Abstraction

These fine hogs belong to SEGA. I just manipulate them.

They were warned this would happen.

In fact, they prevented it from happening on more than one occasion. The ruined world of the future, it seemed, was just certain destiny, because no matter how many times they succeeded in stopping whatever threat was prominent at the time, something new always managed germinate.

Of course, "they" excluded Shadow. Not in the sense that they left him out of their pitiful escapades... he only ever joined in out of utmost necessity, or when there was some sort of leverage against him. More often than not, it was the promise that a foggy memory would be illuminated. No, he felt no desire to be included in their numbers. Maybe all the blind others deserved to be crumpled into one weak party, one "they", but not him. They were dead because they were mortal, existences derisory.

Rouge the hunter was dead. He recalled her only scarcely now. Knuckles the guardian, too, and their daughter. His island defied gravity no longer, having long since rejoined the earth that bore it. Any seams were now long overgrown, first by flora, then concrete and steel. No different now from the rest of the planet's skin, it was suffocated under a kilometre of jagged future.

Omega, which had always been somehow more humane than any of the others, had malfunctioned. Shadow had put it out of its misery.

The doctor, his name escaped Shadow, had suffered the heart attack he deserved before ever getting to taste the domination he craved so consumingly. It was testament to how nugatory he truly was. Sonic the hero left behind a crepuscular legacy that lasted a short while before it was dissolved by acid rain.

But Shadow, the ultimate life form... he lived on. He barely remembered their faces anymore, for it had been so long since the last of them flickered out of existence, just as the stars and the remaining half of the moon had. The others were gone. They had all grown frail, and had been swallowed up by time.

So, so much time it had been. Two hundred years of solitude, give or take half a century.

Everyone back then had been warned, but they knew full well that Silver's portent was irrelevant to them. As much as they guised the obligatory caring engrained in their heroic morals, they knew that Mobius was to suffer the dreaded ruined future centuries after they were dead and gone. But Shadow would live forever. He would have to roll his eyes as their successes, consistently, proved false. He would experience the anticlimactic, drawn-out end of proper civilization.

They saved the future. Yet here he was.

Things now were bleak in comparison to how they used to be but there was no time for reflection. The rockets on his heels no longer blazed when kicked into gear, but the shoes themselves had proven shockingly tough and resilient. There was a quarter-sized hole in the left sole, but, again, there was no time to worry about trivialities. The population now consisted of two classes: the darkness-loving creatures – hungry ones – that forced perpetual vigilance, and the last of the perverse Mobians. As usual, Shadow fit into neither category. A nomad, he travelled from former-city to former-city, hoping always to come across the one being who could, and would if he knew what was good for him, help send the ultimate life form home at last.

Home was not back with Sonic and his sorry generation, of course. Shadow had filled something of a niche there, but not without resistance. It was a miserable time, filled with the self-obsessed in denial. All Shadow really wanted at this point was to go back to the beginning; on the ARK, with Maria, two hundred fifty years in the past. Every person, every place, every thing in his lifespan had smudged away with time, but not her. He remembered, bittersweetly, and so clearly.

Shadow possessed one chaos emerald which he guarded with his life. It was white, and he appreciated it for its immortality. The others were somewhere, he knew, but there was no reason for him to pursue them.

Roughly one hundred years in the past, the once-newly refurbished planet, with its stretching concrete streets and tall, streamlined towers, began its slow diminuendo into decrepitness. It started because the humans died out. Nobody then knew where the virus had come from. A great deal of conspiracy and heated accusation hung amongst the Mobians for a long time after people started dying, especially when the virus was matched with so-called hypothetical samples found in Dr. Prower's lab. The common knowledge that an explosion in the lab of his peer, Hope Kintobor, had resulted in the death of his wife and spawned an alleged strong hatred against humans did not help his cause. He died on Prison Island.

After the last human, who was a household name for quite some time, died, the cities and highways and jungles of electrical generation fields were left behind, and the peeved Mobians wanted nothing to do with their maintenance. It was around this point when the creatures began plucking individuals from the streets.

As it turned out, Dr. Prower's virus had been the late preliminary of a bioweapon designed to kill those same monsters, whose evolution he had predicted after observing a strain of mutant chao.

