A/N: Sorry for the wait, had to find inspiration, hopefully this chapter has less errors in it compared to the last 2

Roman Torchwick has not been having a good week. After a string of relatively successful Dust robberies, his last heist nearly got him captured by the law, all because of those meddling Huntsman, mostly due to that Little Red Riding Hood cosplayer. He had been lucky, in a sense, to have been saved by Cinder and her crew, but even that is only a half-truth. He knew the moment he stopped being useful to her schemes he would be killed, the only reason he was being kept around was because of his knowledge of the underworld of Vale and the surrounding areas, if he even slightly slowed down in how successful he was on these missions, it was his head on a platter, at least Neo would be safe, considering her skills she was vastly more useful to Cinder then he would ever be.

These concerns are what led Roman to shout in anger as he heard slow footsteps approaching his location, shouting at both his lackeys to hurry it up and get what they can, and at the shopkeep to quiet down and stop freaking out, he stepped out of the building to look around and see who was approaching, expecting to see a random bystander, some police officers or at worst a huntsman, what Roman saw he truly didn't expect.

The individual, if you could call it that, looked to be a Faunus, but on closer inspection looked to be leaning more on the animal side of things, considering its height and appearance, which resembled a Porcupine or Hedgehog, if someone was squinting really hard and tried to draw it from memory. It almost was funny, if not for the massive amount of energy he felt radiating from the Creature in front of him, which felt like it could dwarf even the best of Huntsman, even Cinder herself..

This feeling did not ease Roman's nervousness, but rather increased it, heavily. How could something so funny looking cause so much unease in him? And the power he felt from this thing was unnatural, it felt like a fog of energy so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Roman tried to hide his fear as he raised his cane and pointed it towards the Creature, asking it a simple question, "What are you?"

The "Creature" responded, giving a quick snap back "I am Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform, and you are?"

Ultimate Lifeform? Roman didn't exactly know what that could mean, nor did he truly want to find out, judging from the power he felt from this animal, he could only guess he wasn't exactly bluffing, but he would inform this "Shadow" of who he was, in his own cocky way.

"Roman Torchwick, business extraordinaire"

"Does 'business extraordinaire' imply that you do legitimate activities? Because from the broken windows, and suitcases filled with those glowing crystals, I doubt that anything you're doing here is legal in any sense of that word"

Roman groaned, the last thing he had wanted today was to fight anyone, could he just have a quick and easy mission? A simple in and out with no stops? He internally sighed as he narrowed his eyes at this "Shadow" figure in front of him as he realized this was going to be another fight, and it was definitely going to be a fight he could not win.

He considered his options, he could either stay and fight, and lose hard, getting arrested, or worse and losing his Dust haul, or alternatively he could run with some of the Dust and call in Neo or Cinder for yet another escape while using his men as a distraction against Shadow.

It wasn't exactly a hard choice for Roman to make.

Shadow knew almost immediately something was off as soon as he heard the Ginger's voice, and as he observed the store, he came to the conclusion that this was a robbery in progress that he teleported himself into, just his luck.

The brief conversation he had with Roman hadn't been the most interesting either, even with his obvious crime causing Shadow still had wanted to know more about these crystals he had seen, they felt like a strange combination of Chaos Energy and Hyper-go-on, He knew that shouldn't be possible, both powers counteracted each other, as cleverly shown by Sonic, when he thought of trying to use a Laser Wisp in his Super form, resulting in him falling face-first into the ground as the powers rejected each other. But it seemed these crystals rejected that idea and had somehow become a mixture of both, to Shadow's confusion, Jaune had never mentioned such crystals to Shadow, but he couldn't blame him, from the small amount of time they had spent together he had come to see that Jaune still needed much learning about his own world, almost as much as Shadow needed to.

He kept these thoughts in mind for later, as he saw that Roman was preparing to do something, which he could only guess was to run away, which was something Shadow was not going to let happen.

Shadow burst towards Roman in a massive wave of speed and tried to aim a punch directly towards his face, unlike Sonic he wasn't one to play games with his opponents, especially not while he still needed information about where he was. As he sped towards Roman, he was surprised to see him raise his cane again and fire one of the crystals towards what he assumed was his direction, but as he went to dodge out of the way, something which he easily accomplished due to his natural speed, he was surprised to see it was aimed towards a nearby vehicle, hitting it dead on and causing a massive explosion.

As Shadow opened his eyes, having closed them to shield them from the blast, he was expectedly uninjured, not very surprising, considering the many worse things he's dealt with before, but as he turned back towards Roman, he was surprised to see him still in his firing pose, which was slightly unnerving to Shadow as shook the feeling off and rolled into a spindash, firing off towards Roman and hitting him dead in the chest, made easy by the fact Roman appeared to be as still as a statue and frozen in place, not attempting to dodge at all.

