Disclaimer: Never thought I'd be doing this any time soon but…er, I'm back? Well, that was anticlimactic, but yes, to make a long story short, I realized I should have not tried to fix what wasn't broken so right now I'm sitting down at my computer with some water, my iPod blasting "Earth, Wind, and Fire" and trying to get my creative juices flowing. Be prepared! For my story will RickRoll like you've never been RickRoll'd before!

Chapter Seventeen

Sonny Salt was cold.

She was freezing, actually.

What with waves of surprisingly cold chocolate (she must have been in some Arctic Tundra Chocolate part of the factory) against the back of her legs and then some, it was obvious why. The chocolate had been a warm cocoa, but now it looked almost like an icy black. The hard plastic benches to which Sonny was clinging to were cutting into her fingernails and her wrists. They were slippery as than a glacier, but she couldn't let go or she'd fall into that frigid chocolate, in which – no exaggeration – candy sharks were swarming beneath her.

The Oompa-Loompas had not slowed down ever since Sonny had crash-landed right into the Pink Vessel. She could only guess that perhaps it was because she had maybe interrupted some sort of Loompa Lunch Break or something. She didn't know; her head was throbbing too much to be doing any thinking. She had hit her head repeatedly against the benches behind her and because the Oompa-Loompas kept making massive turns through the tunnels Sonny recognized from the Contest Tour.

She closed her eyes as the vessel went wild from the current they were in, the rapid picking up as the fragrant smell of chocolate assaulted her senses. She hadn't smelled it as intensely as before, as all she could think about was falling off the vessel and to her death, but now it was everywhere in her system. She didn't feel that same vigorous vitality she had felt during the Contest Tour.

Those sharks are still following us, Sonny thought as she watched five dorsal fins making a b-line for the vessel. Even if they were made of candy (Wonka wouldn't let actual sharks go swimming in his chocolate), Sonny didn't believe she stood against them. Since she was wearing nothing but an extremely tight but wrinkled blue dress without any shoes, she didn't have anything to protect herself from the sharks' razor-sharp teeth. I just have to hang on...or else I face possible limb amputation, or, at the very least, excruciating pain. Pain that would be worse than the pain she was already experiencing, maybe.

Sonny had to pull herself together. She groaned, gripping tighter to the bench as the vessel pulled another turn, sliding her slightly down the metal floor. I will never know how those Oompa-Loompas ever get the hang of staying so...so still, in these types of conditions. They probably learned from their boss -

She stopped groaning and let her eyes go protuberant at the thought of the Oompa-Loompas' boss. Wonka... It was funny how that single name seemed to be connected to all of the problems Sonny Salt had been facing recently. Actually, it wasn't funny at all. More like maddening. Ever since he had broken into her home and she told him that she didn't like his company (as if throwing her sister down a rubbish bin would have improved her opinion of him) and he had kidnapped her. The famous chocolatier had taken her from her home and trapped in this accursed factory. Wonka had been nothing but maddening ever since.

She should have just fallen forward, into the chocolate, and let the sharks eat her. She was even fairly certain the sharks wanted to eat her. Letting some courage go through her veins, she inched over the edge of the vessel, still clinging onto the bench, her hair whipping at her face. She looked over into the chocolate as it thrashed against the vessel repeatedly.

Watching the chocolate, Sonny thought she would have been thinking about the water – it seemed like a natural response, after all having spent what felt like an hour traversing the chocolatey river. But all that was on Sonny's mind was home. The strange thing was that, now she couldn't tell which was her home or not. She pictured the palatial Salt house in Buckinghamshire with her parents and her little sister, but then she envisioned the quaintly dingy house of Tory and her family in the seediest part of Northumberland (surely they had been told that I've been gone...well, kidnapped, right?).

She shook her head. Either one of the two would have been better than being trapped in this factory.

Loosening one arm from the bench, she gripped her free hand to the edge, careful not to let her elbow or any fingers touch the chocolate. She continued to peer into the chocolate. You know, aside from the sharks and the blistering cold chocolate flying around, the chocolate is sort of...soothing. The rapids had slowed, eventually just swishing the vessel back and forth...back and forth...maybe if I just close my eyes, I'll wake up from this nightmare, maybe that was this is, just a bad dream...

CLAP.

Oww...what the-?

