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Step by step Shadow made his way down the dirt road towards a cozy cottage on the dawn of a new day. Wrapped in a black leather jacket from his work with GUN after a series of back to back missions some reprieve is exactly what he needed.
Though rightly considered by most a total recluse, there were a few people Shadow made exceptions for. Rouge was a great partner and so was Omega, but after spending so long together in the field the last thing he wanted to do was go on any social outing. What he was looking for was peace and quiet, a pleasant conversation and warm drinks. Which eliminated about ninety percent of the people he knew. He only had a hunch Tails was willing to enjoy such a silent time so perhaps it was ninety-five percent.
That left one lady, with the aptly named flowers along the pathway to her door and a thick forest for a backyard. She’d be the right person to raise him up after such an insipid time toiling away in foriegn affairs. Dr. Robotnik was bad enough, it was better the general population didn’t know about the rest.
Respectfully quiet, Shadow knocked three times on her door before taking a step backwards. Despite the unearthly early hour it was her decision to invite him over at this particular time of day. His gaze drew towards the setting moon while a gentle red glow enveloped him from his back and snaked through the grass. Birds had yet to chirp and the song of crickets ruled the lands, though the sound of a door unlocking soon ended the reprieve.
Sporting a red robe and bedhead, an almost chipper Amy Rose answered her door.
“Come right in Shadow, I hope you don’t mind but we’ll be having tea today but it is ready. Oh and-”
“It sounds wonderful Amy, thank you.” Shadow pressed a finger to his mouth after finishing his sentence. It was a common occurrence, sometimes Amy would get so very talkative when all he needed was silence for the moment, this was one of those moments.
Wiping his airskates on the doormat Shadow stepped into the cozy abode and turned his back to the kitchen, bending over to remove both of the airskates and to put the communication device in his jacket on silent. The last thing he wanted was an unexpected surprise in the hour he’d have before returning to work, paperwork waits for no one after all. Shadow slowly removed the jacket as well and hung it upon a hook in the coat rack next to her door.
Shadow turned to stretch and saw Amy pouring from the kettle into a cup through the gap between the kitchen countertop and wall, not one to keep a lady nor a warm drink waiting he began his walk towards the door frame into the kitchen but before he could reach it she blocked his path and handed him the cup.
“Shadow, I’d like to introduce you to someone.” said Amy.
“Fostering another chao, Amy?” asked Shadow, taking a tiny sip from the cup, earl gray he deduced.
“No.” said Amy as she watched Shadow nearly choke on his tea and attempt to play it off awfully. “But please, trust me. You two will get along great!”
With nothing left to do but to accept whatever fate Amy had in store for him he walked forward. Of course he could just as easily use Chaos Control, he even had the yellow gem on him, but he supposed he owed Amy after all she had done for him.
Looking back at him, in his chair no less, was a purple cat with golden eyes and just as shocked an expression as his though they both quickly regained control of their emotions.
“Shadow, this is Princess Blaze of the Sol Dimension, Blaze, this is Shadow, the “ultimate lifeform”.” Amy finished her remark while using quotation gesture’s before taking her usual seat.
Awkwardly bowing a little before stopping, Shadow snapped his head first up at the apparent royal and then to Amy. “Sol what?”
“The Sol Dimension, apparently it’s the parallel version of our own dimension!” Exclaimed Amy.
Shadow forwent the bowing as he took his seat across from Blaze. First she took a sip of her tea, pinkie extended, and looked over Shadow. As she set her cup down, Shadow brought his cup to his mouth, and as he took a sip returned the favor.
Bringing down his cup the clattering of ceramic cup against ceramic saucer was the only noise save for the song of birds and crickets. Blaze looked towards Shadow, then Amy, then the screen door just behind Amy, then towards the table. Shadow meanwhile just cut to the chase and brought his gaze towards the table.
