Chapter 10 Shadow vs. Shadows

Both hedgehogs thrust their fists at one another, but at the same time roll out of the way to dodge. Dusk's fist grazes Shadow's cheek, and Shadow's fist grazes Dusk's shoulder. Both slide a few feet after the glancing blows and look over their shoulders at the other.

Shadow quickly spins around and skates at Dusk again. He swings his fist at her, but Dusk jumps out of the way and counters with a kick...only to have Shadow slide out of the way.

"Chaos Spear!" Shadow yells, causing several yellow spears to form and fly at Dusk. She dodges them, but only by inches.

"Nice, but try dodging this!" she yells. A black aura surrounds her hand and a tentacle erupts out of Shadow's shadow. The shadowy projection takes a swing at Shadow who ducks out of the way. He tries to run away from it, but since the tentacle is attached to his shadow, it follows him.

Shadow skates around the room, dodging the shadow's attacks while it follows him around. Finally he gets fed up and throws several Chaos Spears at the shadow, ripping it apart and forcing it to return to normal.

"Congrats, you're the first one whose actually destroyed one of my shadows." She leaps out of the way of a quick punch, "I actually didn't think that was possible." Dusk says while lunging back at him and kicks, but barely misses him.

Their little fight continues on for a several minutes, but the most damage that either hedgehog can do is knick the other with a fist or the edge of their shoe. Now both seem to have stopped.

Dusk is standing near the vault door, her back to it. Shadow is standing about the same distance away from the hallway door, keeping his eyes trained on Dusk for a hint of an attack. Dusk is panting because of the rush she usually gets from a fight like this, but also because of how much she's been jumping and moving around to dodge Shadow's attacks.

Surprisingly, Shadow is also slightly panting. Dusk had been keeping the Ultimate Life Form on his toes because of how quickly she was able to take attack and how fast she was at countering, the panting was the result of having to stay on the move through almost the whole fight.

Their stare-down continues in silence for several seconds, then Shadow breaks it by letting out a single laugh. "I must admit it Dusk. You have me impressed." he compliments.

"Same here." She says between breaths, "Always my attacks were just barely dodged. You are definitely a lot more entertaining then fighting robots...or the others."

"Then you didn't fight Sonic when he's on a good day. That's the only time anyone has been able to last this long against me. But I've still got a couple tricks ready." Shadow replies with a smirk, "Chaos...Control!"

Shadow disappears, but before Dusk is able to look around an invisible mass slams into her and throws her into the metal door. Before Dusk can react she feels a fist connect with her left arm, and a couple seconds later, her body connects with a wall. Dusk groans, looks towards the vault door, and sees Shadow appear out of nowhere...calmly walking towards her.

A faint smile is present on Shadow's face...almost like he's enjoying this. Dusk gets to her feet and takes up another fighting stance. "Hmph. Still wanting to fight?" Shadow remarks, "Persistent I must say, but I think you've reached your limit." he says while stopping about five feet away from her.

"Limit nothing. I'm nowhere near my limit." Dusk replies in an unconvincing tone. She really didn't look it either, it seemed like she was straining to stay upright and the area on her arm where Shadow punched appeared to have swelled a little.

"Lying is not one of your strong points." Shadow says with a tiny amount of humor.

"Yea? You certainly don't know how to keep me down. Maybe you're going easy on me." Dusk replies, "Because if this is how you normally fight, I'm a little disappointed."

Her little taunt seemed to have angered Shadow...just what Dusk wanted. With a slight growl, Shadow lunges at Dusk, his fist out in front. Dusk manages to curl away enough for the fist to just miss, then slams her knee into Shadow's stomach as hard as possible. He flies backwards and lands right beside the vault door.

"You...little...brat." Shadow growls while placing a hand around his stomach and standing.

Dusk shrugs, "Not my fault you're easily angered. I just played off of your weaknesses."

Shadow lets out another growl. "Oh really?" he asks while clenching a fist. A strange glint seems to sparkle in his eyes and his red highlights appear to glow. "Chaos..."