The vessel had characteristically jerked back, causing Sonny to crash backwards into the bench behind her, her grip on both the bench ahead of her and the edge of the vessel broken. To add more injury to injury, after crashing backwards, she fell forward onto the bench she had holding onto for most of this 'joyride.' Luckily her chin broke her face's fall onto the cold plastic bench.

Using both hands, she began to hoist herself up with whatever lasting amounts of strength she had. She blew some air out her lips in an impatient way. The Oompa-Loompas turned around and raised their eyebrows. In their eyes, they saw a frustrated girl with frizzly hair, casting them dark looks. In Sonny's, she saw two dozen little people wearing blue suits, looking at her as if they couldn't believe she was even there.

They stared at each other until Sonny put her forehead down on the cold edge of the bench, sighing. After a minute or two of silence, she lifted her head and said, "Well? Aren't you going to start the boat?"

The Oompa-Loompas just stared. One of them seemed to be resisting the urge to laugh.

Sonny harrumphed, before sighing. "Please start the boat?"

That one Oompa-Loompa finally let out a laugh, but upon noticing that none of the others joined in, let his laughter die down awkwardly. He composed himself and kept his eyes on Sonny like the rest of them.

"ARGH! Why won't you all – look, I just want to go home, so could you please start the boat?" They weren't even the least bit startled by that unladylike noise she made. She tried again. "Surely you lot must understand what it's like to away from home for what feels like a lifetime? Yes?"

As if on cue, they all shook their heads.

That caught Sonny's attention. "What? But why not? Didn't Wonka take you from your homes? You have to understand, I mean, it's only natural."

They shook their heads.

How can you all be some apathetic? The man takes you from your homes and forces you to work in his factory and yet you all have this blasé attitude. Don't you miss your home at all?"

The Oompa-Loompas were starting to get offended and began to point. Not rudely, but to make some sort of statement. They were pointing at everything – the chocolate, the vessel, the benches, the...pair of spindly doors that Sonny hadn't noticed until now...

What did their pointing mean? "What are you trying to say?" She asked.

They kept on pointing. Er...perhaps they live in this vessel...no, that's too mad to be true. Then again...or maybe they live inside there, where the door is. That is a rather nice, perhaps they have their own wing...

Wait...

Sonny hesitated. "You're saying that...this is your home?"

Once again, they nodded, this time with smiles.

I suppose they won't understand, they've been living here for too long. They probably think it's paradise, Sonny thought.

Resting her head on her arms, eyes drooping, she blinked when she saw a single Oompa-Loompa stand up, walk over to her, and tug on her hand gently. She squinted; she couldn't tell if it was Randall. She watched it tug on her hand and point somewhere. She followed his finger, seeing it directly pointing at the spindly door.

"What?" she asked.

The Oompa-Loompa pointed at the door again. It wasn't too hard to see that he was really pointing at the door, which was in a covered entryway. The entryway seemed quite stable, unlike the bobbing vessel. Speaking of which, the vessel was waiting right against the side of the entryway, slammed right against a pair of clean steps. Aside from the opening of the entryway with the steps, the rest was like a little box, with a spindly purple fence surrounding it. A gate was opened to the steps.

She looked at the door again, the door seemed fairly normal for the factory; it was a primed door with stained glass and beautiful pale purple wood. On the shiny doorknob was a little sign that read in cursive letters: The Superior Suite. In even shinier, golden cursive, away from the purple spindly door, on what was the entryway read the words: Corner Wing.

"You want me to go there?" She pointed at the door, just to be sure.

The Oompa-Loompa nodded, motioning for her to stand up. As she did, he kept his hold on her hand and after watching her bush some dust off her dress, he tugged her towards the edge of the boat. Stepping over it, she stood on one step. He gestured for her to go on.

"Wait – but..." she cast a glance at the lone purple door and how it was just a short walk away. She wanted to know what the Superior Suite was and if it somehow had a way out of the factory, maybe some sort of tunnel...

She turned around. "Can you -" the vessel was gone. It was as though it just picked up and flew away, it must have, because Sonny thought she would have heard it rowing away. But there was nothing. Just her alone on some surprisingly sturdy steps.

She looked around. Where could have they gone? They can't have just vanished, I know they can't have...OH!

Biting her lip, she cringed as she felt cold chocolate splash against her ankle. She found herself peering at the chocolate again. Maybe they silently turned the vessel into a submarine and just like being difficult. She tried to regain her thoughts, thinking about that tunnel... Maybe I can find that tunnel again, it obviously leads to the outside of this factory, she thought, remembering that day she saw that Oompa-Loompa there...covered in minty chocolate slop...she had to convince the prim and proper part of her that going through all of that would be worth it if she could get home.