“Chaos!” Amy brought a hand to her forehead startling both hedgehog and cat alike, though both contained themselves within moments. “I bring together the two most anti-social people I know and expect them to strike up a conversation. What are you thinking, Amy?” Slowly she dragged her hand to cover more of her face. Tentatively Blaze inched an arm closer towards Amy’s
“Here, let’s make this easier for all of us.” Amy quickly recomposed herself causing Blaze to quickly retract her almost comforting arm. “I’ll do the talking like I normally do, and we’ll just go from there.”
Shadow gave a skeptic glance towards Blaze who had the same idea and both nodded unenthusiastically in unison.
“So Shadow, how was your latest mission with GUN?” Amy asked, though quickly she turned her attention towards Blaze. “GUN is our secret service, and Shadow is one of the top agents along with two of his friends. Isn’t that sweet?”
“Soul-rending. It’s soul-rending.” Shadow took a polite sip before setting the cup back down. “Just more wars, bureaucrats, secret projects, cover-ups, pathetically fake rich people and stuck-up royalty… No offense, your highness.”
“Please, just call me Blaze. And there is none taken, Sir Shadow.” Blaze finally spoke up, though quiet and tired she still did her best to exude nearly the exact type of facade Shadow had just complained about.
“It’s just Shadow, Blaze. I am no sir.” he responded in kind.
“Oh, do you not go by those terms? My utmost and sincere apologies for assuming that, I should really know bette-”
“No Blaze, he’s just not recognized with the honors is all. You’re alright girlfriend.” Amy put a hand on her back and the princess seemed to ease up dramatically, though Amy kept rubbing regardlessly.
“Pardon me, but I thought you said that Shadow was a top agent? Surely the government is proud of him for being such a self-sacrificing role-model, let alone for a mobian to earn the term “ultimate lifeform”. I would take this as no small feat in my country.” Subtly Blaze brushed off Amy’s hand but Shadow did not miss the warm gaze spared towards her, she was thankful for something but he was far too tired to bother with figuring out what.
“Hmph, I’m hardly a poster child for them, if that’s what you're insinuating.”
“Still, for someone to earn a title like that I would take an educated guess that you must get your fair share of respect.”
“You don’t earn what you are born with, but I’m sure you’d know all about that princess. ”
To his surprise, Blaze smiled at his snideness. It wasn’t wide or goofy, just a small reserved smile that let a pair of fangs come out of hiding. Though as she took a sip any trace of happiness had vanished.
“More than you’d know.”
Shadow took another sip of his tea and watched a light-bulb in Amy’s head practically burst. Looking down into the cup he noticed that he had only a few sips left before he’d run out, he really needed to slow down how fast he drank.
“Blaze, my tea is a little cold, would you mind warming it up?”
“May I remind you, miss Amy, that you have a perfectly warm kettle?”
“The kettle is also cold.”
“You’ve not touched it.” butted in Shadow with a hint of confusion, unsure how this princess factored into reheating a tea kettle.
“Amy, you know how I feel about this, it’s not just some parlor trick to wave around. You know I despise it so.”
“My apologies Blaze.” said Amy dryly.
“Apology accepted Amy.” Blaze responded in cheek, or annoyance. He was tuning this whole conversation out anyways.
As Amy turned to speak more with the Princess of the Sol Dimension, whatever this funny ruse was, Shadow took a moment to take in the silence. Birds chirp incessantly in their morning songs and the thick dew and fog begins to slowly clear though the sun is nowhere near rising.
Flickering his attention away from the screen door and towards this newfound acquaintance he gave her a closer, more scrutinizing look. Despite being from another dimension nothing about her nor her outfit looked out of place for a royal figure. A golden necklace and a purple gown that looked as soft as it probably was. The red ruby embedded in her forehead was a little strange, but apart from that he couldn’t tell the difference.
Shadow rolled his neck and finished the last of his tea before returning to the conversation at hand.
“I do suppose that is rather fascinating, endless summer can only be charming for so long after all.” said Blaze as she refilled her tea cup.
