A surge of pain hit across her spine, the feeling continued to ache as she can feel like she's about to fall hard on the ground, but she held herself fast and grunts, "This better be worth it." She mutters to herself, her voice was sore and full of discomfort.

The white bat had now found herself in the rocky plains of a valley, looking for Eggman's old lair. But as she does, she couldn't stop thinking about her gloomy partner reacting to her departure, she knew he may be mad at her for doing an act like this.

Other than that, she tries to fight off the urge of anger towards Tails and Amy for hiding a huge lead that she and Shadow needed in order to help find Sonic, it infuriated her to finally doing this her way. Although she started doubting that her action can cause a bigger problem, she looked back, at that very moment, when she and Shadow had... kissed. Rouge just couldn't process what Shadow had done, did he do that out of his own agenda, or was it because a new side of him opened itself to her?

It had to be something new to Shadow since Rouge knew he does not know any concept of romance, but this moment really gives Rouge a new perception, seeing Shadow in a whole new light.

Rouge began to giggle, the thought of actually having a romantic relationship with the Shadow The Hedgehog, The Ultimate Life Form, the thought amuses her, but also gave her some sort of a feeling, which she chose to ignore.

Having Shadow as a love interest is strange in and of itself. If Shadow did have a relationship with someone, he'd leave them cause he knows he has other better things to do, and mostly cause he's never really been a social person if Rouge can say so herself.

The thought, however, it's been through her mind lately, plaguing her to the brink that she has considered she may hold an interest in the Shadow, but she never thought herself to be in a relationship with her own partner. But it made her feel tingly, it felt she was cold but was warm, a strange feeling indeed. Rouge never knew she could feel these mixed feelings, especially towards Shadow.

Realizing she was thinking about her partner again, she shook her head and snarled in a fit of rage, with all she can think about was Shadow. Trying to find Eggman's base is her task on hand, she kept on flying, not resting until she's found what she's looking for.

The journey to the valley is now where Shadow will be arriving, bringing along Tails, Knuckles, and Amy for the ride, requiring a group to help him out with his next foe, needing help now that his partner has now gone to do things her way.

But with Shadow, of course, the ride was really quiet. It was excruciating for Amy, cause she's more talkative than Sonic, Tails still felt guilty by hiding an important piece of information without telling Shadow about it.

Tails couldn't help the feeling but think about what he saw back at the lab, seeing Shadow and Rouge just kiss like that, it was the last thing Tails expected to see in his mind. Like Rouge, he knew it was unlikely. He took a moment and glanced at Shadow, his face tells the young genius he may not want to talk about such a topic. For a guy like him, Tails would rather keep his mouth shut, just like everyone else.

Knuckles was then filled in when Tails called him, he couldn't believe why Tails and Amy would do all that. When asked by Shadow if he knew all about it, Tails convinced the black hedgehog that Knuckles had no knowledge of what he and the pink hedgehog had done.

Shadow though, he was quieter than all of them, a typical thing for him to be but he kept his mind focused on one thing, for now, finding his partner. He just wants to facepalm from Rouge's stupidity, she was still injured and she can't just run away like that.

His chest was pounding though, he felt something bad coming their way.

Back to Rouge, she landed safely on the rocky ground, her heels clicking as her eyes focused on what's in front of her, the white bat sighed with tiredness and rocked her head both front and back before breathing in.

Rouge closed her eyes for a moment and soon opened them, walking up inside a dark cave. Her fur starts to shiver, just as she enters the catacombs, she shuddered from just a single rock that she would step on.

It disturbed her, but it didn't scare her enough to run out the other way and she continued on her way instead. The cave began to get darker and darker the farther Rouge ventured inside, but the dark wasn't a problem for her.

She breathed in, and lets out a screech, her ears perked up a little until she started walking again. Unknown to her, her shrieking howls echoed through and out of the cave, letting the others hear her.

"What in Mobius was that? " Knuckles wondered, hearing Rouge's distant wail.

