Welcome to Gaia! ::

This Sun egg was received by shadowicedragon1 on November 1st, 2005.

Care of egg:
Keep it warm until it hatches.
It should hatch in 5-10 days.
Update: hatched November 12th!

:: Contents & Updates! ::

Updates~
12.11.05 - Ichigo hatches! heart

Contents~
1. General
2. About Ichigo
3. Contents & Updates
4. Rules
5. About Shadow [ic]
6. About Shadow [ooc]
7. Art
8. Gift
9. Recieving Ichigo!

[ Message temporarily off-line ]

Oh dear. xD

...how it all began...

A lot of people will be expecting some sort of dramatic, fierce story of how Shadow battled her way through dragons and flames to find her egg. The truth is a lot less complex: Shadow tried to eat it.

And that was quite dramatic enough for Ichigo.

It had been a complete accident, as were most fortunate things that happened to Shadow. Her mum had packed her a lunch as Shadow was once again late for school, and had enclosed some healthy fruit as mums are obliged to do.

Normally Shadow ignored such tokens, or saved them until she was absolutely starving, but today, her mother had packed strawberries.

Shadow liked strawberries, unlike most other fruit and veg.

So, as she chatted away to her friends, she popped the lid off her lunch box, and raised the unsuspecting strawberry to her mouth. When she heard a squeak.

She eyed the strawberry suspiciously, but it seemed unlikely that it had made the noise. Glancing surreptiously around, none of her friends seemed bothered by it. So she opened her mouth and put the strawberry in.

And almost instant, it moved. It was jiggling up and down in her mouth. Scared, Shadow spat it back out into her hands.
The strawberry sparkled, and quivered - it had -wings- - and slowly zoomed to head height. None of her friends noticed or even moved as it circled them one by one.

Shadow's brain threatened to shut down, so she quickly analysed the options. They weren't too promising. Either:
1. She had gone insane.
2. She was hallucinating.
3. The strawberry was real and somehow linked to something magical.
4. The strawberry was mutated.

She glared at the hallucinated-insanityimagined-magic-mutated strawberry and very quietly, moved towards it, threw her lunch box over it and pinned it to the nearest surface, before quickly shutting it in. She would examine it at home, and perhaps by then her brain would function properly.

Little did Shadow know that this was not the end of her strawberry adventures. It was only just the beginning...

...the one in which Shadow names the mutant...

It was asleep.

Well, so Shadow assumed. It had stopped making funny noises and was inhaling and exhaling evenly, after drying off, eating a small bit of mushed-up pear, going to the toilet and zooming round the living room a couple of times humming quietly, all of which led Shadow to believe that it -was- alive.

She gently picked it up and put it on the piano, right next to her beloved computer. It was still warm and seemed to stir at her touch, and Shadow hurriedly deposited it, where it once again became still. It would need a better nest, Shadow realised, but it was safe there for now, away from being accidentally squashed or eaten.

She watched it for a few more seconds before turning to her computer and loading it up, volume almost silent in order to not waken her little mutant. And then the windows screen appeared, and Shadow forgot all about her find as she absorbed herself in the computer. Her Bleach episode was happily downloading, and she checked it to find it had a steady rate - good. She'd never trusted BitTorrent, but torrents were realised far quicker than direct downloads, so she'd had to use them. And now she eagerly watched as the numbers flickered and changed - 98.7, 99.3, 99.8, 100%. It had finished. She happily clicked and opened the file, her media player instantly popping up. While it was loading, she browsed through her manga files until her eyes fell on one - Death and the Strawberry.

Shadow didn't believe that the mutant was here to stay. She couldn't think of things in longterm - long to her was a week. But it would be nice for even a week to call the mutant by it's very own name - and here was a perfect one. She double-clicked, and opened it, each page revealing the gripping story of Kuchiki Rukia and Kurosaki Ichigo in the world of Bleach manga. Ichigo. Strawberry.

Perfect.

