Hey guys long update… I know but I have a solid plan for the story so it will be finished. This will not have a whole lot of chapters as I do want to move on to bigger and better things.

Some info about Sonic Mania's ratio of original and new stages has been revealed and there will be more old then new stages. It was disappointing to hear but after thinking it over and hearing some other opinions I've decided that's not a bad thing. Mania is an anniversary title and we haven't had any official remakes of this genesis stages in a long time except for Green Hill Zone. Second there is a story related reason why we are going back to old stages. And third Christian Whitehead said Mania is a big game and is bigger than Generations so the hype for the game is still there especially when you consider that Sonic Project 2017 will have both classic and modern and won't have rehashed stages. So I'm okay with Mania's ratio, just as long as the games good.

Tanoshimimashou!

Chapter 3

It was long into the evening when Sonic began making his way towards his rivals home. Or at least that's what he was doing before he decided to stop at a vendor selling chili dogs in the park Might as well enjoy this bit of time before Shadow decides to grill me for "poor moves".

After the blue hero had paid and ate, he decided to spend a bit of time leaning on the rail of a small bridge over the river. He figured he had some time before Shadow would be home anyway. It was quite peaceful when you didn't have some mad scientist threatening you with an army of robots, bent on taking over the world and building an empire.

Sonic watched the water flowing under the bridge as he thought about last night. He found it rather silly that he was and still is lingering on the black hedgehog's words before he left: that his rival enjoyed himself.

"What am I, some shy little girl who got hot over their crush just because they stated their opinion?" He snorted to himself imaging the ridiculously common scenes found in almost every romance show on TV.

"Yeah right," he said aloud into the silence around him only to hear two pairs of footsteps coming from opposite directions. He assumed they were just some people passing by, giving him plenty of reason not to care but one pair sounded so hurried and even angry that it grabbed his attention anyway.

"There you are! Where the hell have you been?! I've been calling you since yesterday but you haven't been answering your damn phone," he heard a very peeved woman's voice say behind him.

"Katie please, I was stuck at the station and I couldn't call you. I know it sounds bad but that's because-" the guy had started explaining before what the hero could only guess was his girlfriend cut him off mid sentence.

"I don't want to hear your stupid excuses. You always do this, go off on your own and never tell me where you're going or why you're going and then you always seem to have some kind of excuse as to why you can't tell me what your doing like your phone died or whatever."

Good grief, do they even notice I'm here? Sonic thought as he debated on just leaving now to avoid the couple's dramatic squabble.

"Will you just listen to me for once woman?! I don't always communicate well but I promise that it's not because I'm trying to be sneaky by hiding all kinds of things behind your back."

Apparently not. Sonic thought mentally face palming as the argument seemed to continue like he was invisible. The two seemed to go back and forth for a few minutes and Sonic realized that he probably shouldn't be listening to this since it's none of his business. He started walking away without looking at the nearly screaming couple but stopped for a moment in the event that the guy became physical.

"I LOVE YOU KATIE AND I'LL BE DAMNED IF THAT'S ANYTHING BUT THE TRUTH!" the guy screamed and silence seemed to cover the both of them as they paused for a moment. "I mean I just don't want to lose you and I know I can make things work between us. This past week has been so full of crap that the only thing I've wanted to do is shove my head in a hole and be done with it. But I got through it all because today I wanted you forget about all of that." There was another pause and the blue hedgehog's ears twitched slightly at the sound of a soft gasp from the woman.

"James..." she said Katie changing from hurt and angry to one of surprise in an instant.

"This is long overdue but Katie, will you marry me?"

"I..." the woman paused like she was hesitating on giving a straight answer. When the pause grew longer than expected Sonic decided to put in his two cents.

"Oh for the love chaos just say yes and kiss the guy already. He ain't gettin any younger," he turned around and said to the surprised couple. It seems neither of them were even remotely aware that there had been someone listening to their argument until now and they certainly didn't think that someone would be Sonic the Hedgehog.

Now that he was able to see them both clearly, lynxes, they regarded each other awkwardly at first before the woman said yes. When they suddenly started making out quite vocally the blue hedgehog rolled his eyes and quickly turned around to leave knowing there was nothing else to see here. He was glad to run off and enjoy the minute or so of pure speed before he would reach his rivals home.

When the azure hedgehog reached the steps, the door opened before he could grab the handle and he was staring into teal eyes attached to a curvy body.

"Hi there big blue, what brings you to Shadow's doorstep so late in the day?" Rouge asked, a slight hint of curiosity and mischievousness in her tone.

"Hey Rouge and I could ask you the same thing," he said walking past the albino bat and welcoming himself in by flopping on the leather couch.

