Jet Halcon, world-renowned fourth general of the Federal Territories' space frontier unit, was frazzled after seeing a beloved second general destroyed from the blast of a fire ball. Silver Couverture managed to get the president to agree to let the Nocturnus into their territory only to be attacked by unknown warships. Now, Jet had the privilege of having to explain what happened before a war occured between Mobius and the Nocturnus planet. His day was just fine and dandy. It almost made him feel nostalgic as he recalled his earlier days when he had to fight alongside his own troops and one of his prized fighter, Shadow Letzte. He wondered what he was doing as he walked down the corridor of a laboratory with his second-in-command, Storm Ahodori. The rescue unit informed him of a sole survivor from the crash site of the Nocturnus ship, so he was dying to see what became of their findings.
Unbeknownst to him, however, someone was watching the general as he made his way to the nucleolab. The lurking eyes gazed at the two men walking away from him then disappeared down another corridor. Manic Verde was practically a regular in the Space Frontier Headquarters of Metal City. He hissed in laughter at his own cunning. He used to be a janitor in this very same building until he met a certain white-furred female bat escorting some dark-furred guy, who used to work here as a soldier, around. While the guy was away, he got some time to play with the bat. Of course, he wasn't expecting the bat to be his boss five years later. This was no time to be remembering those days either. He came here for one thing and one thing only: the perfect specimen to reconstruct.
As he snuck his way into the nucleolab's specimen room down the hall, a familiar friend and co-worker walked out of the room with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He was dancing to Latin music with his terrible dancing skills until he caught sight of the green hedgehog staring at him in surprise. It was a purple and white weasel with a yellow luau shirt and brown slacks versus Manic's red one and blue jeans.
"Hey, that you, Manny?" the weasel asked, pointing at his old friend.
"Nack, my man!" Manic greeted, giving the weasel a dap and noogie. "What you still doin' here?"
"I'm workin'!" the weasel answered, laughing and playfully fighting his friend. "I hear you been workin' a dame at her new comp'ny, ya? Good on ya!"
"Yeah, I got this new gig," Manic said, pulling Nack in to whisper. "It's top secret. Lemme in the room, 'kay? I pay you back."
"Sure thing, man," Nack said, pushing Manic off and opening the door with his ID and hand recognition passcode. He led his friend into the room and said, "So, whatcha need?"
"Anything new or discarded might do so long as it passes the perfect evaluation exam," Manic says, placing quotes on perfect. "It can't be something the government want, and it can't be something any normal person would care about."
"Oh, I got one for you," Nack said, nodding at the description as vague as it was.
A normal person or anthroman wouldn't know what the hell Manic was asking for but Nack knew. Manic wanted some DNA from a specimen that didn't have any past, present, or future relationships of any kind with anyone and one that was a complete nobody. A specimen that wouldn't normally exist to anyone had it not been found. Nack went to the back of the specimen room, passing up multiple shelves and coffins with old bones, chunks of war-torn flesh, bottled eyes, pickled hands, and anything else you could find in some sort of container, and found a glass case on a gurney. He rolled it towards Manic and opened his virtual clipboard to get a serial number of the item.
He said, "This is the new specimen the rescue unit found from an alien ship crash site on one of Mobius's moons. One of the scientists planned to terminate reconstruction because of the lack of living cells from the bones or leftover tissue."
"Hmph, what a weird hand," Manic commented, taking out a portable scanner. He clicked a few buttons just to get a simple read on the bone structure and DNA, but, to his amazement, he got much more than a simple scanning. He got blueprints of the body that was once connected to the peculiar armor encompassing a forearm bone and its DNA! There was so much information that came from this arm alone that it caused his scanner to short-circuit and die. He gasped, "No way! I am so getting that raise."
"The specimen is over here. Give me a moment, sir."
"Well, time ta go!" Manic whispered, taking the hand. He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a robotic arm in the same condition as the hand. Nack chuckled at the similarity and watched as his friend hustled to shove the new specimen into his shirt pocket. Manic nodded then said, "Alright, man. I have to go! Dinner at my brother's place. I'll give you a present!"
"You'd better!" Nack called out, moving the gurney back into its place.
He faked like he hadn't even seen the robotic arm as he typed in codes in his clipboard innocently. General Halcon entered the room, following one of the scientists, and caught sight to the weasel as he walked over to an old specimen of bottled eyes. He turned his attention back to the human scientist as he rolled out the survivor from the crash site. It was obvious he hardly cared for the thing.
