Post by Zuyuri on Jul 23, 2016 5:27:22 GMT
“These experiments look so sad.”
Maria and Shadow were walking through a room filled with tubes and glass containment cells. Plants grew in various ones. The bubbling liquid contained bizarre creations in the masses. One in particular was an odd red and black creation with enlongated fangs, humanoid limbs, and big black expressionless eyes.
“What do you think they were going to do?” Shadow asked.
Maria shook her head. “Grandfather says these were all failed. But why did he make them in the first place? This research was supposed to be for the betterment of the people in the city,” she shuddered slightly, and this time it wasn’t from a brain murmur as she called it. He knew it was from looking at the bottled concoctions and how it scared her that her kind grandfather would go to such extreme lengths.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly, “Let’s get out of here. I didn’t think looking at this would scare you.”
But then the fish eyed creature lunged from the tank, breaking the glass as it clawed through. Maria screamed as it crawled towards them, its webbed hands glistening from the storage fluid. Shadow rushed in front to stand in front of her. “I’ll take care of this. You get your grandfather and tell him something’s wrong.” Footsteps were the only sound of him knowing Maria had done what he had told. He narrowed his eyes and flung his chaos spears forward, blasting at the beast…
Those blasts were continuing as Shadow’s memory relapsed him back to the real world. What was going on? Had the police come to break them out? Did that mean Molly and Rouge had sent a distress call? Then that meant the vampires didn’t get them and they had made it out okay. The blasts were loud enough to be heard, but not deafening, even for his sensitive hearing. What was going on? He stood, still stiff from the beating the vampires had given him for losing. They had dragged him from the racetrack roughly, even managed a few licks on him. Shadow would have fought back, but had been too exhausted to even move.
Sunshine…was she okay? Did the vampires harass her while he was out hopefully distracting them? The bags under her eyes wasn’t exactly an answer, but something else was new, too. Her hair had grown beyond the normal waist length, and was coiled like a yellow snake on her shackles. She took a breath and as she had done while they were stuck, started singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. She had a pleasant voice, but that wasn’t what Shadow was struck by. What he was struck by was the brightening of her hair. The golden strands became an almost neon yellow, the light flowing through the hair until the entire length was glowing. Amid the beauty, though, was something of danger. Smoke was pouring from her strands. Shadow tried to find a way to tell Sunshine that this was dangerous, she could combust on her hair…and the shackle buckled and rattled, falling off into useless, burnt hunks of hot metal. Sunshine’s face lit up in surprise and delight, a laugh escaping her throat. “It worked. It worked!” She was dancing around, completely free from her chains, her hair shrinking back to its usual length.
“What…worked?” Shadow asked.
“I didn’t think it would, but it did! It cancelled out the vampire’s grip! But, of course, sunlight is a vampire’s major weakness like garlic and wood and all that stuff in the movies, so it was a given it would weaken the…” She paused, looking at Shadow’s confused, quizzical face. “…I..um..I can harness the power of the sun. I was trying the hair thing on the wall,” she pointed to smoking holes where stone and cracks were before, “but I realized it wasn’t going to get the shackles off.”
With that little bit of information, everything fell into place. Why the vampires were so curious about her, why they had kidnapped her, and what the heck the explosions were. A vampire with immunity to sunlight would be a threat to everyone, so they were going to…Shadow didn’t want to think about their plans, but all of them weren’t good. Case being, Sunshine was a clue to that goal.
She crossed her arms, giving him a partially scolding look. “You know, you don’t have to act so tough. Faster than a vampire, huh?”
Shadow could have sworn Maria had scolded him in a similar way when taking on the weird fishy experiment from the past. He sighed. “You think I’m bluffing, but it’s true. They just rigged the race as an excuse to beat the crap out of me.”
Sunshine’s eyes shifted a bit. Yeah, a red and black anthropomorphic life form who could run faster than a vampire…it was a very tough thing to buy. Even the cops still sort of laughed at him behind his back. But Shadow’s drive to prove he could be just as good, just as strong, put them all in their place. “I’ll prove it” he muttered. He lifted one hand, and flung it forward. The chaos spear was shot forward, and this time, Shadow was able to harness enough within him to think of a place out of the spear’s range. He had been accidentally tazed once, he didn’t plan on it again. In a blink of an eye, he was at a corner near the window, where a high, hot sun was blazing through. The spear disintegrated as it hit the area where he was, where Sunshine took a step back with a yelp. She blinked once before finally saying, “Okay, I believe you.”
“I knew a girl like you once,” Shadow walked back over. “I almost thought you were her.”
