Shadow: (sigh) I'm bored.
Trinity: Shadow, how old is Tails?
Shadow: Um...ten?
Tails: WHAT?
Shadow: Urm...not ten?
Trinity:(:3) You're dead.
Tails: I'M GONNA KILL YOU!
I don't own Sega's characters. Cause if I did...well...
Chapter 6 – Leaving the Valley
Tails' face was still frozen in a look of shock. He gazed up into Shadow's face as if he was a sage, his mouth hanging open. Shadow was still chuckling at him in amusement and waited for Tails to calm down. Tails' jaw snapped shut.
"Were you really-?"
"Yes," Shadow said, rolling his eyes. "The language has no name, like the ancient people who spoke it. I've just called it the Legend's Language. The only time I heard it spoken was when the legend was told to me anyways."
"So, wait. This isn't a legend, it's a prophecy?" Tails asked.
"Well, yeah. It's been passed down orally from priest to priest for who knows how long," Shadow said with a shrug. Tails let out a sigh and turned to the flames of their camp fire. Shadow picked up a thin stick. "Want me to write it down for you?"
"Yes please. I want to take a closer look at it."
Shadow carved a square into the earth next to the flickering flames. In the square, he wrote the three verses of the legend in English. When he was finished, Shadow threw the thin twig into the flames and lay down on the other side, tucking his hands behind his head. Tails crawled on his hands and knees next to the writing and began to read, the fire his only light. Wow, he thought to himself, Shadow's hand writing is really neat.
"So…this 'beginning of the end'…that phase has already past, hasn't it?"
"I suspect so. That war accomplished the setting the ledged said the world would be like, right?"
"Yeah…" Tails said, returning to the writing. "Then this 'divine rule' the seven cast upon this other world… Do we become gods?" Tails said jubilantly.
"Pretty much," Shadow said with a little shrug. Tails' blue eyes lit up at the very notion.
"But, the eighth being," Tails said, his enthusiasm fading. A hint of anxiety entered his voice "this Guardian…that we have to kill…" Shadow looked straight into Tails eyes and nodded once.
"We're the ones who make the echidnas extinct."
-0-0-
Shadow went to sleep fairly quickly after Tails' short list of questions. Tails himself was sitting up, wide awake, next to the dieing embers. His head was tilted back as he observed the stars sparkling high above in the inky black sheet that was the sky. The blanket of darkness that wrapped around him hid the look upon his face.
I can't kill Knuckles. Tails thought to himself. I can't kill anyone.
(But you can,) whispered a voice in the back of his mind. (After all, you've done it before.) Images of the gruesome death of a certain group of bandits flashed through Tails' mind.
NO! That…was an accident…I didn't…Tails shuddered.
(But you did! And you could-you can do it again.)
Tails wrapped his arms around himself and whimpered. He blocked out the voice goading him and shuddered again. He remembered the feeling that the power over another's life and their spilt blood on his hands had giving him. The fact was he could kill again. And it was that prospect, that possibility that scared the kit the most.
The silver orb known as the moon had moved from one side of the sky to another in its wide, arcing travels around the world. Tails was still trembling next to the ashes of the camp fire when the sky began to lighten. He had been afraid to sleep- afraid to dream- about the voice that night. He was curled up on his side, staring blankly into the remnants of the fire. Shadow was quiet alarmed to find the kit in this state when he awoke that morning.
"Tails? Tails!" Shadow shook the fox out of his stupor and pulled him into a sitting position. "What happened to you?"
"Didn't… sleep," he murmured struggling to keep his head up. "Couldn't… too scared."
"Scared? There's nothing to be frightened about boy," Shadow slipped his arm under Tails' knees and picked him up carefully. He carried him to the river and did something Tails wasn't expecting. He dumped the kit into the cool, rushing river water.
"Gah!" Tails said, trashing around in the water.
Tails was momentarily swept away, disappearing under the surface of the rushing water. Shadow walked casually along the river, following the shadow swirling just under the water's surface. He popped up again a few yards downstream, clinging to the shore and coughing up water. He pulled himself out of the water, gasping for breath and collapsed in the tall grass. Shadow simply walked up to him and smirked down at the panting two-tailed fox.
"Did that wake you up?" Shadow asked in an amused tone.
"Wake me up?! You nearly killed me!" Tails snapped.
"But I didn't, and you're all better now," Shadow said, still smirking.
"All better?! You're parenting sucks!" Tails shouted, sitting up. "I change my mind, there is no way in hell I'd let you adopt me!"
"Like you'd have a choice. You're, what, ten years old?"
"I'M TWELVE!" Tails roared, looking scandalized.
"Eh? You're really twelve?" Shadow said, genuinely shocked. "Aren't you a bit…small?"
"I suffer from malnutrition for two years!" Tails said matter-of-factly, his arms crossed over his chest.
"Well, I guess it makes sense…" Shadow said, speaking to himself. "You were eight when I left and- one, two, three- four years have past…"
Tails sighed, and watched Shadow turn and walk away, muttering to himself. Tails shifted so he was standing steady on all fours. He shook himself wildly from head to tail and spun all the water off his coat. Shadow was still walking away, heading toward Farsight, so Tails had to jogged to catch up to him.
"Shadow? Why are we headed for town?"
"Isn't it obvious? We're leaving the valley."
"What?" Tails stopped.
