Canterlot High School.
After School PTA Meeting
(Third Person POV)
Vice Principal Luna groaned and let her head thump against the, doughnut shaped, table for the sixth time now. She'd been sitting in the same seat, at the same table, in the same Faust be damned meeting for the last three hours, with 100% of nothing being achieved. They'd been unable to decide on what to spend the school's new, larger budget on - with half of the group thinking it should go into building a new Sports and Recreational Building and the other half saying it should go into improving and expanding the school's ageing computer lab.
They'd come to a stalemate on whether or not they should include more carnivorous options in the cafeteria menu, with Granny Smith Apple saying: "Over mah' cold dead carcass" and Mighty Biceps practically screaming: "THE KIDS NEED MORE PROTEIN!" And so the Apple Family matriarch and the fitness obsessed PE teacher argued back and forth, to and fro, until Principal Celestia was eventually forced to ask the bickering adults to leave the room.
Now they were discussing whether or not they should repaint the whole school aswell when they painted the recently repaired entrance to the building. Luna's eye twitched,
"This is going to take yeeeeears" she groaned quietly, leaning back in her chair and fixing her attention to the vastly more interesting task of counting ceiling panels. "I wonder what Vinyl and Sunset are doing right now. Bet it's fun whatever it is. Heck, with Kurama there they could make studying fun. Maybe he's got a jutsu that could allow you to enter the book-"
"Luna" a stern voice interrupted her thoughts and caused her to lose count of the ceiling tiles. The vice principal turned her gaze lazily to her elder sister, ready to be asked the rhetorical question that teachers ask students who talk when they are. "Do you have anything to add?"
"No" Luna grumbled, turning her gaze to the table. I wish I was with them right now Luna thought, completely naive to the situation her niece and adoptive daughter were in...
Vinyl came crashing into a clearing in the trees, gasping for air after the marathon/adventure hike she'd just run. The snow white hoodie, with dark purple hems and sleeves, she was wearing was ripped in several places along the arms and sides and the same could be said of her simple denim jeans. Her neon blue sneakers were more dirty and damaged than all of her previous shoes that she'd ever thrown away combined. Her cobalt blue and bright cyan coloured hair was even more of a mess than normal and there was a large crack in the lenses of her signature shades, earned during a head-on collision with a stray tree branch.
She'd been running for the past three hours and was now completely lost, covered in mud and sporting some rather painful cuts and bruises. The aspiring DJ shoved herself back against a tree on the edge of the clearing, half for cover from either the crazy hermit or the Eight Tails and half for support as she caught her breath.
She quickly silenced her loud breathing when the very ground beneath her shook, displaced by a mighty impact. Vinyl clapped a hand to her mouth and cowered below the canopy of leaves above her. Another impact shook the ground again, followed presently by another and another and so on - clearly the movement patterns of a very large creature. She hoped beyond all hope that it was Kurama, finally having climbed out of the ocean to help his Jinchuuriki and her sister, but a continuous shaking filled in the gaps between each heavy impact and she knew exactly what that meant - this creature was dragging itself over the earth. This made it clear that the approaching creature was the legless Eight Tails and she could only hope that he was not coming from directly behind her, lest she would be crushed by his lumbering mass.
The rumbling and the earthquake-like hand falls were growing closer, almost directly on top of Vinyl now. The teen was on the verge of tears as one hand came down less than one hundred yards away from her on the left, so close she could see it. Terrified she went straight down into a crouch, holding her head in her hands and knees pressed against her mouth she began to cry.
I'm sorry auntie Luna, big bro, Sunset. I'm so so SO sorry. I'm sorry for being a bad student, a bad sister, a bad...everything. I'm sorry I broke so many cups and plates, I'm sorry bought so many pieces of junk with other people's money, I'm sorry I never did my chores. "I'M SORRY!!" Vinyl let out, what she thought was, her last scream venting her apology to the world, tears streaming down her cheeks from under her shades. What she failed to notice was that the rumbling and impacts had stopped, apart from her cries and sobs the jungle had gone silent.
In fact, she only noticed something was off when a voice broke through the new silence. It was clear, deep and distinctly male; with his sentence being ended with a rasping cough.
"I too, am sorry" it was clear as day that he hadn't used his voice in a long time.
Vinyl's head shot up from her knees, resulting in her hitting the back of it against the tree behind her. Groaning slightly as she rubbed that section of her head to alleviate the pain, she looked towards the source of the voice.
