Fair Warning
This fanfic is a Sonadow. Meaning Sonic/Shadow relationship. If you're really not into that, then consider this your one and only "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" warning, however there will not be any explicit content; such activities will take place behind a fade-to-black.
A note on characters' ages
Partway through writing this, I came to stumble upon certain characters' canonical ages. Before anyone else reaches for the brain bleach, let me establish that this was written with the following in mind:
Sonic - the birthday party in Generations was his 18th, thus making him a young adult.
Shadow - his age is basically meaningless as he was created in a lab, but physically the equivalent of somewhere in his early 20s.
Amy - a couple of years younger than Sonic, at 16
Knuckles - a year older than Sonic, at 19
Rouge - still her canonical 18
Silver - still his canonical 14
Tails - still his canonical 8
Other characters should be considered to be their canonical ages, unless stated otherwise.
Chapter 1
The Chaos Spear narrowly missed Sonic's head, close enough to scorch the tips of his ears. He ducked, rolled and came straight back to his feet as he kept running. "Hah!" he shouted triumphantly. "You're going down, Shadow!"
"You wish," Shadow shot back, although there was no real bite in his voice. A blast from his hover skates let him sail over Sonic's attempt at tripping him. "This time, it's you who'll fall."
The countryside sped by in a blur as the two supersonic hedgehogs raced, the miles passing by in moments. Sonic was grinning, clear joy on his face as he ran. "You're getting delusional, Shadow!"
"Hmph." Shadow's expression was as cold as ever.
Sonic ducked sideways to avoid a punch, laughing with sheer joy at the fun of the race. Privately, he suspected Shadow enjoyed it as much as he did; why else would his dark counterpart agree to race every time he asked? He curled into a spiky ball, bouncing off a rock and into the air. He uncurled as he reached the peak of the jump. "Take this!" He kicked out as he fell, his foot heading straight for Shadow's head...
"Chaos Control!"
He landed awkwardly as his foot connected with nothing but empty air, losing speed as he stumbled. "Where'd you go?" he shouted, but the answer came all too soon as a blazing kick hit the back of his own head. He fell, hitting the city street hard and sprawling into a gutter.
Shadow smirked slightly, skating straight over Sonic's prone form and coming to a halt in a square not far ahead. "So much for the 'fastest thing alive'."
Sonic picked himself up with a groan, running to catch up with Shadow. "You cheated!"
"You mean I won," Shadow corrected with a shrug.
"Yeah, right." Sonic could not quite help but smile despite technically losing the race. "Next time, try and beat me without a Chaos Emerald, we'll see who's really faster."
Shadow folded his arms with a small glare. "If you want me to humiliate you like that, then fine. Just name your time, and I'll beat you without Chaos powers."
"Same time tomorrow?" Sonic asked. "Unless Eggman attacks, then take a rain check until Wednesday?"
"You're on."
"Sonic!" A rapidly-approaching female voice was screaming his name.
Sonic's eyes widened. "Uh, gotta go Shadow," he babbled, keen to get far away before Amy Rose could arrive. "See ya!" He took off running again, leaving Shadow to deal with her.
"... and you know, Shadow's actually predictable about when he tries to trip me up. He always tenses up slightly, then glances over, and that's when I know to jump over it..."
"Sonic!" Tails interrupted. The little fox stifled a yawn, fiddling with one of his twin namesakes. "How many hours can you spend talking about one race?"
Sonic looked up at the stars, suddenly aware of just how long he had been sitting on the rooftop with his best friend, recounting the events of the race earlier. "Uh..." He grinned, easily turning the situation into a joke. "Oh, I'm good for another two or three more."
Tails yawned in reply. "Well, I'm not," he said, utterly failing to stifle it this time. "Goodnight, Sonic."
"Goodnight, Tails." Sonic looked up at the sky again, but there was a large patch of cloud over the moon. Sonic sighed in disappointment; the moon was supposed to be full tonight, and after the whole werehog incident he had somewhat enjoyed seeing that without turning into a gruesome monster. He looked at the stars again, and cringed slightly at the bad influence he apparently was when it came to setting bedtimes. There was maybe time for a plate of chili dogs before bed; after all, he would need to recover his strength for the rematch with Shadow tomorrow.
One plate turned into three plates, and it was a very happy - and very full - Sonic that was heading to bed later on. He had just settled down to sleep when he was disturbed by a loud pounding that sounded as if an army was trying to break down his front door. For a moment, he tried to ignore it, even sticking his head under his pillow, but all that achieved was a torn pillow and feathers in his quills. He groaned as the pounding only grew louder, stood up, shook off the feathers, made a mental note to ask Tails to invent a quill-proof pillow case, and went to get rid of whoever was at the door.
