It was hard to breathe.

Instinctively, still not opening his eyes, he squirmed backwards, flicking his ears back against his head at the sound and sensation of moving soil. Yes, that was better, he could breathe now; he tried to do so through his nose rather than his mouth - his throat felt like it was on fire. The world smelled of soil and burnt things. The burnt smell was more familiar. Was that odd?

He opened one eye in a squint, for all the good it did: his surroundings were about as dark for it.

Something clicked. He was underground, for some reason. He got the feeling he didn't spend a lot of time there. No, outside was definitely where he wanted to be - he was cramped, in an awkward position, muddle-headed and with an awfully sore throat. He backed up, slipping on loose earth and stretching the cricks from his joints. Just how long had he been down there?

It took a while, but at last, he managed to back himself out of the hole he'd found himself waking up in. He shook himself off, sticks and soil clouding around him, making him cough and not doing his throat any favours. He turned around looked back at the hole, registering now that it was more a tunnel, hastily made and with a darkened circle of grass around it that, again, smelled burnt.

It was dark outside, night, he realised, and looking around the clearing made him freeze. A tree had come down very close to the tunnel, snapped in two by some great force, at what appeared to be the same angle the tunnel - crater? - was.

Did he do that?

He looked down at himself, at his fur, at his clothes. No scrapes marred either, none that he hadn't acquired working his way out of the hole. Still dazed despite the better air on the surface, a sound he didn't know brought his attention to the west. Rushing and gurgling...

He heard water and realised that extreme discomfort in his throat was thirst. Wobbling unsteadily at first, he made his way toward the water, toward life.

Morning came and saw him puzzling over himself again, sitting in another clearing beside the creek he'd found. He had two boots with odd little metal things in the soles, two gloves, and one golden bracelet on his right arm. It seemed, to him, that he should have two of those bracelets, as well, but he could neither remember having one on his left arm nor losing it.

He had, at least, identified his own species: Mobian hedgehog, black and red-striped, countershaded with a white ruff. Non-Mobian hedgehogs, those spent time underground. Probably. Certainly his sort didn't.

Furthermore, he was in a forest, and the sights and sounds were at once vaguely familiar and quite alien. The words for things came up from his memory as easily as walking, perhaps easier, but as far as his own identity was concerned, the hedgehog was still drawing a blank.

Frustrating, that.

He stood up and looked back into the forest. It was either spring or summer, probably closer to the latter, and he had a rough idea of what he should be looking for. Food, shelter...

The hedgehog set off, following his creek.

He was running, and she had hold of his hand behind him, barely keeping up - they were panting in sheer terror.

Human girl.

They were being chased by four other humans, and he heard them yelling, though he couldn't make out the words. They ran into a room with a great clear viewing window, and their four pursuers stopped, one of them raising a weapon and shouting something at them.

The girl shoved him somewhere, then slammed her hand on a control panel - he was contained, and he heard a gunshot. She fell, pulling another lever as she went down - the door slammed, and she rose again, unsteady, using the panel for support, bleeding.

His own voice shouted "Maria!"

The hedgehog's heart was still pounding, he was still panting, and his head spun from sitting up so suddenly. Slowly calming down, he looked around. He was still in the forest, same as he had been when he'd gone to sleep. It was night again: he'd bedded down roughly mid-day.

He put a hand over his heart - its wild rate was nearly back down to resting. What was that all about? It felt more real than it should have, less a sleeping nightmare than a waking one. He shivered. Yes, he remembered that - he felt almost certain it had actually happened.

But who was this Maria?

Reasoning that he wasn't going to get any more sleep after that, the hedgehog got to his feet and continued his aimless trek through the forest. He could see reasonably well, though half-remembered knowledge and deep-seated instincts said his hearing and energy-senses were probably the more reliable senses in the dark. Something about compensating for good colour vision in the daylight.

He heard and felt energy charging up behind him, and he leapt out of the way as a laser fired, passing him harmlessly. The hedgehog came out of his balled-up jump facing the other direction.

Some kind of robot.

He rocketed forward, curling again and attacking. The robot didn't even appear to see him coming: he bisected it and landed to look at its smoking remains.

"...That's made out of metal." Obviously. He looked at himself. "...I don't think people are supposed to be able to do that."

Not normal people, though everyone in the world did have a Chaos Energy field to work with. The hedgehog closed his eyes, grabbing the memory and forcing it to stay. Everyone did have one. The trick was controlling it, flaring it to protect fragile spikes and bones when running into things at that kind of speed.