What was more shocking to Shadow was how Roman broke and fell into millions of pieces of glass. Was this some sort of latent ability like what Jaune had mentioned? He groaned at his ignorance, how could he have forgotten something like that? He made a mental note to remind himself that the people on this world all had unique powers all their own, which while surely not able to compete with his own power would make the ones who threatened to get in his way or harm others harder to deal with then as would be typical.

Shadow tried to get a sense for where Roman could've gone, but he still received nothing, only a brief flash of extremely faint energy and then nothing again. He sighed to himself, angry that he was not able to catch the thief and stop his mischief, but as he turned to look back at the store, he briefly smirked to himself as he glanced upon the 5 remaining members of Roman's squad. Something he could use to release his frustration with his predicament on, he smirked once more as he slowly walked towards the lackeys, his hands glowing with residual green Chaos Energy.

The lackeys made a comically loud gulping noise as they watched with frozen terror as not had their boss betrayed them, but they were now faced with what he had run away from, as they all got into shaky fighting positions as Shadow drew closer..

*A Few Hours Later*

Shadow walked in the shadows and rooftops of Vale, eventually ending up on a secluded, tall building, with a nice view of the sky. His beating of Roman's men had been interrupted by the arrival of the law, with Cops arriving at the scene to deal with the crime in progress. He had used Chaos Snap to conserve his energy while still getting away from the scene, although he stayed nearby to listen in and see if the shopkeep had seen him, which surprisingly he hadn't.

After getting what he could, he burst off the scene and into the night once more, only stopping where he was now after a few hours of scouting the city. He was both surprised and disappointed by what he saw as he ran his rounds. He was impressed by the level of technology in the city, superior in some aspects to the cities back home, inferior in other ways. But he was still disappointed by the fact this world still resembled his own, some part of him was disappointed that this world wasn't anything radical, cursing to himself that Sonic still had him beat in that department, what with his travels to Arabian Nights and Arthurian England coming to mind.

Shadow set himself down near the edge of the roof he was on, and looked up at the sky towards the broken moon, which reminded him of the moon on his world. He wondered how this moon had broken in such a way, there was no ARK or Eclipse Cannon on this world to his knowledge, nor should the fragments of the lunar object stay there for so long without falling into Earth or back into the Moon. Something, or Someone must be keeping them in place, why or how he did not know, but the level of power required to do that must be immense, but Shadow pushed those thoughts aside as he glanced towards the Crystal he had grabbed earlier, having snatched it from one of Roman's men during their beating.

His eyes danced around it, studying its every surface as he drew closer to it, he could sense and feel its energy, but he did not know if he could summon it upon himself like how he could with Wisps and the Chaos Force. He would try the next day, tonight was a night of rest, he was still sore from the Chaos Control earlier, and his "fight" did little to alleviate that feeling. Shadow hoped that Jaune was safe and had ended up inside of the Bullhead as he had planned, he would visit him soon, as soon as he had mapped out the city to a basic extent and gained enough knowledge about certain things.

Shadow looked at the sky one last time, his eyes glancing at the moon once more, as his thoughts drifted towards not the celestial object, but what, or if, there was a connection between the Grimm and Mephiles, the feeling he got was too similar to be dismissed, and as sure as he was that Mephiles had been erased after Sonic, Silver and him had defeated Solaris and reset that timeline, only Mephiles could've escaped a fate like that, bastard couldn't leave time alone. Shadow could've sworn that Time-eater creature that attacked them a few years back during Sonic's birthday resembled Mephiles to a certain extent…

Banishing these thoughts, Shadow Chaos Snapped once more and teleported himself into an alley, with enough coverage to hide himself and his supplies for the night, out of sight of people but protected enough from the elements and Grimm to be able to afford a good night's rest, something he desperately needed following the days chaotic events.

Shadow closed his eyes and drifted off into sleep, thoughts of Jaune, Roman, the strange crystals flooding into his mind, along with a pair of green eyes and the 7 Emeralds flashing into his dreams, alarms blaring and that strange vortex he had been in before, along with sinister laughing with purple energy flooding into his dreams.

A/N: Sorry if this was a bit shorter than the rest of the chapters, was a bit tired when I wrote this, I hope you all enjoyed tho

This is my first time for this story using an online spell checker, if it messed up any words (like Spindash, or Jaune or something like that) just tell me so I can fix it in a jiffy

Remember to give any critiques in the reviews! Anything helps me improve.