Monday, 9:46 PM
He hadn't really meant to eavesdrop on those two scientists and what they wanted to tell Professor Gerald. If anything, they were the ones being inconsiderate, not Shadow. Yes, it was those two being the rude ones, interrupting some test scans Gerald had been running on Shadow to tell him something about one of their experiments. At first, Shadow didn't care, he wanted his own experimentation done and over with so he could get on with his day. But then they mentioned something that made Shadow lean in closer to hear what they were saying:
Weather.
These scientists, whatever they were doing, had created a small, contained weather system here on the ARK. It was still a work in progress, they claimed, and that some minor (or major, depending on what you wanted the outcome to be) environmental factors in the room were still being controlled by an outside console. But other than that, their research for the moment had been declared a raging success.
Gerald was quick to applaud their work, then shooed them away to continue with Shadow. But Shadow wanted to know more. First things first, their identity.
"Professor, who were those scientists that came in just now?"
"Oh them?" the professor offhandedly questioned as he returned to work, "Masha and Fjord Greene. I believe Masha is a meteorologist, and Fjord is an environmentalist. They're here on the ARK to help better simulate the earth's rotation and weather cycles on certain parts of the ship. They've only contained their research to one room, however. But it seems that they're doing better than what they expected."
"Where is the room located?" Shadow then questioned.
"Sector Beta, I believe." Gerald told him without thinking about it. Test room… 114-97-105-110, if I remember correctly."
Shadow nodded and already knew what he was going to do later. He didn't say anything to Gerald about it, but his anticipation was visible on some of the tests Gerald was running on him- but the old scientist wouldn't have been aware of the small spike until some time much later.
. . .
Tuesday, 1:29 AM
If it hadn't been for a rather dim LED light above her bed, Maria's room would have been almost uncomfortably dark. It was likely unintentional, Shadow believed, but it made her seem like the terminally ill patient she was, and not a child with high hopes and dreams. What could have made Maria's room creepier to someone unfamiliar with her was the small stereo on her desk- at night she made sure it played some sort of music or white noise to drown out the general creaking and whines of the ARK's systems.
Tonight she had put on the Adolphe Adam's Giselle suite; the current portion was during the grand pas de deux in Act II. It wasn't contributing much to the room's already ominous environment.
Shadow walked over to Maria's bed and observed her sleeping for a moment. She was having a bad dream -likely a cause from sleeping on something like an uncomfortably firm medical cot than an actual bed-, leaving Shadow to believe that she was going to be easy to wake up.
"Maria..." Shadow whispered at the sleeping girl, "Maria, wake up."
It took a bit of coercing, but the girl gave a sleepy groan as she started to wake up. "I took my medicine already..." she even grumbled. "Leave me alone. I got..." (she took a half glance at the alarm clock on her bedside) "Three more hours..."
"Don't go back to sleep," Shadow told her, making her sit up now, "I've got a surprise."
Extremely unhappy that he wasn't going to let her go back to sleep, Maria gave him a rather venomous glare.
"And what's that?" she demanded.
"I want to show you something special." Shadow told her with a mischievous grin. "But first you have to answer a question I have."
The girl gave the hedgehog a wary side glance. "Shoot." she agreed in a tone just as skeptical.
"Why Giselle?"
For a moment, Maria had to wonder what he was talking about before realizing that her radio was still on. "Oh," she then remarked dully, "Because I was going insane from listening to the Nutcracker all the time, I couldn't find my La Papillon disk, Swan Lake gets way too loud for me to relax to, and I like the Willis's leitmotif a bit too much. Does that answer your question?"
"Perfectly." Shadow agreed with a nod. "Now get up. We need to get to the secret thing quickly, so I have to carry you there."
"Is that really the only way?" Maria questioned with a rather snarky undertone as she started to get out of her bed.
"The only way to make sure we're not caught." the hedgehog replied in a cocky confidence. "Now get going. We've only got a few hours before the main guards come back out on patrol."
