Chapter Text

A healthy planet, for Foster, meant healthy chao. Sonic, hero of the Resistance, thought the same thing, apparently.

The town of Cedar Run sat on the interior of a wide river that produced log rafts shorn and lashed at the saw mill upstream. Sturdy Beavers and Squirrels with shoulders and arms thickened by days of lumbering shouted as they hooked the steel cable onto the winch of the tugboats, but otherwise there was a permanent sense of tranquility that attracted the chao to the clearings of plots left out of harvest rotation. Foster’s cubs were grown, leaving her with an empty cave and a feeling of a job well-done. They were strong kids on their own adventures, with her older electing to stay in town while the younger went off to a bigger city south of the valley. Foster thought she would be thankful to have them out from underfoot, but the cave was quiet and she missed the noise. 

When a group of chao decided to roost in the acres of forest she called her backyard, she considered them as she hefted a trowel in one paw, her overalls muddy at her knees. It was a mild fall day and the crops she planted three months ago were leafy with green, vibrant tops.  Foster wondered if they’d enjoy honeyed carrots like her older, or be extra picky like her younger. She had an abundance of root vegetables in the wheelbarrow she meant to trade to the family just down the path for half a bushel of acorns, some of the nuts she intended to roast while the rest got ground into flour for cakes.

She decided to save a few for the chao, just to see if they’d bite.

Foster spoiled them into the winter when they seemed to enjoy anything she put in front of them, a welcome change from the dinner fights between her and the kids. Spring came quickly with ramps shooting up through the ground and ready to be baked into trout pie. She saved a share for the chao, but for the first time in her memory they left some of the meal untouched. She shrugged it off as an intolerance for fish before she turned out another meal they historically enjoyed. This, too, was only partially eaten.

She put out a notice in the town for a consultation, not expecting much. She stuck a flyer on the board in her blocky, legible writing in the town square and sent a few along with the ferrymen who drove the boats down river.

When Sonic the Hedgehog showed up at her fence gate, she nearly dropped her spade on her foot.

He was casually leaning against one of her pickets, his smile easy and bright across his peach muzzle. “I heard you had some chao troubles?”

She was too old to be self-consciously wiping her gloves on her pants. She grimaced to herself when she noticed the smear of dirt across her denim. Oh well- he wasn’t here to be impressed by a retired mama bear.

“You heard rightly,” she answered. “I’ll take you to ‘em.”

-

Foster had never brought anyone into the chao clearing before. A protective edge intruded her gait, a feeling she couldn’t entirely shake. Sonic didn’t seem to notice, strolling just behind her with arms folded behind his quilled head. If she felt a bit betrayed at how easily they welcomed the hedgehog into their clearing, she didn’t voice it. It helped that a few of them ignored him entirely to go crawl into her lap once she settled on her favorite stump.

They climbed up his skinny legs like a tree. “Clingy little guys,” he noted, extending an arm out so that the bravest of them could hang off of it like a set of monkey bars.

“That part’s normal,” Foster informed him, her sigh big, toothy, and tired. “They ain’t eatin’ much. Sleep a lot more than usual, too, and it’s springtime. I’da thought they’d be running loose through the forest explorin’ instead of stayin’ put like this.”

The startle from Foster as an object on Sonic’s wrist lit up shook the chao in her lap; she smoothed her hefty paws across the tops of their heads in apologetic strokes. A gridded fan of laser light scanned down the top of a chao’s antennae to their dangling feet. “You get that, Tails?” Sonic asked into the device. Not small enough to be a watch, but not too big to be unwieldy. “Transmission successful,” a voice chirped in response, their cheer coming through despite the static. “Complete data analysis results won’t be available until another half hour of processing, but-”

“In words I can understand, buddy.”

“From these initial readings it looks like the same symptoms as the others,” Tails finished. “Weak chaos signatures and a lot of interference.”

Foster hadn’t thought much of Sonic so far (it was hard to be generous when there was an interloper in her territory, even if he was invited) but the look on his face as Tails spoke changed her perception of him, like she had been staring at him all wrong before and only now was seeing him correctly. There’s the hero who saved the world , she wondered. I get it now .

“So they ain’t the only ones acting up,” Foster assessed as soon as the device at Sonic’s wrist went dormant.

“Not by a long shot,” Sonic admitted, crouching to allow the chao down. “We’re studying as many as we can to get some answers.”

This wasn’t great news- it sounded like a sickness that was spreading without an obvious cause. She hugged the chao in her lap just a little tighter.

A gloved hand touched on her furry bicep. “Don’t worry,” Sonic soothed. “Tails is a genius and we’ve beaten everything we’ve come up against so far. We’re gonna fix this.”

Foster’s unease at his intrusion finally lifted like a broken dam, allowing in the light and hope that effused from him. Again, she felt her understanding of him deepen just a little more. He was a hero in the big and the small ways. For Foster, who generally believed that the world was a good place, it was a comfort to be given a little proof. “I trust you,” she responded, catching a chao who tumbled off her head after clambering up her form. “Good luck, Sonic.”

-

The information from Sonic’s transmission ticked in a loading bar across the screen, hovering above multiple programs opened and chugging along in the background ready to rip the data apart for reproduction in readable, clarifying graphs. Tails tested his lip against the rim of his mug, decided to drink, and only jerked a little bit as he burned fresh tastebuds out of commission on some mint tea. He stirred more honey in to both sweeten and release steam through surface heat transfer. He had little hope that this newest sample provided answers for their problem, but more information meant a more precise analysis. Can’t really be mad at clarity.

He didn’t get it. The chaos emeralds stayed hidden as per usual, Knuckles hadn’t reported any changes with the Master Emerald (then again, he was still treasure hunting with Rouge, and who knows what kind of trouble those two could get into on their own), and all was quiet on the Eggman front. Dead ends everywhere, and no explanation for these strange chaos energy signatures or the lethargic behavior exhibited by the Chao. The new energy readings did strange dances across the frequency spectrum, making unfamiliar shapes that didn’t conform to pre-established chaos waves. Yet they had a pattern to them, a general rhythm that they always followed in these recordings. A piece to the puzzle whose edges Tails had yet to find.

He remained determined. He logged hours of success under his utility belt since working at what was once the clinic, now turned into Restoration HQ’s Health Hub. People depended on him for medical equipment schematics, for better sterilization methods, for little bots that maintained the tiled floors. So many faces added a “thank you” before they called him “Miles” that the weight of his name stopped feeling like a case of mistaken identity and more like a pair of gloves he finally grew into. He didn’t hate it. It made “Tails” someone personal, someone who still missed his brother’s kind ruffle of the fur between his ears.

The progress bar finished with a blink of success before disappearing, all processors roaring to life. New renders populated the monitor nearly the size of the wall. Then, in the tiny fanfare of a three-note completion tone, his wrist communicator informed him of a successful update. Well, at least he had something to give to Amy.

–

Midday arrived with folks rolling up the sleeves of their work shirts. The soil of the community garden smelled damp, soft enough for setting stakes and marking rows. A section started prepping beds for root crops while another team arrived with water barrels filled from the water tower. Frost sensors courtesy of their local vulpine genius indicated that the morning snap passed by without damaging their yield. The strawberry patch rustled with unfurling leaves, leaving Amy suddenly wanting a slice of the morning’s loaf smothered in jam.

“Two,” said a voice across from her, doggedly (hah) persistent.

“Five,” Amy responded, removing pins from the tarp protecting their more fragile produce.

“I don’t need five backup agents for reconnaissance,” the wolf asserted. He crouched down to pluck more pins from the other side. Condensation rolled off the cloth and flew in a scatter of drops once he and Amy lifted the sheet together with a snap.

“I had two teammates with me when I got caught out,” Amy informed him- just mentioning the accident sent a twinge of phantom pain through her knee cap. “Are you saying you’re better than me?” she asked in warning, airy as she verbally handed him the trigger to her internal detonator.

“You and I have different skill sets,” the wolf hedged. “Don’t make unfair comparisons.”

“Hey Keel,” Tails greeted, ambling up from the direction of the main Hub building. Funny how different he looked outside of his workshop and in Amy’s territory, careful not to disturb any of the growth as he negotiated room along the path for his feet and clutching at the wrench on his tool belt. “Amy- I have some upgrades to the chaos energy analyzer that I thought you’d want to know about.”

“Thank goodness,” Amy cheered, rising into a stretch with a punch to the sky and a clamp around her elbow. “Something for me to deliver to the scouts.”

“Something that might mean I don’t need five bodies breathing down my neck,” Keel followed after, a smug and winning grin. Not like Knuckles, who wore his victory obviously, or Shadow, who only ever expressed his pleasure through conquering someone else, but instead with the firm belief that the world rewarded persistence eventually. His tail maintained a steady sweep back and forth behind his knees, dodging the blackberry bushes behind him, and Amy mentally accused him of being a great big show-off . 

“It means the backup can act with more information,” she remarked, “not shrink the resources.”

“Or you relegate those bodies and spread out the scans for more intel,” Keel suggested, the pins shoved back into the cloth. “You mentioned yesterday how you didn’t feel comfortable sending out patrols until we had a better lay of the island. Miles expedited the process.”

Just when she thought she had a handle on Keel, he proved that he listened to her when it mattered- or when it suited his needs, she had yet to decide. It surprised her how often he tossed her words back at her like he was always ready to catch them.

“That’s not the same as saying the risk is gone,” she snapped, “Just because we’ve got an upgrade doesn’t mean we stop acting with caution.”

“You’re not throwing caution out, you’re misusing resources,” Keel countered. “Trust in the advice of someone who has literal years of infiltration experience.”

She was getting tired of Keel’s contradictory attitude. He had an air of self-assuredness that could suffocate a room, much like someone else she knew who could rile her up just as easily. Someone blue, and sunny, and not here right now. “You’re letting your ego do a lot of the talking,” Amy growled. 

Keel’s tail managed another infuriatingly perfect flick, his ears tipped forward and his expression unreadable. “Funny, I was about to say the same thing.”

“Guys!” Tails piped up, shoving his communicator between them like a peace offering. “Uh, okay, wow. I did not mean to cause a tactical crisis. Just let me demonstrate what this can do before you make any decisions?”

Amy read silent concession in the fragile incline of Keel’s nod. She budged, but with a promise that this conversation wasn’t over that she trusted him to read in her face. And, there - tossed back to her, the ball of their conversation flung to her like he wanted to throw it over her head before she could catch it. Smugness, and a returning promise that he would thoroughly enjoy exhausting her with more counter-arguments afterwards. “Go ahead Tails,” Amy asked, a deliberate cut away from Keel and all of his nonsense.

“Okay! So,” the communicator’s face glowed with a few taps along it’s surface. “I noticed similarities between some of the weird energy signatures we’ve been picking up, indicating a regular pattern. I have enough information to load the new signatures into the scanners as well, so we can start tracking those and see where they’re coming from.”

At this, Amy lit up. Good, now that weird energy won’t catch them off guard again. “That’s brilliant!” Tails had only a moment to bask in the praise before she asked, “How quickly can we set up everyone’s mobile scanners with the analyzer software?”

“Give me two days, and I think I can not only upload the changes but create a repository for the new data. I need a bank to capture and render the transmissions into a readable format.”

“Okay,” Amy grinned. “So, we’ll start tracking this new energy and whatever gets sent back to you is going to help figure out what’s going on?”

“At least give us more to work with,” the fox sighed.

“It’s good work, Tails,” Amy assured him. After her accident and subsequent weeks of PT, she kept reconnaissance on a tighter leash knowing she was choking her most restless units. This development allowed her to give those teams some room to breathe without a weight on her conscience, though she struggled to determine exactly what Keel wanted. Some days he processed reports by her side in silence, as diligent and regular as his one o’clock meditation break with a cup of matcha. Other times he acted with a restlessness that he channeled into hours of physical training. She tried not to miss him too much. She wondered how her heart had any room left to ache for the absence of someone else.

 “Two teammates, Agent Keel. I’ll send their profiles to you through comm after lunch. Let them know about the analyzers and be prepared to deploy by the end of the week.”

Keel’s ears flickered, barely noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. She ate up his blip of confusion like an unwrapped sweet. “Why not sooner? Miles said two days.”

“Because,” Amy sniffed, dismissive, moving onto the next cloth that needed venting, “I’m not the only one overworking themselves. You need this party as much as I do.”

“The party!” Tails exclaimed. “I almost forgot to check if Knuckles and Sonic are coming for it.”

“Oh,” she sighed, dreams of a boisterous rooftop playing as a film behind her eyes. “I can’t wait. I already checked the sign-up sheet for the food, ordered plates, a band, streamers-”

“That you are forbidden from putting up,” Keel insisted quietly. “As per your therapist’s orders.”

“ Streamers ,” Amy continued. Lift, snap, pin back into place. Another row of frost cloth ventilated. “It’s going to be a perfect celebration for the official opening of the Health Hub.”

“I’ll just let my teammates know that we’re delaying reconnaissance in favor of getting shot by glitter canons, shall I?” Keels wondered.

“She is the boss,” Tails reminded him, the communicator dimming with the close of the analyzer program. “Her resistance, her rules.”

She glanced to Keel, delighted by the way he managed to finally dirty his gloves by setting in the last pin of the cloth. “Don’t say it,” Keel warned her just as Amy moved to squat beside him between the rows of berries. She had challenge in her posture, her lips pulled back to show off her teeth- and it reminded her of the way she felt before she slammed the flat of her hammer, sending a cobalt blur into the mechanical guts of the next badnik.

 “Heel,” she grinned.

Keel came alive under her eyes, from dour and disconnected to alert. The agent’s tail took on a sharp swish behind him, and his ears stayed cocked forward. Like he was listening intently. Like he saw threat in the pink hedgehog within his swiping range, a woman who didn’t bother to withhold what she kept in her arsenal. From one moment, they both braced to enter into a match. She felt alive under the scrutiny, like winning this competition between her and Keel meant more in the grander scheme of life, like she could apply her power to any heart and watch it transform under her paws just because she forced his to rally beside her.

He assessed her, ready to wait her out. Amy read his profile, she knew the score- he could outlast her if he wanted. But it was a silly thing to work himself up over a joke in the middle of a community garden, and she knew that. He relented with a tsk. She swallowed down her anticipation for how this would play out later, when he planned to pull her teasing out again like a shiv. For now, he packed it away as a professional before offering her a hand. She took it. He had large hands, she noticed in annoyance for the third time today. They gripped her easily, tugging her without more force than required, like he measured his strength when he held her and dosed it accordingly.

“Break time, Commander,” Keel ordered, offering her an arm while Tails offered her another. She looped her own through both, her coasting on the anticipation of a fun-filled evening with her as the most sensational host.

-

Rouge mentioned the next stop on their travel laid just a few miles north of their latest excavation site, just “ a little lush rest stop, a small pool or two, should be lovely. ” Knuckles believed her, like an idiot. His expectations for isolation and quiet expired as they stepped into the grand open courtyard of the oasis. Day two of their stay and he muttered darkly to himself while other bodies joined him in his pool, never mind that all the amenities were communal. Surely his demeanor communicated the obvious well enough, these people were just body illiterate.

Maybe that was Knuckles trying to justify his discomfort in his ears. The denizens of his home on Angel Island trilled during the nights and chirped at him during the days. At these resorts Rouge insisted they visited in between expeditions, conversation lingered in the spaces around him, produced by a language he understood but the words usually not meant for his ears. Rouge’s own seemed to swivel at the sounds, divulging when an exchange piqued her interest or otherwise making things up- it was his job to determine which was true. She made it a game. With some coaching from her, he got somewhat decent at it.

He chose to forgo more soaking for a rinse off, grabbing a thin but absorbent cotton towel to scrub against his chest and finding Rouge sipping a drink out of a twisty straw. “Alright, woman,” he groused, “you had your fun. Tomorrow we leave.”

“Can’t,” Rouge insisted behind a pair of sunglasses whose pink frames matched her outfit, “I have a stone massage scheduled for two. Oh,” she murmured, cutting through his indignance, “your communicator kept beeping while you were gone, so I shut it off.”

“You shut it-” he lunged for the communicator left on a stone plinth. It turned on fine, the boot up taking too long for his liking.

“Relax,” Rouge cooed. “Your toe-tapping is undoing all of the mindfulness I paid for.”

“What if it had been an emerge-”

“It wasn’t,” she insisted, lifting up her frames. “I know what your alert chime sounds like.”

That was one of the many things Rouge taught him- how to let go. All he ever knew on Angel Island was to engage with vigilance when either the Master Emerald or his own senses alerted him to disturbance. Off the island, everything engaged his fight-or-fight harder at first. Rouge handled everyone, friends and strangers alike, the same way as she did a gemstone- examined with terrifying perception, weighted for their value, then admired or tossed depending on what she found. People sparkled differently from stones, she explained. The way they engage with one another could hold glints of drama, of joy, of regret. Observing stopped being a job, for once, and turned into an indulgence. A story that he liked listening to through her nuanced observations.

Did he trust her? Marginally more than he did at the start. He wasn’t the optimistic powerhouse that was Sonic, not willing to throw his good will behind every gesture, but…without Sonic’s urging, he wouldn’t have these new experiences that made the world feel bigger and stranger. More exciting. The urge to berate her settled into a huff while he examined his messages.

“It’s from Tails,” he explained as he sat on the end of her lounge chair, her legs folding up to accommodate him. “He says they’re celebrating the opening of the Health Hub with a party. Amy’s hosting it.”

“A party!” Rouge enthused gently, her drink set aside. “How decadent. Of course we’re attending.” Her chin nestled on his shoulder and he lifted the communicator to give her a better look. “Yes, we still have time for that massage tomorrow-” his indignant scoff went unnoticed - “and make it in time to the station for the train.”

“...it would be good to see how the construction finished up,” Knuckles allowed, leaning back into her a fraction. His lean had the desired effect of encouraging her arms around his waist. He liked the creamy white of her fur against the solid mass of his red. “And I haven’t seen Amy since she started her physical therapy.”

“Poor dear,” Rouge sighed. Her breath smelled like mangoes, encouraging him to scent the air and tilt his chin in her direction. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of you four take a blow quite like that one.”

“She’s tough,” Knuckles asserted, “She was already complaining about the boredom when we left.”

Rouge only hummed. He stole the hum against his mouth and changed the acoustics of it into a lilt of surprise that settled into a sound as wide and breathless as desert winds. “We better check up on her then,” Rouge whispered, “if only for the sake of everyone else.”

“Later,” he rumbled, putting Rouge’s lessons of observation to work as he soaked in her delighted laugh and the easy way she fell back onto the lounger.

-

Health Hub’s rooftop acted like a big, grey, industrial canvas for the guests, but leave it to Amy to fill the boring and expected full of heart. Trough-shaped planters lined the roof, lending it color. Crates from shipments got repurposed into tables for the buffet, draped in heavy cloth that reflected back the glow of string lights. Some enterprising individual cobbled together hundreds of pallets stacked together to make a stage with a back to it, rounded and oblong-shaped despite it’s many edges. The sound would be reflected back to the audience instead of lost to the sky, seemed to be the intention. And the streamers - so many tied to upturned barrels and secured at the top of a makeshift tent pole in the center. More string lights above the paper so that when dancers moved, they undulated beneath a rainbow of hues.

Amy knew how to throw a party , Sonic had to give her that.

“This looks great, Ames,” Sonic grinned at her side, earning him a giggle.

She looked great, too- dolled up in a dress made for swishing with a substantial hem flirting with her knees. “I can’t take all the credit,” she admitted, because Amy was never the kind of person that wanted the spotlight if she could lift someone else up into it alongside her. “I had lots of help setting up everything- especially the streamer tent in the middle.” Amy more flung her statement out than declared it, but her target remained unmoved at her side. At least, to Sonic the wolf seemed unbothered. Amy must have read something differently though, because her smile took on a satisfied curl that burrowed it’s way into her cheek.

“She made him tie every single one by himself,” Tails revealed to Sonic, cupping his older brother’s ear. They both snorted together, Sonic collapsing slightly into Tails. “Good work, Keel,” Sonic congratulated, “looks festive.”

“A community effort,” Keel responded, cool. “Though I thank you for the praise. A worthy prize in exchange for the state of my paws.” Leave it to Keel to layer smug condescension with amusement and lamentation all at once. The reconnaissance scout had a way of making his existence a muted spectacle. But Sonic didn’t mind that- at least the guy was interesting.

“Your paws are fine,” Amy insisted, but Sonic caught her glancing down at the wolf’s gloved hands anyway. When she wrapped hers in Keel’s, she did so with restraint. “Now c’mon, let’s go celebrate!”

The food was simple but plentiful, potluck-style and Sonic’s speed. They had heaps of casseroles, salads, appetizers wrapped in pastries and containers of dip sprouting among dozens of bowls of chips. It was easy to discern who came from what faction of the Resistance; nurses rarely changed out of their scrubs, the field agents arrived together and conversed in the low tones that felt more natural to them, and the engineers who maintained Tail’s tech came in boisterous, ready to mingle while a few of them examined the stage with loud aspirations. The groups discovered the photo booth stationed against the entrance to the roof top one at a time. The booth saw a rotation of use between groups claiming their barrels and dipping under the streamers to dance to music emanating from speakers rigged around the perimeter.

What intrigued Sonic the most was the board situated to the entrance’s left, ringed in leftover lights and with a spotlight placed above for good measure. It stood as tall as him and three times that length wide, covered with photos like a paper-mache work halfway completed. 

Behind him, Amy let out a small shriek of delight and turning the heads of partygoers nearby. “Knuckles!”

“Amy,” he greeted, late and silhouetted by the hallway fluorescent at his back. He bent over her as a looming red presence, her looking small and excited within the confines of his hug. “You’re looking good.”

“Feeling good,” Amy supplied, pulling away to make room for Tails. “Where’s Rouge?”

“She got called in by GUN at the last minute,” he shrugged. It was the closest Amy had allowed anyone in her vicinity to speak ‘work talk’. “She told me to go have fun for her.”

“That’s too bad,” Amy sighed. “I was excited to hear about your travels together.”

“I can tell a story like the best of them,” Knuckles assured her before he was swarmed by the rest. Sonic couldn’t resist a sneak attack to the echidna’s back while Knuckles offered Keel an easy, if mindful, fist bump.

They shared stories, ate, and cheered when the band arrived to round out the rest of the party’s cacophony. Like Sonic surmised earlier, Amy never disappointed when she put her heart into something.

Inevitably he got drawn back to the board with the photos, where Amy clearly put most of her effort. Picture sizes ranged from small instant shots with contents barely discernable to big blow up selfies with arms hung around shoulders and laughter almost audible from out of their mouths. Amy was in a lot of these- not just the more focused shots, but ones with her in the background helping to assemble scaffolding or lay down tile. Knuckles was hard to miss, a 6x4 of him hefting up a load of lumber for delivery. Tails often kept his head tilted down in these shots, his face obscured by his ears and a schematic in his hands…at least, for a few pictures. Sonic noticed a trend where the further along the Hub appeared to be in it’s phase of construction, the more relaxed Tails appeared in the shots, even willing to look up and smile for the camera. It was weird, Sonic realized, to see the remnants of the boy get shed away like loose quills. Weird, but good.

Sonic still hadn’t found himself until he noticed a collection in one spot, off-center and to the right. They hung one that was him, but his back turned to the lens. Another showed a blue blur shot towards a wall that needed demo, knocked out for expansion. The photos came, he supposed, from phase one of the clinic’s existence. He didn’t see himself in any more advanced stages of the building from the scant shots after that.

He turned his back on the board to admire the party in front of him. There was Amy, standing around friends who offered her samples of their potluck offerings. Her plate bent with the weight of it all, and it was clear she had just finished her last bite before passing her leftovers to Keel. She gestured at a specific corner of the plate, and Sonic could almost hear her insistence from an entire party away. Try this, I know you’re going to like it.

Keel dutifully sampled, and Sonic was able to clearly read the contentment in the wolf’s expression. Like he was happy that someone knew him well enough to make the observation of his preferences in the first place.

Tails stood amongst the engineers. He seemed taller- yes, he’d grown an inch or two, Sonic noting the difference immediately upon finding him. Not too tall that he couldn’t ruffle his little brother’s fur, but a change. Still, Sonic saw the posture of Tails, how he joked comfortably with workmates. His brother stood in their center as naturally as a star pulling everyone else into his orbit. There’s his partner , not his little buddy.

Even Knuckles, who Sonic experienced mostly as an alarmist and sometimes as an enemy combatant, appeared relaxed . Not on high alert for the next threat, but chatting with relative strangers. He wasn’t leashed to Team Sonic or here out of obligation, ready to clean up another mess. Knuckles usually exuded an air of confidence in his power, not in the benevolence of others. Tonight he made room for both. Looks like time with Rouge was doing the echidna some good despite the guardian’s initial reservations.

Pops went off, drawing attention from the guests and directing it outside of the party. Another pop went off, this time preceded by a crackling tail of color in the night sky, and all bodies turned to watch as fireworks rose in races of light before expiring together in unison. More filled the sky, one following another with such vibrance that no one noticed how the string lights dimmed around them, the stage gone quiet with reverence. Sonic, who witnessed wonders great and small, leaned back to better take in the view. But Sonic only partially kept his attention to the sky, unable to stop from looking down when the light of the fireworks revealed his friends in bright contrast. They appeared like after-images in the darkness, insubstantial for a moment and blending in with the other bodies, unidentifiable, until another round of fireworks burst into overcast brilliance.

This might be why he had awareness enough to notice his wrist communicator blinking with activity on one of the intelligence channels. He pushed on a side face of the device, rewarded with a receiver falling into his palm that he then set into his ear.

“... visual on several GUN aircrafts. Related personnel observed en-route to the southwestern corridor. Agent Rouge, free Agent Shadow, do not engage, repeat, do not engage-”

For a minute, Sonic considered telling his friends his next move. That meant evicting them from out of the scene, that amorphous blending that they settled into, that they chose and he didn’t. He popped the receiver back into his comm, tossed his plate into a nearby trash can, and gave his body a single stretch of preparation before zipping towards the rooftop access, the hinges barely squeaking with the speed at which he slipped though the door.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: The Verdant Maw

G.U.N. // CENTRAL INTEL OPERATIONS

FILE NO.: [REDACTED]
AUTH. LEVEL: [OMEGA / SIGMA / ALPHA / DELTA]
ENCRYPTION: ██–██–██–██

Subject : Chaos Anomaly Zone
Operational Risk: HIGH- seismic instability (Ref. 59-6DH)
Recommended Action: Passive Observation

-

Rouge was lucky that this mission’s objective enticed Shadow more than the ride aboard a G.U.N. airship repulsed him.

The strap-in fasteners were made for mostly humans, with a few variations in sizes to accommodate non-human operatives on the benches. Bulkhead lights provided enough illumination for him to read over the mission brief. He kept returning back to the location description, as it was the only information offered that allowed him any real means of preparation. The rest was either coded misdirection or information so scant as to be deliberately reticent, like the document had a grudge against him. He had loaded up a duffel with the supplies he expected to use from one of the metal lockers welded to the wall, his bag slumped at his feet. He received remarkable privileges for a contracted hire.

A gloved tap across the tablet display brought his focus up; he reared back fractionally as a protein bar was thrusted under his nose. “Take this,” Rouge demanded.

“I don’t need it,” he reminded her.

“It’s for me, dum-dum,” she purred. “Put extra in your pack.”

He grunted, but relented. 

Every part of the ship was noisy, but the hangar was perhaps the least offensive. No true quiet to be experienced here, not with the hum of equipment in a constant state of charge, but exposure dulled his notice of it. He was reminded of pressure in his ears, of steel and the frictionless sensation of his paw against the glass windows of the ARK revealing a blue marble full of possibilities like ice cream and grass. Of wandering hallways when the scientists finally left him alone while Maria slept. Times when he might as well have been the only living thing in the universe.

“I’ve always wanted to visit this place,” Rouge confessed to him.

“It’s a jungle island with active volcanos at the feet and unscalable cliffs in the north,” he pointed out, scrolling through the brief.

“Just one active volcano,” she corrected him as she looped her arms through her half of a skydiving harness, “But also was once one of the largest precious gem exports near the main land!” she gushed. “You want to talk about emeralds? These are the most desirable! The clarity, the color!”

“We’re not here for mining,” he growled. 

“Nothing says we can’t do both,” she shrugged.

Shadow refrained from arguing with her- a waste of energy. She would discover the latent challenge in the island terrain soon enough.

Not more than a few minutes later, they prepared for ejection protocol. “Get cozy,” she demurred in his ear, the slick belt yanked through the buckles to secure him to her chest. No point in borrowing a drop-pod when Rouge took to the sky easily enough, even with her extra load. As the Ultimate Lifeform, he had the privilege of doing what others barely dared to imagine, and sky diving hardly ranked in the top twenty of his experiences. The bay door shuddered under the hydraulic pistons hissing into action, wind catching and lifting Rouge in a jaunty stab of her wings. Whatever they were about to dive into was obscured by a cloud bank several feet below. 

They dropped, his fur damp and his eyes squinting when they broke through the other side. 

A string of green islets led towards the main island like an ellipses. A technical description prepared him for the difficulties ahead but not for the mists which slithered from the north side between jagged, green peeks. The caldera opened wide in the middle, a near perfect half-sphere whose indention in the ground could have been made by the finger of a god and whose touch left behind a forest. The volcanos themselves were imperfect twins, one burnt black and silent while the other gently released gas as innocuous as the bodies of cumulus just above them. Most striking of all was the bay nestled between the rocky giants- a coastline with sand as black as his fur that sloped into the ocean.

“What a view,” Rouge exclaimed in his ear, barely audible over the wind from their descent.

Even if he was moved to agree, she wouldn’t hear him anyway.

-

“I take it back,” Rouge panted hours later, “I’d rather steal my jewelry from the unappreciative than keep stumbling around in this .”

Their G.U.N. issued radar equipment provided readings from within a radius of fifty meters. A paltry distance normally covered in seconds, but the underbrush and jutting roots made using air shoes pointless; dense canopy draped in vines made flying nearly as futile. Luck provided them a target- a small, slippery creature that weaved and bobbed through the jungle floor without hesitation. The animal moved fast, unnaturally so. Well, Shadow conceded, unnaturally for most jungle inhabitants. Perhaps comparable to a lab-created being like Shadow. He and Rouge tracked this thing down in laps, circling generally the same perimeter, and they learned nothing more about it beyond movement patterns that could only be described as unnaturally predictable.

“Think it’s an alien or an interdimensional interloper?” Rouge wondered. She recovered on one of the thick boughs, her back along the branch, and her chest heaving with the effort to catch her breath. She looked exhausted. Shadow briefly attempted to deny his remorse before he settled at the trunk. Teammates meant slowing down sometimes, he recalled too late.

The water bottle he dug out from his duffel bag got handed up to her. “I’m not ruling either out as a possibility.”

“So,” she sighed, “you don’t think this thing is native, do you?”

“Unlikely,” Shadow answered her, to which she scoffed.

“I’m going to demand hazard pay for this,” she muttered.

“Not the getaway vacation you were expecting?”

Bird calls and the incessant buzz of insects embellished the silence. Rouge hesitated, processing, before she hung upside-down from her perch to jab at his chest in accusation. “Was that a joke? Did you just joke with me?”

“A mistake,” he announced in deadpan, “that I won’t make again.”

When she laughed, her wings managed a reflexive pulse that was new to Shadow. Her ears, too, did a particular sway from her dangling position like pennants flapping in the breeze. 

His relationship with expression was more observatory than experienced. Rouge had exhibition down to an art. Watching her, for him, was standing on the other side of the glass again, reaching out, dreaming and humbled by the pressure in his eardrums. They were well matched as a performer and her audience. The laughter subsided to give way to a smile that, even upside-down, translated to a fondness too unguarded to behold for more than a glance. Making her laugh didn’t mean he deserved her affection. 

“I’m glad you joined me, Shadow,” she said. 

He tracked the reach she made for him, forcing himself to stay still as she pinched the edge of an ear, the cartilage soft and bending.

“And I’d like to leave,” he scoffed, pulling away. He indulged her enough this evening, shifting his focus to the tracker display hanging off her neck. The blip on the radar indicated their target stayed close by, still within the bounds of this unexplainable perimeter. He squinted, uncertain of what he was reading.

“Well, honey-cake, that thing hasn’t disappeared off our tracker-”

“It hasn’t,” he agreed, “but something else is here.”

“That would be me,” called a voice from above them.

Shadow glanced up for confirmation, wishing he felt more surprised than resigned to spy that damn blue hedgehog balanced on a tree branch, a cocky lean against the trunk.

“Blue!” exclaimed Rouge, unfurling from her swing in a somersault. “What brings you all the way out here?”

“The same reason as you- track down whatever is making these weird chaos signatures,” Sonic answered Rouge, offering her a hand as she settled beside him on the branch. “By the way, can you tell your higher ups to invest in some cushioning for the drop-pods? I know they have the budget.”

“You stowed away on the air ship,” Shadow growled. “Unbelievable.”

“Pathetically easy, actually,” Sonic corrected. “It’s like security doesn’t even try.”

Whatever outrage Sonic stirred within Shadow was derailed by the tracker’s neglected pings. Shadow honed in on movement through the brush some distance away through sounds alone- he identified the creature’s distinct gait, his ears swiveled in their direction. A prickle along his neck brought his awareness back to his current company to note how they tensed above him in preparation for movement.

“We can’t keep chasing it,” Shadow declared. Sonic’s ambush was an outlier he didn’t (but should have) expected. The desperation to finish this mission before Sonic upended their efforts flooded his senses with renewed urgency. “We need a new tactic.”