"That what you call a survivor?" Jet questioned, not seeing any spark or oil pour out of the wires.
"A few cells are still alive. That's all that I need."
"Really? Have you at least identified it?" Jet inquired.
"We tried but the charts were off the scale. I'd have to do it again to see if anything changed. Maybe something will come up."
"Mr. Manic, I thought I told you not to find me a specimen that's stolen."
Rouge stared at the bone peeking out of the metal glove with disgust and admittedly some sort of interest. It definitely wasn't going to come into conflict with the protestors, but she wasn't expecting a mummified corpse either. What excavation team did he steal from this time? She noticed the hand was holding onto a handle for some sort of case. Whatever this creature was, it certainly couldn't have been that old. It could have been an Italian businessman trapped under volcanic ashes, but who was to know without doing a little research? However, no matter what questions she asked, there was still a dead guy in her building.
"Yeah, I know, but this one is that rare thing you were talking about," Manic defended, trying to wait for his portable scanner to recharge itself. He smacked it a few times, smirking when it worked properly, and then said, "Look at this!"
Rouge huffed then came over to see the scanner. She watched Manic work as he glided his fingers across his virtual screen to find the recent scan file. It still amazed her to see a janitor be able to work electronics so well and to even know anything about DNA. She actually found Manic a lot sexier when he worked. Once the file was located, he kept the scanner on its charger to show Rouge what he saw when he infiltrated the nucleolab.
"You see, normal human or animal DNA have 40 memo-groups, which is enough for any living thing to perpetuate itself. This..." Manic declared, pointing towards the dead guy with a little bit of bone left in his armor, "has 200,000 memo-groups!"
Rouge looked at the arm then looked back to the screen to see nothing but blueprints and several numbers of different scanning completions. She remarked almost slowly, "Sounds like a freak of nature to me..."
"Makes you want to meet him, doesn't it?" Manic prompted, biting his lip as he looked into Rouge's eyes.
Rouge was about to argue with him until she saw his cute pouting lip and big, glittering eyes. She was a sucker for cute faces, she'll admit to that. She rolled her eyes then sighed and said, "Fine, I'll give you a raise and permission to reconstruct the dead guy."
"Yes, I love you!" Manic cheered, hugging Rouge tightly and pressing their cheeks together.
"But he'd better be as perfect as you say," Rouge couldn't help but smile at her boyfriend, but she did have to set the record straight so she poked Manic's nose and continued, "and when I mean perfect I mean flawless. I don't care what gender the sample ends up being so long as they make me some profit gains rather than losses."
Manic left the room in nothing short of a flash. He stopped in his run, thinking of something, and then ran back to place a sweet kiss on Rouge's lips. He broke away, clearing his throat and blushing, and then ran back to where he was going to go.
I don't know why I put up with him, Rouge thought. I hope his specimen turns out okay. I don't want to have to fire him because someone knows dead and lovin' it over here.
Rouge began to worry about this and called, "Manic, wait! I'm gonna have to watch your process. There's no telling what you'll do to the specimen. It's only a couple of bones and skin cells in this armor thing anyway."
"You know you love my taste in aesthetics when it comes to this. Admit it, boss."
"Ugh, fine, you know how to make hot sexdroids!" Rouge admitted, flying after Manic. It had been awhile since she actually flewn anywhere.
"I like this submissive side to you. It's kind of sexy," Manic said, winking at his boss. He turned a sharp corner and then typed in a passcode to enter his own reconstruction room.
Rouge hadn't been in the reconstruction room in months. It was almost refreshing to see the gold foil along the walls. Cellular reconstruction was a gentle and strenuous process. If the tools didn't conform to the right tolerance, lawsuits weren't the only thing she'd have to deal with. Manic rushed over to the main computer, which controlled all the delicate equipment needed for his job, and connected his portable scanner to the monitor by simply touching the monitor's small laser light reader pad. Virtual hardware became mechanical hardware and all the information could be read properly.
The reconstruction machine itself was about nine feet long to accomodate for any size of creature or robot or subspecies. It was in the form of a coffin made of glass with a flatbed that could adjust to any being's spinal structure and a layer of vector fields that the machinery can effectively operate on like surgeons so to speak. Manic was busy transporting the deadman's hand to the reconstructor pod while Rouge engaged in memories of creating her very first arm surgery on an alien. The race was quite thankful for her discoveries and healing processes. They come to her often as regular clients. It was such a nostalgic feeling, the way her memories replayed like that. It was also painful. That first job may have earned permanent clients, but it also caused her to lose the man she loved. Before she knew it, she was divorced.
