AN: I have to say, I am quite enjoying not having any pressure to put chapters out because I'm not getting comments very quickly:) but thats not the reason I haven't put one up recently, I've had personal project, and THIMUN (if you don't know what that is, then look it up, I'm not your mom.), and loads of other things that I've been doing. (Like reading other people's fanfics... O.o *don't judge me!*)

Anyways, I just wanted to say that I hope you like chapter six, and I do know that Shadow was not in Sonic Unleashed, but for the sake of the story line, pretend that he did witness it. I'm not even close to halfway through this story, and I'm not sure exactly how long this fanfic will be, but I do know that I don't want it to go over 30 chapters, that is much too long. If you guys have any preferences, let me know, also about pet peeves and such, alright?

Also, I hope you guys don't mind me side-commenting in this chapter, I see other authors doing it, and I kinda want to try it out as well. (What can I say, I have loads to say XD) If you haven't figured it out yet, anything in bold is an author's note. Okay, picking up where I left off... Here you go!

Chapter 6- Eggman's Mistake

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shadow the Hedgehog

Wait, one of Eggman's inventions succeeded? (Hahaha, even Shadow has no faith in eggman's machines XD) What does he mean by undesirable side-effects? What trap? Why does everyone else seem to know what this is? Why does that ship look so familiar?

I had so many questions, but all I asked was: "What kind of side effects?"

Everyone in the room turned to me.

"Don't you remember Shadow?" The pink hedgehog asked me, then realising her mistake when I just stared blankly at her, immediately looked ashamed and looked down saying, "sorry, I forgot."

"It's ok," I replied, "but could you... Refresh my memory?"

The girl looked relieved and began to say something, but Eggman cut her off. "This particular ship was at the head of one of my space armadas a while back. I cleverly led Sonic to believe that I was just attacking Mobius again, but I managed to trap him in his super form on this ship."

I had to admit, I was more than a little surprised. "Wait, you managed to stop him in his super form? Explain." I demanded.

Eggman grinned. "Why yes, I have a device on this ship that I managed to trap him in! It uses an energy field to direct his own energy back at him and trap him. I even managed to devise a way to extract the chaos emeralds from him as well! The only problem is that once I start the machine, it can't be stopped, and I don't have enough time to change what it does. It will keep going and release dark Gaia from the planet, as well as-"

I cut him off, "and it turns Sonic into a huge monster! I remember now!" (He's not shouting, he is quietly and epically coming to a realisation.) Then I grimaced. "We have to deal with that eyesore again?"

Rouge smirked, "Awwww, Shad, you do care"

I growled at her pet name for me.

Rouge rolled her eyes at me. "Jeeze, Shadow, lighten up!"

I turned my back on her and looked back to the doctor. "How do you plan to trap them? If you haven't noticed, anything those blasts touch is instantly destroyed."

"Well, I have the machine, one of you has to go distract him and lure him into my ship!" He said in his usual egotistical tone.

"Ok, so who's it going to be?" I asked.

Everybody looked at me.

"Wait, I didn't mean..." I stepped back.

"What are ya worried about, Shad? You are the Ultimate Life Form, right?" Rouge said.

Seriously Rouge? I thought while glaring at her, NOW you decide to agree that I'm the Ultimate Life Form? (Totally with you there mister Ultimate life form XD)

"Okay, fine, will anybody come with me? I could use a little help." I stated, looking at the chaos outside.

"Ummm, I have to go help Eggman get the machine ready!" Rouge excused herself.

"And I have to try to get the Master Emerald back up and running." Knuckles said as he ran out of the room.

"I would help, but I have to keep this ship from going down" Tails told me, turning back to the controls.

"Me too." Chris said. "And anyways, I'm human, there's not much I could do."

"Honestly, I would help you, but I'm still hurt, and I wouldn't be much use, I'll just wait by Eggman's machine and see what I can do to help there." Amy left.

"I'm sorry, mister Shadow, but I'm only nine, if I was older, I'd help you!" The little rabbit in the corner that I hadn't noticed until that moment told me.

The seedrian named Cosmo was nowhere to be found.

I sighed, "that's okay, I didn't really expect anyone to help. Wish me luck, I'll need it."

The little rabbit looked sympathetically at me. "Good luck mister Shadow!"

