Disclaimer: I don't own the idea of Transformers or any of its character or X-Men or any of their characters. Any original characters are mine and this story is just for fun.
Hallowed Nights
Chapter 1: Hallow's Eve
October 4, 2005
The door to the room flew open as a disgruntled thirteen-year-old stormed in and threw her backpack into a corner. Sarah Calihan slumped down into her computer chair and let out a frustrated sigh. It had been another annoying and boring day at school. Her time at school seemed to have gotten worse and worse ever since her best friend Hannah had moved away over the summer.
It didn't help that Sarah's parent's kept pushing her to try to make new friends. Just to humor them Sarah had taken the opportunity at school to talk to a group of girls. She had slipped in a question about a new game out for the Playstation 2. When the first response out was "what's a Playstation?" Sarah had quickly backed off as the conversation turned back to fashion and boys.
Hannah had understood. Ever since that day years ago, when Sarah had found an old Super Nintendo at a garage sale and begged her parent's to get it Sarah had been fascinated with video games.Her collection had now grown to five systems and close to a hundred games. She closed her eyes and smiled as she remembered all the times Hannah would come over to challenge or watch her play the games that she couldn't beat.
Sarah sighed and looked through her games trying to get her mind off of the real world.
"Let's see. Beat it. Beat it. Beat it." Sarah cringed a little at the next one. "Multi-player. Beat it…don't know why I still have this one." She tossed the game aside.
Sarah glared at the calendar.
"If Christmas would come earlier I wouldn't be having this problem."
Pulling her foot up, Sarah kicked off of the wall making her chair slide back over to the computer. "Hmm, maybe I should check out that online game the guys at school keep going on about. What was it again? Last…Heaven? Last Haven?" Sarah typed it in on Google and found a match.
She followed the directions on making an account and downloading the game. Sarah decided to browse the website while the game was downloading and installing to learn more about what she was getting into. She had never gotten the chance to really play an online game before but this game impressed her the more she read about it.
You could design your own character, choose from at least seven different classes, hunt for treasure or monsters, explore vast, detailed areas, and use hundreds of different items, weapons, and armor.
When Sarah was finally able to start up the game she went straight for the character creation. A screen came up with three different races. Sarah decided on the human female over the monster or what appeared to be a fuzzy gnome. Surprisingly, there were a lot of choices from hair and eyes to height and skin color.
Pausing with the game, Sarah turned and studied herself in the mirror on her dresser. There was nothing really special that she could see. She had wavy brown hair that was always tied back and out of the way, light green eyes, and incredibly pale skin, with some freckles, from sitting in her room playing video games all day. She was about 5'3 would have liked to lose some weight.
Sarah poked at her stomach and frowned. "I should really get more exercise."
Turning back toward the screen Sarah started to play with some of the options. Long hair, ponytail, pigtails, bun, spiky, braided. Then there were the colors. Red, black, brown, blonde, blue, white, orange, pink, and it went on and on. Ten minutes later, Sarah was finally satisfied with her character's face. Cycling through the classes, Sarah stopped to read the descriptions on each of them.
Always one for wanting to be in the middle of a fight on a game, Sarah ruled out Archer, Sorcerer, and Cleric. Swordsman was sounding really tempting until she spotted the Rogue. The Rogue relies on physical attacks but can also learn some Sorcerer and Cleric spells for backup.
Sarah thought for a minute. If she picked the Swordsman she would most likely have to go out of her way to find someone who was a Cleric to go around with her to patch her up. If she picked the Rogue she would be the jack of all trades but a master of none. She thought back to attempted conversations with classmates and winced before clicking on the Rogue.
A loading screen came up for a few seconds before a figure appeared. The girl on the screen looked a couple of years older than Sarah with tanned skin and slightly spiky, shoulder-length forest green hair. Through her bangs a pair of cunning gold eyes glimmered. A box suddenly appeared requesting a name.
