He slashed.

He slashed, and slashed, and gored, and ripped up everything that was in his way.

But no matter how many times he tried, his heart just kept feeling bad.

That hollow feeling inside his heart stayed the same since the day GUN soldiers attacked the Ark. All his love ones were dead. One of them was Maria, what she said before her death had become a promise between her and him.

"Shadow… I beg you… let the people on that planet to live with their dreams… and be happy."

Shadow kept the promise, which was to avenge the victims upon the Ark, and kill the humans.

He ripped off the head of his another victim, and tasted the blood that spilled to his face. He looked at the blood that bloomed like red flower between the victim's head and body before he moved on. It was just like Maria's wound. She had a red blossom bloomed from her wound when she was shot, and he wanted every single humans had a flower on their chests, so that he could be contented from revenge.

Then something appeared in his way. And it surprised him.

Well, not very much to him at first, as he saw a hedgehog that was around his age (from his appearances) was kneeling in front of a fresh dead body. Its eyes were opened wildly to show the person's fear and despair and shock. And of course, the person was being covered in blood and burned skin. Shadow smirked cruelly: "You are going to join your family… in death."

What stopped him slicing the hedgehog in front of him into two halves was what the hedgehog was doing. The hedgehog turned to him in ease, chewing something in his mouth which made it a bloody mess. As Shadow looked into what the hedgehog was holding in his hand – a thing that looked like half of a stomach – his mind went completely blank.

Why the hell this kid's eating a human's flesh?

An explosion occurred in the background between them, and it seemed to be the calm before storm.

Yet, what surprised Shadow the most was the hedgehog's eyes – they were the same as his, no eye white at all and a pair of crimson irises. The hedgehog was in a kind of blue color, which had been ruined, or on the other hand if talking in the beauty of killing, was graced by blood and ashes.

"… I don't understand…" the ebony hedgehog murmured before he demanded out the questions: "What do you think you are doing? You should be concerned of your death!"

"Then what will you say…" the hedgehog swallowed the food down his throat before he spoke slowly: "I've been concerned about it every day in my life?"

Shadow was speechless, when did he concern about his own death? Or when he was living happily with Maria in the Ark, when did he ever concern about the end of those happy days before GUN broke in? To cover the truth, Shadow picked another question: "What about you then?"

"Oh me," the blue blur shrugged, "my friends had been always captured by a mad scientist, who wanted to conquer the whole world. Every time it risked my life to save them.

"You know there are chain events. Once you eliminate the threat, things that have relationships with the threat would avenge it. This is a bad cycle. But what's worse, if your friend has a link to the threat, sooner or later you have to wipe him or her out too.

"So why don't you eliminate the ones that are your friends and the threat, so that while you can suffer less from betrayal and puzzlement, your friend can suffer less from broken hearts?

"Also, being the ones get kidnapped aren't happy at all, and they after that want freedom i.e. death, so why don't you make their dreams come true?"

That's crazy. That was the first thing appeared in Shadow's thought. It seemed like they had difference purpose on murdering someone. But what they had in common was to use killing, to make they suffer less from their tragic past.

"So… what are you going to do next after you have killed everyone on this pathetic planet?" Shadow dropped down his chainsaw with a bit of interest in his words as he spoke.

"Well, probably commit suicide to join my buddies I think." The hedgehog sighed, "That's not fresh anymore," as he threw the bloody flesh away backwards before he started to speak again: "But during this time, I met you – a killer like me."

That was the first time after that genuinely tragedy, Shadow saw someone smiled from the bottom of his heart, like Maria. It was a very nostalgic feeling. His version seemed to be blurred as he felt his eyes were heated with tears.

"So what now?" The hedgehog looked down at the dead person again and reached out his hand, before his nails suddenly grew long into the open belly to drag out a liver, and hand it to Shadow. "Are you going to join me?"