I ran out of the control room to get closer to the action. How am I gonna do this? I asked myself, I can't just fly towards them, I'll get fried! Maybe I can chaos control to them between blasts and get a word in before they attack each other.

I pulled out my fake Chaos Emerald. I looked over at the pair of hedgehogs locked in battle. I've gotta time this just right...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Rouge the Bat

I felt kind of bad leaving Shadow high and dry like that, but there was NO WAY that I was going to fight those hedgehogs. That is a job better left for Shadow, and anyways, this is what he gets for bragging about being 'The Ultimate Life Form' all the time. That said, I decided that I would watch the battle and if he really needed help, I would jump in and come to his aid. I wasn't the only one. Amy and Eggman were also watching the battle. Amy had her hammer in hand, so I was guessing that she was thinking along the same lines as me.

Shadow ran out of the control room of the other ship. He stood there looking at the battle for a while; I didn't blame him, if it was me, I wouldn't be too eager to jump in either. He just glared at the hedgehogs for a while until he seemed to get an idea and pulled out that fake Chaos Emerald of his.

Ingenious, I thought, he can just chaos control in and out between blasts, that way he won't get hurt! Looks like I won't have to help him out after all.

I sat back to watch as Shadow counted between the blasts so he knew how to time his teleporting. He unnecessarily watched the blasts a few more times, (I knew it was unnecessary because Shadow never needs to count anything twice.) and I figured he needed a little motivation to get moving, so I went over to where Eggman was in his control chair.

"Hey, Doctor, you got an intercom? One that projects outside the ship?" I asked.

"Of course! What for?" He replied.

"None of your business, just hand it over." I demanded, doing my best imitation of Shadow's death glare so the doctor would hurry up. I checked over where Shadow was again, and sure enough, he was still watching the blasts.

Eggman got the message and handed a microphone to me. "There, just press the button on the side and speak into it." He told me, then he went back to watching Shadow and the Sonics.

"Thanks doctor" I threw over my shoulder as I went over to a place where I could see Shadow better and he could see me. Namely, the huge window at the front of the ship. Amy was there too, watching Shadow and the blasts with large, worried eyes. Shadow was still just standing and watching the Sonics with an expression of dread on his normally impassive features.

"Hey! Mister 'I'm the Ultimate Life Form'!" I teased, and the ebony hedgehog looked in my direction. When he saw me and recognised my voice, his expression hardened into his usual death glare. "Get a move on! Those two aren't letting up! Those blasts aren't gonna get any smaller!" I finished.

Shadow bared his teeth, and I assumed he growled at me, though I couldn't hear it. He looked like he wanted to come over and throttle me, then he closed his eyes for a few seconds to calm himself down and looked back to the Sonics while tossing his fake Chaos Emerald up and shouting something as he caught it again. It must have been his typical 'Chaos Control!' because the next second he disappeared in a flash of bright red light. I never did understand exactly why he has to shout that every time he wants to teleport.

I looked over to where Sonic light and dark were battling and sure enough, a bright red flash flared up between the two just as they had been separated again. I couldn't see what was going on, but the twin hedgehogs paused for a second when they saw Shadow. He stiffened for a second under their combined gazes, then he lifted his arms to point at the two of them and shout something.

Apparently, they didn't like whatever he said, because rather than continuing to attack each other, they both immediately attempted to fire a blast from their palms at him. I saw another red flash just before the beams met and Shadow appeared a few meters from that point. He got lucky that they didn't explode. When the chaos energy beams hit each other, they seemed to cancel out (as opposed to creating an explosion like with the Sonics), and just disappeared. He kept shouting at the two while chaos controlling away as soon as they headed towards him.

He was making good progress in our direction, and the two were completely distracted from their recent battle. They were chasing Shadow like he had just insulted their mother in the worst way possible. He was about halfway here when Eggman opened the bay doors and took his hover pod to the machine. I headed down too; mainly so I could hear what Shadow was yelling that could possibly make Sonic so angry. Amy followed behind me still looking worried out of her mind.

We made it down to where the huge machine was and we watched as Shadow headed rapidly towards us. He made leading two incredibly powerful, incredibly angry, and incredibly frightening hedgehogs look easy as walking a dog. He was becoming increasingly confident, and would stop to yell for longer periods of time before teleporting again. He was still pretty far away when I started to hear what he was saying.

"Can't catch me, fakers!" I heard.

"Eggman's grandma would be more of a challenge than you!" He yelled before teleporting.