"Over here, boss," Manic said, waving a hand to beckon the bat. Rouge landed delicately on her heeled feet and walked over to the computer with her arms folded. Manic then continued to explain as diagrams and blueprints separated in a readable manner, "Okay, Ms. Rouge, I wanna show you something here. This is a normal human DNA chain. Below it, an anthroman DNA chain, okay? That means you, me, anybody like us, right? Watch this. The compositional elements of his DNA is the same as ours, but there's simply more of them tightly packed with infinite genetic knowledge almost like this being was... I don't know, engineered."
"Is there any danger to that?" Rouge questioned, raising a brow.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Manic whispered, smiling confidently. "When I connected my scanner to the computer, I put it through the cellular hygiene detector. That's why all the diagrams and blueprints are in a certain order now as opposed to earlier when my scanner imploded from the override. The cell is - for lack of a better word - perfect."
"Okay," Rouge nodded after some thought. She took out her ID in the form of a small dogtag with a barcode written across it and pushed it into a personnel USB port. She guided her hand across a panel and pressed it down onto a red button, waiting for Manic to tell her when to activate the machine before them. She then said, "Go ahead, but Mr. Perfect better be polite; otherwise, I'm turning him into cat food."
"Any requests for what his function should be? He is, after all, being reconstructed for a purpose," Manic reminded, teasing Rouge.
"The brain chip?" Rouge asked, not getting the joke. She thought over it and said, "Our pleasure models have had very little success since it's starting. Let's hope this one can turn that situation around."
"Activate it," Manic cued, hearing Rouge press the button.
The deadman's hand lifted a few inches off the flatbed and into the vector fields for proper elevation as the first process started. Rouge hadn't noticed this before, but the hand had two spikes on either side of its four knuckles. Why hadn't she seen it before was a mystery. For all she knew, Mr. Perfect could've been a mafia leader at some point in his career and was delivering weed before someone got the drop on him. Two long machine arms bended towards the vector field. Calcium, phosphorous, and magnesium deposits surrounded by liquidated collagen transfused through the arms to create a form of bone tissue with a yellow to off-white coloring in the molds for a skeleton. The fingers of the arms positioned themselves at the last bit of bone protruding from the peculiar glove. From there, Rouge and Manic simply watched as the arms worked to create a skeletal system for the deadman. Manic was very focused on the monitors showing the reconstruction process as he had to approve of certain adjustments and protocols. When the skeleton was complete, he noticed the appearance of a long, jagged tailbone. The computer then produced a listing of possible creatures the few living cells matched with, among them being an echidna.
Manic hummed in thought at the possibility and said, "Tissue processing."
The skeleton hardened within moments before the reddish-brown, liquorice-like strings connected to the tissue connector. The connector was a tube held in place by two handles and connected to a smaller tube that held the large chunk of pink and reddish-brown flesh. It's unknown whether the actual flesh matches with the deadman's leftover bits, but Manic and Rouge soon noticed the deadman take an unusual anthroman's form. The possibility of this man being an echidna grew at an alarming rate for Manic. It seemed to him that Rouge was only concerned with the flesh forming an outward reproductive organ. That was natural.
"Ten seconds to ultraviolet protection," Manic warned, watching a shield cover the glass. "This is the last phase. The cells are bombarded with greasy solar atoms, causing the body to react and protect itself. That means growing skin."
"Wonderful," Rouge commented, not wanting to know what all that meant. The deadman was becoming a live man, right?
"Reconstruction complete," Manic signaled, seeing only the diagram of what appears to be the rare species of an echidna.
"Remove the shield," Rouge told him.
The shield moved backwards and revealed what Rouge thought was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen besides her first love. The creature's hair and fur was a brilliant red color and its muzzle was a preciously sweetened cream color. His hair was long and in dreadlocks, giving him a very exotic sort of look. His nose was especially shorter but cute on his face.
"I told you. Perfect," Manic commented, smiling widely.
He walked over to a control panel and started thinking about clothes for the red echidna simply lying on the flatbed. It would be a moment before the echidna's breathing began functioning. Pins and needles filled with blood and other fluids were being transfused into the body, so the systems could begin working on their new host. By Mr. Perfect being a vibrant red color, Manic thought of islander clothing for him and turned to the colors of the Jamaican flag or the colors most celebrated in Mayan culture. His legs were also extremely long and lithe like his arms. Something to keep him warm would help him out.