My, Wonka seems to be making a hobby out covering me and my sister in suspicious messes, she thought absently, eyes still on the chocolate.

Going up two of the steps, she noticed that the chocolate, even without the vessel, had waves that were getting bigger, wetting her toes ever so slightly. Sonny crossed her arms, rubbing them in an attempt to warm up. She tried to remember the first room Wonka had shown her on the Contest Tour and how warm it was, hoping it would have some affect on her now. It didn't work.

Sonny slid down on the second steps, sitting on the third. My bum is numb. Great. I can't feel my bum. Suddenly, Sonny remembered how last winter she and her family were going away to Ireland, and how Tory thought she was lucky, when every other person in Buckinghamshire and Northumberland would be – to quote her directly – freezing their bums off. Even without Ireland, even if only Tory knew. I'm freezing my bum off. Literally.

Straining her neck, Sonny was having a hard time staying awake. Usually, whether at home or in her dorm at De Montfort, she'd eaten a snack and then taken her 12:30 nap. She sneezed, wiping her nose on the back on her hand.

She could have sworn that this place was getting colder...

She tried not to think about the fact that she was in a way too tight blue dress. Instead, she pictured herself...not in a mink coat, but in body armor.

She wasn't her, Sonny Salt. She was...Astrid Valkyrie...and she was recruiting souls of fallen Amazon warriors and leading them to Valhalla. Everything she could remember from her Norse Mythology classes at De Montfort and from Tory's warrior video games. I can do it. I can do anything.

Except that it wasn't Valhalla at the top of a cliff, just an endless ocean of chocolate...with (oh what a surprise) those sharks still swimming around. And Sonny had no body armor. It makes no sense, really. If I was a warrior, I would not being running around in a tight dress. I don't care what those video games say, how do women expect to move around in those tight outfits of theirs? My dress doesn't even have a pocket where I could carry some weapons I could use as a warrior.

Then again, as a art major, Sonny had noticed that the role-playing-game directors never actually considered practicality or realism when outfitting their characters and models.

The sharks that were swarming below the steps, waiting to eat her when she finally dozed off and fell off the steps, were totally realistic.

I swear, when I wound up the courage to get up off these steps and go through that door, I'm going to get out of this mad house, have Father hire a SWAT team, come back, and destroy Wonka.

"You know, you really ought to be smiling. Not a lot of people would have survived the blistering cold part of the factory."

Sonny froze. Is that...

"You, though, are doing great," Wonka was leaning against the fence...in the puffiest black fuzzy jacket she had ever since...when he broke into her home. It wasn't the same jacket, she was sure...he didn't have on that ridiculous top hat on, instead in its place was knit, ecru-colored wool hat that had a pretty purple 'W' embellishment on its band. He had a pair of black squiggle-shaped perched prettily on his hat. Wonka had a prettily dainty way of wearing his accessories. "I can really see the grim determination on your face –"

If Sonny wasn't shivering, and her bum wasn't frozen, and if those steps weren't as slippery as she knew they clearly were, she would have made a jump for Wonka's throat. He must have been counting on it, because now he was easing closer to the end of the still open gate, his arms crossed.

The loon was still banging on. " – the sheer desperation of a girl reduced by circumstances to her most fundamental self," Wonka went on, "as she struggles in a world – nay, factory – where everyone and everything seems to be pitted against her –"

The funny thing was, Wonka had basically just described her current situation almost exactly. Sometimes that was her daily existence – except for the part about the factory and whatnot. Even with her friends Tory and Becky and Lupe, they were like incorporeal beings when it came to matters with the Salt family where everyone seemed to be against her, even her Mother, who really had her best interests at heart...occasionally. The life of old wealth is a dog-eat-dog world, nobody is your ally, not even your parents. Least of all, your own parents.

God, why am I being so depressing?

"I think you're supposed to be happy," Wonka said in that ridiculously fluttery voice of his. "Because that dress is from Robin Sparrows, and the store says that their clothes give girls the confidence they need to get the job done."

Oh. Well, when Wonka put it like that...

Sonny sat there quietly, not looking at Wonka as he said, "Happy, Starshine, be happy! We might be in the coldest area of the factory but that doesn't mean we're not having a good time!"