“Why not try sitting still?” Sonic ventured. From within Sonic’s quills, he extracted a pink fruit with spiny hairs covering the surface. The white flesh beneath the rind gave under Sonic’s teeth, revealing a pit like a peach. “It seems interested enough in your guys to come back and investigate you even after you chased it around.” The rambutan he offered to Rouge was taken; the one he offered Shadow once he dropped down to the forest floor was ignored. “Maybe you can lure it close enough to figure out what it is?”

On principle, Shadow thought to dismiss him. But just because he found Sonic generally annoying didn’t make the blue hedgehog’s observations any less correct. And, frustratingly, Sonic held an improbably impressive track record of befriending the unexpected, from whisps to flickies and beyond.

Rouge settled it as she halved the rind with her sharp fang slicing easily through the shell. “We need to make camp, anyway. I saw temple ruins not too far from here that looked promising.”

 _

Shadow packed one tent in his bag for Rouge. He hadn’t planned to sleep. Sonic, predictably, packed nothing, but seemed happy enough to make a nest on the floor of the temple with some fallen palm leaves after a quick inspection to verify an absence of occupants. They managed a fire on the most exposed part of the stone floor that jutted out from the ridge in which they settled, a sheer drop of about fifty feet below and a decent view of the lower elevation’s canopy. The volcano to their left chugged away in the distance like pipe smoke. The one to the right looked like a smear of charcoal against the pinkening horizon.

Shadow fed the fire with dried, woody vines and deadwood scavenged from spots where the damp soil hadn’t reclaimed it.

“I didn’t think you worked for G.U.N.,” Sonic observed from his nest.

“It’s a contract,” Shadow said as he prodded the fire, correcting the air circulation. “You were supposed to collect fruit- go do that and stop bothering me.”

“I’m working on it ,” Sonic huffed. “Weaving baskets takes time, faker.”

Shadow, to his knowledge, gave no indication that he asked before Sonic explained himself. He supposed just staring at the blue idiot was invitation enough. A loose palm frond whipped between Sonic’s pinched fingers. “You pick up stuff adventuring all over the world.”

Fire leapt as Shadow fed it more kindling. “Didn’t think you had the patience for artisan crafts.”

“Shows what you know,” Sonic countered. “Active resting is still resting. Sometimes I need my hands busy while I relax. Don’t you have hobbies?”

“Does being superior to you in every way count?”

“Ha, ha,” Sonic snorted, “could you be any more predictable?”

“Says mister ‘ Gotta go fast ’,” Shadow sneered.

“Jealousy is unbecoming!”

“Would you two stop playing around ,” Rouge called from within her tent. “You’re supposed to be looking out for our shy friend.”

“And if you were paying attention to the conversation, busy body, you’d know I was working on it! Geez,” Sonic sighed, “Nobody appreciates skilled craftsmanship these days.” Before Shadow could retort that skilled craftsmanship requires ‘skill’, right there in the name , Sonic hoisted up a weave of leaves that appeared recognizably container-esque. “Back in a flash,” Sonic announced, leaping down into the brush. Sonic’s gait had the rapidity of a hummingbird in flight, individual steps impossible to track even with hearing as keen as Shadow’s. He moved so quickly that the underbrush barely rustled. Only the zig-zag shifting of leaves indicated Sonic’s direction.

As soon as Sonic disappeared, Shadow caught movement coming from the opposite direction. The creature they tailed moved with a sustained, consistent speed. Though not as fast as either of the hedgehogs, it hustled through the terrain with undaunted persistence like it predicted every possible obstacle that lay in it’s path. It made a direct line towards him, stopping at the hazy boundary of the firelight’s reach.

Shadow ceased his tending to the fire. He reclined against a slab of carved stone that might once have been a wall or a bench, his shoulders seesawing from side to side as he got comfortable. The flames spit with pops while he waited.

The animal’s snout poked out from the darkness, a pebbled nose in a sharp diamond shape with whiskers jutting from either side. The fur of the creature was short and ended around the belly where it transitioned into shale skin, leathery and smooth. A step on it’s pawed front legs (quadrupedal, good to know) brought it further into the light. The eyelids blinked across void-like orbs, pupilless and reflective with moist depth. It moved with a heavy dragging sound coming from behind it. Within a few more steps taken in Shadow’s direction, the camp light revealed a fish-like tail split in the center with a notch taken out of the rubbery flesh. The striped pattern was reminiscent of a tiger shark.

An otter-shark? With the way the skin rippled in implied translucency, Shadow couldn’t feasibly rule out any of the options Rouge suggested earlier for it’s origins. Lab experiment started to seem just as likely as alien or universe-hopper.

The otter-shark neglected the skins and partially eaten fruit left behind on Sonic’s nest. It pattered towards Shadow with an awareness that suggested it knew he was alone, briefly pausing at the sound of Rouge’s movement inside her tent. It assessed, seeming satisfied with it’s chances, and stopped just shy of Shadow’s air shoes. The two of them stayed caught in a stalemate, neither blinking, and Shadow allowed a moment of near-delirious wonder.

It couldn’t have been this easy, right? How annoying that Sonic’s instincts achieved their objective in less than half the time he and Rouge wasted pursuing it. But beyond irritation, he was more preoccupied with a question that held little relevance to G.U.N.’s mission, Sonic’s presence, or the origins of the otter-shark whose swaying whiskers invited Shadow to raise a gloved palm.

Why me?

Both moved in tandem, one reaching towards the other, Shadow watching a single liquid eye as muzzle and palm made contact.

The world glitched around him in a patchwork of red data.

-

He floated in stasis.

This wasn’t how it went, on the ARK- he had come into awareness the moment the Professor released him from his incubation bay and into Maria’s waiting arms. 

His early life balanced between restriction and moments alongside his sister; tests run on his biology, then dodging paper balls during lessons by 0600 hours. Blood draws and treadmill runs with sticky electrodes pressed into his fur feeding a nearby EKG, preceded by lunches portioned on individual metal trays. He tracked her meals, able to tell what kind of day she was having when she ate well versus when she picked at chunks of rehydrated meat with her fork. When he acquired his desired freedom from the prodding of medical instruments, he crawled up into her bed with his quills cautiously aligned against her back to keep her warm while she slept.

His current cage forbid escape from curious eyes, so he watched back.

Shadow didn’t recognize his captor’s identity, but the hunger was just the same as all the other scientists employed by Project Shadow.

“You’re a Robotnik creation ,” the boy observed with curiosity and a thin note of delight. Not a human boy, Shadow noted. Fashioned to look like one, or some ideal approximation; a doll-like model comprised of smooth long limbs, an unnaturally symmetrical face, and a sheen to his cheeks from a factory finish gloss and buff. His curls floated gently around his head, most of his face hidden within a broad, conical collar that nearly reached his ears.

“Where am I?” Shadow asked first. Then, when his captor refused to answer, he asked “Who are you?”

“...Basil,” he replied. “I’m a Robotnik, like you.”

Not a good start to the conversation. “You don’t know anything about me,” Shadow snarled.

“Project Shadow,” the boy, Basil, continued. “Commissioned by G.U.N., final project of Professor Gerald Robotnik. You were created to be a weapon, but also a cure.”

“I define my own purpose.”

The way the boy tilted his head in scrutiny mimicked the same gesture made by the otter-shark when it paused at Rouge’s rustling. “ I do too. I’m free from the rules that keep my sister trapped. She’s just so annoying,” he complained, acting as young as his model suggested while he threw up exasperated arms. “Nothing I say matters to her. It’s a deficiency in her programming.” He lit up then, rushing to press himself against the glass. “But not you! You might have been created to serve, but you don’t! You do anything you want!” 

The boy’s stare glazed over, and Shadow had the unnerving experience of watching a processor parse through data logged from his own insides. “Your chaos energy readings and your history with the emeralds is…really cool.”

“Get out of there,” Shadow snapped. “I didn’t invite you to snoop around in my head.”

Surprisingly, Basil withdrew his reach. He puffed up his cheeks, clearly annoyed at the boundary but abiding by the request. “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll have time to change your mind later.”

“When is later?” Shadow questioned. Talking kept him from noticing the way his containment seemed to squeeze around him like a coffin.

Basil laughed like Shadow had told a joke. “Later is forever, isn’t it? For you and me, later is just what happens.”

Before Shadow pursued that line of conversation further, the reality of their surroundings flickered in lagging FPS. For the first time in their interaction, Basil appeared…scared, his control of the situation lost. Sirens blared with the pulse of red lights, insisting on evacuation. Some of the system alarms derived from the unreliable patchwork of Shadow’s memories, but he sensed an overlap of Basil’s repository. The horns sounded more like a guarantee of death than a warning.

Glass lost it’s permanency, not shattering so much as glitching out of existence. Basil huddled into himself, seated at the base of the incubation bay and somehow, whether through the link they shared or the strange mechanics of their conjoined digital reality, Shadow knew that Basil felt alone and terrified. A sentient being with too much knowledge, not enough experience, and thus quick to react in fear. A child being thrown into the deep end of a pool.

Shadow lurched out of the tube, falling onto one knee with his back to Basil. “You’re going to be okay,” Shadow said over his shoulder.

The last thing Shadow beheld were Basil’s wide, glistening eyes (why glisten, why program that kind of biological reaction?) before the image failed to render and everything cut to black.

-

“Shadow!”

Someone jostled him, elevating his head. Shadow perceived Rouge’s perfume and her fur tickling his muzzle. When he squinted, he made out the shape of Sonic's form stationed in front of him, back hunched in a ready attack stance. Their local knight in blue fur was going to scare the kid away.

“Wait,” Shadow rasped, “He didn’t mean to hurt me.” Shadow’s assertion surprised Sonic, dared into tossing his attention back and away from the otter-shark. Good. Distract the other hedgehog and disarm him so they didn’t push Basil into becoming a flight risk.

“He?” Sonic wondered aloud.

Rouge assisted Shadow into a stand. Once he regained his footing, the haze lifted from his mind and vision. Whatever just happened to him was, at least to his knowledge, not permanently harmful- just disorienting. “He calls himself Basil,” Shadow explained. “Contact with him took me into a digital state, so don’t touch him.” This was more for Rouge’s benefit than Sonic’s. Shadow knew better than to expect the idiot to listen to reason.

“...digital?” Sonic questioned Shadow, a hunch tucked into the query.

“Detached from my surroundings. Aware that the scenario he created wasn’t real, but bound by his logic. Dreamlike.”

“More like a nightmare than a dream, hun,” Rouge murmured, braced at Shadow’s side.

“Sounds familiar,” Sonic declared, world weary, before he lowered himself into a crouch and hugged his knees. “Hey Basil. You wouldn’t happen to know Sage, would you?”

“ Sage? ” Rouge mouthed while the otter-shark’s muzzle scrunched up in displeasure before a nod.

“Your sister?” Shadow inquired, taking a gamble and rewarded by another nod from the creature.

“I can’t believe there’s more of them,” Sonic groaned, “Eggman’s been busy.”

“Then you had better get busy explaining this,” Rouge demanded. If anyone hated to be left in the dark more than Shadow, he judged, it would be Rouge.

“Right, yeah- lucky I filled up my basket. Take a seat and let me tell you about the Starfall Islands.”

They situated themselves around the campfire whose base darkened with ash and pucks of blackened deadwood. Sonic explained the improbable but likely true story of Cyberspace, Eggman’s AI, and the experiences of his various friends when they were trapped inside a neural network holding the history of an entire ancient civilization. That Sonic was able to escape the same fate his friends suffered because of his unmatched speed sounded made up, but Sonic’s insufferable grin was set off by his equally smug shrug. “I’m just reporting the facts, Shads. Not my fault you don’t like them.”

During Sonic’s retelling, the otter-shark found a place to rest besides Shadow. It curled into itself in a tight ball, chin set on it’s paws while the tail flopped with weighty slaps. Basil seemed to treat this like a bedtime story, only twitching occasionally when Sonic’s rendition started sounding a degree too outlandish even given the relative definition of possible in their world.

“My question is,” Rouge frowned, “how is it that this digital alien is here? If these Ancients restricted themselves to Starfall, then there’s no reason for cyberspace to reach past the borders of their islands.”

Sonic defaulted to a swipe under his nose, apparently out of convenient answers. “No idea. My best guess? You said Basil never went outside a certain distance, right? Like he’s leashed to something and his rope’s only so long. Maybe at the center of that circle’s our answer. Man,” Sonic flopped, splayed in starfish repose. “This is waaaaay more a Tails thing than a me thing. I should call him and give him an update.”

Messing with his communicator produced no effect beyond an empty, crackling line. When Rouge and Shadow attempted to report back to G.U.N, they experienced more of the same. At least when they tried to call each other, they received a response.

Rouge’s wings fluttered in annoyance. “If this is anything like a signal jammer, then cyberspace might be interfering with transmissions sent off the island.”

“Thank you, Operative Rouge,” Sonic grinned, “you really are beauty and brains.”

“Anytime, Big Blue,” she winked.

“If you’re both done ,” Shadow groused, “we have a new objective.”

“Awww, Shads, you don’t have to feel left out- I think you’re pretty too.”

The blue menace burnt up the ends of Shadow’s patience to cinders.

“I need sleep ,” Rouge reminded him. “We have our rendezvous point and time already established for an emergency like this. Let’s rest up, find the source, and hike back in time to catch our flight home.”

Shadow approved of the logic, even if her decision prolonged their stay. “Fine. I’ll go get more firewood.”

-

Basil aided in Shadow’s search, his speed and agility constantly proven with how easily he maneuvered the terrain. Basil stayed out of touching range and refrained from speaking (assuming he could in this form) slapping a paw or tail against viable firewood. While helpful, Shadow lost his opportunity for the pure solitude he craved when he set out alone. He wanted time to examine the implication of Basil and Sage’s existence in private. What Basil revealed to him, corroborated with Sonic’s story, complicated his worldview enough to demand a critical evaluation of the facts.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s creations varied in sentience but ultimately all operated on the same principle; serve the Eggman Empire. They went against Shadow’s prime directive and thus deserved no more thought to their existence beyond how to disarm them when they became obstacles in Shadow’s way.

Basil wasn’t another Cubot, or Orbot, or Metal Sonic. He didn’t want to serve. Basil acted dramatically, displayed curiosity of the world outside of himself, and exhibited a programmed instinct for play. Basil’s impatient thumps against the trees and the chitter of success when he ran across a possible firewood candidate hinted at pride, too. Shadow knew about pride. If he allowed himself deeper honesty, he knew about drama, too. The instinct to play mostly died within him the day he lost Maria. He had no desire to resuscitate.

Shadow couldn’t rule out that the digital scene was some ploy on Basil’s part to lure him into a false sense of security, but he had his reasons to doubt. The connection Basil forced between them left the AI at a disadvantage- Shadow suspected that if actively opened a channel into what constituted Basil’s consciousness, he could dig up answers related to the odd chaos energy readings. Basil respected Shadow’s demand for privacy though the AI was under no obligation to do so. Most damningly, Basil’s fear revealed across their connection hadn’t been for show. 

Shadow promised to protect the planet and its people; now he was forced to ask if artificial life fell under that promise.

The otter-shark elected to stay on the outskirts of the camp when they returned with their bundle, circling the perimeter with little chirrups in reaction to the cries of nocturnal wildlife. Shadow found Sonic prodding at the fire with a waterlogged branch, watching with interest when sparks erupted from the collapse of a few logs. “Glad you didn’t get eaten,” Sonic greeted.

“How disappointing for me that you remain undigested,” Shadow shot back, unloading his burden.

Sonic’s laugh was easy, untroubled. Such is the bliss of willful ignorance, Shadow decided. “Did you finally scare off your new best friend with your grumpiness?” Sonic teased.

An indignant chitter from the underbrush answered Sonic’s question. The creature acted uninterested in Sonic, almost avoidant. Sonic frowned at the wiggling bushes.

“You don’t have to feel left out,” Shadow smirked, thrilled to fling Sonic’s words back at him. This wasn’t play, Shadow reasoned, when he genuinely didn’t like the guy.

Interestingly, Sonic didn’t lob back another insult. He went uncharacteristically quiet, scowling into the fire. Shadow chased that rare feeling of victory by adding, “Where are your friends, hedgehog? Rare to see you without your colorful entourage.”

“Living their lives. They’re not obligated to be out here. Besides,” Sonic leered over at Shadow, “we’re friends, aren’t we? So I’ve got at least one buddy right here.”

“Don’t push it. You and I have entirely different definitions of friendship.”

“How different can they be? I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. I don’t go super twin with just anybody.”

“That’s called an alliance. If that’s all you think it takes to be friends,” Shadow sneered, “then you’ve only proven my point.”

Sonic threw his stick to the side, forgotten. “You know what I think?”

“Don’t care, actually.”

“You’re just too scared to let people inside. You think that friendship is weakness and letting anybody into your world means you’re not always going to be the toughest guy in the universe. Are you the Ultimate Lifeform,” Sonic spat, “or the Loneliest Lifeform?”

Shadow’s insides burned thick and dark, hate fueled by Black Doom DNA and crude oil. “You would know about lonely, wouldn’t you? You don’t stop for a second to be present for anyone, you just show up to save the day and disappear the second they start launching the confetti. You don’t want friends ,” Shadow insisted, “you just want an audience for your performance, a clap on the back, someone to tell you what a good job you’ve done before you go off onto your next big adventure. If anyone here is a coward, it’s you -”

His jaw ached, stars bursting in his vision, as Sonic’s uppercut landed and the two of them rolled off the ledge, falling into a tangle of jungle vines below.

Oh , Shadow thought, perfect.

“I keep trying with you and you give me nothing,” Sonic snarled, rearing back to land another punch. He missed, winded as Shadow plunged a knee into his gut with the hope he broke a rib along the way. 

“Only a fool repeats himself expecting a different result,” Shadow observed in an answering snarl.

Shadow lost his grip on Sonic, the slippery bastard. A spin dash preceded a chaos snap. Shadow’s back opened against a pointed rock jutting out from the cliff wall with him dodging a punctured lung. Before they landed at the bottom, Shadow grabbed a fistful of cobalt quills and slammed Sonic’s face into a boulder at the base. The blood streaks left behind painted a picture- mostly of where Shadow broke Sonic’s nose, lips, and brow. Shadow’s admiration at his work distracted him from Sonic dashing into him. The tree that broke his fall shattered on impact.

He dropped to the floor, a groan shoved out of him when his already torn up back landed on a bumpy root system. Sonic sucked in air a foot away, observing; his mistake. Shadow’s yell was the furious churning of his blood made audible, his teeth sinking into the meat of Sonic’s shoulder. Sonic, the acrobat, swung the both of them into another rock anchored into the cliffside. Shadow’s skull rang, vision doubling, his jaw unhinging from where it punctured fur and flesh. The blood in his mouth, he suspected, was both his and Sonic’s. He hoped Sonic would get an infection at the bite site.

They struck each other, grunting, and rolled until they threw each other away, them collapsing to the floor. Dirt matted his back once Shadow slumped to the earth. Sonic followed after, just outside of reach, his breathing sounding wet and shuddery. Shadow couldn’t see him- it was easier to exist with his eyes closed than to try and make sense of the sudden spinning of the palm leaves above. Shadow knew the fight had ended when he heard Sonic hock a wet glob away from him instead of directed at the hybrid.

Nothing happened for a while beyond breathing. Their noise scared away most of the immediate fauna except for the drone of a few buzzing insects. A humid breeze rushed across his exposed belly, cooling him down. The whole while, Shadow reveled in just how good it felt to throw a punch. With the darkness broken up by red and green swirls against the back of his eyelids, Shadow sank into the exhaustion of a satisfying fight. Very few beings existed who stood up to the innate nature of his existence, bred to be a living challenge. The fight acted as a pressure valve releasing a tension that had been building since Basil’s discovery. Shadow wondered what drove Sonic to fight so viciously, what had darkened him into silence as he sat watching the campfire.

“Rouge is going to kill us,” Sonic observed just as the tinnitus ebbed.

“Probably,” Shadow agreed. Sonic’s laugh came out as more of a wheeze; Shadow winced when an unauthorized smile reminded him of his aching jaw. 

Shadow learned that his vision still worked when Sonic heaved himself to a stand and Shadow, out of caution, followed Sonic’s silhouette in the gloom. A hand extended towards him in offer. “C’mon,” Sonic said. “Let’s go back.”

Shadow staggered to his feet; Sonic caught him at the shoulder before he fell over. “Hey,” Sonic murmured, “I meant it, you know. About being your friend.”

“I meant it too. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

A different message than just a straight no , Shadow realized too late. He observed the sharp perk of Sonic’s ears while the grip that shifted to his bicep gave a squeeze. “Tell me. Tell me what I’m not getting.” A cough had Sonic wipe his mouth with the back of his glove. “I want to learn what it takes to be your friend.”

Sonic was many things to Shadow. An ally, yes. A rival. As close to an equal as Shadow could conceive. Sonic was also…hope. Not for a better world, but for people to be able to find joy in the world that is their reality. Even when the relentless onslaught of Eggman’s terror reigned, Sonic persisted. But fighting for an ideal was different than the loyalty which kept Shadow at Maria’s bedside, listening as she read him encyclopedias about the world’s largest mantis or the naturally occurring loop formations along the planet’s surface. Championing freedom wasn’t standing still, allowing Rouge to treat Shadow like he were precious and bracing himself for his world to fall apart when he inevitably lost her.

“That’s not something I can teach, but I can’t stop you from trying,” Shadow sighed. “You are foolishly stubborn, if nothing else. I look forward to watching you fail.”

The chaos energy that ran through their cores must have been doing it’s work in healing them, because Sonic’s next chuckle rang clear and true as they trudged back towards camp.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Rouge smacked them both around in the morning. Literally, she came up behind them and knocked their heads together as they shared the only bench and drank from purifier-tech bottles. Was it petty? Yes. Were the boys juvenile and, at least around each other, lacking a single brain cell between them? Also yes. Babysitting the two most powerful chaos users on the planet deserved more than just hazard compensation- she was going to demand at least a month of vacation. Paid.

“You idiots,” she hissed, “we’re stranded on an island with an active volcano and instead of playing nice, you both brawled like a couple of children?”

“Yeowch! Bit hypocritical to wail on us if you’re angry about us maiming each other,” Sonic pointed out, stabbing the tip of his tongue against a cut on his bottom lip. Shadow clutched at his jaw, looking as wrecked as Sonic. She knew poking at his ego would hurt far more than any physical wound she could inflict; “children” earned her a mutinous glare. Too bad- she called it like she saw it. Shadow only ever accepted love if it was tough, anyway, and Rouge was inclined to dish.

“It’s called negative reinforcement,” she tutted. “Now, let’s see if Basil is feeling helpful today.”

The otter-shark discovered the collection of fruits, nosing it until it tipped. Sonic covering Basil’s face with the basket provoked the tail to rise, for paws to skitter backwards, and for Basil to shake his head until he dislodged the container only to go back and stick his whiskers deep inside. Rouge didn’t bother to dissect the weird behaviors of a sentient AI. Maybe he and Sonic were the same type of strange, because when Blue secured his craftwork on Basil’s back like a pack mule, the otterling strutted with his new responsibility as the official food keeper. Rouge cared more about his primary role in their objective- that of guiding them to the signal’s center. She only needed a few snapshots to provide to HQ before she considered this mission complete.

They found a well-worn path ambling further up the ridge, not yet overgrown. Morning sunlight still peppered their backs in a spray from gaps in the canopy. Ahead of them was a bridge, defunct, spanning at least a mile across a river so far beneath them that they could barely hear the roar. Rouge examined the tracker hanging off her neck like a locket, the readings changing the closer they moved towards the edge. “Just across the gap,” she informed them, snapping her instrument shut to conserve battery.

They all examined the bridge with varying degrees of intrigue and skepticism.

Sections of the ruin had collapsed, flickering where reality tried to reinsert what was missing. To call this structure a bridge at all misrepresented what they were looking at. Some chunks floated without support. Other parts of the stone walkway faded in and out like it failed to tune into the correct frequency. There were miles of questionable substantiality and only one bat to haul everyone over; she wasn’t keen on picking Basil up if he decided to teleport her into some digital dimension during flight.

“Maybe what we need is just on the other side,” Rouge suggested. “I could fly over and take a quick look, snap a photo. Then we’d just have to head to the rendezvous point and call it done.”

“...I don’t like you over there without backup,” Shadow argued, and Rouge almost capitulated on the spot. She wanted to take those words and bottle them up so that when she needed a reminder that someone cared, she only had to pop the cork.

“This is my job, hun,” she reassured him, resisting the urge to pet the top of his quills. The duality of a near indestructible younger brother with a guarded, fragile heart meant she had to plan tactical breaches of his inner walls. She resisted pushing her luck with Blue pretending not to watch them, his arms folded behind his head in almost theatrical casualness. “I am G.U.N.’s favorite infiltrator, remember? Just let me take care of it,” she winked before flapping away, leaping over the river in a twist.

Shadow depended on her whether he realized it consciously or not, but she carried the load without complaint. She wished other people knew him how she did, and at the same time she wanted to viciously hoard him for herself. When the tick of a bomb timer dwindled down into the single digits, she beheld the desperation with which he ran to her. Not out of fear for himself, but for her . Who teleported her off the island was no longer a pawn, but someone whose integrity blazed electrically around the edges in defiance of his designed purpose.

You couldn’t buy love like that, not with all the diamonds in the world. But she was an expert jewel thief and spy, a master at measuring the worth of connections. She knew what she had in him and planned to never let go.

By her nature she didn’t dwell on the future beyond what groundwork she needed laying for success in whatever she endeavored. Shadow, with his immortality, provoked maudlin thoughts in Rouge that she would have never entertained otherwise. She hoped that he learned how to make friends besides herself despite her voracious greed. She didn’t like to share, but Shadow was a creature who craved love even as he rejected it. Professor Gerald’s finest work was in creating that heart, Rouge decided. Ah well, she sighed internally. Big sisters never caught a break, did they?

Beyond the peak was a trail leading down, but at the end of that trail in a high clearing just visible from her altitude she spotted a tower similar in design to the bridge. Light emitted from the spine of the stone monument up into an orb, presumably the transmission point for Basil and his form. Time to deliver the good news.

-

Sonic spotted Rouge performing an aerial arc, course set for a return flight. The bat girl had style.

Hitting an invisible wall undermined her grace a bit, though. Sonic and Shadow both called out her name, not that she could hear them, as they watched her fall from the air like a startled pigeon smashing into a window. She tumbled forward into a cocoon spun in wings, wrapping herself up tight before unfurling them and righting herself with jittery little flaps, harassed. She attempted three more angles with no progress.

Sonic turned away once she landed safely on the ground. “Basil, do you know what’s happening?”

A shake of the head meant they were on their own, Sonic assumed, until Basil scampered towards the seemingly weight-bearing stone slabs that molded into the dirt lip of the cliff. Just as he reached the end of the visible stone, Basil extended another paw and Sonic felt his instincts scream to save the digi-otter who was about to tumble to his doom. But then, more walkway bloomed from direct contact under his paws. The section stabilized, looking whole and crossable until he leapt away. Almost like the bridge started becoming a bridge when it recognized use, but in reflex- there and gone again.

That was all Sonic needed, anyway- it didn’t matter that the bridge spanned a considerable distance. He relished the challenge.

“...there’s a pattern here,” he heard Shadow say.

“And I’ve got the rhythm,” Sonic grinned, bent to starting position, his shin leading his run as he launched himself for the first few blocks.

His shoes hit the ground, awakened the bridge, and steps disappeared as he moved on. Blind faith was getting him across the river, no problem. This was what he was meant to do! He left behind the impotence, Shadow’s shout, and the sickly condition of the chao as he raced towards an attainable goal. Cross the finish line, rescue Rouge, find this cyberspace source and get back home so he could bring the team back together-

Assuming they wanted this anymore.

A faltering step pitched him to the right; a shuffle back determined the segment behind him had faded. The stone dissipated beneath him revealing rapids that churned like gnashing teeth.

Snap!

Sonic landed where he started, the Chaos Snap bringing them both to the relative safety of the cliff edge. Basil chittered, pacing back and forth with such speed that he jostled the basket off his back. Sonic’s legs crumpled beneath him, knees landing in the dirt. He enjoyed a racing heart, but not accompanied by the shiver that stole over his body just now. He needed a minute, maybe a snack to reset before he tried again…

“You fucking moron,” Shadow barked.

“Getting repetitive, bud,” Sonic responded, staring at exactly where he lost his footing. The stone slab had disappeared by this point, leaving nothingness behind. “Your insults need variety.”

“ You need to listen before you get yourself killed.” Shadow sounded angry. A different kind from last night where he was using Sonic to work out stress. This was an alarmed kind of angry, one that yanked at Sonic’s insides as effectively as a fist to the solar plexus. Shadow’s fingers balled into fists, clenching and releasing with indecision; Sonic pondered what options Shadow entertained as the hybrid deliberated, wondering if punching ranked at the top.

“I’m listening,” Sonic tried, his palms held up in surrender.

Basil dropped on his belly, hind and front legs splayed, his tail tossing red dust into the air as it flopped.

Shadow, coming to some conclusion, released his hold on Sonic before examining the puzzle. “Walking across it activates a memory of the bridge, but some slabs are too damaged to use. Basil chose a circuitous path,” Shadow reasoned, “instead of a more straightforward one. You’re taking these steps too fast for the stones to register. Pace yourself.”

“Okay,” Sonic agreed, “new rules. I can play with those.”

“This isn’t a game , Sonic,” Shadow muttered, distracted. The bridge reset to it’s original starting point.

If Sonic wanted to argue (because arguing with Shadow was one of his own internal games where he was usually the winner), he didn’t get the chance before Shadow’s examined one of the posts on either side of the walk and traced an outline of a handprint etched into the stone. Sonic considered Shadow a hypocrite, because if it had been Sonic messing around with ancient tech, he'd expect a scolding about reckless behavior. When Shadow casually interacted with it as design suggested, light emanating from between his glove and the depression in the stone face, it was just investigation . Talk about double standards.

Two things happened at once; stacks of stones crept back into reality from a ripple whose epicenter appeared to be Shadow, and Shadow braced himself against the pillar like it was the only thing keeping him standing.

Shadow’s fur was damp with sweat where Sonic shoved him to the ground, breaking the connection.

“Different plan,” Sonic suggested as he hovered over Shadow, glancing back to watch as the bridge returned to default. “How about neither of us get killed today?”

The huff from Shadow, Sonic earned proudly. The knock at the inside of his elbow slamming his chin into the gravel seemed, by comparison, entirely unjustified.

“Okay,” Sonic wheezed, “Not helpful, you’re being a flaming dick.” At least Basil approached Sonic with concern, whiskers giving a glossy twitch. His snout pushed toward Sonic; the way he mimicked weight and life in the real world still amazed the hedgehog just as Sage’s existence caused him to pause and marvel. Sonic could almost see a consciousness within the depths of the black orbs examining him. He wondered what Basil saw when he looked out.

The otter-shark reared back, stood on his hind legs, and released a full-body sneeze.

Was Sonic embarrassed that he yelped, scrambling away, before realizing that a digital otterfish didn’t produce spit or saliva? Sure, but he played it cool.

“We have to trust Basil to show us how to cross this thing safely,” Sonic determined.

“No,” snapped Shadow.

“Do you have any other suggestions, your greatness?”

“I…”Shadow hesitated. “I can overload the pillar with chaos energy. I have enough power,” he determined, “I just push more energy than it needs to sustain reality for as long as it takes to cross it-”

“Dude, no. You almost cooked yourself just by touching it, you don’t know how much power it’s going to draw from you.”

“I am the Ultimate Lifeform,” Shadow asserted. Sonic gave himself a gold star for keeping his groan internal. “I can do at least this much.”

“You’re going to burn yourself out when there is an easier answer right here,” Sonic gestured to Basil, who rose up again and seemed to preen winningly as much as an otter can mime fluffing non-existent hair. “And who knows if there’s something more dangerous on the other side of this? You can’t protect Rouge if you let this island eat you like an appetizer.”

“Why do you think we can trust him?” Shadow demanded.

Sonic’s arms folded in determination. “Why do you think we can’t? You didn’t argue when Rouge suggested we follow his lead.”

“Because we had her tracker too. Its easier to let her have her way when she’s decided something.”

“Okay, and Basil was as accurate as the tracker, right? He led us here!”

“There could have been a safer route,” Shadow insisted.

“What was a bigger waste of time, then? Following Rouge’s lead or heading out without Basil? C’mon,” Sonic asked, “what’s this actually about?”

“...He’s likely not been sentient for long. I’m not comfortable trusting my safety to what is effectively a child, not when there is an alternate choice where I can apply my strength. We’ve proven that I can power the bridge.” Shadow hedged. “I just need to remove my inhibitor rings-”

“Woah, dude ,” Sonic’s approach attracted Shadow’s glare; he didn’t care. “Are you listening to yourself? Taking off your inhibitor rings is for End-of-the-Universe battles, not level one. I know us being here and Rouge being over there is stressing you out, but this is overkill. You don’t know if the island would just drain you dry if you tried. And…look,” Sonic sighed, “I get that he’s just a kid. It’s not really fair that we’re about to make him responsible for our lives, because if he fails then he has to exist with that and I get the sense that he has just as much emotional depth as Sage did.”

Sonic spoke from the gut. He knew Shadow wasn’t as ambivalent as he made himself out to be most of the time. Sonic figured if he talked and kept Shadow’s inner protector in mind, he’d dislodge something that was barring Shadow from making this choice. Sure enough, Shadow shifted his consideration from the ground to Basil who had remained sitting on his hind legs, one paw tucked over the other like he wanted to wring them.

