Red Snow.

*GORE, DARK-THEMED*

*ZERO'S POV*

I guess I was unfortunately prone to nightmares. I don't know anyone who has as many as I do, and as vividly…I guess over time I built up an immunity of a sorts to it, since the nightmares always revolved around the same theme or fear.

Ninth.

Maybe, in a way, I could even consider my nightmares as a warning or an alert to what
could come next in our lives. Learn not to relax too much, always check behind you, cover your tracks, always be ready to fight on a moment's notice, have each other's backs, and the like. But, warning or no, they were torment  nonetheless. However, the constant violence and hurt and anguish that radiated so strongly through my dreamscapes that they were beginning to make me worry about my sanity. I could almost unconsciously feel it slipping through my paws a little every day. I even remember the night I woke up from a particularly bad vision, and had slipped into a nervous breakdown. I was conscious enough to keep myself quiet throughout the episode however, for fear I would wake up one of the team. It wasn't that I didn't need or want help…I just…didn't want them to see me like that. Weakened, scared, falling apart at the seams…I'm the freaking leader after all. If I can't lead with an air of strength and confidence, then I wouldn't be a very good leader.

I don't want to disappoint them…

I don't want to be alone again.

**

It was very hazy in the forest that late afternoon, as we walked through the threadbare trees whose spindly silver branches were sheathed in ice. Even though it was an open forest and I could see the mountainous scenery all around us, I felt the sensation of being closed in. The haze was like a tunnel around us, and at the end of that tunnel, in
front of us, there was a curious red illumination…

**

I know what it's like to be alone, cast out, betrayed, criticized, looked down on, and so forth…I admit it seemed like a bit of a stretch to assume my friends would turn on me if my leading skills proved to be too subpar to their standards, whatever their standards were. It wasn't like them at all to do something like that, and I was ashamed to be thinking like that. I knew they fully understood what I'd been through, that I'm just a kid, and they probably didn't even care how spectacular of a job I did. They seemed to be plenty satisfied that my decisions helped us to survive for all these months. In fact, the others helped take some of the load off my shoulders by helping with the decisions, and I was immensely grateful for it. But I could almost feel their hidden, questioning looks whenever I led on. As if…they wondered why I bothered with the whole leader deal…I definitely wasn't in it for the power, the authority…sometimes I wonder myself. Why'd I essentially take over as the leader…? If it's so much pressure…why not just step down?

**

Eve's face was almost drenched by now, as was the snow beneath her low-bowing head. Her paws were soaked with crimson, and her breaths came fast and sobbing."I can't do it…" she murmured, eyes cast down at the body beneath her.

I followed her gaze, as did everyone else except Valiant, whom Sirius had pulled away to spare him the gruesome sight.

Vector lay on his back in a pool of his own life, his severed arm only inches away from where it was formerly connected, and the cut veins sprayed endless streams of blood onto the snow beneath the wounds... The bone had been completely and cleanly sliced through. I stared down at the fading life of my best friend, who stared back up at me with dull, unseeing eyes,

"Z…er…o…"

Eve, forgetting the blood on her paws, let one of them fly up to hide her flood of tears
at the weak and strained name spoken by the mortally injured Riolu. His life smeared onto her soft face fur, turning it red around her eyes and nose.

"Yes Vector…?" I spoke softly, leaning in to hear what the fallen fighter had to say.

"How long…'till w'get…t'camp…?" he slurred exhaustedly, his eyes losing more and more focus by the second…

I sighed, feeling the sob distort it, "Soon. Real soon. When we get there, we were thinking about having a little campfire party, to brighten the mood." I said. Vector loved it when we had our little campfire parties, with the fire-roasted berries and stories and jokes. They made us forget…

Vector's weak laugh—which sounded more like a cough—broke into my thoughts. He appeared to be smiling, "Can't…wait…Zero…" His voice was getting softer and softer, "I thought up…dis…real funny one…t'tell…y'll love it…"

Eve's sobbing was beginning to affect me, and I felt the tears in my own eyes begin to blur my friend's body below me, "I bet…" I managed.

Vector's eyes were closing, "And th'll be…Cheris…right…?" he whispered.

I nodded hard, "Yeah. We know how you love Cheri berries..." my tears were cascading down my face, like Eve.

Vector smiled, "I'm so…tired…can…y'wake me…when th'camp's ready…?" His voice was almost inaudible and a stream of blood had begun to trickle from the corner of his mouth.