“I wish we could swap places, I hate the cold.” Amy complained.
“And I would enjoy it… because?”
“Because you’re well you know, you ! Not to mention that it’s a beautiful time of year when the snow falls.”
“I thought you didn’t like the cold.”
“It’s a love-hate relationship.” Amy said holding her teacup in a lackadaisical way. “Mostly hate.”
Silence befell the room once more as their conversation ended. A glance towards Blaze told him that she was doing the exact thing he had just done moments prior. Studying the person from across the table.
“If you’ll both excuse me momentarily.” Amy spoke abruptly, sliding her wooden chair from where it was and leaving towards her bedroom while covering part of her leg and her robe. Her tea abandoned precariously on the edge of the table with a long trail of liquid dripping down the side of the cup.
Looking towards Amy’s tea cup let Shadow know that everyone had finished their tea in one way or another apart from Blaze, who was taking quite a long drink. But as Shadow listened as close as he could he could hear no sound of liquid passing, and because she had been drinking nearly as often as he had at the start of their meeting, it wasn’t out of the question to say she may be pretending to drink.
He really needed to stop doing that outside of work, Rouge was a bad influence.
Not realizing he had been looking past Blaze the entire time he was thinking he snapped out of his trance and picked up his equally empty tea cup, unsure of what to do he also pretended to sip.
And so the two of them sat there for what felt like hours, but was really only two minutes worth of silence, pretending to take the longest drink of tea in their lives. Blaze’s ear twitched first but soon Shadow’s followed, the sound of a shower.
Shadow’s face must have portrayed his confusion because Blaze nodded towards him and brought her tea cup away from her mouth. Shadow set his tea cup down and made a noise of contentment. Blaze soon followed with her own noise.
“Who are you really?” they both said in unison. Not wishing to drag the situation out, Shadow gestured towards Blaze to continue.
Politely nodding in thanks, she poured them both another cup of tea starting with his own. When she sits back down she idly stirs her tea cup in thought. Politely, Shadow waits without movement for her to speak.
“I do greatly apologize for this intrusive question, it is not in my nature to pry however in this situation, I must.” Blaze finally stops her stirring and brings her full attention towards Shadow. “What does Amy mean by an ‘Ultimate Lifeform’ if not for a given title? Surely one would expect anyone with such a grandiose title to be bestowed some form of governmental recognition. Because if you are this supposed member of this dimension's secret service, such a title doesn’t seemingly do you any favors.” Blaze asked.
“Apart from my work, I do not pry into others' lives either but similarly the situation calls for it.” Shadow took a sip of his tea to find it piping hot, that was odd. “I deal with many oddities in my line of work, I myself am certainly an oddity. However I am finding it hard trying to comprehend that not only am I currently sitting across from a royal figure of power, but one from another dimension in space and time that I, as well as the rest of this entire Earth apart from apparently Amy, am completely unaware of.”
A fang pokes through a small smirk from Blaze.
“This whole situation is rather absurd isn’t it?” she politely chuckles and Shadow attempts to join her in the action but it comes out as more of a polite grunt of affirmation. “Allow me to start, then.”
“I am Blaze the Cat, Princess of the Sol Empire in what you’d know as the Sol Dimension.” Shadow doesn’t miss the small curl of her lips when stating her royal title, though he doesn’t think she suits the egotistical mold by all that he’d seen so far.
“I was born prematurely and I- Well I was somewhat of an only child but thankfully I didn’t have any health complications. My parents were both cats but as they were King and Queen it was hard to see them sometimes so I was more raised by the caretakers. And when I was four, some uhm…” For a few seconds Blaze trailed off and the gold in her eyes seemed to gleam at the corners. “My parents didn’t make it much further than that… Things got really messy politically and at age seven I was granted the rank of Princess and heir to the Sol Empire until I reach my eighteenth birthday, where I will become the Queen. The country is under my rule and the rule of a special council.”
