Who's That girl in the corner|| Fools

DON'T BE AFRAID

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Buster watched as the dogs parted down the middle and betwen them stepped a shadowy visage of William, his old friend.  He smirked at Buster.  Sledgehammer in hand.  Smoke reathed off of his shoulders seeming to simmer and swim there.  The outline of his form was dancing naked shadow moving with the wind.  A gentle breeze blew at William's dark hair.  The smirk unnerved him.  He only had to look into his eyes to know that wasn't William, let alone the fact that he seemed all wrong.

  Buster's eyes moved to the dogs who started biting at his tires.  The back one went flat.  Then the front.  The car lowered and settled on deflated tires that basically popped like a cork.  "Fuuuuck me.." Buster moaned.  His eyes moved back up to William's face.  His eyes went dark for a moment.  His lips were a thin line on his face, He didn't blink.  He didn't take his eyes off the man.   But behind him several corpses pushed theirselve's to their feet.  Gunshots rang out. 

Each bullet that hit the dogs disappeared in a puff of smoke.  Swallowed by the shadows that engulfed them.  One of the men shot a paralitic dart at William.  It didn't phase him.  He didn't even turn to face them.  They ran and threw themselves on William who shook them off.  Buster wasn't controlling them.  The things that he animated came alive to protect him, fight for him.  It was part of his charm.  

When Shawn pulled up a few moments later everything had changed.  The dogs had rammed into the car hard enough to flip it on it's top.   The window broke and Buster was crawling out of it.  Shawn had gotten there fast.  It sounded urgent and riding through shadows was the fastest way to travel. 

He stood there in the street.  Somewhere in the distance sirens screamed.  He didn't take much notice of that.  Things were bad.  He saw flames licking the sky as the bushes continued to burn.  Corpses kept throwing themselves at William no matter how many times they were tossed aside they stood up until they were completely destroyed.  

Buster was crawling across the street when he screamed.  A dog was ripping into his wrist threatening to Tear it off.  Shawn's eyes lit up.  Bright white against the opposing darkness around them.  First things first.  Buster was outmatched here.  Shawn's hair burned brightly.  The silver strands were neon white exuding a light that almost blinded you.  The failing light of the day cast many shadows. 

The shadows were his playground.  The shadows were his ally.  Sinking into the street, he reemgered in front of the dog.  He grabbed it around the throat with one hand and shoved it back against the tipped car.  It let go of Buster immediately.  Not used to being openly challenged the dog's fury was sudden and intense.  It's jaws snapped in Shawn's face and tendrils of spit, venomous and stringy flew threw the air.  Buster screamed behind him clutching his wrist.  "Goodbye Buster"  Shawn said without taking his eyes from the terrible beasty.

Buster sank into the street.  His shadow was long on the street and touching Shawn's that point of contact was enough to form the link.  Shawn could feel their shadows touching in his marrow and he sunk Buster away into the shadow realm.  The first layer of insanity.  The snowy white ashy existence of silence and lingering shadow.  He would be safe there.  He would heal there.  Shawn hoped.  He hadn't himself been injected with venom of a dark dimension creature, but this thing was definetly of that ilk.  

Time moved differently there.  The minutes were days, and months were a lifetime.  It was a place where sound was sufficated and pain was irrelevent.  It was a place of quiet hope and a place to piece together his fractured psyche in times of great termoil.  His attention was on the thing in front of him.  Already he could hear another around the other side of the car.  William, it seemed watched with quiet fascination.  Shawn's fingers bled into the shadow of the things narled matted bloody fur. He could not see them.  Only the shadow around them engulfing his hand. Shawn did not shake.  Shawn did not fumble.  He stood tall.  The shiney hero in the land of dark.  

"LEEEEEEEEET US OUT!"  A voice raspy and nasty voice rattled in his head.  "BLOOD AND GUTS AND GUTS AND BLOOD.  SET US FREE TO HAVE OUR FUN!"  Shawn opened his mouth and a beam of light spilled out.  White as a supernova and hotter than the sun.  It ripped the dog thing apart, atom by atom it disappated and broke apart.  Floating through the air, mere particles of broken darkness.  Shawn stood there with his arm still raised for a moment longer before he slowly lowered it.  His eyes were still white lights of justice.  The Shiny hero.  Master of light and dark and shadow and pain.  

