DISCLAIMER: All of the characters and places from the Sonic the Hedgehog Videogames and/or comics belongs to their respective owners. They do not belong to me.

This story takes place after the events of Sonic Generations. It involves a lot of different parts of the story merging into one giant turn of events! It's my first fan fiction. Please enjoy it!

Everyone was happy, they had just defeated the Time Eater, and said goodbye to their friends of the Past, and they continued with the birthday party. Sonic was having a great time with his friends once again… at the end of the day, everyone left to go back home and sleep. Now Sonic the Hedgehog was alone and looking up to the stars. He slowly drifted into slumber with a grin on his face, knowing that he and his friends had won once more…

A dark figure stood a small distance away from the sleeping hedgehog. The figure walked over to Sonic, being careful not to wake him. It held its hand out, as if it was holding something in its palm. A dark aura emitted from Sonic and soon started to stream and accumulate into the palm of the figure's hand, creating a dark blue orb.

Together with the orb, the dark figure faded away into the night's darkness, leaving the hedgehog to sleep peacefully… The figure then appeared to the sleeping bodies of Sonic's friends, repeating the process that he had done on Sonic himself. He easily obtained every one of their dark auras, until he came to two problems. Team Chaotix and Shadow the Hedgehog. Those people posed as a challenge for the figure, for it knew that they would be much more alert than the others.

The figure decided to accept the challenges and started with Team Chaotix, the three-person detective agency, consisting of Vector, Charmy, and Espio. The first two dark auras would be easy to take, but Espio would pose much of a problem. Espio the chameleon is a ninja, and is much more alert than his two companions. Add that to his ability to camouflage into his surroundings, and not only would he be challenging, he would be much more deadly. Nevertheless, the figure proceeded to their headquarters.

The figure heard the sounds of snores and sleeping sighs. Each member of Team Chaotix, had their own room and each was sleeping. The figure started with Vector, doing the same process as before. It then proceeded to Charmy, doing the exact same thing… Espio suddenly awoke to the feeling that something was wrong. He sensed a dark aura, and used his camouflage to blend into his surroundings. Espio climbed the walls onto the ceiling and sensed that the aura was approaching his room's door. He had sensed that the aura was accompanied by other dark auras, but somehow the others felt… familiar. His door opened, but he only saw one person, a figure that was shrouded in a darkness that exceeded that of night. He watched as the figure looked around the room, searching for something.

Espio decided not to ponder about what it was that person was looking for, and wanted to render the figure unconscious, then send them to the authorities. Espio snuck up on the figure from behind and tried to knock them out using a small but strong chop to the back of the neck. The attack missed as the figure disappeared from his sight and appeared behind him. Espio used a back kick to try to attack the figure again, but it exited the room and started to flee. Espio proceeded to follow and subdue it.

The figure stopped fleeing, and Espio confronted it. It revealed two orbs, one dark green, and the other a tainted shade of yellow. The figure dropped the two orbs, which seemed to melt into the ground upon contact. Espio watched as two other figures formed. He was in total shock; the two figures looked almost exactly like Vector and Charmy, with the exception of the white as milk eyes. Soon Espio was in combat with the two copies, dodging their attacks, while trying to keep himself calm.

As soon as he saw an opening to escape the copies and attack the figure, he took it. Espio dashed towards the figure and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Despite Espio's speed, the figure was able to block all of his attacks. The figure suddenly vanished in the middle of their fight. Espio looked around to find where the figure had gone, and suddenly noticed the dark energy from the copies becoming compressed. He turned around to see the Vector copy preparing to launch the Charmy copy like a cannonball.

Charmy was launched at Espio with enough force to blast through a building with little damage to the Charmy copy itself. Espio had just barely dodged the attack when the figure had reappeared and lifted the chameleon by the head. The two copies came to assist the figure by grabbing Espio's arms and legs. The figure proceeded with his usual process.

Espio started to feel light-headed, then drowsy, and soon the rest of his body began to feel weak… Just before the figure was able to complete the process, it was kicked by something strong. It looked around to see what had attacked, only to get battered by more attacks. While it was recovering from that last volley of attacks, it saw that the two copies were sent flying by a black and red blur. As the two landed, the blur had stopped and started to speak.

"I don't know who you are, but I sense that you have a chaos emerald. Hand it over, or else."

Espio weakly looked up and saw the mysterious person. It took a while, but Espio realized who the person was.

"Shadow!"

"Don't mistake my motives. I'm here for the emerald, and nothing more. I could care less about what happens to you", said the black and red hedgehog.

