Courtney: Hey, I'm back!

Raigh: You're actually writing?

Courtney: Is that a bad thing?

Rickard: Raigh's just being jealous 'cause he doesn't write.

Raigh: That's hardly the reason.

Rickard: Liar.

Raigh: What was that?

Rickard: …Nothing.

Courtney: ANYWAY, as I was TRYING to say before…

Rickard: Raigh, stop talking.

Raigh: ME?!

Courtney: …I'm only coming back to this because I, for some reason, have motivation to write. Don't know why, though.

Rickard: Do you really have to be so blunt about it?

Raigh: Mincing words doesn't get you anywhere in the world.

Rickard: Says you.

Courtney: But I might as well attempt to make people happy, so here you go. As a disclaimer, I don't own Shadow, Blaze, or the existence of Motal, though I do own the name. I also own Arista, Pip, Blast, and Fire. So enough of that, and here's your story.

Prologue: Looking Back

One full year had passed since the defeat of the Shadow and the return of peace to Motal. Of course, peace is nice and all, but it's ridiculously boring sometimes. At least I didn't have to spend it alone anymore.

Instead, I was stuck with an extremely obnoxious elder brother (don't even get me started on that), an angelic younger brother, a semi-warmhearted father who was apparently a compete loner before he had kids, a gentle and kind mother who, again, was once a complete loner (must be how they got along so well) with a fiery temper, and a little shiba-looking mixbreed who always knew how to cheer me up.

And then there's just random me, a somewhat anti-social and extremely clumsy 15-year-old girl who knew little about proper fighting and people skills. Makes you wonder how there's even such a family, doesn't it? I guess it's time for proper introductions, then.

First off, you should already know my parents, Shadow and Blaze. I mean, they're two of the most popular characters in the entire Sonic series; if you're reading all these fics, then of course you'd know who these two are…were…whatever. Wait, scratch that. This is in the crossover archives…meh, most if not all of you should still know them.

But that's enough smashing my nonexistent fourth wall. Maybe. Anyway, the annoying elder brother was 16-year-old Blast, who might as well have been Shadow Jr. in appearance if it weren't for the purple stripes. Sure, he knew how to make people laugh, but he would not shut up sometimes. Turns out his personality developed from being around Sonic too often growing up (which irked Father to no end, by the way), and now he had the looks of one hedgehog and the actions of a completely different one. He was a reckless goofball sometimes (okay, make that a lot of the time), but he always knew to do the right thing when it really came down to it.

The little brother was Fire the fox (heh, Firefox…ahem, anyways), and before you ask, yes, a hedgehog and a cat had a fox for a kid. Had something to do with mother genes…I think. And I know this because there's no way Mother would: 1) cheat on Father, or 2) have a kid with anyone else that's a black fox with red ears and tail tip. Don't know who he was around all the time during his childhood, but they definitely had a good influence on him. He's, like, literally an ANGEL. Okay, not quite literally, but he might as well have been. He's obedient, polite, and moral; Blast could learn several, and I mean SEVERAL, things from him. Sometimes he was like a 25-year-old in the body of an 8-year-old. But, thankfully, more often than not he was your average little kid, running around and having fun. He had a strong desire to prove himself, though, and that eventually proved to be a very good thing later on.

Then you have me. And I happened to be the only girl and the one who was apparently "destined" to become the new guardian of the Sol Emeralds. That was probably the WORST decision someone could ever make, forcing the next daughter to be the one to protect the things that kept the living world staying the living world (not trying to bash the dead with a club mace or anything, but it's the truth). I had no right to be anywhere near those things. Yet people still thought I was worthy of them, no matter how many times I told them I wasn't (or was hiding in a corner somewhere), and looking almost exactly like my mother didn't help matters. At all. Made me wish I could use my recently-acquired killer pyrokinetics to keep them away from me so I could go back to my life of peace and solitude.

Well, then again, it wasn't quite solitude. I did have Pip since I was, like, ten. Wait, eleven? Twelve? …Sometime around then. I'm brain farting right now. Wait, no, it was twelve. Anyways, he was a little dog-cat-rabbit hybrid-thing that was tossed out of the litter as soon as he was old enough to not be dependent on his mother for food. Why they kicked him out in the first place, I have no idea, considering if they wanted him dead, they would have ditched him while he couldn't keep himself alive, but they did, and I was lucky enough to have him for comfort back when my family was still back in a completely different world (go back to the story before this if you want to know what that's all about…wait, no. Don't do that. That was a very horrifically written story). He was also a whole lot better fighter than I was, so he was my little guard puppy, too. And a speed demon. Can't forget that. If Father wasn't there, then Pip would have been the fastest thing Motal had ever seen. Makes me remember the look on Blast's face when he found out that, as he put it, "that little monster in adorable puppy form" could outrun him. Ah, good times, good times…

I should probably explain the "family in a different world" thing, shouldn't I? It'll keep people from going back to the horrendous thing that is my first story ever written. Basically, Father "accidentally" (though I highly doubt he could have an accident like that) brought a Chaos Emerald (I really don't need to explain what that is, do I?) to Motal when he came with his new wife, and apparently it took several years (as in, when I was four; we're talking a good five, six years here) for the Emerald to start reacting in a way that forced them to take it back to Mobius, leaving me here simply because someone in the family needed to stay and watch over the Sol Emeralds (I still say Mother would have been the better choice, but apparently there's some mumbo-jumbo natural law that says that the daughter becomes the official guardian as soon as she reaches a conscious age or something; clearly they had something wrong there when they made that rule up, 'cause I couldn't even remember what I had for breakfast some mornings, so how did they really expect me to remember things from when I was four?). So I ended up thinking for ten years of my life that they were all dead (minus Fire, of course, since he wasn't even born yet) until two freaky little alien things (again, more of my very bad first story) came after the Emeralds and, for some very strange reason I still don't even know, told me what had happened to my family and even had a video message from them saying exactly what had happened.

But, thankfully, after a whole lot of running around and defeating Team Midget several times (once courtesy of Pip), I managed to defeat their leader with the power of the Emeralds, and everyone happened to come back to Motal at the same time, like some storybook ending that shouldn't really be possible in real life (yes, I realize this is a story, but just go along with it because I have no fourth wall and this should be considered as real life).

So everything was peaceful for a year (well, nine months considering we had to spend three just trying to find the Emeralds again after they separated), and I thought that life would finally return to the way it should have been. But good things for me never really seem to last, do they…?

…And now I am about to tell you the story of when we left our home of the Shuppet Forest for the last time as a family, and our lives were changed forever.

Rickard: DUN DUN DUUUN!

Raigh: It's really not that dramatic.

Courtney: Why are you always so pessimistic?

Raigh: I should ask you the same thing.

Courtney: I'm not nearly that bad.

Raigh: You sure about that?

Rickard: I blame spirit for my problems.

Raigh: You blame spirit for everything.

Rickard: …So?

Courtney: Anyway, that's the prologue down, and I'll get the first real chapter up as soon as I have both inspiration and an internet connection.

Rickard: Don't forget to review! It helps with inspiration. …Or at least it should.

Raigh: How would you know?

Rickard: I just do.

Raigh: Whatever.

Courtney: Later peoples.