Hey! I'm back! Yeah, I know it's kinda' been awhile since I've gotten a chapter out. Funny story actually, including a ton of homework, getting grounded(-_-), and then getting wrapped up in the holidays...and sorry for making everyone wait so long. So, here's chapter four. Hope it makes up for the wait!

Chapter 4

Blaze looked for a lunch table to sit at while holding a tray of food. Despite the stereotypical view that school lunches were disgusting, the lunches served at Chaos Emerald High were decent. Cheap, but decent.

She spotted Sonic sitting at one of the tables near the middle of the cafeteria. He waved to her, and Blaze smiled and headed towards him. As she neared the table, someone pushed past her, knocking her over. Blaze fell. Suddenly, she stopped falling, face inches from the ground.

She marveled at it for a moment. The floor looked so much different when your face nearly hit it.

As the invisible force brought her back to her feet, Blaze turned and said "Thanks, Silver."

"No problem," Silver replied shyly, his hand still aglow with teal aura. "I even managed to save your lunch."

Blaze giggled and took the tray of food from where it was floating beside her.

"Who is that guy?" Sonic asked, pointing to the senior that had knocked Blaze over.

Everything about the senior told you not to mess with him. He was a black bat, wearing a black leather jacket two tears in the right sleeve, black gloves, and black boots. He had long black hair that fell into his navy blue eyes, and a serious look on his face.

"I've never seen him before," said Silver.

"Oh, don't worry about him," said a voice from behind the trio.

Silver and Blaze turned in surprise, and Sonic nearly fell from his seat. A gray hawk was holding a lunch tray behind them. She was kinda' odd to look at. She had feathers on her head that almost resembled a mohawk, and her eyes were different colors; one gray, one orange. She wore a shirt with a flame pattern on it, fingerless gloves, camo pants, blue and white shoes with three black buckles on them, and had a pair of headphones around her neck.

"You know that guy?" Sonic asked the hawk.

"He'th name ith Darkwing, and he'th alwayth like that," the hawk replied, a lisp in her speech. "Darkwing ith the bad-ath of the thcool. Not the perthon you want to get on the bad thide of."

"Why's he like that?" Blaze asked, setting her tray down next to Sonic.

"No one really knowth," she replied, "It'th jutht the way he ith." The hawk looked over the three of them. "The name'th Kai."

"Nice to meet you, Kai," Silver replied, "I'm Silver. This is Blaze. And he's Sonic."

Blaze gave a small wave. Sonic took a bite out of his chile dog and gave a peace sign with his free hand.

Kai nodded in greeting, then looked away for a moment. "It wath nice meeting all of you. I'm a thophomore, tho I gueth I'll thee you around."

As Kai walked away, Sonic commented "That Darkwing guy sounds like a jerk."

"It's probably best just to avoid him, like Kai said." Silver said, then shifted awkwardly and added "Mind if I sit with you two?"

Sonic looked like he might say something, but Blaze broke in, "Of course you can, Silver."

Sonic gave her a look. It read Why do you invite the guy who's hair looks like weed to our table?

Blaze's eyes narrowed as the two of them had a mental argument.

Silver ate his pizza awkwardly as Blaze turned her back to Sonic crossly.

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Amy watched Sonic. She sighed heavily. He would never let her sit at his table. Or at the very least, Blaze wouldn't.

Amy noticed someone waving to her and looked up.

Cream was waving to her from a few tables away. Tails was seated across from her, slightly red in the face as Cream yelled "Hey, Miss Amy! Want to sit at our table?"

Amy gave one last glance at Sonic before nodding and taking the seat next to Cream.

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Knuckles growled as some freshman shoved him from behind in a rush. He walked to the nearest table, picked up the unfortunate sap who happened to be sitting there, and dropped him a few feet away. He then sat down at the now open seat, and politely yelled at the other freshmen sitting there to scram.

A tray landed across from his a few moments after the table was cleared.

"You seem to be in a chipper mood," Rouge observed as she sat down, looking at the shaken freshmen now trying to find new seats.

Knuckles did his best to keep the edge out of his voice as he tried to ignore her sarcasm. "So, how's your first day of school going?"

Rouge gave him a look. "It's pronounced 'hell', sweetie."

Knuckles was about to nod in agreement when he realized she called him "sweetie", but before he could do anything, he was interrupted.

