The powder-blue sky was smudged with clouds, but the air was crisp and the breeze was gentle. Each breath polished your thoughts to crystal-clean sharpness and made your lungs feel like they were sparkling. The afternoon sun was bright, but not harsh. All in all, it was a beautiful day.

Big frickin' deal. Amy Rose stomped down the sidewalk, gripping her pink backpack so hard her knuckles were probably turning white under her gloves. Man, she hated beautiful days. They had a lot of nerve, only coming around during the school year. The grotesquely pleasant weather only made the load of homework weighing down her backpack more difficult to bear.

The cool wind blew from behind her, and a crispy leaf skittered into her path. In her angst, Amy wasn't exactly paying attention to the sidewalk. She trod upon this specimen of optimal autumn crunchiness, splitting the air with a delicious pop – talk about salt in the wound. Amy yearned to fling her knapsack into the wild blue yonder and tackle Sonic, wherever he was, into a pile of leaves; sadly, this was not an option.

She had book reports to do, after all; and after that at least a solid hour of worksheets, and character analysis journals, and essays about Napolion, and then there was that big history exam looming on the horizon... ugh, there was so much! The enormity of the workload was difficult to contain in her mind, let alone feasibly finish. It was enough to crush a girl's spirit. Somehow, she soldiered on, though she heaved a bitter sigh.

School was just so inconvenient! And, compared to the adventures she had when she was chasing Sonic, it was boring as crap – she couldn't imagine how anyone would prefer mundane school drama to the heart-pounding adrenaline rush that cracking down on villains offered. Amy knit her brows in frustration. If only her friends were beside her to help whether the pain – but Cream was a first-grader, and Big was too old. No, she had to endure this torment on her own. And it really was torment: every moment she spent chained to her desk was a romantic moment with Sonic she'd never have; every moment she wasted in the airless classroom was a moment she could have been wrapped around his hunk-tastic arms.

Sonic didn't have to go to school. He was smart and cool and successful already; high school had nothing left to teach him. Obviously, Tails didn't have to go to school, either - he took advanced college courses online just for kicks. Knuckles presumably absorbed knowledge from that rock he sat on all day. And, as far as Amy knew, Shadow had gotten all his schoolwork out of the way back in ancient times, when he was still an icky alien larva or whatever.

The guttural roar of a motorcycle suddenly rattled the air. Amy's ears pricked up, and she whirled around – her face fell when she recognized the hedgehog thundering down the street on his Hurley-Jacobson.

A sudden, chilling fear gripped her ribcage like an icy metal hand. Not Sonic. Not now. Not like this.

Amy turned and bolted down the sidewalk, the incriminating backpack bouncing on her shoulders. She hoped she could get to her apartment before Sonic saw her like this – yeah, he probably wouldn't care that she was involved with the education system like a normal kid, but... gosh, it was so embarrassing! The Hero wouldn't comprehend the plight of the pitiful schoolchild, either. He'd think she was making a big deal about jack squat - which was completely true, but also unbecoming.

Luck was not on her side, however; she ran out of breath just as the motorcycle encountered a stoplight. The two hedgehogs were forced to stop.

Cursing luxuriously under his breath, the motorcyclist braked violently and managed to only wrinkle the pavement a little. The force of this abrupt halt was such that it practically flung the shades off his face. Officially irritated, he pushed his sunglasses back up his snout and grumbled something nasty. Red lights were such an inconvenience – especially this one in particular, since it was broken. All the time he spent sitting here was time he could have spent going fast, smashing robots, or even polishing his gun collection. What a worthless device...

Over the proud purr of Dark Rider's engine, a gross, wet sound rose to prominence and, conspiring to compound his irritation further, scraped across his ears like grimy sandpaper. He glanced to his right and identified the source of the ghastly noise as one Amy Rose.

She was doubled-over, emitting ugly rasps, with a strange apparatus strapped to her back. The point of this behavior remained unclear. Perhaps she was seeking to mock him by imitating that ugly prototype, the Biolizard? Whatever her intentions, she was making a fool out of herself.

"You're making a fool out of yourself," he informed her.

