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Johnny and the Shadow
Johnny was beginning to deeply regret splitting up with Kitty-
- That was splitting up physically, not romantically, he would never split up with her romantically-
- not permanently, anyway.
What had he been thinking about?
He pulled up hard on the handlebars of his motorcycle, narrowly dodging the baton-blast of one of Walker's goons.
That's right. He was running from the police. He flipped the bird over his shoulder. They weren't even real police. Jerks.
He hoped Kitty had gotten away safely. She probably had. Her power was actually better at throwing off pursuit than Johnny's. One kiss, and, poof! The lucky stiff (could a ghost be a stiff?) was gone, tossed all the way across the Zone.
Hence the regret. Johnny just had to be the hero, and lead the cops away. He was such an idiot. Kitty was probably going to have to bail him out, or, more likely, break him out, since they didn't have any money, or anything worth trade (except for Johnny's bike, and that was probably going to get wrecked).
(Probably going to get wrecked, because he kept forgetting to look out for floating mountains, like that one.)
Oh sh-!
Johnny's narrow escape was not replicated by his three closest pursuers. Sadly, he had far more than three pursuers.
He needed a way to lose these clowns!
It was really too bad he hadn't been smart enough to drive towards a part of the Zone he knew. Instead, he, a complete moron, was completely lost.
Kitty had probably gone somewhere she knew. Heck, she was probably back in their lair, wondering where in the Realms he had gone!
It was times like these that Johnny really wished he had, like, a partner. A right hand guy. Kitty was great. Perfect! His best friend, this side of the great divide or the other. And she could fight like anyone, which was a great perk, as far as Johnny was concerned. But she wasn't a guy.
Johnny got up over the rim of a larger island, and touched down. There were trees here, great, towering, dark pines. He could hide under them, lose his tails, provided he didn't piss off whoever, or whatever, lived here.
Too bad Johnny could've had a phD in pissing people off, if hadn't kicked the bucket. If people gave phDs for that kind of thing. Which they didn't.
He glanced up an back, over his shoulder, trying to see if he was still being followed. He was. Actually, he seemed to have attracted even more cops. Damn.
He looked forward just in time to crash his bike.
Johnny tumbled. Only his instinctive flight saved him from cracking his head against the ground, a tree, a couple rocks, and now he was rolling downhill, head over heels. Gravity had changed. The local rules didn't like flying. That happened sometimes. Johnny always hated it when it did.
He came to rest at the bottom of a steep, rocky, ravine.
He sat up, and picked bits of gravel and twig out of his face. He'd had worse crashes.
(Particularly the one that had killed him.)
Well, no matter how bad the crash was, his bike was gone. He was going to have to hoof it, which was so not his style.
He got up and looked around, trying to figure out which direction would be his best bet, and did a double take when he got to his shadow. Now, Johnny wasn't a genius, not even close, but considering where the light was coming from, and how much of it there was, his shadow looked kind of... Big. And dark. And sharp edged. And sort of... in the wrong place.
He shook his head. Not currently his problem.
Without flight, he wasn't going to be able to get up the sides of the ravine, so he picked a direction and started walking down it. Hopefully, Walker's goons wouldn't find him here, because he'd be stuck. He'd have to be quiet. Some of those jerks had sharp ears. It hadn't been an issue when he had his bike, he could outrun them, but not like this. Not on foot. Not in this stupid hole.
This sucked.
"So, just me and my shadow, huh?" he muttered, nervously. "That's fine, that's fine. M'shadow's the only one that always got my back." Most of his life, he'd been alone, one way or the other. Then he'd met Kitty, and-
He whirled. He could have sworn he'd seen something move out of the corner of his eye, but there wasn't anything there.
"Freaking creepy place." Johnny took a step back, and slipped on a rock. He fell, starting a small, but loud, avalanche. Luckily, it wasn't enough to bury him. He got up.
... And heard voices.
He hissed under his breath, and started to sprint down the ravine. Maybe if he could find a place to climb out-
Too late! A pair of Walker's goons leaned down over the rim of the ravine, leveling their guns at Johnny. He backtracked, but two more goons peered into the ravine from that direction.
"Surrender!" barked one of them.
"Uh," said Johnny.
Very suddenly, a tree branch fell on one of the goons. She stumbled, and shot her baton- but it wasn't pointed at Johnny anymore. It was pointed at her fellow goon.
The baton went off, hitting and, as per the design of the strange weapons, binding, the goon. His weapon went off in turn, still pointed in Johnny's general direction, but Johny was quick to duck, and the blast hit the ravine wall behind him, causing a small avalanche that just barely missed Johnny. The other two goons weren't so lucky. The ravine wall collapsed underneath them, half-burying them in rubble.
This left just the first goon. She quickly retrained her weapon on Johnny, who raised his hands, not in surrender, but to shoot a pair of ghost rays from his hands. Now, Johnny wasn't very good at ghost rays, he'd never been able to put enough power into them to do real damage, but he could do them. Sorta.
The guard jerked back as Johnny's rays hit her, and then shrieked as a giant shadow monster rose up out of the ground flung her away, over the tops of the trees.
After a beat of stunned disbelief, Johnny stumbled backward, cursing. The shadow monster (ghost?) twisted towards Johnny, ruby red eyes glittering.
Then it shrunk, receeding into... Johnny's shadow. Huh.
Now Johnny wasn't the brightest ghost in the Zone, but he could put two and two together, and, Ancients, but he could work with this!