Deciding on a color palette, Manic commanded, " Thermal bandages and skinwear."
"I'd, uh..." Rouge started, not knowing how to put her keen interest in the echidna. He truly was a perfect specimen. She continued, "Like to take a few pictures...for the archives."
Manic chuckled at her, earning some blushing in his favor. Yellow, green, and black belts moved in a seemingly parabolic motion as they covered the resting echidna. Monitors beeped as certain functions in the red creature's body began to function accordingly. His heart was pumping blood properly, lungs were expelling carbon dioxide and sucking in oxygen, his brain was playing images found in dreams, and his eyes were currently in the REM state. As the thermal bandages formed clothes for the echidna, the body was finding its equilibrium point in body temperature. This rapid alteration between extreme heat and sudden coldness began to stir the echidna awake. When he felt warmth, his eyes were beginning to open.
Manic activated the camera per Rouge's instructions, and that sudden burst of light triggered an intense disturbance to the echidna's body, causing him to feel fear, utter pain and shock. Immediately following the snapshot, the echidna's throat worked to let out a yelp but could only produce gurgling screams. His back arched as pain went from his eyes to his brain and down his spine. When he tried to relax his body after feeling the pain subside to his feet, his vision was blurred and all the machines surrounding him appeared as demonic things to him. The atmosphere terrified him and made him arch more to feel for his surroundings. He banged against the walls of his glass prison in a full crab position, forcing his throat to work out the yelps of fear from his savage screaming. When his body came crashing down onto the flatbed, he turned and noticed his vision grow stronger. His breath came in sharp pants. He struggled to get out of the prison, banging his head and upper back against the walls when he saw his own horrified reflection. A noise suddenly gained his interest and he saw the camera disappear into the distance. Reaching out slowly, he groped the air then banged against the top of the glass wall to figure out how the camera managed to escape. When he saw no way of truly getting out, he got in a crouching position and searched through the glass. His vision was getting stronger and stronger until he finally made out two anthromen like himself staring at him. He let his throat work as he gulped in a desperate breath before banging at the wall separating him from the people looking at him.
"Frana ys E? Fro tu oui ryja sa mulgat yfyo mega drec? E ryja y secceuh du lusbmada! E ryja du veht y bneacd. Ec ra rana?"
"Wordy little bastard, isn't he? What's he saying?" Rouge asked, furrowing her eyebrows. There were a lot of languages she could recognize in an instant, but the language the echidna was speaking was not one of them.
"Hell if I know. Activate the phonic detector," Manic ordered, watching the sound waves vary in size and wavelength as they came from the chatty echidna while he continued speaking. None of the English alphabet were getting what he was saying.
Rouge chuckled at the echidna as he continued desperately to speak. She wanted to assume that his phonetics were off, but he already looked like an islander. He was probably just talking in his native language. She asked Manic, "Is, uh..., is that thing solid?"
"Unbreakable," Manic commented, staring at the echidna's face full of expression and how his hair perfectly flowed and moved with him.
"Good," Rouge responded, taking out her ID tag and walking to the echidna.
"Mad sa uid!" the echidna lastly said, seeing Rouge come towards him.
He watched her with alert eyes while she watched him with amused ones. His attention then went to her gloved finger as she tapped the glass to get him to look at her. She held up her ID tag and watched as the echidna raised his head to look into her eyes. When they locked, Rouge almost lost her train of thought. The echidna's eyes were a gorgeous shade of violet, almost jewel-like, and Rouge loved violets just as much as she loved jewels. She cleared her throat when the echidna's eyes began to soften then narrow and smiled at him in the same amused expression as earlier.
"If you want out," Rouge said, holding up her ID tag, "you're going to have to learn to develop those communication skills."
The echidna nodded, feigning he understood what was said, and then shifted his eyes from the prized key to his freedom and the white-furred woman before him. He spread his feet in an odd crouching position and glided his hands down the glass walls. Rouge watched with curiosity as the creature lowered his head and eyed her almost predatorily. She, for a brief moment, thought she was about to be treated to a striptease. How wrong will she ever be! Once she caught the echidna's upper lip curl to show his fangs as he growled, her world suddenly black in an instant once the creature pulled his arm back to punch through the glass and knock the wind out of her body.
