While Quin’s wounds were a little more than just scratches they were pretty shallow and the nurse was able to patch her up pretty quickly. Unfortunately the nurse asked questions like how did you get these giant slashes across stomach and lower chest. The lie Quin came up with, rather quickly, is that they were all playing soccer in the empty field between the mountains and the baseball field and a bobcat jumped her. The nurse looked like she wanted to question it but thankfully let it go.

Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said when the girls saw healing wounds in P.E. The story of the bobcat got out and when it got to Gavin there was no stopping it. Soon it became an epic story about how Xena the warrior princess single handedly wrestled a three hundred pound mountain lion and snapped its neck with her bare hands.

It didn’t take long for every student in the school to want to see the “battle wounds” on Quin’s stomach and soon Ethan spotted her begrudgingly showing off the “scratches” to random students throughout the school day.

One other thing that was bother Ethan was the fact that for the second floor in a row the dungeon mentioned the name of the thing they’d defeated and the names sounded japanese or asian to him. When he brought this up to the group they agreed that it was worth looking into.

“Why are you looking at me?” Alex asked.

“Because you’re the Japanese one,” Ethan answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Half Japanese,” Alex corrected defensively, “and I’m from Kansas City.”

“So don’t you know some stuff about Japan?” Ethan asked undeterred.

“Well yes, but I don't spend all my time studying it,” Alex answered annoyed. “I know a little bit of the language and some cultural stuff I’ve learned from my dad, but if you expect me to know what an Aoandon is or that bird you’re mistaken.”

“Can you ask someone about it?” Bella asked, always playing the peacemaker. “You know like your dad?”

“I can’t ask him, he’s too busy for this sort of thing,” Alex answered and then added, “there’s someone else I can ask though.”

“Who,” Ethan asked excitedly.

“Google,” Alex replied smiling at them.

As it turns out Google was pretty knowledgeable on the topic according to Alex.

“From what I can tell both of those things assuming I got the names close to correct are a type of Japanese Yokai,” Alex explained to the group over dinner looking triumphant.”

He frowned with none of them responded with more than confused expressions.

“So what are Yokai?” Ethan asked.

“They’re basically like supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore,” Alex said chewing on a piece of chicken. “There a literally hundreds of different types. It’s actually pretty interesting reading.”

“Supernatural Japanese Creatures?” Ethan asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why doesn’t that make sense?” Alex asked annoyed. “I just told you that’s what they are. I know I wouldn’t have believed in them if I didn’t see them with my own eyes, but I have--we both have, and that’s what they are.”

“No, no,” Ethan said in response. “I know that they are real. That’s obvious, Quin has the scars to prove it.”

“It’s not going to scar,” Quin said cutting him off while Alex said, “huh, I thought those marks were from her battle with The Great and Powerful Mountain Lion of the West.”

Ethan snickered at this while Quin looked mildly annoyed. The story had taken on a life of its own and with Gavin as a driving force it wasn’t hard to see how it kept getting more and more elaborate. Soon the Mountain Lion would a thousand pounds.

“No I mean, this is California, why would creatures from Japanese folklore be here?” Ethan asked.

Shrugging Alex said, “The town was founded by Japanese-Americans. Maybe that’s the connection.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said, but something still felt off about it.

Still even with that uncertainty he felt good. They’d managed to finally clear the second floor and no one got seriously injured. He wasn’t happy at how easily he’d be knocked out of the fight by the thing, but he couldn’t win everything. Besides he’d do a lot better next time when they tackled floor three.

Classes that week passed quickly without a whole lot of fuss if you didn’t count Ethan butting heads with Stewart in computer science or Ms. Phelen yelling at him in Drawing and Painting. He didn’t count either of these as anything special as both of them happened more often than not.

Quin became completely insufferable starting on Thursday and it just got worse and worse in the lead up to her game on Saturday. The normally even keeled girl was now a bubble of excitement about “the playoffs”. Bella did her best to feign excitement with the other girl but Ethan and Alex weren’t nearly as good at playing along.