But, really, history was redundant by this point. Literacy had been abandoned gradually through the generations, when books and pens proved to be inadequate tools of survival. Needless to say, no history textbook had survived, let alone been updated to include the more recent developments. If, by some paradox, the population managed to restring itself into functioning order, the past would be an absolute mystery. Shadow almost wanted them to experience it.

He was walking mindfully across the crest of a great slab of crumbling concrete when he found what he was looking for.

The seasons had dissolved into hot and hotter, but this day was relatively and notably cool. The sky was off-white and seeping the usual tepid drizzle. Living up to his name, Silver the Hedgehog was well-camouflaged against the bland clouds. One less perceptive than Shadow might not have noticed as he glided overhead, was it not for the hum of energy that emanated from the glowing aura suspending him.

Holding his chaos emerald tightly, Shadow shot inside a crevice carved into the once-esplanade, taking on his own camouflage in the darkness. Cardinal eyes set, he waited a few moments until the little projectile had traveled to the cusp of his vision. Once he felt there was a safe distance between them, the ultimate stepped into the strained light and set forwards, sprinting across the plate, silent and calmly surreptitious.

He felt something close to excitement pulse at the base of his artificial spine, but there were other precautions that needed to be accounted for. He'd waited this long, and now was not the time for rash, emotion-driven actions.

The pursuit lasted another half hour, until Silver descended into an outlet, possibly once a door, in a chunk of indistinguishable rubble. Coming to a stop under the cover of a sizable steel beam, Shadow took a few minutes' pause, taking note of his surroundings in case resourcefulness was to be required. He waited in patient silence, not only to let Silver settle in and hopefully let his guard down, but also to review his strategy. Over the years of preparation, Shadow had developed a dichotomous key of what-if's, and was therefore prepared for most any possible deviation from the ideal scenario of "take me to the past" "okay". However, he mentally traced through various contingencies, just to ensure that his preparation was absolute.

Adjusting his gloves, Shadow took a final glance at the depraved, lurid atmosphere around him, and then zoomed to the opening through which Silver had entered. Fingering mindfully his emerald, he peered cautiously inside.

The interior hosted one of the most organized spaces he'd seen in a long time. The slabs of rubble were arranged in such a way that it seemed almost liveable. Shadow scanned the premises to search for any sign of movement.

Wishing faintly for a machine gun, Shadow checked once more to ensure the coast was clear, and then shot to the darkest corner of the asymmetrical pseudo-room.

Once inside, he had to strain to see anything, but noticed a makeshift stairway casting a dim light. Alert, he stepped across the room and followed the ascending hallway. It led him to a second, brighter chamber, where Silver was seated cross-legged on the ground. Tangents of bright telekinetic energy twirled about a large stone hovering in front of him.

Silent, Shadow slunk behind the concentrated hedgehog. With two low words, he sent a shot of chaos energy at Silver. The rock dropped with a thud. Shadow paced over, and placed a hand around Silver's arm.

"LET HIM GO!"

Before even Shadow could react, a jet of flame suddenly blanketed his right arm.

"CHAOS SPEAR!" he roared furiously, reflexively, reeling around and grasping his forearm. The torrent of raw energy struck his attacker square in the chest, knocking her back and into the crumbling wall. Frowning deeply and clenching the charred arm, Shadow paced over to her. The violet cat was breathing, but unconscious. Good.

Walking back to Silver, Shadow caught a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. Raising the chaos emerald again, he coiled himself into a ready stance. However, he loosened his posture after a second, watching in irritation as a tall, deep blue bear-like creature slunk towards the cat's limp form, its mustard yellow paw raised. Exhaling flatly, Shadow sent another chaos blast at it. The beast reared and bared its triangular teeth, but then trotted back into the darkness. Shaking his head, Shadow marched back to the inconvenient cat. An efficient part of him said to leave her there, but he had seen... caused... enough death to fill his lifetime quota.

