I'm terribly sorry for all the time it took for me to get back on here and write again. Been busy with life. So to reward you guys for waiting, here's a longer chapter than usual. :D


"Aw geez, I am not going through this again. Not this morning..." Tails groaned, the hard edge of a growl in his voice. He was sitting in the backseat of Sonic's blue Bugatti Veyron, leaning his elbow on his armrest and staring out at the window, trying to plug his ears from the loud music. For your understanding, everyone in their group had their own car. Somehow they all fit in the garage, but that was another story. Anyway, Sonic and Co. liked to take turns in each others' cars when all driving together. Saved more gas that way, but made a lot of people grumble, since the only one happy with the decision was the one that got their own car. More trivia, each car fit the person that drove it. Such as Sonic's Bugatti. It was supposedly the fastest car in the world. And take Shadow's Hummer; it's sleek and powerful. Tails, on the other hand couldn't drive for a while, but he had a prototype hidden in the garage that he was working on. He couldn't wait until he got a license.

Anyway, back to story. Tails was staring out the window at the scenery, trying to forget the gigantic quarrel that always went along with riding in Sonic's car. Especially when you had Shadow sitting in the passengers' seat. Or any instance where you had Shadow sitting up front. Sonic and Shadow were sitting up front, fighting over the radio as usual. Sonic would change it to his favorite rock station. Shadow would change it to some metal station. Sonic would change it back, insisting that it was his car, he controlled the music. Shadow would change it again, stating that he controlled the music no matter what. It went back and forth. This was the norm for Shadow, because no matter the car, Shadow had to have his music. He was such a control freak sometimes. Silver, who sat next to Tails, was plugging in some headphones and his IPod. Lucky bastard, Tails thought. Knuckles was asleep, as usual.

The boys' had taken a trip out because the girls' had forced them to, saying that it was their turn to get the groceries. So long story short, they were all on a grocery run in Sonic's car. Up front, Sonic and Shadow dueled it out on the radio. "It's my car, I get the say-so." The cobalt hedgehog stated, changing it. "Well I'm not listening to your soft rock crap all the way to grocery store and back." The ebony hedgehog countered, changing it. "Well, most people in here have sensitive ears to metal, so I'm keeping it low. You can have your metal when we get home." Sonic said, changing it. "If they can't stand it, they should've brought ear plugs." Shadow said, changing it. "For your information, I'm driving! I can't wear ear plugs!" Sonic shouted through an especially grungy guitar riff. Shadow was about to yell a retort at him, but Silver beat him to it. "Will you both just turn the radio off and shut up! I can hear you through my headphones!" He yelled, glaring. Sonic and Shadow stared at him. Shadow turned off the radio. "Thank you." Silver said quietly and went back to surfing his IPod. Tails stared wide-eyed at him for a while, then went back to looking out at the window. "Thank God. I thought my ears were going to pop off." He said, grateful for Silver's outburst.

"WOAH, PONIES JUMPING ON MY BACK!" Knuckles suddenly shouted, jerking up and hitting his head on the ceiling. As Knuckles was sitting right next to Silver, the white hedgehog freaked and started shouting with him. Tails just stared in fear, not knowing what was going on. All he could hear and see what Knuckles and Silver flailing around against their seatbelts and shouting. Right when Knuckles shouted, Sonic, the bejeezus scared out of him, yelled in fear and started swerving on the road. Shadow shouted commands at the blue hedgehog, telling him to give him the wheel or pull over. Sonic, of course, did neither. He continued swerving and, much to the honking and shouting of people in other cars, sped down an exit, getting off the highway. He kept driving until his phase was over, and by the time his head cleared and he slowed down, they had ended up off the highway and into a side road flanked by trees. The sun could barely get through the foliage in the trees, so only shards of light reached the group. The road led deeper into the forest and eventually the gravel gave out to ground, as if the people paving the road suddenly stopped. There had to be a reason, right?

Tails was the first one to break out of his state and opened the car door, jumping out. Shaking his head, his ear buds falling out, Silver got out of the car, slamming the door behind him to make a loud enough noise to wake up Knuckles, seeing as he had started dozing off again. "Ugh, fine, I'll get out. Are we at the grocery store now?" Knuckles grumbled, getting out of the car. Sonic and Shadow followed, Shadow grabbing his gun out of the glove compartment and flicking the safety off. "God, Sonic, where'd you end us up now?" Shadow growled, taking in his surroundings with a trained eye. "It's definitely not the grocery store." Silver said, looking around. Tails fidgeted with his fingers, looking behind him at the road they came up. There was an intersection at the end of the road with a flickering light. Great. Now they were lost. What with everyone screaming and flailing around, Tails couldn't see where they were going. "Well, at least we didn't crash. We're not in any pain. We're just..lost, is all." He said, walking around and inspecting the road.

"Yeah, it could be worse, I guess. Wait, didn't anybody bring an emerald with them?" Silver said, suddenly hoping someone brought theirs. "Then we could just warp to the grocery store, then home." He said. "Wait, if we could just warp, then why did we drive? Why do we have cars?" Sonic asked, confused. "Don't get all OOC on me, Sonic. Stick to the plot." Shadow said, glaring. "Wait, what?" The blue hedgehog was still confused. "Nevermind. Let's just drive out of here." Shadow sighed, massaging his temples. "Uhh, the thing about that is..we're kinda…out of gas." Sonic said, bracing himself for a sound barrage from the ebony hedgehog. "Ah, dammit." The hedgehog said, sighing again. "Ugh, let's just walk around then and see if we can find anything, or anyone." Grateful for no shouting, Sonic walked down the road, following Shadow and looking behind him to see the others following him. Tails walked quicker so he could get to Sonic's side. Not that he was scared or anything, he just liked to be near the blue hedgehog; gave off waves of awesomeness.