What had he called her 'starshine'? In her quietest voice, Sonny whispered, "Wonka, I'm freezing cold, there is chocolate on me when they shouldn't be, I was taken from my home...that are just some of the things I can list that are wrong with this situation. Why would I be having a good time?"

Wonka, for some reason, took this response in stride and instead, jumped up off his feet and leaned his stomach on the fence's edge, teetering. "I thought you might say something like that, and I was right. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to be right a lot. It's one of my many talents. Some might say I'm clairvoyant – or better yet, eclairvoyant." He bit his lip with a huge smile. He kept leaning back and forth, still smiling, as though waiting for Sonny to get his joke.

"I survived all four years of secondary school, but," Sonny whispered, "I don't think I can survive such a terrible joke."

Then Wonka did something that was kind of expected of him. He laughed, a silvery one that no doubt belonged to him. It wasn't forced or strained to get rid of a foreboding awkward silence, he was honest-to-God laughing at something that wasn't a joke. Couldn't he see that Sonny wanted him nowhere near her unless it involved her hitting him?

"You're lucky I'm being such a good sport," he went on, chuckling as he said this. "Usually, when somebody deliberately messes with my factory, I go into Wonka Attack Mode, but that's why you're you, Starshine." He was almost close enough to whisper into Sonny's ear.

She pulled her head down, rubbing her arms faster, desperate to get warm so she could work up the confidence to deck Wonka.

"Sure, you dislodged the Wonder Wheel and destroyed some of my more expensive creations, but..." it was at this point that Wonka leaned backward, stood up straight, and leaned on the back of his hand looking out into the icy chocolate. "Meh, that's what you get for being an oh-so-clever chocolatier. Things happens, stuff breaks, you have to take trips to other dimensions to buy supplies. Either way, at the end of the day – oh, that rhymed! At the end of day, nay!" He chuckled, as though he just said the darnedest things. "In the end, it's not really about how you spend the day, it's about..." he stopped, fidgeting with his red gloves. "It's about...who you spend it with. And, well, I sort of want to spend the day with you. Tomorrow. Say, about 9 o'clock?"

Sonny stopped shivering. She didn't stop rubbing her arms, but she stopped thinking about her frozen bum and that her feet were steadily freezing over (she had just noticed it now, she has never been too keen about her feet). She kept her head down, looking at the chocolate and the sharks.

She didn't know what to say.

Except...that that was the most obnoxious way of asking her out. At least, she thought he was. No, he had asked her. Guys only spent that much time philosophizing if it had a point to it. And he had just made it.

And he was still going. "I've decided to let the wonder Wheel flap-doodle slide, and maybe give you a tour of the factory. You know, since, well, since your warty sister got thrown the garbage bin and you two had to leave. The rest of the factory is really –"

Sonny had let out a single exhale that stopped Wonka's tangent. That sparked something in her.

"Firstly," she said, her voice groggy. "Don't insult my sister. She may have a few flaws but she isn't as warty as everyone thinks. In fact, the only warty person I see here is you. You have got to be the," she inhaled her breath, readying herself. She stood up, head still turned, "wartiest, most unpleasant person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. And the sad part is that I spent years thinking you were some sort of deity to be worshiped upon, only to meet a childish, loony-bird who is a pervert."

That caught Wonka's attention. He gasped, putting a hand on his chest, a look of offense crossing his face.

"Well, you're acting Garfield on a Monday," Wonka retorted. "And I'll have you know that when you're angry, you revert back to some tacky Cockney accent. One which is not cute on you."

"That's another thing. See, you don't have the right to call me cute. You're just – just a big old..." At last Sonny turned around, fully applying a fake Cockney accent just to mess with him, "pervert. Inviting five children to your factory and dropping them off, one by one. That is well creepy."

"Don't go talking about things a little girl like you wouldn't understand," for a second, Wonka seemed to turn almost...serious for a moment. "Little snobs like you don't get the things that I know."

"Ohhh," Sonny fake-moaned, clamping her hands together, rolling her eyes, "excuse-moi for intruding on your life. Oh, pardon, I believe it's the other way around. You're the intruder, but I don't intend to be a victim."

"Ohh...'" Wonka mimicked in a high-pitched (well, higher-pitched) British accent, "'You're the intruder but I don't intend to be a victim. My, my, isn't fun speaking in an accent everybody thinks is cool?'"

Two could play it that way.

