Have you ever been alone at night, thought you heard footsteps behind, and turned around and noone's there? And as you quicken up your pace, you find it hard to look again, because you're sure there's someone there~

Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden (Though I like Van Canto's cover better XD)

So a little while ago on Tumblr I ended up making a Spiral Knights gremlin-sona, he's an outcast gremlin, and as a result, he's paranoid as all get-out. This tends to show its worst when he's asked to go out into the Clockworks at night, where he risks being hit on the head with nasty weapons wielded by angry Gremlins and newbie Knights alike. D:

I wrote a leetle story to go with it too!

The Clockworks’ cooling chambers were particularly cold this night, the lone gremlin thought. It might just have been his nerves playing tricks on him, but he was pretty sure they weren’t quite as cold as this. Some clattering nearby snapped him out of his idle thoughts, and he quickly darted behind a wall, shivering. In that short time between hearing the noise and dashing for cover, he could have sworn he saw two red, glowing, aggressive-looking eyes.

His own goggles sported rather expressive ‘eyes’ too, they glowed green, but never blinked, perhaps betraying his constant fear of the world around him. He’d hoped the owner of the red eyes he’d seen hadn’t noticed those bright green eyes darting past. To his dismay, the slow, steady clanking of feet on metal grew louder, telling him otherwise.

He daren’t look now, his eyes would give him away to this unknown person far too quickly, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Instead, he merely poked his nose out, sniffing the air in the hopes of catching something. No luck, the air was as still and dead as ever, and the frost stung his nostrils. Worse still, this attempt at stealth was doomed from the start. Angry clanking and angrier grunting told him that he’d given his position away, he looked down his snout at the cloud of vapour quietly dissipating. Dammit, he thought, they must have seen his breath!

The shivering gremlin gritted his teeth and waited, dreading what would happen next. It didn’t matter whether the red-eyed being was a Knight or a Gremlin, they weren’t going to let him off easy.