Author's Chapter Notes:

I still do not own anything Sonic related.

Breakfast. The most important meal of the day. Shadow was amazed at how three toddlers could so easily ruin such a simple meal.

He had awoken early and had set about to making that precious meal. Each child, when they awoke, found they had a plate with two sausages, a small portion of scrambled eggs, and a piece of toast with jelly.

When everyone was up, seated, and ready to eat, Shadow realized that yesterday had been paradise compared to this moment.

Amy took one look at her sausage and eggs and started screaming. "Ew! Is touchy! I no eat dis!"

"What is your problem?" Shadow asked her, staring at her plate. "It's just food."

"Touchy!" Amy screamed, pointing at her plate. Shadow looked closer and sure enough, the sausage and eggs were in fact, touching each other.

"That's it?" Shadow asked incredulously. "You won't eat it just because the two different foods are touching each other?"

"Yucky!" Amy said, scrunching up her little face in disgust.

"Yesterday you ate six tubes of lipstick and one of the chili dogs that Sonic had thrown chili-side down on the floor, and today you won't eat your food because it's touching each other?!" Shadow half snarled/half yelled at her, feeling his blood pressure rising.

"IS YUCKY!" Amy insisted.

"You know what, I've had it up to here with you, you little—" A small red movement flashed past the corner of his eye. Turning to investigate, he saw Knuckles stomping on his toast, which had been tossed jelly-side down in the middle of Shadow's living room carpet.

"Knuckles!" Shadow yelled. "You get your butt in here and eat your breakfast!"

"Butt!" Sonic said, giggling. "Sadoe say butt! Butt, butt, butt, butt, butt…"

"You shove some food into that muzzle of yours and quit talking," Shadow warned him.

"Butt!"

"I'm warning you, you little twit, you'd better stop saying that or I swear I'll—"

Knuckles picked up his toast and bit into it.

"Knuckles, put that down! Don't eat that, it's dirty now!" Shadow called, racing over to yank the filthy piece of toast out of Knuckles' hands. Predictably, Knuckles punched him in the leg.

"IS YUCKY! I WAN' SUMTIN ELSE!" Amy screamed from the kitchen.

Rubbing his sore leg, Shadow looked up to her and snarled, "You're not getting anything else. If you don't want it you can starve to death for all I care. It'd make my life a whole lot easier not having to deal with you."

"WAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"You know what, I've half a mind to just chaos blast you three off the face of the earth and be done with it! It's not like anybody would miss you little brats anyway!"

All of Shadow's self control was gone. Amy was still screaming, Knuckles was running around the house with his egg on top of his head and his sausage shoved up his ears, and Sonic, blast his ornery hide, wouldn't stop saying the word 'butt.'

Luckily for him and perhaps even more luckily for the three children in his care, someone knocked on the door of Shadow's apartment before he decided to put any of his darker ideas into action.

Shadow stormed over to the door, and opened it, blinking slowly as he saw Amy's little rabbit friend…uh…that girl. And her chao.

"Hello, Mr. Shadow," the rabbit girl said politely.

"Humph," was Shadow's answer, his eyes narrowing as he crossed his arms.

"Remember me, Mr. Shadow?" asked the girl. "It's me, Cream. I'm Amy's friend. And this is my Chao friend, Cheese."

At least now he knew who she was, although why she thought he would care about such information was beyond him.

"What do you want?"

"Well, my mom and me got back from our trip today and Mr. Tails told me what happened to Amy, and said that she was staying here tonight. And I thought I would help. I know a lot about taking care of little kids. Miss Amy would let me come with her when she babysat."

Shadow blinked slowly. Then he stepped out of the way and let her pass.

Twenty minutes later, pride was the only thing that kept Shadow from bowing down and kissing Cream's feet. The girl was an Angel, a real life miracle sent down from Heaven.

In the short time she had been here, the little rabbit had convinced Amy to eat her food, caught Knuckles and cleaned off the layer of egg and grape jelly that clung to his fur, and had somehow, managed to quiet Sonic.

Shadow looked around his kitchen in amazement. If he hadn't known better, he never would have guessed that the three innocent looking toddlers that sat before him were the same mini demons who had tormented him so only a few minutes before.

However, even Cream was not fully capable of dealing with those three toddlers for very long. It was not five minutes since he had calmed down that Sonic noticed Cheese, the chao friend. Still, it was five more minutes of peace than Shadow had had for two whole days.

Sonic's emerald green eyes widened with delight when he saw Cheese flying up above his head. Pointing to him, Sonic asked, "Is dat?"

"Hmm?" asked Cream, looking to where he was pointing. "Oh, that's my friend, Cheese. He's a chao."

"I have it?" Sonic asked, his face a glowing example of childlike innocence.

Before Shadow had time to warn Cream that it was a trick, and that Sonic had about as much childlike innocence as the BioLizard, Cream nodded and smiled. "I suppose Cheese wouldn't mind you holding him for awhile. He likes to be cuddled."

It was like a scene from a horror movie. Shadow knew that something awful was about to take place, but he was unable to warn anyone in order to prevent it. It seemed to happened in slow motion to Shadow, although in reality it took only a matter of seconds. Cream handed Cheese to Sonic, who smiled, hugged it tight, and promptly shoved the chao's head in his mouth.

Cream and Cheese screamed in protest at the exact same minute, and Cream quickly removed Cheese and tried to comfort her traumatized little friend.

"Wha' I do?" Sonic asked, failing to see how he had done wrong.

"You ET da cao!" Knuckles yelled at him. "Jus' wike you ET da Massa Emered, Soni!"

"Shuv up you ear, Uckles!" Sonic snapped.

Cream looked accusingly at Shadow, who raised his hands in defense.

"I did not teach him that," he informed her.

Knuckles tackled Sonic to the ground and the two started wrestling each other.

"I go cao bwast you off eart, Soni!" Knuckles snarled.

Shadow shrugged. "I believe I might have had something to do with that one, however," he admitted.

Cream sighed loudly and went to break up the two toddlers.