"'Ooh, look at me, I'm Willy Wonka and all I do is stand around, bossing Oompa-Loompas around, and do poor English impressions. Gosh, people sure think I'm a genius but in actuality, I'm just a wart on society."

"I do not sound like that. You're making me sound like Goofy," Wonka said.

"Seems about right, considering that's just what you are."

"I don't have to take this from you. I've got other important things to do. Here in my amazing, unsurpassed-chocolate-in-the-whole-universe propagating factory. You could have watched me but nooo," Wonka turned his head, crossing his arms. "You had to act all warty like that wart –"

"Don't you dare talk about my sister like that again!" Sonny yelled, clenching her fists. "Do I go around taking your family down a peg? No! You're just an obnoxious man who needs to put other people down to feel better about himself and this ghost of a factory!"

"My factory is very much alive!"

"I find that hard to believe. From where I've been today, it's like a ghost town here. Your presence here isn't doing much to change my opinion. Just a weird guy with a bunch of servants in a big house. Face it, you live no differently than some of the so-called snobs."

"As a matter of fact, this factory is not a ghost town. Fortunately, I've got my own f-f-...kin to take care of, thanks very much. Your concern is touching." Nothing satisfied Wonka more than throwing someone's words right back at them whilst also improving their grammar.

"Wait...you're married?" Sonny was strangely dismayed.

"Oh no. No, no, no, no, no!" Wonka exclaimed, almost laughing. "No, I'm not married. I –"

"It seems that I figured that out by the first two words you said," Sonny cut off him, happy that she did so annoyingly that it seemed to ruffle Wonka's feathers.

Wonka ruffled her feathers right back. "Oh, please, don't stop talking on my accord. Do go on." He waved his hand dismissively. Still, his feathers remained ruffled and he said, quite seriously for a moment, "If you must be so nosy, I do have kin to take care of. Nosy Nancy." Sonny wondered why he was telling her this. "At least try to enjoy yourself. Now that you're here, you can finally get that vacation we were talking about back at the Salty Headquarters."

Sonny brushed a large chunk of frizzy hair over her shoulder. "I said no such thing!"

"Uh, yeah, you did. And I said that you should have your vacation at the factory –"

"And then you kidnapped me. I know, I was there," Sonny glared. "As I remember quite clearly, I told you before that I can't stand you. Which is why I'm going to have decline your offer to spend the day with you tomorrow. I would much prefer the offer when you offer to take me home and then give yourself up the authorities."

"What?" Wonka exclaimed. "You said you couldn't take a vacation and now you're here, in the factory, you can take that vacation."

"And I don't want to," Sonny seethed. "The truth is, I don't want a vacation. Neither from my home nor my life. If being kidnapped and hauled off to a different town means having a vacation, then I'll do fine without one."

"But you can't possibly enjoy your life," Wonka replied. "Who would? A wart for a sister, a snobby f-f-..male parental unit, and...well, I haven't really met your female parental unit, but I'm going to correctly guess that she's a snob, too. Someone as different as you can't by any means enjoy being around those braggarts."

"Those braggarts are my family and they aren't as bad as you make them out to be," Sonny was sick of people calling her family a bunch of snobs. They weren't – sure, they hadn't won the Noble Peace Prize but they ate dinner together, talked, shared memories, had fun together, worried about each other. They did everything every other family did. "My father, my mother, and my sister care about me. They talk to me. They act normal around me. They don't see me as this made-up image you see of me as someone different – they see me as me. But you wouldn't understand. People like you – the real snobs – don't understand."

Wonka decided to play dirty. "If they care about you so much, then – then why haven't they tried looking for you?"

Sonny didn't know what to say.

Wonka went on, "But, oh, you have a perfect life and who am I to intrude on it? Hmm?"

He was right. Sonny should have been happy. What could she possibly have to be unhappy about, anyway? She had everything a girl her age could want: she was an art major for an amazing university, not only that but she managed to land herself a job under one of teachers and she was more than well compensated. She had her own two-bedroom dorm in one of the many fanciful dormitories of De Montfort, the other bed unoccupied as her roommate had transferred schools in the middle of the year and they had decided to let her live alone. She had the best hilarious friends in the world who routinely got them into all the bets party spots in Northumberland.

She was rich. She had designer wardrobe in her overstuffed closets, and Frette sheets on her king-size bed, an en suite master bath, a gourmet chef's kitchen in the Salt House with black granite counters and all Sub-Zero appliances, and a dozen full-time housekeepers slash masseuses.

