Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story – except, possibly, for myself…
In the dark of the cellar a strange, rhythmic noise broke the chill, peaceful air which reigned between the numerous book-shelves: in her room, the keyboard clicked away happily under the long fingers of the young girl. You could tell from her pose that she had been at it for a while; shoulders hunched and eyes red, she was the complete picture of a computerholic. Musing over the right turn of phrase, she bit her lip, and silence flowed uninterrupted for a midnight moment.
The pale screen before her reflected a greyish-blue, dull light off her face, and the mass of plugs and wires behind the massive bulk of the old machine, which took up almost all the space on the wooden desk, made her look even more human in that small, underground room. It seemed like, among all these drying pages and humming electricity, she alone obeyed the laws of organic life. As if to demonstrate this she yawned hugely, hands still poised over the keyboard.
It was well past today, and tomorrow was certainly on its way out of bed, though outside the low cellar-windows, the sky was still pitch-black. She could have checked the time on the clock in the tool-bar, but she didn't want to; knowing what time it was meant having to deal with it, and ultimately returning to the role of responsible person and hurrying off to bed, in order that she be ready, rested and rosy-cheeked on the morrow. Dawn would bring with it the hard realities of education: lots of learning by heart, and lots of staying awake on the outside…
Ever motionless, she frowned; the final words of the story were giving her a headache. She hadn't written anything in more than two months, and was beginning to doubt where she really wanted this story to go… She had set off on the assumption that this was going to be yet another fan fiction, and that she would soon set small, furry characters zooming through some intricate, private plot, to the general joy of whomsoever it may concern… But so far the story hadn't even moved out of her own home. So what on earth was she supposed to do with it now?
She leaned even further forward, nose almost touching the screen, and read the latest line, while considering whether or not to erase the entire thing. Well, she sighed inwardly, there was one thing which always seemed to work for all the other writers whenever they got stuck: random wormholes!
And lo, even as she wrote the words, in the dark, dusty cellar, with a completely unexpected an inappropriate sound, a wormhole appeared out of sheer nothing, a few inches in front of one of the walls. A bit of plaster failed miserably to fall off the ceiling, thus not creating a dramatic and thrilling effect in any way. On the other hand, the creature which jumped out of the swirling vortex head first didn't need dramatic effects; drama happened around him almost as a matter of fact, wrapping itself around his presence to always create the notion that he was the single coolest thing ever to have walked the earth.
The girl stared.
The girl blinked.
The small, dark creature standing in front of her crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave her a long, impatient look, as though the next move was entirely up to her. His red eyes burned coldly in the artificial twilight. When she utterly failed to respond beyond the aforementioned parody of a stunned gold-fish, he leaned on the wall, and said, in a dangerously neutral voice: "You made me crazy."
The girl stared.
The girl blinked.
He continued: "You gave me a hangover."
It wasn't a question, it was a statement, and the tone of voice was way too close to that used by two persons in a dark alley, just before they become one person and one lump of cold meat in a dark alley.
The girl stared.
The girl blinked.
He continued: "And you made me drink… a luke-warm… coke!"
A he stressed the word "luke-warm, there was a hint, almost inaudible, of repressed pain, as if this, the second of his accusations, was by far the most weighty. As if she, by making him imbibe the on-the-threshold-between-warm-and-cold mixture of dye, fizz and sugar, had added to his already scarred mind some new and unfathomable gash. He growled like something thrice his size, and gave her another long, hard look. She got the feeling he had been practising that stare.
Suddenly she noticed how the air in the small room tasted like thunder; the dust seemed to almost dance, and the wires hummed in a slightly urgent way, as if they were eager to deliver their load of information and get the hell out of there. Light seemed to be happening around the small creature. She would have to do something, soon, otherwise he would…
The girl stared.
The girl swallowed.
"Listen, er, Shadow," she mumbled, hesitantly, "in that case, I, sort of, guess you could do with some, um, food?"
Red eyes focused with a speed which you could either ignore or go mad over, and the small creature spoke again, calm, though in no way less threatening:
"Pizza or burgers?"
"Er… pizza?"
"CHAOS-BL-"
"Burgers! Definitely burgers!!!"
The black hedgehog gave a short smile, which left the girl wondering whether it had really been genuine, and pulled a small electronic key from an unseen pocket. As he pointed it at the wormhole and pressed a button on the smooth silver interface, the vortex blinked twice with a sound like a sports-car, and stopped in mid-swirl.
The girl stared.
The girl pulled herself together.
"Shall we?"