From the volume of the pounding, Sonic had expected to find either Knuckles, or an actual army, presumably of Eggman's robots. When he opened the door, however, he found himself face-to-face with a dishevelled purple swallow. He looked her up and down; her clothes were streaked with dirt, her trademark bandana askew and her feathers crooked and out of place. "Uh..." He blinked, half wondering if he was still asleep, and in that case whether he should lay off the chili dogs before bed. "Okay, Wave... couple of questions..."
She pushed past him without waiting for him to invite her in. "I'm not here because I want to be, you know."
He pinched himself hard, and only when he proved he was in fact awake did he reply. "Yeah, I kinda guessed that from the way you guys only ever show up when Jet wants to prove himself faster than me." He looked back outside. "Speaking of..."
"Shut the door, that's why I'm here," she replied with a sigh.
"Sonic?" Tails asked sleepily from somewhere behind him. "What's going on?"
Sonic's foot started to tap as he shut the door. "Serious question, Wave. Is this something I can deal with in ten minutes flat, or do I need to go make coffee?"
Wave shook her head. "It's definitely not a ten-minute problem."
He nodded. "I'll be back," he said, running to the kitchen. It was, perhaps, a testament to the number of all-nighters the pair had been forced to pull in fighting Eggman that Tails had invented the ultimate coffee maker, a machine capable of making a giant pot of caffeine in only moments. When he returned, bearing the pot and three mugs, he saw Tails handing Wave a cleaning rag, and the swallow wiping some dirt that had apparently jammed in one of her Extreme Gear's jets.
Wave sighed in frustration as the rag only succeeded in making everything worse. The hoverboard, about the size and shape of a wheel-less skateboard, was now about as useful as one. "I'm going to have to get this properly cleaned out, or it'll never run long enough to get back to the others," she muttered aloud.
Tails opened a door, looking somewhat fluffier in his pride. "Why don't you use my workshop, Wave? We can talk about whatever your problem is while you fix your Extreme Gear!" When she only nodded distractedly and walked into the workshop he whispered, "Sonic, I think she's really freaking out. She hasn't bullied me once yet..."
"Okay, that's weird," he whispered back. "For Wave, that's like..."
"Like you not feeling like running," Tails finished.
"Pretty much." Sonic headed into the messy workshop, pouring the coffee while Tails booted up the computer and Wave started to disassemble the Extreme Gear's dirt-jammed jet. "Now, what's so important?"
Wave took a long drink of coffee before replying. "Jet, Storm and me were investigating some old ruins, when some kind of energy shield sprang up out of nowhere. Jet and Storm were caught inside, and I couldn't get through it."
"Energy shield?" Tails echoed, already pulling up various technical diagrams on his computer.
"Not that kind," Wave corrected. "What you're looking at is a personal shield, I'm talking huge. As in, I can't be sure, but it looked like Angel Island got caught inside too..."
Sonic's foot was already starting to tap impatiently. "Angel Island? There's no way that's a coincidence. Was there a way in?"
Wave shook her head, and finished her mug of coffee. "No. At least, not from where I was. Maybe I could have got past it from the inside, but there's no chance Jet and Storm are going to figure it out."
"Same for Knucklehead," Sonic muttered, refilling all their mugs. It took less than two seconds to run to the kitchen, refill the pot with Tails's coffee maker, and return to the workshop with it. "You said not from where you were?"
"Exactly." She pushed a bunch of technical junk aside to take the faulty jet apart without losing any of the small parts. "It looked like there was a giant robot army camped out to one side, and the shield was too big for me to check all the way around."
"Too big?" Sonic grinned, finishing two more mugs of coffee in quick succession. Now positively vibrating from a mixture of caffeine and excitement, he grinned at the others. "Okay, you guys stay here and try to figure out things from the brainpower side of things. I'll go take a run around that shield. Wave, where am I going?"
Wave pointed at a spot on a map, and started to speak - and shut her beak again as the only thing left of Sonic was the breeze left from him exiting at well over a hundred miles an hour.
The energy shield was over three hundred miles away. The speed of sound was three hundred and forty-three miles per hour. For Sonic the Hedgehog, this meant the speed of sound lay bleeding and broken some distance behind him as he easily made it to his destination in just over half an hour.
He slowed his pace considerably, staying carefully out of sight of the giant mech army Wave had warned him about. Without having to focus quite so hard on the fast-moving ground beneath his feet, this gave Sonic time to think as he began to circle the giant shield. It was, at best, translucent, glowing and sparkling blue. It was too hard to make out much through it, but there was indeed a big something floating inside that could only be Angel Island.
