All right now, we've had enough fun with Sonic for the day, so let's skip on over to see what Shadow and Rouge were doing this whole time:


So just a few hours before—1900 hrs—when Sonic had arrived at the clock tower to find Alexa locked up in an hourglass:

Finally, the three of them left quickly to follow the doctor to the clock tower, for they hoped to arrive before he did in order to rescue Alexa, but he was already there when they reached the tower. The sun was already beginning to set by now.

"Ah, so I see you have received my friendly letter," Eggman chuckled into a microphone when Sonic was the first to arrive.

"What do you want from me, Eggman?" Sonic asked Eggman, who steadily glided lower to his level.

"I want the seven Chaos Emeralds," he said in his serious voice and with a minute note of satisfaction in this evil game of his, "and since you've managed to come five hours earlier than I'd expected, I will give your girlfriend another chance."

"Chance for what?" Sonic asked.

"Before she is exploded into millions of pieces by my time-bomb, along with the rest of the clock tower! Muaah ha ha ha ha!" he cackled as he clicked the only big bright red button on his entire Egg Mobile.

On the very top of the large clock tower sat a ginormous hourglass inside which Alexa was being held. Sonic ran vertically up the side of the extremely tall building and tried to break the glass, but it was almost as strong as titanium metal.

"Ho ho ho ho!" Dr. Eggman laughed as he flew his vehicle to the top of the clock tower. "I just love to see you on your knees before my hostage in agony and torment. It hurts, doesn't it? Ho ho ho!"

Just then, Shadow and Rouge scurried off and were no longer at the scene, and when Dr. Eggman searched the area of town below with his eyes, he noticed this.

They decided to search for the missing emeralds themselves, so they left Sonic at the clock tower and headed back through town to begin their search. While Rouge was admiring her new pearl necklace, she and Shadow came across a dark alley and stopped to see a man recklessly digging through a dumpster.

"My senses tell me there's an emerald nearby," Shadow said, turning his head to Rouge and then back toward the alley.

"Ah ha! It is-a mine at last!" the man in the alley exclaimed greedily as he slipped something into his forest-green colored bag and then ran past Shadow and Rouge out of the alley. Apparently an Italian.

"HEY! He's got a chaos emerald!" Shadow yelled when he saw the man pull out a big red glowing emerald from the bag. "Don't let him get away with it!"

But once the man heard Shadow's yelling, he started running as fast as he could through the crowded streets of the night, struggling to get through the crowds of people before anyone took his precious diamond.

"No! I find it-a first!" he tried shouting back to whoever was chasing him, but when he turned around to see who it was, nobody was following him at all. So he sighed and stopped running to take a breath.

Then he felt something poke him in the back so he turned around, keeping a tight grip on the bag.

No one there.

Again he felt something poke him in the back, and he turned back around again.

Still no one.

"Whatever you-a doing, stop it-a right-a now!" the frightened Italian man said, trembling a bit.

Suddenly he saw the silhouette of a bat flying away in the sunset, he wiped his sweaty forehead and unzipped the green bag and felt around inside. Then he stood completely frozen for four whole seconds and then stuck his whole arm inside, then his face, and then turned the bag inside-out and upside-down, thus shaking it menacingly and then clinching it with both hands and scrunching it up.

Then he went, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

His cry could be heard throughout the whole planet, causing even the birds to fly out of the trees in that area.

Well anyhoo, meanwhile, in Central South City Park, Shadow was waiting impatiently for Rouge to return with the chaos emerald. When she returned, she reluctantly handed it over to Shadow.

"Finally. It's about time," he sighed as he snatched it out of her hand.

"Sure, feel free to take it any time," she remarked, turning her head away from him and crossing her arms. She always felt cheated for her hard work.

"Don't worry, we'll eventually leave this sick blasted planet before you know it," Shadow chuckled, gripping the emerald more tightly in his glove.

And so Sonic's team vs. Shadow's had one emerald each, with just five more to go now. Therefore Shadow decided to use chaos control to send him and Rouge all the way over to Sailem Beach (get the pun?) on the eastern coast of Metro World, where they were sure to find something to look for there. When they arrived through the time portal, Rouge landed head first into the sand, while Shadow did a flip to land on his feet.

