Hiroshi and Henry made there way back to the piano on the second floor, still trying to be as quiet as possible in order to avoid the monster they had seen. As they entered the room, they slowly approached the piano. Henry decided to watch the hole in the ceiling so that he could warn Hiroshi about anything that may try to hurt them. As Henry did this, Hiroshi had soaked the handkerchief in soap and started to wipe the blood away. Much to his surprise, and Henry's satisfaction, there was a number under the blood.

"Looks like you were right, Henry. We certainly found something." Hiroshi said, scratching the back of his head.

"And what did we find exactly?" Henry asked, staring intently at the hole.

"The number "679", but that is what confuses me. There are only three numbers here, but the safe has a four number combonation." Hiroshi explained as he examined the piano, looking for another number. This caught Henry's attention, and he turned to inspect the piano himself. What Hiroshi said was true, there were three numbers here, but the safe had a four number code.

"Perhaps we can get lucky and just add a number to the end, maybe we'll get the code right?" Henry reasoned, shrugging his shoulders. Hiroshi sighed, as he turned to face the hole.

"I suppose we should at least try." He said with his eyes shut tightly, trying to piece everything together. When he opened his eyes and was about to face Henry, he saw that the monster was standing behind him. "Look out!" Hiroshi shouted as he reached out to pull Henry aside. Surprisingly, Henry simply jumped to the side and and faced the monster.

"Thanks for the heads up!" Henry shouted back as he ran to the other side of the piano, only to see that the monster was going after Hiroshi now. Henry took this chance to get behind the monster and kicked it in the back of the knee, causing it to tumble over. Then, as quickly as they could, they both ran from the creature. They headed back to the room that was by the stairs to the first floor. As they ran to the room, they saw that the creature was not far behind. When they both charged into the room, they immediately ran for the closet. As they hid, they could hear the door open and close. This was followed by heavy breathing that seemed to travel throughout the room. Then, just like last time, the monster had left, allowing the door to open and close loudly. After another moment, the two of them climbed out of the hiding place and dusted themselves off.

"He is getting quite bothersome..." Hiroshi mumbled as he made sure he still had the items he had found.

"I agree. I wish there was something we could do to make it stop..." Henry said, as he peaked out of the door. "There's nothing out there, Hiroshi. Let's get back to the piano." Hiroshi nodded and followed Henry back to where they were working. As soon as they walked into the room, they immediately put their attention on the hole in the ceiling. After a moment, Henry walked back to the piano in order to see if there were any hidden numbers. Unfortunately, there was nothing more than what they had first discovered. After this, Hiroshi and Henry walked up to the safe embedded into the wall.

"So, do you really think it's that simple?"" Hiroshi asked, pushing his glasses into place once more.

"I can't say. I really don't have the answers." Henry replied as Hiroshi saw him put the numbers 6, 7, and 9 into the first three spots. Henry then began to flip through the last number slot, as if he was trying to decide on what he thought was the right number. Suddenly, Henry stopped and set the last number in the code as 9. Finally, he entered the code. Much to the surprise of Hiroshi and Henry, the door opened to reveal a labeled key.

"That was rather quick..."Hiroshi commented in disbelief due to the fact that it took little effort to open the safe.

"Agreed." Henry mumbled back when he took the key from the safe.

"So now we have to go searching for what that key opens?" Hiroshi questioned as he tried to take the key from Henry.

"Yeah, it says "Kid's bedroom key" on it. So it is either on this floor or upstairs." Henry said as he kept it away from Hiroshi as if he were a child that wouldn't share a toy.

"Let's try that one door upstairs first. I remember that it wasn't actually locked, just stuck somehow." Hiroshi suggested. All Henry did to answer him was nod and then they went on their way. They got to the door quickly since they weren't to far from it to begin with. As Hiroshi checked the door, it was indeed unlocked. But this time the door actually opened. The room behind the door had a brown floor with no carpet. There was a chair and a small table off in the corner along with closet in another corner, and there was also a small white dresser taking up space in yet another corner. The only thing that had really caught the attention of Hiroshi and Henry was a door on the opposite side of the room.

"Let's check out the door." Henry said as he slowly walked across the room. As he approached the door, with Hiroshi close behind him, they heard the door open behind them. The two boys whipped their heads around to see that it wasn't a monster, but it was Takuro. The redheaded boy that Henry had seen with Hiroshi when he first arrived at the mansion.

"Hiroshi! Henry! You're all right!" He shouted in excitement. Hiroshi smiled that his friend was still okay, but Henry felt different. Henry could tell just by looking at him, that Takuro was a bully

"It seems that you are alright as well, Takuro." Hiroshi said as he walked over to his friend.

"Did you guys see it to? That monster?" Takuro said, almost shaking in fear just at the thought of the beast.

"Yeah, we saw it." Henry answered calmly.

"All the exits are blocked, we're trapped in here..." Takuro said as he began to get more and more sad.

"We know. We tried to open the front door, but we couldn't get it to open..." Hiroshi stated while holding his head up with his hand.

"Well, I'm going to go see if I can find Mika and Takeshi. So I'm going to check downstairs. Just be careful out there." Takuro said with great concern in his voice, Hiroshi nodded and Henry stayed silent. Almost immediately after Takuro left, Henry returned to work.

