ACT THREE: WAR

The morning was cold—not unseasonably, but colder than recent days had been. A blanket of mist drifted over the country. It kept the land from getting bright, as if it was trying to delay daybreak.

The peasants had no time for that. After so long waiting for this day, preparing for this day, dreading this day, what they wanted most of all was to get it over with.

Every one of them was at his station. For most, that meant either with a group of other peasants with a bow or pike, or at a lookout station with a drum and a bell. For the unfit and infirm, it meant waiting in the main hall, their makeshift hospital, armed with bandages and water and the dregs of technology's medicine. For a handful, it meant being in bed, so as to be awake and alert when time for the night watch came. Being only human, they were having immense trouble sleeping at a time like this.

The warriors were at their stations, also. Shadow prowled along the southeastern boundary. It seemed to others that he'd slept so much before to give himself supernatural alertness now. Knuckles waited with some pikemen in the west. He was unflappable, his attitude that of unshakable professionalism, and his charges fed off of it. Vector rallied the pikemen at the bottom of the Alley. His enthusiasm was keeping them keyed up, though no one could tell yet if that was good or bad.

Amy and Rouge paced amongst the archers along the northern edge. Rouge didn't care much for defense and Amy was noticeably though inexplicably furious, so neither was very helpful to the peasants in their regions. Tails waited with the reserves, tinkering with a weapon like none the peasants had seen.

Sonic was everywhere.

He was with the reserves, telling them to stay alert and making last-minute tactical adjustments with Tails. He was with the archers, reminding them to retrieve their arrows and noticeably though inexplicably avoiding Amy. He was with Knuckles, smugly saying that he'd picked the right guy for the job but getting no rise out of the echidna. He was in the southeast, visiting with the sentries and comparing notes with Shadow. He was in the north, instructing them to stick to the plan and telling Vector not to try for anything heroic.

He was in all those places, seemingly at the same time. Everywhere he went, the fear of what was to come receded a bit.

It returned slowly, but surely. None of the peasants had done something like this before. The lookouts stared at the mist with an intensity born of anxiety. Here and there, peasants prayed. Others made a show of preparing their weapons, though they had no expertise in the matter. Still others rocked back and forth because they could think of no other way to release their energy. Nervous conversations cropped up, only to die under the weight of unease and edginess.

The bandits had told them the day they were returning, but not the time. The suspense was enough to drive someone mad. The only consolation was the knowledge that it had to end.

The mist began to lift like the rising of a curtain.

A drum sounded. Sonic was there instantly.

At the edge of visibility, far down along the road, he saw something delightful.

The bandits were arguing.

It was hard to see, given the distance and the remnants of the mist. But clearly, the leader of this group of bandits was yelling at his subordinate. His subordinate was jabbing his finger at a map and yelling back. Sonic could imagine what they were saying. He grinned. So far, so good.

Map-man must have won, because the group leader decided to head for the village after all. The bandits kicked their horses up to a trot. They drew their weapons. These unexpected fortifications had them nervous. Nervousness made them angry. They had very physical methods of coping with anger.

The bandits turned their horses at the opening in the fence and rode down the Alley. The more observant ones saw heads looking out over the top of the Alley's sides. A line of peasants stood at the end of the Alley. A large crocodile was amongst them. That settled it for the bandits—something was definitely wrong, and the only way to fix it was to kill peasants until the wrongness went away.

The peasants lifted their pikes.

A fact that is sometimes forgotten is that a horse will not willingly run into a wall of pikes. Regardless of its training and the commands of its rider, a horse will fight momentum as hard as it can to avoid impaling itself on a spike. So when the peasants lifted their pikes, it didn't cause a wave of carnage. It caused a pile-up of horse and man, punctuated by angry cursing and loud neighing and wide-spread confusion.

That's when…

"Fire!" shouted Amy.

"Fire!" shouted Rouge.

The arrows the peasants fired didn't even have proper arrowheads. They were little more than sharpened sticks. It wasn't enough to penetrate armor or even plunge too deeply into flesh. And the peasants were only marginally more accurate than before their training. The makeshift nature of their weapons and instruction meant they couldn't be much better than that.