"Rouge!" Manic screamed. "General alert!"
Manic sounded dozens of alarms before hopping over the control panel to get to his girlfriend. He was going to kill that son of a bitch! The echidna managed to snatch the ID tag away from Rouge as she fell to the floor. He hurriedly placed the tag into the only slot that looked small enough for the ID to fit in, and climbed down from the flatbed as the glass prison released him. Different types of men were entering the room with long punishment sticks as he switched his vision from one person to the next. They wore greenish one-piece suits and bonnets on their colorful shoes hidden beneath them. When he saw Manic lift Rouge to her feet, he rose a bit to stare into the eyes of his reanimators. Manic and Rouge looked back at him, confused with the way he gazed at them. He looked as if he wanted to say something as he opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes narrowed a bit as one of the human men in green came towards. His lip began to curl up to growl again. Then, abruptly, he dashed towards the gold foil wall behind and jumped through it while spinning rapidly to burst through the bricks behind the foil.
"Perfect..." Rouge commented, earning an incredulous look from Manic.
Manic tried to get Rouge to drink some tea to relax her mind after being knocked out by the ungrateful echidna savage, but she was far too excited and shivered with anticipation as she waited for news of her new pleasure model being captured. He was certainly a gorgeous creature worthy of many anthromen clients. If luck was on her side, she might even draw the attention of human or alien clients. He was the starting point of perfection at its finest, and he was also worth a fortune due to the reconstruction of an entire body that would otherwise be presumed dead. Manic didn't care about the red-furred beast, however. If trading government property was going to be this bad, he learned his lesson and vowed never to take any property from anywhere. He was pissed as a hedgehog could get and that wasn't a good thing. Luckily, however, the police were now on the case of the missing echidna.
Down a corridor of Rouge's Recon, several human and anthromen police officials were walking toward the mid-section of the hallway. The yellow lights, signaling refugee alerts, were blinding and the alarms could tear out your ears the way they screeched. The leader of the group remained professional throughout all this while his anthromen colleagues were hissing at the noises. They had better senses than their human counterparts.
"Ladder on 18," the captain of the group called, summoning a ladder from the ceiling. He turned to his men and said, "You guys are with me. The rest will travel through ventilation."
"Okay, sir," a lemur said, leading the anthromen.
"This way," the captain told his human partners.
The echidna was fairly agile and limber as he passed through the ventilation ducts. He sniffed his surroundings for fresher air or the simple scents of fine greenery but hardly caught on to anything. He went down a duct and was stopped by the steel casings several feet away from the fans. Swiftly, he punched the casing out then peeped his head out to see if there were any more men with punishment sticks. Seeing none, he quickly maneuvered his way down multiple ducts. Taking one last desperate sniff, he caught the scent of air and heard the gentle sounds of a passing wind. Excited but also fearful of the other sounds and smells that filled his nose, the frantic echidna rushed through the tunnels and endless ducts until he found his light of hope. He climbed out of the ducts, finally, and was frightened by the different horseless chariots that zipped passed him.
His hair was blown back against the walls as he stood shocked by the many chariots that flew on air and zoomed to different points on their horizons. The vast difference between his remote, quiet world and this chaotic one brought the poor boy to tears. He had never seen anything this savage in his own lifetime on Maysis Isle. He had even gone to another planet and didn't see anything resembling these monstrous things. His knees began to shake and buckle from the overwhelming atmosphere.
"Okay, sir, stay calm," the echidna heard from behind him. He stooped down inside the tunnel again to see three human police officers pointing some form of weapon at him. He frowned at this injustice and continued to listen to the leader of the pack. The officer said, "This is the police. There's nowhere else to go. You're gonna slowly turn around and put your hands on the floor. Do you understand me...?"
Outraged, the echidna left and carefully scaled the building out of his own interest. He clearly didn't hear the officer say after an aggravated sigh, "He doesn't." Turning a corner, the echidna walked along the edge of the building and simply gazed at his surroundings to identify something of simplistic value that he could possibly identify with. Finding nothing but wanting to continue his search, he was startled out of his thoughts when a booming horn approached from seemingly out of nowhere towards him. His eyes widened in fear as a long horseless chariot raced down the side of the building. He looked down to follow the noisy thing then back up into the sky. This place had more than flying, horseless chariots. It had longer, horseless chariots that fell from the sky! Amazed by this, he didn't pay attention to the cars approaching him until alarms sounded and got his immediate attention. Beaming lights blared into his face and he was forced to squinch them closed and hold up his hands to block the light or at least balance himself.
