~Once again, I do not own the Sonic: Drive-In. It's just a reference~
"Danny, what are we doing out here?" Sam asked.
"I really don't believe that all there was out here was a couple bags of Cheddar Peppers and a defibrillator." He said in a low tone, "That and I have a strong feeling that we should be out here." He explained, walking past the Sonic: Drive-In that Jazz and Tucker had passed.
"Like what?" she gave him a look.
"Something big." He said, "Important." He muttered.
"Danny, that doesn't seem like a solid enough reason." She gave him a stern, disapproving look.
A deep ragged cough snapped their attention to a small group of cars on the side of the street. A green cloud of smoke rose from behind the pile and gave away a Smoker's position. When the Smoker coughed again, he stepped out from behind the cars and started running, his long tongue oozing a reddish-brown blood along the way.
Danny rose his rifle and shot the Smoker in the head, stopping the zombie's path and making him drop dead. "That thing just snapped off his own tongue…" he noted.
"How can you tell?" Sam asked, "Because it was still bleeding?" the comment came out as sarcastic.
He gave her a look, "Yeah. I've never seen that before." He carefully approached the pile.
"What are you doing?" she asked in shock, but not loud enough to attract any unwanted attention, "You're gonna go straight to a Smoker's hiding spot?" she asked.
He looked at her, "It's a pile of maybe five cars?" he guessed, "It's not like there's a Tank back there." He shrugged and went behind the pile, Sam close behind.
What they found behind the car was more than they had anticipated. Not a Tank, not another Smoker, but Tucker. Lying on his back staring wide-eyed at the sky blankly through shocked eyes. His skin was pale, and it was clear he'd been there too long. The two knelt by him and pulled off the tongue that had kept him constricted. Danny looked at Sam in fear and slipped his hand in Tucker's right pocket, finding the PDA that they thought they were missing. "Is this reason enough…?" Danny barely forced out.
Sam pressed her fingers to the side of his neck, feeling no pulse. She exhaled sharply and tried to fight back tears, however failing. "Danny… then who's with Jazz?" she asked.
A new level of fear rose in Danny's chest. He dropped his bag, "Try and revive him, I'll be right back!" he jumped up and ran off. His heart was pounding, and his breaths were heavy. They'd encountered another Shifter and they didn't even know it. He approached the house they had taken shelter in and dove through the window while going intangible, grateful that his powers were cooperating again. He coated his fist with ice and pinned the imposter to the wall separating the kitchen and hallway.
"Danny! What are you doing?" Jazz shrieked, shocked to suddenly see her brother barrel through the house and pin who she thought was his best friend to the wall, all in one swift motion.
"Yeah, man, what's your problem?" the irritated teen asked under Danny's grip.
"Jazz, this isn't Tucker. The 'real' Tucker is by a pile of cars with Sam." He paused, then threw an ice-covered fist at his opponent, sending the Shifter to the floor in a crumpled heap.
"I should've made my move by now…" the Shifter growled, "Let me guess, that kid's dead. Isn't he?" he looked back up at him and wiped the corner of his mouth free of blood.
There was another thud as Sam pressed the paddles to Tucker's bare chest, her body shaking violently, finding that Tucker still hadn't responded. She sniffled and rubbed the paddles one more time, "Please, Tucker…" she whimpered and shook her head, she got back up on her knees and pressed the paddles on his chest one last time, making his body jolt up, offended by the sudden voltage once again.
A moment seemed too long. The long, painstaking pause that followed, fear and suspense mixed and collided into a whirlpool that created a pit in Sam's stomach, threatening to take her heart down. The silence seemed to be too loud and everything seemed darker.
However, his sudden intake of air was louder and brought back light. He blinked and coughed hard. He flipped over to face the ground and gagged, spilling nothing due to an empty stomach. He was jerked forwards into a hug by the goth. "Sam?" he coughed. He looked around drowsily and found the defibrillator lying next to Sam, "Was I…?" he felt her hug him tighter. "Ow… Sam…" he grunted.
She loosened her hug, but still held him.
"So… what happened?" he asked, "Where's Jazz and Danny?"
"Jazz is back at the house." She explained and pulled away, "She came back with you. Or at least we thought she did." She said, "It was a Shifter. Danny ran back to help Jazz."
He nodded and took a deep, scratchy breath. "And that defibrillator?"
Sam looked at it for a while, "I'm glad you and Jazz found it." She said.
He sighed, "Me too."
Danny ran up to them, completely out of breath, "Tucker, thank god…" he dropped to his knees and hugged him, "Thought we lost you." He sat back, "Jazz is worried sick. We gotta get you back to the house." He said and forced himself back to his feet.
"Relax, dude." Tucker said, "Don't need two of us passing out from lack of air."
Danny gave Tucker a tired look. Then he chuckled, able to tell that Tucker was taking his near-death experience lightly, as Danny usually did. He held out a hand and helped Tucker to his feet, pulling an arm over his shoulder. "Let's go." He said.