But they were firing at a giant mass of stationary targets. Even if they didn't hit what they were aiming for, they hit something. The arrows might not penetrate armor, but the bandits weren't armored everywhere, and the horses not at all. A few of the arrows were bound to find exposed flesh. The others hit horses and, though not lethal, caused pain and panic.

The horses tried to rear, but couldn't in the confined space. The bandits wanted more than anything to kill something, but they couldn't get in close enough to swing their weapons.

The arrows kept coming.

The leader had had enough. He bellowed a command. The bandits backed away as best they could with their spooked mounts. They turned and, under continued fire from the archers, fled back up the Alley.

"Let's chase 'em out, boys!" hollered Vector. The pikemen chased the bandits—slowly, clumsily, for the pikes were bulky and cumbersome. But they chased nonetheless, even though they had no hope of catching the bandits.

They reached the top of the Alley. "Alright, now back around," commanded Vector. He used his spear as a bar in front of some of the peasants to keep them from going forward. The peasants turned about—awkwardly, as they had to lift their pikes almost vertically—and retreated down the Alley.

Hope springs eternal. And maybe the bandit leader had gotten too used to seeing peasants' backs as targets. Whatever the reason, when he saw the peasants turning, he saw it as an opportunity. With another set of commands, he wheeled his fighters around and set them chasing after the peasants.

The peasants got almost two-thirds of the way down the Alley before Vector reformed them. They got their pikes into position before the first horses could catch up to them, and once the wall was in place, no horse dared to contest it.

"Fire!" came the shouts. Another volley of arrows enveloped the bandits. One of them fell from his horse, blood spurting from his neck. The others shouted in pain or frustration as the horses panicked and the charge was stymied. The bandits didn't wait for an order this time. The moment the attack stalled, they began to turn around and flee.

The peasants chased them again, but this time the bandits weren't stopping. The horses were wide-eyed with fear and frothing from exertion and wounds, and the bandits weren't much better off. They kept on riding down the road until only dust was visible.

The peasants turned to each other in wonder. That was it? Had they done it, after all of that? Was that all it took?

Elation began to set in. They'd done it! They'd driven off the bandits! No one had died—no one had even gotten hurt!

They began to cheer.

"Shut up!" said Vector. The cheering died immediately. "You don't get it, do you?" he said. "I saw this with organized crime all the time, before the fall. The bandits ruled you with the fear of violence. That fear is gone now. If the bandits can't rule with the fear of violence, they'll rule with actual violence until the fear comes back. All you've done today is guarantee that the bandits won't stop until you, or they, are dead!"

The elation of the peasants vanished quicker than the mist had.

"So get out there and get our arrows back, you heard Sonic," Vector chided. "Get as many arrows as we can, and get that dead bandit in here, he'll be useful."

From his observation post along the wall of the Alley, Sonic smiled. He'd anticipated having to get Knuckles in here to restore order, but Vector had done a wonderful job of doing just that. His estimation of Vector rose another couple of notches.

Tails appeared on the platform next to Sonic. "Well, it's a start," he said.

Sonic nodded. "A start. I counted twenty. You?"

"I agree. They weren't expecting anything, so they just sent twenty, with enough horses to carry the loot. Still, given the size of the tribute, I don't think twenty bandits could carry it all. Maybe the rest are coming later?"

"Maybe. That's why we were careful not to overplay our hand, here. We had to beat 'em with as little force as we could get away with. That way, when they come back, we'll still have a couple of tricks."

"Too bad we couldn't have killed more of those bandits."

"It's enough. We wounded a bunch of them. How much medical technology do you think they've got left?"

"Bandits? After this long? Probably not much."

"With any luck, we hurt them badly enough that one or two more will die from wounds, and then another two or three from infections."

"Low-tech warfare is nasty stuff."

"I'd never use the word "clean" to describe it, that's for sure." Sonic used a hand to shield his eyes and peered far into the distance. "Keep a sharp eye out, Tails. I'd expect another attack today."