The figure stood up again, with the two copies appearing on both sides of it. Shadow prepared for a fight. Espio struggled, but got up and joined Shadow for the fight… Before the battle even began what seemed like the figure's head looked towards the East. It saw that morning had come, ruining its chance to proceed with its plans this night. It reached out its hands to the two copies, and they reverted to their orb forms in its hands. The two orbs melted into its body, and one of them was replaced with a big green chaos emerald, which was shattered by the possessor. It threw the shards toward the black and red hedgehog and then disappeared.

Shadow caught all the shards in a blink of an eye, becoming frustrated at the fact that he would have to go back to where he was coming from in order to repair the emerald.

"Thank you Shadow. If you had not been here, I do not know what that person would have done. " The chameleon then gave Shadow a bow of respect.

"I told you not to mistake my motives. (Sigh) What WAS that thing?"

"I do not know, but I have sensed immense darkness with and within it."

"Well, whatever it was, it shattered this chaos emerald. Why would it do this, and why did it just give the shards to me?"

Before either of them even had a chance to think about it, they heard some familiar voices yelling out Espio's name. Espio immediately knew whom the voices belonged to.

"Vector! Charmy!" exclaimed Espio. Espio joined up with his teammates/friends. All the members of the Chaotix detective agency were now together.

"What happened, Espio? We heard a loud noise and couldn't find you anywhere!" said Charmy in his always loud and excited voice.

Espio decided to tell Charmy and Vector what had happened, but did not want them to worry about a knew and unusual enemy, so he decided to tell parts of the truth until a time comes when it is necessary to tell them the entire story.

"I was attacked by an intruder that I could not immediately identify, but judging from their height, they may have been a human."

Charmy then asked, "Why were you attacked?"

"The intruder had snuck into our Head Quarters, so I tried to chase it off or knock it out, but it fled here."

"Why didn't you stop chasing them, after they ran away?"

" I had a feeling that the intruder had stolen something of value from us, so I pursued them."

After hearing this, Vector joined into the conversation rather angrily.

"WHAT! What did they steal! They better not have taken that new radiophone in the office! I just got that thing!"

"Calm down, Vector. I do not know what exactly they took, but I have a bad feeling about this. What do you think, Shadow?"

It was at this time that the trio noticed that Shadow was gone… Shadow was making his way back to the GUN base. He was thinking about the creature that he had fought. That THING was unnatural, and although it gave him shards, it just gave him a Chaos Emerald without a struggle.

Shadow did not have long to ponder about what the creature was, for when he came to the GUN base, all that was left of it were burnt ruins, scraps of metal that were once vehicles, and corpses of the poor soldiers that could not escape, nor survive, whatever had happened at the area.

Shadow searched around the area to find clues to what had happened there. As he was searching, he noticed something abnormal within the building's remains. He ran over to the abnormal thing to inspect it. When he got there he found a sort of containment pod with the bullet-proof glass door with a big hole in it. Something about this pod seemed very familiar, though. He inspected it a bit more, checking every detail of its design.

Soon Shadow had come to a realization as to what this pod was.

"This pod… I remember this! This was the containment pod that Eggman released me from! What is it doing here?"

Before Shadow could think of any possible answers to any of his questions, he heard the noise of a missile. He easily dodged it and escaped its explosion range. He looked up to see that Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik was sitting in the Egg Mobile, an invention that Eggman seems to constantly use. Next to the Doctor was Rouge the Bat, who was being restrained by a giant robotic arm that was protruding from the Egg Mobile.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Shadow the Hedgehog", said Eggman in his usual tone of voice.

"Eggman! What are you doing here! And why is Rouge your captive!"

"I caught this bat trying to steal the Chaos Emerald I have in my possession. As for the reason why I am here, well… that's classified. I don't know why you're here, Shadow, but you've saved me the trouble of finding you, myself. Now I can get you out of y way once and for all!"

"Hmph. And what makes you think that you can defeat ME?"

"Don't worry, you'll soon find out."

"Enough of this nonsense. You know that you can't beat me, so just release Rouge and hand over that Chaos Emerald."

"Hmmm. I have a better idea."

The Egg Mobile suddenly teleports to Shadow's blind spot. A second robotic arm quickly revealed itself from the Egg Mobile and knock Shadow a fair distance, forcing him to drop the Emerald Shards he had.

"What's this? Chaos Emerald Shards? I think I'll take these if you don't mind."

The second robotic arm scooped up all of the shards and gave them to Eggman. As he placed them in his pocket, a beeping sound came from his vehicle.

"Hm? Drat! I was hoping to destroy you now, Shadow, but it seems that I don't have time to do that just yet. So long, Shadow!"

Shadow tried to use a homing attack to stop the Doctor, but Eggman flew too high up for Shadow to reach. It did not matter though. Shadow will just follow him until he lands. He can't stay in the air forever…