body ached now and her hands hurt. But she had gotten a small idea...

Raising her arms back she threw the knife out as hard as she could. The thing flew through the air and if not for his quick reaction speed Black would have been stabbed. "Nice try but-" As soon as he brought his body back up he was slammed into by Brave's fist who kicked him in his stomach as the knife had actually been used as a distraction.

"Hehehe. Pretty sneaky. I've never really used a knife for combat but you know with my aura I can hit slightly harder then it and its easier to just punch or kick-"

Black wrapped his arms around her leg shocking her silent as the kick hadn't seemed to affect him. He twisted her around and slammed her face first in the snow burying her head into it.

"Pathetic. Do better next time." He hissed out at her stomping on her back. "Listen up because there are many kinds of aura functions. I'm going to tell you the most important ones that you need! Durability, Strength, Speed, Time, Ease! Durability is the amount of defense a person has with their aura. You're just slightly above normal human durability with yours when in reality you need to be able to at least withstand gun fire with ease! Using Durability I was able to block your knife strikes. Strength is the power of your aura and allowing your strikes to hit harder! Speed is the boost you get with your aura allowing you to move faster! Time is as long as it takes you to turn your aura on! And lastly Ease is the amount of aura you leak out when you use it! Work on those idiot girl. I'll be back tomorrow."

Before Brave could ask more Black turned away and marched off.

"G... Geez... Whats his issue..." Brave sighed sitting up and rubbing her wounds.

"Here."

"Huh?" Brave looked up finding White crouched down next to her handing her a bottle of blue liquid.

"This will heal most of your wounds and get rid of some of your exhaustion. Please excuse my brother also... He means well. He only wishes for you to do better."

"Yeah well he has a funny way of showing it..." Brave sighed drinking the bottle of all its liquid. Instantly she felt a million times better as her less serious wounds began to heal and the tired feeling she felt vanished.

White hummed for a moment resting next to Brave. "You remind him of younger sibling I think."

"Huh?"

"Oh nothing." White giggled making Brave blush and look away. "Your aura will likely shut off soon. Here." She said finally giving Brave a jacket and some boots. The girl eagerly put them on feeling even warmer. "Why don't I try to help you... See there's a lot more than what my brother explained."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all. How serious are you at being a Wake?"

"I mean... I want to get into the school no matter what at least... I said it before but I want to keep my family safe and also... There's someone I want to meet and ask a question towards."

"I see... Okay then... Listen... As an Imp there are three things you need to work on. Your Mind, Body, and Aura... The Mind and Body are the most important believe it or not. If your body isn't fit for combat, and your Mind can't handle it, it simply wont matter how skilled in aura you are. Never for a moment think you could lose a fight. You're quiet fit for a girl. You have lots of muscles."

"Y... Yeah... I'm not that cute..." Brave chuckled sheepishly. "I'm used to putting in work."

"Hmm. As my brother said. Running away to live isn't bad. But you'll need to at least be able to fight the ones you don't have to run from. You'll need to improve if you want to keep your loved ones safe and march down whatever your goal is. I'll help you out some."

"You will?"

"Sure. First of all. I'll tell you two things you'll for sure need to work on. Vision and Heat... You'll need to gather food if you're up here. Using Heat you can actually melt the ice and snow and convert it into water and then use your heat to boil that water to make it drinkable. Using Vision you can see any food you might fine such as berries or nearby animals you can hunt for food. We're not that far un the mountain though its still quiet snowy. Theres likely some things. My brother and I have survived up here through eating bears."

"B... Bears!"

"Yes. Laws breeds them from what I know. There are all kinds of them."

"J... Jeez..." Brave shook her head for a moment. "A... Anyways. I... I get the heat thing. I use my aura to increase my bodies temperature right. But how do I work on my vision with aura?"

"Hmm... How to explain this... Well... To put it in a simple term... Everyone has a certain amount of aura. Though this number is different. Think of aura almost like stamina. Some people simply can run for longer than others. The amount of aura you have is different from person to person. When you turn your aura on you are surrounded by a faint white light and you get a little stronger, faster, and more durable. However keeping your aura on uses it up. Its not a lot but right now you're using some of it up. Kind of like how when you walk you use some stamina up. If you walk for long enough you get tired. If you have your aura on for long enough it starts to fade. If you run out of aura resting for a little while will make it come back."