Ethan actually found himself biting his tongue more often than not when Quin got talking about the game and the team, some private girl’s school out of the bay area. He really wanted to say no one cared, but was trying his absolute best not to be a jerk. Alex was less tactful and muttered something about how meaningless school athletics were in the grand scheme of things. Quin frowned slightly at this but then pushed it aside and jumped right back into explaining how her team would have far superior stamina because of their training regiment.

When the match finally arrived on Saturday Ethan found himself on the bleachers huddled between Alex and Bella and silently praying that the girl’s lost this match. He didn’t know if he could take another week of Quin tactically analyzing everything using french fries and cups of ketchup at dinner.

Unfortunately for him, it went as these things often do and Quin and her teammates blew the other team out. With every goal that went in he found himself frowning deeper until Bella made a comment about how his face would get stuck that way if he frowned any harder. After that he put a little more effort into hiding his emotions.

Surprisingly, he actually managed to keep a smile on his face the whole time while they congratulated Quin on a well played match and moving on to the next round of the playoffs. Honestly, she’d been fantastic. It was easy to understand how she’d jumped right into a starting role on the varsity team as a freshman. She was a natural, and her movement on and off the ball was first class. He knew even though he’d improved a lot over the course of this season that he was still nowhere close to her level on a soccer pitch.

Quin beamed at them and looked happier than Ethan ever remembered seeing her, but then again she usually showed very little emotion. That wasn’t the case now though, she was jubilant and actually hugged Bella. She looked like she was going to hug Ethan too but then thought better of it and gave him an awkward punch on the shoulder instead. It actually kind of hurt.

Her mood was infectious and he found himself against his conscious will enjoying the evening and cheering for the team. That was until Quin and her teammates reminded everyone of their next playoff match in one week’s time. After that everything left a sour taste in his mouth. That meant one week of listening to Quin constantly talking about the upcoming match as if it were life or death.

Of course there was the very real threat of the dungeon and the Black to deal still so a very mixed emotion group met up at the dungeon the following afternoon to start working on the third floor. The Black hadn’t been seen or heard from since the night of the football game, but Ethan was positive that he was still out there somewhere and still a threat to the group. Alex was actually now insistent that there was a second threat, a person he called “the Other”, but Ethan didn’t really follow this line of thinking.

The third floor of the dungeon was a surprise and was nothing like what Ethan expected. Of course, when was the dungeon ever predictable? Instead of the dark tunnels from the previous floor, he found a bright blue skies when he stepped out of the elevator. He also found a steep, uneven, and rocky ground underneath him and immediately had to struggle to remain balanced.

It took a minute but he finally managed to get his bearings. Somehow, and this was weird even for the dungeon, the elevator let them out near the top of some steep mountains. When he looked down off of the mountains and saw clouds below it threatened to break his brain. They’d just taken an elevator down and now were at the top of a mountain. It probably made perfect sense to the dungeon.

The air was the next thing he noticed. It was thin and hard to breathe up here, wherever they were.

“This is interesting,” Alex said finally after a couple minutes of the group looking around in silence.

“It’s better than the last floor,” Bella said breathing hard.

“Just be careful,” Quin ordered. “If you lose your footing and start rolling, I don’t know if you’ll be able to stop.”

“Let’s move and see if we can’t locate something that looks like it might be what we have to do to clear this floor,” Ethan said. “I’m hoping it won’t take us nearly as long to clear this floor.”

Choosing a direction Ethan climbed up to the ridgeline and began following it away from the elevator. The rest of the group followed after him in a single file line all breathing hard, even Quin. Apparently just having stamina didn’t prepare you for high altitudes and thin air.

Over the next hour, Ethan worked slowly and meticulously along the ridgeline. He could have perhaps moved faster, but he didn’t want to take any chances of someone falling off to their doom.