I nodded, "Yep…"

Vector sighed, out of words, out of time, and never woke again…

**

Why not step down? I don't even think about my position in the team that much. Not in that way though, I wondered how other the others would handle the position of leader if they had the chance to do so…

I inwardly sighed, feeling weighted down by all these wonderings. I guess that's become kind of a habit for me. Wondering…usually after a nightmare to help me forget about it. This nightmare was just another one in a long line of nightmares I had anyway…

**

"Valiant! Don't try to move!" I shouted as loud as I could. I couldn't be sure if my words got out to him. He had attempted to practice his flying, when he ran into what appeared to be some kind of snare that was set up among the trees. The ropes that made it up were almost a sterile white, which would be hard to see unless one actually looked for it.

Closely, that is.

Valiant was screaming in agony from his suspended position. His wings were twisted grotesquely in the ropes, obviously broken to pieces, and several of his limbs were bound dangerously in the tight snare. Sirius was climbing the tree right now, in an effort to cut him loose. Eve waited anxiously below, her anguished tears causing the old stains of
Vector's blood on her face to run."Please stop trying to struggle out of it Valiant!
You'll hurt yourself further!" She screamed up to him. Sirius was almost frantically trying to make his way up, but his shell blades, which he was trying to use to climb up the tree with, continually kept dislodging themselves, making the ordeal take twice as long.

Valiant, meanwhile, was practically hysterical with terror and pain, and his body continued to writhe in the binds with a feverish desperation. Suddenly, one of his feet and wings came loose. The snare began to bend under his weight.

Glitch came up beside me, her face expressionless except for the fearful glint in her eyes as she stared up at the wriggling, trapped Victini, "He's going to break more than just his wings at this rate…" she huffed under her breath, her tail-tip twitching with thinly veiled worry.

Suddenly his other foot and wing came loose, leaving Valiant dangling by his arms. The snare began to lose its shape, and some ropes had broken during the struggle. Valiant was left sniveling and dangling, his mangled wings twitching in pained attempts to move them.

"He's going to fall!" Eve cried, automatically taking position under where Valiant was dangling. Sirius had reached the top, and began to scrambled onto one of the branches to reach Valiant,

"Wait," he yelled, "There's one tied around his neck!"
Sirius advanced toward Valiant as carefully as he could, minding the ice, and grabbed ahold of one of the snare ropes.

Then he slipped.

Sirius plummeted from the tree, and landed heavily in the snow below just as Valiant's arms gave out and he fell, the noose still tight around his neck.
It produced such a loud, agonizing crack for such a small neck…

**

I can't help but think about this thing called fate while we're on the run. I don't believe in fate but…under these circumstances, it's hard to believe that all these hardships are coincidences, bad luck, and so on. Whatever is believed to control fate must hate us then, and I can't seem to place just what we did wrong to deserve this…

A long time ago, Ninth told me I couldn't be allowed to exist in this world once she took it over…

I can't keep thinking it's the world that hates us. It's just Ninth. Ninth…who happens to
be this powerful, bloodthirsty, vengeful, tenacious, maniac who's always after us…

**

"It's my fault…" Sirius murmured. I could almost swear I saw tears welling in his eyes.

We numbly looked at the devastation that had so suddenly been wrought.
Valiant's body was laid out next to Eve's…

When Sirius had fallen out of the tree, it caused several large icicles to break off and fall. I was too far away from Eve to do anything, and could only watch in horror when we realized Eve's impending death falling straight for her...
One of her eyes had been stabbed out, another had pierced her in the back of the neck, and another hit her right between the eyes. The others merely stuck in wherever they hit. The reddened icicles lay discarded a few feet away, staining the snow…
Valiant's eyes were still wide open, forever frozen with shock and pain and horror. Blood had come dribbling from his mouth, and had welled around his neck where the noose had dug in. I brushed my paw gently over his eyes, shutting them for good. The motion struck me so suddenly I felt a sob break from my chest. Eve lay delicately beside her Valiant, her soft fur doused in her own life, her skin perforated with stab wound that continued to bleed out onto the snow.

Glitch stared down at their bodies as well, and looked at me as if she expected me to collapse in tears or something. I lowered my head, letting my tears flow freely.
When I looked up again, I could almost tell I was dreaming…

Sirius was crying.

"It's all my fault…"

**

You know what it's like…to feel alone, no matter how many people around? To be sunk so deep into sadness that no amount of comfort will lift you out of it? And on top of everything, you still feel the need to stand up and pretend nothing's wrong?

No one needs to stress out for my sake…they're stressed out enough already…
And…I still can't help but feel I've dragged them into this…

I've pulled them into my nightmare.

**

"All this happened…we haven't even reached that red light yet…" I mused to myself grimly…

Glitch looked at me with her usual neutral expression, highlighted with concern. I'd begun to grow used to her guarded way of expressing her emotions. It was a good thing anyway, since it was just the two of us now…

Sirius kept blaming himself for the incident. Soon he began talking about other incidents in which he played a part in someone's death. Almost too quickly, his mind was gone. He shut me and Glitch out, and seemed to believe that we were all dead…and that he had killed us all.