“Is that who ‘Maria’ is?” Sunshine asked. After an awkward length of silence, she answered the unasked question, “you talk in your sleep.”
“It’s a long story,” Shadow muttered, stalking back to glare at the sun. There had to be a way out. Sunshine was free, but he wasn’t. “You’re not her.”
“Then how about you tell me about her,” Sunshine cried, “I told you about my life. It’s only fair you tell me a bit about yourself, Mr. Faster-than-a-vampire-hedgehog cop.”
Shadow stiffened. Her condescending tone was beginning to remind him of Korra, and any lecture from Korra was aggravating. What could he tell her that he did know? Even better, how could he even know what he was saying was legitimately true? For all he knew, the memories of her could be false, just planted in there to wipe out more trauma. But the image of her death, her falling from a gunshot wound, reaching out to him, murmuring about promising her something…that was too real.
“On one condition, Sunshine,” he finally answered, “you use your magic hair or whatever to try and get me out.”
Sunshine made a slight gasping sound. “You….you know my nickname?”
“Wait, so…I wasn’t the first? I didn’t know your name, so I gave you one because you sing the same diddy over and over. There are other songs about sunshine, you know.” Now Shadow was the one acting condescending, turning to send his scowl in her direction.
Sunshine crossed her arms with a pout, “It’s Rachel Seddon. And I sing it because my mom always sang it to me. It’s like a security blanket. But…well…I don’t have a British accent like my mom.” She shook her head after a brief second, “Anyways, start talking.”
Despite himself, Shadow was talking. He was telling her everything he remembered. How Maria was a little girl who was sick and couldn’t go outside. How she had to stay in her grandfather’s lab, surrounded by scary experiments that went sour. How he often protected her when she was scared. And how, more importantly, she was killed. Something about Sunshine…it didn’t matter if her name was Rachel, he still would call her Sunshine…made him trust her. It wasn’t just the resemblance to Maria, but her large, green eyes reflected a sense of innocence and a yearning to learn the truth. It didn’t matter how crazy that truth was because, in her own way, she was in just as unusual a predicament. She could harness the power of the sun and use it to disable vampire wards. She never once interrupted him, only nodded and furrowed her brow at the tragedy of his sadness. When he finished his story, she sniffed with her eyes watering.
“Wow…” she breathed, “and you don’t remember anything except her…I wouldn’t wish amnesia on my worst enemy. Not that I have one, I seem to make friends with everyone I meet.”
Shadow threw out a hand, “Why would anyone not like you? You’re…bubbly.” Was calling her ‘sunny’ too clichéd? She just chuckled at his half-assed compliment, or what he saw half-assed.
“You know,” she said, “I think Maria would be proud of you. Standing up to a vampire for a stranger’s sake, protecting the city from...weird crimes. All I do is bake cookies.”
“I’m sure you bake more than that.”
“You’re right. But I won’t bore you with the perfect way to make French bread. Besides,” she wrung her hand through a tress, and in a small, yellow glow, it was lengthening to the rope-like bond it was. “We have a deal. Let’s see if we can break you out of the weird vampire force field.”
Sunshine tightened the ends of her hair, which Shadow noticed had gotten longer than it had been in the past. It was now not just down to her waist, but had been able to extend the length of his invisible barrier. She looked at him wearily, “This…this may not work, but…I want to see if it does.” Once again, she started singing, her hair began to glow, the floor and hair began to smoke…and the floor exploded.
By exploded, an unexpected blast from where her hair had been wrapped around went up. The glow died down and her hair began shrinking as small explosions went off throughout the room, leaving behind bits of rock and holes. Dirt and dust floated in the room, and the yellow glow was gone. Shadow backed off, trying to get a good view. As it cleared, Sunshine’s hair was back to waist length and no longer bright yellow. Her green eyes were widened, and a trace of a smile was emerging He walked forward, expecting to hit the invisible wall. No. He was walking in a straight line through the room. She let out a giggle, which turned into a crazily happy laugh. “It worked!”
“We almost took out the tower, but yes,” Shadow agreed. He wasn’t bouncing around and celebrating like Sunshine was, it just wasn’t his style. But he was doing something he rarely ever did anymore.
He was smiling.
This hyperactive blonde girl with the power of the sun was making him smile. Normally a smirk at solving a case or finding something from a fellow cop funny was the closest people got to it. But no, the corners of his mouth were curved up. He was full of warmth, a feeling he often made fun of or took for granted. He fired a chaos spear at the door, which splintered into bits, leading to a winding stairwell that could have been older than their tow ages combined.
