DISCLAIMER: So, yeah, here we go again. Another venture into the Sonicverse. All characters except random ones I might invent during the story are property of Sega. Looks like the Sonicverse is both inspiring me AND letting me come up with actual words to write rather than just story ideas lately. Pretty good for a comic that was until recently written by someone whose writing skills were alternately good and hideous, and is still being meddled with on occasion by the video game company that commissioned it. Also, BE WARNED. I may have to alter things in chapters I've already posted at times, when I realize I've messed up. I will make no warnings or apologies for this. If that involved yanking the whole story, editing and re-posting it, so be it. There is also a possibility, which I will try to avoid, that this will never be finished. I am a CHRONIC non-finisher. Also? My chapter lengths are variable. VERY. Expect a six line chapter followed by a hundred line chapter. It will probably happen. This was intended to be a short story, until I thought of a way to have more fun with it by adding drama to the humour. So I'm not ENTIRELY sure where I'm going with all of this. These caveats in place, lets hope I never mess up and therefore need to edit, and that I manage to keep going without winding up making it lame. Enjoy, and review!

Shadows of Chaos

by DarknessGothNightPuppyBasket

Prologue the First: Dark Visitor

Sally slowly emerged into consciousness to the measured, insistent sound of someone rapping on wood. Knock... knock... knock... knock... knock.

"Hmmwha? Geh? Go'way." she called blearily, glancing at the clock. 2:30. AM!

"Go 'WAY!" she snapped irritably as the knocking continued.

"I'm sorry, Miss Sally, but I can't," came the reply from outside her door, in an almost toneless, measured voice.

"You can! Come tomorrow!" she snapped.

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to - oh, no. NO!" The voice beyond the door suddenly acquired an edge of fear. "AHHHHHH!"

Sally was suddenly wide awake and in a cold sweat, sitting bolt upright. She dashed to her door, not bothering to put on a vest. She flung open the door, and peered into the darkness of the hall, searching for her visitor. She saw nothing until she looked down, seeing the figure huddled on the floor, shaking.

"I - can't - control it." he said. "It's not - ah!"

As her eyes adjusted to the dark of the hall, Sally recognized the figure clutching itself before her.

"Shadow?"

The black and red hedgehog looked up at her, a pleading expression in his normally expressionless or menacing eyes.

He gingerly moved his left hand away from where he had been clutching himself. Sally eyes had to readjust as a green glow struck her vision. A luminescent circle, surrounding an area of blackness... And then she saw what it was.

Shadow's smallest finger on his right hand was gone, but it didn't seem to have been severed. It simply ended at the knuckle, and a circle of green light marked its end. As she watched, the light suddenly intensified, and moved further down his finger... and more of his finger was gone.

"Help. Me," said the hedgehog, shivering with pain. Then he passed out.

And there Sally was, standing in a darkened hallway in the middle of the night, with an experimental bioweapon unconscious on the floor before her. And she didn't know what to do.