Bonus I

A well known white furred bat looked up, when the bill and the money she had just placed on the table of the coffee shop she had been sitting at, in front of the building, got swiped off by a gust of wind.

In front of her stood a blue hedgehog and seeing, how no other table had been affected by his wind, the bat knew, that he was still angry at her.

Subtle punishments like that were his current strategy, after ignoring them both for a month, during that he slept in the house, in that he and Tails had lived together, before Sonic and Shadow had become a couple and he had moved out. He somehow even got Knuckles to keep his bat-girlfriend off Angel Island for the same amount of time. Now, all the three brothers by choice were showing the two agents cold shoulders, but at least they were talking again...just not in sentences longer than five words.

"You wanted to talk?," the hero asked with an 'I'm only here, because Knuckles/Tails forced me, not because I actually wanted to'-tone.

"Indeed I did.," Rouge replied, stood up, picked up, what had been thrown off, put it on the table again and started to walk off, so Sonic wouldn't throw it off again, when he ran away. The blue hedgehog walked behind her, making a point of not liking it to be close to her.

"Are you still angry? It was just a joke!," the bat argued. It was quite strange to talk in front of herself, when the target for her voice was behind her.

At once, Sonic was in front of her, his glare unusually icy. "Do you know, what happened?," he asked, keeping up the five-words-per-sentence-strategy. "After Shadow took off to get you? No, he never talked about it, strangely, no matter how much I bugged him. All I know is, that you were out the whole night and when you came back, you looked royally pissed...at us both."

Sonic huffed, before he grabbed the surprised bat and raced with her out of the city and stopped on a clearing in a nearby forest.

"Okay, and the point of this was-?," she asked, while she tried to get her fur back in order. "I tried to kill him."

This sentence alone let her stop and stare at the hero. "What?," she asked. "I tried to impale him with a stake, poking out of a destroyed tree."

"...Why?," Rouge asked. Surely he didn't believe this old myth of the stake through the heart of a vampire, right? She was too shocked to realize, that Sonic was talking normally again.

"I panicked, okay? In case you haven't noticed it, your damn prank was pretty convincing. I really thought, that he was a blood sucker, a monster, that could turn the world's population in vampires, or kill them."

"You would have gone against your love to save the world?" Sonic met her glare angrily. "I am a HERO. It's my job to keep the world safe.," he growled. "So...how did you...well, figure it out?"

Sonic turned red and turned away. "He... er...told me...about...what really happened on this mission he never talked about before."

"Oh." Well, the story was SO embarrassing, that Shadow wouldn't share it freely and obviously, he had been convincing enough for Sonic to calm down and actually listen.

Sadly, it didn't change the fact, that Sonic had been for hours intent to kill the one he loved the most, maybe more, than Tails. Chaos alone knew, what this did to his heart and soul.

The bat sighed. She really hadn't thought about THIS. To be honest, she wasn't a hero through and through, so she hadn't seen this coming. No wonder, that Shadow was avoiding her as well, he blamed her the most, as she hadn't grasped yet, how much they had actually damaged with the prank, that went out of hand.

"Okay, listen...I'm...really sorry. I haven't thought that through enough, I guess." Those words really tasted like acid on her tongue, but they were more sincere, than all her apologies for the prank before.

Sonic seemed to sense that, too, because he sighed. "Apology accepted. Just promise me, that you don't do this again...or...involve me, at least."

Rouge blinked. "What?" "It was a good prank, I give you two that much. I think, I can keep things limited, though, so we don't get in as much trouble as you two are already in."

"Oh, so we're not forgiven?" "No, not yet. Knuckles has planned our revenge, I would be a terrible friend and brother, if I would deny him that.," the hero grinned and ran away, leaving it to the bat to return to civilization. At least they were on better terms again.

Rouge couldn't help it and smirked. "You know, Sonic, you would make an excellent vampire with that big heart of yours, I just need to change your way of seeing us first."

Out of nowhere, a dark violet booklet appeared in her hands, she opened it and wrote in it with the attached pen, while mumbling, "But I'll do that another day. You're still young, after all." Letting the book disappear again, she left the clearing at a slow walking pace.

In the twilight beneath the tree branches, her fur looked black as coal, blending with the shadows, as if she was part of them...