"This is the police. This is the police," a penguin said through a receiver. He was seated next to the lemur from earlier with the human officers. They left to retrieve flying units in record timing to find the echidna refugee. The penguin said, "We are processing your identification. Please put your arms up and follow our instructions."
The lemur watched the echidna attentively, making sure his partner could get a read on his facial features. By being the driver of the flying unit, he had to make sure the hovercar was very steady as the scanner on the car traced the red creature's background information.
When the penguin could get no real results, he murmured, "He has no file."
The echidna didn't want to go back to the lab where the green hedgehog and white bat were. He took desperate gulps of the air swishing through his hair and looked up and down his surroundings to find another escape. With no other option, the echidna whispered a single prayer from his trembling lips and closed his eyes as he did so. As if an angel had come down to push him, the echidna leapt from the edge of the building he stood on and heard a small voice fill his spirit and his ears.
'I am with you...'
"He dove off!" the lemur exclaimed, driving downwards to chase the echidna's body. He had hoped he could make it in time to catch him.
The echidna was falling at an alarming rate, somehow managing to dodge several hovercars from ramming into his body and crushing his bones. All he felt was the wind passing around his body and his own heartbeat calmly pulsing through his veins. It felt as if he had been falling for a long time. Suddenly, hands touched his arms and legs and slowed his falling down. He heard whispering in his spirit and a voice complaining about the events that occured in his day. That deep voice grew louder and louder. He was confused by this, but he dare not question what he was hearing. When the voice stopped talking and the hands that carried him let him go, he opened his eyes to see the top of a yellow hovercar get closer fast. He squeezed his eyes closed hurriedly then braced himself for the harsh landing that was about to ensue. Then...BOOM!
Shadow was simply watching the road and minding his own business when out of nowhere the hood of his cab exploded. He yelped a bit in surprise and covered himself before realizing he was still driving. Shadow rushed to put his hands back on his steering wheel then veered in several directions to dodge oncoming traffic.
"Sorry!" he yelled out, nearly ramming into a minivan.
"You just had an accident," the robotic voice told him.
"Yes, I know I just had an accident, ya zappy battery!" Shadow replied, fighting not to rip out the controls containing the voice that spoke to him. He knew what the voice was going to say next and simply drove straight as he heard it, "You've got one more point left on your license and - LOOK OUT!" Shadow screamed, honking his horn. He sharply turned to a nearby corner of building's shoulder and cried out, "Oh no, man!"
The dark hedgehog chuckled to himself, finding karma to be a bitch. He turned on the autopilot for the cab then sighed deeply. Now what? He was barely making ends meet as it was with this job. Now, he was at risk from being fired for collateral damage. On top of that, his license was going to be suspended until renewal if he screwed up on the road again.
The red echidna was barely conscious when he crashed into the hovercab. Whoever was controlling the damn thing was certainly good at making him feel welcome. Tossing and turning in this contraption was not ideal.
Wanting to just punch something, Shadow vented, "Ugh, son of a bitch, I can't believe this!" He took off his seatbelt then turned to look behind him to see his hood inverted downwards. He ruled out any explosions and instead concluded that someone fell through the hood. Not wanting to get rid of a dead body, Shadow asked calmly, "Any survivors?"
The echidna reached his hand up to the nearest stable thing on the hovercar until he heard the deep voice from before when he was simply being carried by wind spirits. He rubbed his head as it pulsed from a sharp pain then cringed as he forced his body up and off the hovercab's floor. When his hand finally reached the glass wall, he shot his head up in fear that he left one glass prison and landed in another one. As he lifted his head to peek through the glass, he gasped to see a dark hedgehog with streaks of red in his hair and along the lids of his eyes. For a moment, their eyes locked in surprise. The echidna's heart suddenly began to pace at a strange rate as he gazed into the other anthroman's red eyes. He was beautiful! Shadow was also speechless from the strange red creature's violet-colored eyes. They weren't blue, and they weren't purple, but they were a healthy mix of both. He was also fascinated with the bright, bold colors he adorned. Red, yellow, green, and black represented some sort of nation, right? Maybe the creature was of Jamaican descent.
Not a man of many words, Shadow started to speak with a light smirk, "Hi... You okay?"