Sam picked herself off the ground and supported Tucker's other side. Danny kept a skeptical eye out for anything that may run at them, but- remembering the odd circumstance they were under- he sighed and crossed the street with Sam and Tucker.
"Danny? You okay?" Tucker asked.
"Yeah." Danny nodded, "Just paranoid." He said, "You scared us."
Tucker nodded, "I'm sorry." He said guiltily.
"Don't apologize." Sam nudged him, "It wasn't your fault. We're just glad you're okay." She said.
He smiled.
"We're all we have left." Danny said, "We need to keep it that way."
"If there were any changes at all, it'd be in how many people we've added to this group." Sam said.
Danny agreed and pushed the door open.
"So what'd you do with the Shifter?"
"He's dead." Danny said, still slightly out of breath. "Let's not worry about him."
"Sounds good." Sam said and plopped onto the couch after they sat Tucker next to Jazz.
Danny found himself on the grey chair on the edge of the living room, staring at the ceiling.
"Do we have anything left for food?" Tucker asked.
"No." Danny said bitterly. "That stupid Shifter ate your share of the Cheddar Peppers."
Tucker groaned agitatedly. "I hate the zombie apocalypse." He complained, lying in Jazz's arms.
"I'm pretty sure everyone does." Jazz said.
Danny watched everyone for a while. Seeing that none of them were really in any condition to do any travelling. Granted the house was a great shelter, running water, working power, they still needed food. He sighed. He was in better condition than everyone else, for once. It was always him that was in poor condition. Then again, whenever he was in poor condition, he jumpstarted his adrenaline and kept fighting. "I'm gonna go out back." He stood up and went out the back door. He sat on the edge of the pool and thought for a while.
"Danny?" Sam asked and sat by him, "Are you okay?"
"I don't know." He said, his eyes not leaving the pool.
"Stressed out?" she asked.
He nodded. "We have to go and look for food." He said. "But nobody's in the condition to be going anywhere." He sighed, "I'm thinking I should go out." He said.
"No way." Sam said firmly.
Danny looked at her.
"I'd rather starve and wait until we're recovered a bit more than to send you out there by yourself."
He chuckled, "What- you're saying I can't take care of myself?" he asked.
"No offense, Danny, but you don't know what to do without your powers."
"Earth to Sam," he waved his hand in front of his face, "I did manage to kill a Tank without my powers."
"That Tank committed suicide." Sam said, "Practically. He wanted you to kill him. But think about it. That Witch? You let her phase through you. The Bulldozer? You overshadowed a Tank to take that beast down. Dash beat the shit out of you. Could've killed you." She said. "Did you use your powers at all?" she asked.
"No." he said.
"Well, if that's a fight without your powers, then I don't want to find out what's out here if every time someone leaves the house get ambushed. Who knows? There could be more special infected out here that we've never seen before."
Danny sunk. She was right. "We still need food, though." He said. "So what do we do?" he asked. "We can eat the veggies here, but Tucker would refuse."
Sam sighed, "Well- Tucker can just suck it up." She said. "If veggies are all we have, then veggies are what we're gonna eat."
Danny chuckled.
A gunshot rang through the air, distant, but they still heard it. Sam snapped her attention toward the noise. "You hear that?" she asked.
"Yeah." Danny nodded. He stood up and looked around for someplace to climb onto the roof. But found nothing. He tried going ghost, starting the rings around his waist and starting them around his body, thankfully transforming him. He gave Sam a brief look and kicked off the ground. He hovered to the roof and looked around. Hearing more of the gunshots but finding nothing. He began looked more frantically, going invisible to hide himself. However, he still found nothing. He sighed and began flying back to the house, seeing that he was flickering back into view. "Oh no…" he gasped, seeing the rings begin to form around his middle involuntarily. When he finally found that the jumpsuit vanished and he was wearing his newish red shirt, he found himself falling, "Shit!" he yelled
Sam watched him fall, "No, Danny!" she screamed, there was then a splash beside her as he crash landed in the pool behind her. She turned around and watched him surface with eyes as wide as baseballs. "You okay?" she asked.
He looked up at her, then turned to see how close to the concrete wall he was. "I almost hit the wall." He held the back of his head and waded through the water, climbing out and onto the pool deck.
"Let's go inside and check if there's any towels inside." Sam suggested.
"Screw that, I'm taking a shower." Danny said. "Hopefully it's hot water."
Sam nodded, "Did you see anything?" she asked and opened the back door for him.
"No." he shook his head, "But now we know for a fact that there's others out here." He said. "And in this area."
"You guys heard the gunshots, right?" Jazz asked, Tucker was sleeping in her lap.
"Yeah. I couldn't find the source." Danny said bitterly.
Jazz looked at him for a while, "Did you fall into the pool?"
"Don't want to talk about it." He trudged off and found the bathroom. The walls were a sky blue and Super Mario characters littered the walls as well as random mushrooms. There were three bathmats, one as red as Mario's hat, one as green as the warp pipe, and the other just plain grey. Hung on a hook was a Starman-yellow towel. He sighed in relief and pulled off the soaking wet shirt. He dropped it in the sink and stepped off his sneakers, soaking the grey mat below him. He then started the shower and peeled off the rest of his clothes.
