I'd say I'm maybe a fourth done with the story at this point, if not a little less. Things are going to pick up from this point on though, so if you've stuck with me up to this point, you're in for a treat.

X

A house came into view about a mile or so into the distance before Shade, who took the lead in front of us by a few feet, motioned for us to stop running. We sat atop a short hill behind a few branches to conceal us from anyone who might have looked in our direction as we inspected our surroundings. The house was fairly decent in size and looked to be two stories tall. There was a tall fence connected to the back of the house that created a back yard of sorts, though there was nothing of interest in the backyard itself aside from the unkept dirt remnants of a failed small garden. I took note of this, seeing as how the back entrance looked to be the best place to enter the home without drawing too much attention to ourselves.

"No need for pussyfooting around anything," Shade whispered loud enough for me and Rouge to hear, "I've done recon on the house a few days ago and saw that they don't lock the front door, so that might be the best way to get in."

Even with an unlocked front door, I'm sure there were better ways to get into the house that could give us a strategic advantage. Still though, Dr. Robotnik put Shade in charge, and I knew from working with him in the past that telling him my thinking would be a waste of time if it didn't match up to his. He was the kind of person who wanted everything to go exactly as he wanted it to, and I normally would have resented this if not for his flawless track record.

We slowly crawled down the hill and towards the house, scurrying from tree to tree and branch to branch in order to keep ourselves hidden. I would have guessed that Amy and Cream weren't expecting us and hiding ourselves was unnecessary, but I had to admit that the extra caution wasn't hurting anything.

We reached the front of the house after a few minutes and pushed ourselves onto the walls on either side of the door. Shade gave me and Rouge a nod and barged into the house without a second thought. My eyes widened in surprise and my heartbeat quickened at the suddenness of Shade's movements, but I followed him in a few seconds after nonetheless.

"Welp, looks like the house is empty." Shade looked around as he said this. He then began relaxing for a bit by taking his shoes off, much to my surprise.

"Hey!" I called out to him, "are you sure that's a good idea? They could just be upstairs."

"They aren't." Shade dismissed quickly without a second thought. bending over and throwing his shoes into the corner of the room as to keep anyone from tripping on them; a rather unexpectedly polite display if you asked me. "Start looking around down here for the emeralds, afterwards we can look upstairs if they don't come home before we get to that point."

And with that, we all began sifting around in drawers and checking under furniture in an attempt to find the emeralds that we came for. At first Rouge and I tried to keep the house relatively clean as we looked, but as the search continued, we began to lose interest in how the house looked and instead threw things out of our way absentmindedly after we had searched through or around them. Shade was in the kitchen searching, and from the sounds of silverware hitting the floor and plates breaking, I could tell that he was having no more success than we were.

We hadn't come here to destroy the place, but by the time we had searched the downstairs we realized that that was exactly what we did. The place was cluttered and damaged beyond belief, the floors littered with trash and the furniture thrown sometimes to the complete opposite side of the room as where they started.

"I'm pretty sure it's not down here!" I called out to Shade, who had just stopped scrounging around in the kitchen. "We should go look upstairs, and quick. I wanna get done before they get home."

Shade exited the kitchen with an intense look plastered on his face. I was confused, but the look that he wore intimidated me to the point of being afraid to ask or say anything. Instead, I let him pass me by and look up the stairs towards the second story without a word. He clenched his fists as his lips contorted into a wicked smirk.

"We have company."

He held onto the railing to steady himself as he walked up the stairs, a strange energy emitting from him that didn't just intimidate me, but scared me. I recognized this feeling though, it was the feeling that I felt every time we were a few seconds from some kind of combat.

I looked over at Rouge to my side and saw that she was completely petrified, afraid to move even an inch. Her hands were clasped together into a tight ball and she could do nothing more than stare at Shade with a look of pure horror. I walked over and placed my hand on her shoulder comfortingly, assuring her that going up the stairs with him would be fine.

And so we followed a few steps behind him as he climbed the stairs agonizingly slow, as if he were a lion antagonizing his prey. When he reached the top of the stairs, he took a quick glance around the room to get an idea of his surroundings. There were three different rooms in front of him, but he made his way towards the center one without any hesitation whatsoever, knowing that whatever he was looking for was in that room. He reached for the doorknob slowly as Rouge and I both looked on as if we were watching a brutal car wreck that we couldn't look away from no matter how hard we tried.

"Ah!"

