A/N: Even thirty! Thank you again to all those who review, follow, fave, or just read! ^_^

Disclaimer: Not even counting SEGA, there are at least three parties that might show interest in suing me after as many references as this chapter's got. But please don't! I neither own nor claim ownership of any of 'em.

"We're going to need a distraction," said Knuckles, his teeth clenched as Amy dabbed rubbing alcohol over his scratches.

"You mean like a double attack?" asked Espio.

"No, even more complicated. She attacks everyone she sees, but we can't have the person she's attacking trying to pour medicine down her throat, they won't survive long enough. What we need is for a couple people to catch her and hold her still, and another person to give her the medicine. She'll probably be willing to drink it if she can't move to attack."

"But how do we catch her?" asked Amy, beginning to gently stick bandages over Knuckles' more pressing wounds.

"That's where the distraction comes in. We need to find something that'll really catch her attention."

"Jewels?" grunted Shadow.

"Probably, yeah."

Some of the others were appalled by the idea, but Shadow quietly led them in breaking into Rouge's house. Fair turnabout for all the museums and spy bases she'd slunk into, he assured them. Impatient with the others' hesitant advances into the kitchen and living room, he clomped upstairs to her room.

"This should do," he said, popping back out and tossing something casually to Sonic. Sonic, whose reflexes were necessarily excellent, caught it effortlessly.

"How long's she had this?!" he exclaimed, surprised. In his hands glinted the yellow Chaos Emerald.

"It was in still in a packing box," shrugged Shadow. "Probably it was found somewhere far away on Mobius, and she bought or traded for it after Knuckles got to keep the blue one."

"So, you really think that'll distract her enough that she forgets the attack mode?" said Sonic dubiously.

"It'll work. We go out, raise enough ruckus that she can find us, use Silver as bait—"

"Hey!" protested Silver.

"—and with any luck we'll be able to get a hold of her long enough to tip the medicine down her throat. Who here knows how to bypass the epiglottis?"

Nobody did. Shadow sighed resignedly.

"Guess I'll have to be the one doing the pouring, then. If she's busy trying to get away and doesn't want to swallow, it could just go down her lungs."

Half an hour later, the stauncher among them were stationed in the woods, lurking outside the fringes of a clearing, while Knuckles leaned casually against a tree. In one hand, he tossed the yellow Chaos Emerald up and down, whistling impudently. He was really doing an impressive job of looking cheekily unconcerned, considering that his every nerve was straining to pick up the sounds of Rouge's approach.

Meanwhile, the others waited, silent. They all knew Rouge might notice them in their hiding places and try to attack them instead; they could only hope that Knuckles' brash whistling and the sharp scent of rubbing alcohol drenching his fur would attract Rouge's attention first.

It was pretty mind-blowing, sitting around waiting for one of your friends to ambush you.

The time didn't weigh particularly heavily on Shadow, who was caught up in his own thoughts. Now that they were going to this much trouble to cure Rouge, he was suddenly . . . uncertain. Not about whether the plan would work . . . but whether he wanted it to.

At first he'd thought it was just the adrenaline and his own strange half-alien psychology, but now Knuckles had confirmed it: Rouge's new form was pretty striking. Her appearance was the least of his concerns, though—what chewed at the back of his mind was how powerful she had become.

Nobody ever said it out loud of course, but she had always been the weakest link in Team Dark. She was tough as nails, but still always the first to stumble, no matter how proudly she tried to hide it. A mere mortal just couldn't keep pace with an Ultimate Life-Form and a battle-grade robot.

But now . . .

She had managed to overpower him, something that would normally be a laughable notion. She had nearly taken Knuckles to pieces, and he'd been expecting her attack. Her echolocation was deeper, stronger, louder; her wings were huge, at least three times as powerful as before; she was faster, tougher, had better reflexes. She was almost an Ultimate herself now.

Really, such a pity that it had to come with murderous tendencies . . .

Shadow's fingers strayed subconsciously to the flask he now wore around his neck. He stroked the cool plastic absently, his thoughts roiling. What if . . .

What if Rouge only drank some of the antidote? Would that cure her only some of the way? What if she drank only enough to bring back her senses, cool the blood-lust, get her more or less back to her normal appearance . . . but leave even just a little bit of her new capabilities? Maybe just slightly bigger wings, slightly better echolocation?

It was an immensely tempting thought. It was downright intoxicating. Shadow ran his tongue over his lips, a thousand calculations whirling in his head even as some nagging little part of his brain began to protest that this was a bad idea, an inconsiderate and cruel idea.

