I do not own sonic the hedgehog or any of the characters from the games, movies or comics but I do own this story and the other characters, I hope you enjoy it.

Things Only Whispered In The Shadows

Ch24. Don't Call Me Hero

I awoke the next morning even more eager than the last, the promise of a new day of training was like fire in my veins as I stretched and dressed before informing Amy I would be gone until the evening when we were going to use the emeralds as I wolfed down my breakfast and thanked her for the money she handed me on my way out the door. I found myself smiling the entire way there as I raced myself there in my full gear. I had refrained from using the silver sleeve so I could use it right away if I needed it and so we could start right away if he was there early. As if on cue I felt the now familiar pulse as I slid to a halt under the tree and Shadow appeared beside me.

"You're early, eager to get your ass handed to you I see." A smile played on his lips as well as in his eyes, I had begun to enjoy his teasing when it came to our training together. He seemed so much happier when we spared, no matter how one sided it was for now.

"Well I have to start somewhere don't I? We don't all start perfect, some of us have to work our way up to it."

He scoffed at that, smile never leaving his eyes. I intended to train as hard as I could to advance as quickly as possible. I would catch up to him some day, no matter how long it took. Pulling my swords free and giving them a twirl I began to circle slowly away from the tree. "You don't believe me?" The question was laced with mock accusation. I had made leaps and bounds the day before as my experience caught up with me once more. A pulse warned me of his first move and I was ready. I spun quickly as he appeared, catching him with the flat of the blade across the chest. Other than a grunt and a delay in his next move Shadow was totally unscathed. I danced back, bringing one blade up in front of me and setting the other out behind me.

"I believe you have a long way to go." He Rushes me without a moments pause.

I feign a hurt expression as I give my best haughty air and press one hand dramatically to my chest as the other slipping behind me to touch the yellow emerald. "Well if that's how you feel!" I vanish as I teleport behind a large tree nearby. I had pulled something similar yesterday evening so I was sure he knew what I was up to. Keeping my breathing even and slow, I waited. It took less that ten seconds for him to pinpoint my location and less than one for him to teleport in front of me but before either of us could do anything else the earth beneath us jerked violently upward. Once again I found myself face down on the ground but this time Shadow had taken a knee in front of me to avoid the same indignity. The motion was immediately followed by a thundering boom and the distant sound of ominous rumbling. One look at one another and we both pulled out our emeralds and teleported up. I gripped the emerald tight as I attempted to hover like Shadow had so often done only to find myself falling in sporadic bursts. A sturdy hand under one arm quickly solved the problem. "What the fuck was that?" I had no time to be embarrassed over a power I had clearly never used before. The ground below was still but the approaching rumbling made me wary of landing.

"My sentiments exactly. We need to find the others." As long as we didn't go see for ourselves alone I was all for it. Sheathing my swords I nodded. "Chaos control." We blinked over to tail's workshop only to find the place in shambles, although the rumbling was quieter here the evidence of the quake was evident all the same.

"Shit, Tails!" I called out as I raced around the room with Shadow searching for the fox through the rubble of the half collapsed building.

"Here!" Shadow called to me pulling aside a particularly large chunk of roof off of a pile of shelves. Tails had been buried under the only safe place in the pile and was thankfully unhurt other than a nasty bump to the head. We pulled him out as quickly as we dared and moved him outside away from what was left of the building just as a streak of blue put a very shaken Amy down beside us.

"Tails! What happened?" I had never seen Sonic so serious before.

Shaking his head Shadow's voice is sharp as he replies. "He was inside when we found him. The quake must have caught him off guard as well." Sonic looked him over as Amy disappeared into the house long enough for a tremor to shake small bits loose from the building before she reemerged with a first aid kit. The seriousness of the situation was slowly sinking in and my nerves were on overdrive as I thought about what could possibly have caused something like this. For the damage to be this severe almost a hundred miles from where we were training was terrifying, and to make it worse we had been even farther away from the origin in the first place. It chilled me to the bone and I was suddenly glad I hadn't had lunch yet.

"Whatever it was that caused this was near Angel Island." The name sounded familiar for some reason.

