Shadows of the Past
written by Kaze the Chao
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Timeline: A few months after the events in Broken Robots and Evil Chao, late summer/early fall-
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Prologue
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In a dimly lit room, two small chao sat on a cushion in front of a large, square window. They were both gazing at the midnight sky, ablaze with stars of all different kinds of colors, most of which they'd never seen before. The first chao, who had sky blue eyes and wore a blue bandana, turned to her sibling and tapped him on the side of his head, much to his annoyance.
"Kumo, Kumo, look! The sky's pretty tonight, isn't it? There's more of them out here than what we've seen before."
"I guess," answered the other chao, who had light green eyes and wore a dark red scarf, attempting to bat her away. "Too bad we're on the wrong side of the glass."
"Wrong side of the glass?" The small ball floating over his sister's head formed a question mark, reflecting her confusion.
"Outside, Kaze, outside," Kumo groaned. "We're not outside."
"Oh." Kaze's gaze returned to the starry night sky. "I wonder what it's like… our world."
"Well, if it's anything like what's in the books--?"
"No, I mean to really be out there, Kumo. Instead of being cooped up in here all the time. I don't wanna see pictures; I wanna see the real thing!"
"That's impossible for us. We don't know where our kind is out there. Remember, Doctor Benedict said that colonies are always hidden from humans."
"So? What's that got to do with anything?" Kaze demanded, rounding on him. "We can find them when we leave."
Kumo opened his mouth to argue, but decided against it. Kaze had always been an optimist; once she set her mind to something, there was no stopping her.
Just then, the light suddenly clicked on, illuminating the room and nearly blinding the two chao.
"It's midnight, you two. Time for you to go back."
As their sight adjusted to the bright light, the two chao saw a bespectacled man wearing a lab coat, scratching his black hair with one hand as his blue eyes peered down at them. Before Kumo could react, Kaze launched herself at the man with a wide grin on her face. "Doctor!!"
"Glad to see me, eh?" the man asked, effortlessly lifting chao off him and setting her back down. "Now, like I said, it's time to go back."
"No FAIR!" Kaze protested. "I still wanna look at the stars!"
"I think two hours is enough time for stargazing, Kaze," Kumo told his sister, crossing his arms. "You need to learn that you always can't get your way. The world doesn't work like that. Isn't that what you've told us, Doctor Thadeus Benedict?"
"Well, yes," Benedict answered him, "but there are exceptions to that, Kumo. Keep that in mind. Now, shall we get going?" He spoke the last sentence with an air of finality, so the two siblings climbed onto the human's shoulders as he walked out of the room, turning off the light and closing the door behind them.
Kumo paid no attention to Kaze's excited chattering during the walk down the hall. His mind was on other things. All his life, he and his sister knew only the sterile white walls, parts of robots and strange machines, boring rooms full of test tubes and chemicals, and their own uncomfortable enclosure in the laboratory research complex in which they were born, only seeing the outside world through glass. In the form of stars scattered across the night sky. Anything else they've seen was only through pictures in books or in their own dreams.
It was only when they'd arrived and walked inside the large metal cage covered with several layers of small blankets that was their enclosure that the question became too much for him to keep within, and he had to ask.
"Doctor!" he called out after Benedict after he told them goodnight. "Benedict, I have a question!"
"Huh? Is there something on your mind, Kumo?"
Kumo gulped. It was now or never. "Benedict, do you… do you think Kaze and I will be able to leave this place one day? You know, get out of here and see the world?"
Kumo must have looked almost desperate, for Benedict stared at him, eyes wide in surprise. A moment later, he suddenly turned his back to the chao. "I… I don't know," he said, his voice shaking. "Besides, it's not important right now. There's still a lot of work to do. Good night."
"Wait, wait!" Kumo called after him, but the human completely ignored him and left. Angrily, Kumo punched at the bars and stamped his foot. As he half-heartedly flopped on his own pile of cloth, his gaze focused on Kaze, who looked at him worriedly. "Kumo…"
"He didn't even answer me," Kumo said bitterly, burying his face in his nubby hands. "I ask the question and he doesn't answer me. I don't understand…"
"I don't understand…"
"I don't understand this at all…"
Kumo's eyes opened. Everything around him seemed pitch-black. At first, he didn't know where he was.
As lightning struck outside, he remembered. He was sleeping on the front seat inside a broken down, abandoned car in the middle of a deserted street. He had left his usual "hideout," an abandoned house on the other side of town, with two children who insisted they come with him to search for new parts to "upgrade" the Obliterator.
The chao looked into the back seat; a boy with dirty blonde hair which covered his eyes and small pointed ears wearing a dirty oversized shirt and jeans with filthy sneakers was sound asleep next to what seemed to be a lavender anthromorphic hedgehog girl with a cat tail wearing a tattered gray hoodie and green skirt with pink socks and black sandals.
Kumo thought back to when he first met them, along with about four others, including the dog-eared boy who left them some time ago. They were orphans with nowhere to go, outcasts from society because they were different. At first, he wanted nothing to do with them; he spent all of his time alone and wanted to keep it that way. But they insisted on following him, calling him their "friend" and "leader," so reluctantly, he stayed. Now, he relied on them as they relied on him. Perhaps it was because of them he was sort of returning to how he used to be… before that horrible day.
The chao shuddered. He still had terrible nightmares whenever he thought about it. Occasionally he'd lashed out at the kids when he'd been in one of his "moods," and deep down, he felt sorry for it. It was still very hard for him to express that without swinging his scythe threateningly at them.
He knew they understood he'd been through such a terrible ordeal. He told them very little about it, as it would bring back those old scars. Not the ones that someone would get if they skinned their knee, but ones on the inside. Even after all this time, they still hadn't gone away… it was like his creator had told him and his sister long ago…
Kumo curled up in the front seat, listening to the rain pattering outside, thinking about that dream, that old memory, and a thought suddenly came to him. The reason his question went unanswered such a long time ago.
"Back then… he didn't think we'd get out of that place," he murmured to himself. "Until that damned human Marcoh did this to me…" The dark chao looked at his reflection in the broken rearview mirror. "…He didn't think we would leave there…"
Kumo sat up again, and looked gazed through the window into the rain outside. "Well, we made it," he concluded. "And we've ended up in another world, to boot. What do you think of us now, Thadeus Benedict?"
--Note: This MoFic is sort of a work in progress. Feedback is appreciated, as I intend on making this one better than the first. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy reading. ^-^ --