Sonic made his first circuit of the shield, detouring to avoid the robot army. Not even he wanted to take on that many alone, so he gave them a wide berth and kept running closer to the edge of the shield at an even more sedate pace.
At this speed, barely fifty miles per hour, Sonic's mind started to wander from sheer boredom. He came to realise that every day for the past two weeks, save for one day when Eggman attacked, he had met Shadow for a race. Sure, he had always kind of enjoyed racing someone who could actually keep up with him, but recently he had found himself wanting to spend more and more time with Shadow...
Sonic shook his head in an attempt at clearing it. He was wasting his time, he knew. Shadow barely tolerated him, never mind friendship - much less anything more than that. So why could he not get the other hedgehog out of his mind? Shadow was his biggest rival, no matter what a certain hawk might think. So why, then, could Sonic not stop thinking about him?
He stopped, and began to run the other way around the shield in case he could see anything new from this angle, although he found himself completely unable to think of anything besides Shadow. Had he just now been thinking about being more than friends? With Shadow? Maybe all the fighting with Eggman had finally driven him insane. Maybe he had taken one too many knocks on the head while spin-dashing. The first problem was, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was about how he felt. The second problem was that it was Shadow he had fallen for. Shadow the Hedgehog, the prince of grumpiness himself, the most withdrawn person Sonic knew.
He came to a halt, letting his head fall into his hands in something close to despair. He could not think of a more impossible relationship, of someone less likely to feel the same way about him. Of course, the moment he had that thought, Eggman immediately popped unbidden into his mind as a less likely relationship, and Sonic shuddered at the idea his traitorous brain had come up with.
"Ugh," he muttered aloud, managing to turn his thoughts back to Shadow. He would simply have to find a way to move on; there would be no point in spending forever wishing for something that was impossible. Talking to Shadow about it could only be a terrible idea; the other hedgehog barely put up with him as it was, and Sonic had no desire to throw that away. So, he would just go to the race tomorrow - and try to act normal.
Sonic started to run back, realising that he was wasting his time on what was indeed an impenetrable shield. Time to see if the others had figured anything out, then go smash up the army and stop Eggman's latest plans. Then, there should be just enough time for a quick nap before racing Shadow again...
His black-and-red double popped right back into his mind, and Sonic pushed himself yet faster in an effort to stop thinking about him. Spending time with Shadow, actual leisure time instead of their occasional meetings in combat... Sonic could not help but smile. What if he could do more, spend more time together besides their races?
He was so lost in his daydreams that he was back at Tails's place before he realised. He ran back into the workshop, grabbing the now-empty coffee pot and heading to the kitchen to refill it.
The coffee maker took a little over a second and a half to fill the pot. For Sonic, that was long enough to run to the window and stare out at the stars again. Shadow's even darker than the night sky, he found himself thinking, looking up at the moon, now visible with the large cloud dispersed. After half a second, he frowned. During his time as a werehog, he had gotten very well-acquainted with the thing, and something looked different about it this time...
Sonic stretched forward to get a better view - and froze in shock at what he saw. He grabbed the now-full pot, and skidded to a halt in the workshop a quarter of a second later. "New problem, guys." I'm in love with Shadow, was a thought he could not quite stifle before dragging his mind back to the point. "There seem to be two moons now."
"A second moon?" Tails echoed in surprise, but almost immediately nodded his understanding. "That would explain the weird gravity readings we were picking up! It's gotta be Eggman... Wave, I think I get it!"
"A gravity generator," Wave finished as she finished tightening the last screw on her now-clean Extreme Gear. "Eggman must have created it..."
"... to pull Angel Island away!" Tails realised with a gasp. "He probably waited for it to be cloudy so we wouldn't notice until it was too late!"
Wave nodded slowly. "I think you're right, Shorty. You're not as slow as you normally are."
Sonic folded his arms. "I see you're back to normal," he muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said, "And if you guys hadn't been poking around at the right time, it would have worked. I couldn't find any ways through the shield, except for whatever that army is guarding."
Tails nodded brightly. "So, it's time to go smash it!" He did not wait for a reply, already running from the room to get the plane ready. "Sonic, get more coffee!" he shouted over his shoulder.
Sonic raced to obey, waiting for the plane with two fresh pots. He looked at Wave, and frowned at her clear exhaustion. "You know, you look about ready to fall off that Extreme Gear. Why don't you ride in the plane and take a break, I'll run."
She hesitated, clearly fighting against common sense. "Normally I'd disagree with you on principle, but..."
Sonic gave her a quick shove in the right direction. "Would you just get in the plane already, Wave?!"