Edited October 2
The characters belong to Sega.
Reincarnate
Chapter 4: Feminine Wiles?
As soon as Amy squeals her crush's name she winces. She had forgotten momentarily about not being such a fangirl. She tries to cover for it by folding her hands behind her back and smiling in a collected manner. Sonic, who had been eyeing her warily, relaxes when she refrains from leaping at him.
"Hey Amy," he says, tossing her a half smile that makes her dizzy as usual.
Don't show it! She says to herself forcefully, and lifts a hand.
"Hi, Sonic…it's great to see you again. Where have you been?"
"Taking a break," he says vaguely. Amy notes with some dismay that her hero's eyes have fallen on Shadow curiously. He stares longer than is polite, and offers the same "Hey" that he had given to Amy, and that smile that she had always found flirtatious. She furrows her brow in confusion. Shadow lifts a hand casually and stretches across the table for the toast. Sonic reacts with his usual speed and grabs it, handing it to him with another grin. Shadow stares at him a minute before shrugging and thanking him.
"So Tails," Sonic says as the twin-tailed fox reenters the room, eyeing his precious diagrams. "You should have told me you had a guest; I would have come back earlier."
"Huh? Oh, right. That's a long story, Sonic…"
Amy tries to visualize Sonic taking Shadow's situation maturely. Somehow she can't picture it – after all, she had laughed when Shadow told her who he was. She tries to catch Tails' eye so she can convey this, but he's lost in his diagrams again, looking happy in his element. Amy fiddles with her bracelets, and Shadow stands up, accidentally bumping against the table and making the silverware clatter.
"I'm going to get dressed," he says, and darts up the stairs in his usual quick fashion, moving almost as swiftly as Sonic does. Her hero watches him leave with an odd expression on his face.
"So Sonic, what were you doing when – Sonic?"
He hadn't even been listening to her, staring instead towards the stairs with a stupid expression on his face, somewhere between a grin and a gape. Amy frowns and shouts, "EARTH TO SONIC!"
He jumps about a foot in the air, spinning around towards her with a guilty expression.
"What? Huh?"
"I was asking you what you were doing when you were…on your…never mind," she finishes with a sigh as Shadow reenters the room, dressed in the outfit he bought yesterday. She's pleased to see that he's wearing the bracelets she bought him, obviously resigning himself to his fate.
"You look good!" she pipes up when she notices his somewhat self-conscious look. Meanwhile a thought seemed to have occurred to Sonic.
"You're the first person I've met that's been this casual around me," he says, not succeeding in sounding anything less than full of himself, whatever his intentions had been. Amy rolls her eyes behind his back and Shadow gives the blue hero an odd look.
"Why wouldn't I be?" he asks, looking around at Amy.
"You were going to show me around Tails' lab today," he points out. Amy nods, for some reason relieved at the thought of a walk – it would help calm her down. She's beginning to feel hurt at Sonic's attitude. He isn't even listening to her when she talks, and she's not even being obnoxious! What is the deal?
"Right, we'll do that," she says, but Sonic jumps in.
"I'll go with you; I know the place better than Amy. No offense," he says quickly at her annoyed look. At this she relaxes a little. At least he had noticed he'd offended her. But again that wish that she and Sonic would just be alone for a minute worms its way into her mind. She shrugs it off as still being depressed about him not paying more attention to her. But then what had she been expecting – him to fall head over heels in love with her the second she refrained from hugging him? No.
"I'll be in my lab," Tails says in a distant voice, nose still buried in his papers, and heads off into the hallway. Amy munches on a cold piece of toast and beckons to Shadow, who follows her towards the stairs, Sonic in tow.
"Okay, up here he has his design rooms, bedrooms, and a sort of research facility, I guess," she says as they enter the hall where their bedrooms are, accidentally blowing toast crumbs out of her mouth as she talks. She blushes furiously and peeks back to see if Sonic was looking. Apparently he wasn't. He's alternately staring off into space and glancing at Shadow, whose attentive gaze moves from Amy to the doors around him. As she opens doors Sonic jumps in to talk about some of Tails recent inventions, and describes the Tornado with intricate detail. Shadow nods frequently and makes interested noises, but Amy can see the flicker of boredom in his now green eyes. Robotnik's machine was very similar to Tails' Tornado, so he probably knows about all the features already. Sonic seems oblivious, going on and on incessantly. Amy is a little surprised; the only time she's ever heard him talk this much is when he's talking about himself or one of his adventures.
She leads them downstairs and opens the door to Tails' lab quietly, giving Shadow time to glance around before moving away again. Tails hadn't noticed them there, buried in a pile of mechanical parts and scribbling things on a large whiteboard. Amy has only seen him working once or twice, and by now knows better than to try to make conversation with him when he's absorbed in something – it's just about the only thing that comes close to annoying him. But he's probably had practice being patient, with someone like Sonic as a best friend: Sonic is a good guy, but always gone. The only time Tails really gets to see him is during dangerous escapades like the ARK incident, and sometimes at irregular intervals in between adventures, like now.