Rouge just smirked silently as she watched the blue blur get comfortable in the home of the one person known not to really offer any comfort or mercy for that matter. "Well to answer your question I had to pick up some files Shadow left here. It's been a mess at HQ. Some brilliant overly cocky hacker from halfway across the world managed to sneak their way into GUN's systems and scramble years of archives. Until the tech team can get it all straightened out, the whole base has been reduced to pen and paper. And of course there's the frequent ridiculous emails being sent to the commander about becoming a swimsuit supermodel."

"I bet he busted a vein over that," the hedgehog chuckled just imaging how the stern super serious human must have reacted to hundreds of emails saying 'Do you want to get ripped? Do you want to be sexy again?'

"You have no idea. Now how about you?" she asked referring to her previous question from before.

"Hmm, Shadow's giving me dance lessons," he said head leaned back on the couch with his eyes closed.

"For free?"

"Ha! Not on my life. I blackmailed him with a photo," the blue hedgehog said clearly amused by his own clever antics and by the fact that it's been almost twenty-four hours and it hasn't backfired on him yet. He soon saw a shadow block out the light above him and opened his eyes to look at a smirking Rouge.

"You sly hog. What did you catch him doing on the photo?" the bat pressed like she was about to get a juicy piece of gossip she could hold over the head of her partner for a bit of fun.

"Ah ah. That would be telling and the terms of our little contract kinda need to stay between Shads and I," he said grinning.

Rouge made a pouty face like she was genuinely upset with Sonic for holding out on her but she didn't really have time to try and press for more details. (Or stick around to do any spying either.) "Well I guess I better get back to base then. Paper files take a lot longer organize and write than electronic ones," she said heading for the door.

"Try not to give Shadow too hard of a time 'kay hun?"

"No promises," he stated simply. And after Rouge left he was met with silence.

Sonic lounged on the couch for a moment wondering what was taking his rival so committed to waiting around for about another five minutes before his need to get up and move around became too great.

You know come to think of it, this is Shadow's house and I don't know that much about Shadow himself. The mischievous hero began looking around the house like a naughty little kid who puts thumb tacks on his teacher's seat just for a good laugh. He knew just the place to start looking too.

He went up the stairs until he found Shadow's room, which looked quite similar to the spare guest room with its lack of furniture and dull colors. Sonic perused the room with a bit of curiosity. Certainly his rival must have something interesting in his room that would stand out to him right?

The only pieces of furniture in the room were the bed, a dresser, and a desk where a small stack of papers was lying. He walked over to the bed where he let his gloved hand run over the velvety black sheets until it passed over a hard heavy object. He looked down to see it was some round spherical device and when he picked it up to examine it he noticed it was a bit worn as scratches placated the surface. There were little buttons on the side and the more he palmed it the more his curiosity grew. So he pushed a button and watched the hologram flare to life…

"...look Shadow I think I got it to work!" a young girl's voice said. She couldn't have been any older than 12. She fiddled with the device until her face came into view; blonde hair and blue eyes...

"See?" she said turning her head to look in another direction before facing the device to the only other person in her company.

"Maria, didn't the professor say we'd get in trouble for taking things from his lab?" Sonic paused a minute as he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears. It was Shadow when he was younger. His quills and ears were shorter, the tone of his voice was higher, not nearly as deep and as smooth as it was now. And his eyes were full of a kind of innocence and emotion he never thought he would find in those scarlet orbs.

"Oh c'mon Shadow. It's gets so dull here on the ark. Don't tell me you've never thought of having a little fun? Besides, grandfather has lots of these things lying around. I'm sure he won't miss one all that much," Maria said to her doubtful partner in crime.

Sonic found himself rather amused by the interaction between this younger Shadow and Maria. She seemed like she didn't mind getting into a bit of trouble every now and then, the small ebony hedgehog probably getting tossed along for the ride.

He began flipping through more segments until he found one that was interesting.

"Maria, what exactly do you plan on doing with that thing?" the young ebony asked. The background had changed to a light blue bedroom.

"Well I heard that on that wonderful blue planet that people take pictures and videos all the time so they have something to remember their moments," she said.

"Isn't that just like how the professor and the other scientists document everything so they don't forget their data?" the younger Shadow replied.

"Well not exactly. It's more like the photo the three of us took all together. We'll always remember that day even if our own memories fade because we have a photo of it!" Maria smiled at the young hog who still seemed slightly perplexed by the answer the young blonde gave him. In fact he wouldn't understand how precious something like a photo or holographic diary would be until many many years later.