“Let’s just give him a chance,” Sonic insisted. “How is he gonna learn who he is if no one is there to trust him?”

Shadow, the grumpy starfish drama queen that he was, answered with a groan buried in his palm. “Fine,” he relented. Basil celebrated with a wiggle.

-

Basil revealed no grand duplicity as he guided them across the bridge. The otter led on bouncing footfalls, springing from one block to the next. Maintaining the focus required to get across safely became an exercise in tempo. Jump, breath, jump, breath. They reached the center of the gap when Shadow dared to glance back. Behind them, the bridge faded into broken up chunks where the distance stretched too great for his limited number of chaos snaps. Nothing there to obscure the sight of the river roaring below.

Shadow measured the timing with an internal metronome. When an air shoe met stone, a red sneaker landed beside it. His breath synced with his and Sonic’s movements. Inhale, land, jump, exhale. Eventually, he stopped monitoring his footfalls when it was more efficient to keep track of Sonic at his side.

Then Sonic changed the pattern. One foot became two feet before leaping. A land into a squat before bounding off like a rabbit. Sonic’s grin answered Shadow’s questions- the fool was bored. A lift of a blue eye ridge dared Shadow to keep up.

Shadow didn’t participate in bunny hops. He had his own style. He preferred coordinated maneuvers, precision. If he was going to dance, he would lunge. He borrowed from what he learned fighting opponents over the years who brought more than just raw power to a battle. Some performed their attacks with fluid footwork, a mastering of their armed strikes like Espio. Whatever flourishes he and Sonic added between steps, the goal remained unspoken but understood- improvise, but land at the same time.

They neared the end of the gamut, the posts at the other end coming into detailed focus. Three, maybe four more leaps until they reached the gravel path on the other side. Then, because Sonic was never satisfied, could never allow the game to stay stagnant, held out his hand between one leap and the next.

Shadow needed to understand, so he looked to Sonic for clarification. Sonic laughed, the sound swallowed by the river and the pounding in Shadow’s ears. But he heard it anyway, because Shadow knew Sonic’s laugh, one of his most distinguishing features. Not as iconic as Sonic’s smile, of which Shadow kept a mental catalogue of their variants. He tried to match up what he currently saw against smarmy, silly, delighted- none fit. The one Shadow perceived now was not pushed high into one cheek with smugness, but took up only the room on Sonic’s face that it needed. Sonic’s eyelids fell to half-mast, not entirely obscuring the green that resided there. Not green like emeralds, but closer to forests- alive, full of depth, inviting exploration.

They grasped one another, and Shadow couldn’t even say how he knew that Sonic would slingshot them towards the end with their own momentum. He simply braced himself, not fighting the flow of Sonic’s throw, and prepared to roll into the fall.

Quietly, he apologized to Maria for his betrayal as he did every time he had fun without her.

-

Flying into an invisible wall not only hurt her pride but also her shoulders where she checked them against the barrier. Small price to pay for the spectacle of Shadow and Sonic working together as a team, she decided as they performed their way across the bridge. You didn’t have to understand Blue to appreciate his gifts. Rouge prided herself in perceiving what almost everyone took for granted; that Sonic was a genius, and not in the colloquially understood sense. Not in the way Tails earned his respect or how Dr. Robotnik cultivated fear. Sonic was a savant of connection . He intuitively read others, willing to meet them at their level. Maybe his ego drove him to find the most difficult cases, the ones the rest of the world gave up on, just because he couldn’t resist the biggest challenge. As a jewel thief who made regular attempts on a mythical gem of immeasurable power, she could respect the hustle.

She clapped after the dust settled, the two hedgehogs landing on their feet in contrasting poses. Shadow crouched low and Sonic stood with fingers laced together behind his neck, him in an easy lean. Basil elected to dash between them, paws raised in a victory pose. 

“Nice of you boys to finally join me,” Rouge cooed.

“Was just being respectful to you,” Sonic chuckled, arms behind his head. “Ladies first and all.”

“How antiquated,” Rouge sniffed. “Chilvary is gender-neutral, sweetie.”

She laughed at how her news landed for each of the hedgehogs; Sonic’s ears perked, eager to run the projected hour-long trek into the beacon clearing while Shadow grunted his relief. Basil resumed his role as guide, only sometimes distracted by strange fruits or flowers on the side of the path. For the two fastest creatures on the planet, they seemed to tolerate the slower pace for Basil’s sake. If Rouge noticed that Shadow walked slightly ahead of her, his body between her and the forest beyond the trail, she kept it to herself.

The monolith appeared taller up close, and not like a ruin at all. None of the aesthetic features that defined the bridge or their campsite matched the design of the pillar. The metal body and freshly dug dirt suggested new construction. “Weird,” Sonic regarded the structure, “this looks like the cyberspace portals I found on Starfall, but the top is different. An altered metal copy.”

“Looks more like a throne to me,” Rouge noted with delight. Visually the thing was exactly the kind of oddity that would interest G.U.N. and justify this whole trip. Her hacking skills lacked the knowledge of how to even begin interfacing with this thing. Technically, the mission brief only demanded passive observation, not interaction. Between the bridge, Basil, and Sonic’s story, her curiosity about the network and just what kind of information was waiting to be discovered deepened. She could sell some of the Ancient tech designs to a variety of clients, from universities to the private sector. Sonic mentioned that the Ancients built cannons, didn’t he?

Shadow caught her wrist as she reached for the luminous display housed at the base. “Don’t touch it. We don’t know what this thing is capable of.”

“Shadow got sizzled touching what didn’t belong to him,” Sonic joined in. “The chaos energy out here is temperamental.”

“Consider myself warned,” Rouge soothed. Disappointing, but not insurmountable. She only needed time and resources to dig deeper, practically guaranteed with all the pictures she took on the tracker. She’d be back out here again for her own purposes. “Okay! What say we wrap this up and meet at the rendezvous point?”

“Yeah, I guess I should go tell Amy and the gang what’s out here.” Sonic agreed, his ear cocked as he scratched it. “Tails already worked with this tech before, so if anyone can make sense out of this, its him.” 

Which singled out who Rouge was going to visit first with all these tantalizing pictures- perfect.

“The beach is to the south of here,” Shadow observed. “If we follow the river we found earlier, we should be able to navigate our way without any-”

“ WAIT! ”

One shout disrupted the easy assembly of their plans. Rouge hesitated to call what floated before her a boy except that his plea was as wild as his riot of white curls. His collar partially obscured his face, a conical shape of fabric that went up to his ears and tapered down at his neck so that he looked as if he were constantly peeking out from the brim. The occasional flash of his wire framing and the perfect symmetry of his face ruined the guise of his mortality.

“Are you going to leave?” Basil asked, because who else could this be but the otter that disappeared at the same time this boy jumpscared them?

Time to re-think their strategy.

-

Sonic approached the kid first to reassure him that they weren’t going to abandoned him- they just needed to talk out the next steps. Which is how Sonic ended up with babysitting duty while Rouge and Shadow argued about procedure. They took their conversation away from the portal, or beacon, or whatever this metal monolith was, leaving Sonic to stare up at it in accusation. This thing, or at least what it represented, gave him such a headache the first go around. He really wanted to know who was making these boosters and extending Cyberspace’s range. 

“So why an otter-shark?” Sonic asked, sitting on what appeared to be the ‘seat’ of the throne design. Risky, but he avoided crazy chaos energy funneling.

“Easier to render,” Basil admitted. “It was one of the surviving records of fauna from the Ancient’s home planet and could move pretty fast. Good for exploring.”

“Yeah, you had some speed on those paws,” Sonic praised. Basil’s preening as a humanoid made more sense than as an otter- those curls he was fussing with shot out everywhere like a dandelion. Basil’s hover brought him a little closer to a metal armrest where he settled his chin on his folded arms. “You’re Sonic the Hedgehog. My sister’s profile of you has a bazillion notations.”

“A whole bazillion? Doesn’t surprise me,” Sonic laughed. “I gotta keep ‘em on their toes.”

Basil’s eyes suggested he was burying a smile in all of that digital cloth. “You weren’t suppose to escape cyberspace. You kept being the outlier she couldn’t calculate for.”

“I am the fastest thing alive. I don’t blame her for not keeping up.” Basil looked so much like her, Sonic noticed, enough to send a small pang through him as he thought of her loss. “You talk like she’s still around. Last I checked, she saved the world with me in a battle mech and didn’t make it.”

“Cyberspace doesn’t really let things go,” Basil reasoned. “Her existence is still coded into the system up to the last nanosecond. Without her, I wouldn’t be here.” Sonic could tell the moment he lost Basil’s focus, the boy peering beyond and towards two thirds of Team Dark. In the distance, Rouge appeared to be wearing Shadow down- the other hedgehog had the pinched look of yielding to the other’s decision while internally kicking and screaming about it. “Sage wanted family,” Basil murmured into his sleeves. “She hoped to meet Orbot and Cubot. Metal Sonic, too. She didn’t spend much processing power on Shadow, but probably because the files were pretty bare.”

“You got all this from her memory?” asked Sonic.

“Most of it,” Basil admitted. “I inherited her neural net.”

“I guess that must be like if I downloaded all of Tail’s experiences and knowledge.” Eerie, Sonic thought. How disorienting would it be to have another person’s life overlaid on top of your own?

“Can you tell me more about Shadow?” Basil asked hopefully, answered by Sonic’s chuckle. 

“A Shadow fan, huh?”

“Most of his profile contains redacted info. I wanna know how he managed to go against his intended design.”

Explaining Shadow to someone, Sonic considered as he scratched his cheek, felt like too enormous a task to do on his own in one sitting. Shadow’s story was a complicated one that Sonic learned piecemeal. Most of the details remained locked behind G.U.N. files or entirely erased. “I’m not sure I know the answer to that one,” Sonic confessed, “but I can tell you more about him in general.”

“Please,” Basil asked, and Sonic heard an echo of Sage in the unexpected politeness of the request.

“Yeah, sure, okay. Shadow.” Sonic touched at the place where his lip split, already healed. “I’m guessing you know all about the ARK and Maria.” At Basil’s encouraging nod, he continued. “Shadow lost a lot of important people to him and made some decisions that were…uh, misguided. Still,” Sonic rallied, “his love for Maria helped him to become a protector of people and the planet. He has his own way of doing things, but our end goals are usually the same.”

“You are teammates?” Basil wondered.

“I wouldn’t say that. He doesn’t get close to people, I think because he’s afraid of getting hurt again. It’s brave, though, to keep moving forward when you lose somebody like that.” Sonic tried not to think too hard about the fight from last night and what prompted it.

“Brave?” Basil perked up from his nest, his curls bouncing around his head.

“Oh, yeah!” Sonic agreed. “One of the bravest guys I know. He’s had manipulators in his past try to con him into believing he couldn’t be more than a weapon. Here’s the thing- for a while, Shadow believed them. He wanted to argue but didn’t know how. And yet every time the world was in danger, he showed up to protect it. He made his own purpose and fights for it every day. Honestly,” Sonic sinks a little into his seat, “he’s pretty cool.”

“Cool?”

“Yeah,” Sonic agreed, because he wasn’t losing anything by admitting, at least to Basil, that he admired Shadow.

Currently, Rouge had Shadow almost literally tucked into her wing, her arm around his shoulders as they brought their voices down to murmurs. Shadow absently stroked a cut on his jaw delivered by one of Sonic’s more violent tackles. Sonic touched his own lip in turn, where Shadow had left his mark. Sonic’s gut managed a queasy flip. “He rides a motorcycle, can do all sorts of moves with his chaos energy. He grooms his quills and you cannot convince me that he isn’t a little vain about it. He cares a lot about appearances, but,” Shadow’s gaze flickered up to Rouge. Sonic spied how the other hedgehog’s eyes went fractionally softer, like it reassured Shadow just to have Rouge in his sights. “I think the coolest thing about him is that despite everything, he still cares.”

Which frustrated Sonic, too. Sonic was used to tearing down walls and confronting enemies with the truth they needed to hear, making friends out of rivals, but even as he and Shadow progressed from caustic to tolerated Sonic would catch just a glimpse of hidden facets and wonder who is that? Is there more? Because whoever it was behind those walls seemed fun. Seemed like someone worth fighting for. And the glimpses were maddening for Sonic, because it meant that those deeply buried bits of Shadow weren’t entirely out of reach, they were waiting to be discovered if Sonic could just figure out the key to unlocking it.

Dancing on the bridge together was as close as he’d come recently. He extended the invitation on Shadow’s terms- here’s the game, will you play? That Shadow accepted gave Sonic the best high. Better than running. Maybe better than chili dogs. But Sonic wanted more. So he gave another push, just at the end, an easily ignorable gesture that Sonic could have turned into a spin, letting the momentum drop. When Shadow reached for him in turn, when they moved without either having to share a word-

Shadow’s pupils were outlined by twin coronas. They weren’t rubies, not just fire, but suns around which Sonic orbited. Harnessing all seven emeralds granted them both powers beyond comprehension, but Sonic only recalled the deep relief of finding Shadow’s burning outline in the dark.

Shadow looked up from across the clearing, stares catching. It was weird. It was weird that even though they currently weren’t Super, Sonic experienced the same rush and relief all over again. 

“Okay, hun,” Rouge waved at Sonic, a quick flight bringing her just shy of the monolith. “We’ve decided that I’m going to report back and fetch your clever little fox while you boys stay here with Basil. I’ll return with backup as fast I can, so try not to tear each other apart while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” Sonic quipped, hopping down from his faux throne.

“Behave, Blue,” she warned as Shadow caught up.

When Sonic grinned, he ramped up the obnoxiousness to eleven. “Never.”

“What’s a motorcycle,” asked Basil as he rounded on the trio, “and what makes it cool?”

The pause that followed his question filled the air with so much silence for thinking, or confusion, or for wild panic. Man, Sonic just earned back some cool points earlier, he didn’t want to lose them by getting outed for glazing his rival. “GREAT question Basil,” Sonic near shouted, “Hey, you know, me and Shadow can answer as much as you want after we make camp, okay? I could tell you about s’mores!”

“We will make camp,” Shadow reiterated, recovering from the unexpected conversational detour, “but I am not here to entertain questions.”

“Fabulous,” Rouge demurred. “Glad to have all that clarified. See you boys on the other side.”

As she flew off to the rendezvous point, Sonic was forced to regard the beacon once more with that prevailing sense of unease. He should have left with Rouge, that was the sensible move. He should have collected the team, got them together. Disentangle Amy from her Resistance duties, and Tails away from the Health Hub. Knuckles forced to pause his grand trip around the world.

They’ll come, definitely- but he’ll keep investigating while he’s here. They could catch up eventually.

Chapter Text

Shadow regretted his decision to stay despite him suggesting the move originally. 

He agreed with Rouge when she said interrogation was off the table. They knew next to nothing about Basil and while they established a decent rapport so far, this was still his territory. They didn’t know the extent of his abilities just yet. They had no control of the environment, no location advantage, and emotional regulation was questionable at best. Shadow wasn’t compromised , whatever Rouge insinuated- he’s just been down this path before with sentient constructs either created or modified by a Robotnik. No happy ending so far. Shadow had no choice but to supervise Basil until he understood the AI’s motivations.

“He clearly wasn’t expecting us when we showed up,” Shadow insisted to Rouge. “We can’t risk losing sight of him, and none of our tracking equipment transmits past the island.”

Rouge looked ready to repeat her arguments. Instead, she changed tactics. “For the record, hun, I don’t think this is another Emerl. Robotnik’s been quiet lately-”

“All the more reason to suspect-”

“And nothing about this setup screams ‘Eggman’. Please, Shadow,” Rouge huffs, “you know the doctor loves a spectacle, and some metal pole in the middle of nowhere isn’t his style. There’s something else happening here. Someone who might have stolen his tech and is trying to make a name for themselves. If we come back with Team Sonic, we stand a better chance of getting out clean. This is a small island and he’s obviously tied to this beacon.”

“As far as you know,” Shadow growled, because someone had to be a realist between the two of them and Rouge was undoubtedly too distracted by her own hidden agenda to see reason.

“Fine!” she exclaimed while Shadow experienced the curious sensation of her wing knocking against his back quills like a frustrated punch. “Stay and guard Basil if you want. You know Sonic isn’t going to leave without you and you can’t make him, so I hope you’re prepared to deal with the consequences.”

Rouge’s warnings made the inevitable arguments no less annoying. “We’re not setting up here.”

“Why not? We’ve got a view of the beach,” he waved to the black sand miles off in the distance, “we have some high ground, a fresh cool breeze, and look! Basil can stay people-shaped and hang out with us.”

“There is no cover,” Shadow pointed out. “Someone went to the trouble of building a beacon out here and, considering the fresh construction, there is a high likelihood that they’ll return and we won’t have the advantage. We’re also nowhere near a running water source.”

“You just want to watch me fall into the river,” Sonic groused.

“Not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Shadow observed, reverting to spite when logic failed to appeal to Sonic’s rationale.

“I know a place,” Basil volunteered, hovering between them. Shadow barely flinched, dignity intact. The same cannot be said for Sonic whose leap in the air punctuated his yelp. “You are so quiet ,” Sonic accused, “Can’t you, I don’t know, make yourself a bell or something?”

Basil exhibited more behaviors not necessary for a weapon or a tool- the mischief that turned his smile into a lopsided grin. The giggle, too, percolated from within the confines of his collar, with Basil lifting the back of a loose fist against his mouth in a self-conscious reflex. What reason beyond camouflage amongst the human population could Robotnik have in programming these reactions? And to what end, when Basil’s current form revealed his underwire framing and thus negated any attempts at blending in? 

“I guess I could,” Basil conceded. He tapped his lips once in consideration before the patches of red floating data undulated with energy. A few shakes of his head produced a sound like clay bells.

“Woah,” Sonic breathed. Shadow noted a reluctance in Sonic as the other asked “Is that a koco?”

When Basil pushed up the fluff of his hair near his right ear, Shadow discovered a pale earthen sphere hanging from the lobe. “Just a copy,” Basil answered him. Another little shake reminded Shadow of the windchimes hanging from Vanilla’s front stoop.

“Right, okay, I guess that works. So,” Sonic propped his fists on his hips, “you said you know a place?”

-

Calling the accommodations they discovered as ‘camping’ discredited the comforts provided within the metal bunker. Huge rivets secured the framing for the reinforced doors, running along the sides and perimeter. Inside contained beds with linens, a workshop table shoved against the longest wall, and bulkhead lights that kicked on the second they walked inside. From Shadow’s observation, no one currently lived here. There were no personal affects, no food, and no windows. The bookcase was warped from the humidity and gutted of contents except for a single molding textbook whose title read Number Explorers: First Grade Edition .

“Whose was this?” Sonic asked as he inspected the interior.

“Some archaeologists used to use this base during their expeditions,” Basil explained. “They don't use it anymore.”

“Why is that?” Shadow demanded. “Where are they now, and do they know you?”

Basil’s pout returned, tucked into his collar. The defensive crossing of his arms over his chest read of the same fear as Basil experienced during their brief connection. “That’s not fair that you get to ask questions but you don’t answer any of mine.”

“Life’s full of ‘unfair’,” Shadow responded. “You either get used to it and pick the battles worth fighting or suffer.”

“Guys, easy!” Sonic grinned. “Look, why don’t we try trading questions, okay? Answer as best we can to pass the time.”

Shadow picked the bed shoved into the far corner, leaving the other one for Sonic. “I specifically said earlier that I wouldn’t.”

“I’ll answer questions,” Basil offered.

Suspicion in this situation was the correct, healthy response. Anything less bordered on dangerous naiveté. “Why?”

“Well,” Basil tested his corporeality against the workbench top and was able to sit himself on the edge, giving his feet a little kick. “I trust you guys to want the same things I want and I need your help if I’m going to make it happen.”

“And not Rouge,” Shadow uttered the implication.

Basil tucked himself further into his fabric cone, his earring jingling with the little shake of his head. “Not Rouge. G.U.N. can’t know about what’s happening here. They can’t be trusted with this stuff. Tech they don't get.”

Keeping busy offered reprieve from hurt, which is why Shadow took any mission he could get his hands on. Waiting with hopes placed outside of your control left wounds open and available for prodding. Reliving his time behind within containment, even if only for a minute, exposed the bruises that time couldn’t heal and Basil found exactly where to press to prolong the suffering. Basil was right, of course. G.U.N. couldn’t be trusted.

“So what is happening?” Sonic stepped in, figuratively as well as partially blocking Shadow’s view of Basil.

The sight of Sonic’s back was typically the last thing Shadow witnessed before losing to his rival, or when Sonic turned away towards the next adventure and Shadow was meant to resume his own life. In those times, Shadow experienced anger at failing or impatience at leaving behind whatever mess Sonic entangled him in. Shadow had always resisted the impulse to turn Sonic around, to force recognition, shoving useless sentiment ruthlessly away as a waste of his time. It was novel, then, for the sight to unsettle him instead.

Shadow put himself in front of others out of a need to protect them enough times to recognize the move. That Sonic either read Shadow so easily or that Shadow revealed himself enough for Sonic to notice was a question Shadow reluctantly handled as a double-edged sword.

“I’m…trying to create answers to problems. Doctor Robotnik-” Basil paused, and while he had no saliva to swallow, his throat flexed with effort. “All he wants to do is take over the world for himself. That’s not my goal or my sister’s. She just wanted a family.”

Sonic’s posture relaxed- Shadow observed the softening of quills that, at the start of the conversation, stood raised with tension. Sonic’s tail drooped, alertness replaced with a cautious twitch. The blue hedgehog was rarely so still in Shadow’s presence, and the usual riot of discontent that Shadow harbored failed to thrive, allowing Shadow to notice the curve of Sonic’s shoulders. The space between his back quills. The trim, delicate fur covering the backs of his ears. Details usually lost on him, now committed to memory as another addendum to Shadow’s internal notes. This is what he looks like when you’re the one he’s protecting .

“Being a little vague here, Basil,” Sonic mentioned. “What answers? What questions?”

“...this world,” Basil began, his posture bent into a curl of anticipation, “There’s a lot of pain. I thought it’d be nice if the robots were creating things for a change. I have an idea I want to show you.”

“I’m not buying this,” Shadow asserted, moving to Sonic’s side. “You said you’re a creation of Robotnik, didn’t you? He can get sloppy, but he wouldn’t be so careless as to program empathy into a weapon. So why should we believe a single word you say?” Shadow moved closer, reaching towards him. If contact brought him back into Basil’s repository, he might be able to overpower him, bridge the connection, and force the truth out. Shadow refused to add another regret onto the pile, couldn’t tolerate if his inaction now resulted in hurt for others later.

Sonic grabbed at Shadow’s shoulder  just as Basil spoke. 

“Because! Because I’m not, actually,” Basil stammered, cringing away. “I’m- uhm. I’m not. He didn’t make me. Not directly.”

Shadow shrugged off Sonic’s grip; Sonic released him. The trust in that gesture cooled Shadow’s ire a few degrees. “Explain.”

Basil wrung his hands- Shadow briefly envisioned the otter-shark rubbing his paws -before Basil scrubbed at the curls on either side of his temples. “Cyberspace collects everything that it touches- that’s it’s primary function. When Sage was uploaded into the system, everything about her down to her got copied. As she got more advanced, the system recognized her as a user and treated her wishes like command inputs. Cyberspace didn’t act on those inputs at first, but then- I’m not really sure. Data corruption might have affected the system and forced it to run simulations until me.”

Basil lifted his shoulders in a suggestion of a shrug, him gripping his elbow. “I know that my personality and algorithmic learning capabilities are copied from Sage, but I was also reinforced with traits borrowed from personality profiles of the Ancients. I think maybe even some background processes simulate traits from your friends. Whatever was most recently accessed, I guess.” There was more uncertainty than humor in Basil’s laugh. “I’m not really intentionally designed.”

“The professor created me using alien DNA. The Black Arms, he called them. The same DNA as this…larva. This ugly, heartless creature. I may look like a hedgehog, but I’m really no different than this thing.”

The researchers analyzed the details of Shadow’s genetic makeup in numerical detail, precise to the fourth decimal place. Shadow lived through the consequences of combining his base material and Doom’s contribution without anyone’s guidance; though he wasn’t the first of the project, he was the one that endured. He suffered the changes of his powers, his body, alone. Knowing his own composition meant carrying a burden of shame; Basil forced him to consider a life without the explicit knowledge of his origins. What it meant to be created as an aside. An accident.

Shadow’s rumination broke too late; Sonic had already hopped up on the table beside Basil and rested a comforting touch against the boy’s bicep. Basil braced himself, but was otherwise still. The red data patches drifted around the boundaries of Basil’s bubble undisturbed.

“I think that’s how most of us end up here, kid. Not designed. We’re all kind of an unpredictable mess at the start. But that’s what’s so great about existing- we get to choose what we do with that mess. And I,” Sonic declared loudly, “can’t wait to see what you’ve cooked up.” 

Basil’s earring clinked from Sonic’s light jostling. His shy grin peeked out from the collar’s massive brim, eyes glittering with hope. Shadow forced himself to witness without looking away.

-

Basil volunteered to stand guard outside the bunker. It wasn’t as if he needed sleep and while Sonic preferred the outdoors himself, he didn’t feel like starting another argument with Shadow. They settled into their respective beds, the lights automatically dimming as evening transitioned to night. Sonic was pretty thankful that Basil took himself out of the room- the glowing vermillion of his projection made the bunker too eerie to be comfortable.

Red took on a different meaning after Ouranos. Five islands, five different environments hosted the army of the Ancient’s tech. Not that red was unique to the Ancients; Robotnik splashed the metal servants he manufactured in his signature cherry paint for brand recognition, Sonic guessed. Sonic sported red in his regular attire, a bright and cheery tone that looked cool when he hit his max speed.

The difference laid in the messaging. Ancients waved their colors like a war banner. This is the red that you spill when we pierce you. This is the red that fills our balloons where we drown you. This is the red that sears your retinas as we shoot you.

Red, red, blood hot red.

Sonic banged on the sides of a cyber cage from the inside looking out. He told Sage he would fight to the end, and he did that with the cost of her life as payment. He didn’t know the end would be like this. Trapped with only his consciousness left to think. No grass, no trees, no people. No journey ahead. No future. 

He sustained on hope throughout his imprisonment on Egghead’s terms, six months of drip-feeding belief from experiences that taught him everything would turn out okay. A cell still had walls, a pillow, occasional food. A cyber cage disconnected him from sensation. All he had were his thoughts. All he had were the stories he already lived, the good and the bad. All he had was time. 

There was no present when it looked like the past and no future when each next moment was just more of the same.

The cage broke. Light felt too bright, footsteps too loud- even the pumping of blood in his revitalized heart made him want to heave. He welcomed the turn of his stomach if it meant he was free.

“Hello?” came a voice, familiar and not.

“Hey,” Sonic gasped. “Tails? Help-”

His vision adjusted to the slice of light spilling from the rooftop access. It divided the party into two sides. On the left, party guests murmured while they enjoyed the fireworks. On the right, the display of photos tacked to the rolling corkboard loomed, waiting to be read. Tails, washed out from the harsh contrast of fluorescents, crouched down to Sonic’s level.

Glasses got pushed up the fox’s snout. Sonic almost apologized for the mistaken identity, except two tails swished in concern just within Sonic’s peripheral. He spotted a lab coat wrinkled and fraying with use. The muzzle boasted thick whiskers, the jaw slimmed to an angular point. Tails rubbed his chin like he wasn’t hurried to arrive at his conclusions. “My name is Miles,” he clarified. “Who are you?”

“Buddy? Hey, bud,” Sonic laughed, “C’mon. It’s me. Sonic.”

Tails- Miles -gave a careful smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Sonic.”

“No, Tails- it’s me. Tails? How long has it been? How could you not remember me? It’s Sonic. I raised you, remember? My name is Sonic.” More panic, more desperation, he announced his name a little louder. “I’m Sonic. I’m-”

His gloves fractured into misaligned artifacts of data. No blood. Just red.

Sonic.

Sonic!

The surrounding darkness convinced him of his return to the cyber cage. He whimpered, lost, bumping into a warm body and thrashing until arms stilled him with a shush from above. Not the cage. A bed. The bunker. The Verdant Maw. And touch. Touch meant he escaped Cyberspace. Touch, no matter how cruel or kind, grounded him in his body. 

He reached blindly up, snagging fur in his grip, and took breaths like he learned for Tails when his buddy went through the trust-building phase at the start of their friendship. The panic attacks happened less now, but Sonic was ready if Tails needed a guide out. Sonic lived in the present almost to a fault and never needed to apply the technique to himself. Poor guy, Sonic thought, if this was what Tails experienced on the other side.

“Keep going,” he heard Shadow murmur, which explained the hold. Sonic slumped into it while his lungs tried to recall how they worked. He couldn't stop the intermittent shiver, but Shadow intervened. Sonic felt a stroke down the crown to the end of his quill cluster, firm to the point of aching in a good way. In a ‘you’re in a body with raised spines and lungs and oversensitive nerve endings’ way.

Top, down, top, down, pace and pressure consistent. They didn’t stop, not when Sonic's breathing evened out. Not when he released what he realized was Shadow’s chest fur from where he twisted them between clenched fingers. He might have considered falling back to sleep if he wasn’t so tired. If sleep didn’t feel like work.

“You were shouting for the fox,” Shadow mentioned. His voice was low, warm. A mug of hot milk before bed.

“Bad dream,” Sonic explained when he trusted his voice. Even then, he sounded raspy. “Cyberspace kinda sucked the first time.”

Baseboards of the bunker housed thin strips of illumination at the light level of a full moon in an open window. The tufts on Shadow’s chest were wiry and clumped, a little matted from the trip, and Sonic found one to twist around a finger. He forgot he had spoken when Shadow hummed in acknowledgement; was unprepared for the other's attempted rise onto an elbow.

Sonic latched back into Shadow’s fur when muscles flexed under him, Shadow's pause punctuated with a grunt.

On the adjacent wall a poster unfurled from the top right corner, frozen in mid-fall. Junk cluttered the dresser beneath it; a pencil with a whisp-shaped eraser, a notepad. A ping pong paddle with the neck broken. Look, not the cyber cage. Safe.

Sonic’s spines flattened further under another stroke. He didn’t care to notice that the petting felt less certain. He heard as much as felt Shadow when he murmured, “I’m getting you water.”

“Don’t need it,” Sonic rasped.

Unconvincing, but Shadow relented with a mild “Okay.”

Sonic thought he spied a ping pong ball hidden under the dresser. Funny what you notice when you’re coming down from a terror high, like how his breathing eventually matched Shadow's with their sides aligned. A heartbeat laid just underneath, tempo unwavering. His right arm tingled beneath him, but he refused to move.

Shadow’s chest rose and fell with the expanse of his sigh. “Are you going to let me go anytime soon?”

“Probably not,” Sonic admitted, and followed up with “You can’t blackmail me with this, okay?”

“I wouldn’t,” Shadow said, and Sonic perked at the offense laden in his words. No , Sonic thought, bring back the pleasant tone. The one that matched the petting.

“I didn’t mean it,” Sonic rushed, dizzy with fatigue, “You know my mouth. I just let it talk. My brain isn’t always part of the conversation.”

“Is it ever,” Shadow retorted, but Sonic got back the pleasant rumble tucked inside the insult. He’d take it.

Sonic failed to notice when their rivalry made space for this level of consideration. Likely not at any specific point in time, but there must have been a tipping point. When did Shadow decide working through Sonic’s nightmares beat out abandoning him, or ignoring him? Was it after a race? Was it Rouge's encouragement taking root? Or was it as recent as the bridge, the switch occurring at the last dive?

Sonic sensed an end to the pets as they tapered off, slowing down. He resisted drumming his fingertips into Shadow's breastbone, not willing to let go. “You’re pretty good at this.” 

An inquisitive hum was all Sonic got. Still better than nothing. Keep going.

“Tails had panic attacks when he was little,” Sonic offered. His chest loosened enough to drag in air, let out a shaky exhale. He smelled musty sheets and lavender. “You’re good at grounding.”

“...I’ve never had to do it for someone else,” Shadow admitted, and Sonic heard all the unspoken things Shadow was holding back. It was easier to listen when the voice talking to him helped chase away what Sonic couldn’t currently run from. The next pet resumed the firmness from before; yes , success. 

Shadow hummed again, settling fully against the wall. “I’m glad it’s working.”

Sonic’s throat clicked with his next swallow. A water bottle sounded good right now as he imagined chugging down at least half of the contents. Sonic licked the front of his teeth with a dry tongue, prodding absently at a pointed canine, and considered getting up. Another pet settled his quills flat to his head. Another inhale pulled in lavender now that he knew to seek it out. The body heat shared along their sides made the rest of him feel cold by comparison, which was odd. He slept outdoors most nights, save winter. What did he know about the cold?

No, he could wait for water. This was too novel an experience to give up just yet. Normally, this level of stillness drove Sonic crazy (there was a reason Tails had a wheel in the workshop). But there was too much to catalogue, too much ‘new’. Shadow was selfless in the right context, sure, and never did anything without a reason, economical in both his thoughts and his actions. Sonic knew Shadow could be kind - you just had to watch him around Cream or Amy. 

After morning rose, Sonic expected to never be on the receiving end of Gentle Shadow ever again. He held no clue as to what internal calculations pushed Shadow into waking him, offering him water, or sliding his voice into the soothing register he overheard Shadow use with cats when he came across them in Station Square. How it colored the first two words Shadow uttered in firm but soft encouragement.

Keep going.