With an exasperated sigh, he grabbed the cat by her shoulders to drag her. But as she was pulled away from the wall, Shadow heard a familiar tinkling sound. Instinctively, he released his hold on the body and reached for his own emerald, only to find it safely tucked amongst his quills. Furrowing his brow, the hedgehog stepped back. On the floor a few paces away, his eyes caught the glitter of a red jewel. Blinking in surprise, Shadow snatched up the gem, looking it over in his hands. A different shape from the chaos emeralds, its surface gave off an energy that was comparable, but somehow unique. He stashed it away decidedly, then returned to towing the cat, placing her next to Silver.

Extracting his chaos emerald, Shadow knelt before the two unconscious forms and placed his free hand so that it spanned both of their adjacent shoulders.

"Chaos control," he spoke.

The first stop was to deliver the female somewhere she would not be devoured. The last thing Shadow needed was for Silver to find out he'd caused the death of his friend.

Chaos control brought them beneath a huge overhanging slab of steel, where Shadow had observed on several occasions a clan of about half a dozen surviving Mobians.

"Help," he shouted flatly. The sound of bipedal footsteps was cue enough for him to raise the emerald and flash away again.

When he touched down, Shadow let Silver drop to the cement, then brushed the gravel from his gloves. He had taken the two of them to a familiar gully, sheltered by some sort of metal mesh on all sides. It was the safest place Shadow knew, accessible only through chaos control.

So far, all had gone as planned besides the inopportune detour of dealing with the cat, and his next move was set to cast as soon as Silver woke up. He switched the chaos emerald in his fist for the red gem taken from the cat. Shadow spent the next hour or so leaning against the gridded wall, watching the toxic sky, hoping that this would be the last time he would have to see it in such a state. Thoughtfully clenching the emerald in his right hand, he deliberately held his chin high to allow Silver to awake and assume himself unnoticed.

Sure enough, after set of short shuffling sounds, Shadow felt a great squeeze of turquoise energy lift him off the ground, and then slam him against the thick wires.

"Who are you?" Shadow could hear the anxiety through Silver's terse seriousness. He only noticed now that the hedgehog was much younger than when he'd visited the past, and hoped that this could be used to his advantage.

"My name is Shadow," the suspended hedgehog replied curtly.

The quickness and honesty of the response evidently caught Silver by surprise. He had been expecting either some sort of metaphor or aphorism, or no answer at all.

Trying to make his dominance clear, he straightened his back further and stuck out his chest.

"Where are we?" he demanded, keeping his eyes fixed glaringly on Shadow.

"I brought us inside a safe structure." Shadow spoke clearly and calmly. "We're about two miles outside Central City's remains."

Again, the frankness threw Silver off. He had to take a second to steady himself.

"What's that supposed to mean," he interrogated further after shifting weight from one foot to the other, ""brought us?""

Shadow closed his eyes for a moment.

"I used something called chaos control to transport us here."

Silver narrowed his eyes. "You can use chaos control?"

"Yes." The questioning was going almost exactly as he had predicted.

"Really?" Silver asked, releasing some of the tension that bound Shadow. His face twisted suddenly in perturbed confusion. "Then..." he went on, "where's Blaze?"

"She understands the importance of what you have to do," Shadow replied. He then gestured with his chin to the jewel in his fist. "But she told me to give you this."

Immediately, he felt Silver bring him to the ground, then relinquish the binding.

The surprised hedgehog came forward and took the emerald, turning it over between his fingers. Shadow saw in his eyes a youthfulness, a motivation, that the ultimate had thought to be extinct. It was refreshing. After a moment, Silver lifted his head.

"Thank you."

Shadow gave a quick nod, and then spoke.

"Now, there's something you need to do."

The pale hedgehog's eyeridge contracted. After a rather penetrating crimson stare during which his nerves took a brief recess, he gave himself a little shake and then closed his eyes.

"Listen, I'm really sorry." he said, shaking his head slowly and raising his hands in defence. "But me and Blaze, we're working to save this time."

"I've spoken to Blaze," Shadow told him. He hated to lie, having been deceived himself so many times, but knew it was necessary to convince Silver. "She understands."

Silver took a confused step back, but Shadow knew what card to play next.

"Have you ever heard of Sonic the hedgehog?" he asked quietly.

"Who?"

Shadow chuckled.

"Never mind." He met Silver's golden eyes determinately. "So, saving this time?" he repeated. "You're a hero then?"

