A/N: Sorry for the long update, but I think it's worth it. I'd like to thank old friends and new as I give you all a...uh...folder!

tailsfan (you can see what Kirei looks like by reaing the beginning of "Hate is Only Skin Deep" you don't have to read the whole thing)

elementoi (thanks)

shadow-is-amazing (Yep, I did!Thanks for being consistant)

The math teacher droned on and on as Silver let her attention drift elsewhere. Of course, like always, and because they weren't human, in the same grade, regardless of age differences. She glanced over at the back row, where Spinner and Shocker would fire round after round of spitballs whenever the teacher turned her back.

Cyclone's pencil was busy and flying across his paper, taking notes on everything the teacher said, even though he probably didn't need too. And Kirei was either glaring at the twins or sending death stares at the teacher's back, whichever became more favorable.

"Spinner?" The old hag asked him, turning around. "What is the value of Y?"

"Uh...It comes before Z?"

"Ahh..." She let out an aggravated sigh. "Didn't pay attention do we? Can someone else tell me the value of Y in this equation?" Not even the humans were that brave. Cyclone's hand shot up.

"Cyclone?"

"Fifty two." He said proudly. The teacher smiled and turned back to her lecture. This is when everyone tuned out. Kirei looked over at Cyclone,

"Cy..." She whispered. Silver mocked her,

"Cy..." She batted her eyelashes. Kirei blushed but then it turned to anger, but decided to ignore it. The words "pop quiz" were uttered from the Grim Reaper's lips.

"No way..." The twins moaned, as a girl passed around the sheets of paper. Kirei went to pick up her pencil, and crushed it, accidentally.

"Can I have a new pencil?" She asked.

"That's the fifteenth one this period Kirei."

"...I can't really help it ha-I mean Mrs. Freeman."

"I'm out of them, Kirei, curse the school budget. Ask one of your peers to lend you one for now." Kirei looked around hopefully. Most kids in her class was afraid of her, or called her disgusting names such as 'Half-breed.'

"Here, you can have mine, beautiful." Shocker stood beside her, a pencil held out in his hand, his charming eyes with a hint of mischief taking hers in. Behind him Spinner was fuming; He had just taken his to give to Kirei. Kirei narrowed his eyes at him, and slowly took the pencil. Then she felt his opposite hand running down her back...

"You creep!" She slapped him across the face. He smiled as he walked away.

"Worth the pain, every time..." The old hag just pretended she didn't see anything.

"You may start, now." Cyclone's pencil flew across his paper swiftly. Silver looked at the problems, and looked over at Cyclone. The answers were running through his head easy enough to read...gradually she received the answers from his mind and began writing them down, a small smirk falling across her lips.

The twins were looking around anxiously for someone to cheat off of, making a mental note that Cyclone was in the front.

'What are we gonna do?' Shocker said in Spinner's head telepathically.

'I dunno. Do you see anyone who's good at math around here?'

'Not really...who is?'

'Point taken. Maybe we should just flunk?'

'Eh...isn't that what we always do?'

'SHUT UP YOU TWO!' Silver's voice screamed into their thoughts. Both were shocked so much they had to steady themselves before falling out of their chairs. A boy cocked his eyebrow at them and decided to leave them be.

'I forgot she could hear us...'

'Damn right I can! Your interrupting my answer base!'

They both glanced over at Cyclone, then at Silver, who was staring right at him, her eyes kind of glazed over as she wrote the answers down.

'Can you please give us the answers...?' Spinner begged hopefully.

'Uh...let me think...no!' She said in a cheerful voice that put the Cheerleaders to shame.

'Damn it! Why not?'

'That would be cheating, half brother o mine.'

'What do you think your doing?' Shocker shot at her.

'Taking advantage of my powers. That's not cheating, because this comes naturally, able to do it since I was wee.' She snickered at her impersonation of an Irish accent.

'It's cheating.'

'I don't have time to argue, you runts!'

"Times up!" The hag declared. "Please pass your papers to the front." The twins gulped, glassy eyed as they passed their papers forward.

"I swear, how in the world are we going to need algebra in our adult lives?" Spinner asked God, looking up at the ceiling. He was not answered. 'Wonder what our parents are doing right now...'

With our Sonic crew

"You think they'll be okay?" Amy asked no one in particular.

"They'll be fine." Sonic reassured her, a hint of annoyance traceable in his voice. Shadow looked sideways at them.

"Maria never went to this school..."

"Maria was in outer space." Rouge countered back, finishing her Boston Crème doughnut.

"True..." The reason why Maria was in outer space at ARK in the first place was because Maria's immune system failed, if she were to catch a cold she would've died. Out in space, nothing survived, including germs.