Blaze took a momentary break to sip her tea, in the background Shadow could hear the sound of the shower still running along with what he thought may have been a washer. He wasn’t really paying attention, he was oddly transfixed on the lady before him.
“As a child the Sol Emeralds, our Chaos Emeralds, chose me when I was six during the phase that back home we refer to as ‘The Troubles’. From what I’ve put together, apparently there’s this fellow Sonic is friends with named…” Blaze trailed off for a moment in thought.
“Knuckles?” Offered Shadow.
“Yes! Thank you, Shadow. Correct me if I am wrong but he is the guardian of the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds tend to disperse, yes?” asked Blaze.
Shadow nodded politely.
“Then the Sol Emeralds work differently. As I am the protector of them they stay with me at all times and do not disperse, though we do not have a Master Emerald so much as a scepter but that stays in the vaults.”
“There is one other quirk of the Sol Emeralds… It grants their protector- powers.” Blaze stopped for a moment to put together her next words mentally. “In essence each protector gets something different that supposedly will help them in their reign over the Sol Emeralds. I was granted the powers of supersonic speed and… Pyrokinesis.” Shadow watched her eyes flicker away from him for just a split second, something about that pyrokinesis bothered her and he’d put money on that.
“Being an only child, having strange powers, and being expected to run a country by age seven in school I was bullied for being different, for not being a regular kid. No matter how much I wanted to be one, I just never felt like I was comfortable in my own skin with almost everything in my life.”
Again Blaze paused to drink her tea for a moment. Outside a bird landed just in front of the screen door behind where Amy once sat to commence it’s morning feast.
“That was all until a few years ago when I met Cream, Amy, Tails, and Sonic. They all helped me return to my dimension and I thought I’d never see them again, and I didn’t until Sonic and Tails came to my dimension. While we were there we figured out how the travel worked better and I am testing that out with this visit. That is my story, Shadow.” Blaze tilted her head to the left slightly. “And yours?”
Shadow looked towards her with amazement although he was still trying to process everything her story wasn’t all that different to his own. They even shared many experiences growing up. He felt oddly at peace with this stranger, he was never like this. Was there something in the tea?
“My name is Shadow the Hedgehog. I am not from this time nor planet, not in whole at least. Fifty plus years ago I was created aboard the first Bernal Sphere space colony, ARK. My ‘parents’ are a hedgehog donor who I’ve never met and the former ruler of an alien race called the Black Arms. Though I considered my only parental figure to be the scientist most involved with creating me, Professor Gerald.”
Shadow sipped his tea and found that Blaze was just as encaptured as he had been with her story. There was almost definitely something in this tea. Neither of them seemed to be social creatures of habit, what was going on?
“Professor Gerald created me to be a perfect being and for his interests, the cure to NIDS. He had a vested interest in NIDS. Do you know what NIDS are?” Asked Shadow.
“Yes, I’ve picked that information up about your dimension at least.” Blaze clasped her hands together and waited politely for him to continue.
“Back then, he had a granddaughter but to me she was like- a sister.” Shadow took a sip of his tea to calm the slight tremble in his hand, a tiny bead of sweat formed on his brow at the thought, the memory. “She had NIDS.”
“Unfortunately, GUN didn’t fund my creation to become a medical cure. They created me to be a weapon. So I went through their programs and I went through various tests to try and help progress NIDS research.”
“About a year or so after I was created I...” Shadow trailed off and left the plane of reality for one set in a past far removed in a space station millions of miles away. Oh Chaos, the gunshots, the screams, the panting, the sirens. It was all too much. It still felt way too real.
Mentally he murmured words of comfort again and again, unaware if he really was saying them aloud. He was not there, this wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. Faintly he could hear a voice call to him, calling his name. He followed slowly, carefully. Like treading over sticks and twigs without trying to break a single one.
“Shadow, are you alright?” He refocused on what was real to find Blaze had moved her chair to be next to his and was running a thumb over the back of his hand. “I am so deeply sorry for prying, I knew I shouldn’t have. This is my fault, I’m so sorry.”