But there was nothing wrong with it, he told himself. It would help Rouge, it would make her safer and better able to defend herself on missions. And if it didn't work out, hey, she could just take the remainder of the antidote and be totally back to normal! There would be no permanent harm done, none at all.

But . . .

Shadow's internal argument was still raging full-force when a soft clatter of wings drew his attention. Immediately he tensed, listening, holding his breath just as everyone else must have been holding theirs. There was a sound of boots touching down on the leafy forest floor. "Want it?" Knuckles' voice came as a casual, enticing drawl. "Want the pretty rock, Rouge?"

Shadow slipped forward and peered through the trees. Rouge's form was silhouetted against the pale lemony glow of the Chaos Emerald, her enormous scruffy ears skewed outwards, her head low. She was clearly sizing Knuckles up, and she didn't seem at all impressed by the way he was baiting her.

"Come on, you can have it," crooned Knuckles. "Take it."

He reached out and held the gem towards her tantalizingly. Rouge hissed, tense and untrusting, suspecting a trap. She was more reserved now, more cautious . . . presumably not quite as hungry as before. She calculated very carefully before suddenly hurtling forwards, snatching for the glowing jewel. Knuckles yanked it back and hurled it as hard as he could.

It didn't work.

The plan had been for Rouge to turn around and pursue the Emerald, so Knuckles could grab her from behind and hold her still. Instead, Rouge just went for Knuckles.

Chaos ensued. Several other Mobians exploded from the forest, hollering, and Rouge whirled to face them. Knuckles shook off his shock, tackled her from behind, and sent them both tumbling and sliding across the clearing. Rouge's wings slammed open to windmill furiously, dealing surprisingly painful blows to anyone who came too close. It was a maelstrom.

Then Knuckles somehow managed to wrench them both over backwards, still clinging desperately to the flapping, flailing bat.

"Now!" he managed to bellow, gasping. "Now!"

Shadow moved like a bullet train. Two steps, he was there, the antidote flask popped open, he pushed it against Rouge's tongue—her breath was sharp with the scent of iron—and already she stopped struggling and began to gulp at the medicine greedily.

And Shadow's thumb slipped over the mouth of the bottle.

Rouge struggled free from Knuckles' grip as Shadow backed off, tucking the flask away surreptitiously. Nobody noticed; they were focusing on Rouge, who looked inclined to eviscerate each and every one of them. She started to get up, but then the reboot took over and she slumped to the forest floor.

So far, Sonic had been the only one of the Mobians to change physical appearance, and nobody had witnessed his transformation back. Now they stood and watched Rouge twitching and squirming unconsciously, the change rapidly restructuring her body—and yet nobody could quite explain how it happened. It was like watching clouds changing shape; wherever you look, nothing seems to be changing, but if you look away for even a moment, it'll be different when you return.

One way or another, within thirty seconds the old Rouge was back. She gave one final shudder, lay still, then groaned and slowly opened her eyes. Levering herself upright gingerly, she blinked around at the group of Mobians, her gaze clouded.

Considering the situation, the others would have expected Rouge to say almost anything. Instead, she said the one thing that nobody would have expected:

". . . What happened?"

"So, you know for fact that it's normal?" said Shadow, adjusting the span of a wrench.

"In a sense," mumbled Rouge, shrugging lopsidedly. She was stationed on a rec room sofa, stiffly upright as if the touch of fabric creeped her out. "If vampire bats go too long without—without feeding, they start to lose it. Eventually their memory system just shuts down, so they don't get traumatized by the horror-movie stuff they end up doing to get blood." She grimaced. "So apparently I was starving all throughout."

Shadow nodded thoughtfully, still engrossed in his work—repairing Omega's insides. He could feel Rouge's eyes searching him, questioning, trying to draw truth from his silence.

The memory blackout was useful, he decided, in more ways than one. Yes, it prevented Rouge and other vampire bats from being sent into shock by their own atrocities, but it also facilitated the cover-up afterwards. Rouge had asked, demanded again and again, almost pleaded to know—had she . . . had she actually . . . ?

'Only dumb animals,' the others had insisted. There were uncounted forest animals lying dead and drained out in the woods, but she had made no attempt to drain her fellow-Mobians, only fight them.

That was what they all said.

Receiving no answers from Shadow, Rouge leaned back slowly, easing herself against the back of the sofa. She cast a listless eye at the mess of wires spilling from Omega's front, which had been pried open slightly to grant access to his scrambled insides.

"How's it going?"

"Pretty good," said Shadow, stripping coating from a wire tip. "The techs here got him back to basic pocket calculator intelligence, the fox cub got him up to the level where he could run Windows Pinball, and once I get his vocal processors back online we can play at 'Spock's Brain' and have him tell us how to complete the operation. Gah!"

