Higher, higher, higher…

Just when Titania thought that her lungs would burst, the thick ash clouds parted and found herself in the planet's upper atmosphere.

If the air was thinner, it was cleaner.

There was some benefit to being a half breed. Wings, for a start, were a nice commodity in times like these. It made traveling her trade routes easier, and it made it possible for her to sometimes break free from the ash and dust of the world below.

But only sometimes. It was hard to get through the ash clouds. Iblis liked them very thick, and they tended to thin out only in the mountains, which were not part of her usual routes. It was hard to breathe while she was in them, so her policy on getting through was to simply hold her breath and flap her wings as hard and fast as she could.

And that fact made bringing her goods up here impossible, so they had to be left unattended.

Titania took another deep breath and basked in the light. She looked around for the mysterious island, said to fly under it's own power, that she had heard so much about, but there was nothing. Just ash clouds below her, and light all around. She took one more deep breath and stopped flapping her wings.

The drop started instantly, and she held her breath as the ash cloud engulfed her.

(-)

"Aaaahhh!" The spinning white ball made it thirty feet into the air before Silver found himself uncurling from the ball he was in and plummeting straight down toward a pile of rocks. His quick telekinesis prevented him from hitting the ground.

"It's no use!" He grumbled as he came in for a landing. "I can't do it."

"Not with that attitude," Shadow retorted.

"I though you were going to help me," Silver complained, hopping onto a nearby rock and sitting down. Their search of the area that morning, conducted on foot by Shadow and in the air by Silver, had turned up no Chaos Emeralds, and Shadow had decided that they should brush up on some skills, like spin dashing.

It wasn't going well.

Shadow didn't bother to respond to Silver's petulant statement. He seemed to be pondering something. "I am having a hard time teaching you because no one taught me. I've always known how to do it."

"Well, I don't," Silver said.

"Did you see anyone do this before you saw me do it?" Shadow asked. "Friend? Family?" Mortal rival?

Silver shook his head. "You know Blaze, and Techno, and Titania," he replied. "Those are the people I see."

And none of them was a Mobian hedgehog.

"And if my family ever did spin dashing they must have done it before I was old enough to remember," Silver answered.

"So do you have any family?" Shadow demanded. It was an awkward question, but as Techno had noted, he excelled at them, and he was not interested in tact while Iblis and Mephiles were still on the loose. If Silver had any family, then they could help the white hedgehog learn to spin dash.

"Nah," Silver said, disinterested. "I mean, I guess everyone does."

Boy are you wrong, Shadow thought, arms crossed over his chest.

"But if I had any they're long gone. Or, I mean, I don't know where they are." When he noticed the confused look Shadow was giving him, he went on. "Someone found me after one of Iblis' attacks. I was a baby. They took me to an orphanage, and I was there until it was destroyed too, so, until, three years ago now. No one knew anything about the attack, or me. Wardeness Marion said that they named me Silver because when the lady who found me brought me in, I was covered in just enough of a dust layer that I looked silver. But then when they gave me a bath it turned out I had white fur. So it didn't exactly work." He looked pensive for a moment. "I hope Wardeness is okay. She was like a mom to me. I guess she was a Mom to most of the kids, but...I hope she's okay."

Silver kicked at a stone nearby. "So that's the story of me. I met Blaze after that and we've been on our own ever since."

"None of that gets us closer to you learning how to spin dash," Shadow replied. Blaze had emerged from their small home and come over to see what they were doing.

"How's it going?" She asked.

"Badly!" Silver replied. "I can't figure out how to spin dash."

"What's a spin dash?" Blaze asked.

Shadow huffed. "See that tree?" He pointed out a charred stump not far away. "Watch." In an instant he was a rapidly rotating ball of red and black that hit the stump at top speed, destroying it. In a flash of gold, Shadow was back before them.

"That's a spin dash?" Blaze asked. Shadow nodded.

"Hunter said all hedgehogs can do it, but I can't," Silver grumbled.

Blaze pulled her knees to her chest, tail twitching back and forth as she thought about it. "When you try and do it, Silver, what's wrong?"

"He isn't naturally fast," Shadow answered for him. "So he has to use his telekinesis to build speed."

Silver looked put out at the explanation but he said nothing.

"And you are lifting yourself with your telekinesis while you spin?" Blaze asked.

"Yes!" Silver replied.

"Of course," Blaze said after a moment's further thought. "Silver, you don't know what you're grabbing!"

Silver considered it and shook his head. "Not really."

Blaze looked at Shadow. "Can you spin dash with Silver as your target?"

An amused "hmph!" was Shadow's only response, and the he was a spinning ball launching at Silver. The white hedgehog held up a hand and caught Shadow in a haze of blue energy.

"You've got to know what it 'feels like' when someone is spin dashing so that you can spin dash yourself," Blaze said. "Let him go."

Silver did, jumping and hovering out of the way as Shadow went whirling past him, coming to a stop a few feet away.

"I think," Blaze said, tucking her feet under her. "That if you can catch Shadow with your telekinesis while he spin dashes a few more times, you might learn what's it feels like to spin dash and then you can spin yourself wherever you want to go."

Silver nodded. "I'll try it. Thanks, Blaze!"

After a few more times of Silver catching Shadow while in spin dash, the white hedgehog declared himself ready to try again.

"Don't say it, do it," was Shadow's response.

This time, Silver's spin dash managed to hit and smash the rocks he was aiming at.

"Nice job!" Blaze cheered when Silver came floating back over toward them.

"Hmph! I suppose it will do," Shadow remarked.

Silver, now in a better mood after having been able to complete a spin dash, grinned at him. "Your optimism is great!"

"Hmph!"

