The Birthday Surprise

Rouge paced back and forth growing more and more nervous with each step. The bat had never through a birthday party before, well, not for a hedgehog anyway. She stopped and looked around. The decorations were all in place, the tables had been arranged just for this, some had snacks, some had games and the one in the center was for the gifts, it was the biggest of them all and was round, the others were rectangular.

'I hope he likes this.' thought Rouge as she looked at the snacks. 'He did say he liked peaches, but maybe making everything peach-flavored was a bad idea.' Rouge shook her head. 'Get a hold of yourself! Even if he doesn't like the all peach... what about where we are?' Rouge looked around. 'The ARK. He must have some happy memories of this place.'

The room was huge, like all combat rooms in the ARK. This room, however, had been renovated to be used for large gatherings, but it still had the cold look of steel, even with the decorations.

The decorations included extremely long streamers, which had to be long because they had to go from the celling forty feet above the ground to about ten feet off the ground and were every color one could think of, and a small cluster of balloons, eight in all, a blue one, a dark blue one, a purple one, a silver one, a red one, a yellow one, and two green ones, one twice as big as the other seven, which were all secured to the center of the gift table.

Then Rouge heard the door behind her open. She turned around to see the first guests to arrive; a blue hedgehog and a pink one, both of them held gifts in wrapping paper. Rouge groaned. 'I don't remember sending him an invitation.' she thought.

The pink hedgehog waved to Rouge. "Hi Rouge."

"What's up," said the blue one in his usual way too happy tone. "You know, it's the funniest thing, my invite must have been lost in the mail, cause I didn't know about this till Tails told me."

The ivory bat's right eye twitched a little. "That right?" she said as she forced a smile. 'I'm going to kill that twin-tailed jerk!'

Rouge knew Sonic and the birthday hog weren't that great of friends and that Sonic wasn't on the best of terms with some of the other partiers, which is way she felt it necessary to not send him an invite, but nothing could be done now.

"So," started Sonic. "Where's the Shadster?"

"This is a surprise party Sonic," replied Rouge. "Omega is going to bring Shadow here when I call him and tell him all the guests have arrived and we're waiting for a few more."

"Who all's coming anyway?" asked Amy.

"Let me think. Tails, Knuckles, Cream and Cheese, Ivo-"

"Hey, wait," interrupted Sonic. "Who's Ivo?"

Rouge looked at Sonic like he was crazy. 'He doesn't know his arch-enemies first name?'

Just then the doors opened again to show Dr. Eggman wearing a party hat and holding a present while humming 'happy birthday.' The doctor stopped when he saw Sonic and the two looked at each other with shock on their faces.

"What are you doing here?!" said Sonic and Eggman at the same time.

Eggman looked at Rouge. "Rouge! I thought you said Sonic wouldn't be here!"

"What?" yelped Sonic in shock.

"Blame Tails," said Rouge scornfully. "He's the one who told Sonic about this!"

"Wait!" barked Sonic. "Are you saying I wasn't invited?"

"Of course not," said Eggman. "Do you really think you and I would be invited to the same birthday party?!"

Sonic looked at Rouge. "Why did you invite the biggest jerk ever!?" Sonic turned back to Eggman. "And I'm not just saying that because of your gut, Eggy!"

"Why you little!" Eggman lunged at Sonic, who was easily able to dodge the doctor, who fell face first on the floor.

Sonic began to laugh at Eggman who would have tried again, had Rouge not broken them up.

"That's enough!" yelled the bat.

"How could you invite Eggman instead of me!?" Sonic half asked half yelled.

"Well, he freed Shadow from Prison Island and saved his life when he was falling through the atmosphere!"

"Whatever, he still going to wreck everything!"

"Excuse me," said Eggman. "Who came here without an invite, hmm? Besides, I would never dream of ruining a party, if I did that I'd never get invited to one again!"

"Well, I've got my eye on you!"

Eggman looked back to Rouge. "Where should I put this?" asked Eggman, referring to his gift.

