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KABOoooom!
Leaves of palm trees and blades of grass get blown back from a blast wave as an explosion settles.
“That’s another one down,” Shadow muttered to himself. The black hedgehog adjusted a device around his wrist. It was a mechanical watch like device, invented by his friend Miles Prower, that allowed him to use stored Chaos Energy to fire bolts that could do serious damage.
Aiming his arm, Shadow fired a green lightning-like bolt towards one of many round orange robots, one of Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s ‘Pawns’.
Unfortunately the energy simply reflected off of the shiny metal of the robot. “Ugh, this new armor isn’t fun to deal with…”
As beams and bullets flew around him, Shadow needed a faster way to know these plates of metal off.
Firing up his rocket shoes, he leaped forward and threw a kick at the nearby robot. With good precision, he knocked a few bolts loose, but he can’t take them all out efficiently enough like this.
He’s gonna need…
Shadow groaned as he utilized his shoes to create a large area of safe distance. Pulling out a communication device, he sent a message.
‘need bkup’
In a nearby city, humming to herself, a pink hedgehog named Amy Rose finished up the last of the cleaning around her apartment.
“There we go!” she sighed, finally glad to have a tidy space.
Collapsing onto her nearby couch, she pulled out her phone to check anything she’d missed. “Hm? A message?” she noted, opening her messaging app. Exiting from a conversation with Miles, she saw that she had gotten a message from Shadow.
Tapping on the contact, she quickly registered his request for backup.
“I’m gonna have to get him to fix his bad typing habits,” she huffed as she got up from her seat and approached her door.
“Oh right—”
She pivoted around and dashed to her room, grabbing a red jacket and tossing it on, zipping up the heart shaped zipper. Turning back to leave once again, she stopped at her room’s door.
She reached to giant hammer that was leaning against the wall. “Can’t forget you!”
Finally, she can make her way out. Hopefully Shadow doesn’t mind the wait.
Running down flights of stairs and out the apartment complex, she whipped out her phone and opened her GPS. Time to get Shadow his backup.
KABOOOooom!
Another robotic pawn goes down, as Shadow finally opens up another weak spot.
“What is taking that girl so long?” he questioned as he jumped back for a breather. “At this rate I’ll run out of chaos energy—”
WOooosh!
A blur of pink and red whizzes right by Shadow, and with a large clank, one of the robots goes flying skyward with no sign of coming back down.
“Took you long enough,” Shadow complained to the pink hedgehog, as he knocked back more pawns.
“SOoooo sorry ‘bout that,” Amy replied, still looking to the sky, proud of the hard hit. “I had just finished cleaning and I had to get my jacket and my hammer, and I live in the city. You know how far that is? It’s—”
“I get it.”
“I know you do,” Amy giggled.
“You might wanna pay attention,” Shadow warned.
“Huh—” Amy looked, right as a bright beam shot by one of the pawns hit her right in the arm. “Hey!”
Shadow chuckled, firing a chaos bolt at an exposed robot.
“Just couldn’t have warned me earlier, could you?” Amy rolled her eyes, grabbing her hammer with both hands.
Shadow rolled his eyes in response. “And you couldn’t have arrived faster.”
“We’re even then,” Amy huffed.
The two of them paused.
“I suppose a tiebreaker is in order,” she smirked.
“Yeah?” Shadow replied, half paying attention as he punched another bot. He was starting to get annoyed at Amy’s lack of contribution. “What foolish thing do you have in mind?”
“Whoever can wreck the most Ivo Pawns wins?”
“Well, then you better get wrecking. I’ve got quite the lead.”
The sound of metal getting crushed was all Shadow needed to hear to know that she’d gotten to work.
With the swing of her hammer, Amy knocked the metal plates off of one of the robots. With the exposed under layer, Shadow used a chaos bolt to snipe the weak spot of it.
“Seriously?” Amy shouted towards him, “That one was mine!”
More back and forths, and plenty of explosions continued throughout the field. At one point, Shadow had knock a bot down and Amy swung at it with her hammer like a golf club.
Eventually, the dust settled and the only thing left in the field was scrap parts and two hedgehogs.
Taking a look around, Shadow acknowledged that the field was clear of threats. “Thanks for the… backup, Rose,” he said.
“No problem!” she said, smiling. “Oh- before you go I wanted to have a… talk?”
Shadow raised a brow. “Don’t keep me long, I need to get some rest. Who knows what plan Robotnik will pull next.”
“Right…” Amy mumbled. “So I was have a chat with Miles a while back…”
She immediately noticed that it wasn’t hard to see the scowl forming on Shadow’s face.
“…And well, he told me you didn’t have a place to stay?” she said, running a hand through her quills.
“Is that what he told you?” Shadow huffed.
“Uh, yeah.”
Shadow let out a, "hmph,” before turning and walking away.
“W-Wait, Shadow!” Amy called to stop him. “It’s just, this entire time I had thought you had a home, and now I know you’ve been living off of nothing?!”
Shadow stopped dead in his tracks. “You know nothing about how I live. Got that Rose? Keep out of my business.”
“Shadow, I know we might have an awkward friendship, but I do consider you my friend!” Amy said with concern. “I can’t just let a friend be—”
“Keep. Out of It.”
With a boost from his Air Shoes, Shadow was gone in a mere second.
Amy sighed, having no hope to catch up to him.
Wiping the sweat from her face, she figured she should head home. It was getting hot out and her jacket wasn’t helping.