Chapter Text
Observation: Shadow the Hedgehog is acting strange.
No, that cannot be the case. For Shadow to be silent and avoidant is normal. It is easy for him to become preoccupied with his thoughts and often wishes to be left alone. Logically, this is average behavior coming from Shadow. It cannot be “strange” if the behavior is nothing out of the ordinary.
E-123 Omega cannot stop himself from finding this instance odd, however. Shadow is an organic lifeform, and Omega is a machine; with the logic and databanks he holds as a robot, Omega does not usually find it this hard to read Shadow’s behavior, as inconsistent and messy organic meatbags may be. Omega still cares little for logic, however. It is difficult when he runs into a problem that cannot be solved with bullets, violence, or property damage. This is one of those problems.
So, it is strange to Omega that Shadow seems to be actively avoiding him.
Of course, Shadow has his own goals to pursue. So does Rouge, and so does Omega. Never does one member of Team Dark attempt to intervene with the goals of another. They share a living space, but it is common to not see one another for extended periods of time. The nature of their “team” is self-directional for the most part, but when their goals entwine they will work together and “have each other’s backs,” as they say.
(…Rouge’s adamancy of the team being a “friendship” despite Omega not being programmed to understand or feel said organic concepts aside.)
Shadow has never acted this way before, however. No, independence is a common behavior of his; Omega just cannot understand why as of recently, he has acted as normal around Rouge, but when Omega interacts with him Shadow is so… jumpy.
“I’m heading out,” the hedgehog in question comments as he walks past, behind the living area and towards the apartment’s front door.
“Where’re you headed?” Rouge asks, turning her head to look at him from her spot on the couch next to Omega.
“Nowhere important,” Shadow says, looking up at her and standing up straight once he’s put his rocket skates on.
“Alright then, mister mystery. Take care,” Rouge says, turning back to the TV without any further questioning.
“STAY WARY OF THE WEATHER. MULTIPLE SOURCES STATE THAT IT WILL BE STORMING THIS AFTERNOON,” Omega says.
“I—” Shadow stammers as his face flushes, having been fixing his quills in the mirror by the door. “Yeah. I can handle some rain. Thanks,” he says—rather strained—while averting eye contact with Omega. The hedgehog opens the door and takes his leave.
Omega logs the behavior into his files.
Hypothesis: Shadow is upset.
This, also, would not be a new type of predicament. Shadow, being organic, has had his times of emotional irregulation. Both Omega and Rouge know this all too well. However much Shadow thinks of these instances as burdening and inconvenient, they are to be expected with the sentience and emotions that the minds of humans and mobians biologically possess. Omega is grateful he does not go through these emotions himself, seeing as both Shadow and Rouge can become quite fatigued—both mentally and physically—when going through them.
“IS SHADOW UPSET ABOUT SOMETHING?” Omega suddenly asks Rouge, startling her. “HE HAS BEEN ACTING STRANGER AND MORE AVOIDANT THAN USUAL. IT IS BEST THAT WE INTERVENE BEFORE IT WORSENS.”
“Oh? I don’t know about upset,” Rouge says, repositioning herself on the couch from having her legs stretched out to crossing them on the cushions. “Not sure about the avoiding, either. He seemed fine to me.”
Omega analyzes Rouge’s statement. He realizes he still can’t get a computing read on Shadow. “THEN WHAT IS THE REASON FOR HIS BEHAVIOR?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, big guy,” she states, changing the channel when the movie they’d been watching ends. “Why? You worried about him?”
“I AM NOT WORRIED,” Omega staunchly denies, fans whirring loudly to cool up his now-heating inner system. “YOU MEATBAGS ARE SIMPLY ANNOYING WHEN NOT IN TOP CONDITION.”
“Sure.”
Rouge continues to watch TV. As he sits next to her, Omega finds himself unable to close Shadow’s file in the background of his thought processes.
Shadow's fucked.
The second he steps out of the door and into the apartment complex hallway, he Chaos Controls somewhere far. He's initially not even sure where he's going to end up, just that it's not here. Not in the apartment. Not anywhere near Omega right now (or Rouge, for that matter).
He gets his bearings, and... realizes he isn't actually that far. He's in an alleyway a few doors away from his favorite convenience store.
Well. Getting a sleeve of Marias cookies and eating his feelings doesn't sound too bad.