Rouge pointed at the round table at the center of the room. "Over there." All three of the guests walked their gifts over to the table and put them down.

Then the doors opened again, this time Tails and Knuckles walked in.

Rouge turned to them. When she saw Tails, she narrowed her eyes and said, in a sightly frighten voice, "There you are, you twin-tailed jerk!"

Tails jumped back. "W-w-what did I do?!"

Rouge ran forward and grabbed Tails by his neck with both hands. "You told Sonic about this little party, right?"

"Y-y-yeah." Tails said weakly.

Rouge began to shake the young fox violently. "You are the dumbest smart creature I have ever meant! I invited Eggman to this party!"

"You did what!?" said Knuckles.

"This doesn't concern you Knucklehead!" Rouge than released the fox due to a sharp pain in her right arm. She looked at her arm to see a small rabbit biting into her arm.

"Get off me Cream!" She shook her arm and Cream released her jaws.

Cream then ran behind Tails and Rouge looked at the bite mark on her arm, than at Cream. "What's your problem!?"

Cream looked over the fox's shoulder. "I didn't want you to hurt Tails!"

Rouge rolled her eyes. "I wasn't going to hurt him. I was just mad because I thought I told everyone not to tell anyone about the party." She sighed. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay, Rouge," said Tails. "At least all of Shadow's friends are here."

"That's right," Rouge thought for a moment. "Now that everyone's here, I'd better call Omega." Rouge took out her jewel encrusted cellphone to call the robot, than looked at the other guests.

"Listen up everyone!" The three still by the round table looked at her. "I going to call Omega and he's going to bring Shadow here."

Eggman's face began to show worry, this did not go unnoticed by Rouge.

"Don't worry Eggman, I convinced Omega not to hurt until the party is over." She paused before adding "Once it is, you'll have thirty seconds to flee the ARK before Omega rips you apart, limb by limb."

That didn't help the doctor at all.

ARK Training Room

Omega lunched more rockets at the ebony hedgehog, who destroyed them with his homing attacks than skated towards the robot and, more importantly, the white flag behind him. Call it "capture the flag EXTREME!"

In order to keep it interesting, Shadow agreed not to use his Chaos powers and Omega agreed not to use explosive missiles. If they did use these powers, they could calm down and enjoy the fight instead of worrying about injury, which was the really point of this; to keep Shadow entertained while the party guests arrived, and it was working well.

Shadow skated right passed Omega, grabbed the white flag and waved it in victory.

"Looks like I win again, Omega." said Shadow.

"The score is now three-S, two-O," said Omega. "It appears as though-"

"It appears as though what?"

Omega just stood there. Unknown to Shadow, Omega was receiving a call from a bat, telling him to take Shadow to the "party room" so that it may begin.

"It is time to go to a different location."

Shadow was puzzled. "Leave here, why?"

"I know a place that will give us more tactical options."

Shadow crossed his arms, not sure of the robots strange behavior. "Fine, let's go." The two exited the room and headed down the empty hallway of the ARK, their footsteps echoing.

As they walked, Shadow had his first time to think all day, when he woke up Omega immediately came and asked him to go with him to the ARK, and they've been playing "capture the flag EXTREME" ever since.

Now that Shadow could think, he felt strange, like he forgot something important about to day, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He looked at the robot next to him, and he suddenly wanted to ask a question.

"Omega, do you remember when you were created?"

The two stopped and looked at each other. Omega thought of the question. "Twelve years ago, next mouth."

"I see."

"Why did you want to know?"

"Never mind, let's just get to this room already."

"Affirmative."

The two contained down the hall, Shadow not sure why he wanted to know the robot's age, but this made the hedgehog think of what he knew of himself. 'How old am I?' thought Shadow. 'Those fifty years I was held by G.U.N. shouldn't count, I guess, so how old would that make me?' Shadow kept thinking of this, unaware that he would have an answer soon enough, until he and Omega came to a large. "Is this where you plan to continue our game?"

Omega looked at the door. "THAT IS CORRECT, SHADOW! THIS IS WHERE WE WILL BE ENTERING AND ENJOY OUR GAME!!"

