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Rouge used her wings to lighten her footsteps, but they too made the lightest disturbance in the air. On other days, Shadow had picked up on it, but this time he maintained composure.
He was a strange beast - not the one she'd pictured from the description in the files. She'd imagined something huge, perhaps with several sets of teeth and claws tipped with poison. Although the teeth and claws were yet to be dis-proven, he looked younger than she did staring out at the blue marble. The sheen from the bright light out the window with the fluorescent lights above them gave him a blue cast that almost made G.U.N.'s "mistaken identities" seem believable. It was an icy and eery glow that made him look like a ghost. So still and cold, she wondered how this could be the same freak of nature who just materialised into a locked tomb and rescued her - only to become a statue again.
Shadow shielded his eyes from the sun, and shook sand from his shoes as they charted their route from here. It was hard to believe she was staring at him again, the strangest person she'd ever known, and he didn't even know it. In the bright light his fur shone like it'd been polished - she supposed that suspension fluid he was in had left an oily residue. It was hard to look at, and made most of his body appear grey and pink - only true colours visible in the shade made by his hand and his splaying quills.
He wasn't questioning the sun, which she supposed was a win - he at least still had some fundamental concepts down. Or he was too embarrassed to ask about them, which would indicate he had some of his old personality back - also a win. But in every other way…
She couldn't take it any more, and had to avert her eyes from this newborn Shadow - she busied herself with his robot guard in arranging team formation and tactics.
They stalked in the early sunset, bright pink and orange lights shining through the trees. Today was just securing an infiltration rout: Shadow didn't agree with G.U.N.'s multi-step methods, but the two of them had promised each other they'd play nice to curry favour for Omega. And for Shadow, since he'd just put half of the infantry in the hospital with one teensy little mental breakdown, but since he'd lobbed the comet away from earth they'd called that even.
They paused, and she hoiked him into her hands to shelter in the trees as a scout mission passed below. Four regime soldiers, not particularly well armed, but worth noting down nonetheless, so she took out her digital map and placed a pin in it.
'Or…' Shadow caught her eye and beamed the thought into her head.
She didn't completely love this side of him; it wasn't that violence was his first answer to every mild interruption to their path. The problem was it was the second, and his usual first answer was that they move in the next three seconds.
She shook her head and gave him a look, shuffling them quietly through the tree branches to the emergent layer, from which they could see the rolling deciduous forest as it cascaded down and up the slopes of the valley below. Here with the salmon sun against her ears, she felt a warmth flow over her back, and the strange sound of Shadow… laughing? Just once. One 'ha'.
"What?" She hissed, but she found herself smiling too - he had an orange glow about him that made the scowl lines on his brow seem lighter, and brought out the warm red tones of his black fur.
"I was kidding."
"Oh were you? You do that, do you?" She elbowed him, shuffling on her perch;
"Maybe I do. You'll never be sure."
The witching hour was Team Dark's preferred operation time, even when the operation was just their own leisure. Especially when the operation was for their own leisure actually - they all jealously guarded their free night times from work or people they didn't like.
Rouge flung Omega by the handles into a pit of robots, and he clanged with glee and began crunching through the guards like a child in a ball pit. Rouge and Shadow watched him lovingly for a moment, before she swung Shadow into both hands to balance their weight.
"Care to join him?" She asked
"Give him a minute," they said quietly; "he looks so happy."
The flashes of munitions from below and the moonlight above mixed in them to make a pensive sort of excitement. Life was a nice rhythm, really - they were drifting with no real agenda or instruction now, but the freelance life had some wonderful benefits.
A bright magenta flare blast from Omega fizzed for seconds; Shadow's shiny coat reflected back the unnatural glow, and blurred it into a warm purple across their quills and fur while it lit their eyes pink.
"So do you." Rouge mumbled.
"Hmm?"
"I said your turn."
She dropped them, and they flipped gracefully to connect heel to mechanical jaw on their way down.
Shadow sat, cross-legged and obedient, as Cream held a golden yellow daisy up to the side of their head.
"I think this one will go nicely!" She said brightly, and looped it into her chain. Shadow raised an eyebrow at Rouge, who was trying her best to fix the one Omega had been bestowed with, then promptly broke. She'd tried tying it, then using a hairband, and had now resorted to electrical tape and strapping it to Omega's metal shell. Shadow cleared their throat when Cream looked over at Rouge.
"How about this one?" They offered, holding up a pink clover they'd pulled from the grass behind. Cream flipped her ears as she swung back to look at what flower Shadow would have chosen.
"That one will be lovely! It looks so pretty with your fur?"
"My fur?"
"Yes!"
"Don't all colours look the same? I mean I'm just… black."
Rouge glanced over, and couldn't help but chuckle - at that very moment, Shadow's fur was an explosion of colour. Where the sun had rusted them over years their coat was a warm roasted brown with flecks of red and orange, lit up by the sunshine around them. The golden cliffs to their side brightened the mix, while the pink and white flowers around them dappled their shiniest smoothest quills with spots like petals. And to their other side, the bright sky reflected on the tips of their ears like a blue halo. But she nodded approvingly.
"Yes, I think put all the flowers in there, Cream. Black goes with everything."