Silver was taken aback. He stuttered for a moment, before blinking and nodding squarely.

"Yes. I am."

"That's very admirable."

"I..."

Shadow then proceeded to explained, with all the honesty he could afford, his story, and why, if Silver truly considered himself a hero, he should assist Shadow. He spoke softly of Maria, knowing it would appeal to Silver's obvious attachment to his cat friend.

"Will you help me?" Shadow asked.

Silver took a long pause, then looked at the emerald in his hands.

"Yes."

"Good," Shadow said. "What do you know about time travel?"

"A little," Silver replied. Now that he had been recruited, he seemed to have picked up a look of determination that contradicted his naivety. "Blaze was teaching me. You can use the chaos emeralds and the Sol emeralds... but there're rules... the emeralds won't take you anywhere a past version of yourself already exists, and they won't let you land anywhere something else already is."

Shadow was only half listening.

"Do you know how?" he interrupted.

"I..." Silver stuttered in surprise, "yes, but Blaze says I'm not ready to-"

Shadow gave a curt nod, and then crossed his arms. "Are you ready?"

When the chaos energy finished rerouting nerves to senses and senses to consciousnesses, the two silhouettes touched the ground.

With nothing more than a 'hmph' and a quick swivel of his head as a means of bearing-collection, Shadow righted himself and then shot from the room where they had arrived, zooming down the hallway, and gone before Silver had lifted from his poised landing position. When the hedgehog erected himself and saw the room holding him, his eyes widened.

"Wow, Shadow!" he gasped, face shining with amazement. Not noticing Shadow's absence, he hopped to the slate gray matte metal wall, running a finger down its surface. He felt his gloves glide like magic, their seams finding nothing jagged to catch on. "It's so smooth!"

Grinning, he turned to look at Shadow, and felt his smile falter somewhat when he saw the empty chamber around him. But upon rotating further, he almost keeled over. There was a wall missing in the hexagonal room, the one opposite the door.

In two huge steps, he leapt across the chamber. The hedgehog just stared. Before him, lay the entire cosmos, black and blue and violet, sparkling, never-ending. It was the most beautiful thing that could possibly exist. He had never seen stars before...

He lifted a hand to reach outside, finding the absence of any sort of breeze peculiar. But instead of extending out and fondling the intertwining galaxies, his palm was stopped by some unseen force, like invisible telekinesis. But when he withdrew his hand and then knocked one fist gently against its transparent surface, he blinked in surprise.

It was glass. Glass! The same substance he had encountered occasionally in his native time period, only considerably less murky and not found in a pile of dully geometric forms. But this was fascinating... like solid air.

However, his amazement at the window was short-lived, because a moment later, a huge spherical body rotated into view outside. Astounded, he pressed his face and hands up against the glass to get a better view. It was huge, and very blue, and also very beautiful.

Blinking heavily, Silver gave his head a little shake and recollected his composure, straightening his face and letting his palms slip from the cool glass. Turning his head towards the doorway, he set to finding Shadow.

There were no ghosts here because nobody had died yet. The last time Shadow had been on the ARK, he couldn't blink away the visions of Maria, suppress that same feeling of helplessness that overtook him when he was trapped behind that wall of glass.

He skated decidedly through the maze of corridors that made up the station, feeling a wonderful confidence in each dart and turn. The place was curiously empty. But then again, the dim overhead lights meant that the station was in its makeshift night, so the inhabitants were most likely in their bed chambers. He felt a surge of pride in the fact that he knew this place so well, after so long. But as he turned down a familiar hallway, Shadow froze.

The far wall was lined with escape pods. One was missing. Two feet to his right stood the bloodstained keypad, little bullet casing corpses littering the floor around it. Shadow felt his insides churn. They were too late. Squeezing his fists furiously, he turned on a heel and shot back down the hallway.

The hedgehog caught sight of a long gun propped up against the wall. It had been a long time, but he swiped it up venomously before pivoting and zooming back into the haunting room. Teeth clenched, he raised the weapon and let round after round shatter the glass escape pods.

"Shadow!" Silver appeared at the end of the hallway, running forward.

He had waited two hundred years. Wasted two hundred years.

