Chapter 12: Captured
A month later, Luna spied on us from her perch in a tree just above the gummi berry patch. She watched as the three of us traveled to the glen and worked on repairing the quick tunnels to infiltrate Dunwyn City. My words continuing to ring in her head, "I won't lose another loved one. I won't let him kill you either." It began driving her insane, thinking about it. "Stupid. Why risk your life for others? It just doesn't make sense." She thought silently to herself, shaking her head from side to side to try and throw the thoughts from her head. Unable to shake away her thoughts, she decided to formulate a plan to try and take me away. She jabbed the knife she kept with her deep into the tree trunk and used the chain that was attached to it to swing from the tree and closer to the ground. The moment her feet pressed against the tree trunk, the knife gave way and slipped out of it. Gravity caught up with her and she plummeted around two feet to the soil below. "Ow!" She mumbled to herself as she stood back up, rubbing her butt with her right paw.
She thought of how to take me away as she attempted to rub away the shooting pain from her "landing". "I need to get inside the house first." She thought to herself. "If I wait for her in her room, perhaps I can get a drop on her." Suddenly, my words rang through her skull once more. "I won't lose another loved one." Her mind wandered with more questions, "What is a loved one? What is love?" She asked herself. "Maybe I can get answers from daddy once I've brought Sunni back." Suddenly she heard a loud clicking noise from behind her as if something was being forced into place. Luna turned around to come face to face with the double barrel of Rose's shotgun. "Give me a reason to pull this trigger." Rose threatened. Luna simply gulped and dropped her knife and chain before raising her paws up into the air to indicate her surrender.
Rose then pressed the barrel of the gun closer toward Luna and stated, "In the house now!" Luna kept her hands up and did as she was told, her forehead slightly sweating with a kind of fear. As she led the gummi bear clone inside the house, Rose made sure to pick up the knife and chain weapon that was lying on the ground before entering the house herself.
By the time it was time for us to return home, we had completed around another ten percent of the track we needed to travel to the city and back. The both of us were tired and sweaty and weren't ready for the scene we saw the moment we walked through the front door. Luna was tied up and sat down on the living room couch answering Rose's questions. "Luna?" I said in pure shock. She looked over in my direction with a slightly saddened expression but she didn't look tortured or hurt in the slightest. "Save me mom. She is scary!" Luna whined in my direction. I was extremely confused at that point. So confused that my mind simply fell blank and I nearly fainted where I stood. "How did you catch her?" Eric asked, snapping me back to reality before I could actually lose consciousness. "Let's just say that she isn't the most trained spy I've ever seen." She said to him. Luna became flustered and raised her voice saying, "I just want to take her back to..." Rose interrupted her, "I can't let you take Sunni to that madman." Rather than getting angry that the woman insulted her "father", Luna actually became confused. "Madman? What do you mean by that?" I decided to interrupt and ask her, "How did he treat you when you first woke up?" Luna's eyes opened wide with the memory of her brief encounter with Dr. Lavender.
A bright light appears before her pained eyes as she awakens for the first time. A muffled voice with an excited tone cackled aloud, the sound ringing in her ears, "He, he, he! You may not be a real gummi bear, but even an abomination can be useful I guess. If you bring your original sister to me, I may consider increasing your lifespan. Perhaps her DNA can even make you into a true gummi bear." The images she saw were simple blurry shapes, her eyes in pain from adjusting to the light for the first time. She opened her mouth to make a sound, "Who..." She choked, her voice straining form its first use. Not knowing where she was or how she got there, and barely knowing who she even was, she attempted speak once again, "Who are you?" She noticed that her voice was muffled and when her eyes finally adjusted to the bright light in front of her, she noticed that she was floating in a transparent blue liquid with a breathing mask over her face. She was simply floating in a tube with nothing but her fur on. Innocent in the ways of the world that she had come to, she paid no attention to her "indecency" but simply focused on the older man staring at her. "You may refer to me as your creator, or your father, if you prefer. Something about that word meant something to her. Upon hearing it, her heart somewhat leapt with a kind of joy, and she began feeling as if the belonged somewhere. She had someone to teach her things about this world she lived in and perhaps she could find out more. Her curiosity reached farther than the sky and she wanted to learn it all.
However, the next few days couldn't go farther from her plans. Rather than him taking her places and teaching her things, like she had hoped, He kept her trapped in the tube of liquid and stuck her in the arms and legs with various needles. She began feeling stronger with every injection, but she continued to feel the emptiness and loneliness of the neglect. She just wanted to get out of the tube and wander around. Finally, a wish of hers came true. One day, just as she was awakening from sleep, something around her began to change. The liquid that kept her suspended began to drain out of the bottom. Her body lowered itself until inevitably, her feet rested smoothly on the ground. Feeling herself stand for the first time, she wasn't expecting her legs to fold so easily as the remainder of the water drained away. Her knees, not used to supporting even her light weight, bent and she found herself lowering to the ground along with the liquid. Finally seeing her exact color for the first time, she was intrigued at how bright she looked out of the dimming liquid. Still wet and with her fur pressed tightly against her flesh, she placed her front paws against the ground to try her hand at standing up. Slowly, she struggled and pushed herself upright. Placing one foot under her waning body, she reached out and pressed her right paw against the glass of the tube that held her and attempted to pull herself into a standing position. Her knees and ankles quickly finding the strength to support her body weight, she took her paw off of the glass and allowed herself to stand there for a few minutes, literally feeling herself become stronger just by standing. Then a thought occurred to her, "What about walking?" She then placed her right paw back on the glass and began to take her first step toward the left. She felt herself stumble and caught her balance by placing her left paw on the glass in front of her body. Leaning against the glass she then began taking steps in the same direction while supporting herself. It was pretty much no time before she was walking without supporting herself and her steps were even becoming much smoother and less clunky. In ten minutes she was practicing jogging in place. And even opening and closing her fists and moving her arms around. She was kind of sore from the new use of her muscles and even the injections, but she refused to complain.
Suddenly, the glass tube began rotating and lowering all on its own. It was only ten seconds till the tube lowered itself down to the level of the drain and she finally stepped out and slipped off her breathing mask. At first, she thought that her dreams were coming true and that she could go out and learn everything she could. That was until a door on the far side of the empty laboratory slid open and Dr. Lavender proceeded to walk toward the young Luna. She saw the old man come closer and closer and she stood ready for him to kneel down and offer his hand for her to take. They would have fun, her learning to play many games and him teaching her the important things the world had to offer. It wasn't so, the moment he got close enough, he stopped short and simply stared at her like he believed that she was a disappointment or something and finally blurted out, "You took much longer to learn to walk than I predicted, X fifteen-oh-five. Suddenly, the feeling of both betrayal and guilt flooded through her. Then he added, "However, it took the last of my resources to create you. And I could always use your homing abilities to locate the creature you originally came from." Confused, Luna tried to talk to him to ask him to clarify his words, but he simply turned away from her and ordered her, "Get yourself fitted with some close and get moving. I need you to bring your original back to me. And don't fail me. I made you and I know how to turn you back into a pile of slag."