"Let's check the door now." Henry said in a plain voice as he turned back to the door. Hiroshi nodded and stood behind Henry ready to see what was behind the door. Then, Henry opened the door. Oddly, there was nothing. Literally, nothing. There was only a wall behind it, the wall of the room. Henry stared at it in confusion and began to fiddle with basically everything on the door. Hiroshi also looked at the door, but found nothing notable about it.

"Maybe we should head to the second floor and use that key we found." Hiroshi suggested as he went to leave the room.

"Fine, just give me a minute." Henry said as he pulled the screwdriver from his jacket. Soon, he began to work on unscrewing doorknob.

"Why are you taking that?" Hiroshi asked just before he had opened the door.

"If anything, we can shove it in the monster's eye. That's better then letting it chase us." Henry reasoned as he plucked the knob from the door, leaving the screws sitting on the floor. While Hiroshi didn't exactly think that it would be of any use, he decided to just let Henry keep the doorknob with him until the monster showed up again. The duo went back downstairs and the door to the left of the stairs that lead to the first floor. As Henry used the key on the door, they were met with the sound of a lock unlocking. Quickly, they both entered the room and and looked around. There was one bed, a chair in the corner, a small dresser, and some bookshelves far away from the bed. While Hiroshi and Henry knew they needed to search for something, they stopped when they noticed that someone was curled up into a ball behind the bed. Luckily, it was Mika.

"Mika! You're okay as well!" Hiroshi shouted as he ran over to his friend.

"Hiroshi! Have you seen the others?!" She asked, obviously worried about her friends.

"Yeah, we have. Takeshi was hiding in a closet, but he ran off somewhere. Then we just saw Takuro a minute ago. He said he was going to look for you and Takeshi downstairs." Hiroshi explained.

"You should come with us, Mika." Henry said calmly while he stood by the bed.

"NO!" Mika screamed covering her head with her arms, acting as if that would protect her from some king of force that only she could see. "I will not go out there while that monster is loose!" She really was scared. She looked like she was about to cry. Henry watched for a moment. He saw that if he was going to convince her to follow him, he would need to speak carefully. He would need to use logic, but also do a good job of comforting her.

"Mika, you would be safer if you came with us. If you stay by yourself, you would be vulnerable and the monster might come for you. You would be safer if you had somebody to be with." Henry said gently as he knelt down beside her. Mika looked at him, still sad and scared. "And besides, you would be with Hiroshi. He's one of your friends, right?" Mika stared at him for more, as if processing the words he just said. She was so scared of the monster she ignored what any sane person would have done in this situation. Then she smiled and wiped her tears away.

"You're right, Henry. I was acting so silly just now." She said while trying to recompose herself.

"So you'll come with us?" Hiroshi asked, helping Mika to her feet with a growing smile on his face.

"Yes, I'll go with you. Besides, why should I leave all the work to you two?" She teased with a silly smirk sprouting onto her face.

"Well, that's good. But before we leave this room, did you find anything important? Like, a key or something?" Henry questioned.

"Yeah, I think something was on top of the bookshelves. I would have gotten it, but I didn't want to have my back to the monster if it ever showed up..." Mika stated as she quickly became worried again. Henry put that aside, and went for the item she described. As he went to the bookshelves, he noticed that he couldn't reach the top. As Henry looked over the room once more, he found a chair, still sitting in the corner. With the help of the chair, Henry managed to find a small container of lighter fluid. What really caught his eye though, was that there was a small note attached to the small fluid container.

'Keep this close to you, and find the other component.' It read. The text was small, which was understandable due to the small size of the container and smaller size of the note itself. Henry studied it for a moment, trying to see if thee was anything special about the lighter fluid, but then he remembered.

'However, I do know that you must have at least one item or trinket from the tests. You will get to keep the item or items with you when you enter Equestria.'

Celestia's words echoed through his mind. 'This must be the item' Henry thought as he put it into his pocket. 'What bothers me though is that the item isn't really special. there has to be more to this...'

"So, what was it?" Mika asked as she slowly crept to the door, probably going to open it.

"Just some lighter fluid is all, nothing that special." Henry lied as he wrapped his hand around the container in his pocket. That was something funny, it was important. It was very important, and they didn't even know that it was more important then anything that had been found as of yet. Though Henry didn't understand how important it truly was, he did know that it was actually important. He had something, but it wasn't complete. He now needed to "find the other component" and finally claim the true treasure of this trial. 'I'm doing good. Just need to follow the instructions and everything will be okay.' He thought as he jumped from the chair. As he gripped the container of lighter fluid in his pocket, he sighed and moved on to follow his two companions.

Author's Note

I'm gonna spend a lot of time on the next chapter. I'm going to try and make it longer then what I usually do, so I hope that it turns out okay. Anyways, I'll just spend time working on that and "A Colt's Darkness".

Also, the whole bully thing will come into play later in the story.

Anyways, I will get back to working real soon, but even I am not entirely satisfied with this chapter. I will try to keep things as interesting as I can. So with that, I hope you enjoyed the chapter anyways.