Tails Of The Phoenix : Sunset Override

Chapter 2 : Nickel or a Penny

I gasped for air, breathing heavily whilst breaking a sweat. It was warm and cosy, I lay wrapped beneath an unfamiliar brown patterned blanket with cool zigzags and beige and orange colours reminiscent of a kind of poncho.

I must have fallen asleep on this bed and not just any bed, I looked around to confirm it and sure enough beside me was a desk with a mini fridge beneath it on my left and to the right a table with an old desktop with the screen saver for windows Vista keeping a screen on hold. And there in the desk's lamplight was a note book. Above me lay a few Altaria swimming in a sea of Azure blue sky among countless swirls of white. Quite a fitting wallpaper, or rather roof paper? There was a brown leather couch in the centre of the room in front of a TV with a Switch docked and hooked up to it, (Buy a Switch if you can, they are awesome) red cupboards and book shelves lining the walls of the room on wooden frames with cables and clothes hanging out of some of the cupboards, chock full of hats, suits, jackets and all sorts of other equipment. I then checked under the covers to find not a single scratch on me.

I was right. It was my room. All that magic star-falling-alley stuff had just been a nightmare and now here I was, alive, awake and well. I got up in my blue sports pyjamas and grabbed my red gown, tightening the cotton strap around my waist while stretching and yawning atop my heated carpet.

I sluggishly walked over to my computer, sitting down on my linen chair so I could shut it down and go back to sleep. I moved the cursor and the screen went back to normal, right in the middle of writing a new chapter for Zero dungeon.

"Ah, Zero dungeon?" I grimaced at the name, pondering if all of it had even been a good idea to begin with but I shrugged it off as usual, closing the tab for Wattpad without saving. "Now might be a good time..." I sat back in my chair and leaned back pondering how to break it to them, "I'm sure they'd understand wouldn't they? I mean... There's not alot of them and.... Well, I need to move on.... I mostly didn't want to do it for their sake But...." I gave in after a few minutes, reaching forward to the mouse again and guiding it to the 'shut down' icon but hesitated. I hadn't seen my new email, I moved to the notification and clicked away going through the deserted inbox with one email there.

The stamp had a postbox with two bells on it attached by a red ribbon. The title read :
Sunset Override
Dear Fey

We are happy to see you are well assuming you are now reading this message, after much debating we had decided to ask you for your assistance, further details and a thorough explanation will be provided aboard the Starset express after all your poké- YOU have been nursed back to full health. Please enjoy our complementary cookies n' cocoa, sponsored by Fernando's café!

~Sunset Override
P.S. sorry we forgot to say from Sunset Override last time, my apologies!
:3

I scratched my head in confusion and read it again, it was the same letter from my dream. Except this time it was digital with a few changes, some typos and came with non-existent free cookie-

".... Nah. That's not true, that's impossibru."

I rolled over my bed in a hurry, flinging open the mini fridge to find it stored full of slabs of dark chocolate. My heart melted on the spot making a great addition to the hot chocolate I'd make later, I closed it just incase and stared in awe at my bedside table and sure enough there were about 50 or so chocolate chip cookies in a plastic wrapped gift basket with a bell on the handle tied by a black and red ribbon which I immediately tore to shreds with a flurry of slashes from my talons. (Not actual talons. Let's just say I really wanted those cookies)

There was a knock on the door a few minutes later as I got back into bed after shutting down. "It's not locked mom!"

The door handle turned and I almost choked on my chocolate chip cookie. That wasn't my mom.

"Oh you got my cookies? Hope you like them, I made them myself." She closed the door gently, she then hopped on my couch and lay there, stretching and spanning the length of the couch. Tall as she was, in the same way she was just as suspicious. She wore a brown cosy coat with tufts of brown cotton around the collar.

"What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost." She smiled kindly, her eyes a bit squint for some reason.

"Who are you and how did you get in my house!?" In my panic I stupidly threw a cookie at her shuriken style and she caught it with two fingers, then munched it while sitting up and giggling a bit.

"You aren't still sick are you?" Her head tilted to the side as she leaned on the side of the couch and looked at me with a concerned look.

"Wh- Why are you here you- you thief!?" She suddenly stood up and marched over to my biscuit basket.

"Well~ if you say a thief then that means there's something I'm here to steal, isn't that right?" She towered over my bed with a confident smirk and a menacing gleam in her eyes as she reached to snatch my defenceless cookies.

I couldn't stop myself from trying to chop her hand out of the air but instead I scratched her, leaving a gash across her arm. "Stay back you fiend!"

She held the gash on her arm and pouted. "I was just teasing you, I thought you were playing around when you said that you didn't recognise me!" I kinda felt bad for a second and offered her a cookie in confusion.

"Sorry about that? Honestly I don't even know anymore, Who are you?" She graciously accepted my cookie, abandoning her wounded arm as she ate the cookie.

There was a loud wrapping on the door. "Penny! Leave the poor child alone!" It was followed by another voice, though this time it was the same voice as the thief before me. "This is the F.B.I. open up!"

'Penny' backed away from the cookies, hands raised while she stared at the door wide-eyed. "I DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO THE COOKIES I SWEAR!" I stared at the cookies and noticed they were a bit darker than usual, my vision began to swim as I stared back at 'Penny'.

"'Penny?', wait P-Penelope!? But that's not...." Everything dimmed for a second as my whole world turned asunder, flipping to the side as I nearly fell sideways, the ground began to shake and gravity loosened quite a bit.

The door flew off its hinges as 2 silhouettes barrelled through the open door. I grabbed onto Penelope's arm as we fell, my mind couldn't comprehend everything that was going on with the lights off.

The last thing I heard was broken glass as I felt a powerful gust of wind buffet my room with the loud sound of a whistle tearing through the air while glass shattered and scattered everywhere. Then the lights came on and I found myself holding onto Penelope again except we were halfway across the room with my furniture and things everywhere.

"Wha-what the heck just happened!?" She turned back to me and patted my head while grinning, her black hair tinted red on the ends almost glowing in the light, her left eye a fiery orange while the other, a brilliant amber colour and her grey pyjamas standing out amongst the crowd of people lying on the ground. One of them appeared to be Penelope in her normal clothes with her normal hair colour, lying on the ground amongst shattered glass-.

"Crud, why did this have to happen to me!?" I tried to break from her clutches but she wouldn't let go. There was no gash on her arm, it was perfectly fine.

"You're the one who Nyx'ed it." The half eaten cookie in my hand crumbled to ashes and I fell to my knees choking and coughing out clouds of smoke. Tears welled up in my eyes as the unbearable pain seared my lungs, every bone in my body felt like it was being pressed against an iron as hot as the sun as she merely laughed and bent down to look me in the eye.

"Please be a dear and send Ruuto and Ferrah my regards~" Her hand shot straight through my chest as my vision clouded over, my eyes ablaze with rage and hatred as I fought to stay awake. My screams came out in husky rasps of smoke as I fell sideways. My hands dropping to the ground motionless. I struggled against the dying light as the darkness swooped in like the ravenous crows of the night, she walked to the door, turning off the lights then walked off into the cold and unforgiving night.

"It's time for all your stories, all your dreams, your very heart and soul...... to go nighty night. You said it yourself. 'After every summer... comes Fall.'" her voice echoed down the corridor as everything pitched to the left and I was ripped out the window into a sea of clouds...