"You'll have to excuse me, but I have to take Cheese to Chao Kindergarten." Cream informed them, her chao agreeing.

"Chao!"

"See you later then, Cream." Tails waved as she flew off, using her ears as wings. Rouge laughed.

"Oh, I get it! Cream Cheese!" Everyone stared at her. "What...?"

"I'm sure Knuckles is getting lonely..."Sonic elbowed her teasingly.

"Don't push it, Blue Boy."

"Hey Sonic, what are we going to do today?" Tails asked him, tugging his arm. Our hero thought a moment, his eyes drifting to the side thoughtfully.

"Not sure Tails..."

"We can go to the mall!" Amy squeaked excitedly. Sonic's eyes widened.

"Of all the evils-"

"What's a mall?" Shadow asked them suddenly.

"Only the greatest place in the whole world!" Amy continued, sort of bouncing up and down in her famed joy. A sweat drop appeared on Rouge's snow-white fur.

"You know what? I think I'm going to head over to that island right now..." She started to take her leave down the street.

"Kay, bye Rouge!" Amy waved, Shadow just nodded, Rouge nodded and did a salute back.

"Oh, can we please go Sonic? Shadow? Tails?" The condemned looked at each other; One not knowing what a mall is, one seeing this as a death sentence, the other not deciding, going with whatever Sonic went with.

"How bad is it Faker?" Shadow whispered.

"We're talking Amy's favorite place, Shadow, Amy's!" Sonic whispered harshly back. Tails nodded knowingly.

"Do you think we can really escape, though, Sonic?" Tails asked him, looking over at the hopeful Amy. Sonic moaned,

"Sadly, no; if we get away, we'll hear about it all tonight...and that hammer..."

"Well, I do need some parts for the Tornado..." Tails considered.

"I take that as a yes! C'mon..." She ringed her arm around Sonic's. "I can't believe you've never heard of a mall before, Shadow? How do you live?"

"Oh, I somehow manage." His tone a bit amused at the sight of the great Sonic the Hedgehog being dragged down the sidewalk by a pink weak seeming one.

At Angel Island

"Back." Rouge said as she sat herself down at the edge of the shrine, dangling her feet off the edge. She looked over at Knuckles, flipped her wings back into their resting place, to notice he didn't even look at her as he stood there stiffly.

"I said I cared when...?"

Rouge rolled her eyes and realized the temperature had soared from the cool autumn breeze she had felt down on earth. They didn't call it a tropical island for nothing. "You have any lakes around here?" A refreshing dip was what Rouge needed to calm down and sort out her jumble of thoughts tossing around her head.

"What's it to you?" Briefly Knuckles' curious glance snagged her eyes.

"A swim would be nice."

"You mean, you'll leave?"

"For awhile." Knuckles looked like he had just won the lottery.

"South of here, two miles down." Rouge didn't move. "What?"

"Your not coming?"

"I have better things to do then to spend my time and getting nowhere."

"Having fun?" Rouge's expression was bemused. She was hoping she could fight him over there, a good fist-fight was an excellent workout, and beating Knuckles was a huge mental boost.

"Oh, I'm flattered you wanted me to come." Knuckles teased.

"Don't be. I'm more than happy to go alone.

She stood up and flapped her wings experimentally before taking off, gliding through the afternoon heat. Knuckles thought awhile, glanced back at the emerald guilty, and glided after her.

"You won't be happy now." He muttered, the picture of Rouge wet entertaining him. 'WHAT?! No, no, no. That's just...wrong...' He thought, shaking the thought from his head. 'The heat is getting to me. I do need a cool swim.'

Meanwhile, at lunch...

"How can you eat that stuff, Kirei? Cafeteria food is like, poison. The teachers eat it, and look how they turned out..." Spinner told Kirei as they settled down at one of the further back lunch tables.

"I know, but I forgot to make one this morning..."

"Eh...you can have half of my sandwich...I'm not really hungry anyway." Cyclone offered. Kirei blushed and timidly took it.

"Thanks..." The twins shot death stares at him.

"For the record, have you got any detentions today?" Silver asked them, breaking their train of thought. They smiled innocently.

"Can you believe only two?! That's better than usual!" Shocker replied.

"What for this time?" Cyclone asked, only half interested.

"Can you believe we got busted for only demonstrating the law of physics? In science, the teacher asked us to do a demonstration-"

"Of how much speed we need to run up walls and crud like that-"

"So we're like, 'sure', and we ran up the ceiling-"

"And completely totaled the lights!"

"They blew up and sparked and everything! One even exploded-"

"Sweetness all the way." They slapped high fives after finishing each other's sentence the whole story.

"That is so immature...stupid too." Silver grumbled. Kirei snickered, and asked eagerly,

"Did anyone get hurt?"