The deaths of Eve and Valiant seemed to have caused him to snap. He had been trapped in his own guilty world, delirious with lack of sanity.

Glitch and I had left him on his own for a while, as he wouldn't talk or even recognize us when we tried to talk to him. He had blocked us out. He no longer knew who we were. It made me wonder about what he could've done in the past that would set him so close to the breaking point…

When Glitch and I had returned, we realized leaving broken Sirius alone was a horrible mistake…

Especially without taking away his shell blades.

When we returned, his own blood stained the snow, just as Vector's, Eve's, and Valiant's had. The guilt had been too much.

Sirius had slit his wrists.

**

Now…I have another question. Have you ever…no…nevermind.

It's a secret I kept from everyone. I will never tell them. If I did, I'm sure I would have lost all their respect. I'd be demoted from the strong leader to the frail, troubled creature who had…

Had…

…

I was glad my fur made it barely visible.

Unless you pulled back the fur as much as possible, you couldn't see the healing, wimpy, hesitation cuts around the wrist area. Not even a full cut.
Those were from a…worse time. Much worse. Ever since then…I'd never even dared to think about doing it again. I'd never let myself get that bad again…

**

"GLITCH! NO!"

The silver Eevee lay beneath me, turning my paws red with her…her life.

She lay…there…in two pieces…

Her upper half had dragged itself a few feet away from her lifeless lower half, which lay bleeding in the icy slush.

She couldn't speak, and her eyes were alight with the most emotion I had seen them possess so far…they were alight in utter mortification, complete horror at the realization of her fading existence.

The same shadow we'd seen a split second before Vector had cried out about his severed arm, the same one I'd swear I'd seen on the tree just before Sirius had slipped off it…
That shadow…

It had torn Glitch in half.

Her upper half was dragged up to my paws, the horror in her eyes replaced with clouds and emptiness…

I looked up, and screamed my mourning to the skies, just as I was numbly aware that I was no longer standing by Glitch's upper body.

I was impaled onto a tree. I looked down to see the spear handle jutting out of my midsection, the blood running onto the snow.

Bloody snow.

The pain registered all at once, and I began to writhe and scream in agony as spasms of pure fire and hurt wracked my body. I grabbed at the spear handle, but it refused to come loose. Sheer whitefire agony roiled like a demented storm through my veins, and a hot substance welled up in my throat. My head bowed to vomit up several pints of blood onto the snow, my vision blurring and becoming blurrier by the second.

Then…

The shadow.

It stood in front of me, a small shape with sharp red pupils.

A smiling curve of platinum white canines glinted like an evil sideways moon through the haze.

"Nice…trick…isn't…it…?"

The spear disappeared in a blink, and I fell into the pool of blood that had formed below me.

"If it wasn't so dreadfully messy, these games would be so much more fun."

I stared down the shadow, almost feeling the river that carried away my sensations and energy away…

"It's so satisfying to see your look of fear every night. To see you wake up with lingering horror in your eyes, to see your sanity slip-ping and slip-ping away a little more after every nightmare…"

My entire being was throbbing in dull agony, weighted down with complete exhaustion.

"I'm proud of myself. These nightmares aren't too easy to conjure. Aren't the best kinds
of illusions…the ones…that stick in your mind for days and days…?"

I heaved another pint of blood, drenching the front of my ruff with blood. I could have
sworn I saw the shadow flinch before I felt my eyes roll back.

"I can't wait until tomorrow night."

**

Nightmares…

…

I've heard that voice before.

The shadow…

…

Dawn was approaching, a steady inching globe of fire behind the mountains behind us.

Instinctively reacting to the first rays of morning, I began to wake the others.
Valiant yawned stubbornly after a few times of being shaken, before his eyes opened,

"Morn..ing…Zero." he yawned.

"Morning, little guy." I replied, turning to Vector, who sat up and rubbed his eyes,

"S'morning already…?" he yawned.

Eve stood up, stretching each leg in turn, "Usually I'm the one to be up first…" she mused, looking at me curiously.

Sirius sat up as well, scratching behind his ears, and Glitch rolled over onto her belly, rubbing her face. I nodded at everyone once they looked less asleep, "Alright guys, I have a feeling today's going to be a good day…" I shrugged, "As good a day as it can be anyway."

They regarded me nonchalantly, and began to cover up all the traces of being at the shelter.

I sighed quietly to myself, and found myself absently staring down at the snow beneath me.

Pure white snow.