Shadows on the Sea

If This is Sleep, Then a Blanket on Cold Ground Makes a Bed!

He places the pencil on the paper, tilting the lead against the white surface until it makes a thick, dark line. He lifts the pencil, places it down. Another line. Two short streaks, then a thin connecting piece like a half-rectangle. A shadow to indicate solidity. His lips curve in a thin smile. Drawing is the one thing he's good at. Well, besides planning.

victim leans back and examined his sketch. A cursor. His drive and focus.

The cursor will pay soon enough.

He smiles.

-

Dark dropped from the tree onto Chosen, waking her up with a jolt, and he yelled, "BREAKFAST IS READY!" into her ear, before bouncing off to jump onto Second with an "AHA!" that must've woken forest animals for miles around.

Chosen rolled over and offhandedly targeted him with a fireball which Dark adroitly ducked.

Victim threw something at Dark and shooed him off of Second, before crouching down beside the fire again, a grim look on his face.

"What's wrong?" Chosen asked, him, sitting up alertly. She hated sleeping. It never made her feel better, and she always missed something important. As well as being unable to defend herself. She slept as little as possible, even at night.

Victim gave her a mildly concerned look before answering her question. "Code's put up posters. Dark's wanted now for some reason."

"What?!" Chosen shot up from her blanket and rose to her full height. "HE WHAT??"

"I would call victim an idiot, except that he knows exactly what he's doing," Vic remarked dryly, swirling the fire with a long stick and removing a large pot of something that looked like tea from over it.

He looked over at Dark, addressing him directly. "If you're wanted, then he won't have to go looking for you; you'll just get turned in like a sack of- um, fire," he amended, noticing Chosen and Dark's matching looks of deep rage. "And if you're on the run, then you can't get supplies as easily."

Dark growled deep in his throat. "I swear, I will rip his code apart strand by strand and-"

"-And I will burn it and stuff it down his screaming throat," Chosen finished.

Victim gave both of them a worried look. "I'm... suddenly seeing the family resemblance."

Dark's fangs flashed in a grin.

Second rolled over and glared at all of them crossly. "Mmmm," he complained.

"Yes, very eloquent," Chosen told him while Dark muffled his chuckling. "Now get your butt over here before Dark eats all the food."

"Food!" Second squeaked, emerging all the way out of his blanket cocoon and tumbling over to the fire.

Victim slapped his hand away from the tea. "Hold your animations, for Alan's sake!"

Dark and Chosen both winced, noticed each other wincing, and scowled at each other.

Victim tipped his head and gave them that worried look again.

"First things first," he said, eyeing Chosen. "Me and Dark are working on something that might help, but it's in the city, so we'll have to get there first." He paused, then spoke abruptly. "As me and Second can't fly- well, I can't when I'm not at full energy, and Second can't unless his friends die in front of him, apparently- we'll have to be carried."

"Dibs on Second!" Dark yelled, skittering full speed at the orange hollowhead and knocking him to the ground.

Chosen crossed her arms. "Fine then. I'll take Vic." She glared at Victim. "Be good, you."

Victim held up his hands in mock surrender. "Yes ma'am no ma'am whatever you say ma'am."

She eyed him and began packing up her blankets. This would be a long day.

Four hours later, Chosen dumped Vic unceremoniously onto the top of a concrete building slightly taller than the skyscrapers around it.

Dark alighted gently beside her and reached up to disentangle Second's arms from his shoulders, then placed his younger brother carefully on the edge of the roof, steadying him with one arm while guiding him onto the flat plain of the skyscraper's top with the other.

Victim raised an eyebrow at Chosen. "You didn't have to drop me."

Chosen worked her arms to get the kinks out. "You wriggled for the first half hour of the flight."

"That was a while ago, though!"

"Chosen never forgets a grudge," Dark told him, and then immediately quailed under Chosen's forbidding glare. "Sorry," he said meekly. Chosen narrowed her eyes at him and turned her attention back to the rooftop itself.

It was mostly flat, with a few vents popping through the hard surface like thick metal branches, a grim-faced concrete wall surrounding a squat iron water tank which looked like it needed a scrubbing brush and a good fixer-upper, and a single melancholy-looking roof access with a padlocked handle.

Chosen harrumphed. She turned to Dark with an exasperated look, and he was quick to defend himself. "Look, did you expect me to build a palace? A skyscraper all to myself, or something?"

"Yes," she told him. "I expected that you would flaunt your oh-so-amazing brain to the IP addresses and back."

"Well, too bad," he responded. "I want to lie low, and this is precisely how to do it. Pick the roof of a barely-used building, and expand downwards."

Chosen sighed. "Come on, Second."

The four hollowheads walked towards the roof access, Second still chattering on to Victim about s t u f f and all of the many things he always did over the holidays. Chosen couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so... conflicted. As if someone had taken all of the less-known emotions, thrown them inside her, and given the pot a stir. She felt like murdering Dark again, then hugging him, then asking him what in the web he'd been thinking to make her worry like that, and then shoving him off a cliff. Probably with a ViraBot tied to his ankles.

Anyway.

Point was, she didn't remember when she felt this mixed up-

Oh, hang on, she did, actually.

It was right after Dark had died.

Oh yeah...

Victim placed his hand on the padlock and the door swung inward, hinges screeching out a protest. Chosen studied the darkness, trying to make out the interior of the dusty black stairwell.

Dark was already pushing past her, eyes flitting around the walls as if he were looking for something. He frowned and muttered something under his breath, but continued down the stairs.

Chosen followed him warily into the darkness, running her fingers along the concrete walls.

Light bulbs flashed into existence above her head and she jumped slightly.

They were at the bottom of a concrete stair, looking down into a long, high-roofed room held up by support beams. Stone floor, blueprinted walls- this was truly Dark's atmosphere.

Dark spread his arms. "This is my lab."

-

Hi!

Tabby here! :3

I'm running on five and a half hours of sleep right now.

What's even more amazing is that I haven't crashed yet.

Yay