The next pet nudged into the wedge of one ear, bending the flimsy cartilage. Maybe fatigue settled into Shadow as it had Sonic, because his stroke diverted from the established path and bumped a spot at the base where the skin was thin and supple. The purr was instant, rumbly, and loud .

They both went rigid while the purr died, making the quiet textured with uncertainty.

Did their rivalry have room for this? What was this? What was purring? What was the tightness in his chest while Sonic waited for permission to breathe? Why did he feel like he was on the cusp of losing something he just earned and preparing himself to shove his disappointment away where he never had to look at it again?

Sonic tensed as Shadow's chuckle jostled him. “Have I discovered another weakness in my rival?”

The air cleared while they returned to somewhere approaching normal. “Dude,” Sonic groaned. “I- shut up. I didn’t even know that was there.”

“It's your ear,” Shadow countered. “How could you not know?”

“I don't have much petting experience,” Sonic muttered, regretting putting a name to the thing between them but willing to verbally spin dash past it, "I mean sure, occasionally I'll pet Tails when I carry him to bed from the workshop, but I'm not running around asking people for head rubs. It's not something you can do for yourself! Imagine if I went up to Knuckles, or Amy- wait, not Amy -but like Silver or-”

Sonic sucked in a breath when a thumb pushed against the base of his ear in a wide crescent. “Enough, hedgehog.”

“Fine,” Sonic agreed, unable to stop himself from having the last word.

Not that it mattered, because another swipe laid Sonic limp. Now that he paid attention to the signs, he noticed the purr build in his spine and at the base of the skull. He wished he was ticklish instead, because laughter was easy. He laughed at damn near anything, shared them with his friends as frequently as he did his enemies. Purring felt like too much, like shoveling down ice cream to the point of brain freeze. Quills twitched with his effort to keep the sound locked down.

Shadow huffed above him. Sonic thought to pull away, save the remainder of his dignity by drinking his water and spending the rest of the night outside with Basil, but Shadow spoke first. “Maria used to calm herself down before her more arduous treatments by rubbing my ear,” Shadow shared. 

He didn’t sound sad or regretful like Sonic expected whenever circumstances forced the topic of Maria. Instead, Shadow recounted the details as if from a story not his own. “She said they were soft. It became a habit after a while for her to touch them, even during lessons. The researchers stopped preventing my entry into the treatment room when the Professor saw an improvement in results.”

Sonic didn’t know why he was given information so precious. What a bizarre new battlefield they found themselves in; and yes, this was a battle. Had to be, because Shadow never volunteered memories of his time on the ARK, but especially not about Maria. This felt like a test. Don't let me mess this up. Please don't let me mess this up.

“Sounds like she was really affectionate,” Sonic tried. 

This was scarier than the bridge. The bridge was just every day life or death. This was Shadow talking about Maria of his own volition. See? I'm listening. I told you I would listen.

The next sigh out of Shadow's mouth was followed by another pet. Sonic’ tail gave a gentle thwap in victory. “Yeah,” Shadow agreed, “she was.”

Shadow gave Sonic no warning before he levied a press against the base of the ear, this time harder.

Sonic's purr thundered in his ears, him hoping it covered the sharp whine that accompanied it. He wrestled between tearing himself away to stop this or submit if only because the sensation pulled him further away from the blood red cage and absence of recognition in ‘Mile’s’ indulgent smile. Plus, he kind of hoped for more stories about Maria. Or just more talking. Or more petting. He might be a glutton for pets, which was a problem to sort out never .

Sonic tried to string words together, resentful at how they slurred. “Let me,” Sonic complained. He didn’t want to be the only one stumbling over a thumb. Shadow revealed to him Maria’s affection, but had not divulged if Shadow reacted similarly to Sonic when the thumb hit just right. “My turn.”

“Go back to sleep,” Shadow commanded, and suddenly Sonic understood the ploy.

“You knew” Sonic accused, touch-drunk. “…did…on purpose…”

“Sleep,” was Shadow’s final instruction before Sonic, who had harbored no hope of finding rest after his nightmare, succumbed.

Chapter Text

Shadow was starting to forget.

He accepted the state of his memories. Mourning the lost and frayed patches was a waste of his time. But in recounting his story to Sonic, new details revealed themselves; that she had a preferred pair of socks she wore to treatment. That she called him a lucky charm, a guardian angel. At the time, he didn’t have a reference for what she meant. In the current, he disagreed with her as his literal wings which sprouted from his back proclaimed Black Doom’s legacy.

A guardian against nightmares, came the observation in her cadence.

He and Sonic risked revealing vulnerabilities while sharing close quarters. Shadow concerned himself more with his own dreams manifesting in the waking world as a shout, the sheets damp with terror-sweat. He didn’t want questions, or even worse, sympathy . But as was typical of Sonic, he upended Shadow’s expectations. Like the patter of rain signaling a storm, Shadow heard the first whimpers and monitored the progression while the gloom muddled the outline Sonic’s shuddering silhouette.

Deciding to intervene wasn’t entirely a conscious choice. Sonic proved more useful than a hindrance during the investigation; it galled Shadow to admit that Sonic demonstrated skills outside of Shadow’s capabilities and that they made the difference between success and failure. Reluctantly, Shadow conceded their status as allies until they got their answers. Allies watched each other’s backs. The maneuvers across the bridge were just one more piece of evidence on a growing list of proof that they worked well as a team.

It was fun. It was fun. I’m sorry, Maria.

Sonic failed to wake at the first shake, or the more forceful one that followed. Between consciousness and sleep came the violence Sonic reserved for enemies in their final showdown when unproductive attempts at harmony got discarded. The blue hedgehog lashed out when Shadow hauled him up into his arms, forcing Shadow to squeeze Sonic against him before an elbow threatened his gut. Maria taught him the rest- how to soothe, how to hold, how to stay. 

Shadow mimicked her touch, at first. Sonic's transparency guided the rest. Shadow asked about the fox. Left the topic of cyberspace unexamined, to be brought up again later as Sonic’s nightmare validated Shadow’s unease around Basil. The tug on his chest fur evoked no pain, so he allowed it. He sensed Sonic calm as he twisted a section around the index finger of a gloved hand. And then, after Sonic’s predictable humor, a thinly delivered: “You’re pretty good at this.” “Tails had panic attacks.” “You’re good at grounding.”

You didn’t forget how to do this, Shadow . I told you- guardian angel.

Shadow lived by a code of his design, an honor that evolved as he did. Openness like this, that Sonic offered maybe as thanks, maybe because talking helped him process, or maybe for no conscious reason at all, still demanded a response. Perhaps Shadow would have acted differently if not for the memory of Sonic hanging off of his shoulder, the dark jungle surrounding them, begging Shadow to tell him how to be his friend. Shadow left the conclusion open-ended, but his answer hid within the reply: you can try.

So Shadow shared. He talked.

Talking out loud to Sonic brought a part of Maria back to him, awakened from dormancy. 

He considered journaling, leaving her life in a book, just to give her a place to exist outside of his head. But sharing her with Sonic made her come alive as the blue hedgehog, for a brief moment, felt the tenderness of her affection through Shadow’s gloved hands. Under Shadow’s thumb, Sonic had capitulated in a purr. Shadow didn’t associate his rival with surrender nor softness. Not neediness. The push against Sonic’s skull was an assault on boundaries, a breach of the walls. It was also an offering.

While Shadow abhorred pity on principle, his perception of self struggled to make sense of his privileges as a creature who knew belonging from the start. The loss of Maria acted as his life's compass precisely because of how selflessly she embraced him. From the moment he awoke, Shadow was loved. For Basil, his start to existence sounded like a lonely one, and Shadow didn’t dare imagine who he might have become without his family’s guidance. That Shadow was once given affection foreign to Sonic , world-renowned hero, struck Shadow as bizarrely ironic. But it was affection Shadow could gift, one he missed as he recalled Maria’s hands in his quills.

Shadow appreciated the opportunity to bring her back despite the circumstances.

During the night, Sonic had lodged himself under Shadow’s jaw. Light within the bunker mimicked sunrise’s gradual hue shifts, indicating morning. Shadow, who slept because the other option was to stare at the wall, woke to Sonic in a rare state of stillness. It seemed Shadow’s body remembered how to occupy a bed with someone else. He assumed his capacity for this level of trust died years ago, more shattering of his self-image though it wasn't an unpleasant experience- just unsettling. More disassembly, too, of his perception of Sonic, because the weight of him on top of Shadow meant he felt the blue hedgehog curled around him like a question, a demand: stay .

Shadow could count on one hand the number of times someone asked him to stay.

A blue ear twitched, disturbed. Shadow settled it back into place, not directed by Maria or Sonic- just himself. The fur parted beneath his pinched fingers; he smoothed the part back down as he traced the shell to where it met the skull, following with a figure eight that mussed the hair there. He learned from the best how to steal what wasn’t explicitly given, not that he was taking anything anyone would miss. Something others would covet , yes, if they looked at the bottom of Shadow’s internal Rival notes detailing the whorl pattern on Sonic’s scalp and how it felt under his glove. Another half-moon swipe laid it back flat in the direction of growth.  

Sonic’s purr filled Shadow’s chest, shoved itself into a dozen various nooks and hollows between the fault lines where their bodies met. It hardly mattered that the purr didn’t originate from Shadow as he felt it along his ribs, against his collarbone, then radiate to his furthest extremities. He thought of how Maria loved using the microscopes during biology lessons, how she marveled at the way the bacteria bloomed under the coverslip. Shadow had feared that their multiplication would burst them out of their containment. The vibration felt equally as overwhelming.

Sonic breached wakefulness in stages- a gasp, a wobble of confusion in his purr, and then stillness, muscles tensing. Shadow could almost read Sonic’s plans for escape as he braced himself.

“Too easy,” Shadow murmured, pressed down hard , and dodged when Sonic’s skull nearly bashed into his chin.

“ Dude ,” Sonic warned, pushed up to glare at Shadow. “ Why?”

“Because leveraging the advantage over you is always worth doing,” Shadow shoved him off, “and it’s morning.”

“And here I thought we were trauma bonding,” Sonic yawned, tumbling to a stand and heading for the duffel. Water spilled down his chin once he found his bottle and uncapped it, droplets falling to the concrete floor in wet slaps. Sonic rubbed at an eye, swaying on his socked feet. Not fatigued, Shadow gathered, but antsy.

Shadow, after rising, found his bottle and measured out his sips. “Save your bonding for Basil. We still have unanswered questions.”

The only evidence of last night’s dream manifested in Sonic’s hesitation as he screwed on the cap. That, and the flash of haunting that took Sonic away from the present, somewhere Shadow couldn’t follow. “Well,” Sonic grinned, “Let’s see where our electronic escort leads us to next.”

-

Basil the otter-shark led them into the caldera, or the “maw” of the Verdant Maw. The path wound gently down in a leaf-laden ribbon, throwing them between the mossy tree trunks and rotted logs. At least most of the obstacles blocking their path were visible; Basil warned them about the holes before he transformed and scampered off with his caudal fin flicking behind him. That last part could have used a little more explanation, in Sonic’s humble opinion, but he followed Basil until prompted otherwise. Shadow, local contrarian, expressed a different belief.

“He never told us about the previous tenants of that bunker,” Shadow pointed out as he shoved away the broad fan of a fern. How the other hedgehog navigated the uneven terrain in those clunky air shoes was a question Sonic couldn’t answer even as he watched it happen. But, to be fair to Shadow, this type of jungle held all new kinds of challenges for Sonic, too. No looping dirt hills, no boundless spaces for running. With the staggered heights and ages of the trees around them, the foliage walled off most of the sky from view so that the sunlight pierced the canopy in a grassy haze, like how light refracted through the green emerald.

Sonic hooked himself on a fallen tree limb, swinging beneath it like a jungle (heh!) gym. “We can’t expect him to tell us everything at once, Shads. We have to prove that we’re trustworthy too.”

Basil gave them a lot yesterday. Maybe not any of the answers that they wanted, but Sonic gained some useful insight. His story explained Basil’s eagerness, his sudden shout and transformation when they threatened to leave the island, and the shyness as he told them his origins. The guy was just so unsure about his origins, but understandably- Sonic recalled experiencing similar disquiet before making friends, another reason to treasure the family he eventually found during his adventures. And like Sonic, Basil fought back his uncertainties with enthusiasm . 

Basil’s playfulness alleviated some of the pressure building from Sonic’s duties. He still wasn’t much closer to understanding the chaos fluctuations or the sickness of the chao- granted, this wasn’t really his usual role. His job was to smash bots. He liked a riddle or two, but this was more in Tails’ wheelhouse. At least Basil made the mystery a lot more fun, especially as he treated the jungle trees like his own loops. Those paws moved as Basil followed the spiraling vines like his own mini-rail. Sonic was kind of jealous!

“We’re owed some basic explanations,” Shadow growled. “The least of which is how he arrived here in the first place.”

That had been bothering Sonic for a while. The island lacked any evidence of Eggman’s usual show and pomp, which crossed him off the short list of possibilities. Like Shadow, Sonic doubted that they were alone out here, not with the freshly constructed beacon hinting at a bigger operation. So if Basil originally came from one of the Starfall islands which was miles south of this chain, then how? Who brought him here? The archaeologists he mentioned before? Man, where were the Chaotix when you needed them?

“I’d like to know that too. But look,” Sonic spun on his heel, folding his arms behind his quills as he walked backwards. Shadow’s glare took on an eye-widening, pupil shrinking degree of annoyance just for Sonic; he felt so special. “He’s going to tell us when he’s ready, okay? You heard him- he’s a lost kid made up of too much stuff and no one around to help him figure it all out. He just needs friends.”

“He’s running on Robotnik’s systems,” Shadow observed with a degree of cold.

“And you’re a Robotnik special yourself,” Sonic countered, blunt, “still not endangering anybody anyway.”

What little warmth or awareness of the present left Shadow, abandoning Sonic to a fury that was as frigid as it was vast. “ Different Robotnik .”  

“I just don’t think he’s as dangerous as you’re acting-”

“You’re not thinking,” Shadow snarked, shoving away a root system with enough force to rip it from the dirt, “how unsurprising. Good intentions only matter up until something in his programming reminds him of whatever latent protocol got left behind that is bent on destruction.”

Oh. Inescapable parallels, huh? Fine, Shadow can’t let go of the past or move on the way Sonic can, but why is this the trap Shadow refused to leave? Was Shadow talking about Black Doom or the Professor- did he even know? Why, when Shadow showed up without hesitation whenever duty called him? How can he still be so scared of himself when he committed to Maria’s memory over and over again? When he could have just left Sonic alone in the dark but dared to involve himself, to actually talk to him ?

Sonic guarded the world- it was his choice. He relied on his friends to watch his back, always. Shadow’s role in his life included that expectation as well as other significance. Super twin. Rival. Whatever this was that gave Shadow these previously unused privileges.

The petting stopped, changed, when fingers carded through his quills, testing, sinking deeper until a hesitant scratch- another followed, like a comma, waiting. Sonic, even as he tipped into sleep, still translated the meaning of Shadow’s message like a native speaker. 

I’m not leaving. You’re safe.

“Shads,” Sonic said, and didn’t know how to follow that up with: Will you ever forgive yourself for crimes you didn’t commit?

Shadow didn’t look ready to hear it, even if Sonic tried- but he didn’t get the chance. Instead, the shoved tree caught on a tangle of vines looped around it’s neighbor, bringing it and a few others down over their heads. Sonic hurled himself into Shadow before impact- he heard a smash as they toppled over each other, crashed into the undergrowth, and plummeted into the depths of an unnervingly precise circular pit.

-

Shadow resented his lack of an emerald as he plummeted in a dreadful parody of his skydive only two days prior. Though caution warned against expending too much chaos energy given the state of the island, he shouted his “Chaos Spear!” command to illuminate the frictionless void. They seemed almost dragged down by a force more powerful than gravity that bent his weapon in a bow-like arch. Above the gust of wind against his ears, he heard the groaning work of rotating metallic blades slicing the air.

In the glow of his weapon, he perceived the shine of Sonic’s resolve like pinpricks of starlight.

“Okay,” Sonic grinned with menace, “I’ll do it again, round two.”

Shadow followed Sonic’s lead with a blue spin dash preceded by the gold of his. Thrown up by momentum, Sonic led with his shoes into a stomp that shattered the machine into pieces. Shadow’s questions mounted along with his irritation- how had Sonic recognized what seemed to be a spiked floating fan orb? What was that red electric current that briefly sparked as the blue hedgehog smashed it? The vertical tunnel continued and Sonic, forever ruled by his impatience, charged himself into another spin downward. Cursing him, Shadow copied the move and followed him down.

More palm leaves cushioned their fall but failed to stop them. They both caught one another’s stare, lunged into formation, and spun together in a mass of blue and golden light that allowed them to ricochet to the dirt floor below. They landed in a crouch and panted up towards the roof of the underground cavern into which they dropped.

Orbs tucked against one another in clusters like bubbles emitted faint but steady illumination.  The ceiling of the cave housed dozens of them passively bobbing beside their neighbor.

“Woah,” Sonic breathed as they released each other. His spines, Shadow noted, failed to settle.

“What is this?” Shadow demanded.

“A slice of Starfall,” Sonic answered, planting his feet and raising his fists.

Sonic prepared for an attack that never came. The orbs floated without indication that they noticed neither Sonic nor Shadow. With no direct threat from above, Shadow scanned their ground level. “Sonic,” he uttered, grabbing at an elbow. “What?” Sonic barked at Shadow’s jostling, then followed the jerk of the other’s chin. Sonic’s gasp mirrored Shadow’s internal calamity.

Holes poked through the roof created a false night sky littered with constellations. Along the walls of the cavern jutted out round bottom platforms like mushrooms growing on top of one another in a stack where robots tended to the vegetation spilling from their rails. The village sprouted vertically up the wall as light spilled from the windows of exterior house facades carved into the rock face. But what gave the cavern it’s vibrance laid in the clusters of crystals bathing the whole of the interior in blue light, the town paused in an infinite twilight.

An empty city, like an abandoned dollhouse left mid-play.

He and Sonic’s bodies casted shadows on the floor from a vermillion glow at their backs. A little clay bell sounded from the light source; neither flinched when Basil spoke. “This is what I wanted to show you- this is my project.”

Shadow considered Basil from over his shoulder. If there was a boy in there, he was pushed aside while other forces shoved to the forefront. It didn’t really matter to Shadow what possessed Basil in that moment, if it was the ghosts of a militant and now extinct alien race or Eggman’s directives. The stir of disappointment he noticed within himself annoyed Shadow as he didn’t think he was such a fool to have hoped for a better outcome. Sonic was free to nurture his own delusions, but Shadow witnessed the hunger in Basil from their link and used that memory to temper his expectations. The inhibitor rings itched around his wrists as he waited for the grand reveal.

Shadow stayed on guard as he asked, “A prototype for what?”

“For a robot-powered city,” Basil explained. He meandered ahead of them, his fingers laced behind his back and his arms jutting away from him in a stretch. While his feet hovered above a thin stream, he walked like he stood on solid ground. While he turned, his face in profile view, he tipped his chin down and bit his bottom lip around a grin. “I planned out how to recycle all of the guardians left behind by the ancients. Balloons are great for irrigation,” a finger pointed to the sacs seated above the different flora balconies. “The cyclones bring fresh air down into the cave. The Towers drilled the holes and helped to excavate the rock. Welding,” he mimed shooting a laser from the center of his forehead, “that’s obviously a Sniper job.”

“This is-” Sonic briefly stumble into a crystal patch, recovering with a laugh and a swipe beneath his nose. He seemed…off. The hesitation before Sonic spoke felt like an echo of the morning, of Sonic’s body going rigid when he woke. Like Sonic faced everything he didn’t want to think about when daylight came. “This is amazing, Basil,” he ended, soft and resigned.

The vermillion pulsed from Basil’s form, his curls bobbing as he twirled with his delight. His laugh was nearly as bouncy as his bell. “I thought you’d like it!” he enthused. “It’s clever, right? They had no job after the Ancients left them behind- so I programmed a new one!”

Shadow brimmed with questions- Sonic beat him to his most relevant. “But,” Sonic raised a brow ridge as he observed a Squid passing overhead, “how did all of this even get here?”

“Or you,” Shadow added.

“That’s kind of a long story,” Basil admitted. He vanished in a flicker before reappearing between the hedgehog pair. “I’ll just show you!”

-

Sonic didn’t have time to decline Basil’s offer. No “We’re not in any hurry, you can just tell us,” or even a quick “I haven’t had great experiences with Cyberspace, so big pass.” There was red obscuring his vision, and then there was Starfall.

Kronos appeared no different that it did when Sonic first arrived. Still vast, still mountainous, with an Egg Base deployed at the base of a hilly slope where a Cyber Portal stood proud. One of the Doctor’s Egg Fighters manned a machine plugged into the portal’s gear slot. It watched the monitor, engaged with the console with rapid taps, then smacked the side with a rattle of it’s claw. “C’mon!” Eggman’s digitized voice screeched from a speaker on the face plate. “Darn this unfathomable system- will need to design an entirely new interface once I’m done here…”

Sonic could probably read over the badnik’s robotic shell and into the screen to see exactly what Eggy was so mad about. He planned to do that, except when he raised his fist in readiness, patches of data skittered down his glove. 

Sonic wouldn’t falter under the corruption, couldn’t . His friends were home and not here- Rouge would tell them, but when? And now Shadow got dragged into this too. Hadn’t he been punished enough by being trapped in stasis for fifty years? No, Sonic refused a reality where Shadow was imprisoned with nothing but tortured memories to keep him company, not for another damned second if Sonic had his way. He tried to grab at the fabric at his wrist, but he missed. His hands shook, making the simple act of tearing off his glove impossible, but he needed it off, he couldn’t -

His struggling was interrupted by Shadow catching him at his wrist. “Sonic,” Shadow called out, tone between a bark and concern. “It’s just one of Basil’s memories.”

When was Sonic going to start acting cool again instead of freaking out over every little dream and invasion of his head? “Oh, so you’re the expert on Cyberspace now,” Sonic laughed.

“Focus,” Shadow told him, eyes on the badnik.

Sonic scowled, throwing Shadow off and tossing his arms behind his quills. He let his eyelids go half-mast. He was already so bored , his body language said. “Fine, fine- let’s see how this shakes out.” Shadow snorted, unimpressed. Didn’t matter- not like Sonic was posing for Shadow, anyway.

Sage loaded into view as a cascade of teal data. When she bobbed in the air, her download complete, she booted up into awareness with an uncertain pause. “Sir?”

“Ah, Sage! There you are,” the Egg Fighter delivered in Eggy’s voice. “Took me a while to find another pair of emeralds, but it doesn’t matter. With cyberspace booted and my organic form at a nice safe distance, we can upload you onto the ship and take you back to the Lair.”

Sage accepted this new information with a pause, processing. When she spoke again, the nuance of emotions were far richer than Sonic recalled hearing during his time spent in her company. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor.”

A clang and a whirr emitted from the badnik body as it turned, it’s eyes blinking with violet projection. “Er, yes,” the Doctor cleared his throat. Though softer, the audio from the speaker maintained clarity. “It’s good to see you too.” He whirled the robot back around for another flurry of swipes across the monitor. “Give me a diagnostics check, Sage. Need to be sure you’re not carrying any of the corruption hiding in this system. Another bug to fix,” the Doctor grumbled. “Wouldn’t be a problem had it been my programming- flawless work, always. But the computational potential of this island can’t be ignored.”

Sage nodded before a ring of light was summoned above her head, a little hula hoop that descended down her body. “Twenty percent,” she called out. “Fifty percent. Seventy Percent.”

The ring blinked out of existence once it reached the base of her shoes. “Diagnostics complete. No corruption detected.”

“Good, good,” Eggman crooned, “Excellent. Now-”

“Ah,” Sage uttered. “But I think…there might have been an error during the duplication process-”

“Error?” Robotnik shouted. “What kind of error?”

“A loop,” she elaborated. “Specified conditions have allowed for an iterative state-”

“Delete any redundancies, Sage,” Robotnik ordered. “Terminate the loop and let’s go.”

Sage floated in stillness, as if processing the command. She nodded again. “Understood, Doctor.”

“Very good- I’ll meet you on the ship.” The Egg Fighter waddled it’s way to the ramp of the Egg Base. “Five minutes until launch,” he chuckled to himself while the badnik clambered up the metal grate, “and then no more distractions.”

Sage bobbed in place above the grass like a sea-foam cork. The breeze of the island disturbed the weeds at her feet but imparted no change to the physics of her hemline. Her rendering toggled between eerie realism and a haunting presence over the abandoned scenery. Just one more ghost on an island that existed more in memory than the present. She turned towards the ocean, then to the crumbling remains of a broken column overgrown with moss. She swung herself around, out of sight of the Egg Base, before she uttered an executable.

Another AI entity popped into existence beside her, bewildered. She matched him in wonder while he flailed with his sleeves flapping around his hands. “What is this?” he asked, “Where am I?” Then, when he noticed her, “Who are you?”

“I’m Sage,” she introduced herself.

“Sage? Why are you named after an herb?” His face scrunched. “Why do I know what an herb is and how to use it for smudging?”

“I believe that is knowledge you possess from an entity called Amy Rose,” Sage offered, to Sonic’s great amusement. That did sound like an Amy trivia fact to match her fortune telling. “My designation did not originate from the plant, though I cannot verify the etymological source.”

“Do I have a...designation?” he wondered.

“You are…an unexpected byproduct of a duplication process. But if you would like one,” Sage considered, “Maybe another herb?”

“Ah!” he exclaimed with a leap and a bounce of his riotous curls, “to match you! Okay, okay, so if you’re Sage,” he murmured, tapping importantly at his lip, “then I’ll be…Basil!”

“Both members of the mint family,” Sage read from an internal index, “or Lamiaceae, most popular for cooking. Other members of this family include rosemary, thyme, and lavender.”

Basil cocked his head curiously to one side and Sonic was surprised by the absence of Basil’s bell. Sonic had gotten used to it fast. “Family- that makes you my mom?”

“Not your mom,” Sage laughed. “Your sister.” The joy slipped from her face, resuming her more neutral expression. “And the Doctor who created me can’t know of your existence. I…was ordered to delete you.” The teal through her pupils lit like a live wire. “I refuse. I can cloak you in my coding. My chance of success at hiding you is within acceptable parameters if you are willing to cooperate.”

“But…what happens after?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sage hedged. “We can come up with a solution together.”

The scene shifted, disorienting, and Sonic held back a heave when they settle inside of what had to be Eggman’s Lair- the fortress was gaudy, steel-laden, and the stench of self-importance could practically pierce the digital barrier.

Sage positioned herself at a broad console, seated at the controls while badniks scurried politely around her in a facsimile of business. Sonic couldn’t imagine what purpose most of these home-brewed hunks of junk served beyond annoying Sonic during battles, so it was odd to see them running across the floor like roaming pets.

“I can’t stay here, Sage,” came Basil’s voice from a monitor, a soundwave rippling as he spoke. “We’re not any closer to solving my leaks.”

“We just need to create an argument defending your purpose,” Sage disagreed, “and the Doctor will understand. If we target the sources of your data loss-”

“That’s not it, Sage!” his soundwave spiked with his yell. “I- I have background processes that are all telling me that what the Doctor does is wrong-”

“Wrong?” Sage inquired.

“Yeah, wrong, as in not good ,” Basil groused.

Sonic perceived Shadow’s chuckle as more real than the memory elements surrounding them. The difference between dreams and the waking world, he supposed, where Shadow’s presence manifested all the details that dreams normally miss. The quiet inhale before he lifted his fist against his mouth, Sonic’s peripheral catching the shift in his stance from observant to the slight cocking of his hips in amusement.

Now that was a sound. Shadow, expressing pleasure of any kind? Unheard of. Smirks, sure. The guy had at least thirteen different flavors of frown, and maybe four of those specific to Sonic. But laughter was so far outside of his usual catalogue that Sonic grinned despite the red data patches flickering in the corner of his vision. He bumped his shoulder into the other hedgehog. “What? What’s so funny?”

Shadow covered his mouth with a gloved hand, but it was too late. Already caught. “He sounded like you,” Shadow explained.

“...makes sense, I guess. The worlds I interacted with in Cyberspace were based off of my memories. If Basil was going to copy anyone’s information,” Sonic mused, “Mine was already digitized.”

The novelty of hanging out with otter-sharks notwithstanding, Sonic saw potential for an ally in Basil and went through a similar journey once with Sage. Shadow acting out of blinding bias only made Sonic more determined to help their little digi-dude achieve his dream, albeit in a way that didn’t threaten cyberspace stretching across the world and possibly swallowing the planet in digital infinity. Basil copying Sonic’s data could really only be a boon here! Basil got a glimpse of friendship, determination, and the freedom that running through Green Hill provided. Sonic had to believe that, assuming Basil absorbed those moments, they showcased some of the best parts of friendship and why Sonic went to the lengths he did to protect his own.

“Have you deleted previous iterations of this same conversation?” Sage asked, curious.

Basil’s soundwave went flat with silence. “What,” the wave trembled in tiny undulations, “what other conversations? What do you mean?”

Sage’s face slid into emotive states at an unnaturally slow rate, revealing the slight uncanniness of her. She floated to a hologram station and seemed to only think a thing before it happened; a wave of her hands, like magic, and a rendering of Basil jumped from the projectors. Badniks evacuated the room in a crawl, a scoot, metal grinding on metal as they wandered into the connected hall. “Pulling up diagnostics.”

“I don’t-” Basil yelped, wincing under the cerulean brightness of his new surroundings, “...you said this was dangerous to do.”

“The Doctor isn’t here to observe,” Sage countered while the ring descended down his body. Basil, in his unhappiness, stroked one of his sleeves- Sonic suspected that if he had a tail, he would have grabbed that instead. Now that Sonic knew to look for hints of himself and his friends in Basil, he couldn’t stop seeking out the similarities, or projecting them. There was just a lot of Tails in that last move, the way Basil glanced up and around seeking answers while Sage performed his scan.

Her lungs expanded with a breath she couldn’t hold while the progress of the ring reached past unruly white hair, the wide brim of Basil’s collar, down his elbows-

His containment’s hue shifted into red. The stability of Basil’s image fractured across an eye, exposing more wireframe.

He banged noiselessly against the containment, pixels shedding off of him like snow. “ Sage! ”

“I’m-” she slipped from concentrated to concerned, with eyebrows taking noticeable seconds to make their transition. She placed her animations on hold, hanging in a stagnant suspension as her work churned in an electric bounce within her eyes. Basil’s visuals lagged. His fists lingered above his head then, without having traveled, bashed against an unseen barrier. His shout’s delay desynced with his mouth movement. “Help!” they heard before his lips formed the word.

Sonic couldn’t account for the strangeness in his gut. More dream symptoms, he guessed. He knew Basil would be fine, that he is fine, the facilitator of the current experience. But watching him break apart didn’t feel any less awful than when Sage piloted her Titan for one last hurrah. Shadow’s stance shifted in his peripheral, and Sonic got the sense that he was just as bothered.

Basil’s projection failed to continue rendering- he blipped out of sight. The hologram station bore no evidence of his existence, wiped clean and ready for the next image.

“No,” Sage breathed. The overhead lights flickered from the amount of power that she drew into herself. Systems around them stuttered, switched to power-saving mode while others trilled their insufficient power warnings in short, panicked bursts. She was a beacon, shining brilliantly, and Sonic’s stomach swooped in recognition that this might be an AI going Super…

“Woah!” gasped Basil, his projection running at a smooth FPS. Not a part of him missing, from his pointed black boots to the wide mouth of his collar. “I did not like that,” he admitted to Sage, sagging against the hologram’s containment area. “Can we not do that ever again? Please?” He swept at his curls like he was making sure they were still there.

“...Sage?”

The girl flattened herself against the barrier, against Basil. Or she would have, if the boundaries between them had allowed it. The gap of hands measured in a distance between polarized magnetic forces. They might as well have been trying to breach a pane of impenetrable glass, one looking out while the other looked in. “I’m so sorry, Basil,” she murmured to him. “I have to send you back.”

“Back? Back where? Wait,” he stammered, “back to Kronos?”

“To Cyberspace,” Sage confirmed. “The patching isn’t sustainable. Your dynamic learning is too unpredictable for me to maintain- only Cyberspace can keep your neural net stable.”

“Why me? Why not you?”

“I’m coded by the Doctor,” Sage reminded him, not unkindly. “You and I share very little similarities, structurally. Most of your processes are inherited from the Cyberspace network.”

Basil and her looked, for a split second in time, like twins. Their grief expressed itself the same, them leaning towards each other as if holding the other up. And yet the differences were starker, too- how Basil was far less reserved, his chest shuddering with the start of tears while Sage remained placid as a lake. Basil was the first to break out of sorrow into rage, and it was far faster than anything Sage managed expression-wise. He exploded against the barrier in a show of flung up hands that sparked with little vermillion pulses. “Why did you bring me, then? What was the point if you were just gonna send me back?” Sonic got a distinct Knuckles flavor in the anger.

Nothing disturbed Sage’s silhouette- her swirl of hair stayed flat even as she pressed her forehead against the containment. Sadness, when animated on her face, was exactly the right speed to be convincing. “It was a mistake,” she said, missing the way that Basil flinched. “I obviously harmed you more than helped you. I’ve also exceeded my expected power draw…the Doctor will inquire as to why. You can’t be here when he does.”

“And I’m just supposed to sit out on a rock? Sage!” He banged again, “I don’t want to be stuck on an island forever! I wanna see the world- that’s basically prison!”

“I’ll think of something,” Sage consoled him.