"We're leaving the valley to fulfill that prophecy," Shadow explained. "We're going to find the other five beings of Chaos. So before we go, we should stock up on food. It's not like we'd find much out there…"
"Shadow…" Tails' ears drooped. "I can't do this, Shadow. I can't…kill Knuckles. Or anyone else for that matter."
"This is why I had my doubts about you," Shadow said, looking over his shoulder at Tails. "You're a lot friendlier than me, and you're going to be a lot kinder than the others, I suspect. You might not be able to kill Knuckles, but I…"
A strange look crossed Shadow's face. His eyes were narrowed and his fist clenched at his sides. Tails had seen the look before, but he couldn't remember where and when he saw it, or why he looked so hurt and enraged. All the same, Tails felt unsettled by the dark look in his eyes. When Shadow turned his red eyes on Tails, he flinched.
"I don't have any qualms about destroying the people who get in my way."
-0-0-
For one reason or another, it was a common understanding that one wore clothes in town. When it got around that Tails' house had been burnt down by bandits and all his belongs were gone, they gladly gave him- and Shadow- clothes. Tails received a pair of blue jean shorts and a plain white shirt, as well as a red hoodie. Shadow, on the other hand, had to forgo a shirt. His quills made it difficult for the young village women to force any shirt over his head. Instead, the girls got him the tightest black pants they could find- and forced him into them.
"Humor them," Tails said, smirking at the brooding hedgehog. "You've got to be the hottest guy they're every seen."
"They could at least give me something a little loser," Shadow growled, tugging at the tight fabric. "These feel like they're gonna rip in two at any moment."
In the end, they gave Shadow another pair of pants that weren't so tight, but they refused to let him change into them. They were offered new pairs of gloves to replace his old and ripped ones. Tails discarded his old gloves and got a pair of black leather gloves similar to the pair that caught his eye on his last visit. These were a fingerless pair, but unlike his old ones, they were made like that. Shadow discarded his old gloves as well, but declined the offer.
"They'll just get ruined while we're out there anyways," He said lightly.
"Out…there?" said one of the town's people.
"We're leaving the valley," Tails explained. Everyone up and down the street gasped.
The news of Farsight's favorite boy machinist leaving the valley had traveled through the streets, and within an hour, everybody knew. The people didn't try to stop him, but instead, they all but buried him with food and supplies. Both Tails and Shadow acquired traveling cloaks from a middle-aged couple living at the outskirts of town. Even though they were old and worn, the two of them received them gratefully. Children who idolized Tails run up to him in the streets to hand him little bags filled with their mothers dried foods. The village girls (the ones who dressed Shadow) returned with leather flasks that they filled with water for the two of them. One old man even gave his prized position, a well made pocket knife, to the young fox.
By the end of the day, Tails and Shadow were laden with gifts. They got free board in the inn owned and run by one of the village girl's family. They spent the rest of the afternoon in their third floor room, carefully packing everything into backpacks. They stored food and water carefully, planning the rations to last for at least two weeks.
"Who knows how long it will take to get to the nearest occupied town after all," Shadow said, looking over a map that was made just before the war. "I'm sure none of the major cities are still standing."
"There are only three places that I can think of on that map that still exist," Tails said while playing with the pocket knife. "But bandits and criminals hide out in the ruins of those cities, and the bounty hunters that chase them cause even more damage. Any place on that map that still exists today would be like that. They're all dangerous places that only provide temporary shelter because of the toxins in the area."
"Dangerous places, huh?' Shadow said thoughtfully. "Come here and show me where those three towns are."
Tails marked three cities north of the valley where Farsight laid. The small town of High Hill was closest, with June Square not too far away. Some distance away, along a gulf shore was what was marked as huge port city called Blacken. Shadow's eyes swept across the map, looking between the three towns. He calculated the time and distance it would take to travel to all three.
"Shadow, you're not thinking of going to these places, are you?" Tails asked nervously.
"Why not?" Shadow said, going through their rations again. "Where else to start looking for someone with power? I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of the other Chaos beings turn out to be hard core criminals. So unless you know where to find our old friends…"
Shadow stopped. He didn't even have to look over his shoulder to know the look on the kit's face. Tails was a young boy, nothing more than a child, and he was here, alone in a valley after a terrible war had ravaged the planted. Of course he doesn't know where anyone is, he probably doesn't even know if any of them survived. Shadow thought.
"Yeah, I know where to find them. At least…" Tails said with a touch of sadness in his voice. Shadow looked over his shoulder reluctantly. "At least, I know where to find their graves. Amy…When Sonic left, Amy took it upon herself to take care of me. When the battle reached our front door, when we were fleeing the destruction…we got separated and I lost sight of her, but I heard her…screams."
"And Cream…and Big…and even the Chaotix! They're all…gone. Sonic even had to go run off and disappear too. The only one who I'm unsure of is Rouge. She up and left a few months after you, when word of the robot army and Eggman's death reach us."
Tails stood shaking again, his wide eyes staring at the floor as he remembered the things he wished he could forget forever. Tears that he hoped to never see again rolled down his cheeks and fell to the floor. Shadow stood with his back to Tails, letting him cry silently. He felt awkward, like he wanted to comfort the boy but didn't know what to do. How could he comfort Tails when he couldn't even overcome his own sorrows?
Shadow: Awwww...poor Tails.
Tails: What, can't give me a hug?
Shadow: (shrug) Apparently not.
Trinity: ...I said early that Tails was eleven...Oh well. Let's call it a typo!
Tails: Reveiw me, or I'll be a sad, depressed kit for a very long time!
