Greetings dear reader. It appears you have stumbled upon my humble tale of holiday apathy. I assure you, this is a stroke of luck! You see, this is a story of the horribly misunderstood hedgehog who is forced by three of his acquaintances to discover the true meaning of Christmas when he already knew what it was in the first place. If you were looking for a heartwarming tale of love and family then you have come to the wrong place. Enough talk though. Decide for yourself if this tale tickles your fancy. Let us begin on Christmas Eve when Shadow the Hedgehog was beating someone up.
It wasn't exactly uncommon for him to be doing this during a holiday (evil never sleeps after all), but honestly, Shadow thought, this wasn't really the best time. He had been waiting around in the storeroom of a jewelry store practically all night, while an unimportant store clerk was looking for the necklace he had ordered for Rouge.
Shadow had been just about ready to shove the sluggish human aside and find it himself, when his highly sensitive ultimate ears picked up the discreet sound of an alarm system going off. The clerk was blasting some stupid heavy metal into his ears and was completely oblivious to the robbery taking place, so Shadow sighed and took a leisurely run into the main store area. The robber was in front of the counter, about to break the glass, when Shadow tackled him from behind. It wasn't really a contest. The hedgehog had the thief pinned and crying uncle in about five seconds flat. Shadow then shot a chaos spear at the nearest police phone, held the robber's arms behind his back, and waited for the cops to arrive.
"Twenty minutes." Shadow grumbled to himself as the police car pulled up to the store. "It took twenty minutes for the cops to get here, a jewelry shop about a mile away from the station. The incompetence of most humans never fails to amaze me."
After handing off the robber to the police, finally getting the necklace, and giving a certain store clerk a Stare of Doom, Shadow grabbed his motorcycle (if the robber had taken Delilah then things would have happened) and set off home.
The snow-caked streets were empty as Shadow rode along. Everyone was inside, parents frantically wrapping presents they had been procrastinating on, kits pretending to be asleep, poised to sneak downstairs after the adults retired. Which was fine by Shadow, no one to stop him on the streets with, ugh, singing. He wasn't the most social of hedgehogs, nor the friendliest. Or cheeriest. Or any kind of smiling whatsoever. Bad things happened when he smiled. Like explosions. But that was that one time.
After about ten minutes of driving, Shadow reached his house. It was kind of solitary, which was intentional, and had a large, pink christmas tree spray painted on it, which was not. Shadow had a pretty good idea who had painted it though. Sonic was not clever, or funny, or even slightly witty in any way, shape, or form, and Shadow was going to make sure that faker knew it tomorrow. The house was also made of cobblestone, but that's unimportant.
Shadow walked his bike up the the garage and flipped open the keypad to input the opener code. But before he could punch in any numbers, small, black, glitchy flecks began to appear on the display. He blinked. And blinked again. Because what the flecks were doing, they should not be doing. They were moving together, like puzzle pieces, to form a face. A face that should not be on Shadow's garage door keypad: Mephiles the Dark.
For one thing, Mephiles was supposed to be dead. Gone. Wiped from existence by some flame stuff that Shadow hadn't really seen. The second thing was that he shouldn't even be able to remember Mephiles! Time was a weird thing, but "having never existed" pretty much guaranteed no one remembering you. Then again, Shadow didn't rust Sonic and that Princess chick as far as he could throw a-. Well, actually, that was a bad analogy. Shadow could throw pretty much anything. The point is, Mephiles the Dark should not be on his keypad display.
Shadow reached for the display screen to do-, well he actually didn't know what he was going to do, but it would probably involve fire. Then just like that, Mephiles' face vanished. Shadow blinked several times, but the keypad remained bare.
Totally not slightly freaked out, Shadow typed in the code and parked his bike in the garage. He then entered his house.
Now, you're probably expecting a long, extensively detailed paragraph about what Shadow's house looked like. I will spare you the trouble. Mainly because this is not a long story about houses, but one about grumpy hedgehogs and annoying friends. So I am going to fast forward a bit. Where to you may ask? Well, to about the part where Shadow was about to go into the kitchen and make himself a sandwich, but saw something that made him grab one of his conveniently placed guns.
A large cloud of purple smoke was coming from his kitchen. The smoke seemed to then notice him, and begin twisting and stretching until it finally formed a shape: the crystalline one. "Mephiles." Shadow growled, cocking his pistol.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't the ultimate hedgehog! Didja miss me? Admit it, you missed me!" Mephiles said cheerfully, floating in corporeal existence. "Hmph, hardly." Shadow shot back. "How are you even here anyway? I thought you were erased from time." "Details, details." Mephiles said airily. "So, how's it going? That weed-headed nut job fix his time yet?"
"Get to the point. Why are you here and how soon can you leave."
"Geez, touchy!" Mephiles rolled his eyes, rolled them out of his head, and tossed them back into his face. " Right then, I have a message for you, Captain Emo-" "Do not call me that."
"Ok, fine. I have a message for you. Apparently some people up in the spirit realm think you don't understand the 'true meaning of Christmas' or whatever, so they're sending three gullible idiots to bother you tonight and try to teach you."
"But, I already celebrate Christmas. I did it with Maria, I do it now. I just don't sing all the time and plaster a stupid grin on my face." Shadow said annoyed. "Hey, I'm just the errand boy!" said the aggravating ghost. "The first one's coming at 11:30, so I would skip the sandwich and get some shut-eye while you can, if I were you. But hey, I don't need either of those things. I'm a ghost!"
"I noticed." Shadow then glared at Mephiles, turned his back, and made a move toward the coffee table. He then stopped and turned back to Mephiles. "Oh, and I know you're not real."
"Oh?" asked the crystal thing amusedly. "And how is that?"
"You are way too cheerful." And with that, Mephiles dissipated into a puff of purple smoke. Shadow then sighed and kicked the leg of the coffee table.
There was a whooshing sound, then the table, and the floor around it, swung upward, revealing a set of steel steps leading downwards. Shadow eased his way around the raised table and began to descend the stairs. He usually closed the trapdoor on his way down, but he left it open this time. Just in case.
There were two rooms in the basement: a lab where Shadow tuned up his gear and gave himself upgrades, and a small room with a bedside table and Shadow's sleeping tube that was basically a bedroom.
The hedgehog breezed past the lab and into the "sleeping area" as he had dubbed it. As another little security measure, he placed the pistol on the nightstand next to his tube. After giving the room a once over, just to make sure no more ghosts were lurking around, Shadow stepped into his tube and locked the door. There were about a hundred different switches and buttons on the inside panels of the tube for pretty much anything imaginable, but Shadow just pressed the ones to frost over the glass panels of the tube and induce and antigravity state. After floating around for a few minutes, Shadow fell asleep.
It seemed like he had only been asleep for a few minutes when Shadow was awoken by a tapping on the glass of his tube. The frosted glass blurred the shape of whomever was outside, but Shadow took one look at the shape and groaned. This was who it was? Of all the people to try and teach him the 'true meaning of Christmas, this guy? Seriously? The tapping became more insistent and a shout of,
"Hey Shadz, get up! We got stuff to do!" could be heard. The encounter was inevitable, but Shadow was not going to enjoy it. With a sigh, he turned the gravity back on and opened the door to meet the first ghost: the faker.