"Mom?" A small figure moved through a darkened city, illuminated only by the eerie glow of the flickering streetlights. Buildings towered above the figure, its eyes darting from left to right, searching for something… "Dad?"

The voice was small, but echoed off the outer walls of the buildings. The origin of the voice stopped until the sound died out. Despite its low volume, the sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead. After it had faded out, the figure started moving rapidly again. Its footsteps echoing much like the voice. It stopped again to beer down an alleyway between two buildings; one appeared to be some sort of apartment-like structure, while the other seemed to be a skyscraper. The shape couldn’t make out how far up the top floor was. The building seemed to keep stretching upward, like a finger of the planet or of God prodding the planet; A mighty pillar keeping the unusual blood-red sky from falling onto the silent city below. The figure shook its head and darted down the alleyway.

In the dim light a fire escape could be seen. It wound up the side of the apartment-looking building and ended at the roof of the building. The shape leaped onto the ladder hanging a few feet from the ground and started climbing up. After an hour or so he emerged at the top of the building. Judging by how far it went up compared to the adjacent skyscraper, the structure was about 15 stories tall. From the top of the building the shape could see more of the city. : Part of it looked to be set ablaze, while another seemed to be frozen over. Everywhere near him was shrouded in nothing but perfect darkness aside from the streetlights, and still yet another was illuminated with a blinding light coming from seemingly nowhere. All of these odd attributes met at one point of the city. In the sky in the exact center of the city there appeared to be some sort of fierce battle occurring. A bright golden-white light, a deep crimson, and a pitch-black swirling blur was suspended in mid-air over the center.

The figure stood, transfixed with suspense, watching the battle. As it watched, a ball of pure black, about the size of a golf ball, flew right over its shoulder and into the skyscraper behind it. The ball was embedded deep into the building, and seemingly did nothing.

However, what followed was certainly not nothing.

Three floors of the skyscraper were completely engulfed by a noiseless explosion of pure black energy. Or rather it was first an implosion, followed by the explosion. The three floors were compressed into a sphere no more than a foot in diameter, and then all of it was throw outward in all directions at blinding speeds. None of the debris flying horizontally hit the shape, but the shrapnel that was sent upward blew apart the rest of the skyscraper. Debris fell around the figure, and it closed its eyes when it saw a huge chunk of concrete heading straight for it. It felt something pin its body to the ground… the impact wasn’t too painful at all, yet it opened its eyes expecting to see its legs covered in rubble.

Eron didn’t see rubble.

Brown eyes… bright red hair…

Worse than being buried! He started, twisted, fell off of his bed, and hit the floor flat on his back. The brown eyes were instantly gazing back at him; the facial expression was one of mock curiosity and true amusement.

Eron sighed and shoved the face with its accompanying body off of him. "G’morning, Cinnamon." He mumbled as he sat up.

"Oof!" she commented as she fell over, "Be a little more gentle, willya?"

"If you didn’t leap on me all of the time I would have a reason to do so!" he yawned, "How did you get in this time, anyway?"

"Your aunt let me in!"

"WHY?!"

"She though you’d been sleeping to late." She shrugged.

"Well, get out so I can put some clothes on!"

"Aww, but why? You’re so SEXY in your boxers!" she winked, and instantly burst into laughter at the look of annoyance that spread across Eron’s face, as well as the blushing.

She then found herself talking through the door to a dressing Eron on the other side.

Eron is, was, and will be a tiger. A gray tiger. He was a gray tiger with black stripes. Simple enough, right? He had ‘wild’ brown hair, meaning that it went everywhere. The only parts that remained constant were two spike-like bits of hair over his forehead right above his eyes. They first shot up for an inch or two, then dropped limply back down and ended a little below his chin. He almost always wore a long blue undershirt with a silver stripe across the center, an open collared white overshirt, and to complete the set, a pair of semi-baggy kahki cargo pants. Sure enough, he emerged in the doorway a few minutes later in the said outfit.

Cinnamon signed in a mock-dreamy fashion, and was immediately seen darting out of the front door followed by Eron, fixing his heel into his right shoe and stuffing a bagel into his mouth.

Cinnamon Spice was a cross between a raccoon and a squirrel. A Raquirrel. If you called her a Squaccoon, you would probably wake up in an ambulance. Her fur was a shade of darkish-medium brown, here eyes close to the same color, if a bit lighter. Her hair was short, a few spikes styled in the front, and the rest coming down the back of her head to the bottom of her neck. It was bright red with a few pink streaks in it. The only abnormal thing about her was her outfit, or rather, part of a lack thereof. She wore kahki pants similar to Eron’s, and also similar shoes. However, she refused to wear any kind of shirt or top garment.

Why she had this quirk, nobody seemed to know, or much less give any thought to it. The only person who seemed to even take notice of it was Eron, despite the fact that he had grown up with Cinnamon since they were in 2^nd grade. It never got to him then, but seeing as how he was now 16, and Cinnamon 17, and both had been maturing…

Well, that’s all I’ll say on THAT subject!

Eron and Cinnamon lived in downtown Tampa, Florida. They sometimes said that it was Clearwater, since their condo was pretty much right on the border between the two cities. The complex was rather tall, and Eron lived on the 28^th floor. Seven floors down from Cinnamon’s floor. She lived on the top floor.