"Shit, Knuckles." I had never hear Sonic swear before either but if knuckles had been on an island when that went off then he had a wave the size of a skyscraper coming his way any second. Another Pulse and Shadow was gone. "We need to run damage control, Amy can you watch tails? Whisper I need you with me." Amy nods soberly to Sonic as she continues to treat Tails.

I pull the silver sleeve loose, "Lead the way."

The next twelve hours mostly consisted of damage control and emergency rescue that thankfully both Shadow and Kuckles both joined in on. Sadly even with the added help we couldn't keep up with the sheer scale of the disaster. Hundreds of people were dead and thousands more needed help of one kind or another in the nearby city alone. Amy showed up after dark with an exhausted hug for sonic as she informed us that Tails would be fine and was currently repairing one of his machines to help with the rescue work. By the time he showed up we were all about ready to drop. It was eerie not having any leads on the source of the quake and the subdued silence only made it worse.

To ad insult to injury Tails brought even worse news. "The emeralds are gone."

I stared at him numbly for a minute as his words sank in. Running a hand over my face I took a deep breath to smother the dark feeling forming in my gut. "How many were still there?"

"Sonic had one, and you and Shadow had the only others. That makes four gone. We're lucky that knuckles was on the island when the wave hit or we would have lost the master emerald as well." A stillness had settled over the group, like a wound to deep to ignore.

I was shaking at this point, torn between screaming in anger and breaking down in tears. Instead I pulled out my emerald and focused. If I wanted to go home I was going to end up fighting a war and I was going to win this one, no matter the cost. "Chaos control." I flashed up to the tallest standing building and slipped into my artificer mindset. I felt out the area; stone, wood, cloth, metal. Every nonliving thing in a quarter mile hummed in my head like a symphony. This was a bad idea, but it was the only thing I could think of doing to distract myself, to keep the reality of the situation from crushing me before I had a chance to do something about it.

I felt Shadow next to me as I closed my eyes. "I hope you aren't about to do something stupid." He took a step closer.

"Probably, but I need to do this." His hand on my shoulder almost breaking my concentration as I flinch at his next words.

"You don't need to prove anything." I could hear the concern in his voice just as clearly as I felt it, and it hurt to say the next words out of my mouth. Taking a step toward the edge his hand slipped off and there was no turning back.

"If I don't then I never will. Chaos control." The emerald glowed brighter than ever as I forced as much power out of it as I could. Every piece of rubble in the area larger than a basketball glowed with the light of the emerald and lifted up from the ground. I vaguely remembered hearing a voice shouting at me, I was to focused on the task at hand to pay attention to it however and all I could do was feel the things I now held in my command. I spread my arms wide and lifted up, the rubble began to dissipate into smaller pieces as it rose, leaving everything else behind on the ground wherever it was. Pain ripped through my body as my mind fought against it and used it to force more power out of the emerald as another power joined my own. I was to far gone to question it, power was power at this point and I increased my range as the rubble dissolved into its base components under my influence before settling into neat piles of materials on clear patches of ground. The longer I worked the more pain ripped through me until every moment felt like an eternity, I felt my body giving way until a calmness passed over me and the power stopped. The little bit of rubble left rained down on the outer city as pebbles and sand before I snapped back to my senses like a rubber-band.

I gasped allowed and fell to my knees, wrist tingling where the bracelet touched. "What happened?" The words came out hushed and strained as something solid supported me from behind. The world was spinning violently as my head swam.

A curt voice sounded behind me as an answer. "You almost killed yourself. If you hadn't been wearing an inhibitor ring, which I have no idea how you came to posses, you would have succeeded." Shadow's voice shook with so many emotions I couldn't pinpoint them all but anger was the one that stood out the most.

I don't know why he stayed still, I would have dumped my sorry ass off on the nearest helpful person if I were him, but stay he did.