She was even still doing pretty well in class (despite the late nights and oh-so-painful early mornings, thanks to Tory). OK, so she had failed a single class (Astronomy) but that was only because Tory kept ripping her out of night class to head to parties where she could wave her butt around on the dance floor. It wasn't as though her parents knew about that one class, and Sonny knew that she spent every spare minute of her time studying, she could maybe even get extra credit. Not too shabby for a girl who had spent a month of this past semester lying around in bed drawing.

So why was she so bloody depressed?

Sinking down onto the steps, Sonny wasn't sure if those were her toes or Popsicles. She also didn't care.

Wonka must have noticed her keeping her eyes on that still persistent sharks because he said, "Those are my Smarties Shark Candy. Don't worry. I made them in the shape of nurse sharks, so they're perfectly harmless, they're more scared of us than we are of them. I let them swim around him because they're attracted to the bright lights. They're not hanging around because they want you for a midnight snack? But really, how knows? They've never tasted Salt Girl before. I'm betting they'd find you delicious."

Sonny eyed Wonka's grin and decided not to say anything. She also decided to ignore the faint way her stomach did a somersault at his words.

That was when she remembered. Why she was so depressed, that is.

That was also when she, while trying to stand up, she slipped down the steps.

It was just that, suddenly, being eaten by candy sharks seemed preferable to hearing anymore of Wonka's chattering.

She heard Wonka let out a faint scream from the entryway. But part of her didn't care.

She hit the water backward. It was even colder than she had imagined it would be. All the breath was sucked away from her body. The shock was so intense, that for a split second Sonny wondered if a shark had bitten her in half. She knew from a documentary Tory and her had once watched that a shark's teeth were so sharp, their victims didn't even feel the initial CRUNCH. They often weren't even aware they had been bitten til they saw the blood.

Bloodcurdling cold wasn't the only thing she experienced as she hit the chocolate. She was also plunged into darkness. At least at first. Until her vision adjusted to the murky chocolatey-ness, and she saw that the lights from the ceiling had lit up the chocolate around her.

That was when Sonny knew that she hadn't been bitten in half, that there was no swirling blood around her, and that the dark blobs she was seeing were just the nurse sharks, trying frantically to get away from her. Not surprisingly, she couldn't see her own hair, so dark that it blended in in the chocolate. She felt it swaying around her dark seaweed. She recalled that time where Tory had spent nearly two hours working on Sonny's dark tresses to make them perfect. Tory, who prized her friend's hair, would have been pissed if she were here to see Sonny resurface, as a chocolatey mermaid.

If she resurfaced.

She thought it was rather nice down there. Cold, yes, but peaceful, and quiet. Mermaids have the right idea. God, what was Ariel thinking, wanting to live on land, anyway?

It was amazing, and for a few seconds, Sonny forgot how cold and miserable she was, and that she couldn't feel her butt or her feet, and how she couldn't breathe and was quite possibly drowning.

But then, what did she have to live for, anyway. Sure, she was rich, and she had access to her family's private plane and she didn't have to do her own dishes and she could get all the lip gloss she could ever want.

But she had never actually cared for lip gloss. The fact was, her life was just a grayness, just like this chocolate and it was attempting to swallow her alive and she couldn't do anything. She couldn't even do anything about her own name – Alison. Sometimes, just saying it loud made her want to retch; Alison really was a lovely name, but it just gave the wrong message. It meant "noble kind" making it a very WASP-like name and while it was nice to feel noble, the name began to quietly make her head spin, so she went by the nickname of Sonny. Obviously, her Mother was expecting a prudish, socially devout, waltzing ray of sunshine when she was looking through baby names. Instead she got her – surprise. No waltzing and certainly no sunshine.

So what was the point of living? I mean, really?

Then, as if it were a message sent from her guardian angel, she thought about...drawing, and how it was something she didn't avoid. It was something that started out as a shape or a piece of fruit could turn into an image that peered into your soul. Another thing had to be my friend Tory. Despite the staggering odds against her, she managed to find the best friend a sad rich girl like herself can ever hope for: the one, the only, Tory Smeath, she was the one who nursed her back to social health. Pretty soon, her Mother and Father and sister floated into her mind. They had always been there for her, even if they weren't saying anything or worse, saying something rude, knowing that they were was more than enough.