"I... I've had mine on for nearly the entire night?"

"It's likely reaching its limit. Its impressive it can stay on that long. Especially since you're using a function."

"A function? You mean the heat thing?"

"Thats right. See. You asked earlier how you can see better with aura... We call these functions... There are many of them. Its sort of hard to explain but in this case you're warmer because you think of your aura having heat so it gives you heat. There are thirteen in total. The 13 functions are Size, Durability, Strength, Speed, Hearing, Vision, Smell, Feeling, Time, Ease, Emotional, Heat, and Brightness. Basically they do what the names say. Size allows you to grow your aura, emotional allows you to show your emotions to others with your aura, feeling allows you to sense how much aura you have or someone else has, as well as numb your pain. In order to use a function you need to imagine it. To increase your strength you would imagine your aura in your arms and legs as you kick adding weight to them. For durability you would think of your aura being something like armor or having the durability of something and coating you or something you're touching. It all depends on who you are and how you think. My brother for example imagines he's wearing armor with his aura or what he's holding is metal, thus the durability is amped up with his aura. When he strikes he imagines his aura forms a blade over the thing he's using increasing its attack power. Personally I like to imagine my aura is like water flowing around but at any second it'll turn into solid ice making it impossible for me to get hurt. That said there are other factors you have to consider with aura. Using a function drains aura. Imagine your aura is a number. You have an aura of lets say 3000. And every one minuet having your aura on takes away 1 from that number. So in 3000 minuets your number would drop to 0. Using a function speeds that up. So if you were to use lets say heat. It would take away aura 2 aura ever second plus the one aura every minuet. You can use as many functions as you want as well but they add onto the drain. And once aura reaches 0 you can't use it until you rest meaning you're open for any attack. The amount of power, and durability, incensement or speed gains, you get is up to how skilled you are, as well as what you imagine and how much aura you're willing to put into it. For example you could think of strength and durability. And lets say you lose 6 aura every second. Your opponent could try to counter with the same thing. Strength and durability. In that case what you could do is up the amount of strength or durability you're using. This would increase the amount of aura you're using up faster turning that 6 every minuet into something like a 12 but now its harder for your opponent to hurt you and you deal more damage. Of course they could then use more aura up to push up to that level meaning you'd also have to keep using more. Also you need to factor in the amount they're using and if they're bluffing you or not. Thats where feeling comes in as you can use that to try and sense your opponents aura and try to figure out if they're focusing more on speed, strength, or durability, and adjust yourself to using the amount of aura that can just barley beat them that way you still hurt them but also lessen the amount drained on yourself. And of course you'll need to consider several other things. Such as using weapons versus limbs. You could use five aura to increase the damage of your punch but if your opponent uses five aura to increase the durability of his armor it would cancel out your strength increase while still keeping him defended as he still has normal armor. In that case using a sword would negate that as your weapon could then break past his armor. So to review what we've gone over, you have a certain amount of aura, however it slowly runs out the more energy you use. Using a Function uses up more aura but powers you up in certain ways. You're able to pick how much you're powered up like going 50% physical and 50% speed and so on. Imps use aura for almost everything so its important to learn those things. Also just like with everything in life some people will just be born better at certain Functions more than others. For example my brother is good at physical things like strength speed and durability but has trouble with other things. You're pretty good with heat so thats on thing you could work on more and master. Are you following along?"

Smoke rolled off of Braves head as her brain became fried and she set there blinking. "And... This is the simple explanation?"

White sighed. "Use aura to increase damage big. Bigger than bad guy uses aura to make himself durable. Bigger attack than bigger defense means your attack hurts him real bad. Also use aura to increase speed, or sight, or other things like that. Numbers used up. Five bigger than four so 4 defense loses to 5 attack. Now you have 5 less aura though. Be smart and consider numbers and fast wins."

"Okay... Now I think I get it." Brave nodded.

"Good." White said slowly standing up. "In that case. I'll help you work on the technical stuff and get some of them down. But for now you need to rest. Black will be back tomorrow to challenge you to another fight." She said handing Brave back her knife. "Do your best to train and try as hard as you can. I don't think there is any other way... If you're serious about joining this school, even if its for a selfish reason, then let that guide you."

"Right." Brave nodded a glowing in her eyes appearing. "I have one month to learn all of this stuff and defeat Black!"