"No, not really..."

"Aw, man..."

"Your just as bad as they are!" Silver punched her lightly. Kirei narrowed her eyes at her.

"Don't touch me."

"Am I not worthy, oh mighty half-breed?" Everyone fell silent, including the whole cafeteria. Silver had said it on accident, it wasn't in her nature to call people names like that, unless she had a reason.

"What did you call me, Wonder Girl?!" Kirei pounded the table and stood up, her eyes ablaze in fire one could not see. Wonder Girl was a nickname for Silver, her being the most powerful and radiant of them all. Silver swiftly joined her standing, her eyes becoming less gentle by the second.

"You heard me, you hybrid!"

"Don't insult her like that!" The twins coursed, calling her that was just unfair. Cyclone suddenly found the floor interesting, staring blankly at it.

"Butt out!"

"Save your breath, we're not going anywhere!" Spinner yelled, his voice echoing across the gym. Kirei glanced back at them, her eyes looking at them fondly. They would be tortured for days by the rest of the students, standing up for the disgusting 'half-breed.'

Silver crossed her arms over her chest, she hated being able to see the mental scars on Kirei, they were brighter than anything, and a forceful reminder of all the pain she had been though.

"I don't want to have to waste my energy on you, Kirei." She scoffed. Kirei responded with charging toward her, arm outstretched.

"Eat this, Wonder Bitch!" She screamed, throwing all of her energy into her fist at her. Silver sighed, an annoyed one, and moved quickly to the other side of the gym. Shocker and Spinner each grabbed her shoulder.

"Leave her alone, c'mon now." She still was their sister. Whether they liked it or not, they didn't like seeing nether of them hurt. Kirei ripped away from them, tearing out of the cafeteria. They all watched her go, the one who felt the most guilt was Cyclone.

Sonic's least favorite place

"Look on the bright side, there will be chili-dogs." Tails offered, as they strolled in. Sonic didn't have time to respond, he was too busy being yanked by Amy, who was apparently talking to Shadow.

'This is new...' Sonic thought, looking over. And, for once, Shadow didn't seem to be in verbal pain by listening to her.

"Why did you look at me like that this morning...?" She asked, blushing a bit. Shadow cocked an eyebrow.

"...uh, I don't know what you mean." Truth is, he did. Her eyes had a certain purity that reminded him strongly of Maria, and this, understandably, was something he didn't want to share to a hedgehog who was infatuated with Sonic, this 'mall', and pink. He shuddered, thinking of her room. To think, she offered for him to sleep there...

"C'mon Shadow, please tell me?" It was then Amy really looked into Shadow's eyes. They were so full of strong sorrow and rage, the red was like fire that licked at his soul. She suddenly felt bad, remembering the conversation she had had with him on the Arc. "Never mind..."

Meanwhile, Sonic felt a brief spark of jealousy light up. He had always been the one who Amy always gazed at, who she talked too...He stopped himself...him, jealous, because of Amy? How could something so stupid cross his mind?

Shadow looked away from her uncomfortably, feeling strangely exposed. He never really liked looking people in the eye, afterward it made them all afraid and quiet.

"Can we go to the mechanic place first Amy? I need some parts to fix up the Tornado."

"Sure, Tails." She said, springing back into her peppy mood. Sonic brushed off his previous mood as it turned to remorse because Amy gave him a good whiplash as she turned into the store. Tails said hi to the storeowner; they must know each other quite well.

Sonic tuned out as Amy explained to Shadow just what a mall was, watching the horror in his eyes grow. Amy turned away from him and he mouthed,

'How could you even let me walk in here?'

Sonic just grinned back. "Uh, Amy?" He asked, still uncomfortable by the fact she was still latched onto his arm. He wasn't sure, just a lot of confusing emotions went on when this happened, and Sonic liked to keep things simple; straightforward.

"Yeah?"

"Me and Shad are going to go get a chili dog-"

"Oh, I'll come with you!"

"No...I mean, you can't..."Sonic stuttered, when Shadow mouthed from behind her, 'Tails.' "Tails isn't nearly old enough to be in a store by himself."

"Oh, I guess your right...I'll meet you down there, then." Sonic and Shadow walked out, relived.

"Thanks for helping me out, there man. I thought I was a goner." Sonic told Shadow, who waved him away.

"The stronger should help the weak." He quoted.

"Uh-huh...What was Amy talking about back there?"

"I don't know." Shadow replied smoothly. Sonic was left with his thoughts.

"Huh..." Shadow wanted to know why the hedgehog asked, but didn't speak his thoughts. 'Perhaps Sonic is getting jealous of not having Amy's attention all of the time...'