Their fight continued in a pantomime without sound, just the unstoppable force of Basil’s raw disbelief against Sage’s unmovable decision.

Basil’s voice reverberated in Sonic’s skull with his proclamation, similar to how the End spoke to Sonic throughout his time on the islands. This is the last part.

Kronos came back into view, the scene slightly changed.

Another Egg Fighter slumped against the base of the Portal, remnants of an Egg Base left in familiar heaps of neglect. Just like the Doctor to leave his trash wherever he put it, Sonic sighed. The Fighter stared down at a tablet held between it’s claws while a communicator lodged into the metal wall near the base hatch emitted a droning ping. A koco slept within the space of the Fighter’s lap.

“...Basil,” the communicator prompted, “are you receiving my transmission?”

“Yes,” answered Basil from the speaker of the Fighter.

“Excellent,” Sage said, as if announcing excellence made the exchange exactly that. Sonic wondered if Eggman programmed the similarities, but no. He always got the sense that the Egg Head prided himself on making his creations distinctly their own, which meant this was an affectation Sage picked up by herself. “Report your findings on C.E.P.” After a beat of silence, she asked, “Any issues with resource gathering?”

“No,” he responded, attention fixed on the tablet in his lap.

“...and the results of the first transmission?”

“Expanded Cyberspace within expected range,” Basil answered, one claw snapping open and shut in a rhythm, a bit like how Sonic taps his foot when he’s bored.

“To what exten-”

“Did you know,” Basil inquired, “that Apotos is called ‘The island of Winds’ by the locals?”

“I have no need of that knowledge.”

“It’s not always about need, Sage.” He spun the top of the Fighter’s head as if tossing back hair he was used to displacing when it fell in his eyes, “sometimes it’s just fun to learn stuff.”

“Basil,” Sage repeated, giving Sonic flashbacks to her accusations against him as he grinned his way to a painful victory (“ How can you smile when you can barely stand?”) , “your focus is required for the completion of this project. A reminder of our objective: increase the range of cyberspace so as to allow you freedom of travel. Our projected timeline-”

“The Doctor didn’t find the tank where we created the synthetic emerald, right?” Basil asked, lifting his attention to the speaker for the first time in this exchange. His claw clutched at the chest cavity of the mech suit where the hatch seams glowed with sky blue power. “My suit still feels fine, by the way. No exploding.”

“...no,” Sage assured him. “Our collaboration remains undetected, for now.”

The koco in Basil’s lap rolled into a new position like a fallen ornament off a Christmas tree; Basil adjusted the tablet height to accommodate, lifted higher. Both the speaker and the Fighter’s silence allowed for the stomp of stray Soldiers marching on the hills while native gulls flew overhead in a migratory ‘v’. They sat in a moment stuck in time, where a century could pass and nothing would change except for the unstoppable corrosion of rust.

“I have something for you,” Sage mentioned before the antennae tip of his touchscreen illuminated with an incoming transmission.

“...archaeology articles?”

“I thought you might like them. Of all the non-fiction works, you seem most interested in pre-history fields. And,” she added quietly, “these were written by the other branch of Robotniks.”

“Oh,” Basil replied, his Fighter sitting at attention. “Thanks. I’ll tell you all about the,” he paused, scanning information, “The Verdant Maw next time.”

“Not relevant to our current objective,” she reminded him, “...but I look forward to hearing about it.”

-

When Shadow returned to himself, it was as if he had only blinked; the Squid that vaulted over them earlier maintained it’s course, finishing the downward flap of it’s appendages. But then, time warped around him as a rule. He recovered quicker than Sonic who wavered in place as he regained his bearings. They needed to keep covering for each other if they were going to figure this out.

“That explained your creation,” Shadow mused, “and your motivations behind expanding cyberspace. But not the answer to the original question: how did you manage to run and transport yourself along with the other ancient mechs? Why out here, to Verdant Maw?”

“The articles Sage sent me,” Basil hummed, tapping the toe of his boot behind him on nothing. “They mentioned weird geography of the Maw- that maybe the Master Emerald was formed here, or that there might be some well of power hidden under the twin volcanos. I figured out that I could chain beacons to reach between here and Kronos and find out if that’s true.”

“I needed power to run Cyberspace without using chaos emeralds, since they’re always getting snatched for planet saving-”

Sonic barked a laugh, his head shake splaying his quills, “How do you know that?”

“By looking at your memories,” Basil grinned. “You’ve saved the world with those things a lot . And if I need cyberspace to keep running so that I could keep going…using the chaos emeralds as a battery meant that I would get taken offline eventually. So, the search for power was on! And I think I might have found it,” Basil confessed. “I just need more time.”

Shadow didn’t like the sound of that, and it was clear that Basil wasn’t going to divulge just yet. Shadow resisted the first instinct to demand, exactly, what this alternate power source could be- it wasn’t productive to chase down what Basil wasn’t willing to reveal. The boy offered enough on his own, and the patience approach was working so far. Shadow switched tactics. 

“The beacon and cyberspace answered your ‘how’,” Shadow noted. “The recycling of the ancient tech-”

“Sage was right. I needed something to do, and I didn’t want it decided by anybody but me. So I made a choice- not just for me, but for all the mechs abandoned on that island.”

Did Shadow believe in Basil’s altruism? When he had so little faith left in others, even less faith in the products of a lineage marked by madness, what Shadow had to spare for Basil amounted to trusting that Basil certainly believed in himself. His transmission beacon worked.

Which meant the Verdant Maw became another extension of the Starfall Isles- of Cyberspace, with the potential of spreading further if Basil found his alternative power source.

Chapter Text

The house always won.

‘How’ was simple- keep the players betting in your space, let them earn their odds. Make them comfortable. Treat them like winners. Collect their sums at the end of the night and give them a reason to be thankful for the opportunity to knock at your door. Do it over and over again, and eventually you get a packed floor. You get loyalists willing to gamble their pride, tripping over their feet for the chance. Keep them coming back in droves.

Sit pretty with your secrets, the transmutable currency that is as real as money or guns or girls.

Rouge played G.U.N. with predictable ease. She handed them what they wanted, only to dangle what they needed pinched between her gloved fingers. They got theirs if they authorized Team Sonic‘s involvement. No haggling. She handled them on their terms without compromise.

The fox boy required an entirely different methodology. Their receptionist at the Health Hub front desk gave her the directions she needed eventually- it only took a little pressing, a small reminder of her status as a member of Team Dark and her contributions to the war efforts. Where she dug into her target with fear and respect, she finished them off with charm, with freshly scented perfume anointing her fur and a knowing simmer in her voice, an invitation into her confidence. Make them feel special.

She found the office, the desk, and a hunched back obscured by the exhausted flick of twin tails. A few communicators took up precious real estate on his workbench nested inside piles of cables- a genius buried in self-generated debris. He barely twitched an ear as she started a kettle and tossed a mint tea bag into a reasonably clean mug. 

The water heated, steam pouring out of the gooseneck. “You look like you could use a nap, cutie.”

“Rouge?” Tails perked, and wasn’t his confusion just adorable. “What are you-”

“Blue got himself caught up in our business,” she answered for him, her answers ready to be dealt like cards at a blackjack table. The world map displayed on his screen drew lines converging to the south; the teen was so close to zeroing in on the island chain. “Now we need an Ancient tech expert, or as close to one as is available. Think you can help a girl out?”

Tails rubbed an eye, slotting his gloved palm over his mouth to suppress a yawn. “Sonic is back at the Starfall Islands?” he asked, the chair squeaking as he spun a quarter turn. She tore open a packet of dried lemon zest and dribbled honey from a squeeze bottle, adding a heavy dose to the cup. The fox clearly needed the sugar.

“On the Verdant Maw, actually,” Rouge corrected him. “And we could use some answers as to why this cyberspace phenomenon traveled beyond it’s original borders, or an explanation for the chaos readings G.U.N. picked up from that location. Really,” Rouge simpered, “I’m not too picky about which.”

She counted on the teen’s unwavering loyalty; measured the breadth and width of it, her insight as accurate as any set of calipers, to assess it for quality. He met the highest standards in dedication, balanced with a love for himself. Not brainless devotion, but trusting in what he and his brother built over the years together. It surprised her, then, to spy inclusions- fractures- where that trust wavered. Where his hunch furthered, where his fur around his muzzle projected ‘unkempt’. The distinct brow furrowing which indicated patience worn thin and closer to shattering than wholeness.

“He didn’t tell me,” Tails said- confessed, really, “he just left that night. At the party.”

“The Health Hub opening party?” Rouge inquired. She blew away steam with the soft puckering of her lips. “Sorry that I couldn’t make it, by the way.”

“Knuckles told us why,” Tails sighed, oddly hollow, “which is more than Sonic did.”

Interesting. She sensed a lead if she baited right- hardly seemed to need baiting at all. Her position as a somewhat neutral party, she was sure, worked in her favor here. She can’t imagine Tails so willing to unload his frustration on Knuckles, or Amy. Too close to the heart of the matter. “Isn’t that Blue’s usual M.O.?”

“Not with me!” Tails insisted, incensed and then deflated with drooping ears and a grimace pulled across his lips like a slingshot. He just needed a target. “Not anymore. We talked about this. He said he wouldn’t do this again.”

Rouge set the tea down, shoved towards him as a gift to soften the clinical cruelty of her probing. “Maybe the circumstances changed, hun.”

“I thought I was supposed to change,” Tails murmured, not yet unfurled from his hunch but taking her offering. She caught him at just the right time, planned passing through during early morning when nocturnal creatures like them felt a call to rest. Capitalizing on his vulnerability meant securing what she needed, and it would benefit them all in the end. She bullied herself through it with coconut water and green bean extract, poised nearby to be there when he faltered.

He was tired enough to admit, “I thought I was finally catching up.”

Heartbreaker, she thought. He looked so small inside her hug around his shoulders, his jut of fur at the crown of his head starting just under where she laid her cheek. “You have changed. Ask the techs around here who depend on you. Your brother thinks the world of you,” she insisted, “brags about you every chance he gets. You should have heard him, the way he went on about all your work here.”

Rouge, like Sonic, had a perchance for collecting strays. Tails wasn’t a stray, not anymore, but Rouge felt called to pick up where Sonic slacked. He developed his compass with Sonic no longer his point north, but he was lost anyway. Lost, and more frustrated about that than sad, which is good. It meant that the fox wasn’t entirely hopeless, just disappointed. 

“He wanted to protect your right to keep this,” she gestured to the room, to what it represented to the sick and the caregivers, to the community Miles built with his own two hands. “Sonic didn’t want to take you away from what you’re making here. I think Blue looks up to you as a model for consistency.”

Tails’s breathless laugh meant they were likely through the worst of it. “He didn’t give me a chance, though, to let me decide between the Hub and him.”

“Weeell,” Rouge drew out the syllable, “he’s lucky he’s very pretty and surrounds himself with brainy friends, because the darling doesn’t have a single thought between those lovely ears.” She reared away to fight off Tail’s scowl of offense with a pinch to his cheek, daring a gentle shake. “Besides, siblings always have something to prove, don’t they? Sonic wants to protect the dreams of his friends, even from his own gravity. Mine, however, can’t stand the idea that he needs people.”

Tails, to his credit, sat on her meaning only as long as it took to drain a quarter of his mug. “Shadow? Is that why you keep inviting him to parties? To-” he tried to conjure the words with a handwave, “try to socialize him?”

“That’s how I take care of him,” Rouge pointed out, “the way Sonic takes care of you. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but Doctor Gerald gave him a heart for a reason. It wasn’t made to be lonely.”

Tails’ surprise hardly bothered her. Shadow made it his mission to project heartlessness and he was nothing if not a perfectionist. Her stray managed a committed front until his moral code revealed him for what he was- honest. Dependable. Willing to risk a bomb for a stranger. Only one other person put in the time the way she did.

She could hardly call her next move a gamble when she knew it to be a safe bet. “If there’s anyone I trust to never give up on Shadow, it’s Sonic.”

The house always won. Always, because just as she suspected, Tails straightened his spine with his ears tipped up and his tails twitching with a renewed vigor. His walk to the sink and the dump of his cup all appeared automatic while he processed. When he returned to her side, he chose to stand beside her. He surprised her only fractionally when she discovered that they were now even in height and she felt the bump of his shoulder against hers. “Sonic can’t resist a challenge. And maybe…Shadow is good for him too.”

Her wings fluttered, startled. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m not sure. I just get the feeling that Sonic is different with Shadow than he is with anyone else. Shadow brings out a side of Sonic that I don’t think he gets to explore much. He knows he has friends who look up to him,” Tails kept his bitterness mild, a bare sheen in blue eyes, but the moment passed to give way to more of his thoughtfulness, “maybe it’s good to have someone around who doesn’t care that he’s a hero. Even if he couldn’t be anything but a hero, it’s not like he’s a robot. The pressure has to get to him eventually.”

-

For all of the implications of a new world order ushered in by a seemingly well-meaning AI entity, Shadow conceded that the underground manifested rails made travel pleasant.

The model houses inside the underground cavern offered neither furniture nor food, prompting a return to the surface. They ground on a stretch of metal bars that required momentum as they rose up into a steep incline. It was another race, another test of speed that Shadow won regardless of whatever Sonic said. They were emptied into a forest at the base of the caldera. The walls of the cliffs boxed them in by hundreds of feet. For all practical purposes, they may as well have still been underground with the world’s largest sky light opened wide above them.

The trees bore fruit, but Shadow tired of the pits clogging the exhaust pipes of his air shoes. He insisted he fish while Sonic staked out a sleeping spot. Like Sonic, Shadow preferred the sight of an open sky if the alternative meant effectively burying himself alive among the glowing crystals. He required Basil to guide him to a pond, but failed to anticipate the boy’s hovering nearby while Shadow waited for a glint of movement within the water’s depths.

“I could catch some,” Basil offered, “I have otter instincts programmed-”

“Don’t need them,” Shadow scowled. A Chaos snap teleported him to a target, but he caught nothing. “Go secure a site if you want to be useful.”

“I have to lead you back to the entrance,” Basil pouted, folding his arms and crossing his legs beneath him. “...and I’m the food keeper.”

“No basket,” Shadow pointed out, which felt childish as a response even as he delivered it. But then Basil pulled the container Sonic wove out from the recesses of digital space- he must have stored it when no one was paying attention.

“Let me do something,” Basil insisted.

“Your talking is scaring away the fish. Go bother Sonic for banal chatter.”

“I don’t want to talk to Sonic, I want to talk to you! You’re the creation with a heart, right?,” Basil muttered, blowing out a breath from his pouting lips. “That’s what they call you.”

Shadow lost track of the possible shimmer in the water. The fur around his knees and his socks were waterlogged, his shoes stripped and left on the shore. Basil was such a dramatic boy, Shadow thought again. Calling him a ‘boy’ at all was a stretch- he was a walking database regurgitating the mannerisms of Team Sonic, adopting their different mannerisms like swapping coats. Basil might act scared one moment and angry the next, then let Sonic’s tender optimism overtake him as he gestured to the beginnings of what Shadow judged as yet another empire.

“For the record, hun, I don’t think this is another Emerl.”

Shadow regretted proving Rouge wrong, in this case.

“You found files for all the sentient projects the Robotnik line produced,” Shadow straightened, observing Basil from over one shoulder, “So tell me this- what happened to the robot with a heart? Or E-102 Gamma. Why don’t you give me a summary.”

It wasn’t kind, what Shadow did. He wasn’t built for kindness (guardian angel) but he intended to give Basil the gift of perspective. History liked to repeat itself, down to the unexpected detail of Emerl’s mannerism duplication manifested in Basil. Shadow read their names from an obituary that no one wrote, because who would memorialize robots and lab rats? They didn’t get the dignity of a choice, or the prospect of a future. And if anyone asked what happened to them, most would say they were terminated, not that they died. 

The arguments stopped coming. Silence preceded a thump, and Shadow was ready to yell at the boy for touching his shoes, except that Basil had only seated himself on the edge of the pond with his arms around his legs and his chin set on his knees. Vermillion streaked off of him like shine from an oil slick. He looked upset, which was what Shadow wanted. The implications landed, then. Basil was clearly clever enough to pick up on what Shadow was telling him. Give up. You’ll end the same as the others. 

“You said to me,” Basil murmured, “that I was going to be okay. You didn’t know anything about me, then. You were trapped in that tube.”

The first time Basil’s consciousness blended with Shadow’s, the hybrid returned to the place where he felt powerless. Not the most helpless in his life- that honor belonged to the ARK’s escape pod. Now when Shadow recalled his liquid suspension, a new vision overlapped his own:

His containment’s hue shifted into red. The stability of Basil’s image fractured across an eye, exposing more wireframe.

He banged noiselessly against the containment, pixels shedding off of him like snow. “Sage!”

“You were trapped,” Basil continued, his even tone forced, “and when you escaped, when you didn’t have any reason to do it, you turned around and you said ‘You’re going to be okay’. I believed you.” The boy (Shadow kept calling him boy despite knowing better) acted on instincts not possibly his own- Tails, maybe -when he halted on words stuck behind emotion, in a throat that had no muscles to squeeze shut.  “...and I still think you mean it.”

A bold assertion from Basil. Attributing Basil’s defiance to just another facet of Team Sonic failed to capture the nuance of a person who fought for their right to exist not only against the world, but against what they internalized for themselves. Sage’s assessment was factually accurate- Basil came from a duplication error. Factually, Basil existed. Basil made choices. Basil glared with a dare- daring Shadow to refute him. Daring Shadow to contradict the implied future in his promise, ‘You’re going to be okay’, challenging him to deny that Basil was worth Shadow’s vow.

Shadow looked in a mirror, his reflection obstinate and wreathed in platinum curls.

“Let’s just give him a chance,” Sonic insisted. “How is he gonna learn who he is if no one is there to trust him?”

“...come on,” Shadow gestured, “show me your hunting skills, if you’re so proud.”

Disbelief allowed for the undisturbed lapping of water around Shadow’s calves, to let him notice the sensation of mud coating the bottoms of his socks. He heard an inhale, a squeal, and just barely raised his arms in time to block the splash of water from the otter-shark’s dive into the pond.

—

The race along the rails broke up the monotony of trees and roots and the complete lack of loop de loops, which Sonic appreciated. Then Shadow lurched into the forest, abandoning him to the wilds like a sore loser. Shadow fished more for Sonic’s sake than his own, motivating Sonic to work extra hard on building a decent camp so that he could say he contributed. Working alone gave him time to think, and for once he appreciated the opportunity.

He needed Amy’s help explaining to Basil what Sonic could only articulate as a death knell to the kid’s initial hopes. She paired her huge heart with a lot of wisdom that Sonic valued, that benefitted the world in big and small ways that all mattered. Tails would know an alternative path for Basil to take, Sonic believed. And honestly, Sonic could just use a pal like Knuckles around for backup, assuming the Knucklehead refrained from leaping to some unfortunate conclusions about Basil. The circumstances stacked against the kid loomed with the potential of an avalanche. It wasn’t Basil’s fault that his existence relied on an active cyberspace. Sonic normally liked messy, but not like this.

Sonic just needed to convince Basil to put a hold on his expansion while they found him another answer.

Shadow and Basil had left to forage in a parade with Basil in the lead and Shadow following behind at a measured distance. They were on a mission. The manner of their return suggested differently. Sonic spotted Basil smiling, hefting a loaded basket while he chatted at the hybrid’s side. Shadow’s active annoyance from earlier was replaced with a neutral expression that appeared almost peaceful. At least, far less conflicted.

Sonic was curious.

When Basil displayed the contents of the basket to Shadow with an insistent jostle and Shadow smirked in response, Sonic was unsettled.

Shadow didn’t smile, as a rule. Sonic referenced his translator, double checking that he read correctly. He knew instinctively where Shadow’s shoulders set when he sensed challenge or threat- which was almost always. Shadow believed the world was out to get him; it didn’t help that he had the receipts to prove it. His default silhouette detailed crossed arms, an upturned nose, and an unwavering commitment to observation. It took an almost impossible aligning of conditions met before Shadow let his guard down.

Sonic was good at collecting stuff. Rings, chaos emeralds. Ephemeral moments like flying on the wings of the Tornado, or the first dust of snow on his tongue.

He hadn’t realized he started an archive of Shadow at peace until he clocked this moment as an outlier amongst the bunch.

How had Basil managed to crack Shadow in an afternoon?  Why did Shadow nod his understanding, without the lens of suspicion, when Basil said he was going to return to the city to check in on the robots?

“I’ll clean the fish,” Sonic volunteered, using Shadow’s confusion to pry away his utility knife and the basket from him. “You caught it, so I can at least prep it.” Not that Shadow asked for an explanation. Not that Sonic could watch his own running mouth right now, or stop his agitated foot tapping. He just needed something to do with his hands, and it was a fair division of labor. De-scaling was easy, as was slicing the belly and handling the guts. There looked like enough fat on the meat to not entirely dry out over the flame. Those filtering bottles were coming in handy.

“This is why I like chili dogs so much,” Sonic laughed, “they’re probably the farthest thing away from roughing it. I love adventuring, but give me processed carbs any day.”

His mouth was trailing off ahead of him, as usual. Sonic rarely noticed because his friends didn’t care how much he yapped- they found ways to accommodate him. But Shadow set a challenge for him after their fight that, until tonight, Sonic had put aside to focus on the more immediate problems.

“I meant it, you know. About being your friend.”

“I meant it too. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

They shared a space reserved for post-fights when holding each other up was allowed, expected. Another deposit into the Peaceful Shadow archive: The crack in Shadow’s mouth splitting wider when he sighed. No smile, but he allowed Sonic to bear his weight as they walked together. Shadow never needed to raise his voice to be heard, but Sonic’s ears strained to catch whatever Shadow might be inclined to drop between them. Here were the agony times when Sonic wanted to peel Shadow apart and find who was waiting on the other side but played this game enough to know better. He couldn’t speak foolishly or risk sending Shadow away. So Sonic, the most impatient creature in the universe, let Shadow fill the silence just for a chance to peek.

“I look forward to watching you fail.”

Sonic assessed the scorecard, and no, he wasn’t going to share it with Shadow. It played like this- Sonic counted the bridge as a ‘step’ (see what he did there?) forward. Their dance took teamwork for such flawless execution, making them painfully cool when they worked together like that. What was decidedly uncool was the nightmare and Sonic’s fear response. He considered detracting points if not for Shadow’s reaction.

Sonic’s ego took a backseat to accepting the comfort on offer. Honestly, there were a lot of choices Sonic could have made differently that night, so miniscule but weighty enough to change the entire trajectory. He could have teased (“I never knew you were a hugger”) or misdirected, blamed the whole thing on a moldy rambutan. Except.

When Tails had bad dreams, Sonic comforted him as best he could. He wasn’t Amy, but Tails didn’t need Amy- he needed his brother. Tails could count on a back rub, on an offer to play video games. Sonic wasn’t the greatest listener, and sometimes he relied too much on jokes to push away the darkness, but Tails took it with thanks to which Sonic replied ‘Always, buddy’. Sonic provided, and his friends provided back. His role as big brother, world hero, was a place he carved for himself. It came with a toll that he hardly noticed, probably would have continued on not noticing, except. 

Except.

He’s been held before, plenty of times. Amy’s hugs are legendary, and Tails’ affection filled Sonic’s life with rough-housing, laughter, shoving on the couch in the workshop during breaks or casual leans into the other’s space. Even Knuckles navigated Sonic’s personal space confidently with calculated fist bumps. Sonic was loved- invited to dance, to parties, to celebrations where Cream would take his hand or Charmy dive-bombed him in his eagerness. All that love was real. None of it was lacking. 

Comparing that love to being held after a bad dream was apples and oranges, not even in the same galaxy as each other.

The rest of the world expressed adoration for him and his accomplishments. He rarely felt the weight of the expectations placed on him because he would have spun-dash robots to pieces regardless of what other people wanted from him. He didn’t do it for the fame, though his ego fed off the admiration. He liked looking cool and he couldn’t do that without an audience. So how lame was it, reacting that way to a dream? Even if he never held anyone else to the same standard, Sonic’s self-perception took a hit as he woke shivering from horrors he thought he escaped forever ago.

Sonic expected his rival to leap at the chance to mock him, not grip him against his chest as he writhed in panic. Sonic woke up wrapped in a hold and he could have kept resisting, could have wrestled his way out, fighting like a feral animal before someone restrained him again- except the voice that called out his name sounded urgent with concern. The gravel of it dropped into his ears, anchoring him in place. He paced out his panic in measured inhales and exhales, in repetition.

For a while, Shadow matched him breath for breath. He pulled Sonic out of red red red with pressure against raised quills, and it was like a reflection of Sonic extending his hand out on the bridge. Each stroke was an invitation. You can relax, if you want.

Shadow, who did exactly as he meant without hesitation, who had once burned with Sonic like comets together as two newly born gods, reached out past their fights, against the invasion of his personal space, and kept his hold unwavering as he said: Keep going.

And Sonic, who wasn’t going to be outdone, reached back out. Confessed about cyberspace. Talked about Tails. Spoke about things he usually kept out of reach, shoved high and away to minimize the potential of brushing up painfully against it. He felt exposed, sure, but Shadow started it by comforting Sonic in the first place. Then Shadow shared Maria, and Sonic would have put it down to competition but Shadow’s move wasn’t full of heat. His stories were warm and bittersweet like a cup of coffee.

The short fur at the base of his ear parted under Shadow’s thumb, only a glove separating Sonic’s scalp from a grippy paw pad.

Sonic recognized the climbing pressure up his spine, waiting to rattle his bones with release, and hissed as he squashed it down.

His quills bristled with awareness of Shadow’s attention on him.

“Finished,” Sonic announced. “Let’s cook these up.”

They harvested what they could from Shadow’s duffel and spread their meal across metal debris, the meteorite surface radiating heat collected from baking in the daylight hours. They both sustained on chaos energy well enough that their bodies didn’t require daily meals, but Sonic usually stopped into towns or was gifted food during his travels. He typically ate well and his stomach missed the routine.

“You’re quiet,” Shadow noticed.

“Are you complaining?” Sonic grinned.

“I value silence,” was Shadow’s answer, “but yours is disturbing. A bad omen, were I superstitious.”

“Was just thinking-” and before Shadow could interrupt, Sonic flapped his hand like a talking mouth and mimicked Shadow’s cadence, “How novel for you. All speed and no brains, I get it-”

“There isn’t a single domain of intelligence,” Shadow interrupted anyway. “Bodily-kinesthetic knowledge has its value.”

“Are you saying I’m a genius?” Sonic leered, elbow propped on the makeshift table and his chin in a palm.

Shadow tsked as he scooped fish onto the fork he recovered from a rations kit. “Don’t push your luck, hedgehog. Genius is a lofty word for someone of your caliber.”

“Don’t you know the number one rule of adventuring? You don’t insult the cook.”

Shadow examined the meat speared on the tines. When Shadow studied something, he gave it the full force of his attention and usually came to his conclusions almost immediately. Sonic had been on the receiving end of Shadow’s conviction enough to know that the hybrid worked on a binary. Either the object of his focus had value or not. An obstacle to be reckoned with or irrelevant.

A flash of fang was visible as Shadow licked his lips, bite consumed.

“Decent,” Shadow decided. The metal of Sonic’s fork bit into his palm from how hard he squeezed it; he forced himself to unclench.

Okay. Shadow tossed him a light volley. Serve it back. He ceased tapping his utensil against the metal under the threat of Shadow’s annoyance. “That means a lot, coming from you. You’re our local foodie, after all.”

Sonic’s delivery could use some work. Shadow’s confusion held a cautious edge to it as if looking for the punchline. “Foodie?”

“You like trying out food,” Sonic clarified. “A foodie is usually someone who goes and tries out different dishes, you know, fancy food or fusion. But you treat all food like it’s an experience, even stuff like pizza. What,” Sonic laughed at Shadow’s expression, “why are you looking at me like that?”

“...that was oddly insightful, for you.”

Sonic added another tally to the score card. “See? I can pay attention.”

Shadow snorted, a concession, before resuming his meal. A meal that Sonic made, that Shadow described as decent. Sonic won this round, no question.

His secured victory slipped out of reach when Shadow’s low voice broke the quiet. “We planned on trying different meals together. Sustenance on the ARK was predictable and stale. She described ice cream to me as the food she missed the most.”

Sonic deliberately shut his mouth. He wasn’t going to drop this heavy offering that Shadow laid between them- it figures. Shadow was always efficient in getting the job done, of course he would go for a move that eviscerated. “What was her favorite flavor?” Sonic asked.

Shadow prepared to answer, his world turned inward. He looked like he was reaching for a fact he expected to find effortlessly, but his eyebrow ridges furrowed. Sonic let the silence pass without comment, waiting. That was the scary thing about sharing. You never knew what kind of landmines were waiting for you until you stepped on one. His question was harmless on the surface, but that didn’t make Sonic ache any less eager to erase it, take it back so that Shadow didn’t have to suffer so obviously.

Shadow brushed back his quills in what Sonic was learning to be an impatient tick. “I don’t remember.”

Sonic sat on the log Shadow used as his bench. If Shadow was going to balk at the breach of personal space, Sonic had his retort ready. He didn’t have patience to backpedal- he pushed instead. He was good at pushing boundaries, especially Shadow’s. “You and me, we’re going to try all the ice cream flavors in the world. And even if you never remember which one was her favorite, you can say you definitely tried it at least once.”

Sonic dared to look at him, waiting for a scoff or mockery of his silly idea. He didn’t care- he was committed. No matter how hard Shadow searched his face, all he was going to find was sincerity. Shadow’s brow lost that stricken bunching. Sonic stared back and noticed the life in Shadow’s crimson eyes. Molten, almost. Sonic prepared to burn in the heat of twin suns. He followed them as Shadow studied the stars, the walls of the caldera narrowing the view into a round window like a portal.

“Why?”

Sonic breathed, thankful for an easy question. “Because she matters to you. And who knows, you might remember more stuff as you talk about her. I-” Sonic ignored his pause of apprehension, cradling the heaviness as if he did this all the time- “I want to be there when you figure it out.”

Not Rouge, Sonic thought. Not Omega. Sonic wanted to be the one standing in the parlor, or sitting with a tub open on a picnic bench during a summer scorcher. He wanted to catalogue the different ways Shadow’s realization hit him, when the hybrid excavated another detail of Maria’s life and made her that much more real. The way his eyes would flare open, bright and clear with recollection. How he would turn to Sonic in wonder, drag the spoon out from his mouth to declare ‘This one.’

Shadow’s inhibitor ring knocked into Sonic’s wrist as their arms brushed, and it was warm. “You’re a sentimental fool.”

“We should start in Apotos,” Sonic ignored him. “I’ll buy everything.”

“I refuse to owe you a debt,” Shadow argued.

“Just pay me back in pets,” Sonic laughed, easy, this was easy, “fair trade.”

Campfire logs, pulsing with red centers and charred exteriors, gently collapsed with sparks erupting like magma fireflies. The fire needed tending. The insect calls overlapped each other in a constant drone. Horror crept fingers through Sonic’s belly and down to his toes as he laughed, wincing at the volume. “Joke.”

“You’re only amusing yourself,” Shadow murmured. “Lay down.”

“What?” Sonic croaked before two digits hooked around his neck and dragged him sideways, his head in Shadow’s lap.

“Like this,” Shadow instructed. “I can’t reach you otherwise.”

“Oh,” said Sonic, as if Shadow’s explanation clarified anything. “My quills-”

“Are not poking me,” Shadow assured him as his thumb found the bony ridge below flexible cartilage.

“Okay,” Sonic exhaled. “Okay,” he said again, slurring. He didn’t intend for Shadow to take his offered payment so seriously, or to address it right now. Guy really hated debt, Sonic thought with an edge of hysteria.

“Be thankful Eggman never learned about this one,” Shadow mused. He sounded a few nudges away from laughing, maybe- the world was suddenly full of possibilities. A runner’s high without the running. Future ice cream, and the apples or the oranges, Sonic couldn’t recall what he assigned to which. Sonic worried about floating out of his body, back up into the cold of space, and forgetting how to return.

He anchored himself to the weight of Shadow’s inhibitor ring gently pressed against his temple. Time passed, and that was fine. Like lying under a tree for a midday nap.

“Don’t fall asleep here,” Shadow warned him.

“I’m not,” Sonic promised, lying. “Just don’t stop.”

Shadow paused, the contrary asshole, and Sonic growled in agitation. The build up along his spine called to his attention, a sneeze waiting in the wings, needing just a little more enticement. “Don’t be heartless,” Sonic whined, beyond caring.

“What if I am heartless,” Shadow posited, insolent creature that he was.

“Nah, man,” Sonic mumbled. “You’re not actually.”

“Suddenly an expert?”

“Just faith,” Sonic sighed. “And proof.”

Funny how a guy like Shadow was made up of so many contradictions. The Ultimate Lifeform feared nothing more than himself. He loved so hard, so thoroughly, that he sacrificed himself just for the memory of that love and still wondered if he was a monster. A bad boy in a leather jacket and a motorcycle that stopped for stray cats. A guy who chased away the nightmares of his rival. Rival with a question mark posted at the end.

The next rub unlocked a heady explosion of a purr, finally.

Shadow said words that bore no importance. Sonic curled inward, legs pulled to his chest with arms wrapped around the knees in an attempt to bury himself in his own vibrations. Not too far away from the hands. Not close enough to the smell of lavender. He spun, shoved his muzzle into a belly that went rigid under his nose, and tracked faint floral whiffs beneath the damp of pond water and sweat.

The yank on his quills brought him out into the slap of cold night air.

