Night 52: Sun Room

[composers_proxy]

[from here]

Last time he'd been in the Sun Room at night, there'd been some crazy guy with a gun and Neku really wasn't looking to have another bullet in him, so he was cautious as he pushed the door open, his flashlight darting from place to place.  He might not have all his old psychs on him, but he still had a few of Mr. H's pins and those would

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[composers_proxy]

All plans for heading to the basement were put on hold once the shadows decided to stop acting like good little shadows and started trying to stare him down like this was some kinda turf war. Sora said he'd seen them before; those were the things from his world he'd mentioned, right?

Well... the Noise weren't exactly normal, but Sora hadn't shrugged it off when he'd tried to explain and even experienced that, so if Sora said he knew what he was talking about, Neku could trust him at his word too. But if this was supposed to be his own darkness... he had to agree with Soma. Just how did he fight something like that?

"Our own darkness, huh," he repeated under his breath, glaring right back at the annoyed shadow of himself.

As if to prove Sora's point, the shadow smirked back at him, dressed up in his JotM brand clothes, all the usual pins, but oddly enough, a pair of reaper-like wings unfolded at the shadow's back. What. Me? A Reaper? You've got to be kidding. That's not me-

"Like a bolt from the blue," the shadow taunted, eyes lighting with a familiar red tinge, though there was no sign of the famous red pins that'd caused that change before.

"Shut it," Neku growled back, ignoring just how weird it was that his own shadow was talking, aloud no less, back to him. Did he really sound like that? There was no way he'd use the same lame taglines as the Reapers.

"I thought you were sick of this game," the shadow continued with a shrug, "just thought I'd see if you were interested in ending it."

[scintillatingly]

While Sora would have liked to answer Soma's questions in all the detail that they deserved (the Heartless were difficult to explain, much less understand), there clearly wasn't the time for that. He didn't know if fighting back would be an option now, but he was still prepared for it. He'd fought his Anti-Form and won before, so he could do it again!

Still, a small part of him knew that sometimes things went wrong, and he returned to that state himself. When his drive mode failed -- it was rare, but it happened -- he'd go berserk and claw at anything in his path. Donald and Goofy had told him what he looked like then, but he didn't like to think about it.

What shocked him was when Neku's shadow -- which had strange wings attached to it -- started to speak. Heartless weren't able to talk, usually; the only one he could think of that could was Xehanort's Heartless. So what was going on here?

Before he could try to defend Neku or help him, though, his own shadow had started to talk as well. "Haven't you ever wondered where I came from?"

Sora spun toward it, still trying to will the Keyblade to come back, and yet there was nothing. He was totally helpless against this thing, even if all it seemed to be interested in doing at the moment was taunting him.

"You could say it's a result of that time when you were a Heartless for a while, but I was around even before then. Because your heart... it's not completely pure, is it?" Even though the figure was almost completely black, Sora could see a shining in its yellow eyes that made him almost certain that it was smirking at him.

"I never said I was!" he yelled back, as pointless as he knew this all was. It was just supposed to distract them, right? But it wasn't like he could just ignore the words being tossed at him, either.

[madeinthehrl]

[Sorry about the wait! I'm up for backthreading if you are.]

Soma could only look helplessly from one shadow to other. The words that were coming out of their mouths--she didn't entirely understand any of them, but the effect on their casters was obvious. And it seemed there was nothing she could do about any of it.

Her jaw tightened and her grip on the gun tightened. If there was one thing she hated, it was feeling useless. And as she seemed to be the only one unaffected by whatever was causing this, there wasn't much she could do but stand there and wait. The shadows didn't seem to be doing anything but taunting Sora and Neku, and Soma--well, she didn't do well with emotions. She never had. It hadn't been in the training.

"Leave them alone," she said at last. Almost immediately, she berated herself for how stupid it sounded. But they were shadows--you couldn't hurt shadows. So what else was there to do?