The door was opened quickly from the other side, and a small rabbit and her Chao both lunged towards Shade, the rabbit swinging a vase and the Chao attacking with a gold club. Without flinching or thinking for even a second, Shade raised his hand and released a powerful surge of energy that threw both of his attackers back into the wall behind them. The Chao let out a pitiful yelp as it slid down the wall, passed out, and the Rabbit coughed a silent, violent cough as her head fell weakly. At this point, I recognized the both of them as Cream and Cheese, two of the people that lived in the house.

Shade stepped into the bedroom menacingly, pushing over a table that was in his way and flipping the bed frame in the corner of the room just to mess the room up some more for his own enjoyment, I assumed. He stood over the two weakened creatures and gave a frightening smirk once again. He knelt down within eye shot of Cream before violently grabbing the fur atop her head, forcing her to look at him in the eye.

"I'm gonna ask this once..." he said simply, tightening his grip on her fur and causing her to grimace in pain. "Where are the Chaos Emeralds?"

"Are..." she started weakly, her sentence being interrupted by a spur of coughs, "are you working with Eggman? Why do you want them-"

Before she had the chance to finish speaking, Shade pulled Cream's head forward and slammed it back against the wall behind her. She let out a cry of pain, and I couldn't help but recoil in reaction as well.

"That's not what I asked." He put simply, seemingly unfazed by the trickle of blood that began falling down the right side of her mouth. She coughed again before speaking.

"I can't tell you, Sonic and Tails and Knuckles would never forgive me..."

"Alright then." Shade let go of the top of Cream's head, letting it fall forward and fave the ground again. I could hear Cream's breathing soften slightly, as I could tell she thought that she was safe. She couldn't have been more wrong.

"You did this to yourself."

And he grabbed her arm tightly with his right hand, digging in with his palm slightly to get past her fur and reach her bare skin. He then smiled again, releasing another surge of energy that burned away her fur and left a dark burn on her skin that gave off a smell that made Rouge and I gag.

He then stood up without saying a word, throwing the tablecloth that had been on the table he knocked over on top of his two victims and turning away. He shot his energy at the walls around him and cried out almost frustratedly, though nothing had happened that could have prompted such a huge reaction. I had never gotten such a close look at him releasing this energy, but from where I stood it looked as though he was shooting flames from his palms.

He took a few breaths to calm himself down and walked over to Rouge and I as if nothing had happened. He closed the door behind him and told us to start looking for the chaos emeralds, which we did without complaint.

As we scrounged around inside of the different bedrooms looking for the chaos emeralds, Shade calmly made his way downstairs. After a few minutes, I heard the familiar beeping of the fridge warning that its doors had been left open. He had stolen food out of the fridge.

That fact alone calmed me down slightly and replaced my uneasiness with amusement, and I was able to finally speak to Rouge for the first time since seeing Shade use his powers.

"Do you see what I mean about him being powerful?" I questioned, "I might be fast and you might be able to fly, but he has weapons for hands."

"I don't like it at all."

She looked up at me with a scared look that made my heart ache with pity. Watching him deal with Cream must have been a lot worse for her than for me.

"She's barely eighteen, it just feels so wrong doing that to her," Rouge continued, sniffing slightly to hold back her tears, "what he did was just so... heartless."

I didn't know what to say to this. I might have agreed with her, but I knew that there was nothing that either of us could have done to change anything about Shade's way of getting things done. I let out a deep sigh and shook my head, "there's nothing we can do but get used to it. The sooner we can get the emeralds, the sooner we can get out of here."

As soon as I said this, I found a shining green light emitting from underneath some shirts in a drawer. I couldn't believe how lazily it had been hidden, but as soon as I pulled it out of the drawer, I could confirm to myself just what it was.

"Speaking of finding chaos emeralds," I started, holding my discovery out in Rouge's direction, "here's one of them."

"In a drawer?" She asked almost comically, "what a lame hiding spot."

Right after I had given the emerald to Rouge to put away (don't ask me to specify where she put it), I heard the front door's knob begin to turn. I quickly looked over at Rouge and cursed silently. We both ran down the stairs In time to see Shade taking his position beside the door in preparation for the unforeseen visitor we were about to have.

The stairs had been placed right in front of the door, so Rouge and I were seen the second the door was opened. On the other side of the door, a pink hedgehog wearing a red skirt and top looked up at the two of us with a bewildered gaze. As soon as she saw us, she jumped backwards defensively just in time to escape a punch thrown by Shade.

"Well..." she scoffed, "do I even need to ask what you're here for?"