"Feeling it in your bones?"

"I'm not that old. Just my feet. You're one to talk, you've seen almost as many battles as I have. Where do you feel it?"

"Tips of my tails. They twitch when a fight's coming. They were twitching all morning, and they're still twitching now."

"Your tails are always twitching."

"Yeah, but when it's about a battle, I actually feel it."

Sonic squinted. "Prep Betsy. Number three, I think."

"All over it."

An undercurrent of tension was building again, but it wasn't so bad this time. Now that the peasants had tasted battle, though they might still fear it, it would not be the fear of the unknown that cast a shadow on their hearts.

Here in the center of the village, where the reserve element was kept, they'd only heard the battle. They'd seen nothing. The news had spread quickly, though. The bandits had been beaten off. None of the villagers had been hurt. A good start.

The reserve element was mostly the peasants that had been with the warriors most. Kenji, Koji, and Seiji were all there, along with the two peasants that had tried to steal from the warriors that first night. Sonic's reasoning was impeccable: the reserves needed to be able to communicate easily with Sonic and Tails, to cut down reaction times. The peasants thought Sonic had a strange sense of humor.

Kenji beat the butt of his pike against the ground. "I wish sensei could see us now," he said.

Koji looked over at him. "What, see us sitting here, doing nothing?"

"See that it's working. See that we made it happen. See that, somehow, our last hope is panning out."

Koji didn't respond. Something was on his mind, Kenji could see.

Kenji gave him a nudge. "Hey, are you here?"

Koji started, and then slumped back down. "I suppose."

"Thanks, by the way."

Koji frowned. "For what?"

"For coming with me to get warriors. For being a part of this. For making this happen. It was worth it, wasn't it?"

"I can't take any sort of credit," Koji said.

"What do you mean? You were right there, you asked warriors like I did, you carried the rice we used, you helped us out, you…"

"I opposed it every step of the way!" said Koji. His words were like water bursting from a dam. "I thought it was a stupid idea! I never thought it would work! I came because I thought it would flop, and I wanted to be there to bring you safely home!"

He shook his head. He couldn't bring himself to look at Kenji, his shame was too great. "How wrong could I have been? Don't you remember? I fought with you every step of the way. I thought we should pass on Sonic. I was skeptical about Knuckles. I cast doubt on every plan you had, took exception to every idea. I was worse than useless."

Koji clung to his pike like it was the only thing keeping him standing. "Kenji, I… I'm so sorry! I didn't think it would work! I was so used to arguing with you that I couldn't see how you might be right. I can't take credit for anything that happens now, because… because the only reason I came was to watch you fail!"

Koji gasped out the last of his confession. Kenji just shrugged in response. "But you still came," he said.

Disbelief swept over Koji's features. "What, that's it?"

"What more is there?" said Kenji. "Whether you liked it or not, whether you meant it or not, you came. You were a part of it. Your complaints and arguments ensured we had conviction, since we had to pass your test first. If this works, you deserve as much credit as anyone."

Even though Koji had just declaimed his nay-saying nature, he could not help himself. "But what if it doesn't work?" he said with a wince.

"Then we'll be dead, and who cares?"

Koji shook his head. "You're a better friend than I deserve, Kenji."

"And you're a better friend than I could hope for, Koji."

With a thoughtful tone of voice, Seiji said, "I'd rather not die, given the choice."

Kenji and Koji looked at each other. They didn't have to say anything. They just laughed.

"What?" said Seiji suspiciously.

"You're very wise, Seiji."

"You can put things in perspective better than anyone."

"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" Seiji said.

"Of course not."

"Farthest thing from our… minds?"

As one, the peasants looked to the north.

Someone was beating a drum.

The bandits left their horses behind this time. In the tight confines of the Alley they'd be a liability. Instead, a larger force of bandits moved up the road. Whatever deficiencies that had existed in their arms or armor were gone. Bandits they might have been, but they'd all been professional soldiers at some point. They'd just experienced an object lesson in the danger of their enemies. They would afford them professional respect now.