After an hour he finally spotted something in the distance. A small cave was situated in in the mountainside about ten yards below the ridgeline.

“Worth a look I suppose,” Alex said shrugging after Ethan pointed it out. “Maybe there’s a giant blood sucking bat in there or something.”

“Alex, don’t say that,” Bella said looking like she’d rather do anything but explore the cave.

“I’m just saying,” he replied. “Everything else in this dungeon has been rather unfriendly.”

“Let’s just go see if there’s anything in there worth our interest,” Quin said moving in front of Ethan and leading the way over toward the cave.

It took another twenty minutes of slow steady walking to reach the cave mouth, but they did without any noteworthy issues. The first thing Ethan noticed was that the cave was deep, deeper than he could see from outside of it, and that it got dark very quickly.

“Why does it always have to be dark places?” Bella asked to no one in particular.

“Because the dungeon feeds off of your fear my dear,” Alex said smirking and moving a couple of feet inside the cave. “There doesn’t appear to be anything of interest that I can see from here, but it goes in a ways.”

“Let’s head inside then,” Quin said shrugging and stepping in the cave too. “If there’s anything in there, I’m sure we can handle it.”

“Yeah, we’ve got this, don’t worry Bella,” Ethan said placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We’ve all got this sweet armor and you’ve got that wicked axe to defend yourself with. I think we’re good.”

“I just wish this place would use adequate lighting for once,” Bella said sighing and timidly stepping into the cave.

Ethan took the initiative and moved up in front of the other three. He was feeling confident and was certain they were about to find whatever the monster of this level was and he wanted to have the first crack at it this time.

Walking further into the cave he sword he heard a rustling but when he squinted his eyes a head of him he couldn’t make anything out but the rocky surface of the cave in the dim light coming from outside.

Up ahead he could see that the cave narrowed and then the opening turned to the left. I might need to borrow someone’s phone at that point to use as a flashlight he thought. I doubt that the outside light is going to get past that point.

A familiar hand snatched at his back and Ethan knew that Bella was holding onto a piece of him just in case. He smiled to himself at how his best friend was afraid of the dark. If holding on to him made her feel better he wasn’t going to take that away from her.

“Hey Alex or Quin, I’m going to need one of your phones with the flashlight feature turned on,” Ethan called over his shoulder. “It’s getting too dark to see where I’m going.”

“Hang on let me dig it out,” Alex responded apparently digging around in his pocket for it. “Stupid thing. Here we go.”

There was the sound of fidgeting and then a bright white light temporarily blinded Ethan. He blinked a couple of time allowing his eyes to adjust to the new light source and then looking around he saw it reflected in hundreds of tiny eyes. Angry clicking responded and as many tiny legs as eyes moved all around the group.

“Oh my god,” Alex said with his eyes going wide as he stared at all of the spiders.

There were hundreds of fist sized spiders all over the cave staring and clicking right at the group. They looked angry and also hungry. We’re going to get eaten alive, Ethan thought trying not to panic.

“Oh Heavenly Father, I come to You today, bowing my head and opening my heart, asking for protection from all the evil this world holds. Please protect me from this evil spawn of Satan all around me,” Alex recited clearly praying now and looking on the verge of losing it.

“How do you want to play this?” a much calmer Quin whispered to Ethan.

“I think we slowly leave this cave,” Ethan said. “I don’t think we want to try to take all of these things on at once.”

“Alright, I lead,” Quin stated and started edging back towards the cave entrance.

The group slowly followed and for a second Ethan thought that they would be able to simply walk out but then the dam burst and the spiders swarmed.

Alex screamed like Ethan’s little sister would have and bolted, swatting spiders that came at him with his shield and inadvertently hitting them with the beam of light coming out of his phone. When the light hit the spiders they scampered backwards away from it, but Ethan didn’t really have time to think on this.