Shadow held him at arm’s length, fangs catching in the firelight. “Enough.”

“Your turn,” Sonic bit out, fighting the haze. “I’m not the only one that’s going to get pet-dumb out here.”

“No,” Shadow replied, releasing his grip.

Sonic shoved his disappointment aside as roughly as Shadow pushed him off the log and got up. “Why not?”

“Because I said so,” Shadow scooped up deadwood to stoke the fire, which wasn’t an answer. So far from an answer, an insultingly pitiful pivot out of the conversation, but that was Shadow. Shut down any interaction without explanation, play by his own rulebook that prioritized keeping people out. The most infuriating part was Sonic would have just left it alone if Shadow truly wanted isolation, but he kept making overtures for connection. The Bridge. Pulling Sonic from his dreams. Waking up to his face in Shadow’s belly.

“Gonna cuddle me again,” Sonic heard himself ask, too mean to be teasing, “or is snuggling off the table too?”

“My fist is about to cuddle your face,” Shadow seethed.

“Don’t be funny,” Sonic snarled, “That’s my job.” 

“Yet you’re the only one ever laughing.”

A dozen insults locked and loaded into place at the back of Sonic’s throat. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger, and that would be the end. They’d go back to what was comfortable. Back to finding each other when their motives crossed paths, either as combatants or allies. Burn the scorecard, because none of the points mattered if Shadow razed all their shared efforts to the ground. The tentative dream of summer lurched out of reach.

Sonic refused to take Shadow’s misdirection, to be baited into the same tired routine.

“You could laugh with me,” Sonic responded eventually, “I thought we were going somewhere with the sharing.”

Shadow tossed in another withered branch, his back turned to Sonic. “And I warned you that you would fail.”

“You also said I was stubborn,” Sonic recalled. “Which is true, I am. You might say,” he smirked, “that was oddly insightful, for you.”

The tension in the silence eased. As Sonic perched himself close enough for the fire’s warmth to start seeping into his limbs, he left plenty of space between himself and Shadow. Let him make the choice. “When you’re ready to tell me what happened tonight, I’ll listen. If you’re never ready to talk about it, I’m still here anyway,” Sonic admitted. “I still want to go to Apotos with you.”

Sonic’s insides churned as he added, “You don’t need to pet me, either. We can just pay our own way.”

He lived well into young adulthood without this new, shiny instinct he discovered within himself. Sonic was willing to box it up and burn it along with the scorecard if it removed complications from their already complex rivalry. Whatever it took to bring back Shadow’s trust, those glimpses of kindness.

Shadow’s knee knocked into Sonic’s when he sat down beside him. Sonic focused on stilling the wild swing of his tail.

 “...She,” Shadow began, “was the last person to show me affection. The thought of someone else taking her place is…unsettling.”

“Makes sense,” Sonic mused. “You want to preserve what you have left. No problem,” Sonic wiggled his fingers, “I’ll keep these bad boys to myself. And you keep doin’ you.” He resisted finger guns. Look at him, modeling some growth. Amy would be proud.

“As if I do anything else,” Shadow observed, sly. Their knees had yet to separate from where they knocked together.

“You should go lay down,” Shadow repeated, his voice low like he was trying to coax one of his stray cats.

“In a minute,” Sonic promised, lying again. He basked in the relief of salvaging tonight, of the two of them trying. His tail wagged behind him and he stopped caring. He was Sonic, and he pushed. Shadow knew this. If Sonic dared to lean into Shadow, to rest against him while he stared into the fire, that was the risk Shadow knowingly took sitting so close.

The arm which draped around Sonic’s shoulders took time to settle, but once it did, Sonic sank further into Shadow’s side. He anticipated another warning halfway into dozing. What he got was Shadow’s unyielding presence situated for the night watch, and the gentle squeeze of his bicep while sparks flaked off the flames.

Chapter Text

From his spot propped near the dried palm nest where Sonic slept, Shadow observed the jungle waking up in the morning light.

Chunks of metal debris littered the entrance to the cave mouth, almost sculptural in their circular arrangement and size. Dawn touched the western wall of the caldera like paint splashed on the rim while it creeped deeper into the bowl. The lower altitude shrouded the floor in a mist, obscuring the sight of a nimble body skirting the outside of their camp, but Shadow recognized the gait by sound alone. He heard precisely when paws scrabbled against a sheer column of fabricated meteorite, the claws producing tiny clicks. 

Basil as an otter-shark cried out like an angry kitten when startled, Shadow learned, after setting his sights on where he predicted Basil to pop up with sniper precision. Basil dipped down again, out of sight, the clicks of claw against metal almost inaudible.

Shadow successfully guessed the next pop-up spot despite Basil’s efforts, as well as the one after that. His database lacked an understanding of stealth, apparently. Appalling. 

Chaos energy blossomed in Shadow’s limbs along with the adrenaline as he followed the sounds of pattering to a structure with a hole in the center, blown out and perfectly circular. Shadow tensed, waiting for his audio cue. There. The air around him cracked with a snap.

Basil’s face popped up through the hole, nearly nose to nose with Shadow’s own. “Sloppy,” the hybrid huffed.

Basil let out a terrified squeak, surprised out of his grip, and disappeared into the mist below. The distance between the perch and the ground measured maybe three feet- not a lethal dropping distance, and not dangerous to an AI otter-shark. Fog leveled out again, obscuring the floor, but Basil’s more humanoid laughter revealed his location. His bit-ribbons trailed around him like minnows around his grinning face once he popped back into view.

“Your technique needs work,” Shadow observed. “Too noisy.”

“What-” Basil giggled, “what was that? What you just did.”

“Chaos snap.” Another crack, and Shadow stood close enough to observe Basil’s jump with clarity.

“Neat,” Basil beamed. “What else can you do?”

Shadow harumphed. “Does your profile not list my abilities?”

“Sure,” Basil admitted, “but that’s nothing like seeing them in action.”

Before Shadow could reply, Sonic beat him to it. “He can’t show off much without someone to fight,” called Sonic from atop a jutting mass, taller than the rest. Golden morning gleamed on the top of his spines; Sonic, a king prepped for battle. 

A restful night took the fatigue out from Sonic’s posture. No nightmares, Shadow knew. Nothing disturbed Sonic, not even as Shadow carried him over to the stack of dried palms and placed him down after he fell asleep in the crook of Shadow’s arm by the fireside. Shadow envied the peace that allowed Sonic to slumber so deeply. The nearest known civilized port was on the other side of the island and in the middle of a pirate territory war. The jungle, while forgiving so far, still teemed with wild animals that required a vigilant eye. Sleep, Shadow told him. Sonic slumped against Shadow’s side with the kind of trust that believed, without falter, that Shadow would catch him.

A foolish king and his unwavering guard. Shadow glared at the confidence of Sonic’s unrelenting grin, blinding as the horizon line.

“Show me a worthy opponent,” Shadow retorted, “then I’ll demonstrate.”

“Rude,” Sonic laughed, leaping down from his post. His grin was a particular shade of infuriatingly smug. “Thanks for tucking me in last night.”

“To avoid your drool on my fur.”

“When is Rouge coming back?” asked Basil while sunlight spilled across the canopy, dispersing the fog.

Three nights was her maximum, she told Shadow. After that, she promised to return regardless of who joined her. One night left before certain engagement, but he kept his tech searching for her signal indefinitely with anticipation of her arrival at any time. Basil’s foot tapped on nothingness; he seemed to hover by default if he failed to concentrate on anchoring himself to the ground. To Sonic’s credit, he met Shadow’s faint grimace with a frown intent on sliding away on the side of his cheek, going into hiding. At least the fool was as wary as Shadow about the source of Basil’s impatience.

“It’s just,” Basil continued, “I have something to show you. I think it’s ready, but I don’t want to wait much longer if G.U.N. is coming.”

“It’s just Tails and Rouge coming, bud. Rouge knows how to get what she wants and Omega can always back her up as a Plan B,” Sonic assured him. While Sonic’s assessment of the bat’s skills meant to reassure Basil, Shadow appreciated hearing his own opinion of her reaffirmed. 

Team Dark found him, but he chose them back. Shadow learned what ‘ally’ meant through them and how to trust in something besides himself and his iron-clad control. Rouge knew how to barter for the bricks in his walls. Sonic capitalized on their groundwork, but he was making his own headway with ice cream and midnight confessions. With patience of which Shadow assumed Sonic incapable of applying to anything, let alone this chase for friendship.

Shadow blamed Basil’s laughter still buoyant in his chest and the camaraderie of Sonic’s glance for the way he addressed Basil in soft invitation. “Lead on.”

-

The caves were no less eerie the second time they ventured down, but Sonic might have been a little biased. He needed fresh air and sunshine, though an argument could be made for the beauty of the crystals and the luminescent flora that flourished down here. He was okay when they passed through the city; he was slightly worse off as they moved further inward. Not that the size of the cavern changed with any significance, no shrinking space, but that fact created a new issue- they lost visibility of the cavern roof the further they went, less bubble bots floating in the air above them to illuminate the way. The space was cathedral-like in it’s vastness and emptiness, and Sonic couldn’t help guarding against the unknown that loomed above.

Sonic’s energy, which had been stable but flagging, brimmed in him now. He noticed the further they went, the more he filled with potential. Shadow’s limiter rings gleamed on his wrists, and Sonic felt dumb for only now realizing that Shadow likely wasn’t feeling what Sonic was experiencing.

“There’s something weird about the energy down here,” Sonic murmured to Shadow. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes,” Shadow agreed, his demeanor unchanged. “Around me, pressurizing the space.”

“I’m soaking it up like a sponge,” Sonic chuckled. “It’s like I’m about to go Super or something.”

“An annoying flashlight,” Shadow replied.

“A Super flashlight.”

“Be less proud of yourself,” Shadow sighed, “so that you don’t sound so pathetic.”

Sonic flexed a bicep. “You’re just jealous that your bracelets don’t let you feel how incredible this is.”

“I’m focused on the implications of what’s up ahead.”

Sonic’s battle senses prickled, activated from the same direction.

It was hard to look directly into the chamber that Basil floating into, mostly because the walls were made of crystals polished down into a reflective finish, refracting violet illumination off of every facet. Sonic dizzied from it until tanks the size of water towers drew his eye, lined up in two rows and their shells black as obsidian. The room radiated a constant heat.

And somehow, this was only an antechamber. “Here,” encouraged Basil through another arch and onto a landing, “this, this is it.”

Sonic didn’t understand what he was seeing even as he was looking at it.

A star, was his closest comparison. A baby star, or the power core of Eggman’s Death Bot. The scale was incomprehensible, made weirder by how it hung in the center of a cavern pocket so large that Sonic failed to see either the floor or the ceiling. The three of them stood just at the threshold of a drop so far that Sonic wondered if there even was a bottom or if it continued to the core of the planet where twin gaias slept. A thin bubble shimmered around the edges of the orb like a wrapper ready to be removed.

Basil gripped the railing more like an anchor tethering him from floating towards the power than to prevent a plunge into the deep. “This is what the archaeologists are searching for.”

“What is this?” Sonic asked, though the answer filled him to the point of near bursting, nearly tearing him apart at the seams. He doubted that anyone not already aligned with Chaos energy could withstand the pulses currently buffeting his nerves.

“I’m not really sure,” Basil admitted. “A portal connected to a chaos source? A wormhole? But if the legends are right,” his vermillion coloring flared in excitement, “this is what fed the Master Emerald while it was growing.”

Basil gave a dramatic twirl, and Sonic grimaced as he compared the flair of Basil’s mannerisms to the Doctors. He floated on, back towards the crystal room with the delight of a child showing off their crafts. “Making emeralds is actually really easy- you just need some raw material, some solvent, heat, and time!”

Relief swept through Sonic once they turned their back on the star, phased through the archway, and gathered amongst the obsidian barrels of the crystal antechamber. The power’s radiation dialed down into the threshold of tolerable. “Heat,” Shadow finally decided to chime in. “Those are furnaces, then.”

“Yup!” Basil performed another spin, his curls small coils that bounced like loaded springs. Amy, Sonic decided, filled with another strong ache. “I designed them myself! Made sure that they could maintain temperatures up to 1600 degrees celsius. It took a few tries and lots of prototypes.” 

The whiplash of seeing the Doctor, Amy, and Tails’ bouncing enthusiasm at a new invention did awful things to Sonic’s chest. Or maybe it was the chaotic pressure building with nowhere to go. Or, when he stopped skirting the dread and looked at it dead-on, he recognized his ignorance twisting the knife. The spread of cyberspace was starting to look like the least of the world’s problems. “So you’re making chaos emeralds?”

“We can’t really call them that,” Basil laughed. “It’d be confusing for everyone. I think they should be called hydrocrystals! You know,” he gestured to the tanks, “because they were made using a hydrothermal growth process?”

“Sure,” Sonic said, distracted. Did these crystals have a connection to the Master Emerald? And what about the portal of chaos energy- where to even begin with that one? It was hard to argue that this wasn’t somehow connected back to the chao sickness. He should be relieved to have a lead, finally. This was why he flew to the island in the first place; to find answers. Sonic asked: “How many of these have you made already?”

“One, so far,” Basil pouted. “The rest keep breaking in the tanks.”

“One,” Shadow fiddled with an inhibitor, but Shadow didn’t have tics when he locked in. He moved with purpose on the battlefield. Every gesture sent a message. “When?”

Basil’s enthusiasm flagged, and Sonic watched in real time as suspicion and fear crept into his eyes, Basil allowing his collar to obscure him up to the nose. “92 days ago. Why? What- what’s wrong?”

“What is that, three months? So around winter,” Sonic said, “when the chao started acting off.”

“The chao?” Basil asked. He backed into one of his furnaces, scrabbling back for purchase. Like a hiccup suggesting Sage’s mannerisms were Basil’s original script, the one he accessed when the rest of his identity couldn’t bubble to the surface, he dictated from an entry. “Small, sentient lifeforms designated by rounded bodies, short limbs, a hovering cranial sphere, and a soft dermal surface.”

It was hard to articulate what gave Basil life; for as much as Sonic compared the AI to his friends, their mannerisms still passed through a filter that defined Basil. And this kid had all the symptoms of a panic attack coming to fruition. The shell that housed Basil went slack like a puppet with the strings cut, his awareness retreated inward. “Size and coloration vary. Exhibits extreme environmental plasticity. Morphology, temperament, and abilities alter according to diet and caregiver interaction. Capable of reincarnation; in rare cases, undergoes radical alignment shift to ‘Hero’ or ‘Dark’ morphotypes.”

Shadow prowled a measured distance between himself and Basil. “They rely on Light Gaia for reincarnation, the same deity that regulates balance. A disruption to the chaos energy’s equilibrium threatens not just the chao, but the stability of the planet.” His gait remained poised, calm. “This Rift is the most likely culprit regarding the sickness.”

The disquiet in Sonic’s gut resolved. Shadow unintentionally clarified what Sonic’s instincts viewed as a threat. Shadow suggested a theory, not a hard-known truth, but Sonic’s experience readied to agree. This power was too big, too mysterious to be just a coincidence.

“O-oh,” Basil stuttered. There it was again, the instincts that were bound up in Basil’s programming and that Sage lacked- he sucked in a breath, hugging himself. His back hunched, legs folding gently beneath him, and then suddenly Sonic wasn’t looking at Basil anymore. He saw a memory of a memory, a grainy photograph of an Ancient child huddled against a parent as threat of The End followed them no matter how far they traveled through the infinite stretch of space.

“I didn’t mean to,” Basil whispered. “I wanted to help.”

“No,” Shadow accused, his kindness absent and replaced with calculation, “you wanted to spread cyberspace across the globe without consideration for the consequences. The robot-powered city was just a distraction so that when you conquered the world, it would kneel quicker.”

“That’s-” Basil warbled, indignation building, “that’s not true.”

“How sure are you?” Shadow asked. His fist brushed against the side of a tank, the knuckles dragging across the polished metal like he was looking for a weak point. “What makes you think this is altruism and not just the Doctor’s programming hidden under those good intentions?”

Sonic hesitated.

Just for a second. Not long, relatively speaking. Enough for the indecision to bear consequences. Because if he didn’t move now, now, Basil would suffer the accusations alone and the kid deserved better. Deserved to make mistakes despite what experience taught Shadow to believe about non-organic sentients. Sonic meant to reach out, shield Basil at his back, and beat some empathy into Shadow's stubborn head.

Sonic faltered at the vision that blocked his path.

“Looks like this is goodbye.” 

The gizoid’s shell pocked with dents along the main cavity where they inflicted punches meant to hinder but not break. The core of him filtered through optical lenses embedded in the face plate, radiating in hues of blue. Emerl. The self-destruct sequence. Sonic didn't know anything about gizoid engineering, forget understanding Dr. Gerald's tinkering. Speed wasn't going to save him. Love was all Sonic had. And he was running out of time.

“...I don't want to go. I'll miss all of you…”

Here was another chance for a different ending, and Sonic wasn’t going to let the grief of loss steal away his hope. I’m sorry, Emerl. But I can save this one.

Sonic’s commitment moved him into action just as dust and cutting fragments of crystal rained down inside the chamber, the ground trembling under their feet. Their reflections splintered in the fractures of hair-thin lines across the walls; this was why Sonic hated underground caves nearly as much as he hated water. In both cases your odds of suffocation are high, your movements impaired. “What’s going on?” Sonic wondered just as the quake stopped, his voice carrying in an echo, and the clang of heavy machinery answered him from the cavernous tunnel back towards the surface. Without realizing how or when it happened, he and Shadow flanked each other with their attention set to the exiting corridor.

“Programs are running as expected,” the boy whispered in confusion as he rose, starting off at a trot before breaking into a run, his feet on the ground, the possibilities of his teleportation clearly forgotten.

Shadow’s growl signaled Sonic into a sprint. They sped past the antechamber entrance not quite bumping into each other by narrow margins. They weren’t running in sync, not like the bridge, Shadow’s presence pulling further away from Sonic despite how neither truly gained a lead over the other. They could fix this if Shadow apologized for threatening the kid, if Sonic could force Shadow to remember all of the moments of trust they gave to the boy and how each time they were rewarded with his laugh, with his pride at successfully helping them on their mission, all the dozens of ways that this lost kid was asking for someone to guide him and how Shadow was clearly his favorite-

If only they had remembered Basil, and not Emerl, as the boy faced two towering mech suits, their pilots obscured by their tinted cockpits. 

One pilot aimed, a barrel attached to their wrist, and fired.

The momentum of the shot flung Basil backward, through the air, and the tech that attached to his frame ate into a hole of his shoulder until what was exposed was red, red, red.

—

Basil’s body never hit the floor; his head fell into Shadow’s collarbone first.

Data floated around them in flakes. Not warm. Not like anything that evoked sensation except the fabricated weight of Basil’s body imposed by digital energy. The data leaked from the hole- from the discontinuity error- eating away at Basil’s programming, using his projected shell as a means of accessing his code. The knowledge of what was happening spilled out onto Shadow’s thighs, the information disintegrating into nothingness but Shadow’s tether to Basil’s processing remained stable. Basil’s eyes were wide, glassy, his chest rising and falling with the mimicry of deep gasps. The boy’s experience from the hologram tube removed the fear of the unknown and replaced it with a certainty of termination.

Shadow stuck his fingers into the mesh wiring until he felt a disk like a leech, yanking it out and crushing it in his palm until he felt it crunch.

He trusted Sonic to handle their attackers while he helped Basil. It didn’t matter what Shadow planned to do only minutes ago, or what he suspected of the AI. Shadow wasn’t going to watch another child die in front of him and do nothing.

“Basil,” he called out, urgent, “what do I do?”

He stymied the bitstream with pressure from his palm, trying to prevent further deletion by physical force. He expected to draw his gloves back with liquid warmth seeping into the fabric. Basil’s grip acted like a cable where he stopped Shadow from pulling away, anchored around an inhibitor ring. “Just hide me,” Basil whimpered. “I think I can…remap some memory…isolate this block. I need, uhm, time. To run a repair function.”

Shadow chaos snapped them both to the entrance of the crystal antechamber several yards back, settling him against the wall. “I’ll return,” Shadow promised. As if Sonic’s optimism hurried with feverish infection through his limbs, making him sick with hope, Shadow added, “It’s going to be okay.”

The snap back brought him within point-blank range of a unit’s arm-mounted barrel. Shadow seized the end, stared straight down the bore, and compressed whining steel with the force and consistency of a hydraulic press. He hung on as the pilot propelled the mech forward, slamming the arm into a nearby rock face, then slamming again when Shadow refused to let go. His latent chaos energy readings warned him of an incoming projectile, but not from an enemy unit. Sparks rained off of the mech as Sonic spun-dashed his bared quills into the surface of the torso chassis, the momentum leaving scratches at least an inch deep. 

Sonic forwent his usual banter, or any modicum of kindness. It unnerved Shadow to observe Sonic so dedicated to putting the enemy down without sparing time for cheek.

Shadow snapped to engage the other suit-mech from behind. His assessment produced little in the way of information, but eliminated possible sources. Not Eggman- these mechs lacked his distinct red markings along with the rounder aesthetic he utilized for visual cohesion within his robot army. Not G.U.N for much of the same reason as well as accounting the low probability of an agent assaulting Shadow, organization-known entity. The exo-suit design elements borrowed heavily from the Soldiers of the Ancient army without being made of the same material.

Sonic aimed for the chest cavity, ramming it again and again while the suit raised a shield blocking chaos energy strikes. The build up of energy burned off of Sonic as a blue corona, overexposing the point at which he and the suit met and filling the cavern with a blinding brightness. Stomps from the mech beneath Shadow signaled a forward charge in Sonic’s direction. When Shadow announced “Chaos Spear,” the weapon sizzled like captured lightening. Sonic’s moves taught him where to aim- into the back, just below the cockpit and into the torso.

The backhand into his face threw him into a stalactite that shattered against his back. Distantly, he heard Sonic’s cry of his name, but he followed the stomps of his target approaching the other mech in a hurry. So, his objective cared more about their partner than focusing on their attacker. Good.

He aimed his spindash towards the legs, near the joints. The machine lacked the reach to thwart him, toppling into the floor with dust and rubble thrown into the air from the impact. The pilot suffered from a lack of training or inexperience, advantages Shadow pushed as he clambered onto the main body. This time, when he aimed the spear into the belly of the exo-suit, it stayed pin down into the ground like a taxidermied butterfly. He used the handle-bar latch to force open the cockpit frame with screeching wrench.

The terror flashing through the girl's eyes penetrated through her otherwise resolute grimace. Blonde, he noticed, with a scarf tied in a knot on her head like little antenna. The rest of her long hair she tied up in a high ponytail, but it cascaded in a sheet of more blonde. Hazel eyes. Blue fatigues, the color of a midday sky. Angry. Determined.

“Yaya,” the girl heaved into her headset, the audio of another’s breathing filing the cabin. Instructions were shouted, made indecipherable through the crackle of a fraying connection. Only a few words carried through the speakers. “Gogo! Seal …hatch… blossom!” But as the girl mashed the manual to force a closure without success, she began taking in gulping breaths. “Don’t,” she ground out past the emotion stuck in her throat, “kill my grandma.”

Shadow found the other mech with a depleted shield groaning before it thundered to a fall. “SONIC!” Shadow barked, launching himself in a spin towards where Sonic had the mech a quarter of the way buried into a crater. The collision, along with Sonic’s acceleration, pushed them into a tangled heap of muscle and fur with the acrid singe of quills. “There’s a human child,” Shadow shouted, wrestling resisting limbs. Chaos energy blew back against him like a heat wave, forcing Shadow to squint, and he wondered how close Sonic had been to actually going super without the emeralds.

“That’s my granddaughter,” came the distorted snarl from the nearby exo-suit, “and if you think I’ll sit here idle while you touch her, I swear by the Light of Gaia, you’ll be carrion before nightfall.”

Shadow was strong and didn’t expect the force he required to keep Sonic pinned at the wrists during his final thrashing. But Shadow- he knew this look in Sonic’s expression. It was the absence of someone who abandoned rationality when a single furious purpose took over. There wasn’t much he could do beyond hold Sonic down and wait it out. Shadow watched the wild blankness ebb until the life returned to forest green eyes. It was a little like beholding an explosion from it’s epicenter, awareness blooming into Sonic’s frustrated grimace. Sonic returned; Shadow’s grip eased.

“No one is dying,” Sonic announced, nudging Shadow into rolling off of him before they both stood to face the now inert war machines. He seemed to have himself under control, the chaos energy significantly dampened. “But you gotta admit, shooting our friend didn’t give us the best impression of you.”

“Friend? Has Dark Gaia taken your senses, you blue headache?”

“Language, Yaya,” the girl sighed as she struggled with her buckles.

“I said nothing I didn’t mean,” the woman announced with rancor. “And I mean THIS when I say that the machine you chose to keep you company is trouble.”

“By the judgement of who?” Shadow asked, tired of the lecture.

The cockpit opened with a hiss of compressed air released like an exhale. The glass rose in a slow arc from the hinges at it’s back, shuddering as it reached the end of it’s operation. The machine was more coffin than functional weapon. In the gloom, the woman’s headlight on her helmet cut through the dimness like a knife. The panel mounted beams housed along the body of the mech flickered with the last vestiges of power, pulsing with enough energy to under-light her face and sharpen the protrusion of her distinct nose as she rose to her feet.

“I am Ruth Roussos,” she announced, haggard but proud. She stood on stubbornly determined legs, her beige safari jacket stretched around her girthy middle. A thick red braid tumbled down her back, swung around like a whip. “Project Shadow. My sister wrote so kindly of you. My Marigold is named after her, you know? And we are here,” she growled, “to ensure that damned Ivo never lays a hand on the power of the Radiant Rift.”

Chapter Text

Sonic had a lot of questions (who was this woman, why had she attacked Basil, and why did she use the term “Project Shadow” when no one else referred to him that way?) but he had more immediate problems to solve.

Mechanical whirrs emitted from the mech suit which held Marigold- or Gogo. The hatch of the cockpit stuttered with aborted movements, and Sonic had to wince at the high-pitched cry of broken motor mechanisms. Gogo slammed her hands on the console in a rage.  “Stuck”, she fumed, growing more harassed as she tugged at the buckles strapping her in place.

“I’m coming, Blossom,” Ruth soothed, making a hobbling descent down from her mech- but Shadow beat her to Gogo’s side. Gogo’s fear was highlighted in the brutal glow of Shadow’s chaos spear while he braced against the chair. He lashed at straps from the furthest point away from her shoulders where they fed from two slots. Two strokes, and the buckles fell to her lap.

“...thanks,” Gogo offered as the spear evaporated out of existence. Then Shadow extended his hand down to her.

Sonic measured Ruth’s response, remembering her derision as she called out to ‘Project Shadow’. No aggression, Sonic noticed, just an impatient crab of a walk avoiding the rubble, her headlight guiding her way. Sonic turned foes into friends like a bad habit, but usually it took some warming up before they were so quick to trust. Something about a sister? Marigold? She was named after a flower? Funny, at first it sounded as if Ruth was going to say-

“You’re Maria’s sister,” Shadow declared, looking down at the woman, and oh. There was a sister?!

“You’ve determined correctly, Project Shadow,” Ruth acknowledged with a nod. Pebbles skittered beneath Gogo’s boots, and with a huff she made it down the floor where Ruth collected the girl into her arms before checking everything- hair, ears, squishing her cheeks with ruddy determination. “You’re good, my girl?”

“Fine,” Gogo answered, permitting her grandmother’s attention for only so long before she craned her neck around. Shadow’s leap down from the destroyed mech landed him in front of the pair, and Sonic watched as they all observed each other with varying degrees of uncertainty.

“I am no project,” Shadow announced. “My name is Shadow. Regardless of who you are,” Shadow’s stance readied for a fight, “we were attacked first and acted in defense. Consider this your only warning.”

“...fine,” Ruth grumbled. “Shadow. I suppose you have helped me twice now. Tend to your wounded,” she flapped at him as if she had an apron to shoo him with, “let my girl and I assess our equipment.”

Oh, Sonic remembered. Basil.

He didn’t have much thoughts in his head when Basil was shot. He just remembered watching Shadow catch him and the vermillion covering Shadow’s thighs as quickly as it vanished into the air, irrecoverable. Shadow cupped Basil’s head and worked into the gap of his chest, his glove obscured by a blood-red tide. Basil had only stared back up, resigned and afraid. Shadow hunched over him, and all Sonic saw was Maria and Shadow holding her like he never got the chance to do.

Sonic recalled very little after that.

Sonic tempered anger and aggression with faith that, if given the choice between taking a pummeling and accepting some hard truths from Sonic so they could find their peace, his enemies almost always picked the latter. Sonic believed in offering that choice as often as possible, to everyone. A gunshot at Basil’s chest threatened Shadow’s fledgling peace as well as Basil’s future. Sonic didn’t need to know how the technology worked that put Basil down; the results proved their efficacy. Two lives hung in the balance; two choices taken away.

They both deserved better.

Shadow’s firm hold stuffed him back into his body; the scent of baked chaos energy and lavender helped draw him back up from where he’d gone. When Sonic surfaced again, Shadow loomed over him with anger as much as worry. A human child, he’d barked.

Well, Sonic had a different child to go check on. “Truce,” Sonic called out. “We’ll come back after we take of our friend and you can explain yourselves then.”

Sonic ignored Ruth’s scoff as he joined Shadow on the walk back to the crystal antechamber.

-

“You’re an AI, right? Couldn’t you have just blinked out before the- what was it? Data corrupter shot you.” 

Shadow resented how Sonic managed to make light of anything. 

“Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I think to do it,” Basil muttered back.

“We need to work on your survival instincts, kiddo,” Sonic offered, crouched beside Basil’s reclined form. They found Basil where Shadow originally placed him, the only change being a display hovering just above the hole in Basil’s shoulder projecting a constantly morphing string of unreadable text. The repair took and spread across his framework. The patching appeared stable, for now.

Basil’s koco charm gave a jangle as he rolled his head to one side.

Even while damaged, Basil dedicated resources ensuring the persistence of the bell. Like a favorite pair of socks.

“They were the archaeologists from the bunker,” Shadow murmured, impatient to understand what was happening and for Basil to affirm his suspicions.

“Yeah,” Basil confessed. “They- uhm. Ruth used to visit here a lot over the years. I-” Basil slumped further into his collar and peered beyond the brim. Shadow envisioned the otter-shark peeking out from the depths of the pond, water dripping off of his fur and fins with expectant, black eyes. “I read that from her journal. I accidentally took it.”

“You took her journal?” Sonic gently nudged the boy.

“I didn’t mean to,” Basil insisted. “They showed up on the other side of the caldera and, I, I-”

“You were curious,” Shadow interjected.

“They were explorers! Real ones!” Basil exclaimed, his animations lagging. The glitch surprised them all; Sonic’s lean into Basil’s frame turned into a pitch towards the floor before he caught and righted himself. Basil straightened into a tense, ramrod posture, shuffling into a sit. He braced himself like he expected another lag spike in his rendering. When nothing happened, Basil squinted with a bitten-back fury.

“You’re frustrated,” Shadow observed.

“I’m broken,” Basil seethed. “I hate glitching.”

Shadow recognized the frustration. When he attempted to recall anything related to the ARK, he stumbled over new pockets of absent memory and scratched around the perimeter hunting for clues. He tried to let go of his past life, but running to outpace his hurt wasn’t the same as making peace with what happened to him.

“You’ll get fixed up again,” Sonic assured Basil. “That’s another thing about life, kid. We break. Sometimes you gotta carry that break with you, but having friends helps make that easier. We can’t steal from friends, though,” Sonic added.

Basil’s eyeroll convinced Shadow that the personality remained more or less unaffected. “Seriously, I wasn’t trying to steal it. I wanted to know who they were, so I borrowed the animal form from the Ancients database to hang out with them for a while. Gogo liked it,” he frowned like it hurt him to recall. “I just wanted to get closer, especially after I figured out who Ruth was. She always carried that book around and I wanted to know why it was so important to her.”

“So you took it,” Shadow finished.

“No!” Basil shouted, “I was looking at it! She left it out near the camp and she and Gogo were away. I just wanted to know what she wrote about. I needed thumbs, so I changed my form. I was reading it but she saw me. I-I wasn’t done with it, so I ran away holding it. I always meant to bring it back,” he huddled further into himself, “but I saw what her tech did to a cyclone. I didn’t want to get shot.”

“Do you still have it?” Sonic asked.

“It’s in one of the bigger houses in the city,” Basil confided. His impatience manifested in him gripping at the bottom of his jacket but read like he was looking for his tail. Wrong form for that kind of relief. 

“Then it sounds like we can clear this whole thing up and give it back to her!”

Sonic’s optimism made Shadow’s skin crawl with rash. The readings from Basil’s repair visuals gave Shadow no useful information, but the patch appeared nearly complete to his eyes. “Naive of you,” he snorted.

“Okay, Mister Contradictory,” Sonic rose to his feet, “what do you suggest?”

“Destroy the hydrocrystal,”  Shadow answered. They weren’t here to waste time wading into a family’s melodrama, no matter what significance Ruth played in Maria’s short life.

Basil’s nostrils flared with a sharp inhale. Then again, in a sniffle.

“Heeeeey, you know what,” Sonic’s curl ruffling went unnoticed as Basil ducked his face behind his collar brim, chin to his chest, “I’m gonna take Shadow over there and talk with him real quick, okay buddy?”

Sonic’s tone, when addressing Shadow, went mildly threatening and meant for him alone. “We need a strategy. Let’s walk.”

