Thanks for the awesome turnout, everyone! I honestly didn't expect the first chapter to be received so well!

I'm actually using the real stage layouts to write these, so it might get tedious.

Anyway, first things first, Shadow did enter the giant ring…

Special Stage One –

He had been unaware of curling into ball-form between the strange fade to white and the fade-in. The first thing he realized was that he was rolling around in a maze of some sort. The next was that it was a rotating maze, with brightly-colored blocks, red-and-white bumpers, and other things acting as the floor. He fell a short distance as the floor became the wall, through some rings, and onto the new, already-tilting floor.

The fact that he was slowly-rolling in an environment that was rotating itself, plus the sickeningly-bright and ever-changing backdrop he was against – it cycled between birds, fish, and one other image he couldn't identify – was just too much for Shadow, accustomed to his own title's darker environs. He was mind-numbingly dizzy, and completely lacking any sense of direction.

It really didn't help that the direction of the rotation seemed to change at random as the Player moved him through the maze. Shadow figured he must be doing it, somehow or that it was otherwise Player-controlled, but it only added to his disorientation, and he was afraid to try and ask Sonic anything, afraid he'd vomit if he opened his mouth.

The Player kept him against a pair of bumpers as the maze rotated him towards a flashing set of spheres marked "GOAL"; Shadow suspected they were the exit, and, despite there being a Chaos Emerald in the maze somewhere, he sort of wanted the Player to screw up.

But he did no such thing, and Shadow successfully dropped into the next chamber via a set of transparent bumpers that became corporeal as he passed through them.

Right there, there were blocks that were shaped differently, more like diamonds, and spinning. When he hit them, they changed color, though Shadow didn't realize this at first, the background and spinning and keeping his stomach firmly in place took priority.

The maze rotated, and the Player took him through several jumps to keep him against the blocks. They began to disappear, and then Shadow fell through, and, through his dizziness, he felt a familiar power.

Chaos… The familiarity comforted him in this fish-out-of-water experience as the world around him faded to white and he uncurled and gently floated to a standing position, cradling the blue-purple Emerald as it vanished into whatever personal pocket dimension they kept themselves in.

Green Hill Act Two –

Shadow blinked as Green Hill came into view. He had double-vision, and the stage seemed to waver in a fashion not unlike the fuzzy-induced mutations experienced by a certain famed plumber's saurian steed. It was a wonder he was still standing, and he felt like he should collapse. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest.

"You okay there, buddy?"

"Where were you!?" He felt pathetic, but his words still managed to express his anger. "…I would've appreciated a little explanation!"

"I would've said something, but the Player seemed to be handling it so well. Sorry."

Shadow growled, closing his eyes in an attempt to make the Zone stop moving around him. It didn't work, and it was worse when he opened them again.

"Super Shadow better be really broken for this sort of trouble…"

"Um…"

"What?" Shadow snarled. He really wasn't in the mood for bad news. Too bad for him he was about to get some.

As the Player began guiding him through the still-wavering stage, causing him to leap into the air and destroy a piranha on another of those weird bridges (made even weirder by his double-vision), Sonic reluctantly gave him the worst possible piece of information he had heard since being hacked in.

"…This was before Chaos Form, too." There was a cringing tone to Sonic's voice; he knew Shadow didn't want to hear it.

"What!? That-…whoa!" The Player had inadvertently cut him off by making him leap over a bed of spikes and off a cliff, in a much longer fall than his stomach was ready for. Thankfully, it wasn't in his sprite capacity to actually vomit, so he didn't, landing without harm (in the game's own definition of "harm", that is) on a Ring Box, with one more box and a Shield beside it.

The initial bounce nearly catapulted the dizzy hedgehog into another spike bed, prompting a disbelieving "Whoa, close!" from Sonic that, for some reason beyond all logic, aggravated Shadow even more.

The end of the first Act was fun, he'd admit to that. But the Special Stage had ruined whatever glimmer of hope he'd managed to capture in actually enjoying this experience.

And it was all for nothing! "Sonic, what the hell am I collecting Chaos Emeralds for if there's no Chaos Form?" he demanded.

"Um, I don't remember," said Sonic as Shadow collected the shield and plowed through a breakable wall in ball-form. "I think it tacked something onto the ending? It's been a long time. Don't worry, you'll be fine."

"Fine?" said Shadow sarcastically as he broke through a Speed box. The effect amplified his dizziness, so the Zone appeared even more warped. So he felt quite justified in his argument as he blew past terrain he didn't have more than a second's thought to interpret. Something involving a swinging platform. Or something like that. "I'm seeing double! Yes, I'm perfectly 'fine'."

And then there was a loop to go through. The tiniest of whimpers escaped him as he was suddenly both dizzy and upside-down, and then down the other side and bouncing off of two Buzzbombers (not fun while dizzy!), a piranha, and down an S-curve tunnel.

"You'll get used to them, Shadow."

Rolling down the tunnel hadn't helped matters, and, while his double-vision was beginning to clear, the Zone still refused to stop moving before his eyes.

Thankfully, the goalpost was right there after it, and he rolled past it and offscreen.

"Aw, he missed this Act," Sonic lamented, while Shadow said, at the same time, "Good, he missed it."

If they could see each other, they would have exchanged glares.

"It's not that bad, Shadow, really," said Sonic, sounding annoyed. "Oh, well, he didn't collect enough rings, anyway. Man, he was running it! Only twenty one seconds!"

"Ugh… That's it, I want out of this game."

Shadow has cleared Act 2!

The Special Stages in Sonic 1 really do make me dizzy. But not that dizzy. Poor Shadow…