I hope this works... Dusk thinks while readying her shadow. She quickly forms another shadow wall and completely surrounds herself with it, basically sealing herself between wall and shadow.

"Blast!" Shadow yells. An enormous amount of Chaos Energy explodes off of Shadow and tears through the room. Dusk's shadow-wall absorbs most of it, but it still shatters and Dusk is hit by the ending of the wave.

The room isn't much better shape, the attack practically destroyed the walls, there are huge cracks running through the ceiling, and the vault door is no more.

"Thanks for opening the vault for me." Dusk says while steadying herself, "Guess you got something wrong...I am escaping with the emeralds." She runs then skates towards Shadow.

Triggering a Chaos Blast when the wind is knocked out of you isn't easy, and even though Shadow can't move out of the way he was able to at least brace for her blow. Oddly though...it never comes. Dusk had chosen to do something completely different.

She slid off to one side and darted past Shadow, but along the way she slowed down enough to land a small, short kiss on his cheek. It may have been small, but the kiss caught Shadow off-guard...then he found himself flying into a damaged wall from a kick to his back.

Dusk quickly jumped into the vault and smashed open the case holding the emeralds. "Time to get you guys out of here." She mumbles while scooping them up with a shadow-basket of sorts.

As Dusk left the vault with her nine emeralds, her luck ran out. Sonic and everyone else was coming straight into the room, spotted the vault door gone and her standing there, and instantly knew what happened.

Before the crowd could react, Dusk quickly skated for the hole in the wall made when Shadow connected to it, jumped out and over the black hedgehog, and started to sped away across the grounds.

She didn't get too far though, when Shadow struggled to his feet and launched a couple Chaos Spears at her shadow, destroyed it, and scattered the emeralds. Dusk was only able to grab three of them before she ran off.

Out of the five Chaos and four Sol emeralds, Dusk got away with two of the Chaos and one Sol emerald.

Only Sonic and Blaze gave chase, the others stayed behind to help Shadow. A few minutes pass before Sonic and Blaze return.

"We lost her." Sonic says.

"We followed Dusk to the wall, then she formed a ramp and catapulted herself over it and got away." Blaze adds.

"Well...at least its not a total loss. She only got away with three emeralds." Amy says optimistically.

"True, but now Eggman had at least five emeralds and the Master Emerald. We only have six emeralds, three of each." Knuckles states.

"So Shadow, what exactly happened?" Rouge asks.

"Well. I started making my way to the vault when Dusk attacked, to guard it. Somehow she and one of those robots got there first. I destroyed the robot and then started fighting with Dusk." Shadow says.

"And you got beaten by her? Even with your Chaos Powers, Shadow still got beaten." Sonic interrupts.

Shadow growls at his blue counterpart, "I wasn't beaten Sonic. In fact, I was winning then she got off a lucky hit that knocked the wind out of me. Then I further used up my stamina with a Chaos Blast."

"Is that how she got into the vault?" Silver asks, receiving a nod as an answer.

"She got behind me and kicked me into the wall. Then...you all know the rest." Shadow grumbles.

"But, aren't you the Ultimate Life Form? Shouldn't you have beaten her right away?" Tails asks.

Shadow hesitates before giving an answer. "Yes I am the Ultimate Life Form, but I...I was really just toying with her at first...it was when I really started fighting when Dusk got off that lucky hit."

"Alright, but right now we have another problem. Since my vault is in ruin, where are we going to store the emeralds Dusk left?" Blaze asks.

"I'm sure GUN wouldn't mind locking them up in one of their vaults." Rouge answers. "At least they'll be protected until this vault is re-built."

"It should do...but I'd like to keep one at my workshop." Tails states.

"Why?" Blaze asks.

"I've almost finished up an invention, but I need an emerald to test it." Tails replies.

"Well...I suppose it would be a bit of a good idea to separate them, should Eggman attack again." Blaze mumbles. "What is this invention anyway?"

"It should give us a slight edge on Eggman when it comes to the Chaos and Sol Emeralds." Tails says with a smirk and his tails flicking about.

