DISCLAIMER: I own nothing in this fic, but I own the fic itself, so don't use without my permission, which I will probably happily give anyway.

Tails' turn!

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'Making an Entrance Style 3: leaning by the person's doorway, and waiting for them to come home (see fig. 5)' Shadow thought, and laughed.

***

Tails had never actually met Shadow, and had hardly seen him, except for in his Super form, so it in fact took him quite some time to recognise the black figure apparently awaiting his return, as he flew back towards his workshop in his plane.

"Shadow?" he called when he finally did recognise him, hoping that he hadn't made some stupid mistake and was about to be very embarrased.

"Tails!" Shadow replied in his best oh-there-you-are voice. "You're back! I've been waiting for you for quite a long while."

"Oh." Tails replied, wondering if he should apologise.

"That's really good piloting, you know. Who taught you? Sonic?"

"Well, I taught myself really, it wasn't that hard." said Tails, somewhat embarrased.

"Oh. Well, you look really experienced, anyway. We never really got a chance to meet, did we?"

"Uh, no. Shadow, how did you-"

"Oh, that's not really important, is it? Anyway, I actually don't really have that much time. You see, Eggman's at it again." He waited for a reaction from Tails, which he got in the form of a gasp "But don't worry! He still has a while to go to put his plan into action, and I've managed to trick the idiot into thinking that I'm his partner, so what I really need from you is a fake emerald, like the one you tried to give him on the ARK. In fact, I need two. Can you do that for me, Tails?"

Tails felt on much safer, more familiar ground here "Oh, sure thing, Shadow!"

"Will it take you long?"

"Nah, not at all. A day at the most"

"That's really great. Try to get it to me as soon as possible. Oh, and could you not tell Sonic or Knuckles or anybody about this? Sonic's a great guy, but he doesn't tend to think about anything that hard. If he rushes into Eggman's base, Eggman will realise there's something wrong, and probably realise that I've been working against him. Okay?"

"That's fine, Shadow."

***

A while later, Shadow returned to collect the fake emeralds.

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Again, if u have anything constructive to say (or praise for how utterly great I am) please review. No flames, please. If you don't know about the fake emerald, basically Tails made a fake chaos emerald in SA2 which was the same as the real ones in every way, except that if it was used in a weapon, or anything, it would actually work against the other emeralds, to counteract their effect, and in the case of ARK, actually blow up the eclipse cannon.