(-)

When the three of them made it back to the house, they found Titania already there. She looked dusty and ash covered, but seemed cheerful.

"Did Iblis attack you on the way here?" Silver asked when he saw her.

"Nah," she shook her head, making a hair clip in the shape of a spiral with three crystals dangling from it chime. "Just hit a cloud, that's all. So the vegetables the Blaze had when I came through last time were really received and I have a few things that are offered in return." She opened her bag and set a few things out on the table, including a large book, some kind of sauce in a jar. "If none of this suits I can hold your credit until something else that you would like comes along."

Blaze picked up the book. "The Lord of the Rings," she read, looking the book over.

"I am told it's a very good book," Titania offered. She come across something in a rag in the bottom of her pack and pulled it out. "Ooh, and look at this!" She unwrapped the cloth and showed them a piece of a red stone. "You'll never believe this, but this thing was glowing this morning. I was flying by and I saw it, and I thought, that's not lava. It wasn't!"

Shadow was reaching for it when Silver blurted out, "we need that!"

Titania drew it back. "What do you mean, you need it? What for?"

"We're gonna use it to stop Iblis!" Silver said, before Shadow grabbed one of his quills and yanked on it, hard. "Ow! What was that for!"

"You can't go around sharing that information with strangers!" Shadow snapped.

"Titania's not a stranger!"

"Um...do you want me to stand outside for a minute while you ...discuss this among yourselves?" Titania offered.

"No! We need that! It's a piece of the Chaos Emeralds and we're going to find the pieces and put a stop to Iblis with them!" Silver insisted.

"The...Chaos Emeralds?" Titania glanced at them. "The real Chaos Emeralds? Like, 'Sonic the Hedgehog used to use these to turn super and stop evil Emeralds'?" She looked at Shadow. "Really?"

He stared right back. "Really."

Titania hesitated, then tossed the shard to Silver. "Here. If this is something that you think you can do, take it."

"There's something else you can do for us too," Blaze said. "We need to find as many of these as possible. Will you keep a lookout for us when you make your route and bring back anything that you can find?"

"Sure."

"But don't tell anyone what you want them for," Shadow warned.

"I won't, I promise," the fairy told him."But just so I know, is this, an all-out trade? If someone doesn't want to give one of these shards up, do you want me to trade whatever I need for it?"

"Yes," Shadow replied.

"Okay. Don't take this the wrong way, because I have heard the stories that say that sometimes you were a hero like Sonic, so I'm not trying to offend you, but you have not been on my trade list before..." she trailed off, and Shadow gave her an impatient glance.

"So?"

"I don't usually extend credit to people until I know they're good for it," Titania said. "And if people get petty and unreasonable about what I'm trying to trade for, it could get bad and in that case, you're asking for a huge line of credit."

"It's okay," Blaze told her. "Silver and I will back any trade for Chaos Emerald shards that you find."

Titania nodded. "Works for me. Now, what do you want to trade for? Anything here?"

"Information," Shadow cut in.

"Depending on what you want to know, that's free," Titania told him.

"Where is Freeville?"

"Ooh, the mystery city of Freeville," Titania gestured for him to follow her and led the way outside. Blaze and Silver followed along behind them.

"See that mountain in the distance?" The fairy asked. "It's said that Freeville is up that mountain. You head due North to reach it."

"Have you ever been there?" Blaze asked.

"No. It's a long way outside of my trade routes. And I don't even know if it's real. The stories that I hear about it say that it fights off Iblis' incursion with weapons that repel him. They grow their own food. The mountain helps keep them out of the worst of the smoke. They're a city-state all of their own. But no one seems to know where exactly they are, and no one who ever sets out for it comes back."

"Maybe they liked it better and decided to stay," Shadow pointed out.

"It could be," Titania didn't sound sure.

"I thought Maude had come back from there," Silver chimed it, referring to a human woman he had met in the Westopolis Underground Rail Line where survivors had been living since the Iblis disaster.

"Silver I know you think the best of everyone but she's called Mad Maude for a reason," Blaze reminded him.

"That's all I ever knew about it." she glanced at them. "Are you going to try and find it?"

"We are," Shadow told her.

Titania nodded. "Alright. I'll keep moving on to my next stop. I should make it before nightfall. Anything you wanted before I left?"

"Yes!" Blaze said, looking at her friend. "We'll take that book."

(-)

No sign of him.

It was as though Shadow had vanished off the face of the Earth. But that couldn't be true. Not without the Chaos Emeralds.

He had to be on this planet somewhere.

Mephiles considered this as, in the form he had stolen from the hedgehog in question, he moved quietly along the worn footpath that counted as a road in this area.

A peak in the distance caught his attention.

Ah. Maybe Shadow had retreated to higher ground.

And there was that town up there that Iblis had not been able to harm and now loathed and hated and wished to destroy.

Maybe Mephiles would pay it a visit.


[A/N:] *taps computer monitor* Hello? Anyone still reading this? I know you might be thinking that writers nag for reviews a lot, but it takes work to churn these chapters out. It's nice to know that the work is appreciated.

That said...

I finally found a use for the OC who seemed like a good idea in 2008 and a bad idea in 2022. This story is weird. If I hadn't started it then I wouldn't be writing now. If I was trying to write it now, I would have given it a different title, scrapped Titania from the get-go, but also probably would not have ever bothered to start writing in the first place. Much like Sonic '06 this story is stuck in an odd time loop. Funnily enough, I can tell what other shows I was watching back when I started this based on how I designed Titania, and those shows included Winx Club and Avatar: The Last Airbender. But I digress.

Emerald Shard Count: 2! Next time: the mysterious city of Freeville.