‘Now,” he half-joked “how about we get my gun before the suckers show up.”
Maria and Shadow were walking through a room filled with tubes and glass containment cells. Plants grew in various ones. The bubbling liquid contained bizarre creations in the masses. One in particular was an odd red and black creation with enlongated fangs, humanoid limbs, and big black expressionless eyes.
“What do you think they were going to do?” Shadow asked.
Maria shook her head. “Grandfather says these were all failed. But why did he make them in the first place? This research was supposed to be for the betterment of the people in the city,” she shuddered slightly, and this time it wasn’t from a brain murmur as she called it. He knew it was from looking at the bottled concoctions and how it scared her that her kind grandfather would go to such extreme lengths.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly, “Let’s get out of here. I didn’t think looking at this would scare you.”
But then the fish eyed creature lunged from the tank, breaking the glass as it clawed through. Maria screamed as it crawled towards them, its webbed hands glistening from the storage fluid. Shadow rushed in front to stand in front of her. “I’ll take care of this. You get your grandfather and tell him something’s wrong.” Footsteps were the only sound of him knowing Maria had done what he had told. He narrowed his eyes and flung his chaos spears forward, blasting at the beast…
Those blasts were continuing as Shadow’s memory relapsed him back to the real world. What was going on? Had the police come to break them out? Did that mean Molly and Rouge had sent a distress call? Then that meant the vampires didn’t get them and they had made it out okay. The blasts were loud enough to be heard, but not deafening, even for his sensitive hearing. What was going on? He stood, still stiff from the beating the vampires had given him for losing. They had dragged him from the racetrack roughly, even managed a few licks on him. Shadow would have fought back, but had been too exhausted to even move.
Sunshine…was she okay? Did the vampires harass her while he was out hopefully distracting them? The bags under her eyes wasn’t exactly an answer, but something else was new, too. Her hair had grown beyond the normal waist length, and was coiled like a yellow snake on her shackles. She took a breath and as she had done while they were stuck, started singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. She had a pleasant voice, but that wasn’t what Shadow was struck by. What he was struck by was the brightening of her hair. The golden strands became an almost neon yellow, the light flowing through the hair until the entire length was glowing. Amid the beauty, though, was something of danger. Smoke was pouring from her strands. Shadow tried to find a way to tell Sunshine that this was dangerous, she could combust on her hair…and the shackle buckled and rattled, falling off into useless, burnt hunks of hot metal. Sunshine’s face lit up in surprise and delight, a laugh escaping her throat. “It worked. It worked!” She was dancing around, completely free from her chains, her hair shrinking back to its usual length.
“What…worked?” Shadow asked.
“I didn’t think it would, but it did! It cancelled out the vampire’s grip! But, of course, sunlight is a vampire’s major weakness like garlic and wood and all that stuff in the movies, so it was a given it would weaken the…” She paused, looking at Shadow’s confused, quizzical face. “…I..um..I can harness the power of the sun. I was trying the hair thing on the wall,” she pointed to smoking holes where stone and cracks were before, “but I realized it wasn’t going to get the shackles off.”
With that little bit of information, everything fell into place. Why the vampires were so curious about her, why they had kidnapped her, and what the heck the explosions were. A vampire with immunity to sunlight would be a threat to everyone, so they were going to…Shadow didn’t want to think about their plans, but all of them weren’t good. Case being, Sunshine was a clue to that goal.
She crossed her arms, giving him a partially scolding look. “You know, you don’t have to act so tough. Faster than a vampire, huh?”
Shadow could have sworn Maria had scolded him in a similar way when taking on the weird fishy experiment from the past. He sighed. “You think I’m bluffing, but it’s true. They just rigged the race as an excuse to beat the crap out of me.”
Sunshine’s eyes shifted a bit. Yeah, a red and black anthropomorphic life form who could run faster than a vampire…it was a very tough thing to buy. Even the cops still sort of laughed at him behind his back. But Shadow’s drive to prove he could be just as good, just as strong, put them all in their place. “I’ll prove it” he muttered. He lifted one hand, and flung it forward. The chaos spear was shot forward, and this time, Shadow was able to harness enough within him to think of a place out of the spear’s range. He had been accidentally tazed once, he didn’t plan on it again. In a blink of an eye, he was at a corner near the window, where a high, hot sun was blazing through. The spear disintegrated as it hit the area where he was, where Sunshine took a step back with a yelp. She blinked once before finally saying, “Okay, I believe you.”
“I knew a girl like you once,” Shadow walked back over. “I almost thought you were her.”