The owner of the store is kind to him, as always. She seems to notice that something’s up, because she offers Shadow a free small bag of conchas, insisting that he take it for his troubles. Begrudgingly, he takes it, not wanting to be rude.
Taking it slow isn’t distracting enough, he realizes. Shadow walks through Central City’s sidewalks and eats his cookies, thinking too hard about the realization he had while lying in bed the other night.
Shadow the Hedgehog has feelings for E-123 Omega.
Thinking about it again makes him feel stupid. He feels like an idiot. Omega’s his teammate, his friend; Shadow can’t let a dumb crush get in the way of that. That aside, Shadow is crushing on a robot. How’s he even gonna begin to explain that to Omega? Hey, Omega, I’m experiencing this organic life-form feeling called being romantically attracted to you. He’s gonna think Shadow’s so stupid.
Shadow’s self-imposed task of ignoring this crush is nearly impossible, though. He almost wants to lean towards just embracing it instead. He’s found his gaze lingering on Omega for too long, getting a funny feeling in his stomach when the guy looks back at him. Shadow looks at Omega and purses his lips thin like a smile wants to sneak up on him and crinkle under his eyes. He thinks of how much fun Omega seems to have when he uses all his strength to blast at robots, doing what he does best, and he feels himself swoon. He’s fully aware Omega’s a robot, but… he wonders what it’d be like to give Omega a ki—
Shadow quickly shakes his head and tries to still his beating heart. Chaos. What a childish thought.
He looks up and realizes where his feet have taken him. He’s in front of an obnoxiously fox-head-shaped house that makes it so obvious who it belongs to. He walks to the front door and tries to knock, but the door’s open the slightest bit so he walks in. It’s also insanely loud inside, the sound of an electric screwdriver overtaking anything else.
“Prower,” Shadow says. The kid’s laying under some kind of big machine and wearing a safety mask, screwing the bolts inside of its mechanisms.
It’s too loud for the kid to hear, Shadow realizes, so he walks a bit closer and tries again. “Miles.”
Nope. Nothing. He walks closer and taps a finger on the kid’s shoe. “Tails.”
“GAH!” Tails yells as he turns off the screwdriver, and instinctively tries sitting up, accidentally hitting his head. “OW!” He slides forward from underneath the machine and pulls the mask off to rub his forehead, then notices the hedgehog standing in front of him. “Shadow? Sorry! You startled me!”
“You should really lock your front door,” Shadow says, taking a few steps back and giving the kid room to get up.
Tails sits up properly and continues to rub his forehead as he stands up, leaving the mask and electric screwdriver to the side. “Ah—Sonic and Amy were gonna get here later! I didn’t want them to have to knock,” he says, walking by the side window to a work desk full of blueprints and various other papers splayed across it. “N-nevermind that, what are you doing here, Shadow? Not that I don’t appreciate the visit, of course!”
The hedgehog realizes he has no idea why he’s here. Then he realizes that if he’s here, he might as well use the resources presented to him. “Do you know where there’s an Eggman base I can go destroy?”
“Oh! Sonic and Amy just called me from one they found, actually. I can give you the coordinates!” Tails says, grabbing the Miles Electric from his desk. “Have Rouge or Omega not been able to find any recently? N-not to doubt their abilities or anythi—”
“It’s fine. I was just passing by, so I thought I’d ask you,” Shadow says. It’s… not the full truth, but the truth.
“That makes sense,” Tails says. He turns the Miles Electric’s screen towards Shadow, showing a map with coordinates in the corner. “Sonic and Amy told me they found one underneath these grass plains. It’s got a hidden entrance under the soil that’d usually be hard for someone to find, but I’m sure it’ll come easy to you.”
“Very well,” Shadow says with a nod. He takes out the bag of conchas he’d been keeping in his quills and tosses Tails a yellow one. “Thank you for the information. I don’t know how long you’ve been sitting there working, but get some food in you, fox.”
Tails holds the Miles Electric in one hand and catches the concha in the other. “Hey, thanks, Shadow! See you later!”
“Mhm.” The hedgehog puts the bag back in his quills and takes out the Chaos Emerald he’s been carrying with him. The fox munches on the sweet bread right as Shadow teleports away. “Chaos Control!”