A pair of their leaders followed on horseback. The bandits had a wide variety of weapons and protection, from padded leather to chain mail. Their leaders showed similar variety, with one wearing a shiny rounded breastplate while another sported samurai-style laminar scalemail. In spite of the variety, the bandits moved as a unit, not a mob. They were united by purpose and training. At the moment, that purpose was reducing the village to a charnel house.

The peasants awaited them. They kept their pikes up this time, as surprise was gone. Vector stood behind the line, his makeshift spear held high.

For a moment the bandits stopped to get themselves in order. The archers did their best to thwart this action. New volleys of arrows rained into the bandits. The peasants had used only their worst arrows this morning. They now turned to their better arrows, the ones with stone arrowheads. Many of the arrows hit. Some of them penetrated armor. A handful bit into flesh.

The bandits hardly wavered. Most of the arrows were harmless and they knew it. They'd come through much worse before. Their leaders bellowed the charge order.

The trouble with pikes, as the peasants were rapidly learning, was that all the power is concentrated at the tip. Once the enemy is past the tip, the pike is useless. Knuckles had drilled a principle into them that he called the first law of pikes. "No one gets behind you, no one gets to your flank. One swordsman behind a line of pikes kills the whole line. That's why we have to guard everywhere, all the time."

Now, the peasants realized, getting past the point of the pike had very similar properties.

The bandits closed in on the pikemen. The pikemen jabbed out with the pikes. One of them connected and hurled a bandit back, but his armor saved him from anything more serious than a bruise. His comrades, though still wary, pressed closer. They used their swords and spears to bat at the ends of the pikes, trying to create openings to push in.

The closer the bandits got, the harder the shots they gave to the archers. Soon the archers were only shooting at the bandits in the back of their group—and so did nothing to keep the bandits from pushing in.

One of the bandits danced between two pikes. He rushed forward. The peasants could do nothing but scream in fear. They had no protection, and the bandit's sword was very, very sharp.

It never swung.

Vector reached over the peasants—his massive frame was quite the advantage here. His spear fired outwards. It caught the bandit square in the chest. It stopped him completely. Vector realized the spear was all that was keeping the man up. When he tugged back, the bandit crumpled.

But fear caught the peasants in its grip. More bandits were angling between pikes now, and the arrows were doing nothing. The bandit leaders had sent spearmen towards the archers' stations. Sonic's instructions to the archers had been clear: if something threatens you, duck. The spearmen jabbed up at the archers, and though the archers hid behind their walls and escaped the danger, it meant they weren't shooting arrows.

The pikemen jostled the bandits as best they could, and Vector stabbed again and again with his spear to try and keep the bandits at bay, but it just wasn't working. Two peasants dropped their pikes and turned to run. The others backed away, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the bandits came on. Fear took on a life of its own. They surrendered ground to try and survive, and they didn't even do that well. One bandit caught up. His sword flashed. One peasant fell, then another, before Vector's spear answered. In so doing, as Rouge had predicted long ago, the spear shattered, leaving its blade in the body of the bandit and leaving Vector without a weapon.

It was too much! The peasants ran backwards, or dropped their pikes altogether, and Vector could do nothing to stem the tide. They surrendered the end of the Alley. Now the bandits would spread out, use their numbers to maximum advantage, and sweep on into the village—

A flash of blue.

The singing of metal against metal.

Gasps at the suddenness of his arrival and the swiftness of his strike.

An arc of blood as it was propelled away from its old body.

He came in from the corner of the Alley. They didn't see him coming until after the first blow had cut open a bandit's chest.

Sonic Hedgehog had joined the battle.

There was no expression on his face—except, perhaps, the hint of a smile, not that he'd killed, but that he was doing what he was meant to do. His white gloves stood out against the black leathers he'd donned and the metal of the sword. His eyes were unblinking. They saw everything. There was no surprising him.