When the "tour" is over and Shadow's curiosity is satisfied, the three hedgehogs retire to Tails' living room, which has a few comfortable chairs, a sofa, and a big-screen T.V., which Amy turns on as they enter with the complex control that she can assume Tails built himself. Basically anything electronic in the house is Tails' handiwork, something she has always been impressed with. She has trouble with wood projects, let alone something like the Tornado. She sits carefully in a chair and Shadow drops gracelessly into the chair next to her. Sonic flops onto the couch, feet up on the arm.
"So when'd you get here?" he asks, the question directed at Shadow, who looks away from the T.V. and says, "A couple of days ago. I came with Amy."
Amy braces herself. If there's ever a time to tell Sonic exactly what's going on, it's now. She clears her throat and switches off the T.V., turning in her chair to face her blue idol. But before she can utter a word Sonic turns to Shadow again and says, "If you ever want to be shown around Station Square…I could take you. We could try Twinkle Park, or something."
Amy goes hot, then very cold. She feels it building up, tries to hold it back but can't…she bursts out laughing so hard she falls out of her chair and lands on the floor, clutching at her sides as she pictures it: Shadow and Sonic on a date. So that's what was going on, why Sonic was ignoring her! What a hoot!
"What's so funny?" Sonic asks, a trace of indignation in his voice. Amy can't answer; she's gasping for breath. Meanwhile, Shadow seems to grasp exactly what's been asked. He goes very pale.
"Uh, did you mean…like a date?"
"Well…"
Shadow starts to shudder. Amy settles down as her concern grows, watching Shadow double up in his chair, shoulders shaking.
"Are you okay? I didn't mean to–" she begins, but then a tiny sound, close to "meep" escapes from Shadow, and then he starts to laugh. Not as loudly as Amy, but laughing all the same. Amy watches in something like wonder: she can't remember ever hearing him laugh before.
"I think you'd better tell him," Shadow says seriously, his laughter dying away, now coming in spurts, reminding Amy of herself two days ago. Amy complies. As Sonic listens, his eyes grow steadily wider and his face gets redder. Finally he slaps his hands to his face and yells something they can't make out into his gloves, stomping out of the room. Shadow and Amy take another look at each other and dissolve in laughter again.
-
High up in the night sky, a floating island is home to the last of the echidnas. The Emerald is still miraculously in one piece, even in all the commotion on the ARK, and Knuckles, the Guardian of the said Emerald, is the happiest he's ever been to be home. Because although life on Angel Island is lonely, if he's there it means things are pretty much normal, and he can take a break from all the excitement. It has been a few days since ARK had almost hit the Earth, and he's enjoying the peacefulness of the night in training. He's standing on one of the broken pillars surrounding the altar, punching the air in a quick succession of jabs – a test of both balance and speed.
He leaps to another pillar, punching the air again as soon as he lands. He spirals upwards, swinging his barbed fists around in a whirlwind, and lands gracefully on the ground. He sighs and looked up at the starry sky. He had been up there, in space, less than a week ago. Already that time has a dreamlike quality to it. He had experienced the same thing after the encounter with Chaos.
At that thought he glances at the Emerald. Chaos and Tikal had been imprisoned in the Emerald for years before Robotnik had freed the beast. Luckily for all of them, the villain had unknowingly freed Tikal as well, and she turned out to be the one to solve the mystery for them by taking them with her into the past so that they could use the information gathered there to piece to the puzzle together. And now she was gone into the afterlife, taking a more peaceful Chaos with her. But it still gives him a bit of a chill when he thinks about how they had been there all his life, and he had never known it. He'd never really looked at the Master Emerald the same way again.
He looks around at the stone columns, where the Chaos Emeralds once stood. They are all back on the space colony, and he isn't exactly itching to bring them back down to Earth again. Wherever they are, there's trouble, he had learned after the two near-disasters. Power could be such a pain when used wrongly.
A rustling sound comes out of nowhere in the sky above. He jerks his gaze upwards again, but sees nothing. But further down the island, towards the distant mountains, he catches a glimpse of a dark shadow moving swiftly across the island, caused by the light from the half moon that remained. At night the red core of the moon can be seen, an eternal reminder of the devastation that could have occurred. He frowns into the night, eyes still locked on the area where the shadow had been. He may be a bit gullible, but he isn't an idiot in any case. The shadow does not bode well, he's fairly certain.
This suspicion reaches swift confirmation as the air fills with a sound not unlike thunder. But Knuckles knows it well enough after having heard it twice to realize that the once-unthinkable is happening. Angel Island is falling again.
"Just perfect," the Guardian mutters, bracing himself as he feels the Island beginning to drop.