Shadow was holding his ears. "Why are you yelling?!"

"I am sorry, my volume knob was stuck."

Shadow looked very confused. "You have a volume knob?"

"Eggman equips all of his robots with volume knobs."

Shadow arced his brow. "Why does he... oh, never mind, let's just get back to me beating you." Omega opened the door and the two walked in. The room was very dark and quite. "Omega, try to find a light switch." The robot did nothing but close the door, thus getting rid of the only light source. "What did you do that for? Now I can't see!"

"That is the point." came the robot's voice from the darkness.

"What's going on here!?"

"You'll find out, Shadow." came another's voice.

"Eggman!? I don't know what's going on, but show yourself!"

"As you wish."

Than the lights came on and Shadow became covered in confetti as everyone jumped on and yelled "Surprise! Happy birthday Shadow!"

Shadow stood there shocked beyond belief. "It's my birthday?"

"Well technically," said Eggman. "You were never born, you were created, but birthday sounds better than creation-day."

"Whatever," said Sonic. "It's a party for you, Shadow, that's what matters!"

"Sonic's right," said Tails.

"Yeah." said Amy as she grabbed Shadow's left arm.

"Come on Shadow." said Rouge as she grabbed his right arm. The two walked the still shocked hedgehog over to the round table which had everyone's gifts on it. "See, Shadow, everyone brought a gift for you, why not open a few?"

Finally, Shadow came back to his senses. "Wait." he said. "How do you guys know it's my birthday when I didn't even know?"

"Well," began Rouge. "We were all curious, so we did some snooping." Everyone looked at Rouge with narrowed eyes, she sighed. "Alright, I did some snooping, and I found out that you were created on this day years ago. So I decided to through you a party!"

Rouge walked over to the other side of the table and brought back a large cake that had sixteen unlit candles on top it. She sat it down right in front of Shadow and than lit the candles. "Blow out the candles and make a wish." Shadow just stood there staring at the cake. "Shadow?"

"Sixteen candles," said Shadow. "That means I'm sixteen years old."

"Well, I didn't think those years you were in suspended animation should count."

Shadow looked at Rouge and smiled. "Thank you, Rouge."

Rouge smiled back. "No problem!"

Shadow looked back at the cake and blew out the candles.

The rest of the party went very well. Everyone enjoyed the games and Shadow didn't complain about the snacks. Everyone was having fun, even Eggman, who was looking over his shoulder most of the time to make sure Omega didn't attack him from behind. Eventually Shadow opened his gifts and liked them all. Sonic had given him a pair of running shoes, making fun of Shadow for relying on his jet shoes. Needless to say, Sonic left this party with a broken nose. Amy brought Shadow a more manly version of her hammer. Eggman gave him an upgraded version of his jet shoes, that would let him go faster than Sonic's top speed. Knuckles gave Shadow a pair of spiked boxing gloves like his own. Tails made him an Air Gear called the Black Shot as well as a pair of goggles. Cream and Cheese gave Shadow a Chao egg. Rouge gave the hedgehog new power rings that had black diamonds embedded in them. Yes, the party was very fun for everyone, but, all good things must come to an end and so did this celebration. Everyone began to leave the room.

"Well this was fun." said Eggman. "We must do this-"

Omega appeared in front of Eggman pointing his gating-guns at him. "Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight..."

Eggman ran out of the room screaming at the top of his lungs. Everyone laughed.

Soon only Shadow and Rouge were left in the room. "Thanks so much for all this, Rouge." said Shadow.

"You're welcome, Shadow." said Rouge.

"Now tell me, why did you really through me this party?"

Rouge's face turned bright red. 'Did he figure it out?' Rouge tried to hide her embarrassment. "W-what do you mean?"

Shadow took a step towards her. "You know." Shadow put his arm around Rouge's waist and pulled her toward him.

Their faces were just inches from each other. "I guess you figured it out, huh?"

"Yeah, now we get our wish." The two closed their eyes and closed the gap between their lips.