"No!" Shadow shouted as he slammed his fist into the computer console. "How could it fail again?!"
The hedgehog grumbled as he went through the computer's programs again to see what had gone wrong this time. This should have worked this time; this was going to be the one time that it was going to work for real. Several months ago, Shadow had found an old laboratory that the Ancients used for something similar to life longevity, or maybe even resurrection. And for months, he had worked tirelessly to use that very technology to bring back something he had lost years and years ago.
Shadow typed up a command in the console and a message flashed back at him. After reading it, Shadow nearly hit it again. "Batteries? It needs batteries?! What kind of stupid Ancient technology needs batteries?! Stupid son of a-"
"Special delivery for a Mister Shadow the Hedgehog!"
Wait, what?
Shadow turned from the console to look down at a yellow cube-like robot who held out an envelope for Shadow to take. The hedgehog didn't take the envelope and went back to the console.
"Buzz off." he told the robot tonelessly. "Go take that envelope and shove it up your gears, I'm doing something important that can't be done unsupervised."
"I was told by Doctor Eggman that I give this to you whether you reject it or not." the robot then informed Shadow, shoving the envelope even closer to the hedgehog. For some reason, it smelled like someone had dumped a bottle of vanilla perfume all over it. It made Shadow sick.
"Please dude, just take the thing." the robot told Shadow. "Eggman's gonna get mad and think I didn't give it to you if you don't take it now. He might even scrap me if he's in a bad mood (he really likes you, you know)."
"Good." Shadow hissed as he snatched the envelope from the robot. "Now go away."
"Yessir!" the robot agreed with a salute before quickly going away. Shadow rolled his eyes before looking down at the envelope with a measure of disgust. The perfume was giving him a headache now, and it had been sealed with an embossed logo of some quack with a mega ego. Curious for a second, Shadow opened the envelope and skimmed over the contents of the letter inside.
'I, Ivo Robotnik, formally known as Doctor Eggman, do hereby ask of you, Shadow the Hedgehog, to attend a meeting on…'
With a grimace, Shadow crumbled up the invitation and tossed it over his shoulder before going back to the console. He had heard about that doctor for some time and he wanted nothing to do with him at all. Rumor had it that he kept being beat by a stupid blue hedgehog that Shadow had met before and no longer wanted to do business with. The old man must have been running out of ideas if he had to resort to trying to reach Shadow- who had done all in his power to stay as silent and out of the way as possible after discovering the Ancients' technology.
Behind the console, a capsule with a sickly, translucent fluid started to glow. The fluid slowly started to pulsate as a figure was just barely able to be seen through it. Shadow only happened to look up at this time and when he saw the figure within the fluid, his pupils shrunk in horrified astonishment. Without thinking, Shadow rushed to the capsule and placed his hands against the glass that separated him from the creature on the inside.
"Y-you're alive…?" he questioned through the glass. "I-it's working?!"
Shadow looked over the capsule as if he had only imagined the movement from inside, but deep down he knew that he didn't. Without warning, a hand slapped against the glass from inside the capsule. To any lesser being, they were have jumped back in surprise or shock, but Shadow remained where he was to stare at the hand as if it were nothing more than a little fly that decided to land there.
"I won't give up." Shadow then proclaimed before hitting his fist against the glass. "Not when we could be so close..."
Suddenly, Shadow was hit with an idea as he turned to look back at the crumbled up invitation on the ground.
"Robotnik..."
Shadow walked over to the tossed invitation and read it over. Apparently this… Eggman wanted to capture a common enemy? A stupid little blue blur that couldn't mind his own business needed to be stopped once and for all, right? Too bad Shadow didn't care about that pest at the moment. Reading more, Shadow found that Eggman wanted them to meet at his liar that Saturday around seven in the morning. It seemed kind of early, but it was going to be at Eggman's liar so it became almost a better deal for Shadow.
"Do you really think he'll have what we need?" Shadow asked as he turned to the capsule. The hand was no longer on the glass, and the fluid had stopped pulsating. It was almost as if the display from earlier had only been a dream, brought on by Shadow's own will to cheat death.
"I'll go." Shadow decided as he looked back down at the invitation. "But don't think for one moment that I'll enjoy it! In and out, that's all I want. I'll be back soon as I can Maria- promise."