Chapter Eight: But?

"Sonic. Sonic!"

"Huh!? Oh, what?"

"Are you gonna lie on my shelf half asleep, or will you help me with this machine?" Tails stood glaring at Sonic, who had shoved half of the fox's precious machinery carelessly to the side so that he could rest his buttocks on the unstable shelf like he always did. The hedgehog shrugged.

"I'm observing. When I'm done, I'll help... AUGH SH-ugar." He yelled as he fell face first into the cold, metal floor of Tails' workshop, he managed to get over it though, and agreed to help, mostly to get Tails' mind off the fact that his shelf was now broken. "Ok, what do I do?"

Tails pulled Sonic under the machine, pointing at the sea of different coloured wires inside it, "I've got the machine put together, all I need to do is connect all of these wires together. There should be nine hundred and two."

"Nine hundred and two!?" Sonic jumped up, well, almost did, until he smacked his head on the machine, that brought him back down.

"Yeah, this is interdimensional travel, it's not easy, like rocket science. Ok, now, you just connect red to red, blue to blue, number to number and so on."

"Gotcha."

The two worked for about an hour and a half, although it seemed like much more to Sonic, this was the sort of thing that Tails liked to do... for some reason. Eventually, Sonic reached breaking point and couldn't do anymore. "Okay, that's the ninety fourth wire, or ninety fifth. Anyway, can we take a short break now?"

Tails sat up, wiping some oil from his face and looked at the blue hedgehog, who was now more black than blue thanks to the oil leak that was unfortunately directly above his head.

"I guess so." He handed Sonic a cloth and the hedgehog immediately took to cleaning himself. Once he had finished, he stood up.

"You've not been outside since we came here Tails, c'mon, atleast go out with Marine if not me."

"But, the machine-"

"There's no rush to finish it. Now," Sonic opened the door, "you coming?"

"Yeah, one minute." He walked into the next room and shouted up the stairs, "Marine!? You coming out!?"

The raccoon's voice soon came back down, "Alroight, just a sec."

It took her about five minutes to get down, she explained herself after Tails gave her the: 'What took you?' look. Sonic, however, had already seen his chance to get away and had fled so that he wouldn't have to go back to that darned machine.

"I had ta finish the chapter oi was reading didn' oi?."

"You read books?"

"What of it?"

"What were you reading?"

Marine folded her arms, "Dickens, if you must know."

"Dickens." Tails stared at her for a moment, raising his eyebrow, "Charles Dickens? The writer?"

"Yer thought oi was dumb didn't ya?" She grinned and rubbed her nose, then linked the astonished Tails and pulled him out of the door.

Elsewhere, Blaze had found herself a large tree, she lay on a stable branch, overlooking a massive lake. Relaxing like this was rare back in her dimension, with her lifestyle, so she could fully appreciate the great view of the forest and the cloudless sky.

That was, until, a wave of water seemed to come from nowhere, drenching her from head to toe as it knocked her off of the branch, she wasn't that far up, but figured that it would still hurt when she hit the ground. She didn't expect what she actually did feel though, which was two arms catching her, she was a little dazed, but managed to open her eyes to see Shadow.

"You okay?" His voice almost made her shivver, which she found to be a little pathetic of her, she managed to force something out of her mouth.

"What happened?"

"Forgive me, these shoes kick up a lot of whatever I'm running over."

"Oh." Blaze shook her head, her senses coming back to her. "Erm, you can put me down now."

Shadow raised his eyebrow, then realised that he was still holding the feline. "Ah, of course." He put her down and watched as she set on fire to dry herself off, "Blaze isn't it? What do you do again?"

Blaze blushed slightly, thinking, He remembered my name. "I'm a princess."

"Hm." Shadow looked her up and down, "I don't see many princesses wearing a tank top and shorts."

"Heh, I guess." Blaze looked away, the clothes she had on were a little... unlike her.

There was an awkward silence for a couple of seconds, until Shadow took a step backwards, "I'll be seeing you then."

Blaze wanted to call him back as he walked away, but couldn't-shouldn't. Shadow almost seemed to sense this, and turned around and walked back to her, "Are you and Sonic...?"

"...Erm, yeah I guess. But..." She paused.

"But?"

"But..." Blaze bit her lip as he lifted her chin up, his face looked almost emotionless, his eyes didn't.

"Bu-ut?"

Blaze groaned quietly, looking down, then back up to the red eyes which were piercing her. Unable to stop herself, she wrapped her arms around the ebony hedgehog, kissing him full on on the lips. She pressed her body on his furry chest, making the kiss deeper, Shadow responded by wrapping his arms around her, stroking her back. Blaze couldn't look him in the eye as they pulled away.

Shadow was the first to speak, "What's wrong?"

"S-Sonic..."

"Look," He put his hand on her shoulder, "Tell him in your own time. Can we meet here tomorrow? Two?"

Blaze nodded and the two walked away.

I must say, actually writing Shadow/Blaze has made me like them a bit more, so it won't be torture to have a love affair with them.

Anyway, the last two chapters haven't got any reviews, I don't know why, but if you enjoyed this, leave a review please, I like to see how many people are interested and the more reviews I get, the more effort I'll put in.

Oh, one last thing, sorry this chapter has taken a while, I've had some writers block but I think I'm over it now.