"Hey," Shadow said, throwing his untouched lunch into the garbage can, a bemused look on his face.

"Shadow!" Rouge exclaimed, "Are you really going to sit with us and not in some dark part of the cafeteria alone?"

"No."

"Oh," Rouge replied, taken slightly aback from how flatly he answered.

"So...why are you here?" Knuckles dragged out the question for emphasis.

Shadow gave him a look, then said "Well, despite checking on you lovebirds-" Knuckles went red and gritted his teeth. "- I thought I should warn you about my homeroom teacher. He also teaches science and math. You'll have an-" Shadow smirked, "-interesting class period."

As Shadow walked away, Knuckles put solemn expression on his face and tried to mimic Shadow's voice "You'll have an...pause for mysterious effect...interesting class period."

Rouge stifled a giggle and playfully slapped him. "You know it's not nice to make fun of people!" she scolded him.

Knuckles laughed and took a bite out of his pizza slice.

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After Shadow finished his "warnings" about the science and math teacher, he walked over to the lunch table in the far corner of the room, waiting for lunch period to be over. Boy, were they going to get a surprise in those classes.

Eventually, the bell rang for fifth period. Shadow got up from his otherwise empty table, and was swept up with the mass of students leaving the cafeteria.

Shadow made his way to his locker, which he'd taken the liberty of spray painting his symbol on so he wouldn't have any trouble finding it. For some reason his teacher didn't approve of that, and he'd only barely got off without a detention on the first day of school.

Shadow got his books for his next two classes, and was about to slam his locker door closed, when he remembered something. He went through his backpack, and pulled out an old picture, slightly tattered around the edges.

In the picture was a blonde girl in a blue dress, smiling sweetly at the camera while hugging a black hedgehog with red stripes. On the back was a small inscription in a thin, neat cursive handwriting. It read Me and Shadow, whether he likes being hugged or not.

Shadow turned the picture back over, and taped it to the inside of his locker door. He slammed the door shut and turned to get to class-

-and ran head first into someone, making the two of them drop their supplies all over the floor.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!" exclaimed the girl Shadow ran into. She was scrambling to pick up her notebooks while talking. "I am so so sorry! I just transferred to this school and I'm still learning my way around the place and-"

For the first time, Shadow and the girl got a good look at each other. Shadow really didn't know what to say. The girl was wearing rocket shoes just like his, only orange, light blue, and cream colored instead of red, black, and white. She wore a black skirt and a light green shirt, and wore gloves just like his, but with the same color differences. She even wore inhibitor rings. Heck, the girl herself resembled Shadow, except she had light blue fur, and orange stripes instead of red.

The two kinda' just stared at each other for a second, slightly shocked a total stranger looked so similar to them. Then Shadow picked up some of the girl's books and handed them to her, saying "Are you trying to steal my style?"

The girl took her books, smiled, and said "I was going to ask you the same thing."

As Shadow helped the girl to her feet she said "I'm Dawn, by the way."

"Shadow."

Dawn nodded and brushed a lock of blue hair from her eye. "I'm a junior, and am heading to biology," she gave him an embarrassed look, "Do you think you could help me find the classroom?"

Shadow nodded. "Actually, that's my next class."

Dawn smiled. "It's kind of weird, actually. I thought my first day, I'd be a shadow. Now I'm following one!"

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Sonic took his seat in fifth period math class. Blaze was on his left, and Amy was on his right. Joy.

Shadow had come up to his table at lunch, warning him about the math and science teacher. Sonic really didn't know what to expect. Shadow is a bit hard to understand sometimes.

Suddenly, the door burst open and the teacher walked in.

Sonic's jaw dropped.

"Hello, class!" the teacher said as he wrote his name on the chalkboard. "My name is Dr. Eggman."

And finished! Again, really really sorry about how late this chapter was. Hopefully I made it up to some people by putting their OCs in here. And yes, the OCs will have significant parts in the story. I do not own the OCs in this chapter. They go to their rightful owners.

Darkwing the Bat- Anonymous friend of mine

Kai the Hawk- TigerHawkBramble

Dawn the Hedgehog- spottedfire-star

And of course, all Sonic characters belong to Sega. I hoped you liked this chapter (seeing how it took so long), please read and review, and look out for the next chapter!