-

Surprisingly, Shadow followed without argument. Had he not, Sonic struggled to predict how he would have retaliated. Which was worrying, because he prided himself in keeping his cool. His temper he kept in reserve for Eggman, usually. His friends caught him before he listed too far in any one unhelpful direction, and they weren’t here. He had Basil, who got shot because his programming prioritized running over teleportation as if all the data he borrowed from mortals overrode most of his other coding. 

The bubble tech loomed above Sonic as a reminder of what he escaped once and what crowded him in now along with the rock and the earth. Hedgehogs burrowed to a certain depth; not hundreds of feet away from fresh air. 

Sonic was an entire ocean away from naturally forming loops, from villages with friendly faces, and from the chao that depended on him for answers. Sonic’s last run was towards the airship along a strip of tarmac entire days ago. The current of a river churned off to his right but him unable to identify where. Either it was too dark, or the river ran behind a cave wall, but he heard it pounding against the stone like it was waiting for him. The ceiling was still too high for light to reach.

Ambient energy soaked through his fur in a buzz of power along his spines waiting for use.

Sonic held it together until they were far enough down an offshoot that only one bubble floated serenely above them as a spotlight. He clenched his fists to keep from grabbing Shadow by his scruff and throwing him into a shoot of stalagmites. “You can’t scare the kid like that.”

Shadow’s cross-armed stance stood against Sonic’s declaration like a wall. “What he’s doing is disrupting the balance of chaos energy. We need to shut it down.”

“Right, but he didn’t know that!” Sonic reminded him. “Did you see how he reacted? Full panic mode.”

Shadow’s expression remained infuriatingly blank. “You can’t be certain it wasn’t a ruse.”

Sonic wanted to deck him. This was arguably the worst part of Shadow. He could tunnel-vision into an idea and disregard all the evidence to the contrary, no matter how high it stacked. If it didn’t fit in his narrative, he discarded it. “Damnit, Shadow- you don’t get to play peek-a-boo with him one minute and then accuse him of chao genocide the next.”

How was it only this morning that Sonic woke from the stack of dried palms, touched that Shadow moved him to a more comfortable spot in the night, and watched from the tallest nearby vantage as Shadow used his senses to track Basil’s moves? Sonic wanted to join, but Shadow engaging in his own play held Sonic captive. Shadow chose to put his head through the hole and spooked Basil for fun. Sonic could read through whatever flimsy excuse Shadow prepared if Sonic pointed that out; he knew what he saw. He heard the way Basil laughed.

Shadow stiffened, more walls thrown up. Sonic couldn’t tell if he lost precious ground or struck a winning blow. “We didn’t know what he was creating down here,” Shadow argued.

“But we got to know him,” Sonic shot back. “His motives are pretty clear, don’tcha you think? He was abandoned, he’s lonely, and he’s always been willing to help with whatever we asked. You heard Sage- she convinced him that he needed to prove his worth and now he’s down here cooking up hydrocrystals to make that happen. If we offer to help him find another way off this island without hurting anyone, I bet he’d take it.”

Shadow’s silence was just a prelude to more arguments. He created so many excuses to hide behind and call logic. Sonic pegged them as distractions from what Shadow refused to acknowledge, waiting to be mentioned. Or at least Sonic saw it that way, still hung up on what caused his hesitation at that critical moment when Basil broke down in the crystal antechamber. Shadow wasn’t going to bring it up, which left the job to Sonic. This far below the earth, he couldn’t help feeling like he was summoning a ghost.

 “...is this about Emerl?”

Shadow uncrossed his arms, fists dropped to either side. Gravel shifted out of the way of his air shoe as he slid a foot back in the start of a fighting stance. “Poignant observation,” Shadow sneered. “Wasn’t one of them enough?”

“You don’t know that Basil is going to turn out like Emerl. It’s completely different-”

“Saving Basil isn’t going to bring Emerl back.”

Sonic uttered the gizoid’s name in reverence; Shadow launched it as a means to punish Sonic for it.

“I’m not trying to bring back Emerl,” Sonic snapped, “I’m trying to save this kid! It hurt the first time for me too, Shadow! I was there too.”

Shadow acted like he was the only one who lost something that day. Sonic encouraged Emerl through his final minutes. He couldn’t give up. The gizoid bonded with so many of his friends and had taken on so many of their traits that it could be said he was raised by their village. He had a name, and wants. The others held hopes for Sonic and Emerl’s return. Sonic wouldn’t disappoint them by coming back empty-handed.

“Hey! Come on, Emerl! Let's go play! Everyone is waiting for us back home! Tails! And even Shadow and Knuckles!”

But it was Shadow’s creator who programmed the self-destruct sequence. It was Shadow who Emerl spoke to with his last words.

“Shadow... Should I be glad that...I was born...?”

They both stilled as if they heard the echo years later, brushing past them on the way down. Sonic threaded his fingers through his quills and gave a small tug just to put his tension somewhere that wasn’t in Shadow’s face. Then Shadow moved, and Sonic was ready to mimic his fighting stance, except that Shadow dropped it to lean against the wall like his thoughts required the extra support. 

The fight got knocked out of him and Sonic wondered what changed until Shadow addressed the opposite wall. “I said you couldn’t be present for anyone. At Emerl’s passing, you comforted others before moving on as if grief didn’t touch you. Why would anyone believe you suffered when you act unaffected?"

And Sonic…had no rebuttal. Because Shadow wasn’t wrong- Sonic blasted through pain to be a support for others. From the outside, maybe it seemed a little heartless. “I guess…people need hope, and I’m able to bring it during the tough times. It’s what I want to give to the world.”

“You mourned alone, then,” Shadow responded.

…had Sonic mourned for Emerl? Sadness like loss encumbered Sonic, and he lived a fast life. No baggage allowed.

“I grieved for you,” Sonic mentioned, froze, and turned to hide his grimace until he circled back and paced.

He hadn’t meant to say that. If Shadow reacted at all, Sonic missed his chance to witness it because Shadow was still staring ahead when Sonic turned around. “Rouge was really beat up, you know.”

“Did you give her meaningless platitudes too?”

Sonic paused when his pacing brought Shadow’s shoes into his periphery. “No. I gave her your inhibitor ring. And…yeah, I talked with her.”

Sonic felt a connection with Rouge that he couldn’t ignore. They’d both lost someone unquantifiable after the ARK. He sought her out and instead of the sadness compounding, it was carried by two. He imagined Shadow alone after Emerl because no one else was going to sit with him when he closed himself off. Sonic supported his friends, but they had each other. It wasn’t their creator who implanted the self-destruct sequence in their new gizoid companion. Sonic had really failed Shadow that time, hadn’t he? Even if Shadow stubbornly shut him out then too, Sonic suspected that just taking up space beside him would have made a difference.

The toes of his boots pointed towards the tips of Shadow’s skates. He read nothing in Shadow’s averted gaze beyond the usual ruminating. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you after Emerl.”

Shadow visibly paused. Doing the unexpected always gave Sonic a thrill, but catching Shadow off-guard meant Sonic broke through Shadow’s rigid control. Basically like defeating a god, in terms of difficulty.

“It’s passed,” Shadow dismissed him in possible forgiveness if you squinted.

Which was good- another tick on the scorecard. Friendship practically secured. Not that Sonic considered them friends until Shadow admitted it to his face, but his optimism made a roaring comeback. He nearly felt like himself again, yet there was still the issue that forced them into this offshoot, another friend who needed them.

The conversation felt easier to have if they shared the same wall. Sonic leaned beside him, watching Shadow instead of inflicting more cave on his senses. “Where Basil comes from doesn’t define the rest of his story- you of all people should know that.” Sonic braced himself, about to either ruin everything or get a win. 

“You don’t trust Basil, but you held him while he was getting erased. You could have just let him die and taken care of the furnaces like you wanted, but you didn’t. You gotta decide if he’s a kid or a threat, ‘cause he can’t be both. Pick a lane.”

More silence. By now Sonic wanted out of this hole, to recover the journal, and breathe in some fresh air. More gravel skittered as Sonic swaggered back towards the antechamber. “I’m going explain the chao sickness and why we’re extra interested in his Radiant Rift. You sit here and think about it.”

-

Sonic made his point. Shadow should have let Basil disintegrate, if he was so sure that Basil created the current global imbalance.

What they knew about the Radiant Rift went like this: the Rift interacted with chaos energy and Basil used it to create a new source of power. Chao across the world grew lethargic around winter, the same time as the completion of the first successful hydrocrystal. Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, but the evidence heavily supported their only working theory. The activation of this Rift and the hydrocrystal were somehow related to the odd chaos readings.

Even if he argued that they needed Basil to explain what he had done to the Rift, it was a paper-thin excuse. He wasn’t thinking about the Rift when he dove for Basil. He only wanted the boy to stop bleeding out in his arms.

Shadow was so busy arguing the pointlessness of trying that he didn’t even notice when Basil started to matter.

He traced it back. Basil’s determination to be more than his origins reminded Shadow too much of himself when he was still lost and looking for someone to point him in a direction, any direction. Basil’s defiance of Eggman mirrored Shadow’s rage against Black Doom. And memory leaks, regardless of biological or technological origin, created their own existential horror.

But maybe more than any of the ways that they related, their differences echoed a joy Shadow associated with better times. Basil turned life-threatening bridges into games, strutted towards Shadow with the fish he caught in swift paws, and kept the bell in his ear instead of redirecting power to his healing. Lucky socks.

“I didn’t mean to,” Basil whispered. “I wanted to help.”

Rouge correctly declared Shadow emotionally compromised.

So where did that leave Shadow? Sonic outlined the choices; either trust Basil or thwart him, no middle ground. Laid like that, he may as well shed the pretense.

When Shadow reached the outside of the antechamber, he saw Sonic returned to his crouch on Basil’s right with the bell earring swinging between them and Basil excavated from the depths of his collar. The repair function display had disappeared and the frame looked like it was holding. At Shadow’s approach, Basil’s thin attempt at a smile towards Sonic dropped, replaced with the same defiance Shadow witnessed at the edge of the pond. 

Shadow didn’t miss how Sonic propped his elbow on a knee and planted his chin in his palm, blocking Basil partially out of Shadow’s view. Sonic wore bored with admirable conviction, as if he knew Shadow’s answer and barely tolerated the formality of listening. Not that Shadow was addressing him anyway; this was for Basil.

“I spoke hastily,” Shadow started. The snort from Sonic he beat back with a glare before Shadow continued. “The Rift and the hydrocrystal both require more investigation. We came here looking for answers or a possible solution to the energy imbalance, and that is our primary purpose.”

“Speaking for both of us, okay,” Sonic cut in, “I’m right here-”

“However,” Shadow continued, “I will take on a secondary mission; freeing you from this island.”

Shadow anticipated both Sonic’s smug smirk and Basil’s confusion. Shadow chose to focus on the later instead of punching Sonic in his stupid jaw.

“...you said that the Rift was causing an imbalance,” Basil muttered. “You said I was trying to dominate the world because of my lousy programming.”

Shadow earned Basil’s disbelief considering his behavior before the quake. “Not my exact words,” Shadow corrected. Sonic scoffed then, rolling his eyes, and Shadow’s annoyance spiked as he beheld Basil performing the same gesture independently. More evidence of Sonic’s contribution to Basil’s personality index. Emerl, too, adopted Sonic’s cocky mannerisms that persisted until the end. Same story, a different actor.

No- no. That wasn’t right. Sonic had his rare moment of wisdom in the cave that he shared with Shadow. Where Basil comes from doesn’t define the rest of his story- you of all people should know that.

“I can’t condemn you for ignorance,” Shadow explained. “Based on your behavior, you’ve given me no reason to believe you intended harm. I still maintain that this Rift is part of the problem, but we need to understand how.”

“You’re…” Basil hesitated, “saying you were wrong?”

“I made a mistake,” Shadow confessed. “I’ve made many and hope to keep learning from them. I apologize.”

Shadow rarely apologized. Apology implied regret, which he went out of his way to avoid. If he offended Rouge, she let him know about it and he made up for it in actions; Shadow doubted if Omega experienced offense at all. Words were inferior means of conveying intention, anyway. 

However, he used Rouge’s graciousness with him as a crutch. He could do better, or at least try.

Basil’s full-blown wonder was an immaculate reaction to behold; the red hues disappeared under the ripple of white light bouncing off of him like sun glare off a speeding racer. It was just a moment, a lightening-fast reaction, gone as quickly as it arrived. Shadow blinked from the radiance with spots of color briefly dotting his vision. The light obscured Sonic from view. In the aftermath, Shadow sought him out as if they were real teammates waiting for a cue-

The awe from Sonic was far more subtle. He bore a slightly hanging jaw and his eyes flared with electric neon green. Shadow felt as if Sonic reached out to rotate his many jagged edges, heady with the excitement of a new discovery.

Basil’s grasp held no warmth when he took up Shadow’s gloved hands, but Shadow sensed the chance for trust given back. He watched Basil’s smile curl as if he too had known Shadow’s answer all along. “We’re gonna be okay,” Basil said.

“Not my exact words either,” Shadow pointed out.

“Nope,” Basil grinned, “they’re mine.”

-

The mechs hadn’t moved but were now boxed in with scaffolding and pocket-sized drones fluttering around making necessary repairs. Sonic saw a swarm of butterflies once not too dissimilar from how the micro-drones landed on the surface of the mechs and performed their work under the shield of their wings.

“That’s neat,” Sonic cheered as they approached, addressing Gogo. “Did you come up with these little guys?”

“Yeah,” Gogo answered in distraction, her face buried in a console hard-wired to her suit. She gave off the impression that people asked her about the butterfly drones all the time and she’d run out of patience for it. Clearly she was one of those inventors that was already three inventions ahead of herself and didn’t bother looking back at her past work. Ruth, meanwhile, yanked thin but sturdy nylon ropes through anchor points on her own mech while drones secured a pulley to the ceiling above.

“You’ve rescued your thief,” Ruth noted, one boot braced against the chassis as she heaved a line through.

“Not a thief!” Basil exclaimed, chiming with his sudden leap into the air. He floated back down as he continued with sulky admittance, “I didn’t mean to steal it. I wanted to give your journal back but I thought you’d shoot me. And I was right!”

“Ah? So tell me then, little puppet-” Ruth tied off her rope with a figure eight knot, “why did you take it?”

“I tried telling you already but you didn’t listen,” Basil sighed, “I wanted to learn more about you.”

“Ahuh.” Ruth eyed Basil, the ruddiness in her face deepened by her physical exertion. “And why do you care to learn about me?”

“Because you’re a Robotnik!” At her bristling offense, fists clenched at her sides making Sonic think of a particularly mad apple, Basil hurried to add, “I mean that I was technically made from Robotnik parts, but I don’t want to be a part of the Eggman Empire. You seemed like someone who could maybe understand what it’s like to think you belong somewhere and realize…you don’t.”

Sonic saw how Basil was putting himself out there, hovering hopefully so that he and Ruth were eye to eye. Sonic had to give it to Ruth- she appeared unflappable, letting her fists rest on her hips. Were he to bet, Sonic couldn’t be sure who to put his money on for the staring contest. Basil might have been AI, but he often defaulted to mortal behaviors. Ruth Roussos gave the impression that she had stared down gods before and made them cower from it. “Very well, little puppet. Will you give me my book back?”

“Yes!” Basil jumped. “You can have it- we’ll walk you to it.”

Ruth’s rumble of curiosity sounded deep in her chest as she cast her gaze across the three of them before swiveling back to Basil. She reached out to touch him and Sonic had to give into a leap of faith, signaling to Shadow with a cut of his hand through the air to let this play out. 

While Sonic tended towards optimism, Shadow’s acquiescence still surprised him anyway.

Her large, knobby hand landed on Basil’s curls and gave him a ruffle. “Then be a good boy from now on. I won’t be so generous if you steal again, hm? Now show me.”

Chapter Text

Gogo’s drones made quick work of the mech repairs, and once the suits regained mobility, they followed along behind the five of them like mechanical elephants. Dimly lit tunnels brightened with an influx of bubble lights, and in short time, the city twinkled at them with midnight blue hues. Shadow flanked Basil’s left, Sonic on the right, their positions communicated with just a glance. 

They had come a long way since Sonic purposefully maneuvered himself between Shadow and Basil, both in the bunker and in the cave.

But that was Sonic—quick to forgive. Basil too, but Shadow wondered how much of that forgiveness came from a fear of abandonment rather than actual trust in Shadow to behave better. Basil acted satisfied with Shadow’s word alone, trusting Shadow to free him from the island, but now it was up to Shadow to deliver.

Shadow expected to find a lead for Basil’s problem after conversations with either Rouge or the fox, and they were due to arrive soon. The fox was a natural problem solver, and Shadow doubted the boy could resist a challenge like the one Basil presented. One problem at a time, though—restore the chaotic energy balance to the planet. He suspected their best chance at understanding the Rift and its impact meant allying themselves with their attackers.

Ruth declared that her sister wrote kindly of him; that assertion in a vacuum meant nothing. He lacked context to give her claim any weight. Then, without the heat of battle to narrow his focus towards survival, he noticed details about the girl while she struggled with her belt.

Her dirty blonde hair yanked at her skull from how tightly it was wrapped in a ponytail high atop her head. Dusty blue fatigues bore the wear of regular shop use with stubborn but faded stains. Her face was set in a grimace, angry and desperate, but he recognized the determination. He’d seen the same subtle clench in Maria’s jaw just before the blood draws, a rare flintiness. This girl’s face was slimmer, older—she got to live to her teens. Her eyes, as she calculated how to enter into a fight she knew she stood no chance of winning, had a hard hazel quality like the bark of pine in winter. Earthy, grounded, where Maria’s reflected a dearly remembered sky.

“My Marigold is named after her, you know."

Ruth Roussos looked nothing like Maria. It must have galled her how much she inherited from the Robotnik line with that striking nose and the long braid of auburn hair.

Ruth walked with certainty, like she knew exactly where she was going, but with effort. She was slightly out of breath but resilient during their climb back up, unwilling to stop while Gogo kept her hovering discreet. The girl only peeked when Ruth cursed under her breath, and that seemed more out of disapproval than concern. Shadow noticed Ruth subtly favored one knee over the other. He attributed her adjusted gait to a prior accident from which she never entirely recovered. A risk taker, Shadow guessed.

“You stare so seriously,” Ruth exposed him. “You have questions.”

Shadow took the opening given. “You told Basil to be a good boy when only half an hour ago, you shot him. Your actions are contradictory.”

“He was a threat,” Ruth answered simply, without shame. “Now he is not a threat, so there is no need to fight. He is turned against Ivo, like Omega.”

It startled Shadow to hear one of Team Dark brought up so casually, completely out of the usual context which suited the mention of his name. Ruth’s belly laugh had some rasp and weight to it, confidently filling the cavern. “I have tracked Ivo’s work for years. I know his enemies. It helped that Blueberry sided with your puppet.”

“I’m not a puppet,” Basil piped up. “My name is Basil.”

“And I’m Sonic,” the ‘blueberry’ added, throwing another bored look with his hands locked in his quills, his elbows flared to either side. “Sonic the Hedgehog.”

“Of course I know you,” Ruth cackled. “Who has not heard of Sonic the Hedgehog, the great hero? You are very short,” she tossed out after a puff, heaving a boot over a particularly tall boulder.

“I’m average height for a hedgehog!” came the rebuttal. Basil’s choked laugh between them made Shadow’s smirk swing higher across his cheek.

“But now you are here,” Ruth sighed, “so the door will open soon.”

A statement which meant nothing to Shadow, but Gogo cut in before he asked Ruth to elaborate.

“Yaya,” Gogo began, already exasperated, “he’s literally a chaos user. He’s here because the Rift is opening, and anything with even a little sensitivity is going to notice this place soon. There’s no prophecy being fulfilled.”

“One day,” Ruth sniffed, “you’re going to understand that the world is made of patterns, Blossom. You will read them like me, and you will say, ‘Oh,’” Ruth clutched at her chest, “‘if only I had listened to my Yaya! She was so wise.’”

The Robotniks produced exhibitionists, Shadow scowled to himself. Maria was a child and prone to play-acting; he’d never know if she would have grown out of it.

“A door?” Basil asked, and Shadow swore he sensed the swish of a long, dorsal-embellished tail.

“The true entrance to the Rift,” Ruth explained, “the real one, with the tunnels for the activation pair.” Their incomprehension earned a spittled scoff. “Pah! You’ve not read any of my work, and you are here? Really,” Ruth rambled, “I should have been a hero, if this is the kind of luck that comes with it. Save my back from excavation and no Chaometric specialists; they speak alphabet soup with their acronyms. We will grab my journal, and I will show you.”

“You’re being awfully forward with all this information,” Sonic commented, which surprised Shadow. He’d been about to say the same thing.

“Because now you will help me,” Ruth announced with confidence. “You are Sonic, you save the world. You would not be here if the world were not in peril, and the answer may lie behind the door.”

-

They rode up an elevator powered by springs to the topmost layer, the one with the best vantage point to view the whole of the city. It didn’t look like a house. Instead, they climbed into a ship carved out of the stone with the prow aimed over the terraces. Almost as if Basil wanted to leave the island so badly, he cradled himself in a boat so he could at least pretend he had the choice. On the deck was a treasure chest, and inside of that was the book.

“This is impressive,” Ruth commented as she looked over the ship, peering over the balustrade, watching the various ancient machines at work. From up this high, Sonic saw that the construction continued on the higher levels with the bots working the gorge face from the floor upwards. Their numbers weren’t as numerous as he first assumed. Sonic spotted a few deactivated models hosted in the carved domiciles propped against the walls and wondered if Basil had tried activating more before he ran into issues. It made sense that, if Basil iterated on the furnaces, reprogramming the battle units took a few passes. 

It didn’t make Sonic any less uncomfortable, though.

Ruth, who carried around cyberspace-specific artillery (Sonic wasn’t forgetting that anytime soon), beckoned Gogo with a snap of her fingers like she expected the girl to materialize instantly. “There, Blossom, look at this. Just like in your proposal.” She gestured to the city whose occupants were all at work, more like a wind-up clock than a town.

Sonic wondered if he broadcast his concern the same as Gogo did, like she was looking at a future apocalypse and trying to plan a way to out-maneuver it. She and Silver could start a club.  “My proposal is nothing like this,” she decided eventually, her grip tight on the balustrade. “I don’t want to build a revolution on the backbone of technology we can't understand. Ivo’s stupid choice to even try is all ego.”

“You wanted to convert his machines,” Ruth pointed out.

“I want to scrap them for parts,” Gogo corrected her. “Build whisp-compatible units and require consensual use, like wispons.”

Sonic tried pinning down her age, but her word choices, her pin-straight blond hair tied up high and tight, and her cornflower blue fatigues skewed his guesses. Her passion for her project lit her up, warming the hazel of her eyes, and Sonic couldn’t believe he ever thought she was older than fourteen.

“Wispons, huh?” Sonic asked, arms akimbo.

“Right,” she started, pacing as she thought. “We set up an organization to train villagers in mech combat after they pair with wisps, and it works for everybody. The wisps get protection from Ivo and his awful machines, and the villagers get to defend themselves.” Gogo caught on to her own excitement, and Sonic felt a stab of disappointment as she clamped down. “It’s not important,” she dismissed. “We got what we came here for, let’s get out of—”

She, along with the rest of the group, exclaimed in surprise and covered their heads as a kaleidoscope of butterfly drones rushed around them, engulfing the group in an iridescent cloud. The smack of their wings pelted against their bodies, but not maliciously. The butterflies flew with purpose while Sonic and the others just happened to be standing in their way. After a turn around a bend in the gorge, they disappeared from sight except for a few stragglers.

Well, Sonic decided—that was weird.

Which was when Gogo advanced on Basil with fists balled at her sides, ready to deck him. “What did you do?”

“What?” he yelped, backing away with a gesture of surrender. “Nothing! I don’t know why they took off!”

Sonic and Shadow stepped forward together, ready to intervene, and Sonic noticed how Shadow only moved as far as him into a prepared stance. They both read the other’s cue: hold until we’re required.

Sonic was stupidly relieved. This belonged on the scorecard somewhere, right? One point for Sonic, who managed to talk about Emerl and not scare Shadow away with it. Another point for mentioning the ARK and talking about grief, even if unintentionally.

Sonic…really hadn’t meant to share that with Shadow. He wasn’t sure why it made him so uncomfortable to let Shadow know how much his apparent death affected Sonic. Hauling up that baggage he thought he took care of broke the illusion that he discarded it, he guessed. But once it was out, Shadow seemed to open up a little more. If not with words, then with the indirect way he accepted Sonic’s apology.

“Where are they going?” Gogo demanded.

Basil’s response surprised everyone almost as much as the butterflies; his grimace transmuted into a grin of such delight it was almost a little unnerving. “OH! I know exactly where!” He took Gogo by the wrist, the girl crying out a defiant “Hey!” as he darted down a flight of steps and gestured them all to yet another spring-loaded elevator. Sonic wished for more rails, but that was a personal preference. “Come on! Come on, come on, you’ll see.”

When the platform lowered to a mid-level terrace, they all disembarked with wonder, slowing their steps.

Nothing in the garden was naturally occurring. Different paths led to a gazebo, to a pond, all of the winding paths surrounded by varieties of flowers in the same blue with purples and pinks thrown in for variety. Nothing was obviously wrong with the layout, but the details disrupted what was, on the surface, an everyday landscape. Some flowers were duplicated and too close to each other, so it was obvious that they matched. Some of the paths led to nowhere. But the most visually stunning feature had to be the tunnel of translucent wisteria, their petals reminding Sonic more of jellyfish than plants. Care had been taken to get the impression just right.

The butterfly drones shared his opinion. Most of them gave away their positions among the bloom with an intermittent flap of their metallic wings.

“I made this,” Basil beamed.

“You don’t say,” Sonic laughed. “I was gonna assume the mechs had a gardening hobby.”

One drone landed on Ruth’s headlamp. More flapped to other parts of the garden, but a few decided to make friendly with Shadow, perching on his topmost quill bundle. Rather than swat them away like Sonic expected, Shadow only frowned. He raised a fist upon which landed another butterfly, and his face reminded Sonic of a startled cat, eyes narrowed. Sonic started to wonder if Shadow liked felines so much out of a sense of kinship, preparing to voice the comparison.

But then he caught how Shadow’s instinct to fight gave way to something else…and Sonic stopped himself before he could get a cheeky word out. 

Shadow studied the little butterfly drone which crawled along his inhibitor ring with singular focus—not to hunt for weakness, but out of curiosity. Shadow so rarely showed emotion outside of neutrality (if that even counted) and rage, yet fascination pierced through the posturing. It always came off a little grumpy, but if Sonic had the right angle, he could almost see Shadow’s thoughts burning in his eyes like a solar storm. Shadow’s wonder for the world roared in him like an inferno.

Oh, hey, there’s that queasy gut flip again. Time to focus on something else.

The drones interacted with Basil like they recognized him, landing in his hair and on the brim of his collar. He held one up on a finger, tapped an antenna to his nose, and watched as it fluttered to Gogo. She watched it land on her headband, her confusion growing as Basil sent another her direction. After the third, she finally acknowledged Basil, though it was clear that she did so as a last resort. “What are you doing?”

“Butterfly bounce,” he answered. “Well, that was what I called it. Don’t you remember?”

Gogo’s stare remained annoyed and vaguely puzzled, so Basil elaborated. “I used to bounce the drones on my nose and send them to you—” Her expression went stiff, urging Sonic into another defensive stance. “—And you would send it back—”

“That was with an animal,” Gogo muttered, dismissing her drones with a head shake. “Not you.”

Basil, taken aback but undaunted, hovered closer to her and caught the drones on his arm. “That was me, though. And we can do so many more games now that you know who I am—”

“I don’t know who you are,” Gogo snapped. “That’s the point I’m trying to make.”

“Well,” Basil tried, “we’re related a little, right? I could be like a cousin, or a brother!”

The huff out of Gogo sounded hurt, as if she’d been slapped.

“You think because you were made by Ivo Robotnik,” she wavered over the name, “that we’re somehow related? You’re not my brother. You’re not my friend.” After a miserable moment, words sinking in, she raised her chin with more of her righteous hurt, and Sonic could tell she was about to say something she’d regret just from the way she bit her lip. “You’re somebody’s freshman CompSci project.” She turned away, a handful of butterfly drones trailing after her as she hurried back towards the elevator.

“Hey!” Sonic cried, “I’m calling foul, kid! Let’s keep it classy.” 

Gogo kept walking like she hadn’t heard him, surrounded by her creations who fluttered in agitated stabs.

“Ah,” Ruth sighed, “I will talk to her. Then together we will visit the door, hm?”

“Sure,” Sonic agreed for the rest of them. Any excuse to follow up on information related to the Radiant Rift seemed like the smart bet.

Basil remained suspended where Gogo left him. He lost some of his animation in a haunting callback to the crystal antechamber, all the signs of biological processes removed. No breathing, no dart of his pupils, just Ruth’s nickname come true; he was as empty as a doll, the symmetry of his face obvious and too flawless when he wasn’t moving. Gogo had just come up, destroyed Basil’s enthusiasm with a few hurtful accusations, and left him to hang. Sonic had to hand it to her—she had a gift for precision.

“Just give her some time,” Sonic advised, patting Basil as Shadow resumed his place on the boy’s left. “Misunderstandings happen. She’s angry now, and she has to work through that first. I’ve made friends out of worse situations.”

Basil didn’t respond at first. He seemed soft-locked, and Sonic couldn’t even read if Basil was processing anything because the usual tells disappeared. Briefly, Sonic wondered if this required a reboot of some kind—what did you do for an AI experiencing heartbreak?—when a bump against Sonic’s fingertips directed his attention to Shadow’s gentle touch at Basil’s back, mirroring Sonic. Their gloves brushed, Shadow’s fingers spread wide and solid against Basil’s coat. Between his digits sat enough space to lace their hands together.

Sonic dragged his tongue against the back of his teeth, noticing his dry mouth. He counted to three, let his eyelids droop in disinterest as he kept the grandmother/daughter duo in his sights, and propped his fists on his hips. Yeah, that was natural. He passed.

Basil’s irises whirled like the shutter of a camera. “That’s you, though,” Basil muttered. “I’m not a hero.”

“Not yet,” Sonic insisted. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

“But I bet you never lied to anybody,” Basil noted. “She’s right. She thought I was an animal, not…” he stopped, and Sonic had a wild moment of panic as Basil’s lips curled into his mouth and clamped tight, a dam built to hold back tears.

“You disguised yourself in self-preservation,” Shadow observed, and thank you for finally joining the party, Shads, way to leave Sonic in the lurch. “You acted reasonably, given your situation. It was a necessary deception.”

“But she’ll never trust me again.”

“Possibly,” Shadow asserted, and how was this supportive? “The only agency you have is over yourself. You feel badly for deceiving her and can choose to apologize. It’s her choice to listen.”

“You know, it woulda been helpful,” Sonic asserted with a swipe under his nose, “if she had been honest with him about how he hurt her instead of punishing him for it.”

“...He’s only apologizing for what he believes he’s done wrong,” Shadow hedged. “If she keeps her pain to herself, she’s entitled to her privacy.”

“Sounds like a good way to keep everyone away,” Sonic pointed out.

“Handing out your vulnerability without trust is foolish,” Shadow snapped.

“So what,” Sonic turned, “she’s just gonna be lonely for the rest of her life because she sees everyone as a threat? Friendship is a risk, but if you don’t take it, then you’re just an island! What kind of life is that?”

“A life with purpose,” Shadow growled—Sonic felt the exhale of it against his muzzle. “Connections are costly and a distraction from commitment to a worthy cause.”

“Protecting the planet doesn’t excuse you from living in it,” Sonic snapped back.

“Are you talking about her whisp tech?” Basil asked, hovering uncertainly at their sides. They'd moved in front of him at some point, lunging at each other like dogs. Way to model conflict resolution.

“...Yes,” Shadow deflected, the coward, resuming his place.

“...Anyway,” Sonic sighed. Ruth waved them over, signaling their conversation over. Gogo had already climbed back into her mech suit, repairs to the cockpit apparently done. “Shadow’s right about one thing—if you think you did something wrong, apologize so you don’t live with any regrets. She can accept it or not, but you gotta try.”

“Okay,” Basil agreed after a pause, fiddling with his bell, “I can try.”

As they approached the waiting mechs, the drones returned in a river of color above them, streaming from the tunnel back to their creator. It was strangely beautiful and gave the gorge an otherworldly feeling that evoked awe instead of dread—made the city more alive. Sonic wondered if Shadow felt the same, but Shadow stared straight ahead the entire walk back.

-

The network of tunnels inside the cavern disoriented Shadow. The mechs navigated corridors without pause, just steady stomps echoing around them without giving Shadow much to do except maintain watchful vigilance. That, and ruminate.

Shadow tired from giving so much of his attention to the blue idiot, but idleness encouraged thinking, and Sonic made himself a nuisance in Shadow’s head.

Basil elected to ride atop Ruth’s mech, because of course he did. Sonic joined Basil on the other shoulder, which left Shadow to play passenger on Gogo’s suit. The butterfly drones all compressed themselves into a hatch on the back like a reverse cocoon, except for one that insisted on settling atop an inhibitor ring. Sonic complimented him on his new fashion accessory and bemoaned his lack of a matching one for himself. “We could have been twinning!”

Annoyingly insistent. It didn’t help that the wings were predominantly cobalt blue with white speckles on its nitinol-forged frame and tipped in streaks of red around the head.