"Too slow, again!" He shouted as he dodged yet again.

"You two are no match for the ultimate life form!" He jeered at them.

He wasn't even yelling 'Chaos Control!' to teleport anymore, he would just shout an insult and teleport, then yell another rude comment and flash away before they could attack.

It seemed that Sonic did not like to be teased about his speed, because the two glowing beings appeared to be growing more and more upset with every insult and missed attack. Even the golden one (who was supposedly the 'world peace' and 'can we talk this out' side of the blue hedgehog) had pure hatred and anger in his eyes. It was the dark one who really made me nervous though. He had murder in his eyes. His whole body radiated black power. He looked beyond infuriated, it was an anger which I had never seen the likes of before. We needed to power him down before he got ahold of Shadow. I was afraid of what he would do if he did manage to catch the ebony hedgehog.

Then, just a quarter of a mile from the ship, Shadow got too confident. (Ya, I know, Shadow? Confident? pssssssshhhhhh, noooooo... *#sarcasm*) He stayed in one place just a second too long, and the dark Sonic caught him with a quick, well-aimed blast. Shadow was hit on the left side just below his heart. He clutched his side as he was flung the rest of the way into the ship. His fake chaos emerald flew out of his hand and off into a corner of the room. He was thrown hard, head-first against the floor just behind the trap. He landed with a sickening crack on the metal floor and I saw his eyes widen in shock as he crash-landed. He kept tumbling across the room until he hit the wall where he groaned and collapsed on his right side, unconscious. (What!? The ultimate life form unconscious!? I have to check my notes... Oh well, Sonic must be pretty dang powerful.)

I flew (literally, flew, not just running fast. #wings) across the room to him to give him a quick check to see if he was all right. His gloves were stained crimson where he had been holding his injury. The wound on his left side looked pretty bad, it gave the impression that he had caught on fire, and then someone had put liquid hydrogen on the fire to put it out, because it was ice-cold. But it wasn't very deep, and it wasn't bleeding too badly anymore, I was confident that he would heal. It was his head-wound that I was really worried about. He had fallen unconscious, but I knew that unlike with most injuries, falling asleep was one of the worst things you could do with a head wound, so I was worried he might create permanent brain damage. He had definitely cracked his skull on the floor. His forehead looked a bit flattened. I knew that he had been designed to heal much more quickly than the average person or hedgehog, but between his side injury, his cracked skull, and the gash on his head where he had landed, his system was having a difficult time coping fast enough. Even when you heal at ten times the rate of any normal creature, a broken skull is very difficult to fix, and will definitely take a long time to repair itself. His head wound wouldn't stop bleeding. His system must be focusing on his skull first, as that is likely the worst injury he has, and therefore is the priority to be healed. I needed to wrap something over his head and torso to help stem the blood and seal his wounds to buy him time to heal.

I was wearing my one-piece black body suit as usual, and so I yanked off my boot and ripped off part of the black fabric from the leg of my suit. Amy had rushed over too and caught on to what I was doing and tore the hem of her dress off as well. I started wrapping the fabric from my suit around his head very carefully so as not to shift any fragments of his skull that might have been broken. Amy started to wrap the hem of her dress around his torso and soon he was as best patched up as we could manage. He still hadn't come to, and his breathing was shallow, ragged, and slow.

(Okay, yeah. Really morbid... Blame my newly broken toe. I needed someone to share my pain)

I was freaking out, it was all my fault that Shadow had gotten hurt (yes, yes it is, Rouge), if I hadn't rushed him, if I'd not chickened out and I'd gone with him... What? Would he still be hurt? Would I be hurt too? Would we have managed to lure the Sonics into the trap already?

"Oh, Shadow, please be okay." I started to cry over his broken body, my face in my hands. I felt Amy put her hand on my shoulder and remembered that we still had a job to do. I wiped off my tears and got ready to finish the job Shadow started and get the Sonics into the trap.

Just then, the Sonics landed in the bay, they saw Shadow behind me, and they growled with a hatred that not even Shadow had ever accomplished in the time that I'd known him. ( O_o Somebody's not happy...) The dark one raised his arm to deliver a blast that would likely finish the ebony hedgehog off.