"SHADOW!" Silver bellowed at the top of his voice. "THAT'S ENOUGH!"

Bright energy snatched the gun from Shadow's hands, and then lifted him into the air. He tried to curse, but even his mouth was held shut.

Glaring furiously, fear-stricken, the flushed Silver held him there. Trying his absolute hardest to keep a stolid composure, he held his stance silently and solidly.

"Just..." he enjoined, "calm down."

Shadow tried to break free, but was held completely still. Anger still bubbling internally, he breathed as heavily as his binds would let him. He felt sick, but could do nothing. All of this meant that Silver had been right; he could never return to the ARK at the same time as Maria.

For a long time, he strained and resisted, and saw Silver wince with effort once or twice. All he had wanted was to start over, but it was never to be. He felt deceived by the universe for allowing him such foolish hope, and ashamedly furious for being blinded by it.

But after a while, his pulse steadied and he felt his head begin to clear. He just hung there, void. At the same time, a sense of punctuation began to form that helped to seal off the previously open nozzle of his past. He felt, in an astringent way, better.

What must have been three hours passed, and Silver blacked out from exhaustion. Shadow dropped to the ground. Exhaling deeply, he paced to the gun which Silver had tossed a ways down the hallway. Picking it up in both hands, he separated and disabled its parts with a series of clicks that were close to as satisfying as the deafening shots themselves had been. Squeezing his eyes shut, he stepped over to the hedgehog and let himself slump to the metal floor, staring out the circular window into massive space.

"Shadow?" Silver's voice sounded faintly as he stirred awake a few minutes later.

The ultimate life form made no effort to reply, but expressed something of an apology in dipping his head.

Silver, still looking dazed, pulled himself into a sitting position. Observing Shadow's silence, he placidly joined. For a long time, the pair just sat, staring through the toothed glass out into space. This place... now so desolate to Shadow, so dead. What had once been his home was not more a catacomb than anything.

"I'm sorry about your friend," Silver said softly after some time.

Shadow closed his eyes. "Maria is gone," he replied simply. "This is how it's meant to be. There's nothing to be sorry about."

Silver looked down at his gloves, then back up at the dark hedgehog.

"You could help us," he said quietly. "Y'know, to save the future."

Shadow sighed, eyes fixed on a swirling red galaxy in the distance. The crease nestled at the centre of his brow lessened.

He didn't need Maria to start over.

A/N: Ladyamalphia?

I know what you're thinking. "LA, you disappear for six months and then come back a Shadow lover? Did your parents finally send you to normal camp?"

NO,NO,NO. They tried, but I fought 'em off. No. Ewwww. Trust me, it took a LOT of willpower to not end this sucker with, "THEN THE ARK ASPLODED. BUT NOT THE PART WITH SILVER ON IT. JUST SHADOW. THE END." This here was a birthday gift to my lovely friend Hannah, AKA Midnight Lullabye. Guys, if you've never heard of her, go read her stories right now and send her nice big reviews. She is one of the sweetest people I've ever never met in person. I love you, MiLly!

I'd also like to make a big shout out to my newish good friend, Jake-X, who is desperately in love with Shadow, and helped me through a couple of characterization rough spots. If I'd had my way, Shads would've left Blaze to get eaten by the mutant chao monster thing.

Hmm. I'm super unhappy with the dialogue. Actually, the story in general. I suck at dumb Shadow, and then little Silver ended up coming out all wrong too. Yuck. I think this concept would've been better off as a long-term story, just so I could develop something a little more realistic between them. It was supposed to be Shadow/Silver romantic-y, but I just couldn't do it in so little space. Hmm. I'm anticipating a kinda negative reception with this one. Oh well.

But now, it's Stone Cold time. See, uhh, here's what happened with that. It's all MiLly's fault. 'Cause, see, I had to write her a story for Christmas, which ended up like 6000 words long or something (it's going to be uploaded eventually), and then I had to write her birthday story. So, go throw stones at her. Birthday stones. Oh, plus, the last chapter of our collab got a grand total of ONE review, which just put me off writing altogether for a little while.

ARRIITTEE. Reviews are my life! Gosh, I haven't got a review in MONTHS now.

Now, back to Stone Cold.

Thanks for reading!

--LA