"Alright, alright." Maria relented. "Just need my shoes..."
. . .
Shadow didn't have a single problem finding the room he needed. He set Maria down in the simulation room and gave her the signal to stay there before he went to the control room. A large window connecting the two rooms allowed Shadow to see Maria quite clearly.
"Get ready." he warned her mischievously from an intercom speaker. Maria looked up at him with a rather skeptical and sour face before he started to begin the machine.
Let's see, to do what he wanted, he needed to make a hypothetical cold front collide with a hypothetical warm front...
The first drip to touch her came so suddenly, and was gone so quickly, that Maria nearly screamed. From the control booth, Shadow snorted with amusement before changing a bit more of the environmental factors to increase the rainstorm. The light drizzle slowly became a heavier storm and each little drop fell onto Maria's skin, hair, and clothes like small kisses.
As the raindrops continued to fall onto her, Maria's body started to shake. It wasn't an obvious motion, but Shadow could feel it from her. Very few times was he completely in tune with her emotional or physical state, now was a time that he could- and even he could admit that the feelings Maria was having were nearly overwhelming.
"Maria." Shadow spoke carefully into the room's intercom, snapping her out of her thoughts enough for her to look up at him. Any tears she had were meshed with the rain droplets that had fallen onto her face. Her body was in enough shock that Shadow was sure she was in some way.
The corner of Maria's mouth started to twitch. Without her even vocalizing though, Shadow knew what to do: he pushed a few buttons on the control panel and the rain started to come down even harder. Joyous with the addition, Maria turned her head up to the room's ceiling and gave a definite, and very wide, smile.
"Watch your blood pressure." Shadow warned to her through the intercom.
Maria snapped her head to look at Shadow, the biggest smile he had ever seen her in was etched on her face as she hollered (quite loudly) to him, "Screw that!" before spinning around and dancing in the artificially created rain. He tried to hold it back, but Shadow laughed at her. A quick idea came through his mind and he almost immediately acted on it.
After inputting several commands into the main console, the simulator room's speakers started to softly play some music for fairy-child Maria to dance along with. He wouldn't admit it later, but Shadow loved seeing her this way. Happy, careless, and just being… Maria. Who could ask for anything more?
"What are you doing in here?!" a voice snapped as the door for the environmental room opened. Shadow took a quick look and saw a very unwelcome Fjord standing there.
"Shit." the ultimate lifeform grumbled as he quickly turned the machine off. Not a few moments later, Masha came in through the control room door and gave him a stern look. She waved him aside as she checked the console's systems for any anomalies before giving an all clear from the intercom to Fjord- while she was doing this, Shadow sneaked around her and went down to Maria.
"What we are doing here is extremely delicate work, Miss Robotnik." Shadow heard Fjord correct Maria for something that she wasn't quite a part of. "You could have tampered with something and everything would have been screwed up!"
"I'm sorry sir..." Maria apologized as Shadow stood by her side. "It worked so well, I thought it was finished. I didn't know that it still had some bugs..."
Seeing the girl's sincerity broke a bit of Fjord's tough exterior and he let out a sigh. "We'll let you know when it's working properly- you may even be the first to test it proper, too. But for now, let's agree to disagree and go back to your room. It's not worth getting the professor up at this hour to berate you again."
"Yes sir." Maria agreed. "Thank you sir." and with that, the girl and the hedgehog left the testing area.
"I have spare clothes for you." Shadow offered. "They're just down this hall. I figured that leaving them any where else might allow you to get too cold, and then you'd have hypothermia."
Maria was silent- her wet slippers leaving irritating little squeaks with each walk she took. "Shadow..." she then said in a low voice, almost a whisper, "Thank you."
Shadow gave a small smirk but quickly took it away. "You're welcome." he replied, attempting to come off as uncaring. But in reality, it made him feel like the greatest thing alive.