"Oh man, I hadn't thought about this." Sarah scratched her head and glanced around her room. Her eyes fell on her calendar hanging on the wall nearby and the highlighted date of her favorite holiday caught her attention.
"Halloween? You sure look like that's when you'd be seen." Sarah said to the figure as she typed the name in. She frowned when another box appeared saying the name was taken.
"Hmm." Sarah tapped her desk until a thought hit her. She hit the backspace key a couple of times until Hallow remained and tried again. This time she got a message saying it accepted. The girl on the screen grinned and gave a little bow before it started loading the rest of the game.
--
Sarah was startled awake by a loud banging on her door.
"Didn't your alarm go off? You're going to be late to school." Sarah's mother called through the door.
There was a crash and a yelp as Sarah's chair fell to the floor taking her along for the ride.
"Ow…" Sarah groaned and attempted to get to her feet while trying to calm her racing heart. Rubbing her side Sarah squinted at a bright light nearby before realizing that the computer screen was still on. She had fallen asleep playing the game.
"Wow I haven't gotten the chance to do that in a while." Surprise went through Sarah as her voice started to crack. She doubled over as coughs racked her body. When it was finally over Sarah stood up and sniffed.
'Oh great. Now I remember why it was a bad idea to pull all nighters. It figures.' Sarah thought to herself.
"Oh no, Hallow!" The thought had suddenly run through Sarah's aching head that on a game like this if she had fallen asleep with Hallow out somewhere near monsters her character would be dead and hours of hard work could have been lost. Turning back towards the monitor, Sarah let out a sigh of relief when she saw Hallow standing near the outside wall of the town unharmed. Sarah logged off.
After another coughing fit, Sarah turned to the clock and panicked. She had less than ten minutes to get ready and she knew her mom was never going to let her skip because of getting sick from staying up late. In fact if her mom found out Sarah would probably come back to find her games gone.
Quickly, Sarah got dressed, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her messy hair a couple of times before grabbing her untouched backpack in the corner. Taking a quick stop in the kitchen to grab a breakfast bar to eat on the way, Sarah spotted her dad sitting at the table with a cup of coffee watching the morning news. Her mother had probably already gone to sleep since she worked night shift as a nurse at a local hospital.
"This is getting out of hand. The government needs to do something about all these freaks already." Sarah heard her dad mumble. A news reporter was going on about some mutant that had just tried to rob a store as the cameras caught a hunched figure with a lizard-like tail being shoved into a police cruiser.
"Make sure you're home right after school. I don't want you wandering around town alone."
Sarah shook her head and scoffed. "Yeah right, like there's anything keeping me out over playing games."
Sarah dashed out of the door before her dad could respond.
--
"This just isn't my day." Sarah grumbled as she dragged herself home.
It was one of those days you just wish you could start over. Since Sarah had gotten distracted with playing Last Haven none of her homework had been done. One of the teachers had decided to throw in a pop quiz, and to top it all off, she had inevitably fallen asleep in class and had been forced to stay late with detention cleaning out a science lab.
'My parents are going to kill me.' Sarah thought to herself then braced for a sneeze. The nights were coming earlier now and the sun was already starting to set. She paused to look for cars before crossing the street. Since Sarah's house wasn't too far from the school she had to walk back and forth every day.
At first Sarah didn't pay any attention to the revving of an engine in the distance. Before she knew what was happening a screeching of brakes filled the air. Sarah jumped as a red van came sliding right onto the sidewalk next to her. The back door to the van slid open revealing two men dressed in black.
One of the men reached out and roughly grabbed Sarah by the shoulder, trying to yank her into the vehicle. Blind panic set in as Sarah tried to scream and run. The other man in the back reached around to help before Sarah could get away. Sarah went flying forward and let out a whimper as she heard the door slide closed.
The driver floored it and the car screeched again and swerved as it took off. A stray cat yowled and leapt into some nearby bushes as the van nearly hit it. Shaking, it crouched down and peered after the van as it hurtled down the street.
