Shadow slipped a coin into the slim, narrow, silver slot and searched the listing for a somewhat swanky, somehow serious song. The pickings were slim, it seemed, because the jukebox was stuffed with obscure, unheard of artists probably from another era.

The first song he played was a little too bubblegummy, something about a garden. The bar crowd immediately demanded that the hedgehog "Turned that shit right the fuck off". The next song he chose, the title was rather simple yet it resonated deeply with the ebony anti-hero; "Giving Ground".

Now, it was hard to label this song, but if the hedgehog had to place it in a genre, it would be a hard choice between Techno, Electronic, or Rock. He didn't usually care for music, he never did, but tonight was a special occasion for him.

"What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and your choice lies broken
And the truth is drowned"

As the lyrics pounded heavily into Shadow's skull, tears began to well up in his eyes. "Why, God?" he mumbled to himself.

The bar crowd began grumbling about the unfitting beat, the beat padded with too much keyboard and not enough "hillbilly" for their tastes.

"Whatcha cryin' about?" shouted one bar patron sitting in a nearby booth to Shadow's left.

"Boyfriend leave yeh?" another patron jabbed, evoking a bout of laughter from the rest of the crowd.

"Now I know you will not see
The madness we have seen
Now I know you cannot be
All that your fright has been"

"How fitting," Shadow mumbled to himself as he turned to the antagonizing patrons and began fidgeting with something stowed away between his quills.

"Gonna take that stick outta yer ass, boy?" mocked the man in the booth.

Shadow let loose a brief chuckle before resting his hand on the jukebox. "No, no I'm not."

"Ah, I see, just adjustin' that stick to it's a lil' more comfurrable, eh?" the same patron retorted before letting out a laugh only a hillbilly could, that unforgettable "Heheheh!" they do that makes you just want to pry their spinal cord out of their backs with a blunt crowbar.

"Everything is lost in the giving ground
Everything is lost"

"Boy, why don't you turn that euro-fag shit off and go home, you look like hell!" the hick in the booth continued.

"Heh," Shadow pulled a gun and turned it toward the annoying southerner in the booth,"Straight to hell."

"Hey, man, it's just a song," the yellow booth patron now became rather worried for his own personal safety, for obvious reasons. "I'm ain't mean nuthin' by it!"

Oh, the adrenalin rush, the unmistakable sensation of power he got whenever he held a gun to some deserving fool's head. To make the situation even sweeter, the silly hick had practically soiled himself in front of Shadow.

"If y'all have such a problem with this "Euro-fag" music," Shadow did his best to immitate and mock the hillbilly patrons in the bar," then why's it on your jukebox?"

Shadow the Hedgehog, G.U.N. Agent, savior of Earth, one of the world's greatest scientistific experiments, had been reduced to this; a life of unnecessary late night bar fights somewhere in the god-forsaken land they called "Rural America".

"Hey, man," said someone to the right of the jukebox, behind Shadow,"Why don'tcha just leave'n'never come back?"

The hedgehog turned to see a slightly overweight bartender twelve-gauge shotgun in hand and the barrel staring Shadow in the face.

Shadow smirked. "Big mistake."