This last bit because an arc of electricity had suddenly shot down his arm, sizzling. A soft crunch of startup, and Omega's servos and processors began to roar, struggling to draw the cold metal body back into the realm of the living. Fountains of sparks sprayed from loose wires, his arms twitched violently, his hull rocked slightly in the effort of pulling his systems together.

Then, all at once, his eyes flashed red and the rest of his systems blazed to life, announcing their return with a triple cascade of electronic notes that—actually did sound suspiciously like the Windows Pinball "jackpot" signal. Shadow almost chuckled, but he didn't get a chance to; Omega's arm was already snapping into its machine-gun configuration, and his glowing eyes were already scanning for the last thing he remembered—Fiolet.

"Easy, there," said Shadow evenly. "He's nowhere near here. If you shoot up the rec room too, I can't say we'll be able to keep G.U.N. off you."

Omega lowered his arm, reassessing his environment.

"How long have I been out?" he asked. This time Rouge laughed softly; despite the tinny tone created by his jury-rigged speech circuits, it was such a human thing to say upon waking. Sometimes you had to wonder if half of Omega's robotic tendencies weren't just put on for show.

"About two days," said Shadow. "Don't move too much, you're still going to need a lot of repairs."

"What happened?"

"Fiolet didn't escape in that hallway. His mist form just crawled into your insides through your air grilles, then wrecked your circuitry by transforming into one of his solid forms. Judging from the shape and extent of the damage, we're guessing it was a turtle."

He managed to almost fully repress a smirk, but it was still not lost on Omega. The robot swung one arm as if waving away such irrelevancies.

"The legendary Greek playwright Aeschylus met his demise when an eagle dropped a turtle upon his head. There is no dishonor in sharing his manner of demise."

"Yeah," said Shadow, his face expressionless. "Better watch out for those teenaged mutants, though."

Omega made no answer save for a miffed beeping, indicating he found this comment unworthy of response. Instead he turned to Rouge.

"I recall Shadow asking after you before Fiolet's attack. I trust you were unharmed?"

"Not exactly," mumbled Rouge, picking at a loose thread on the sofa's arm. "Ask Shadow, he can explain it better."

Shadow did explain it. Rouge slipped away halfway through, so he went ahead and explained all the parts they hadn't told her as well. Omega listened studiously, interrupting occasionally to inform Shadow that he was connecting some wire incorrectly.

"We should have foreseen that her transformation would be of that nature," he remarked at last. "Her dislike for blood was indeed strong."

"Sort of an odd trait for Rouge to have in the first place, though," said Shadow, completing his work. "Still don't know where she got that."

"That was also inevitable. Hybridizations between vampire bats and other species almost always result in offspring who fear blood."

"Really?" Shadow raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the sofa, folding his arms.

"I have researched the subject. It is theorized that the conflicting urges of vampire and non-vampire genetics create a serious internal tension. Hybrids desire blood, but at the same time are repulsed by their desire for blood; the body's eventual solution is to develop a global repulsion towards blood in general."

"Fascinating," murmured Shadow. "I hadn't known that."

"The fear is usually powerful and deep-rooted, resisting all therapeutic or medical treatment. Rouge's transformation, being the converse of this, must have been extremely dangerous," said Omega. "You are fortunate to have survived."

"I guess I was," admitted Shadow. "It's one of the few good things about being half alien. Black Arms have a poison in their blood that makes them taste disgusting—and apparently, so do I." He glanced up at Omega. "Don't tell her. It could make things . . . uncomfortable. Nobody knows except me, and now you."

"I appreciate your confidence," ventured Omega awkwardly. Shadow waved in dismissal.

"Don't let it go to your head. I just knew you don't have the problems keeping secrets that people without programming do."

"Yet another reason why programming is vastly superior." The smug twang in Omega's voice was slight but unmistakable; Shadow rolled his eyes and smiled ever so faintly. It was the same old game Omega had been playing with his teammates since day one.

"However . . . " Omega spoke up again. "How do you propose to keep this information classified, when the event can easily be reviewed in the security logs?"

Shadow started.

"Dammit; I'd forgotten they had those security cameras everywhere. We should probably delete the evidence before they start investigating what happened that night."

"I highly doubt you will be granted permission to delete vital G.U.N. security material," warned Omega, but Shadow was already setting off down the hall.

"Don't be so sure! I know the guy who looks after the security booth—a laxer attitude towards protocols never existed."

There was one small kink in the plan, though. When Shadow got to the security booth, Rouge was already there.