The pink girl jolted and straightened up quickly. Showtime! "Yeah, but..." She winked and struck a pose she thought was cute, almost toppling over in the process. "...oh, Sonic, my darling, I'm a fool for you!"

Shadow lowered his sunglasses to glare at her properly.

She beamed at him for a moment, uncomprehending, until recognition finally clicked – and her cheeks turned from peach-pink to a truly magnificent scarlet. "...Oh," she squeaked. "Heeyy, Shadow."

"That's the fifth time," Shadow announced, wearily. "This week."

It was Tuesday.

"Omigosh, I'm sorry, okay?!" Amy squealed, burying her face in her hands. "You just... looked... so cool... and Sonic-like..."

"Very cool and Sonic-like on my jet-black and crimson motorcycle, certainly," Shadow snapped. "Just the most Sonic-like thing in the world. Especially considering the dual vulcan cannons mounted on the back wheel and the symbol of the alien race I completely slaughtered emblazoned on the fuel tank as a war trophy. Why, the very definition of Sonic-like, I tell you." He jabbed a finger at Amy. "You, girl, have a problem."

"I said I'm sorry! It was an accident! What do you want from me?"

"I want you to cease confusing me with inferior beings, if it's not too much trouble."

Amy ground her teeth and made a strangled noise. "Sonic is not inferior, you jerk!" She stomped her foot for emphasis and whipped out her best case for Sonic's defense: "He's, like, totally awesome! You're just jealous 'cause he's way faster, cooler, and hotter than you!"

"Hmph." Shadow rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat. "Don't waste my time with your infantile adulation, Pinky."

"Oh yeah?" Pinky puffed up like an angry chicken. She didn't know what adulation meant, but it sounded like an insult. "What's got you in such a rush, huh?"

"Well," Shadow said, coolly, "I'm currently off to Club 'Rouge' for the afternoon tournament, and then, after I inevitably win, Rouge and I are going to have dinner and rob a bank or two; and then, I plan to go skeet-shooting with Omega at six, followed by fleet-shooting with the Doctor, and I'll see if I can't squeeze in a bit of vigilante justice before the Chao In Space showing tonight."

It was common knowledge that Club "Rouge" was a fight club, but you weren't supposed to talk about that. Amy groaned internally, agonized. That sounds like so much fun... "Huh! Big whoop!"

"Is that so?" Shadow casually leaned on Dark Rider's handlebars, smirking. "And what are you doing tonight, Miss Rose?"

The truth fell out of her mouth before she could formulate a suitably-impressive lie. "...Homework."

To this, Shadow raised an eyebrow, legitimately curious despite himself. "What's that?"

Amy couldn't believe it. Look at that creep, all high and mighty up on his tacky, over-grown Big Wheel... he didn't even know what homework was! Why, he probably hadn't suffered a day in his life, and here he was – cruel beast – dangling his I-don't-have-to-go-to-school privilege over her head, taunting her! Now, just for the record, Sonic wouldn't pull this kind of baloney on a lady. He was a gentleman. Amy herself couldn't fathom how she kept mixing the two blurs up.

She fumed for a moment, then relaxed. Clearly he didn't understand the scope of the torture she slogged through every day. Maybe she could still twist this to her advantage – anything to wipe that condescending sneer off his cool and Sonic-like face.

"Oh, didn't you know?" she said, sweetly. Her voice took on an air of mystique as she parlayed up her parleying. "Homework is a very... 'special' assignment, given to us students."

Shadow looked mildly intrigued. Emphasis on mildly. "Like a mission?"

Amy nodded enthusiastically, continuing in hushed tones. "Yeah, exactly! A daily mission, handed out by the school, that tests your intelligence and endurance. These things are serious business, Shadow. Each assignment is real difficult, and they always take a ton of time to finish... and you gotta be super careful the whole time, because even one error can mean..." - she drew a finger across her neck - "...if you get my drift."

For a moment there, Amy thought she had successfully impressed him – but then he scoffed. "Hmph. Child's play."

"It's not!"

"Whatever." Shadow glanced impatiently at the stoplight – still red. Damn, it was broken. "So... What's this... 'school' thing?"