Suddenly, a flash of light lit up the interior of the van and it swerved wildly. The sickening crunching and groaning of metal filled the air as the van wrapped itself around a nearby telephone pole. A woman in a shop a few dozen feet away stuck her head out of the door, gasped at the wreck, and ran back inside to call for help.
For a minute there was no movement. Then slowly the undamaged side door of the van slid open and a small figure stumbled out. The figure fell on all fours and retched. The woman from the store ran outside again calling out as she noticed the small figure stumbling away from the van, down the street and out of sight. She could hear the sirens in the distance.
--
Sarah choked out a sob. She couldn't even remember how exactly she had managed to get away from the crash and sneak through the window into her dark room. Her instincts had been screaming at her to just run to safety, through the pain and horror. Now it was all starting to sink in.
Tears streamed down Sarah's face and she couldn't stop herself from shaking. Her eyes widened in terror as she stared down at her own hands desperately clutching twin wickedly curved daggers. Sarah tried not to retch again as the sticky metallic smell of blood reached her nose.
The weapons crashed to the ground as Sarah backed up trying to scrub the blood off of her arms. She hit the table sitting by her bed. The small lamp on top began to wobble and the movement caught Sarah's eyes just as is started to fall. There was a loud crash as the lamp's base shattered on the wooden floor. Sarah yelped and jumped away.
"Who's there? Is that you Sarah?" Sarah's dad shouted from another room. Footsteps hurried up to Sarah's door. There was a quick knock before her mom looked inside.
"Sarah, when did you get back? Are you alright?"
Sarah tried to hold in a sob as her mother used the light spilling in from the hallway to see. There was only a few seconds pause before the deafening scream came. Her dad's thundering footsteps came next as Sarah froze in shock.
"What's wrong? Where's Sarah?" Sarah's father came around the corner. He looked up at Sarah. "W-who are you? What are you doing here?"
"Oh my god." Sarah's mother covered her mouth in horror as they noticed the blood. "What did you do with Sarah!? Where is she!?"
With her frantic mind Sarah couldn't grasp what was wrong with her parents. Her father took a threatening step towards her. On instinct Sarah flinched and backed up.
"W-what are you," Sarah coughed, "talking about? I'm Sarah!" Her voice cracked and sounded wrong in her own ears.
"You're not Sarah, you're one of those monsters aren't you!?" Sarah's father tried to make a grab for her but she moved and got shoved instead. Pitching forward, she slammed into her computer chair and went tumbling to the ground with a shout. There was a flash of light and Sarah's eyes widened as her hands closed around the hilts of the daggers.
"No wait!" Sarah cried out as she scrambled to her feet. Her reaction was too slow as her father let out an outraged roar and slammed his fist into her side. The air whooshed out of Sarah and she struggled to regain her breath and balance. She turned wide eyes to her father unbelieving that he was actually attacking his own daughter.
"Lucy, call the police!" Sarah's mother ran for the phone while her dad tried for another grab.
"No no no! Leave me alone! I'm your…" Another coughing fit came and Sarah ran clutching her side. Through the doorway, down the hallway, past her startled mother at the phone in the kitchen, and out the front door. Without thinking she headed for her old hideout, an old forgotten playground in an out of the way, overgrown corner of the neighborhood.
When she realized where she was she headed straight for the water fountains near the bathrooms. Tears streamed down her face but she didn't dare wipe them away with her bloodied hands. She couldn't stop herself from shaking as she weakly made her way towards the fountains. All she wanted to do was to get clean and hide. So many confusing and frightening things were running through her mind.
Once she reached the fountains she bent to get some water and froze. She couldn't understand what she was seeing at first. There staring up at her from her blurry reflection were the golden eyes of a terrified, tear stained face.
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Authors note: This story is Movieverse for Transformers and they will be making appearances next chapter as characters start to come together.
Sorry for any confusion about Sarah right now, the next chapter will be giving a better idea of what happened.
Please review and tell me what you think I will try to post the next chapter soon.