Shadow closed the window. "I shall call you Ichigo," She whispered softly, before switching back to her Bleach anime and becoming lost in seconds.

----------

Ichigo woke, feeling rather sleepy still and rather disgruntled. A buzzing noise had disturbed it from sleep. Looking upwards, it saw its owner with her eyes fixed on the screen, and the buzzing noise was the same thing that she had been doing earlier, though now it was eminating from a giant - structure. It looked solid and big and scary, and Ichigo blinked at it for a few seconds before scuttling, scared, to hide behind the teenager.

Peeking from behind a few stray strands of hair, Ichigo's fears increased - this structure-thing obviously trapped small beings like itself and they were moving, obviously trying to get out. Shadow was just watching them from the front, why didn't she help? Getting more and more distressed as it watched a particularly pathetic one with blue coloured fuzz on its head almost crying, Ichigo squeaked and fluttered in front of its owners face anxiously.

----------

Shadow's first reaction was to grab whatever was in her way and throw it out of her way. This was Bleach, for cryin' out loud! No one disrupted her Bleachy-ness! And this was a really sweet bit, with Rikichi and Hanatarou coming to help Renji after his fight with Byakuya-taichou!
"Wha-" She growled, before her eyes focused on the flying blob. "Oh, it's you, Ichigo." She sighed, rolling her eyes. "What's wrong? Are you hungry?"

Ichigo bobbed up and down, squeaking and crying. Shadow frowned, wondering what on earth was wrong. But to Ichigo, all Shadow's words meant was "brrzzz, brzzzzzzezzzz."

"Look, just calm down a second." Shadow lifted her hand wearily from the mouse and enclosed the strawberry within it. "Oh - and I've decided to call you Ichigo. How's that for a name, hmm?"

Ichigo squeaked even more loudly, insitently and shrilly. It jabbed a tendril towards the screen, where Ichimaru Gin was now attempting to tempt Rukia into asking for freedom, and quickly withdrew the tendril, as if burnt. It could not have been made more obvious, even to Shadow, that the strawberry was terrified.

Shadow sighed and contemplated fulfilling her urge to lock the mutant out for a few hours so that she could watch Bleach in peace. But she resisted - she could watch Bleach later. "A'right, all right..." She grumbled, logging off and shutting down. Ichigo calmed slightly, though it still shook and shivered in her hand. "But we're going to do work instead, understand?" She added sternly. "If you don't want to play, you've gotta work, yeah?" Shadow vaguely wondered if she was making sense, but ignored that train of thought and gathered up her books with a sigh. "First thing I'm going to do is to teach you to read, write and speak, you little moocher. You're going to help me with my homework one day if it's the last thing I ever teach you to do, you hear..."

Ichigo did. But although it could see her mouth moving, all it heard was blah, blah, blah blah blah...

...the one in which Ichigo likes shoes...

It was now three unsucessful hours later.

Shadow was in a sulk, a pile of leaves, glue, sparkles, coloured paper, twigs and scissors littering the table in front of her. Ichigo was dozing quietly by her hand, unaware that her owner was nearing bursting point. She angrily crossed out "Attempt #127" on her pad and dropped the pen with a loud clatter onto the table. "I give up."

Ichigo swivelled it's "face" towards her.

"You're so picky!" Shadow burst out finally, glaring at her Wethkin. "Why can't you just LIKE them? They're all perfect, I spent ages on them..."
She ranted on and on, unaware that her strawberry was not even listening anymore, before finishing. "...and if you don't like them, you can just make your own!"

Ichigo squeaked as if to say, 'finally'. Rising up, the egg gently skimmed across worksurface and settled in Shadow's lunchbox.

"Oh. No. Not there," Shadow groaned. "I need to eat -something-! I'll get to school and it'll all be gone!"

Her egg looked disapproving, or at least as disapproving as an egg -could- look. It fluttered upwards once again, and descended neatly and purposefully...in the fruit bowl. Shadow stared.