The other dog jumped over the car.  Threw itself at him.  Shawn was not there.  Blinked out of the world and gone before it crashed into him.  Somewhere a little bear was climbing slowly, carefully down a tree.  William watched patiently.  When Shawn reappeared he did so behind the beast that landed feet in front of him.  He reached down on the street and grabbed it's shadow.  He ripped it in two.  The dog, ripped apart as if acted upon by two impossible forces pushing on it's insides with great force.  Shawn threw it's shadow to either side of him and the dog thing's two halves followed.  A yelp of pain and then silence.  

"SHINEY HERO! DOOOOOO NOT HOG ALL OF THE FUN! THIS EVIL IS ACIENT AND HORRID, WE WILL SEEEEEEEE IT UNDONE."  The s's and e's of it's lilted speach slide out of it's slithery tongues.  Growing larger from his back were two vipers of the dark dimension.  Shawn's symbolic bonds to that horrible place.  It was a place that even unnerved him.  But he did not let it show.  He had fought creatures from tehre before.  

Light spilled out of his lips, from his nostrils and out his eyes.  The cop car pulled up to the curb and a fat sunburned sheriff looked over the carnage.  "HOLY, JESUS!"  He exclaimed.  And was amazed to see a toy teddy bear throw himself at a man made of shadow.  He hadn't even noticed the whipping tendril snakes coming from the bright guy's back.  They hissed and writhed in the air, swimming around Shawn's head.  Occasionally seeming to whisper in his ear.  Shawn did not falter.  "Go back to where you came.  Or be undone."  Shawn told William simply.  

"No one's going anywhere!"  The cop commanded finally finding his vioce again.  "SILENCE BACCON!"  One of the vipers demanded and it whiped itself at the cop car ripping the door off with one motion and throwing it down the street.  It banged and skidded and came to a screaching halt.  Shawn watched this with mild interest and then turned back to Shadow William.  William raised his sledgehammer and the other viper struck.  It ripped Shadow William's heart out and spit bright light into the gaping hole.  That was enough the sheriff was speeding off the street having seen all he needed to see.

William, stunned, dropped to his knees and fell on his face.  He melted into the street becoming smoky shadow.  Dying and sinking back into the dark dimension from the shadows of which he came.  There was a scream inside the house.  Shawn calmly turned his attention to the house and began to slowly walk towards it.

DON'T BE AFRAID

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Shawn's face was a stoic mask.  Eyes white and blazing.  Hair on fire with white light.  And suddenly it wasn't.  His hair slowly fading to the usual silver.  His face was no longer a bright beaming beacon of holy white fire, but it gave nothing away.  No emotion, no concern.  He was figuring her out.  He knew from the moment he saw shadow William that something wasn't right.

That was dark and shadow and concentraited dark energy.  Things could not exist in the dark dimension and be fair and true.  They were corrupt.    He didn't have to be told that this girl held his bloodline in her veins.  She sarcastically said it's a girl.  That was enough to gather a small smirk at the corner of his mouth.  Shawn looked at her for a long moment not saying anything at all.  He looked around the shadow realm and he felt at home.  He had always felt more at peace among the ashy silence.  He wasn't a man who opened up easily.  He wasn't a man who let people in.  This was the first time in his life he had ever been here with people he cared about.  

He turned and looked upon Buster's pale grey face.  Buster seemed to be sweating and shaking his head slightly from side to side in some horrible fever dream.  The small plush companion picked up a broke shard of glass from a broken bottle on the ground and jabbed it threateningly at Shawn as he stood watch over Buster.  But the tiny creature's heart was not in it.  He was weak, tired.  He was still full of live, but Buster's fading strength made him weaker in turn.  They were linked that way.  The thing would die defending him.  Shawn's smirk disappeared.  He picked the thing up and put it on the bed next to Buster.  

He realized that they were back in the Fool's Dice Club.  The shadowy version of it at least.  Broken bottles and random shit laid here and there.  The place was a wreck.  Shawn knew that in the real world something had gone down there.  It translated.  Objects physically transmuted to the shadow realm, exactly where they were in the fixed point in reality.  They hadn't been gone that long.  Maybe a day if you took into account the time difference between this world and reality.  "Who is your mother?"  Shawn asked finally, turning his attention away from Buster and the little bear.  As he did the creature lowered his weapon and slumped over exhausted on top of Buster.  