She figured she would just stay down here. It was a lot less stressful, in a lot of ways, than her real life. She might as well inhale the surrounding chocolate while she was at it. After all, chocolate was the best medicine and it seemed as though she was in desperate withdrawal right now.

The next thing she knew, though, there was an enormous splash beside her. And suddenly Wonka, fully clothed, was swimming her, and had grabbed her, and pulling her – gasping and choking and sticky – to the surface, then pulling her up the steps of the entryway and onto its landing.

Sonny was a little angry, and also shivering uncontrollably.

OK, so maybe she didn't really want to live at the bottom of a chocolate ocean. But she didn't need to be rescued, either. She wasn't really going to stay under there til her lungs were and she choked to death on chocolate.

When she blinked, she saw Wonka leaning on his arms, towering over her as he was crouched down beside her, peering at her...was that concern on his face.

"Oh, Sweet Sugary God, are you OK?" Wonka asked. Only his lower half was covered in chocolate, his hair and hat remained untouched. As was his fuzzy coat, which Sonny realized he had discarded onto the landing and was now wrapping it around her.

For once, Wonka had asked a good question. Was Sonny OK? That was something she had been asking herself for more than a while now.

Wonka reached up and began to try and button the coat, obviously not realizing Sonny's personal bubble. She reacted by reflex. She smacked him. Hard, in the cheek. Knocked off his hat, too.

She sat up, shrugging out of the coat. "You are NEVER to lay a hand on me again! From this point on any part of YOU that touches ME you will NOT BE GETTING BACK!"

Wonka touched his cheeks, surprised by all means. He had saved her from drowning but that was no matter. She didn't ask to be rescued. He simply wrinkled his brow and held himself straight. Leaning away, he said, "I do believe that Satan himself would run with his tail between his legs from that viper temper of yours."

Sonny crossed her sticky arms. "Then why are you still here?"

"Because –"

"WHY are you so rude to me?" Sonny interrupted.

"Oh, but I'm not rude. You're just insignificant."

She glared. "...And YOU'RE proof that evolution can go backwards!"

"If your brains were taxed, you would get a rebate!"

"If you were any more mindless, you would have to be watered twice a week!"

"...If I gave you a penny for your thoughts I'd get change!"

Sonny rolled her eyes. "Nothing you say can offend me, Mr. Wonka –"

"– Willy."

"– Because I'm just glad you're stringing words into sentences now." She was about to cross her arms when she noticed something sitting safely in front of the forgotten door...

Wonka crossed his arms, smirking his perfect smile. "Hmph. Nice try, Starshine. But you have no power over m – AIIIIIIIIEEE!" Wonka grabbed his bobbed hair in clumps at the sight he saw.

What Sonny had spotted by the door was a metal tray of a teapot, a pair of cups, scones, and right there sitting neatly at the door was Wonka's purple top hat. Glad to find the teapot still piping hot, she pretended to dip the nozzle as she held out the top hat like a magician. She smiled serenely. "I'm sorry, what was that you were saying? Something about me holding no power over your?"

Wonka's purple eyes doubled, bulging out at the sight of his hat and the teapot. "No, don't! For the love of all that is Good and Sugary, DON'T! The felt will SHRINK! Please, no!"

Sonny lowered the teapot and eyed the hat. "It will shrink? And this is a bad thing because...?"

He waved his hands up and down. "BECAUSE! JUST, BECAUSE!"

She placed the teapot down, instead staring at the hat. "Even for a top hat, it's far too large. Come to think of it, I've never seen one larger..." Oh, I have got the best idea... She smirked.

Lifting a single chocolate-smeared eyebrow, she asked, still smirking, "Are you trying to compensate for something? Do tell?" Sonny immediately knew why dirty jokes were fun.

Apparently Wonka didn't think so. Well, actually, he was just sort of standing there, pointing at her, mouth open, not even blinking,

Eyes narrowed into playful slits, Sonny walked up, still smirking but now softly. With the hat behind her back, she walked, pulled off Wonka's knit cap (discarding it onto the floor), put the top hat in his head and did something she thought was quite nice. She ran a single chocolatey finger down Wonka's chocolate-speckled chin slowly, still smirking, before lifting her finger and shutting his mouth. His eyes followed her.

Job done, she walked right back him, head high and nose in the air. Sonny was quite proud of herself, she didn't know she could pull of being minx-like while covered chocolate.