“Blaze.” it came out so rough and dry, he drank his tea. “It’s okay, you don’t need to blame yourself.” Shadow pinched his nose and blinked a few times. “Let’s forget that ever happened and continue with the story.”
She looked so entirely unconvinced.
“Please.” He requested.
Eventually, Blaze let go of his hand but she stayed just as close with her chair. Only getting up to give Shadow a glass of tap water and to set it aside. He nodded in thanks and drank a quarter of it.
‘I understand.’ Blaze mouthed.
‘Thank you.’ He replied.
“Ine-” He coughed, his voice wasn’t quite right yet. “Inevitably, GUN grew scared of my power and they sent up a group of black ops on a regular cargo shipment. They killed everyone, eventually. She… And she- She saved my life. But I couldn’t die. I couldn’t escape them.” Shadow’s sadness turned to bitterness in his words.
“They hunted me down after I took an escape pod, they were like wolves at the door. They put me in isolation for fifty years and eventually Dr. Robotnik, the grandson of Gerald, woke me up. They twisted my memories, Blaze. Professor Gerald twisted my memories… He went insane. He wanted me to destroy the world, but in the end Amy was the one to remind me of the promise I made to my-my sister. To protect the world, not destroy it!” Anger bubbled at the surface though when Blaze slid the water his way a little more he took another long drink and it subsided.
“That night I thought I sacrificed my life alongside Sonic to keep him and the planet safe from what I had wrought.” Shadow took a tiny sip of the water. “I didn’t die, I just went back to hibernation. Dr. Robotnik found me, created millions of androids just like me and my memory was gone once more. I thought I was an android for so long, but I wasn’t.” Another sip. “I was saved by my team, my friends. They stuck with me to defeat Ivo and then against the Black Arms, and Black Doom.”
Shadow took another large portion of water out of the glass. Blaze returned her thumb to rubbing his glove.
“After that, GUN hunted me down and one thing led to another. Now I work for them.” Shadow and Blaze shared a moment of silence after those words. Reading each other's eyes, their facial expressions. Shadow was willing to bet that she was thinking the same thing he was.
“I am so sorry about that!” Amy said bursting through her bedroom door in her usual red dress and her quills now straightened out. Within a split second the two of them had gone back to exactly where they were before she had left. Amy didn’t seem to notice. “I spilled some tea on myself and my robe.”
“You didn’t choose to mention that when you left.” Shadow remarked cooly.
“Yeah well, I didn’t want to make a fuss about me being clumsy again, okay?” Amy remarked before looking at her clock. “Aw shoot, Shadow it’s about that time.”
He knew what that meant, GUN would want him there first thing in the morning. The clock stood out amongst the birds chirping incessantly and the windchimes just outside her kitchen window blowing harshly with the strong wind. Within her room a forgotten alarm clock went off with it’s shrill buzzes.
“Ah, and so it is.” Shadow nodded courteously and reached behind his head to remove the Yellow Chaos Emerald and walked towards the front door. As he did both Blaze and Amy followed close behind him.
Amy held out her hand to hold the gem as Shadow put on his jacket and airskates. The three of them stood in an awkward silence as he checked his pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out.
Eventually Shadow retook the gem and Amy launched a surprise hug attack at both him and Blaze bringing them into a triple group hug. Gingerly they hugged one another whilst Amy squeezed the air out of them.
“See you next week, Shadow.” Said Amy.
“Farewell, Shadow.” Replied Blaze.
“Until next time Amy, until we meet again Blaze.” Concluded Shadow.
The three broke their hug and reluctantly Shadow opened the door and walked out and back down the dirt path. From the window on the door Blaze waved gingerly while Amy was a little more wreckless in her hand motions. Shadow smiled enough to let a fang of his own poke through and gave one large wave with his hand before reciting the same words he did so very often.
“Chaos Control!”