Prelude to an Adventure.

Maria, who is still in her space suit, followed closely behind Shadow but the isolated blonde was enjoying the scenery of earth. "Earth is surprisingly different then on ARK. Is everything on this planet just like this place?" ask the Streaked Steaker

"Not really, in the city I used to live in hardly had green plains like these, it was a lot like the space station but with an unlimited amount of air." answered the cherubic child. After taking a step, Maria took a nasty fall, "Oww, these jet boosters may weigh light in space, but now they're a ton."

Maria then pressed a button on the rocket like skates that made them 'clamp' off her ankle, the boosters also were big enough for Maria to wear her slippers with them. The ebony wonder stare at the shoe marvel. Shadow clamped the rocket skates on his feet and began to walk with ease. Maria gawk at what the Ultimate Life Form did and asked him, "How'd you do that?"

Shadow up to her and replied, "I have above normal strength,"

"Ok, but won't they slow you down?"

"I could use these to strengthen up my normal speed without them."

"They do look good on you. Now let stop talking about shoes and start on our hike again"

The two continued with their hike for the Chaos Emeralds, following on Shadow's senses and upstream. They hike for hours, they took breaks now and then, refreshing their swore feet in the river, until they cam across steep and wide flat-topped plateau, with smoke clearly visible where the two were standing.

Maria took her best hunched, "When's there smoke, there's fire, and when there is fire…

Shadow finished his lighter counterpart's statement, "There's a civilization. I'm also picking up a Chaos Emerald atop of there."

"Now the only problem's is to up ther-" Maria stop as Shadow swept her off feet and hold her in his arms and then kick off the ground and onto the base of the mountain only to jump off to a higher level, like a rock skipping in a pond. Soon Shadow and Maria reach the top and were confronted by massive stone walls; the tall towers within the gates could be seen. "Echidnas! What are they doing here? Oh, I almost forgot, Shadow," Maria mumble as the hedgehog tilted his head down to Maria, "PUT ME DOWN RIGHT THIS INSTANT! It's a very uncomfortable position to be in." The Ultimate Life Form drop Maria right on her Fanny, "That's not what I meant and you know that."

"Shhhh!" went Shadow as he spied a bulky and shaggy echidna with a spear approaching to the two's position.

The menacing weapon of war and the innocent girl duck down and flatten themselves to the ground, they even stop breathing for a moment as an extra precaution. Soon the mega-sized marsupial's feet thudded away. Maria perk her head up enough to examine the traveling echidna's weapon and notified Shadow, "From what that spear went through, I think they are not much as pacifists."

"Stand Close," ordered the black and red ULF as he got up an approach the gatemen and ordered them in a dark stern voice, "Let me pass,"

One of the guards pointed his spear up to Shadow's face, who only took one short glance at and back the guards, and bellowed in a loud, tough, and prideful tone, "The gates of Echidnapolios are not open to the like to you,"

Shadow stood his ground and glared at the two guards, "And what I do I have to be to enter?"

Maria was in earshot range of the ecstatic converse and thought to herself, "These guys act like they're on a Japanese Anime Soap Opera."

The other guard chuckled, "Have you not heard of the Knuckles Tribe's conquest? We had just overrun the Stryker Clan of dingoes, the very rivals to echidnas. To enter our domain you must a strong warrior,"

Shadow narrowed his large red eyes at the two, "And how do I prove myself worthy of entering our domain of great recent great 'triumph'?"

The other guard lowered his spear to Shadow, "Do not speak with a cocky tone of the Knuckles Tribe, you cur! To enter you must beat us in combat!"

Shadow quickly leapt into the air and turned his right hand into a fist and the other to a karate blade. And with a swift punch and chop, the two guards fall to the ground. Maria awed at Shadow's speed, grace, and accuracy, she walk out of hiding and approach her ally in a strange new world, "You were amazing!"

The black hedgehog's glaring eyes soften to Maria, "We're in the past,"

Maria jaw dropt as if her tongue weighed like a cow, "How can that be?"

"We were brought here through Chaos Control, a tear in space and time."

"How can you be sure?"

"From Prof. Gerald's data download, with Echidna History, this where the echidna population took a incredible drop for an unknown reason. The only clue is a stone portrait of a giant lizard of water destroying a city that the professor found in the Mystic ruins." Shadow then noticed Maria smirking and blushing, "What's with you?"

"Sorry, you just sound cute when you talk all darkness."

Shadow blinked twice after hearing that word, "Cute?"

"Shouldn't we enter the den of crazy war loving spiky rodents?"

"Marsupials, Maria." Said Shadow dully.

Maria gave Shadow a very nasty look, "Shadow, we're in the past to a parallel world. I think we have more important things to do than correcting each other."

"I am the one doing the correct-" Shadow stop in mid sentence when he notice Maria's calm blue ocean eyes glared at him like a raging tidal wave crashing on a small newborn goldfish.

"Shall we go?"

"Aren't you afraid?"

"I have been coop up in that oversized soup can for more then half my life, I have a LOT of energy to burn, and this trip is my ticket."

"Maria," Shadow started at the girl with great awe, "You give such surprise. I would never expect you to do something like this."

"Shadow, I told you already, you have to Live and Learn. You have to do things that scare you, you have to make shift every mistake you make, do your bests at things your bad at, and so forth." Maria felt proud when Shadow smiled, then the ebony rodent step up to door and pushed against between the wooden frames, "Shadow, pull."

"Oops,"

"Live and Learn, Shadow, nothing to be a shame about."