"You'll be eaten, you know that! You can't stay there! What if one of my parents finds you? Food doesn't last long in this house, y'know!"

Ichigo meeped admonishingly.

"I know I'm being picky! I just don't want you eaten!" Shadow raved, unaware that she was actually -talking- to a strawberry, and the strawberry was -responding-.

Ichigo flittered up once more and landed - in Shadow's shoe.

Shadow stared. "You've -got- to be kidding me."

Ichigo shook itself in the negative.

"My shoe?" Shadow asked, disbelieving. "You want to stay...in my shoe?"

Ichigo nodded.

And that is how Ichigo finally established itself in Shadow's house, with its very own nest - Shadow's shoe.

...the one in which Shadow really hates water...

The car journey was pretty long to Aekea Ice Rink, where Shadow skated. She chatted away inanely to her friend Mai, oblivious to the clinging, chaos-on-wheels strawberry that was attached to her bag.

Eventually the two arrived and Shadow extracted herself from the car with difficulty, swinging her bag around to rest comfortably on her shoulder and carrying it in, still unaware. She paid and went through reception to the rink itself, which was surrounded by ascending pews arranged in rows. She dumped her bag on the bench in front of were she was sitting, and froze. She thought she'd heard a faint 'squeek' of protest.

She eyed her bag.

It moved, wriggled, and, excruciatingly slowly, was lifted off of the strawberry, disclosing it. Said strawberry instantly shivered, zipping towards Shadow to cuddle in her hair.

Shadow glared.

"I told you so!" She hissed quietly, trying not to move her lips. "I told you you'd freeze! I told you you wouldn't like it- hey! Where're you going?"

Entranced by the shining, sun-like lights, Ichigo swayed forward, apparently transfixed by the flash-flash of silver blades on snowy ice, colours seeming to entwine and dance before speeding apart again.

Squeeeeek. Ichigo liked the shiny things.

Shadow's eyes narrowed, and she made a swipe for her egg before it darted out of her reach. About to follow it, she was stopped short by her friend frantically pointing to the clock and yelling something about lateness.
She eyed the clock. 5:14
Oops. Her lesson was in exactly one minute.
Get your skates on, as her father would say.

Shadow abandoned her attempt to retrieve her egg, instead pulling on her boots as fast as her feet would allow her, and lacing them up swiftly and tightly. Finally done, she stood and raced towards the ice, battling through crowds of ages from tiny infants and bawling babies to forty-year-old, rather hasseled and worn looking parents.

Reaching the ice safely, Shadow skated quickly over to her teacher and apologised. A quick glance round the rink showed her that Ichigo was no-where in site - both a relief and a worry. Maybe it'd gone back to her bag, she thought wistfully.

Their first aim of the day was spins.

Shadow couldn't spin to save her life. Two-feet-clinging-to-barrier-and-physically-pushing-herself-around spins she could do, but one-footed spins backwards? Not a chance. With rather bad grace she dug her blade into the ice and pushed backwards, bringing her arms in to keep her momentem going and rotating slowly for three revolutions before grinding to a halt.
Her teacher smiled weakly at her before asking her to do it again.
Shadow sulked. She dug her blade back into the ice...
...and was met with no resistance. She looked down.

There was -water- where there had moments before been ice.

Alarmed, Shadow looked up.

There was her egg. Ichigo. But it looked much, much different.

It seemed to positively sparkle and glow with energy. The shape was different, it looked less like strawberry and more like nothing she'd ever seen before. It had eyes and a mouth. But most of all, it was reflecting and magnifying sunlight.

Right onto the ice.
Shadow's eyes bulged.
"Oh...dear."

---------

Three hours later, after the rink had been evacuated in a panic, a thoroughly miserable larvapuff was sitting wrapped in Shadow's towel, being lectured in the importance of listening to its owner. Hearing Shadow rant on and on, the puff swore there and then that it'd never, ever go ice-skating again.