He was fast—impossibly fast. The next closest bandit barely had time to turn before the sword sang again and separated his head from his shoulders. More bandits turned to fight him, and his sword lashed out again and again, keeping three and now four bandits doing nothing but defending against him, and his presence alone pushed those bandits back. They didn't even try to retaliate. Whenever they made a forward motion the katana was there like a sheepdog. Somehow he was able to move fast enough to fight four, even five bandits at once. They could only move backwards in the face of this assault.

Some of the bandits stalled rather than leave their comrades behind. The rest found a new group of pikemen in their way—the reserves Sonic had brought with him. The bandit rush stopped and the pikemen escaped. That was all the opening Vector needed. "Turn around, you sods, turn around! The bad guys are that way!" He gave a healthy smack to one peasant with the butt of his spear. The others quickly got the picture. In moments he'd rallied the pikemen and reformed them.

"Now it's our turn!" Vector hollered. "Charge 'em, boys!" And, even weaponless, he led them forward. His maw was gaping wide.

The bandits discovered that working your way inside a wall of pikes is a lot harder when those pikes are running at you. Men don't like charging walls of pikes any more than horses do. The prospect of a wall of pikes running at the bandits was similarly unappealing. A giant berserk crocodile was intimidating in its own right.

The momentum of battle shifted completely. Now the bandits fell back up the Alley. The speedy blue terror occupied a flank by himself, while the pikes jostled and pushed and occasionally struck the retreating bandits. The fleeing bandits subsumed the spearmen, and when they left their places, the archers rose again and added another reason to run.

The bandit leaders rode up to try and rally their charges. One of them was waving a scimitar broadly and shouting orders that you could understand even if you didn't hear the words.

There was a loud crack.

The bandit leader looked down at his chest. A long bolt, metal and almost two hands in length, had punched through his breastplate. It was as if the leader couldn't believe what had happened and needed to see the injury to make sure he was dead. Seeing it made him believe it. He toppled from his horse, lifeless as stone. The other leader decided the present situation would not be remedied by his death, and precluded that possibility.

Now there was nothing to keep the bandits from running. That's exactly what they did.

You couldn't run from Sonic Hedgehog. He gave chase. The katana flashed. One bandit fell, and was trampled by the peasants. Another fell, and three pikes impaled him within a moment.

That was enough.

Sonic reined himself in as the bandits escaped the Alley. He knew better. If he pursued any more, they'd encircle him. Every instinct in his body saw a running enemy and wanted to chase. Decades of war pulled him back. He was master of himself. He stopped. The peasants pattered to a halt behind him.

The bandits got away. Sonic let them go, even as he trembled with adrenaline and eagerness. He swung his sword to get the blood off and forced himself to sheathe it.

"Back to the village," he said, as much to himself as the peasants. He turned away from the bandits. Not seeing them helped.

There would be work to do in the village, he knew. Planning, salvage, medical attention for those who'd been hurt, juggling personnel to replace their losses, and he had to do it all. Somewhere along the line, when he wasn't paying attention, Sonic Hedgehog had become responsible.

He hated that work, but he didn't mean to avoid it. It took all his concentration to return to the village because that was the opposite direction of the action, and if there was one thing Sonic lived for, it was being in the thick of the action.

That was the real reason he'd set himself up as the reserve. Sure, it made sense to post people around to guard all the different angles. And it made sense to be able to move people around as required. He was tactician enough, now, to appreciate all that. But the real reason was that being in reserve meant he could go wherever the fighting was. He didn't have the willpower to fight that urge.

He had barely enough to return to the village.

It was a small victory, but it would do for now.

Tails gave Betsy a kiss. "You did wonderful!" he said affectionately. He hugged Betsy to his chest.

Sonic shook his head, a smile on his face. "Leave him be," he said to the other warriors. "Tails is geeking out for a moment."

Tails gave Sonic the look a music critic gives a pop artist. "You just don't appreciate the beauty of good engineering," he said.

Rouge had an unimpressed look. "Tails, you're mooning over it like it was a woman. It's just a crossbow. Who cares?"

"This isn't just a crossbow," Tails said. "Anybody can make just a crossbow. Betsy is unique."

