Welcome to Gaia! ::

Allen's eyes grew wide with alarm as she turned and man-handled one of the guards. The poor guard just shrugged and drawled, "Ain't my area. Lemee call in." He turned to head back to his office, obviously charmed by the fake sweetness that hadn't fooled Allen at all. She seemed so lonely at times, and so hard and rough at others. It was confusing. Allen watched in silence as the man lumbered off. "What's your name?" He asked softly, turning his attention back to the girl.

"Shade?" He murmurred. Another thing about her that was painfully familiar, but unplacable. He offered her his hand, not bothering to stand. "Allen Gray." Something struck him suddenly. "Which elementary school did you attend, uf you don't mind my asking?"

"I'm trying to figure out why I recognize you." He answered. "We're only about four school years apart, so we could have logically attended elementary school together." He chuckled at himself. He had no idea why he was still dwelling on that subject, but he knew if he didn't figure it out, it'd bug him for life. "And I did, in fact, attend Soen Elementary, which is the one I believe you're speaking of."

He shrugged. "Memory is an odd thing, is it not?" He studied her face for a moment, his eyes dwelling curiously on her own hypnotic purple ones.

Allen tended to be rather intimidating, whether he meant to be or not. Still, the look of anxiety in her eyes tore at his heart. The sense of justice that made him a force of nature swelled up and he found himself overcome with the desire to protect her from whatever was making her uncomfortable.

Until she spoke, and he realized that it was him.

"Oh, no." He murmurred, pulling his gaze from hers, the spell broken. "I just-"

It was at that moment that the power went out.

Allen leapt to his feet in surprise (he was a Take Action kind of guy), and nearly toppled Shade over in the process. He caught her by the upper arm in the dark, hauling her back upright, which brought her against him. "Careful," he grunted in the dark. He waited for the lights to flicker back on - for someone to say something, but all was silent and dark. Still holding her by the arm, he reached with his opposite hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his keys, flicking on the tiny flashlight attached to them. A miniscule beam of light tried in vain to peirce through the darkness, barely illuminating anything. "What on earth just happened? Are you alright?" He finally released her arm so she could pull away from him. He shined the flashlight around. Where was everybody? Why did it feel suddenly like they were all alone...?

Allen frowned, straining to hear the sounds of a person moving or something, but could hear nothing but their own breathing and words. He strained his eyes against the darkness. His flashlight was little help.

"It's probably just a short power outage. Nothing serious. The lights will likely be back on in a minute...The safest thing to do would be to sit here and wait until they come back on." This said, he carefully found the chair he'd been sitting in and returned to it. He took hold of her wrist and helped her find the chair beside him. "If anything, there should be emergency lights coming on soon. Then we can try to find the exit out of here."

"I was once in a blackout where everyone started panicking. It was insane. People got hurt and things got broken, complete chaos, just becuase some people get a kick out of screaming whenever it gets dark." He shook his head. After a moment he clicked off his flashlight. "It wasn't doing much good anyway." He said. "I wonder why it's so silent. You'd think that in a place like the mall, people would be going crazy, but no. It's kind of creepy, almost."