The silence stretched on as my breathing evened out some and the pounding in my head lessened enough for my mind to catch up with what I had just done. I leaned on him and he stayed put as I began to tremble. I wasn't sure why I was shaking exactly, there were too many reasons why I could have been so I chalked it up to all of them. The pain set in shortly after, it started as a dull ache in my muscles and slowly seeped into my bones. I was exhausted, hungry, and terrified that if I fell asleep I might never wake up. This was a new feeling, fear that I might not be strong enough to survive myself. Silent tears streamed down my face, staining my vest a darker shade of purple than it already was. "What is wrong with me?" I never meant to speak the question, a touch of mania creeping into my already ruined voice.

"You care too much." His answer startled me enough that the tears stopped momentarily.

"What?" Shadow shifted behind me, forcing me to face him. Eye to eye now he held me gently at arms length by the shoulders.

"You put yourself in danger constantly. I honestly don't know how you're still alive with the way you do things. You are by no means weak and with the shit you just survived I can see why and I swear to god if you tell anyone what I just said I will deny most of it." I give a small laugh at the last part before it triggers a short coughing fit. He was right, I was still convinced there was something wrong with me but he was still right. I tried to pull away from him to stand. Nothing worked, all I managed to do was to fall away from him as the world tilted. My vision went black an my eyes fluttered for a moment as I started to go down. "Whisper!" Shadow pulled me to him to keep me from hitting the roof face first and cursed.

I sighed out a few more words as my vision came back to me. "Why do you have to be so damned perfect?" It was meant as a jest to ease his worries but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

"What the hell did she do?" Sonic had made it to the rooftop, what had taken him so long?

"She used the emerald and her powers to lift the rubble away, I tried help her but she was working too fast and ended up siphoning the power of the second emerald as well to do it. How far out did she get in six minutes?" That would explain the extra power and how I survived. Wait, minutes?

"The entire city, and she did a hell of a lot more than lift it away. Will she be OK?" Shadow pulled me closer as he stood picking me up as if I were made of glass.

"She'll live."

"Did you just say six minutes?" my voice wavered with uncertainty.

"Did I stutter?" He raises his eyebrow, his usual curt tone only slightly less biting than normal.

I shake my head in disbelief. "It felt like hours..." and immediately regret doing so as my vision swims again. "That was a bad idea."

"Which part?" Another scoff and he's right back to our usual banter.

I groan as he starts walking over to Sonic. "Moving."

"And here I thought it was the suicidal attempt at being a hero." Sonic was almost smiling again as he looked between the two of us.

"I'll leave this to you, I'm needed on the ground." He sped off the side of the building and streaked across the now open layout of the city, flitting from person to person.

"I'm not a hero." I watched sonic carry people back and forth and stop here and there, doing everything he could to help out.

"Could have fooled me." The biting tone never left his voice and he had no idea how deep his words cut this time as he walked over to the edge.

"Hero's don't kill people." Shadow stopped in his tracks on the precipice his attention suddenly fully on me again. The gears in his head were turning and it was clear how woefully unprepared for that statement he had been.

He opened his mouth a couple of times to say something before he actually managed it, "Is that what this is about? Some half-baked..."

"NO!" I choked out the word before he could make anymore assumptions. "If I were on a guilt trip I would have tried to take Salem on alone. I just, don't deserve to be called a hero. I've killed hundreds of people and I'm responsible for the deaths of thousands of others, even if it was just to survive." Shadow stayed silent and took a few steps back from the edge. I had leaned in to his chest at some point and squeezed my eyes shut to avoid his gaze. The tears came unbidden again as I felt the pulse from his emerald as we teleported.

I kept my face pressed to his chest as I cried and he carried me through a couple of doorways before setting me down gently on a bed. Pulling the covers over me silently he then headed down the hall before the sound of running water could be heard from the bathroom sink. He reappeared with a tall glass of water and set it on the bedside table. "You're going to want to drink that now, and you are going to feel like you were hit by a train tomorrow morning." He turned to leave, his features stiff and unreadable.

"Thank you." He had done so much and after admitting what I had I felt as if I deserved his kindness even less.

"Don't thank me, I want you up at the hill by noon tomorrow. Since we don't have the emeralds anymore we will need to deal with things here first." His voice was all business as he walked toward the door again. He hesitated for a moment, "If the pain gets worse tell Amy, she'll know what to do." and continued out of the room and down the hall. Eventually the front door shut behind him.