Bella, Quin, and him had no choice, but to bolt after Alex. The spiders were everywhere and Ethan’s sword was about as effective as a piece of paper against them. Sure he probably sliced a couple in half but there were so many and it was like trying to swat a fly with a baseball bat. Sharp pincers nipped at his armor chewing at it. Thankfully he was able to knock most of the spiders of if his armor before they could do any serious damage to it.

Alex burst from the cave mouth and kept running, scampering his way back up to the ridgeline and sprinting back towards the elevator. Ethan, Quin, and Bella weren’t far behind him and this time none of them played it safe and took the mountain at a safe walk. There was a huge cluster of spiders behind them and all over them and the prospect of falling off of a mountain didn’t seem quite as bad in comparison.

The first time Alex slipped he was trying to reach a group of spiders trying to eat through the armor on his left leg. He managed to knock them off but lost his balance and fell down slamming into his shoulder and sliding a few feet below the ridgeline before stopping on a rock.

“Ethan,” Bella called to him.

“I’m fine, keep going,” Ethan said pushing himself to his feet and trying to ignore the aching pain now coming from his left shoulder. “We need to get away from these things.”

She did as she was told and Alex scampered back up to the ridgeline only to slip again as he was just reaching it and slammed his face into the rock face. His armor protected his face somewhat but his nose still crunched and broke being smashed between the rest of him and the rock.

Grunting he angrily pushed himself back to his feet and began stomping along the ridge after the rest of his group. He was pissed now, but the anger was giving him a clarity he hadn’t had before. Instead of panicking now he calming pulled the last few spiders off of him and flung them off the mountainside hoping that the creatures last few seconds were very painful. In the moment he wasn’t above spite and the pain coming from his nose and shoulder was making him very spiteful.

“Come on, hurry hurry,” Alex yelled at the group from inside the open elevator. “Let’s go, lets go, let’s go.”

Ethan was the last one to reach it and as soon as he did Alex hit the button that lead back to the basement causing the door to slide shut behind them. The four rode the elevator back up with only the sound of their ragged breathing.

Upon finally reaching the top and piling out into the basement room Alex said, “Well we had a good run, but I think the dungeon beat us, so we probably should never, ever go back to that place.”

Ethan didn’t respond, just dismissed his armor and felt at his nose. It was bleeding of course, which was what he suspected.

“Are you alright?” Bella asked him with a concerned look on her face.

“Yeah, I think I broke my nose,” Ethan said feeling ashamed at being the only one who injured himself.

“Hold still,” Quin said coming over and standing in front of him.

“What?” Ethan managed to say before she started touching his nose. “Wait, what are you doing?”

She didn’t respond with words but instead after a few seconds began pressing his nose hard with her hands. Pain surged through Ethan and he wanted to scream, but he wasn’t going to give Quin the satisfaction of knowing she hurt him. At least that was his plan, until he felt and heard a snap and the pain got too much. He finally screamed only realizing a moment later than she’d let go.

“What is the matter with you?” he snapped at her.

“I set your nose back into place,” Quin said shrugging. “It’s not fun, but it’s simple enough. Do enough athletics and you see several broken noses a year.”

“You set my nose back right?” he asked bewildered feeling his nose.

Sure enough it felt straighter and the pain was actually starting to lessen already.

“Yeah,” Quin said.

“Thanks then I guess,” Ethan said, “but warn me next time please. That sucked, I don’t think it can get any worse than this though.”

This was a foolish statement as things in fact got worse for Ethan in the coming week as he was about to find out.

Most of the week was fairly normal actually with his classes being on usual range of their spectrum. History and P.E. were good, Math and Drawing were bad. Spending time around Quin was almost too painful for everyone as she was even more amped on her soccer time.

Not only did she quickly make Ethan, Alex, and Bella promise to go to her game on Saturday but she also made pretty much every other freshman promise to go. Ethan suspected that most of them just agreed quickly to get her to shut up and that they wouldn’t actually show, but hey if he could have flaked out he would have.