It was. The crossbow was large, almost three-fourths the height of its owner. It had a scope. A stirrup extended from its front. It had not one, but three notches along its length. A winch arrangement rested behind the third notch. The crossbow was painted blue. The word "Betsy" was painted in very neat orange script ahead of the front handgrip.

"It got the job done, anyway," said Sonic. "I'm gonna check the lookouts, make sure everything's on point. You guys chill."

Tails looked at Amy with hope in his eyes. "Wanna hear more?" he said eagerly.

Amy's return look was of the I-don't-know-how-to-politely-say-no variety. Before it could register with Tails, Vector flung the door curtain open and roared in. "Was that a battle or what?"

"So," Amy said hurriedly, "what's special about Betsy?"

Tails' face burst into a smile. "Betsy's really versatile. I can use these three different firing positions. I have three different types of bowstring I use, depending on how much energy I want. It's a trade-off between power and rate of fire. If I use the bowstring with the least tension, I pull it back to the first position. I can pull the string with just my strength and the stirrup, so I can get off a shot every twenty seconds or so. When I really want to make myself known, I use the max tension string and the third position. I have to use the winch to draw the bow with that setup. It limits me to a shot a minute."

"I bet it tires you out, too."

"Nothing I can't manage."

"What did you use today?"

"Third position. That's how I was able to punch through that bandit's armor. It went through so far it was hard to get the bolt back out! I had to undo the armor and pull it the rest of the way through."

"So you have your own arrows, too," said Amy, looking at his quiver.

"Bolts, and yup! It's a shame, but by the time I realized I needed a really good low-tech weapon, most of the technology to make really good weapons was gone. I would have loved to use carbon fiber more. I had to settle for hollow metal for the bolts."

"Hollow?"

"Except for the arrowhead, of course. Keeps the weight manageable."

"But it means you have to salvage every arrow," Amy protested.

"Bolt," Tails corrected again. "Your guess is right, no one can make these anymore. I used to have a good number of specialty bolts, too. I had explosive bolts, incendiary bolts, shrieker bolts that made a lot of noise as they flew, for signaling… I've used 'em all up except for the plain old metal penetrators. There's no helping it. Betsy's too powerful for wooden bolts. The acceleration warps them and they don't fly straight."

Amy looked at the front of the crossbow. "What's that stud on the end for?"

"A stand."

"You're kidding me."

Tails grinned. "I didn't bring it with me, but I've got a stand I can use with Betsy. That's for when I'm pretending I can hit things really far away."

"Pretending?"

"You can only squeeze so much out of a crossbow. No rifling is the killer—it makes the wind a real problem. Under perfect conditions, though, Betsy's range is more than people imagine."

Enough people had given Vector the cold shoulder that he gave up. He was still full of undirected energy, so he left the room again to talk with the peasants. Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Tails, sensing he'd lost his audience, reluctantly started to disassemble Betsy for storage.

"Do you think the bandits will attack again tomorrow?" she asked Tails.

"Why? You eager to get in on the action?"

"No no no," she said, waving her hands. "I was just wondering. You've seen way more battles than I have, so if anyone would know, it'd be you or Sonic."

Tails' chest puffed out a little at the compliment. "Well," he said in a modest tone of voice, "there's no way to be sure about this. I'm just working with a few assumptions."

"Then work with them," she prompted.

"My guess is no. This wasn't the full force of bandits. It was a detachment. Twenty bandits and one officer hit us the first time, thirty and two the second time. As near as we can figure, they had an advance party there to cow the villagers, then another group to help them secure the loot. They know, now, that that won't be enough to take this place. So they've gone home to try and figure it out. The other leader will have to explain to the boss bandit what happened, and then they'll have to decide what to do from there. It'll take time."

"Oh good," said Amy, visibly relaxing.

"It's just a guess," Tails said sternly.

"Oh, I know. But it makes sense."