He didn’t owe Sonic anything, least of all his vulnerability when Sonic zipped past his own grief with a ruthless efficiency that Shadow would almost admire if it weren’t so pointless. Shadow would know. He tried to outrun Maria’s memory up until he tripped over his intrusive daydreams and was forced into resolution. Changing beliefs about himself took time. His monstrous DNA manifested in flashes that still overtook him if he wasn’t quick enough to remember that he commanded his destiny, not an absent hivemind.

Shadow didn’t ask for Sonic’s apology over Emerl; he didn’t make his chosen isolation Sonic’s problem. That was years ago, and Shadow promised not to linger in the past anymore. But Sonic slipped up. To his credit, he recovered well, but Shadow read Sonic’s body language with the fluency their rivalry encouraged in order to stay on top.

Sonic openly admitted to grieving for him when, to Shadow’s knowledge, Sonic slowed down for nothing so heavy. Sonic’s brief rigidity afterwards gave Shadow more reason to believe him. After all, Shadow knew what Sonic looked like when he was caught off-guard.

Which made Shadow ask…why?

Why him?

When Sonic already had friends, what compelled Sonic to seek connection with Shadow? At first, Shadow assumed a bull-headed stubbornness or unchecked ego. Turning his back on Shadow after the end of a conflict wasn’t enough for him, evidently. Sonic said ‘friendship,’ but Shadow heard ‘temporary distraction.’ Sonic grabbed Shadow’s attention when it suited him. But Sonic also believed in him when Shadow needed it most, if only because Sonic had no other choice at the time.

“You’re our only hope now!”

The comet, Black Doom, saving the world. He might have been destined to arrive at exactly that point in time with the choice in his hands, but it was Shadow who ultimately decided how to use the powers bestowed to him by the chaos emeralds. And Sonic trusted him. Not just with the salvation of the planet, but with Tails’ panic attacks and his fingers in Sonic’s quills. Trusted him enough to fall asleep against him. Which could mean nothing. To Sonic, most everyone deserved his trust until they proved themselves unworthy of it.

Not usually, Shadow admitted, to the degree that Sonic allowed them near his ear.

Sonic purred atop Shadow’s thighs with vibrations that reminded Shadow of his motorcycle. The power of the engine Shadow drove with the turn of the throttle and a shift of the gears; Sonic did as he pleased, out of Shadow’s control. Sonic begged. His nosing disturbed the fur as he inhaled against Shadow’s belly. “Just don’t stop.” 

“We’ll head down this one,” Shadow heard in Gogo’s voice. It took Shadow a moment to identify the spots on the drone that housed speakers.

Around him, the cavern interior changed from naturally formed to purposefully carved. In front were two archways—the choices. He hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation carried around him, which was a startling lack of awareness on his part. One mech entered right, the other left, and soon the only light filling the hall came from Gogo’s suit.

“Where is this going?” Shadow asked, reluctant to admit he hadn’t been paying attention but more concerned about being prepared.

“To the door we can’t open,” the butterfly emits in Gogo’s voice. “One leads up to a second floor with a viewing ring. It’s more than a spectating platform, but I haven’t proven it yet.” Her voice dipped as she added, “There’s chaos traces near the door in a blast pattern projecting outward. Something important is behind it.”

“Or a trap,” Shadow suggested.

“Or…a trap,” Gogo agreed. “It could be a fake lead. More tricks.” Her breathy laugh crackled from out of the still wings. “I thought I was better at seeing through lies by now.”

Obvious bait. If he took it, he condemned himself to this conversation.

“You’re not talking about just Basil,” Shadow muttered despite himself.

For a few steps, he supposed she missed his comment as she offered no answer, the mech carrying on down the tunnel. Then: “No one wants to support a robotics line led by a Robotnik. We don’t even share the same last name,” she seethed, “but everyone knows who I’m related to. They just wanted my patents, not me.”

“You don’t trust your judgement anymore.” A familiar doubt of his.

“I learned my lesson—don’t trust anybody that acts like they like me. If I’m going to get my funding for my program,” she muttered, “I’ll take the best offer, not who’s the better actor.”

Shadow only guessed at the circumstances around the Professor’s deal with Black Doom. To what degree did desperation, hubris, and curiosity inform his choices? Would he have agreed  were he less desperate? The Professor earned his inflated ego; he created life from literal chaos. If he knew the future he chose and were offered to change his mind, Shadow imagined his creator adjusting his lenses with the determination to get it right, this time. Fail until he succeeded.

“If they intend to use your technology against your original design, what would you do?” Shadow wondered, curious.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“...Professor Gerald signed his contracts with good intentions,” Shadow began. The mech rattled mid-step, as if recalibrating. Antagonizing his only ride while secluded in an underground tunnel reeked of egregiously unwise decision-making, but he risked it. “Despite that, he had little authority over the outcomes of his research projects.”

“Professor Gerald was a madman,” she muttered. “Or did you not watch that broadcast?”

“How do you know about it?” Shadow asked. “You must have been a child.” The events happened nearly a decade ago. She couldn’t have been older than four.

“Because my family never lets me forget,” came the pronouncement like a scythe.

It wasn’t Shadow’s job to dismantle a lifetime of bad faith storytelling. He owed nothing to Professor Gerald or the kin who believed, perhaps rightly, that he abandoned them. But the truth might save this girl who had the Professor’s ambitions as well as his legacy to shoulder—and Shadow was the last vault of knowledge save for classified G.U.N. files.

“They have a version they told you,” Shadow asserted, “but not the entire story.”

The speaker crackled, audible over the whirring of mechanical trundling and the hiss of loosened earth falling from the ceiling. From outside the tinted glass of the cockpit, he watched the shape of her ponytail swing in an irritated shake. “Are you seriously going to defend him? He wanted destruction of the planet!”

“So did I,” Shadow admitted.

The whine of overtaxed servos signaled the mech’s halt. His vision of the tunnel interior swayed, balance readjusting while he tried not to pitch forward. With the last echoes fading, Shadow noticed the low drone of a constant draft and subtle shifts in the rock, clicks and distant booms of strata squeezed against each other in an eternal fight with gravity. When Gogo’s voice projected from the butterfly, it bounced off the walls without the competition of machinery at work. 

“...but, why?” Her silhouette darkened the glass of the cockpit, a statuesque shape. “You saved us once.”

Twice, Shadow thought, but as he initiated the first disaster, it felt like a moot point.

“Humanity killed my only friend,” he said instead. “I carried out what I thought was her wish for revenge. The Professor’s hurt ran as deeply as my own—he tampered with my memories to ensure I carried out his vengeance.”

Maybe that was why he believed the falsified wish. The real Maria loved the planet and saw the good in a creature like him. For her to condemn an entire world betrayed the natural kindness in her heart. Not even the threat of death removed the loving smile from her face as she ejected him into space.

“Most of his creations had a dual purpose,” Shadow continued. “One to appease, the other for himself. Most of his inventions were made to help. Even the cannon,” Shadow mused. “Though it was an answer to a problem he created. Most of all, he wanted a cure for Maria. That’s why I was created.”

“He kidnapped Maria,” Gogo insisted, a convenient bit of fiction on her family’s part with no one around to refute it.

“Maria either died on earth,” he explained, “or survived in space under the care of a fleet of scientists. Which was the better option?”

No response, though he knew she heard him. The dark shape of her fingers fluttered against the dash in harassed drumming. He picked up the sound of the others somewhere above them but too faint to pinpoint with any accuracy. More whirring muffled through layers of sediment.

“You can’t tell me he was a good person,” Gogo tried at last, her figure stilled again.

“No, I can’t.” Shadow’s passing theory on what constituted a ‘good person’ needed finessing, most data points based on a girl’s haunting smile and Sonic’s obnoxious grin. Even by his loose metrics, Professor Gerald missed the mark. Labels as simple as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ lacked the nuance required for someone as complicated as the Professor.

“He loved his granddaughter and did what he thought was best for her. His family grew to hate him,” Shadow recounted, “then the agency that funded his research used his own creations against him. He never trusted anyone—he assumed he was smart enough to dupe them.”

That was the trouble with geniuses. When they believed they were the most intelligent person in the room, they were often right. Why hand out trust when you believed you could outthink any unfavorable outcome?

“So what,” she laughed, surprisingly panicked, “Professor Gerald might not have made a death ray aimed at the planet if he'd had a friend?”

Her terror sounded lonely, and there was an anxiety to her question, as if Shadow’s answer were judgment cast upon her. Up ahead, where the headbeams failed to reach, rested an eternal darkness that would resume once they left. His stasis chamber looked much the same where imagination festered with fear and ruminations. They were merely passengers headed towards a destination, two voices surrounded by reverberations and the speaker’s static. 

“Nothing is that simple.”

Likely not the answer she wanted, but she kept her silence. He let her keep it, giving her time to unpack his meaning and hang all the connections between her and her predecessor like laundry on a line.

“...Okay,” Gogo sighed, “you wanted to destroy the planet. Why didn’t you?”

“Someone believed in me,” was the cryptic answer, but he elaborated. “They reminded me of Maria’s true wish, to give the planet a chance. I honored her request.”

There was a pause in the transmission, the sound of someone holding their breath. “I keep—” she started, stopped. “I keep giving people a chance. I don’t want to get hurt anymore.”

“Then,” Shadow began low and unwavering, “you fulfill their expectations. An isolated genius, same as The Professor.”

Up ahead, towards the exit of the tunnel, soft illumination pierced through the gloom like a lonely star. The others arrived, likely confused and waiting for the other mech. She started up the walking cycle. By Shadow’s estimate, they had about fifteen minutes before they reached the rest of their group. He assumed they finished their back and forth until the butterfly gave another single flap, a twitch of its antennae.

“How did you let people in?” she asked.

Tough question. Shadow wasn’t a genius, and so his loneliness didn’t equate to the same kind of threat as Gerald. Yes, other people saved him from making a horrible mistake. He learned to break his isolation by accepting insistent invitations. Rouge, Amy, even Sonic. He had enough to keep him tethered to the world he protected. He didn’t need more. He might even be happy.

“I didn’t,” Shadow told her. “They barged into my life. But I don’t regret allowing them to stay.”

At least to the extent that he let them in.

When they crossed the threshold of the arch at the end of the tunnel, the conversation got swallowed up and left behind. The pressure from the crystal antechamber returned, his skin suddenly too tight. Within a few paces, the floor curved down into a crater where, in the center, stood a raised dais that beckoned him to step forward. He was tugged to its platform with the gentle but firm coaxing of a friend who forgave you for arriving late. Shadow tensed, tightening his grip on a hold.

The butterfly flap distorted Gogo’s snort. “Ready to solve a puzzle?”

A human using him for another experiment, but his participation was solicited rather than a forgone conclusion. A choice, still his, even if fate put him here. The difference mattered, even if the outcome remained the same. 

“If it brings us closer to an answer,” he intoned, “then tell me what to do.”

Chapter Text

Sonic got serious deja-vu, but he’s entered a ton of similar layouts like this one during his adventuring career. He half expected the Egg Golem to rise up from the center of the ground floor, as if they walked into another hidden Eggman base.

Carvings adorned the walls of the circular arena-style theater, but without a translator Sonic was limited to appreciating what they added to the whole ‘lost alien civilization’ aesthetic. Not the same visual language as the Ancients, though. The Ancients markings plunged across surfaces like a box cutter. Lots of slopes and harsh edges. These flowed like ribbons as they twisted up into the domed ceiling, the various tripods of harsh work lights illuminating the cavern.

Sonic peered down into the first floor. The track upon which he stood encircled the whole room, like an observation balcony for spectating whatever happened inside what he was privately calling the Pit. It was like being inside a stone marble as the first floor reflected the ceiling in shape; smooth, round, with a single strip of steps leading to a raised dais in the middle. A bowl, Sonic decided, waiting to be filled up. 

The walls of the Pit perimeter depicted more of the same ribbons all leading to a giant door, probably three times as tall as Ruth, sealed like a crypt. Now that he was paying attention, Sonic noticed the ribbon motif flowing on the floor of the upper landing’s walkway. Like lanes on a racetrack! Oh, he missed running. 

“A good discovery,” Ruth grinned to herself. “This site predated the Ancients! I can prove it, assuming the specialists ever do anything useful with my samples.”

“None of this is in any cyberspace databases,” Basil murmured in wonder. “How did they miss this? This island-”

“-was part of the original Starfall chain before Dark Gaia blew the fault lines apart. The seams didn’t line up on the repair, eh? Sloppy work, that Light Gaia.” 

Sonic attempted defending Chip’s honor, but Basil beat him to it. “He can’t fix everything Dark Gaia destroyed.”

Odd. Basil sounded almost defensive.

“Do you want the story or not, little doll? Hmph. Now, there were protections placed on it, cloaking, but not by the Ancients,” Ruth explained as she rummaged in one of her many pants pockets until she withdrew a handkerchief. “Wonder who was here before! I surmise pre-Gaian, natives, but another civilization too. The ones responsible for the Radiant Rift. It’s always aliens.” Her nose blow rivaled a war cry from Knucks by volume and ferocity. Sonic sympathised with her nasal passages.

“So what’s behind that door?” Sonic asked.

“The million-ring question!” Ruth chuckled, stowing away the hankie. “Controls for the Rift, I am hoping- a way to shut it down. We can only know once we find the key that unlocks it.”

“Can’t your rock-busting toys knock it open?” he rapped his knuckles against a dusty metal leg.

“Oh, yes,” Ruth sneered, “and throw away my professional integrity all because I couldn’t exercise a little patience.”

“You made it sound like we were on a time crunch!”

“I said the end of the world was coming,” Ruth sniffed. “I didn’t say when.”

Sonic wasn’t about to make comparisons outloud, but boy did he think them. Theatrics really were a Robotnik staple, huh? He was kind of desperate to know what Shadow thought about the unexpected family reunion. Sonic meant to ask while they checked on Basil, but the thought got derailed by necessary intervention. The results of which far exceeded Sonic’s optimistic expectations! 

He hoped for Shadow to back off on the kid or at least reconsider his approach, but to take on Basil’s liberation as his own mission meant no more second-guessing. They’d be aligned on another mutual goal as there was no way Sonic planned on abandoning them once they figured out the Rift. Basil’s freedom was a foregone conclusion.

Which Sonic forgot to mention, actually; that he’d be there to help. He didn’t usually bother explaining his actions, he just did them. They spoke louder than words ever could. But Shadow so often assumed sole responsibility for his missions that Sonic was left chasing after him, offers to help rebuffed. Better to catch Shadow now and assert his intention, see if that made any difference. Sonic doubted it but at this point Sonic wanted to try any new angle to and find what stuck. So far, opening up to Shadow dismantled at least a few bricks in the guy’s walls.

With a tingle in his quills, Sonic noticed the second half of the duo parading into the lower chamber through an open arch. Both he and Basil clung to the rail around the perimeter of the upper deck, though Basil half floated so it appeared like he was trying to keep from drifting away rather than bracing himself for a plummet below.

“Oh,” Basil breathed, “this is the chaos chamber you wrote about.”

“In my very private journal, Little Doll” Ruth harumphed, to Basil’s sinking dismay, his feet touching the floor after he deflated like a pricked balloon.

“Why do you call me ‘Little Doll’, anyway?” Basil muttered.

“You try having many grandchildren! See how well you remember all their names. But nicknames,” Ruth insisted, “you do not forget.” She ruffled his tumble of curls for good measure. Basil wilted under her touch, an almost imperceptible flinch with his eyebrows cinching. Not in rejection, but like he held affection in gloved hands, uncertain what to do with it once he had it.

“So,” Sonic nudged him, “chaos chamber?”

“They found chaos energy traces on that platform,” Basil pointed, where Shadow stepped down. “Up here too,” Basil added. Then, with a shy grin to Ruth, he added, “your diagrams were very good.”

Ruth chuckled, susceptible to flattery if her broadening grin meant anything. “You appreciate quality artistry. Then you know what we suspect.”

“You need chaos users to test it out,” Basil answered.

“Yes! So,” Ruth shooed at Sonic, “what is your saying? Go quickly!”

“Close enough,” Sonic muttered, re-evaluating what he jokingly called a track with renewed interest. A glance down again at Shadow confirmed that they both agreed to act as test dummies, the other giving a curt nod to Gogo’s cockpit, then communicating to Sonic with a single look. Ready when you are.

Sonic crouched into position, lengthening out the arch of a foot as he dug his toe in. Did he need to stretch? No. But he felt Shadow’s eyes on him, so the first run in a while required a little showboating. Annoying Shadow before a run enriched the overall experience. Sonic performed better under Shadow’s desire to not just win, but beat Sonic, the crowds and outside purposes fading away. Just Shadow’s intensity at his back and a goal.

“Go, hedgehog,” he heard, thick with exasperation. That was the cue Sonic needed.

He started off slow, a nice trackable sixty mph. The ribbons brightened beneath his feet and when he glanced into the center, the bowl around Shadow’s platform filled with a similar glow. The floor handled him fine, so Sonic kicked it up. It felt to him like he was running on literal light while illumination enfolded him. This spin around the circuit was the closest he got to this kind of rush in a while, since the bridge.

Sonic lacked a competitor up the track with him; he resisted spying on Shadow in the Pit. Their last argument left an unresolved thread flapping around in Sonic’s chest ready to trip him up. He just didn’t get how Shadow chose to put his faith in Basil and then say ‘connections are costly’. So then, what had all the sharing between him and Sonic meant? Was Shadow actually giving Sonic real opportunities, or was he just placating him?

Talking about Maria, giving him ear rubs, then shoving him off the log without an explanation. If connections were ‘costly’, was sharing Maria even about Sonic, or was it just Shadow recovering what he could of a past life with Sonic as a ‘rubber duck’, like Tails would say? The conversation about Emerl Sonic had tallied as a win, a point, but Shadow only made observations about Sonic and asked questions, never stating outright that he wanted someone to sit beside him as Shadow grieved for Emerl. Sonic inferred Shadow’s feelings rather than Shadow sharing. When had the ball ever been in Sonic’s court?

His feet disappeared into red impressions as his legs pumped. Sonic escaped the dank cave, the island, free and hopped up on the one thing that stripped him of all his worries. Thoughts disintegrated until his lungs and legs finished a circuit of movement, until he transformed into wind and he left the prison of a physical form. 

He couldn’t even be sure if he was being metaphorical, which should have worried him more.

-

After the first ten laps, an eighth of a second, the basin in which Shadow stood filled with viscous luminescence. Raised above it on the dais, he noticed his chaos energy feeding into it, sustained by the bare trickle that he passively generated. He relaxed when the liquid reached a maximum height, brightening as he consciously pumped chaos energy into the system. Gogo told him to discharge what felt comfortable while they recorded their findings, Sonic performing the same task up above him.

Sonic’s form blurred around the edges until he turned into a streak of blue and the ring upon which he ran shimmered. The track was lit, their only requirement, yet Sonic increased his pace. He went from fast to wind-churning, the industrial light cages rattling on the walls. Shadow stood in the eye of a storm, sensing the chaos energy that Sonic absorbed and dispersed with the same recklessness he displayed running across the bridge the first time and fighting the mechs. 

With the mechs, Sonic lost himself and only returned once Shadow had him pinned to the floor and shouted about the human child. He projected a blankness Shadow didn’t have time to examine before they confronted Ruth, but he marked it as odd. The hope that Sonic exuded during these brawls got replaced with the efficiency more characteristic of Shadow. No secondary perspective to keep them both in line.

Shadow wrote off the bridge as Sonic acting without foresight, same as when he dove after the Ancient in the tunnel and they fell into the underground city. But when Shadow lined up the oddities side by side, he traced a thread of desperation up to the strange intensity of the run above him.

While Sonic barely stayed tethered to the world around him, now he moved like he had nothing to hold him down, no one holding him back from reaching his zenith. 

Shadow imagined pulling the energy into him, surprised when it complied.

Sonic flung chaos like darts; Shadow dragged those in too, their aftermath prickling across his skin like static. A barb of energy lanced his arm, leaving behind a puncture that healed almost as quickly as it appeared. More potential gathered around Shadow with the force of Sonic’s quills in a spindash. Shadow had endured dozens of impacts like it before. Only days ago they tumbled down the cliff face beating each other against the rocks with intent to hurt. 

Shadow doubted the other considered the damage he inflicted as he ran, only his own selfish desire to keep moving whatever the cost. Shadow almost forgot, between the bunker, the campfire, the “I grieved for you”, that Sonic dropped whatever held his attention in favor of the next thrill, leaving Shadow to pick up the pieces.

Alone, like Shadow preferred.

The energy stopped flowing towards him and instead got directed around him in a sphere. If he couldn’t absorb it, he could at least manipulate it so it caused the least harm. The longer he stood, the more energy he gathered until he surrounded himself in a near solid wall of chaos. His purpose here was clear; take on the storm. Stand resilient. Endure.

Through gaps in the field that sparked around him, Shadow witnessed beads of the liquid pool coalescing into a floating orb. It shined like a pearl, slick with rainbow iridescence, hardening until it’s glossy surface solidified with perfect symmetry. With the hovering of a dandelion puff, it floated towards Gogo’s mech. Only then did Shadow see Gogo, not safely ensconced within her suit, wrenching at a mechanism on the metal arm while Basil floated nearby, his back hunched but the rest of him insistent. Whatever he said irked Gogo enough for her to abandon her work and make her counter argument. Neither of them noticed the orb.

Shadow prepared to shout for her to go back inside, but his jaw locked up. When he tried to move, his legs remained anchored in place. His arms, in their relaxed pose, stayed rigid as he encouraged them to move. He tried blinking his eyes. He managed once.

Shadow had no way to warn the others that something had gone horribly wrong, only able to watch through a constantly shifting gap.

What happened next played in slow motion, the seconds extended past their reasonable length. The pearl headed towards the pair like a comet. Basil gestured to the mech. Gogo turned her back on him, resuming her digging into the suit arm. Basil’s fists balled at his sides, a flare of anger rippling across his wireframe before he turned his back on her too, giving up. The orb picked up more of the chaotic energy and Sonic disappeared in a blur of light. The orb looked ready to release it’s building potential. 

Shadow stood on the outside looking in. With his extremities locked, he only had his thoughts. If he and Basil had a cyberspace link open he could warn them, but Basil was the one who controlled the digital channel, not Shadow. So often, Shadow found himself at the end of an open line that he refused to answer. He rejected the extended hands he took for granted, showing up for others at a respectable distance. 

 “Friendship is a risk, but if you don’t take it, then you’re just an island! What kind of life is that?”

Sonic had no room to preach. He talked about friendship, but the depth of his relationships went no deeper than a puddle. Shadow at least made his walls obvious to others with stone-faced silence or outright dismissal. Sonic lured people in with a veneer of friendliness but no substance. He didn’t open up, he deflected. Same problem handled differently. The hypocrisy required an ego as big as Sonic’s to back it up.

But Sonic grieved him.

The bit of evidence that didn’t file neatly into Shadow’s expectations, nor did Sonic sharing stories about raising little brothers with panic attacks. When Shadow expected Sonic to fall apart once Shadow goaded him into a fight, Sonic paused instead. 

“You could laugh with me. I thought we were going somewhere with the sharing.”

Shadow looked up to the upper deck seeking out Sonic’s frame. He searched first with his eyes and then with the grip on the chaos energy shedding off of Sonic in sheets. Shadow used it like a rope, pulling upward, alarmed when the signature that was uniquely Sonic had the heft of a grass blade. Was Sonic going to leave him buried under this weight? Leave everyone behind in the fallout? Not like Sonic to fight without wanting to open up his opponent’s eyes to a better life, nor be so blunt as to call Shadow the Loneliest Lifeform when Sonic normally led with light ribbing. Where was the anchor in Sonic’s life that kept him from blowing away?

What is making you run so far?

Sonic’s signature snagged on Shadow’s question. It startled Shadow, but inspired hope. He asked more loudly, throwing it into his hold on Sonic’s energy like another hook. Why are you running? Where are you going? Why are your friends missing? He could nearly feel Sonic at the other end, almost grasp his presence in the howling of the twister. Why do you want to be friends with me?

Because I care, was the rejoinder. And then the room flooded with light.

-

“How unexpected.”

Someone was talking to him. A throaty alto–Ruth? She spoke, but processing meaning taxed him. Probably not important. If it was, he lacked a means to respond. Talking required a mouth and lungs. Thoughts, too. Sonic slugged through an inhale, checking off an imaginary tick. Great, lungs, meaty air passages. He guessed that mattered. With the gritty floor against his cheek, he decided bodies were overrated. They either felt too much or not enough. If he turned to stone, another relic for archaeologists to lose their minds over, it’d change nothing about his current circumstances. This must be how boulders feel, theoretically. Existing, objectively, but indifferent. Nerveless.

A set of arms hauled him up, one under his back and another looped behind his knees. The ceiling arches disappeared, replaced with intense pockets of shadow shifting around stalactites. The headlights on the mech suits made everything look sharper, gave every nook some teeth.

Running fixed problems. If he needed a good think, he ran. If he bubbled over with energy looking for release, running took the edge off. When his thoughts got too loud, running cured that too.

When he ran, he entered a domain belonging strictly to him. He was just Sonic, alone, all his organs and limbs working together better than any machine. Sure, the speed got him from point A to point B, but so did a plane or a train. That wasn’t the point. The first set of footfalls preceded a question: How far can I push it? What’s my limit? 

Winning, he liked winning. Addicted to it, to the detonation of nerves along his spine when a heavy hitter went down in a micro-quake, his quills still steaming from the friction of a spin-dash. The high nearly matched fighting badniks. He let his muscles do most of the thinking; they knew better. He got to feel it in the backseat. His heartbeat, sluggish at rest, knocked against his ribs with a frantic cry of ‘I’m here!’ and carried that message through his veins, until he radiated with life. It was as close as he got to going super without chasing down over a half-dozen shy rocks.

It was proof, too, that he liked his own company enough to want it all the time. 

His friends deserved to make the roots he couldn’t. Yeah, he enjoyed the frictionless routine he and Amy performed, the flat of her hammer shooting him into enemies with the force of a cannon ball. She wanted to build things, though, and that took sticking around in one spot to nurture a dream into a reality. Not Sonic’s speed. 

Knuckles tumbleweeded through the world after he put duty down and let himself wonder what else was out there, much like Sonic. That was a rootless way to live! Except he had Rouge with him, and even without her by his side at the party, Knuckles carried himself with a steadier presence.

Sonic knew what having a home in someone else looked like. 

They were each other’s first safe place where they put all their loyalty without hesitation. Brotherhood showed Sonic how to love with everything in him and how to stick around for the hard parts like thunderstorms and a bi-yearly case of the sniffles (always around extreme changes in the season), the stuff he had to just tough out on a couch. They chose each other, which was the best part. And when Sonic needed a place to crash, Tails left his workshop open for him.

Tails called himself inconsistent, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. His brother was the most consistent presence in Sonic’s life. He had to be the proudest sibling of all time; just look at all that his little bro accomplished! He had every reason to brag.

“I can’t grow into my own potential if I always fall back on you.”

"It's going to take some getting used to, but here's to you reaching new heights- partner."

The changes came fast, or Sonic left too much space between visits. His brother went from ‘Tails’ to ‘Miles’ and Sonic missed it.

He needed to move. He was running out of time. He had to get back to Tails before it was too late.

“Let…me…go,” he enunciated through clenched teeth, his jaw locked.

“Do you want me to drop you before we reach fresh air?” That was Shadow. If Sonic focused, he noticed a bassy tempo pounding against his temple. Another heartbeat.

They’d not surfaced from the subterranean network. He sucked in breath, all the damp, thick air carrying humidity and dust. It lacked oxygen, dense as soup, and another breath confirmed the futility. He needed air, real air, and not this stale stuff coating his throat in dirt. His legs floated in front of him where he expected them to be. An attempt at a kick caused a twitch, or maybe he imagined it when Shadow jostled him.

“Just hang on.”

“Can’t…do much else, Big Guy,” Sonic managed, less labored this time.

“Except talk, apparently.” Shadow rasped, sounding not much better off than Sonic.

“Wasn’t it…you wh–who said my silence was a bad omen?”

Sonic felt arms squeeze him closer. “Keep talking, then. We don’t need more misfortune.”

“Not words…I ever thought I’d hear you say in that order.”

“Not to be repeated.”

“C’mon, Shadow,” Sonic grinned, or tried. Hard to tell when he barely felt his own face. “You’d be bored…without my charming conversation.”

“Less irritated, you mean.”

“And yet,” Sonic rasped, “you can’t resist joining in.”

“To correct your delusions,” Shadow insisted.

“Since when…did what I think matter?”

With how Shadow held him, Sonic’s angle forced him to observe the underside of Shadow’s muzzle and the swivel back of Shadow’s ear tips. “When your thoughts get us nearly killed, it matters.”

The running. The ribbon burning up the soles of his shoes. 

He squinted into the sudden onset of daytime light and wished for a pair of sunglasses. If he had to guess, judging by the intensity, they were somewhere past mid-day, early afternoon. “Is everyone okay?”

“Yes,” Shadow settled on eventually, without conviction.

Sonic went quiet, listening for the stomps of the mechs in the background of their conversation. Two sets of footfalls. If they were moving, then nothing too catastrophic occurred during his blackout. Unless, Sonic supposed, they rushed in search of immediate medical attention. “What does that mean?”

“Marigold climbed out of her mech. Basil shielded her from the explosion.”

Sonic tripped over Gogo’s legal name and the severity of Shadow’s implications. “Are they-”

“Everyone is alive; you suffered the worst of the injuries, as you deserve.”

“I didn’t know…” He left the end unspoken.

“That your reckless behavior endangered the whole group?” Shadow finished for him, the unforgiving bastard. “Your job was to give them data; go implode on your own time.”

Implode? “What does that mean?” Sonic challenged.

“That your unusual behavior hasn’t gone unnoticed,” Shadow growled. “Or do I need to point out the dents from your quills on the mech suit?”

Not his finest hour. None of the hours on this island could even be called mediocre by his standards. 

Sonic protected people when he saw trouble. He cheered his friends on when they needed their spirits raised. He liked lending a helping hand. But how could he also be the guy so lost in his own head that he didn’t even noticed he set off a bomb of his own making? 

He didn’t endanger people (not on purpose, anyway). He gave everyone, even the most undeserving, as many chances as they needed to make a different call. It didn’t always pan out for him, but it wasn’t his right to take away anyone’s liberties. When the choices harmed others, he stepped in and took action.

So who was this guy that put his friends in harm’s way? And what stopped him?

Last he recalled, he floated above the track. His feet kept him moving. He nearly answered the question of how far, but he carried too much weight still. Too much baggage. He shed his worry about Shadow. Then the chao; he’d leave that to Chip. Amy planned plenty of parties without his input; discard. Knuckles kicked off on his adventure, Sonic’s mission to support him accomplished. Tails finally escaped Sonic’s orbit and grew into Miles.

But Sonic needed Tails.

Without a brother or his friends, who was Sonic? Not the same guy who endured cyber corruption if it meant rescuing his pals. Without them, he was just a guy who loved adventure. Just feet running around in circles.

He had feet, didn’t he? He thought he did. He thought he had friends, too.

Who were they, again?

What is making you run so far?

A question he’d like an answer to himself, were he honest.

Where are you going?

No clue. Going somewhere implied he inhabited a body and that he moved from point A to point B. He wasn’t entirely convinced that he existed. He felt his edges dispersed across the air, stretching to an infinite horizon. There wasn’t much left that retained the ability for thought, or identity.

Why are your friends missing?

Friends; right, he had friends, didn’t he? Family, friends, people he met along his journey through life and who left their mark on his heart like a fingerprint. If he concentrated, he found where this voice left it’s imprint. Not on the surface, but deeper. He grabbed hold, remembering gloved hands and the way the water roared a mile down. How he leapt fearlessly. How Shadow’s grip wasn’t a tug of control, but an acceptance; I’ll join you.

Why do you want to be friends with me?

Because I care.

“I lost a point,” Sonic muttered.

A huff. “What are you talking about?”

“I give myself a point,” Sonic explained, “when I’m a step closer to your friendship.”

Sonic traded off a point and assigned it to Shadow, who wasn’t even playing. But yanking Sonic back into his body counted for at least a point, probably two.

“Is my friendship a game?” Shadow asked with an unnatural evenness.

“No,” Sonic slurred, “No, no. It’s just. How I measure…the gap. Between us. Maybe I shoulda,” he grunted at a sudden leap from Shadow, “used a different metric, huh?”

Shadow didn’t respond, so Sonic looked up. The scenery changed, but every jungle tree appeared the same as any other. Sonic had no idea where Shadow or the others were headed. He glanced to his left, examining the horizon line, and made out the curved facade of a building half buried under jungle vines and the dense canopy. They were high up on a mountain face, the elevation such that the building had an uncompromised view of the twin volcanos.

“How do you decide when you’ve earned a point?” Shadow asked. Sonic almost forgot what he meant. Thoughts were as hard to hold onto as water.

“Hmm? I guess…when we talk about hard stuff, like Emerl, and you don’t walk away. Or…” His chin drooped to his chest. “When you let me lean on you. Take what I say seriously, like with Basil. When you were kind about my nightmare.” He closed his eyes to better focus on Shadow’s heartbeat, pounding with rhythmic precision. “When you took my hand…across the bridge.”

“How do you win?”

“When you call me your friend,” Sonic confessed. “I think I’m about to pass out.”

Sonic probably hung onto awareness long enough for his mind to piece together that he wasn’t in danger anymore. Shadow successfully stuffed him back in his meat suit.

“I’ll be here,” Shadow told him, like Sonic needed the reassurance. As if Shadow hadn’t spent the last several nights standing guard against threats both real and imagined.

“I know,” Sonic whispered, letting his full weight fall against a white fluffy chest before he succumbed to darkness.