Shadow huffed, they were nearing his partner's whereabouts. "It's her, follow that screech. "

They all nodded and followed Shadow's intuition as he led them towards a cave. Meanwhile, Rouge soon found herself in the main room of the lair, finding a giant computer just in front of her. On a hunch, she ran up to the computer and began hacking into the security cameras.

As she was typing still, her ears shifted, she soon stood into place and focuses her hearing, listening closely to what she can identify as someone or people circling around her.

The sound stopped.

Whoosh!

Rouge acted fast and pinned down someone with red fur in a blink of an eye, the white thief realized who she had apprehended and let the red echidna go, chuckling. "You should be careful who you ambush, hun~"

"Nice to see you too, Rouge. " Knuckles replied annoyed while receiving a hand from Amy, who was right behind him.

Emerging from the shadows was Rouge's partner, with a scowl on his face, "That was stupid of you, you know that? " He began to lecture her, making Rouge roll her eyes.

"It was nothing, my legs were fine while you were interrogating Tails and Amy, " Rouge responds trying to show Shadow she's alright, it also reminded Shadow of his last conversation with the fox and the female hedgehog.

She turned around to face the computer and smirked, "And I made us some progress, just hacked into the security cameras and I've got us footage. " The bat said, pointing at the computer screen.

Tails beamed at the bat, "This is good then! We can check out the footage on the day Sonic disappeared. " The fox walked over to the computer and clicked on the video, as the others huddles around him quickly.

Security Footage

"Hey Tails, I'm here! And I've gotta say, this place is a dump. " Sonic chuckled at his communicator, making Tails laugh as well along with Amy.

"Hasn't been always a dump? I heard this place is gonna be turned into a scrapyard soon." The young fox joked around, Sonic snickered of the thought of an Eggman Lair rebuilt into a yard for a bunch of junk.

"But don't you think that's a little dangerous though? " Amy asks the two, Sonic raised a brow but to him, it didn't seem like a big of a deal that's worth worrying about.

"I don't know, why question it?" Tails furthered the conversation, but Sonic chose to forget the conversation and just kept on trudging the fark path until he awaits further instructions from Tails of where to go next.

"Think about it, there's still so much badnik remains and a lot of useful information there that if were turned into a bunch of junk, then all of that info would've been turned to scrap and all our hard work would go down to square one."

Sonic raised his head in thought and hummed. "Huh, you got a point there, Ames. To be safe, I'm just gonna raid the heck out of this place, where to next, Tails?"

"Turn right and you'll probably see the main hub area, that's where the computer might be."

" 'Probably'?" Amy repeats what Tails said.

" 'Might'?" Sonic followed.

"Alright, alright, I get it! Stop ganging up on me, jeez." Tails grumbled whilst the two hedgehogs chuckled at him. But he wasn't wrong when Sonic caught a glimpse of a computer just in front of him. So he picked up the pace and sped up until he was face to face with the monitor.

Faintly, from the other side of the communicator, Tails began jumping around with glee, "Haha, yes! This is great! Now we can access some of Eggman's recent plans and finally put a stop to all of this madness." He exclaimed proudly that he sounded like he was about to fall off his chair.

Sonic stifled a laugh and continued to hack his way into the computer, with the help of Tails of course, and was able to access a ton of blueprints, future plans, and a bunch of other important pieces of information. The hedgehog chuckled as he scanned through the entire computer. "Oh wow!! It might be the adrenaline talking, but I think we can take care of this rampage in just 5 minutes!"

"Sounds like a plan, now try connecting me into the computer so I can download all that stuff you found then we're good to go!" Tails said, but before Sonic can connect Tails' computer to the one in front of him, his ears picked up a clang nearby. It seemed to have alerted Tails and Amy as well, seeing as they began asking Sonic tons of questions.

"Is someone there??" Tails asked.

"No... that can't be. That base hasn't been touched in forever!" Amy claimed, the sound of disbelief heard from her tone, which made Sonic more wary of what's going on. He tried to cancel out any noise he hears and concentrated on any sounds near him. Suddenly!

"What the-!"

End Footage

...Silence...