The next morning the whole group met at sugar cube corner. Twilight started the conversation "okay before I start does anypony else have a suggestion" she said. Pinkie started waving her hand in the air like a maniac "ooh me, I think we should get balloons, music, oh and maybe a-" pinkie was stopped by twilight "not about that, about how to get them home" she said. Pinkie had a pleading look on her face "please, we haven't had a welcoming party for them yet" she said. Twilight face hoofed "anypony else have any suggestions" she asked.
At that moment someone walked in "I have a suggestion" they said. They all looked at who had burst in. sonic and his friends were shocked "shadow" sonic asked. Shadow walked to their table ignoring sonic "I suggest that you stop goofing off and help me get us home" he said. Sonic put his hands up defensively "whoa slow down, how did you even get here" he asked. Shadow crossed his arms "i came to eggman's fortress after you to find no eggman, no chaos emeralds and a portal to this hell" he said. Tails put his hand to his chin "no eggman and no emeralds, does that mean that they're both here too" he said. Shadow reached behind him and pulled out a green chaos emerald "if this is here, it means he's here and he's probably out there looking for them already" he said. Sonic turned to tails "the miles electric can track the emeralds right" he said. Tails nodded "yes, but it's back at the library. Let's go back there" he said.
They got back to the library and tails picked his up his miles electric. He examined it for a couple of moments "do you want the good news or the bad news first" he asked. shadow was about to speak but pinkie jumped in front of him "good new, no bad news, nonono uh good news" she said. Tails was confused for a moment but shook it off "okay so good news is that I am getting readings for all seven chaos emeralds" he said. Sonic was glad to hear that "what's the bad news" he asked. Tails showed everyone the screen "i don't have a map so the best I can get right now is a general direction" he said. Knuckles growled "is there anything you can do about that" he asked. Tails started pressing buttons on it "well, I can attach it to the top of the library so it can scan and make a map, but that would take about a day or so" he explained. Sonic thought about it for a second "alright you do that and we'll pick this up again tomorrow" sonic said. Tails gave him a thumbs up and flew out the window to get to work.
Shadow didn't seem happy about that news "so, we're suppose to just wait" he said. Pinkie walked up to him and put her hooves on his cheeks "come on turn that frown upside down" she said. Shadow slapped her hooves away from him "get off of me" he growled. Pinkie just smiled at him "don't worry I can smile enough for both of us" she said. Shadow just scoffed. Sonic walked up to shadow "by the way where did you sleep last night" he asked. Shadow shook his head "I didn't" he said. Pinkie gasped "no wonder you're all frowns, don't worry you're welcome at my place. It'll be like a sleep over" she said. Shadow didn't look amused "no" he said. Pinkie nodded "I'll take that as a yes" she said.
Tails flew back though the window "okay by my calculations, it should be done in about twenty and a half hours" he said. Applejack changed the topic "so y'all said that egg fella is here too, is he dangerous" she asked. Tails chuckled "not by himself but he commands an army of robots" he said. Fluttershy backed up a bit "that doesn't sound good" she said. Knuckles smiled at her "don't worry nothing bad will happen as long as we're here" he assured. Sonic put his arm on knuckles "are you trying to impress them knuckle head" he said in a mocking tone. Knuckles growled at him "shut up" he yelled.
Shadow scoffed I'm not spending one more second in this circus" he said as he walked to the door. Pinkie bounced after him "I'll show you to my place so we can have that sleep over" she said. Applejack watched the door "I'm kinda worried for her" she said. Sonic chuckled "he may act cold but deep down he's a good guy" he said. Tails nodded "yeah he's helped us countless times" tails said but the smile on his face disappeared "except when" he trailed off. Twilight noticed the change "I'll have to ask him about that later" she thought.
Later that night shadow was sitting on a bed in a mostly pink room. Pinkie walked back into the room "so this is where you'll sleeping" she said. Shadow put his hands on his face "how the hell did she talk me into this" he mumbled. Pinkie got in a bed on the other side of the room "and the best part is, we'll be in the same room so we can talk all night long" she said. Shadow looked up at her "why do you even have two beds if you live alone" he asked. Pinkie laughed "because silly, this scene wouldn't make sense if I only had one" she explained. Shadow just held his head as if he had a headache. He laid down and faced away from pinkie pie "i need sleep" he said. Pinkie nodded "okey dokey lokey, good night" she said. Shadow just ignored her and tried to get some rest.
At the library spike decided to get to sleep while tails and twilight were still downstairs. Twilight waited until spike was gone then got tails' attention "hey tails, there's something I wanted to talk with you about" she said. Tails turned to her and smiled "what is it" he asked. Twilight thought about the best way to phrase it "uh remember earlier when you guys told us that shadow wasn't a bad person" she asked. Tails nodded. Twilight took a deep breath "it seemed like something was bothering you, like a bad memory" she said.
Tails smiled faltered "um yes" tails gulped "me and my friends were in space and we met a girl named...cosmo" he looked down when he said that name. He recovered and continued "shadow tried to attack her and I tried to protect her, he...almost killed her" he said. Twilight gasped "why would he do that" she asked. Tails found it hard to continue talking "our enemy placed spy equipment on her, but that wasn't her fault" he said. Twilight saw that he started to tear up "and then a bit after that, cosmo...sacrificed herself for us" he said. Tears were now flowing from his eyes. He put his hands over his eyes "cosmo, she was...special to me" he said. Twilight wrapped him up in a hug. Tails looked down at her to see that she was also crying. Tails returned the hug. After a minute twilight let him go and wiped the last of the tears out of her eyes "I'm sorry for making you relive that" she apologized. Tails chuckled slightly "it's okay, I think it helped to get it out" he said. Twilight was looking into his eyes. She then noticed how close they were. She backed up and her face reddened "at least he didn't notice that" she thought. She got up from the couch "I'm going to go to sleep, good night" she said as she hurried upstairs. Tails looked at the top of the stairs with a questioning look, but then he just smiled and got ready to sleep.