Unfortunately for him, he still had “Diving Club” with Quin so when her match Saturday afternoon rolled around he found himself sitting in the bleachers with Bella again. This time he’d actually brought his math homework to work on during the game. With Bella sitting right there it was a perfect opportunity to get it done.

One thing he noticed right away was that he’d been wrong about the rest of his class, or at least most of them. Almost everyone Quin asked showed up from Gavin, to Stewart, to Jenny even. That last one was a nice surprise even if having Stewart there sucked.

Still he did his best to ignore the sound of Stewart’s loud, obnoxious voice and focused on his math problems as the whistle for the first half began. Ethan was making pretty good progress on his homework by half, but apparently Quin and her team weren’t having the same luck on the field. They were down a goal to nil and she looked upset in the huddle.

“Did you really have to do that now?” Bella asked him looking like she disapproved. “We’re supposed to be here supporting Quin.”

“Bella, you know I just can't stand her team any more with how much she has been talking about it for the past couple of weeks,” he answered defensively.

“She’s just excited,” Bella said shrugging. “C’mon, put that away and cheer for her. It means alot to her having you here.”

“I don’t think my presence means all that much to her,” Ethan said with a small laugh. “Besides what am I going to do from over here to effect the game?”

“Just cheer her on,” Bella said like it was obvious. “She needs us rooting for her.”

Ethan was just about to respond with, “fine, have it your way,” when a less welcome voice sounded in his ears.

“What’s all this?” Stewart asked mockingly. “Dare I ask, but is there a lovers quarrel going on up here?”

“Get lost Stewart,” Ethan snapped. “We weren’t talking to you.”

“Better get that anger under control or you’ll scare your fat girlfriend,” Stewart said climbing up the bleachers towards him.

Anger surged through Ethan causing him to clench his fist and stand up knocking his book to the ground.

“Ethan, let it go,” Bella said soothingly to him. “He’s not worth it.”

“What are you going to do Ethan?” Stewart asked. “You should probably listen to Miss Planet there before you get yourself hurt. Her large gravitational pull can’t protect you if you come over here.”

Suddenly Ethan found himself in the air diving over two rows of spectators right at a very startled looking Stewart. Ethan slammed into Stewart hitting him with his sore left shoulder first causing pain to surge up his arm but he didn’t care about the pain. He didn’t care about anything except hurting the other boy. He swung his fists and began punching and punching and punching Stewart.

Ethan would like to say that this first volley of punches did some real damage, but that would be a lie. Ethan was still pretty small, and regardless of how much stronger he thought he was getting, he was relatively weak outside of his legs, and Stewart was a much bigger boy.

Stewart recovered from his initial surprise and his mouth turned from a smirk to snarling rage and grabbed Ethan off of him and threw him to the ground before jumping on top of him and punching him over and over in the face.

The first thing Ethan felt was his nose breaking for the second time within a week. He felt shell-shocked as the fists slammed against him again and again. Blood was running down and he felt dizzy.

He could hear screaming and yelling in the background but it was getting more distant by the minute. Everything was getting more muffled actually and he was tired. The last thing he remembered seeing was Jenny’s face with a look of disgust on it. Then he passed out.

When he woke up he was in the nurse's office with a huge headache. His nose had been fixed and wounds on his face tended to.

“Ah, you’re awake,” the nurse said stiffly.

“What happened?” Ethan asked holding his head.

“Here sit up slowly, and take this with water,” the nurse said holding out a couple pills to him.

Ethan did as instructed and sat up slowly before downing the medicine with a glass of water on the table next to the bed.

“As far as what happened,” the nurse said. “You started a fight with Mr. Hawkins and got knocked out pretty badly.”

Oh that’s right, Ethan thought feeling miserable. I jumped Stewart and he beat the snot out of me and to make things worse, Jenny saw the whole thing.

“Mr. Tanaka will be in, in a moment to have a word with you,” the nurse said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything else stupid in front of him. He’s furious.”