Amy bit her lip and considered how best to twist her words. "It's like... a training center, sorta. You go there to learn how to survive the world. It's very stressful, because the tests are brutal and you gotta memorize stuff about old battles and junk – like, you need to know every facet of Napolion's three big mistakes and all that. So you don't repeat them, right? And then, after you study 'em in the books, you have to survive all the combat simulations in the gym, and that's no easy task. Children have snapped ribs attempting some of them... or worse! And I haven't even gotten to the cafeteria yet... the food is inedible on purpose, to get you accustomed to eating like, moldy old carcasses. You know, in case you get trapped in a cave or whatever. Finally, just when you think it's over, you have to deal with all this homework, which is basically just what they drilled into your poor brain all day, just for a second time. Oh, and the students are a bunch of morons."

"Yourself included?" Shadow sneered.

"That's not what I-"

The black-and-red hedgehog was focused more on the stoplight than Amy. "Seems awfully basic," he yawned. "Especially the homework, if it's merely a review."

"Well, it's not basic at all! I, unlike you, have actually done homework, so I can tell you – from experience – that it's hard!" Incensed, Amy planted her hands on her hips, rearing up like a cobra. "It takes me hours just to get my worksheets done!"

"I don't doubt it," Shadow drawled. "But you must realize, pink hedgehog, that I, unlike you, am the Ultimate Life form – and so I, unlike you, would eliminate this so-called 'home-work' in a matter of seconds." He idly picked at the fur on his arm as he calmly continued to explain: "When pitted against someone of my prowess, whatever passes as 'challenging' among your ilk amounts to laughable at best. It's simple math."

Amy's anger blazed up again. "What exactly are you trying to say? Huh? Are you calling me stupid?"

"Basically."

A gold-and-scarlet warhammer materialized in the girl's clenched fists. Screeching indignantly, Amy slammed her Piko-Piko mallet into the pavement. The concrete buckled on impact – everything in a ten-yard radius shook. "WRONG. ANSWER."

Incidentally, the tremor jostled the busted stoplight just enough to snap the lazy circuits back into working order. The light burned bright green and, wasting no time, Shadow gunned the motor – with a monstrous roar from the engine, Dark Rider shot down the street at full tilt, one enraged pre-teen in hot pursuit.

Swinging her hammer with reckless abandon, Amy charged after him with a ferocity that evoked visions of a starving cavewoman barreling after a potential meal. Not that it did her any good. Shadow smirked at the pink fool who, for all her bloodthirsty threats of impending bodily harm, was swiftly shrinking in his rear-view mirror.

He knew perfectly well that a school was a center of learning – learning of the academic variety, to be precise. The pink hedgehog's pathetic attempts to pull the wool over his conjoined eye were so pitiful they approached endearing, only to veer sharply away at the last minute. He could understand her reasoning, though. She was ashamed. Observing her tire out so easily from a mere sprint cemented it in his mind: school made one weak. It wasn't hard to imagine how, either. Sitting around, gathering dust in some educational facility for eight hours was hardly an optimal strategy for conditioning, physical or mental. The very thought of it sent a small shudder down Shadow's spines.

Suddenly, the weather seemed so much more beautiful.

Shadow grinned to himself as he launched Dark Rider off a ramp, pulled a sick 360 spin, landed on a telephone line, grinded for a few seconds while shedding a hail of sparks upon the heads of many confused pedestrians, and then hopped his bike onto Battle Highway. This thrifty shortcut saved him the five seconds that simply using the on ramp would have cost him. Plus, it made him look ridiculously cool. Those who can grind a motorbike along telephone wires are a distinguished few.

He switched on Dark Rider's stereo system and set off towards the neon-edged Night Babylon district, blasting Neutral Chao Garden at an obtrusively loud volume. "Let the coarse whimpering of Jeff Mangum herald my coming," he whispered to no-one in particular, and a scythelike smile edged across his face.

Briefly, Shadow turned his eyes skyward, absorbing the heavens through the lenses of his shades. Still were they beautiful. He thought of the poor pink wretch and his smile split into a full-fledged grin.

"Man, I am so glad I don't have to go to school."