Shawn's eyes were no longer white, but that did not mean they were no longer burning.  They burned with a need to know where Mystic came from.  Why didn't he remember her?  Where was her mother and what happened to her?  It was entirely possible that she was born here.  In this ashy place of quiet.  She could have lived her whole life here, grew up fast.  A few years here and popped out into reality almost an adult.  Time did funny things in the palace of shadow.  He stared at her, before she could answer his question he pulled her into his arms.  Breaking his tough guy persona and allowing himself to love her.  Like a father should love his daughter.  There was no sound in the palace of shadow, but his heart was hammering loudly just the same.

DON'T BE AFRAID

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Shawn's mind was a whirlwind of emotion, though his face was calm and sure as it always was.  Shawn was not a very emotive man.  He didn't like holding his cards out for the world to see.  Even if the world was silent and dead and the only eyes upon him were the eyes of his daughter.  Fuck.  He had a daughter.  It was hard to believe and yet, he accepted it instantly.  She was powerful.  So powerful and so young at the same time.  That combination scared him a little.  He knew that she would grown into her powers.  Learn to use them as he did over the years, and who knew what tricks she had access too that he did not.

Silver Shadow was always regarded as one of the toughest of the Fools.  This fact never escaped him.  He was in fact one of the Club's enforcers.  The muscle when things got heavy.  He nodded.  He had questions, a million in fact, but only one surfaced to his lips.  "Are you going to stick around?"  In not so many words he was asking if he was going to get a chance to get to know his daughter.  Though, he wasn't a prison guard.  He wouldn't hold her here if she wished to go.  He felt robbed.  Robbed of the years he didn't get to be a part of, and at the same time a swelling pride that almost made a smile break across his face.

Behind him Buster whimpered and leaned over the bedside and vomited black bile.  It was writhing and moving and making bubbling, squeaking sounds.  Shawn frowned.  He didn't know any mutants personally who had the gift of healing touch, though he had heard about them.  The best they could do was leave Buster in the Shadow realm for a few days.  Come back and check on him.  He should be sorted out after some time to heal where time moved differently.

"There are things about my past that I am ashamed off.  There are things i wish I could take back.  You are not one of those things.  I feel like i don't' even know you, but at the same time i feel like you've been with me my entire life.  You're a part of me.  That means you're stronger than you think.  And it looks like you've inhereted my power set.  I want to see what you can do with them. I saw the shadow dogs.  Those were impressive.  I can manifest dark energy from the Dark dimension.  It's as simple as a thought, and requires concentraition to control, but once you have it.  It's your best weapon."  

Shawn was standing on the front steps of the club and he joined Mystic outside.  The sun was a grey circle in the sky casting no real light.  The shadows were actually rare here.  Only the shadows of other people moving around in the real world though it only took a suggestion of thought to manipulate them.  What shadows did exist were faint, not powerful constructs to manipulate.  As if they were fading out of this world and bleeding into another plaine entirely.  Though dark, rich shadows of Fools at the clubhouse moved here or there.  Shawn wasn't perceptive enough to know what they were doing based on blobby undefined silhouettes.

"Firstly, Mystic isn't much of a name.  And since I never got to name you  I would like to change that.  How does Emily feel to you?  Emily Silverman.  It was my mother's name.  You wouldn't have gotten to meet her.  She died when I was a teenager....."  He paused.  "I didn't have you when I was a teenager did I?"  He waited for her to answer and then dismissed it with a nod.  "I want to see what you can do. I will do a few things and then see if you can replicate it."

Shawn looked at a moving shadow.  It was in the garage tinkering on an old motorcycle.  He raised a hand and syphoned part of it's shadow off of it.  A swirling cloud of shadow moved to greet his palm in a ball.  Shawn changed it in mid air and moved both hands.  Starting close together and then widening out he drew his his hands away from one another and shaped a six inch knife made of shadow.  Grabbing it by the blade he hurled it at the bike.  The tire went flat in the land of shadow.  The tire went flat back in the real world as well.  It was hard, but if you concentraited you could effect things in the real world from over here.  "Shadow manipulation.  Do you have that trick?"  

Shawn was also eager to see if she could teleport through shadows, turn into a shadow and become part of the wall, and probably most importantly if he could teach her to conjure and manipulate dark energy familiars.  For him it was vipers.  Apparently his daughter had dogs.  Shawn raised a hand and waved it through the air as if to say "Show me what you got kiddo."  There was still no love on his face.  He had embraced her, accepted her, claimed her and even named her but gushy shows of emotion were so not his bag.  It just wasn't in his character.  She would have to break down those walls over time, even if there truly was love there in his heart for her.