Chapter Text
Green Hill
Sonic ran up to the top of the mountain, looking down at the chaos below.
‘And Eggman is… over there!’
Sonic jumped and curled up as she dashed down the slope, barreling into Eggman’s robotic suit.
Dr. Eggman roared at Sonic for the impudent attack, making Sonic roll her eyes and yawn.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing, Hedgehog?!”
Dr. Eggman growled at Sonic’s bored expression, feeling slighted by the hedgehog’s arrogance.
“You’ll have to specify which hedgehog you’re asking. Is it me, or Shadow? Or Amy? Or Silver? Or—”
“I get it! Shut up, Blue Menace!”
Dr. Eggman interrupted Sonic’s attempt to subtly count how many hedgehogs she actually knew.
‘Man. Eggman needs to chill.’
Sonic beat up the suit of metal before dashing out of there, only to instantly run into Shadow.
“Shadow! Hey, Dude!”
Sonic ran over to the emo hedgehog cheerfully, still grinning cheerfully from Dr. Eggman’s swift defeat.
Shadow leveled Sonic with a glare that flew over her head without any effect.
“So… whatcha doin’ Faker?”
Sonic folded her arms behind her head, resting on her hands as she looked at Shadow expectantly.
When he didn’t respond immediately, Sonic tilted her head in silent question.
‘Did I do something wrong? I should apologize if I did. What did I do now?’
Just as Sonic was about to apologize for a reason unknown to herself, Shadow spoke and interrupted her.
“Just watching. You never know what the Doctor will do next.”
Shadow crossed his arms, his gaze fixed on Eggman’s lab in the distant corner of the island.
“Okay!”
Sonic sat down beside Shadow’s standing silhouette as the sun slowly lowered in the sky to their left.
“What are you doing, Faker?”
Shadow questioned Sonic, since Sonic usually ran off after having her curiosities quenched.
“Sitting.”
Sonic unhelpfully replied, but she certainly thought it was helpful since Shadow couldn’t see what she was so clearly doing.
Shadow sighed, leaving Sonic confused as to the reason his reaction was like that.
As a winter breeze stirred on the island, Sonic shivered from the cold before Shadow massaged his forehead in exasperation.
He took off his extremely dark gray—nearly the same dark color of Shadow’s quills—and red scarf that was color-coded specifically to his quills, which exposed his fluffy white chest fur as he wrapped the scarf around Sonic’s neck semi-loosely.
Sonic shifted, her blue jacket sleeve brushing against his hand as he retracted his grip.
She fingered the scarf through her white gloves, marveling over the odd texture.
‘Is it just me, or does his scarf feel like his fur from whenever we fight? Spar. Duel? Lance would like me having a more… diverse vocabulary.’
Sonic looked up at Shadow, a broad smile on her face as she beamed at him.
“Thanks, Shadz!”
Sonic glanced back down to study the scarf better after thanking her rival/frenemy.
The shift in attention made Sonic miss the moment Shadow’s face turned almost green, like his blood.
Shadow cleared his throat before sitting next to Sonic. Just to make sure she didn’t get cold again.
Can’t have the hero of Green Hill get a cold, now can he.
The two sat there on the cliff’s edge for a while, just watching the sun’s descent change the color of the sky.
Shadow yawned as the sun finally set, shifting from where he sat to stretch as the air grew colder.
“Let’s go now, Sonic.”
Shadow began, about to stand, when Sonic fell limp against him.
“S—Sonic?”
Shadow’s face turned green as his heart rate spiked abnormally.
‘Am I afraid? Why would I be afraid of Sonic? Or of…’
Shadow quickly shook his head, instantly freezing when Sonic’s body shifted limply closer.
‘I… I have to get up. Now. This is… ugh.’
Shadow ignored the feeling of his blood pumping in his body as he attempted to pick up Sonic’s sleeping body while still sitting.
‘I don't have a Chaos Emerald… I can't Chaos Control without one… it's too unstable.’
Shadow sighed unevenly as he scooped up Sonic and quickly stood, ignoring the way his heart beat so erratically.
He would have to ask Rouge about this strange occurrence later.
‘It doesn’t seem like a poison or illness, but it doesn’t mean it could be any less dangerous.’
Shadow carried Sonic to Tails’ place to try and locate Sonic’s house.
No one actually knew where Sonic personally lived except Tails, and even that looked unlikely sometimes.
Surprisingly, Tails wasn’t at his garage late today.
“…Unfortunate.”
Shadow murmured to the unconscious Sonic with a soft sigh, again.
Going to Tails’ house at this time would make the fox uncomfortable to speak to, and it would be awkward for them both.
Shadow decided that he would just take Sonic to his house.
Sonic wouldn’t know it was his house anyway.
Shadow shook his head and headed away from Tails’ garage.
As Shadow arrived back home, he huffed as he debated where to put Sonic.
She was surprisingly a heavy sleeper, since all the running hadn’t woken her up.
‘…Sonic wouldn’t mind the couch, right? Wait. Why do I even care? Sonic has been bothering me since the start…’
Shadow’s gaze lingered on the scarf that had stubbornly stayed on Sonic the whole time.
He might as well let Blue keep it, since it liked her so well.
It wasn’t as if the scarf was sentient. That would be insane.
The scarf just… had its own personality, so to say.
It would fit better on some than others, even though it was just a scarf and could be adjusted.