Shadow blinks and he’s in the grassy plains the kid mentioned. Sure enough, after some minimal poking around, Shadow finds the hidden entrance to the doctor’s base. A large, metal trap door latches open from underneath the earth once he kicks at it; far too obvious, in Shadow’s opinion. He skates his way inside and follows a trail of destroyed badniks. He reaches the entrance of a spacious room, and the other two hedgehogs inside it are too preoccupied with being swarmed with robots to notice he’s even there.
Shadow teleports various times and shoves a Chaos Spear into every badnik he warps to. It’s nothing short of satisfying; relaying his focus on a target, calculating every movement, and performing it with speed and accuracy.
There we go.
“Shadow?!” two voices yell out.
“Hedgehog, Rose,” Shadow says as he lands back on the ground, the remaining badniks having been obliterated.
“Ain’t it a pleasure to see you! What are you doing here?” Sonic asks.
“I was passing by and asked Tails for one of the doctor’s bases to blow up. I had nothing else to do, so I came here. I’m assuming he didn’t tell you I was on my way.”
Sonic’s communicator beeps. “Sonic! I just remembered to tell you—he might already be there, but I gave Shadow your coordinates!” Tails says, his muffled voice sounding like he’s got food in his mouth.
Sonic giggles. “Yeah, he’s here, alright,” he responds to Tails.
“Well, it’s nice to see you! Glad to have another pair of hands to help out,” Amy says. “Let’s keep walking—how have you been?”
“Fine,” Shadow says.
“That’s it? Just fine ? Nothing exciting going on?”
“Not really, no.”
“You know he’s not much of a talker, Ames,” Sonic says, amused and snickering. “Hey, I think there’s another big swarm in the next room!”
The three hedgehogs spend the next while destroying badniks and other pieces of Eggman property. Shadow never really admits it, but destroying badniks is fun. Not just satisfying, but fun. He retracts a Chaos Spear and peers at the insides of a Buzzer as he thinks about how much Omega would be enjoying himself if he were here, guns blazing and all, yelling out ANNIHILATE and CHARGE every second—
Shadow then feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest as he realizes who he’d just thought about.
“GRRAAAAAH!” Shadow yells as he uses Chaos Control and rips through what he feels like a million badniks in ten seconds.
“Woah! Jeez!” Amy says in surprise.
“You good there, Shadow?” Sonic asks.
Shadow lands back onto the ground again, kneeling and staring at the floor for a bit. “I’m fine,” he says, fanning his face a little as he stands up.
“You seem distracted, are you sure you’re okay?” Amy asks.
Shadow sighs. “Yes. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”
Neither Sonic nor Amy look entirely convinced, but they let it pass. “Ames, you were gonna see what you could find on the computer over there, right?” Sonic asks.
“Oh! Right!”
The three hedgehogs then redirect their attention to looking through the Eggnet, seeing what they can find. Shadow mentally writes down what sticks out to him, but other than that, the three find nothing all that out there for Eggman.
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” Amy says. “I’m gonna shut this thing off before Eggman realizes we were snooping around.”
“Oh, thank Chaos, ” Sonic says, halting the tapping of his foot that had been going on for a few minutes. “I’m so bored, blowing shit up was more fun than this. Let’s get outta here.”
“I can warp us out,” Shadow says. He pulls the Chaos Emerald out again and after a second, the three of them are back outside in the plains. The sun is now setting, giving a pink and orange hue to the sky; a visible change from when Shadow had arrived. The grass is also wet, indicating that it had rained and stopped throughout that time.
“It’s that late already? No wonder I’m starving,” Sonic says. “You guys wanna go grab dinner? Tails probably needs to eat, too.”
“I’ll pass, but I have these in the meantime. I gave him one as well.” Shadow pulls the bag of conchas out again, and gives Sonic and Amy the white and pink ones respectively. “I’ll be on my way now.”
“Oh wow, thanks, Shadow!” Amy says. “I guess we’ll see you later, then!”
Sonic takes a bite of his concha. “Don’t be a stranger!” he says with a wave and a mouth full of bread.
Makes sense where Tails got that from, Shadow thinks. He nods and starts walking in the other direction, grabbing the final concha from the bag and beginning to eat it. He tries to savor its chocolate flavor as his thoughts begin drifting, and he wishes he had another distraction from his dumb crush again.