“I won’t,” Ethan said wishing the lights in here weren’t so bright.

As the nurse said Mr. Tanaka came in a couple minutes later and looked Ethan up and down with his angry eyes. If Ethan thought the man was unfriendly the last time he saw him, he’d seen nothing yet.

“Mr. Russell, what do you have to say for yourself?” Tanaka finally asked in a low dangerous voice.

“I’m sorry, Stewart provoked me,” Ethan answered feeling guilty now. “He was saying all of these things about Bella being fat, and me being--”

Cutting him off Tanaka snapped, “I don’t care what he said. Nothing give you the right to start a fight, especially in the middle of the stands during a prestigious girl’s soccer game. What do you think parents from the other team thought? Hinan Academy is full of a bunch of thugs probably.”

“Yes sir, I’m sorry sir,” Ethan said quietly.

Mr. Russell are you aware of what a great privilege you have in attending this school?” Mr. Tanaka asked. “Doubly so for you, because you attend on a financial scholarship. Do you know how many kids would do anything to change places with you?”

“Yes sir,” Ethan said not looking at the man.

“I’m disappointed,” Mr. Tanaka said breathing out slowly. “I’ve talked to your teachers and all is not well. You’ve got a C in math and a D in Drawing and Painting. Ms. Phelen especially seems to think that you don’t put in the effort. You’re lucky that Mr. Darnell, your history teacher spoke highly of you or this might be a very different conversation.”

Well, Mom is not going to be happy about those grades, Ethan thought biting his lip. At least Mr. Darnell was there for him.

“As it is I’m suspending you for a week, which so happens to be the last week of the semester,” Tanaka said. “You’ll take your tests like everyone else but will not attend classes. I’m also banning you from participating in clubs or athletic teams next semester and will only reinstate this privilege in the fall if you show real improvement in your grades and how you treat your fellow students.”

“Suspended?” Ethan asked stupefied.

“Yes Mr. Russell,” Tanaka said nodding his head. “Remember there are real consequences to your actions. Now then I have to go have a conversation with Mr. Hawkins. Freshmen I swear.”

He left leaving Ethan to sulk about how unfair the world was.

Unfortunately Ms. Watanabe, the nurse walked over with a stern look on her face and said, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Now then you’re friends are here to check on you. Five minutes and then they have to leave alright?”

“Okay,” Ethan said fighting a determined inner struggle not to cry.

“Ethan are you alright?” Bella asked when she, Quin, and Alex entered.

Bella and Alex looked concerned but Quin looked distant and upset. Oh right, I started something during her match, Ethan thought. She’s probably pissed about that.

“I’m alright, suspended but alright,” Ethan answered.

“Suspended?” Alex asked.

So Ethan told them everything about his conversation with Tanaka until Alex finally said with a chuckle, “well if you thought he didn’t like you before.”

“Hey Quin,” Ethan said looking at the girl and ignoring Alex. “I’m sorry, I should have been cheering for you instead of getting into fights with Stewart. I’m sorry if I ruined your big game.”

Turning she stared him in the eyes inspecting him with her big green eyes before finally saying, “You’re weak.”

It took Ethan a moment to register what she said and when it finally registered all he could sputter out was, “what?”

“You’re weak,” Quin repeated. “We all are. We need to get stronger. I lost today because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t work hard enough. You lost today because you weren’t good enough and didn’t work hard enough. We lost in the dungeon because we weren’t strong enough and didn’t work hard enough. We need to get stronger.”

“How?” was all Ethan managed to ask after seeing the fierceness, anger, and determination in her eyes.

“We’re going to start training harder,” Quin said. “We’re going to run further when we run and you’re going to start working on your upper body as well so that next time you get into a fight you don’t lose and next year when I make the playoffs I don’t lose.”

“And next time we face those spiders in the dungeon we don’t lose?” Bella asked.

“Exactly,” Quin said.

“Wait, what do you mean next time?” Alex asked looking alarmed.