Shadow headed across Mobius to Azure Lake Zone, where a log cabin was located on the southern part of the lake along with a nearby garage. He didn't have to look too far to find Sonic the Hedgehog and his best friend Miles "Tails" Prower, for they were attending to a mysterious object under a large tarp.

"Sonic!"

Sonic and Tails turned to face Shadow.

"Yo Shad, what's happenin'?" asked Sonic.

"Sonic, Tails, I need your help."

"Heh?" Sonic raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"Yeah, it's not like you to ask for our help," said Tails.

Shadow motioned to Sonic and Tails. "Come closer."

Despite not knowing what Shadow wanted, Sonic and Tails did so.

"What I'm about to tell you is top secret," said Shadow. "You must tell NO ONE, understood?"

"Right!" said Sonic and Tails.

"According to information I discovered, the Roseinians are plotting to open a portal to Hell at the Ekhsezhaba Research Center. I don't know if they've opened the portal yet, but I do know that the portal CANNOT be allowed to exist."

Sonic scratched his cheek with his index finger. "So how do we figure into this jam?"

"I need you two to airlift me to the lab…NOW."

"Um…are you sure about that?" said Tails. "That sounds very risky."

Shadow glared at Tails. "I wouldn't have asked you two if I wasn't."

Sonic extended a hand to the side, palm-up. "Shad, I dig the fact that ya wanna keep the world safe and all, but I agree with Tails: for once, that really sounds like pushin' it."

"Sonic, if you and Tails do this for me, I promise I'll do any favor of your choosing."

Sonic smiled and stroked his chin. "Well…when ya put it that way…I got just the thing: whenever ya get back, you take Tails and I out to a restaurant of our choice, and it's all on you!"

Shadow nodded. "Deal."

Shadow and Sonic shook hands, and the Ultimate Life Form shook on it with Tails as well.

"I gotta be honest, I'm glad you enlisted our help for this journey, because that gives me an opportunity to test out the new Super Tornado!" said Tails.

"Super Tornado?" Shadow raised an eyebrow.

Sonic and Tails removed the tarp from the mysterious object, thus revealing the Super Tornado. This plane resembled a C-47, but painted the same way as the Tornado 2: blue with orange stripes on the wings, body and horizontal stabilizers, Sonic's name in white letters on the rear portion of the body and Tails' "twin tails" emblem on the vertical stabilizer. What also caught Shadow's attention was the laterally-mounted weaponry: two M134 miniguns, one M61 Vulcan cannon, one GAU-8/A Avenger and one M102 howitzer.

"That's a nice aircraft," said Shadow. "How did you two get that together?"

Sonic smiled and shrugged. "Well, ya know…a piece from here…a piece from there!"

"Never mind that. Let's go."

Soon enough, Sonic, Tails and Shadow were in the Super Tornado, flying over the Mobius-Roseinian Empire border, at least five miles off the ground. At one point, they rendezvoused with a KC-135 Stratotanker of the Royal Mobian Air Force to refuel. At one point during the journey, Shadow opened up to Sonic:

"Sonic, I'm going to be honest: I still don't like you. However, I think you're a really good person, and I really admire your determination."

Sonic smiled. "Shad, I don't expect ya to like me! All I really ask from ya is to respect me for who I am!"

Shadow nodded. "I do. I really do."

Just then, Sonic and Shadow's little heart-to-heart was interrupted when Tails chimed in over the plane's PA system:

"OK Shadow, we're just about over the destination now."

Shadow got up from his seat.

"See you later…Sonic the Hedgehog."

Sonic waved at Shadow. "Best of luck…Shadow the Hedgehog!"

With that, Shadow went to the open bay door and jumped out of the Super Tornado without a parachute. Being the Ultimate Life Form, he landed on the ground without suffering any injury whatsoever. Immediately upon hitting the ground, Shadow's Hedgehog Sense went off.

"I don't like this. They're not going to like this, either."

Shadow whipped out his Model 29 and set about trying to find the least likely way into the Ekhsezhaba Research Center. The research center was a moderately-sized, nondescript concrete building with a satellite dish and a couple of radio towers on top. The parking lot was largely deserted save for a couple of UAZ-469 jeeps, Ural-4320 army trucks and the occasional civilian car. After some reconnaissance, Shadow determined that the best mode of entry into the building would be an emergency exit on one side of the building.

Fortunately, the door was unlocked, and strangely enough, it gave no alarm upon being opened. However, once he got inside, he could tell that things were far from normal, with the hallway lights flickering and red emergency lights going off. He proceeded carefully at first, not knowing exactly what he was going to be up against, but nevertheless having a really bad feeling about it. For once, hearing the echoes of his footsteps throughout the laboratory halls gave him chills up and down his spine. Nevertheless, he kept his wits and courage about him as he pointed his .44 Magnum down the hallway ahead. All this time, Shadow's Hedgehog Sense had been tingling, and for good reason: as he neared an intersection in the hallway, a Roseinian soldier rounded the corner right towards him, wielding an AKM. Immediately, Shadow couldn't help but notice that the soldier's eyes were giving off an evil red glow.

"Kill…" said the soldier in an unholy demonic voice.

"Kill this."

Shadow wasted no time in blowing the soldier's head clean off. Figuring that some unholy apparitions awaited him, Shadow quickened his pace, trying his best to find his way to the main laboratory area. Along the way, he killed two other enemy soldiers, both of them having evil glowing eyes. Knowing this, he deduced that the portal had already been opened. Soon enough, he came to a sturdy metal door with a small window. Not having a keycard or code to access it, he broke it down with a Spin Dash, thereby gaining him access to the main lab. It was a veritable mess here: shards of glassware littering various lab tables and the floor, a bunch of lab machines overturned or otherwise destroyed, more flashing red lights, flickering fluorescent lights, and dead bodies – lots of dead bodies – plus the blood and gore to go along with them. There were more possessed soldiers here, so Shadow blew their heads off as well before reloading. Suddenly, he felt something touch his leg, so he quickly spun around and pointed his gun at the source, only to discover a scientist lying on the floor.

"You…help us…" said the scientist.

"Agent Doak, I presume?"

Agent Raymond Doak nodded weakly. "The Roseinians…they've…the portal…stop…these…"

Before Doak could utter another word, his eyes rolled upwards as he lay his head back before closing his eyes forever in a manner befitting Lita Ford and Ozzy.

(I knew he wasn't going to finish that sentence.)

Shadow's attention was broken by a growling noise. He looked over and not only saw a few more possessed soldiers coming at him, but also a couple of possessed sergeants wielding KS-23 shotguns as well as a couple of Imps. Though none of these were powerful enough to defeat him, he chose to concentrate his fire on the Imps first. One of the Imps got shot in the chest and survived, but a few seconds later, it ended up vomiting out its internal organs before collapsing lifelessly on the ground. A sergeant that got shot in the liver suffered the same fate. Having gunned down these foes, Shadow proceeded further into the laboratory.

(They should've just stayed dead.)

After proceeding through a mess of blood, gore and guts, Shadow soon came to what he perceived to be the portal, as marked by an inverted pentacle on the ground. There were a couple more possessed soldiers and Imps guarding the portal, but they proved no match for .44 Magnum bullets. Having dusted his foes, Shadow stepped towards the portal, but before going in, he opened one of the bags that Rouge gave him and pulled out a crepe, which he proceeded to eat. Within the first few bites, he deduced that she had filled it with Nutella and quark. He nodded, finding the taste to be agreeable. Then, after taking a deep breath, he stepped into the portal…

Criticism is gold. Negativity and nitpicking are pyrite.