It felt more comfortable to those it 'liked' than to those it didn’t, so, for Sonic to feel comfortable sleeping with it meant it liked her a lot.
Shadow chuckled, since it was a bizarre way to describe a simple scarf, but it wasn’t as simple as it looked.
It had Shadow’s colors for a reason.
With yet another sigh, Shadow dropped Sonic on the bed—his bed—and moved to his couch in the other room.
As long as he left before she woke up, she would never know whose house it was.
Shadow ignored the way his cheeks heated at the thought that someone other than family was sleeping at his house.
He would try to sleep as much as possible, even if he didn’t completely need it.
Sonic noticed the explosion on the mountain immediately, since it was so loud.
She turned back to Shadow to point it out, but he just punched her head and she became dizzy.
“Learn to focus.”
Shadow instructed Sonic to not forget as he raced off in the explosion—Eggman’s direction.
Sonic shook off the dizziness, still mostly disoriented.
“Hey, Shadow! Get back here!”
Sonic called out for Shadow, who did not turn around to give a response.
Sonic, frustrated with the emo hedgehog’s rudeness, ran after him and was quickly catching up before crashing against Shadow’s back once he stopped.
Sonic, unprepared for the collision, nearly fell off the mountain before Shadow grabbed her wrist and hauled her back up.
“Look where you’re going next time.”
He sighed and released her once she regained her balance on the mountain’s ledge, dusting his hands off and brushing the dust from his clothes that came about due to the collision.
From the view, Sonic remembered a time she fell asleep while watching the sun fall, and then she woke up in someone’s house.
Since Shadow was there when she fell asleep, she figured he might know whose house it was.
“Hey, Shadz? What happened after I fell asleep here—HEY!”
Sonic looked over the ridge to better remember that time, and turned around while asking her question, only for Shadow to start leaving her behind.
Sonic groaned as she facepalmed, running after Shadow to see Eggman in a cave at the top of the mountain.
‘Woah. A shiny rock. A shiny magic rock?’
Dr. Eggman began monologuing about how Sonic’s friends could never defeat him with the power of the Paradox Prism, and Sonic charged up to make him eat his words.
Going too fast has some issues though, since she couldn’t hear Tails.
She glanced back at Tails while running, and Tails waved at her strangely.
‘Is he worried I won't get there?’
Sonic smiled and gave Tails a thumbs up since she could make it. He didn’t have to worry.
She turned back to the Prism and charged full force at it, shattering it into several large fragments.
A sharp pain pierced through Sonic, who couldn’t tell where it originated, and an energy wave crashed over Green Hill as the world turned dark.
She had been pierced by the smallest of the Prism Shards, while Shadow Chaos Controlled to avoid the blast.
Shadow didn’t know where he was anymore, and the blast wave still caught him.
New Yoke City
A hedgehog sifted through the junk and tossed away items carefully.
Anyone who approached too closely was noticed immediately by the little hedgehog, she would duck into the piles to hide and avoid the eyes.
If anyone had seen her, they would say that she might’ve been blue had it not been for the grime coating her quills and clothes.
There were glowy light red quills in a sort of V-shaped pattern over her head, which was strange considering that uniqueness was a crime here in New Yoke.
The hedgehog stepped away from the trash heap after finding a strange pair of bright red shoes that complemented her odd quills.
As soon as she put them on, she heard a sharp cry for help a few meters away from her position.
For some reason, the voice sounded familiar despite her never hearing it before.
She sighed as she crouched down to start running, even though she hated doing it. It almost felt like deja vu.
‘Just this once.’
She blurred past in record speed, knocking over two boring-looking Mobians and technically rescuing an odd-tailed fox.
The fox didn’t register the rescue immediately, reeling in shock before glancing in the direction of his rescuer and running from the Mobians that were slowly recovering from the fall.
Silently, the fox thanked the stranger for daring to help him, even if the bullies weren’t fully stopped.
That one act of kindness, even if it was accidental, changed the fox's perspective.
One thought plagued the fox constantly afterward.
‘Who was that?’
On the other side of the spectrum, the hedgehog sighed and massaged her aching legs.
She hadn’t run in a long time, and she again remembered why she hadn’t.
Running had gotten her into trouble once, and now it pained her every time.
The price of being different, she supposed.
‘At least the shoes make running slightly more bearable.’
She shook her head, spotting a bat and echidna as they snuck around in an alley to her left.
‘…Ignore it. Curiosity causes trouble. Everything causes trouble, actually.’
She sighed again, moving on to her place of residence. A very obscure spot that the Chaos Council’s robots hadn’t found.
‘I will end the Chaos Council's tyranny, one day. They will pay for what they're doing to our home.’
The hedgehog glared at the Council’s headquarters with hostility, still vividly remembering the day she began to hate running.
‘It's their fault.’
The Chaos Council were the root of everything awful in the city. Literally.
She was tired of everything in the city. She wasn’t exactly old enough to remember the old environment, but somehow, she still missed it.
Deep underground, far below the Council’s headquarters, was a forgotten secret prison.
A dark-colored hedgehog mourning his beloved sister lay frozen in an old and decrepit cryogenic chamber.
No signs of life were visible in any tool on the surface, and nothing had recorded anything so deep underground.
Slowly, that hedgehog would begin to reawaken.
His first thought once awake would have nothing to do with any of his memories.
‘What did the Faker do?’
Time Left Until ____: xx Years