In the living room, Jazz sat on the couch laughing.
"What's so funny?" Sam asked, sitting on the couch adjacent to her.
"Did you not see my brother?" she giggled, "Soaked head-to-toe like a cat taking a bath. He looked pissed!"
Sam chuckled, "Well, he was lucky he didn't hit the pool wall. He crash landed." She said, taking the situation a little more seriously, "His powers are failing." She said.
Jazz grew silent. "There has to be a reason as to why that is." She said, "They can't just be failing. There has to be a reason."
Sam thought about all of the possibilities. But none of them made sense. A good possibility was that he was nowhere near a ghost portal, but his powers would've shorted out before. Before she thought about this for too long, she heard the door creak back open and a pair of footsteps hit the wooden flooring. She turned around carefully, trying not to twist her stomach in the wrong way and hurting herself. "Enjoy yourself?" she asked.
"Water was cold." He grumbled and started opening other doors. He was somewhat more immune to the cold, but it still wouldn't have been good if it got him sick or slowed him down more so than before. Which was why he was digging through the closets- he searched for dry clothes to change into so he didn't have to change back into the same, soaking wet clothes he had before. At the moment, he only wore the star-yellow towel around his waist and was looking through the closet directly across the hall from the bathroom, which he found was full of toiletries and cosmetics and whatnot. He sighed and looked to his right, seeing three more doors, one on the same wall, one on the opposing wall, and the other right in between the two. He opened the door on the same wall, finding that it was a deep, grape colored purple. With a black, metal framed bunk bed, where the bottom bed could be changed to a futon couch. There was a black and white desk to the immediate right side of the door, and a black mirror hung on the wall to the left. Beyond the mirror was a tall lamp with a paper shade, and a closet. He then looked at the room further. Girls used to stay in this room, so there was no true guarantee of finding any clothes for guys. He shrugged and tried the closet anyways, finding bras, dresses and slim tank-tops. But much to his surprise, half of the shirts in the closets were large T-shirts that were gender neutral. He found a black shirt with a blue and white print that was clearly a high school shirt. Reading something about 'game day'. He then looked for some pants. To his shock, he found men's pants too. In about his size. There were three pairs- jeans, tan dress pants, and black dress pants. The black dress pants he found with a blue and red work shirt. He chuckled when he checked the small shirt, reading that whoever he was 'borrowing' clothes from worked at the Sonic: Drive-In. He draped the pants over his forearm. "With my luck, I'd find a pair of boxers around here, too." He said, "Maybe it was a brother and- wait, no…" he muttered, "Sister and extreme tomboy." He said.
Sam walked down the hall and found him, "Danny?"
He jumped and almost shook the towel off, catching it before it went any lower than his hip, "Sam!"
She threw her hands up defensively, "Sorry!" she gasped. Then she looked around, "Wow, this room isn't bad."
"Tell me about it." Danny said, fixing the towel, "I found clothes in here that fit me."
"Really?" she asked.
He tugged on the shirt he wore and the pants he found, "These are my size. Girls used to share this room." He said.
"Did you find underwear?" she asked.
He gave her a blank look. "No."
"Well, maybe you'd find some in here." She looked around, "Is there a dresser even in here?" she asked.
"No." he looked around, "But there's that." He pointed at a small set of drawers that would've belonged to children, hidden between the wall and the bunk bed.
"Maybe, then." She said and sat on the bed and checked the top drawer, finding some women's underwear and toys. "What's with all the toys?" she asked, "Looks like they were a drive-thru collector." She pointed out and pulled out a snake-like thing with a scoop-like head, apparently a spoon.
"Uh…" Danny thought a moment, "I did see a Sonic uniform in here." He said. "Maybe she collected the toy for some reason?"
Sam shrugged and kept looking. "Hey! Boxers!" he threw a pair at Danny.
He caught the pair before they hit him in the face, they were primarily green and had oranges on them. "Wow."
"Now, before you have another panic attack of me seeing your junk, I'll leave the room so you can get dressed." She said bluntly and walked out, closing the door behind him.
He turned red at the statement, then quickly got dressed, wincing then he buttoned the pants. He pulled up the side of his new shirt and saw a bruise, "Geez…" he pulled up the shirt higher to see how large the bruise was, but saw it was wrapping around his body. He stepped back and looked in the mirror, seeing the bruise climb up and criss-cross his body to finally gather around his neck. He sighed and pulled his shirt back down and stepped out of the room. He started down the hall back out to the living room. He sat down next to Sam.
"Comfortable?" she asked.
He shrugged.
She looked at him for a while, Jazz had fallen asleep again and Tucker was still asleep. "Now what?" she asked.
"We have to find whoever was the source of those gunshots." Danny said. "They might have food, they'll probably be able to help."
Sam reached an arm around him and squeezed for a hug. "We'll find them." she smiled. "If we heard gunshots, and this area is as dead as it is, then they have to be living somewhere close." She said. "We'll go look for them later, okay?" she suggested.