Sonic would have continued to peruse the small device for more entries but his sensitive hearing picked up the distinct sound of a door being unlocked and opened. He experienced a moment of panic not wanting to have to explain to Shadow why he was in his room going through his belongings. He quickly fiddled with the buttons on the device to turn it off and slid it back where it was on the bed before racing down this stairs so he wouldn't be caught looking more suspicious than he already was.

When Shadow entered through the front door the first thing he saw was a blue body leaning against the wall attempting to be the most casual person in the world. "Sonic? How did you get into my house?"

"What no kiss for daddy or a welcoming hello? I mean I know you came home from work but how do you know I wasn't busting my butt today before I came here?" the blue hedgehog asked covering up the last bit of nervousness from his panic earlier with humor.

"Cut the jokes. I asked you a question, how did you get in here?" Shadow closed the door to lean against the sofa while he waited for an answer.

"Oh fine buzzkill. Rouge happened to be here when I came by and I let myself in." the blue hedgehog answered. "But anyway don't we have more important things to do?" he gestured to the furniture in the room that had yet to be moved.

Shadow raised an eye ridge about Rouge being here but he honestly wasn't surprised. He'd ask her about it and check the house to make sure nothing was out of order later. In the meantime, he had another lesson to teach.

When the two of them had finished moving furniture out the way they took their positions once more, Shadow once again pretending to be the girl for the sake of Sonic's practice. "You do remember everything from yesterday don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then this time I'll explain about posture and rhythm..."

He knew he shouldn't have, but as the ebony agent seemed to go into some long explanation about the waltz, he stared into those ruby eyes and thought back to the hologram he just saw. He confirmed what he saw before: that their felt like there was something missing in the others eyes, something they may have lost.

"Sonic? Are you even paying attention to me?" Shadow asked in an irritated tone breaking Sonic from his thoughts.

"Huh? Oh yea posture and rhythm. Real important," he responded dumbly.

Shadow sighed. "Look here faker, I'm not talking for my health. SInce you forced me to give you these lessons I expect you to at least pay attention."

"Sorry, what were you saying again?"

"I was saying that knowing the movements is one thing but being able to apply a steady rhythm to them is another. It's not hard just follow my three beat count while doing the box step you learned yesterday," he said looking the other in the eyes.

As Shadow began counting with a rhythm of three beats, the blue hero moved easily catching the rhythm. But while his body moved on a sort of autopilot he couldn't help but notice something he didn't before because he was so preoccupied with learning movement, the closeness of his rival.

Left hand still grasping Shadows he noticed their chests were almost touching. In fact every time they twirled he could feel Shadow's fluffy chest fur tickling his own shorter fur. The simple sensation felt like a tease and Sonic couldn't help but move millimeters closer from on every third beat to feel it again. He thought he might go mad if he couldn't just run his hand through the soft patch to see if it was as soft as it looked.

With the movement of the waltz being as easy as the black hedgehog said he found his right hand which was positioned on the others side to be moving slowly across his ebony fur. He felt the warmth of the others ebony fur between his fingers as hand moved closer to the others back, feeling the subtle curves that he couldn't see with his eyes.

"Sonic!" the agent gasped in response to the rather exploratory hand on his body. He quickly tried correcting his startled tone of voice." I mean faker what are you doing?" he said glaring at the other after removing the arm that had just been caressing his side a moment ago.

When the blue hedgehog realized what he'd been doing he attempted to laugh it off. "Oh sorry about that guess I got a little too into the moment."

Shadow gave him a long look before sighing again and reaching for the others hand. He tried not to flinch as Sonic put his hand back on his side again. "Since you seem to have the pattern down easily why don't you lead this time," he said with just a slight tinge of red on his muzzle.

"Ok," he responded, and began the movement again. Shadow letting him be in control gave rise to a new feeling in the blue hero. Being the one to dictate the moves, direction, and position made him feel like he was asserting a certain level of dominance over the other that he enjoyed. He suddenly felt very giddy and light like he was on cloud nine as they swayed together in step and his silence as opposed to yesterday didn't go unnoticed by Shadow.

Shadow didn't want to admit it but he still felt very awkward about pretending to be the girl for the sake of Sonic's practice. The confidence the other had gained after mastering the easy steps and rhythm made his movements bold. He was learning to dictate the pace but still retained a level of gentleness and it drove him nuts. And his scent, chaos his scent, it smelled of outside, like fresh green grass and reminded him of a summer breeze. Why was this bothering him so much? Was it because his rivals hand sent a jolt of electricity up his spine in his brief caress? Was it his blood rushing through his body in a maddening way because of embarrassment of the position he was in? Or maybe it was that Sonic was an amazing dancer who learned how to take control quickly? He couldn't answer any of those questions and he was becoming too flustered to even try so instead he tried to go back to actually giving a lesson.