She felt eyes upon her. She looked around and realized it was Shadow. It was almost an expectant look he gave her. She looked back to Tails. Tails glanced at Shadow, then made a big show of working on Betsy—implicitly releasing her from the conversation. Grateful, she walked over to Shadow. Instead of waiting for her to sit, he stood and exited the room. She followed with a curious expression. Behind her, three pairs of eyes watched with keen interest.

She followed him past where the night watches were gathering, past where the pikes and arrows were gathered, past the pile of arms and armor looted from the dead bandits. The last was a grisly sight, since those possessions hadn't yet been cleaned. Amy felt queasier looking at the bandits' belongings than she had looking at their corpses.

So this is war, she thought. We kill our enemies, and use them to get stronger so we can kill their friends. Everything is a weapon.

The thought made her shiver.

Shadow walked around to the southern edge of the fence, eerily similar to where she'd fought with Sonic. She tried not to think about that too much. She resolved, instead, that if she ever needed to have a private conversation, she'd find somewhere else for it.

Their only company was a distant, barely-awake sentry. He glanced at them once, then turned heavy-lidded eyes back towards the distance. Shadow made sure he was out of earshot before stopping.

"I wanted to ask you something," he said.

Amy was well-practiced at dealing with Shadow, so she knew better than to rush things. That didn't stop eagerness from bubbling up within her. It just helped her contain it. "Yes?"

"Why do you fight?"

She overcame her surprise and took it in stride. "It's like I told you earlier. I hate seeing people so helpless in this crazy world, and I know I can make the world a better place."

"Better for who?" he asked. Genuine puzzlement was in his voice.

"For everyone, I suppose," she said. "Or at least for the people I meet."

He shook his head slowly. "That's completely alien to me," he said. "The idea of fighting for others is… beyond me."

"Why do you fight, then?"

He shrugged. "Why does a plague spread? Why does a scorpion sting? It's my nature."

The nonchalance of his answer made Amy's jaw drop. "That's it?" she said. "No, sorry, sorry… ahem. That's it?"

"What more would there be?" he asked.

'He thinks like a weapon.' Sonic's words echoed in Amy's head. "You're going to have to tell me more."

"There is no more. No past. No future." He put a hand up against one of the fence rails. "When you described your past, it made sense why you fight, a little bit at least. That is… I could tell it would make sense to you, even if it didn't to me."

"You mean internal consistency?" she offered.

"I suppose. Even if I couldn't understand what you were thinking, I could tell how you'd gotten there. Me, on the other hand…"

He didn't say more. Amy waited, but he was lost in thought. "When you say you have no past, what do you mean?" she prompted.

He blinked at her. "I didn't think it was confusing," he said. "I have no past. I have been the same as long as I can remember. I think back to what I was before, and it's the same as now. I awoke in a metal room, with this sword nearby. I knew how to use it, and what would happen if I did. That was all."

"There wasn't anyone there? No one to talk to or… anything?"

"No," he said. "I thought that went without saying. When I left the room, there was nothing but destruction and desolation outside. I couldn't tell what it might have been. It was all pulverized beyond recognition. There wasn't a living thing in sight."

"How long ago was that?"

He cocked his head. "How would I know? I haven't kept track. There's no point."

Amy didn't know what to say. He seemed to sense the gap, and felt the need to fill it. "I spent a while after my awakening thinking. What was I? Why did I exist? What was I supposed to do? You had a past. Your identity came from it. I had to create one for myself. It's harder than it sounds.

"With no past, I couldn't even prove to myself that I existed. I had no idea where I came from or why. I just… was."

Amy nodded after her initial surprise. Things were starting to come together. "When you said that I probably existed… you have trouble admitting other people exist when you don't even know if you exist, right?"

"Yes. All the trappings of existence—history and identity and purpose—I didn't have them. All I had was a sword and the ability to use it. So I fell back to that. That's all I am. The hand that swings the sword, and the eyes that aim it, and the brain that knows where to place it, and the legs that transport it."

Amy's eyes darted to Shadow's sword. Sonic had pointed out its lack of defense. It was more than a symptom of Shadow's preference for the attack. If Shadow's hands weren't real, what use did he have for a handguard?