Decoe, Bocoe, and Bokkun are standing outside the open doorway to the training room. Dusk was inside and normally the threesome would ask how it went, but seeing her current state was more then enough to keep them outside.

Sure Dusk was only attacking a punching bag (one of the big cylinder-shaped ones), but she also seemed to be very upset. It looked like she was hitting the bag even harder then usual and occasionally she'd let out angered yell and punch/kick so hard that the chain holding the bag up would creak from strain.

Eggman was walking down the hallway, looking for Dusk to hear how the mission went, when he sees his assistants and Bokkun looking into the training room.

"What are you three watching?" Eggman asks as he approaches.

"See for yourself." Bocoe says while gesturing into the room. Eggman looks, sees Dusk, and starts walking in, but then Decoe and Bocoe grab the back of his shirt and jerk him backwards.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Eggman asks angrily.

"Trust us, you don't want to go in there right now." Decoe says.

"And why not?"

Before either robot could answer, a loud yell comes from the room just before a metallic snap and a loud thud.

"Umm...Dusk just snapped the chain for the punching bag." Bokkun says in a slightly timid voice.

Eggman looks nervously at his robots then stands and says, "Perhaps I'll let Dusk vent her anger a little before I go in."

The four of them watch Dusk walk away from the grounded punching bag and over to the track. She begins running, then skating around the track as fast as her Extreme Gear can possibly go.

Dusk speeds around the track nonstop for the next ten minutes. Finally she starts slowing down and comes to a complete stop after a few minutes of coasting. She stands there for a couple minutes, breathing deeply and standing completely still.

"Its okay guys. I've calmed down now." She says in a loud enough voice for Eggman and the others to hear.

Eggman cautiously walks in with Decoe, Bocoe, and Bokkun following. "You sure you've calmed down?" Eggman asks.

"Yea. I just really needed to let some anger out." Dusk replies without turning to look at him.

"What for?"

"The mission didn't go as planned."

"How did it go?"

"Well...to make a long story short, I broke into the estate and managed to get all of their emeralds...but as I was getting away an attack from Shadow made me drop all but three of 'em." Dusk admits.

"So where are the emeralds you managed to get?" Eggman asks. Dusk points to a small table on the far side of the room where the yellow Sol Emerald and gray and purple Chaos Emeralds are resting.

Eggman looks at Decoe and Bocoe and gestures towards the emeralds. Both robots walk over, grab the emeralds, and leave.

"May I ask why you were so mad?" Eggman cautiously asks.

Dusk finally turns to Eggman, and he sees that there is a line of tears at the bottom of her eyes. "They had nine emeralds. NINE emeralds! And I was this close..." she holds her thumb and index finger half an inch apart, "...to stealing all of them. Then Shadow had to throw a couple of his Chaos Spears and make me drop nearly all of them."

The tears start slowly sliding down her cheeks. "All six of your Egg Raptors were destroyed, and I only got away with a three of their nine emeralds. You trusted me with this important mission and completely blew it. I failed..." Dusk sinks down onto her knees and lets the tears fall even faster.

"You didn't fail Dusk." Eggman says, causing Dusk to look up. "I can always rebuild the Egg Raptors, and you did manage to steal enough emeralds for one of my most ambitious plans to begin."

"I guess that makes me feel a little bit better." Dusk mumbles and wipes away her tears. "Thanks."

Eggman gives a bit of a smile then leaves with Bokkun following. Dusk stands up and walks over to the punching bag. "Knowing that I didn't completely fail helps." She mumbles, "But..." Dusk remembers her fight with Shadow. "..At least I finally got to really test my skills. That was a lot of fun, and Shadow actually looked...handsome." Dusk smiles and giggles at that. "I'm really looking forward to our next meeting." she mumbles aloud while rolling the punching bag up against the wall.

Well? How was Shadow and Dusk's fight? If you're thinking this is the last time those two will fight, think again. Of course their next fight won't come in the next chapter, but it will happen...trust me.