“Is that who ‘Maria’ is?” Sunshine asked. After an awkward length of silence, she answered the unasked question, “you talk in your sleep.”
“It’s a long story,” Shadow muttered, stalking back to glare at the sun. There had to be a way out. Sunshine was free, but he wasn’t. “You’re not her.”
“Then how about you tell me about her,” Sunshine cried, “I told you about my life. It’s only fair you tell me a bit about yourself, Mr. Faster-than-a-vampire-hedgehog cop.”
Shadow stiffened. Her condescending tone was beginning to remind him of Korra, and any lecture from Korra was aggravating. What could he tell her that he did know? Even better, how could he even know what he was saying was legitimately true? For all he knew, the memories of her could be false, just planted in there to wipe out more trauma. But the image of her death, her falling from a gunshot wound, reaching out to him, murmuring about promising her something…that was too real.
“On one condition, Sunshine,” he finally answered, “you use your magic hair or whatever to try and get me out.”
Sunshine made a slight gasping sound. “You….you know my nickname?”
“Wait, so…I wasn’t the first? I didn’t know your name, so I gave you one because you sing the same diddy over and over. There are other songs about sunshine, you know.” Now Shadow was the one acting condescending, turning to send his scowl in her direction.
Sunshine crossed her arms with a pout, “It’s Rachel Seddon. And I sing it because my mom always sang it to me. It’s like a security blanket. But…well…I don’t have a British accent like my mom.” She shook her head after a brief second, “Anyways, start talking.”
Despite himself, Shadow was talking. He was telling her everything he remembered. How Maria was a little girl who was sick and couldn’t go outside. How she had to stay in her grandfather’s lab, surrounded by scary experiments that went sour. How he often protected her when she was scared. And how, more importantly, she was killed. Something about Sunshine…it didn’t matter if her name was Rachel, he still would call her Sunshine…made him trust her. It wasn’t just the resemblance to Maria, but her large, green eyes reflected a sense of innocence and a yearning to learn the truth. It didn’t matter how crazy that truth was because, in her own way, she was in just as unusual a predicament. She could harness the power of the sun and use it to disable vampire wards. She never once interrupted him, only nodded and furrowed her brow at the tragedy of his sadness. When he finished his story, she sniffed with her eyes watering.
“Wow…” she breathed, “and you don’t remember anything except her…I wouldn’t wish amnesia on my worst enemy. Not that I have one, I seem to make friends with everyone I meet.”
Shadow threw out a hand, “Why would anyone not like you? You’re…bubbly.” Was calling her ‘sunny’ too clichéd? She just chuckled at his half-assed compliment, or what he saw half-assed.
“You know,” she said, “I think Maria would be proud of you. Standing up to a vampire for a stranger’s sake, protecting the city from...weird crimes. All I do is bake cookies.”
“I’m sure you bake more than that.”
“You’re right. But I won’t bore you with the perfect way to make French bread. Besides,” she wrung her hand through a tress, and in a small, yellow glow, it was lengthening to the rope-like bond it was. “We have a deal. Let’s see if we can break you out of the weird vampire force field.”
Sunshine tightened the ends of her hair, which Shadow noticed had gotten longer than it had been in the past. It was now not just down to her waist, but had been able to extend the length of his invisible barrier. She looked at him wearily, “This…this may not work, but…I want to see if it does.” Once again, she started singing, her hair began to glow, the floor and hair began to smoke…and the floor exploded.
By exploded, an unexpected blast from where her hair had been wrapped around went up. The glow died down and her hair began shrinking as small explosions went off throughout the room, leaving behind bits of rock and holes. Dirt and dust floated in the room, and the yellow glow was gone. Shadow backed off, trying to get a good view. As it cleared, Sunshine’s hair was back to waist length and no longer bright yellow. Her green eyes were widened, and a trace of a smile was emerging He walked forward, expecting to hit the invisible wall. No. He was walking in a straight line through the room. She let out a giggle, which turned into a crazily happy laugh. “It worked!”
“We almost took out the tower, but yes,” Shadow agreed. He wasn’t bouncing around and celebrating like Sunshine was, it just wasn’t his style. But he was doing something he rarely ever did anymore.
He was smiling.
This hyperactive blonde girl with the power of the sun was making him smile. Normally a smirk at solving a case or finding something from a fellow cop funny was the closest people got to it. But no, the corners of his mouth were curved up. He was full of warmth, a feeling he often made fun of or took for granted. He fired a chaos spear at the door, which splintered into bits, leading to a winding stairwell that could have been older than their tow ages combined.
‘Now,” he half-joked “how about we get my gun before the suckers show up.”