Oddly enough, Cinnamon was scared to death of heights, so she always hung around Eron’s place, and liked it even more when her and Eron wandered around the city. So whenever Eron needed time to himself he would go up to the very top of the building, tot he outside part, and sit in a little crevice underneath the outer wall (Which wasn’t very tall to begin with). It even had a mid-sized hole in it that served as a window that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico.

However, neither Eron nor cinnamon were on top of the building. Cinnamon had dashed into an elevator just as the doors were closing, leaving Eron to run face-first into the metal doors, and grumble as he heard Cinnamon’s laughter descend along with the mechanism.

He bolted down the staircase as fast as his legs could carry him, jumping whole flights of stairs at a time. He flung the bottom parking level’s door open and glanced around, stars exploding in his eyes. Had he beaten Cinnamon this time around?

He stumbled around a corner and leaned against a cold concrete wall of the parking level, panting heavily, shaking the bursts of light from his vision. He looked up just in time to see Cinnamon flying right at him, hugging him against the wall, also sending the starbursts right back into his eyes as his head hit the concrete.

"Owww… Cinnamon, do you have to do this every morning?" Eron moaned as his temples throbbed with the sudden rush of blood to his head.

"Sure! After all, it keeps you in shape!"

"What about YOU? You take the flippin’ ELEVATOR! Home come you don’t take the stairs instead?"

"What do you think I do when you’re on the roof?"

"Uh…"

"Exactly! Let’s go do something." Cinnamon said. Her and Eron wandered out of the parking level into the late morning sunlight.

It was a clear summer day, hot and humid like all summer days in Florida. There were a few heavy-looking clouds in the distance, being gently blown in by a westward breeze from the bay. The standard summer day almost always had a brief downpour in the mid-to-late part of the afternoon, which was the main cause of the constant humidity. Eron rolled up his sleeves until they arrived at an air-conditioned location.

In this case it was the Aquarium. Eron and Cinnamon had been there more times than they could count, but they both had passes for it, and Eron particularly enjoyed one section in which it was a broad walkway encircled by plexiglass, with the outside of the glass teeming with aquatic inhabitants. But that wasn’t until the mid-part of the building.

Eron and Cinnamon walked down a street, their right side lined with a shopping center that seemed to have been constructed years ago, yet only two or three of the available plots were actually being used at the time. To their left was a parking lot with a construction site in the middle, that looked like it was going to be a new terminal for the port. At the end of the avenue was the large glass building that is the aquarium. However, at the every end of the line of shops, there was a port for cruise liners. Today there was a ship docked there.

"Ahoy, mateys!" a cheerful voice called from the entry to the port. Eron and Cinnamon simultaneously turned their heads to the origin of the greeting.

"Macy!" Cinnamon cried and launched a tackle-hug at Macy.

Macy was a deep green hedgehog, whose fur reflected a surprisingly large amount of sunlight. She seemed to radiate a green aura of cheerfulness around her because of this. Today she wore a tropical tourist-like shirt and… no pants.

Eron often wondered how he became friends with the girls whom had the weirdest dressing habits in the world. As you can see, Macy didn’t like pants, and much like Cinnamon, Eron seemed to be the only one that ever noticed this.

Regardless, Macy lived in the Bahamas, and often spent her summertime months in Tampa living with her older brother (A marine biologist) in an apartment complex a few blocks from where Eron and Cinnamon lived. She spoke fluent English, and preferred it over any of the languages spoken in the Bahamas. She also spoke without a Jamaican accent. Her eyes were a deep blue, and her hair was a pale-ish bright purple.

Macy received the tackle-hug and was pinned to the ground. "Good afternoon!" she smiled pleasantly and shoved Cinnamon off of her lightly. Brushing herself off, she stood and made her way over to Eron, who had apparently been trying to sneak off. She tiptoed up behind him and suddenly threw her arms around his neck, "And how’s my favorite feline companion today?"

"Can’t… breathe…" he choked under Macy’s embrace.

"Oops," she released him, "What’s up?"

"I wouldn’t be if Ms. Tomboy over there," he indicated to Cinnamon ("Hey!!"), "would have let me sleep in like I had planned on doing." He swung his head to the left as an empty can hurled past from Cinnamon’s direction. "Anyway, how about yourself?"

"Oh, I’m just fine," she ran a hand through her hair idly, as if apprehensive about something, "As you can see, I just got in. I’ll pick up my luggage later, or have my brother pick it up I suppose." Eron nodded, "Anyway, it was obvious that you had forgotten that I was coming in today. What were you doing all the way over here?"

"Aquarium."

"Again?"

"Yyy-up."

"Let’s do that later .I wanna hang out at your place for awhile."

"Er… okay. C’mon, Cinna. We’re heading back."

"Aww… why?" she pouted, "Is she more important to you than I am?"

"She’s in from out of town, you moron!" Eron waveed his arms frantically and was promptly creamed in the face with a brick.

"Don’t call me a moron!" Cinnamon commented as she walked past Eron who lay stunned on the ground. After a few steps, she turned around, twitching her tail and giving him an annoyed glance, "Are you coming?"

Eron was then walking about 10 feet behind Cinnamon and Macy. He grumbled when he saw them give each other looks of victory. Those girls will be the end of me… he thought to himself as he shoved his hands into his pockets and sulked.

"Hurry up!" Macy called. Eron looked up to see that her and Cinnamon were about 40 feet ahead of him now.

The end of me… he thought as he dashed to catch up with them.