The speaker was a tall, heavily built man with shaggy, hazelnut brown hair and dark pink skin. Most of his body was concealed in a faded brown trench coat and black cargo trousers, at the bottom of which he wore a pair of light brown boots. All of his attire appeared to be battered and beaten to the point of falling apart. The toe of his right boot was torn open, revealing the steel toe cap protecting his feet. All of his pockets on both his coat and trousers were either ripped or burned open, revealing the inside of the pocket and occasionally the skin beneath. He had a pair of emerald green irises, almost the same as Kurama's, which were shrouded in the shadow of his hair. However this man, unlike the Nine Tails, had no pupils whatsoever; just an almost completely green set of eyes with a faint bordering of white at the edges. His expression was flat and unreadable, his nose small and slightly crooked and he had small ears that pointed outwards. His face was also completely covered in freckles
"S-sorry? Vinyl eventually forced out, growing anxious. "Sorry for what?"
"For what I must do" the man answered slowly, raising a balled fist and stepping towards the young DJ.
Vinyl flinched and dived out of the path of the incoming fist. The man obliterated the area of the tree her head had been in front of. The three foot thick lump of bark and wood stood no chance, as the man's fist flew straight through it as if it were a stick. Completing her evasive roll, the shades wearing teen turned around to see the top half of the tree come crashing down mere inches from her. She had no time to dwell on this however, as the one man tank kicked the fallen half of wood straight at her; forcing her to press herself flat to the ground as it flew through the air and deep into the forest.
Taking a second to watch the tree fly was almost a massive mistake, as the man was upon her in no time; another fist ready to crush her into the ground. Vinyl executed another emergency jump, scrambled to her feet and began to run, but this guy was fast. Glancing back allowed her to duck just in time to avoid a violent arm swing, which she could identify as a lariat. Looks like all that time I spent watching wrestling actually amounted to something Vinyl thought to herself as she looked up from her crouch, only to be faced with a horrible sight. The man had managed to terminate all of his forward movement and was now sending a powerful back kick her way. Vinyl could do nothing but raise her arms in defence. Heavy boot met the soft cotton of the girl's sleeves and quickly won out, tossing Vinyl across the clearing and into a tree.
The force of the kick put the young DJ in a daze, the impact with the tree knocked her straight out and threw the shades from her face. She fell two feet from her impact zone to the forest floor and was completely unconscious by this point.
Her attacker approached her prone body, laying almost motionless on the forest floor and he sighed. Picking her up by the hood, he lifted the unconscious girl to his eye level; leaving about a foot of distance between her feet and the ground.
"Once again," he said forlornly. "I am sorry."
(Kurama's POV)
I awoke with a start, but in attempting to sit upright I hit my head against something wooden and tough. Quickly going back to laying down, I brought a hand up massage my throbbing forehead, to find the appendage to be a black fur covered paw. I rolled out from underneath the wooden overhang and gave myself a once-over, observing I was in chibi mode but with some slight changes. All four of my paws were now black, as if I'd been walking in a shallow pool of black paint and each of my nine tails was tipped with white making them look like used, orange paint brushes.
I next moved on to observing my surroundings. I was in a forest of tall, autumnal oak trees standing in an endless sea of soft green grass. The sky was unnaturally blue, so bright it hurt the eyes to look at and not a single cloud to break it up. It all seemed so real, but a continuous blurriness surrounding my field of view told me it was nothing more than a dream.
I turned my attention back to the object that had made my awakening very painful and saw that it was just a low hanging branch, almost snapped off from the main trunk, it was hanging in the perfect position to hit me when I sat up. I groaned and rubbed the small lump forming on my forehead.
"I heard pain is only in the mind, but this is ridiculous." I grumbled to myself, as I began to explore to dream world. For a time the scenery remained the same, the dense foliage preventing me from seeing too far in any direction other than the one I was walking in. I was following an open trail that twisted and turned constantly, so I couldn't tell what I was heading towards. Prepared for the worst but hoping for the best, I broke into a run as my anticipation got the better of me. Then, upon rounding a last corner, I was blinded.
My eyes took awhile to adjust to the brightness, leaving me stumbling and confused for a few moments. But after some time (and lots of eye rubbing) I found myself looking out over a massive grassy plain. Straight out in front of me there was nothing rolling hills and grass almost as far as the eye could see, but I could see the further away from me I looked the darker and less bright everything grew. Squinting I could see that all the grass in the distance was dead and black and looking behind me I could see the forest growing even more dark and less inviting every second.
Something to my left was casting a faint shadow over it all. Casting my gaze off in that direction, I had to crane my neck back in order to take in the entire sight before me. It was a volcano. It was so stupidly large, it was impossible to see the whole thing at once. If I wanted to see the base the crater would be cut from view, but if I turned my attention towards the crater I could not see the base. From said crater a continuous, thin column of smoke rose and floated high into infinite, blinding blue. It was certainly quite the spectacle.
"I'd hate to see that thing erupt" I muttered to myself, attempting to fathom the amount of destruction a volcano of that size could unleash.
"It would certainly be quite the show, wouldn't it?" a voice said heartily, from behind me. I was about-face in a flash, teeth bared and claws out. But I froze when I saw just who it was.
"You..."
"Hello there, Kurama" Day Break said with a smile