After walking a while, the forest started getting less scary and more cool for Silver, as the white hedgehog watched everyone walking. Sometimes they would be illuminated by a shard of light, and then they'd be dark again. It was cool. Silver looked behind him and saw that the car was at least a couple miles away now. Bringing his head forward again, he almost hit Knuckles as the group suddenly came to a stop. "Hey, what's the hold up?" He exclaimed, trying to look around them. He walked to the side, and saw why. The gravel ended in big chunks, revealing the forest floor. There was a big archway with a sign at the top that read in faded letters, 'Green Hill Cemetery'. That sent a couple shivers down the ivory hedgehog's spine. "Woah, didn't know Green Hill had a cemetery." Sonic said looking at the arch. Now they could see it. In the beginning of the cemetery there were small gravestones, and leading farther in, the stones got bigger, probably the ones with more money. "Well. What do you guys want to do now? Turn back?" Sonic said, looking at everyone's faces, probably reading the fear on Silver's. Sonic gave a sympathetic smile to the hedgehog. Silver gulped and nodded at him. "Hell, it's still daytime, and it's just a cemetery. I'm gonna explore." Shadow said, walking under the arch. Knuckles shrugged his shoulders and following the black hedgehog. "Tch, fine. I'm coming." Sonic said, beckoning Tails and Silver. "Come on, like Shadow said, it's just a cemetery, right?" He said with a smile. Silver took to the air. "I feel safer in the air. Never know what's in there." He called down to Sonic, who nodded and started walking. Tails followed silently.

Floating silently, Silver followed the group overhead, trying to catch up to Shadow while looking around. Below, Shadow was looking at each headstone, reading some, while others were indecipherable. The worn path eventually stopped at a fork, and Shadow looked down each. The left one sloped sharply downwards, while the other one went in a gentle slope upwards. He immediately chose the right one. He always felt better on higher ground. Knuckles followed him as he started walking. Silver, seeing that there was a hill, took to higher air, looking up. As he went higher, he started to see that there was a tower at the top of the hill. It rose over the tops of the trees, so as he floated upwards, Silver could see the highway and the town out in the rolling green hills. He flew over to land on the top of the tower, testing it to see if it would crumble. It did look old, after all. Silver felt better now that he was in the open and he had the sun shining on him. He saw Shadow and Knuckles below, scaling the hill and was happy for his ability to fly. Away from him, Sonic and Tails were far behind walking down the path slowly; Sonic taking it slow at least so Tails wouldn't get scared. When they got to the fork in the path, they took the downward slope, not knowing which way the others went. And as they walked, the path started getting darker. "Uh Sonic..are you sure that we should be taking this path?" Tails said, looking around at the trees. He couldn't see the sun now and there was mist gathering, slowly but surely. Sonic, on the other hand, was having a good time. He was in an exploring mood, and the dark and bit of mist wasn't going to scare him. "Nah, its just mist. If this path was dangerous, there would've been a sign or something." He said, reassuring Tails.

Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. The air went sharply cold. The air even felt dreary and heavy. "Sonic? This is a bad sign." Tails said, calculating the sudden air change. "I know, buddy. I know." Straining his eyes to see in the darkness, he suddenly went rigid. A wispy evanescent form was quickly coming towards them. Sonic put Tails behind his back, trying to see the form more clearly. It suddenly took the form of himself, and its face was a contorted form of hollow eyes and a gaping mouth that looked to be screaming, but no sound came. "OMG, IT'S A GHOST!" Sonic screamed. Usually he wasn't scared of much, but ghosts were an exception. Dragging poor Tails behind him, he took off running back up the path.

Up at the tower, Silver, Shadow, and Knuckles suddenly froze, hearing screaming that could only belong to Sonic. And it took a lot to make Sonic scream. Silver jumped off the tower and took to the air, searching at the fork for the blue hedgehog. Shadow took off running back down, and Knuckles barreled down the path after him. Sonic passed the fork in a screaming blur and took off down the path out of the cemetery. Silver looked down the sloping path and screamed as well as he took one glance at the ghost and took off in a rocket towards Sonic. When Knuckles and Shadow got down to the bottom, Knuckles squealed at seeing the ghost change its course and come after them. He dashed past as the ghost reached out towards him and followed after the guys. Now it was just Shadow and the ghost. Of course he wasn't scared; it was just a spectral, and an angry one at that. The ghost switched from the form of Sonic and took Shadow's form. Momentarily surprised, the hedgehog took his gun in both of his hands and took aim at the ghost. He shot two bullets, one after the other, but they just passed through its form. Realizing that bullets couldn't work, of course, he growled and braced himself for the impact. The ghost hit him like a wave of cold water and vanished into the air. The black hedgehog shook his head, ridding himself of the feeling. Figuring that their trip was over now that everybody had run out screaming, Shadow ran after them. Back at the car, everybody was scrambling to get inside, and Silver started lifting it into the air. Seeing as they were going home now, Shadow quickly jumped onto the hood of the car, gripping the rails. From there, they sped off in the distance towards their home out in the hills. As they started passing the town, Shadow figured he had better avoid yelling when they got home and dropped off the car when they started passing over the grocery store. He had money on him anyway, so he could grab the groceries real quick. When he dropped off, Silver looked at him, "Hey, what are you doing?" Shadow cupped his hands and shouted to him, "Grocery shopping!" Then he turned towards the ground and dived, going into a roll on impact in the parking lot. He was surprised that the trip had actually turned out fun. He smirked.

Now this was grocery shopping.


Yeah, Shadow does this all the time. XD