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The sun shines brightly on Whisper, its warm glow sowing a smile on her face. Holding her hand is Tangle, her usual grin plastered wide for the world to see. Whisper stops at the door to the Diamond Cutter base, and swings it open. Tangle stares in astonishment at the other occupants who greet her one by one. She runs in, shaking hand with a teal ocelot, more than happy to show off to her as he practices his unwavering marksmanship on angry, eggman shaped dummy targets. A brown lion is the next to shake her hand, who gives her a tour of all the projects he has been keeping busy with. On a number of occasions, he has to quickly stop Tangle from excitedly grabbing something and accidentally breaking stuff. Lastly, she meets up with a green monkey, who proceeds to astound her with her psychic abilities by guessing what number she was thinking of, even catching her in the act of switching the number she thought of when the monkey guessed right.
Standing at the doorway, seeing all her friends get together, Whisper feels genuinely happy. It has been a long time since she felt this way. Her smile falters when a voice in her ear suddenly says something, causing it to reflexively flick, though it was too faint to make out. She paid it no mind and continued to watch her friends interact. Despite her efforts to ignore the ethereal voice, she can hear it get louder and clearer. “Miss Whisper, it’s time to go.” Whisper looks around confused. Go where? She’s happy here. She doesn’t want to go. The voice won’t relent, getting louder each time. Everytime the voice comes, the scene in front of her begins to fade and distort, like a dye diffusing in a beaker of water. The world around Whisper begins to fade to dark, and her friends one by one start to diffuse away into thin air. “No, please don’t go.” She tries to speak, but finds herself voiceless. The ocelot is the first to go, the lion follows suit, then the monkey. Finally, with the world having gone dark, Tangle turns around and faces Whisper. She smiles and waves, her cheery voice solftly calling out “Don't keep me waiting too long, okay?” Whisper silently cries out, reaching out as she is pulled away by an invisible force. Eventually, Tangle dissipates like the rest, leaving Whisper alone and floating aimlessly in the dark. Eventually, she feels herself suddenly pulled out of the darkness, like a fish caught by a hook.
Whisper slowly opens her weary eyes, and sees Cream’s gentle gaze looking back. “Miss Whisper, it’s time to go. I’m sorry to wake you up, but we’ve reached Angel Island.” Whisper looks around. She is back on the ship, everyone around her looking miserable, and Tangle… She remembers what happened. She didn’t even get to say goodbye before she turned into one of those zombots shuffling around on the world below. “I’ll… be out soon.” Whisper forces a smile for the young rabbit. Cream looks back at Whisper. She understands completely the hurt she is carrying. It was the same hurt she had to carry, and still does carry for her mother. She heads off to tell the others that Whisper has woken up. Meanwhile, Whisper is still lying down. More than anything she just wants to fall back asleep, go back into that dream, but…
Tangle wouldn’t have wanted her to mope around forever. She has to press on. If not for herself, then for Tangle. She gets up, and forces herself to march off the ship, and hopefully, to a better tomorrow.