"Straighten your back out more," he began trying to clear his mind. " And give your partner eye contact..." he stopped for a moment when those emerald eyes started gazing into his. They were so expressive and bright and Shadow had to look away from their stare or his knees might have turned to jelly right then and there.

Sonic smirked finding the perfect opportunity to poke fun at his rival. "What's the matter Shadow? Like what you see? Or maybe what you see is too much for you-Ow!" he broke away from Shadow to grab the foot that the black hedgehog had savagely stepped on. Shadow refused to let Sonic make fun of him like that especially when he couldn't explain his body's reaction to the annoying hedgehog..

"Well it seems like we corrected your two left feet and you have the rhythm down. I think that's enough practice for today," the ebony agent stated already preparing to walk away from Sonic.

The blue hero was a bit disappointed the moment between them ended so abruptly but part of him didn't mind the moody side of the other. In fact he found Shadow's backlash as a result of his teasing rather cute and exciting. He loved to be playful but he found that right now there was an opportunity to learn about the other and he took it.

While the other moved the furniture back into place, Sonic debated on whether it the question he was about to ask would offend the other in any way. "Hey Shadow?" he asked waiting for a response but when he received none, he just continued anyway. "What was it like for you living on the Ark?"

It was such an out of the blue question that it caught Shadow completely off guard. He stopped moving furniture as he contemplated why his rival would ask that all of sudden. "Why do you want to know?" He turned to look at Sonic who was sitting on one of the couches already moved back into place with a blank expression on his face.

"Just curious is all. I know the memories you have of the ark aren't all exactly cheerful and if you don't want to talk about it then I won't keep bothering you about it," he said it so casually but Shadow heard the sincerity in his voice and you could say it continued to throw him for a loop. He didn't sense any ulterior motives or joking and felt that maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell Sonic about his past, he certainly had nothing to hide.

"It was not the same as living here," he began sitting on a couch adjacent to the one Sonic was sitting on. "Being an experiment, there were many scientists who saw me as nothing more than a tool to advance their own research. I wasn't exactly treated like a normal person with rights and feelings except by two humans, Gerald my creator and Maria."

Sonic remembered the name of the old scientist back when he delivered his speech about taking revenge on the world for the death of his granddaughter. His impressions of Gerald were certainly not very high especially since he had one mad scientist that he sometimes dealt with on a weekly basis but something told him he was about to learn about the human from a different perspective. And as for Maria, he knew she was someone special to Shadow and if the holographic video he saw earlier was anything to go by, he knew that it must have been hard to lose someone so important to him.

"My creator was like a father to me. He taught me things about science and society and despite also subjecting me to his experiments he was always considering my state of well being. He never did anything to me that was painful and tried to avoid making me uncomfortable most of the time. He's the one that created my skates and inhibitor rings. Maria was different though. I considered her to be the only friend I had ever made on the Ark. Where the Professor was always technical and scientific, Maria was more about life, emotions, and thoughts. She taught me how to be an actual person instead of just an experiment, and she often didn't mind getting into a bit of trouble out of boredom," he continued.

Sonic nodded at the last thing Shadow said. It confirmed what he saw in the videos and as his rival continued he felt that everything was making sense.

"So did you get into trouble with her?" Sonic asked attempting to inject some humor into the conversation remembering the innocent expressions of a younger Shadow.

"I... well...Maria was a very bold person," he said cheeks turning red in embarrassment as he remembered old times. " Despite her disease she wasn't afraid to explore as much of the Ark as she wanted out of curiosity. She had a fun loving personality that didn't let rules stop her and... " Shadow stopped mid-sentence as the image of Sonic came to mind. He suddenly had images of his rival poking fun at him, pulling pranks, and just having a blast even if he was on a battleground surrounded by dangerous robots from every direction. He couldn't believe what he was realizing: he had subconsciously made a comparison of Sonic and Maria.

"Shadow?" the blue hero inquired as the ebony agent had stopped mid sentence with a strange expression on his face.

"It's nothing. Did that answer your question?" he said still not looking at Sonic.

"Yeah pretty much," he said getting up from the couch. It was getting pretty late. If he didn't go home soon Tails might get suspicious. "Well I better get home then. Same time tomorrow?" he asked heading for the door.

Shadow didn't speak but rather made a noise of approval. "I'll see you tomorrow then, ," he added in an almost suggestive manner that certainly didn't just fly past the dark agent.

As the door closed and he was left all alone in his living room he thought back over the last few hours and groaned.

Oh chaos, what's happening to me?

The first scene of the chapter with the random couple in it is not just for padding out the chapter. I'll refer back to it in another chapter. I'm glad you guys are really enjoying my first romance story.