There was no way that I'd let Shadow get hurt any more than he already was. His safety was now my number one responsibility. I crouched protectively in front of him and snarled menacingly at the dark hedgehog across the room; "don't you dare hurt him!" I demanded; then seeing my opportunity to get them into the trap, I growled at the two of them "If you want to get to Shadow, then you'll have to come over here and go through me first!"

The trap was still hidden under the floor directly between the Sonics and I. But Eggman had assured us that it was ready to capture Sonic at a second's notice.

Both Sonics sneered at me with that extremely annoying, over-confident grin on their faces.

"Have it your way, then." They both replied in perfect sync, and began striding across the room like they owned the place.

Right as they stepped on the trap, I yelled: "Now Eggman!" And (thank goodness he was paying attention) the doctor pressed the button and before I knew it, both Sonics were trapped in a kind of glowing energy field thing. Because they were both forced into the centre of the device, they smacked together, but the trap did its job. No blast came, because the force field bounced the energy back at them, and they absorbed it.

Eggman wasted no time in starting the machine to remove the emeralds and release light and dark Gaia from the planet. Already the machines were warning that they were going to overload from the level of power that they were attempting to contain.

There was a humming noise, and both Sonics shouted in pain as the Chaos emeralds were ripped from them. There was an intense light, and when we looked back at the machine, it held only one Sonic, and the chaos emeralds were floating around him. Something wasn't right about Sonic though, he wasn't completely his normal self. I didn't have time to ponder it though, because in that instant, the machine continued it's job and shot a purple blast down to Mobius.

The planet once again broke into pieces and a huge almost entirely transparent purple thing rose up and then dissipated away across the planet just as quickly as it had come. It was dark Gaia, but it obviously had very little power from being awoken so soon after having been defeated.

Sonic yelled in pain again as he was transformed into a hulking beast with huge fangs, claws and muscles. Again, he still did not look quite right. even for a monster twice my size, he did not look like he should have. After he had transformed, the machine released him and the chaos emeralds (which were black and powerless). He collapsed on the floor. He was not down for long though, and he quickly got up and gave a furious howl. It was then that I noticed what was off about him. His fur was still a dark, almost black shade of blue. And his claws were longer, sharper, and the colour of pure obsidian. His fangs were razor sharp, and reached just below his muzzle, they were a pure white that glinted dangerously in the light from the bare lights on the ceiling. He was no longer super Sonic, but he had remained dark super Sonic when he rejoined. (Remember how he doesn't need emeralds to go dark?) He was now a very powerful, very angry, Werehog.

Sonic started to advance on us, looking incredibly pissed off. He was snarling with a feral menace like I had never seen before.

Apparently, Eggman freaked out, because some robotic arm swung out of nowhere and knocked Sonic out of the ship and sent him hurtling down towards the dark planet below. In all the excitement, we hadn't noticed that we were orbiting on the dark side of the planet (That is important later). He howled the whole way down.

Everyone was frozen in place, wondering what the heck had just happened. It was Shadow who broke the silence. He groaned and turned over where he was. His eyes were flickering open and closed in a determined attempt to wake up.

I snapped out of my confused daze and kneeled down next to him as he tried to get up.

"Shadow, if you can hear me, stop moving. You're badly injured, and you'll just make it worse by trying to move around." I instructed him.

He stopped moving and blinked a few times and squinted in the light in an attempt to see me. After a minute or two, he had woken up enough to recognise me.

"...Rouge?" He asked groggily.

AN: Mwahahahahaha! Suspense! *devil grin* (I'm so evil O_o) Lol, don't worry, the next part is mostly written, you won't be in suspense for very long ;) I'm curious, where do you guys think I live? Based on how I write and the expressions that I use, I mean. It's kind of a trick question, but I'm just curious what you all think. I'll tell you guys the answer in a chapter once I get a few responses, okay? If you get it right, you will have earned my eternal respect and the next chapter the moment that I receive the answer XD that's all I can give you, cuz I'm broke ;_;

(p.s.) I'm really not sure where to cut off my chapters, so I actually didn't decide to cut it off here just to be mean, okay? I've been keeping them at between 3,500 to 4,500 words, and it just so happens that this part was the best place to cut off in that general word range, okay? *don't hurt me!* if you guys think they should be longer, then go ahead and tell me, alright? (Same with if you want them to be shorter, but who likes short chapters?)

Anyways, cya next chapter! (Lol, next is lucky number seven!)
-Kthxbai, Silverfangirl96