He opened his eyes again and took another look at the robot. The design was unfamiliar. Probably. "Well. Thanks for the lesson, in any case." The hedgehog moved on again, yet more alert in the darkness.

"And that would be a road." It went over the creek.

He knew the concept as surely as if he always had, and even saw a car rush past, going quite a bit faster than he'd been walking.

Not, he suddenly remembered, as fast as he could go, however. The hedgehog leaned on a tree and lifted one foot, looking at the metal bits lining the bottom of his boot. Jets, he realised, thrilling in the memory - jets he could use to run, faster than any other person in the world.

Maybe?

He frowned, letting the foot drop. What wasn't he remembering? He shook his head and concentrated on the jets, and before he knew it, was channelling his Chaos Energy through them, hovering. He took off down the road after the car, muscle memory taking over for his missing intellectual one, legs weaving easily around in a pattern and letting him go fast.

He broke off into the forest as the car came into sight again and watched it disappear over a rise. The shadow of another vehicle rose up beside where it had been, Shadow the Hedgehog.

He blinked. Talking to himself, he tried the flash of memory out: "Shadow the Hedgehog."

He paused for a little, thinking about it, as the second car crested the rise and sped off.

"Well, it's the right species, at least."

Thirteen days wasn't bad going for remembering his name.

It was the sixteenth day.

Following the road, Shadow had eventually come to the outskirts of a city, where he stopped on a hill overlooking it. It seemed nice enough, as far as his mental concept of a city went, but some deep instinct, as certain as the ones about what trees to sleep under and which to avoid, still made him wary of entering.

A newspaper drifted by, caught briefly on his leg, then was whisked away by the wind. He saw something about a fifty-year anniversary before the print became illegible.

Fifty years... That certainly felt important. Why?

A gigantic flame plumed out from one of the city's skyscrapers, instantly catching Shadow's attention - the sound of a resounding explosion jarred his bones seconds after. More followed, spreading haphazardly through what he could see of the buildings, and a set of aircraft streaked by overhead, launching missiles and firing energy weapons. All at once, the seemingly robust city life had dissolved into a blare of disaster and panic. Shadow picked up his ears, stared for a few moments, then huffed and turned away. His instincts had served him well since he'd woken up, and right now they were saying he didn't have time for the people living there, human or Mobian, especially not with them panicking like that. As he walked away, however, a voice spoke, surprisingly close and surprisingly audible over the din of the broken city in the distance.

"Shadow…"

The hedgehog stopped, stunned for a moment, then turned. A hologram shimmered in the early evening air, displaying an image of a smartly-dressed human, posture all but screaming leadership. His clothes were black as Shadow's own fur, hair swept back into twin red peaks - the colour looked abnormal, even though Shadow carried the very same in his stripes. Behind the hologram, he could just about make out the shape of the small, floating drone that was projecting it.

"As you can see," said the human, gesturing behind himself at the broken city, "the day of reckoning is almost here." His voice was distorted somewhat by the drone's cheap speakers, but was smooth, collected, and deep, again one of self-assured leadership, though to Shadow's ear something sounded odd about the way he was emphasising certain words and pronouncing certain syllables. Still, for all the human's strange appearance and accent, more important things about what he was saying took precedence.

"What? Who are you, and how do you know I'm Shadow?"

The human ignored the question. "You must find the seven Chaos Emeralds and bring them to me, as promised. Then the true reckoning will come." The human smiled, a vicious smile that part of Shadow shied away from and another recognised and exulted in. The hedgehog shook his head, baffled.

"What are you talking about?"

Above them, help for the city was arriving in the form of fast-moving military jets, which were engaging the invaders' own aerial vehicles. One such battle screamed over to Shadow and the little drone; the human in its hologram looked up as they passed by overhead, and Shadow, too, saw a missile miss and come blazing toward them. The drone arced out of the way instants before the missile slammed into the ground directly below where it had been - Shadow threw up an arm and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the drone was gone, leaving him alone with a muddle of questions in his amnesiac brain

"Just what was that all about?" he asked himself. "If he says he knows who I am, then like it or not, I have to believe him." He shook his head, spines rattling lightly. "The only way I'm going find the secrets of my past is to get those Chaos Emeralds!"

And he was off, hoverskating into the city. Whatever a Chaos Emerald was, anyway - he had a feeling he'd know one when he saw it.