Shadow continued. "No one else exists, either. If I can't prove I exist, how can I prove others exist? I only know for sure at the moment when my blade strikes home. That's when I know the other person existed—when I deny them their existence to vindicate mine.

"No past. No future. My life is the flash of a sword. I'm not alive unless I'm in battle. I have no purpose if my swordsmanship isn't being challenged. In the moment of victory, that's when I can see—if just for a moment—that I exist. That's all there is."

It explained so much it staggered Amy. The paranoia, the anti-social behavior, the boredom, the lifelessness, the cruelty—all symptoms of Shadow's existence as nothing but the hand that swings the sword.

"I feel sorry for you," she said. "Not only are you lonely and miserable, you don't even understand the depths of your misery. You never knew the alternatives." He gave a single slow nod in response.

But it didn't explain everything. It was time for the question Amy had been dying to ask since the conversation began.

"Why tell me this?" she said.

Shadow opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He closed his mouth again in frustration. The process repeated several times. The furrows in his brow became deeper each time. Amy wished she could help him, because she understood the problem. He was trying to explain something he didn't have the words for. He wanted to say something in a language that was foreign to him. Without knowing what he meant, though, she could do nothing to help him—and that left her as frustrated as him.

They stood there for several long moments while he tried to work it out. A gust of wind interrupted them briefly. When it was over, Shadow moved for his katana.

Amy's eyes focused on his sword. Shadow turned away from her and began an exercise routine. It was not dissimilar to the ones Sonic had taught her—at least, the forms were not. The execution could hardly have been more different. Each action he took was complete and stood on its own. It had a precise range of motion, start point, and stop point. Yet they came in rapid succession, one following on the heels of the other, with a speed that suggested that he had never stopped, and never would. It was the purest expression of skill Amy had seen. Shadow was able to thrust with his sword to an exact level of extension, halt the motion, and proceed to the next—each one of the actions discrete and discernible—and still make the moves rapid as actual combat.

Then he turned.

He began to swing before Amy could react. Her mind was in control enough to keep her from moving, and that saved her. Shadow had flowed into another routine, one Amy had never seen. One, she quickly decided, that no one had ever seen—because Shadow was modifying it on the fly. What was happening? The blade sliced through the air, cleaved the wind, and moved with enough force to pierce armor and sever limbs, all with total control.

All without touching Amy.

Each one of Shadow's attacks ended with the blade a hair's breadth away from her body. None of them touched her, even though surely all would have if followed to completion. She dared not move, even tremble, lest she thwart his accuracy.

His eyes never moved. They looked past her, through her—yet, inevitably, at her. It made her shiver.

Her question changed as she stood there, watching him exert himself. He wasn't showing off. A being certain of his skill had no need for that. He was trying to communicate. He was falling back to the only language he knew, the only language that could express his thoughts. If Shadow was the hand that held the sword, then swinging the sword was more intimate than speech.

What was he saying?

Swish, swish, swish, went the sword. Amy looked past it, past the look of intense concentration on Shadow's face, into the place where swords live.

You exist.

That had to be it. Even more definitively than Shadow could prove to himself that he existed, he knew that she existed, because she had changed him. His first demonstration had shown her what he was like on his own. This one showed that, because of her, things weren't the same.

She recognized a second level of meaning. Hadn't Shadow said he only knew people existed when he cut them down? Then for him to recognize her existence without drawing blood…

He ended the routine. The sword remained where it was for a moment. Its tip was so close to her throat that, if she'd had an Adam's apple, swallowing would have caused sword and skin to meet.

Slowly he withdrew the sword and sheathed it. She noticed for the first time that he was breathing heavily with exertion. Communicating had taxed him, and it was all the more precious to her because of it.

"We should sleep," Shadow said as he started moving. He headed back into the village. "We should be ready in case the bandits come back," he clarified when he saw Amy's confused expression.

"Of course," she said, and hastened to follow.

They said nothing more. In their own ways, they'd said enough.

Next time: Lull