"Ow!" Rouge hollered when a coconut fell from a tree which they just happened to land under. "Gee, thanks a lot for the help, Shadow."

"Not my problem," Shadow replied to her sarcasm as he walked away from Rouge out to the blue-lit beach. The sun was continuing to set as it still left the orange reflection in the beachy ocean waters.

"Now if only I knew where to get my hands on another . . ." Shadow paused as there was a ginormous wave in the water, causing all the surfing and swimming people to scream and panic, fleeing toward the beach as the gigantic wave formed into a hand and tried to take Shadow out to sea.

"CHAOS?" Shadow exclaimed, leaping out of the way of the massive water-like hand which pounded on the sand.

The massive tidal wave sieged the whole entire beach, and from it came a loud screeching which pierced Rouge's nerves since, as a bat, she was very sensitive to loud noises such as this.

"Rouge, get out of here!" Shadow tried to yell through the loud screeching of the monster. "It's Chaos!"

"I know, right!" Rouge managed to holler back while holding her ears.

"No! I mean the monster!" Shadow shouted.

"OH! THAT!" Rouge replied right before the screeching stopped, which had nearly deafened Shadow's ears by now.

He was ready to take on the battle against the giant monstrous creature Chaos, formed by Dr. Eggman himself and designed to destroy all humanity and recover chaos emeralds which actually gave it the power to transform into different monsters, such as sea creatures or any other creature composed of water.

Anyway, Shadow took his stance against the giant sea monster and then shot strikes of lightning at it from his fingertips, using the power left from the sun along with his own special abilities. It shot straight through the middle of Chaos's stomach, exploding a hole right through the center, which put a smile of satisfaction on Shadow's face until, that is, Chaos pulled itself back together again.

Then Shadow remembered the chaos emerald he had and used it to control time; and by shouting the words "chaos control," he managed to pause time and reach into the belly of the monster, thus pulling out a turquoise chaos emerald and landing back on the sand. Then, once time had returned to normal, Chaos had lost its ability to control the large waves once and for all. It pulled itself tighter and tighter together until it was its original size again, and Shadow stood right up to it with each red and turquoise chaos emerald in his hands.

"Hmph," he chuckled coldly. "You thought you could get away with this, didn't you? Well think again."

Then he jumped up in the air and closed his eyes, focusing his energy on the two emeralds. Then he turned into Super Shadow and did away with Chaos in an instant, sending it to another location far away through the time portal for now.

After landing gently on the ground again, Shadow dusted himself off and tossed the emerald up and down in the air. And just before he was able to catch it again, something ran up to him from the left and then pushed him down to the ground.

"OUCH! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Shadow revolted outrageously as the "thing" turned out to be Amy Rose, another hedgehog from the planet Mobius.

"Oh! Good thing I found you! For a second there I thought I was the only one here," Amy giggled in relief.

Shadow muttered to himself acrimoniously while dusting off the sand and dust from the emerald and himself again. Rouge walked up to the two with her hand on her hip and a smile on her face.

"Well now," she chuckled thoughtfully, "so I suppose you ended up here too, huh?"

"Yep! And all this time I've been looking for Sonic. Oh, have you seen him anywhere lately?" she asked Shadow curiously.

"No," he mumbled crankily.

"At least not for an hour or so," Rouge finished answering the question.

"WHOA! And you even found a chaos emerald! Ooh! May I see? Pretty please?" she pleaded Shadow, who only got that much more irritated and aggravated.

"Oh, hey! Nice necklace," Amy told Rouge, who seemed to admire the flattery.

"Oh, this old thang? Nah, give me a break. This is the least of all my collections back at home," Rouge scoffed proudly.

Yup, and now you can just imagine Shadow getting pretty tired of being stuck with these two chatty girls. So annoyed that he actually thought about using chaos control on himself to leave them stranded all alone with themselves, but since they were such loud mouths and gossipers, he thought it best to keep an eye on them so that they wouldn't tell anyone else about their discovery of the two chaos emeralds.

Now let's get back to Knuckles and Sonic, current time was 2030 hrs:

So, we last left our two spike-headed friends way over in South City District near the major football field. Sonic had his yellow chaos emerald in hand as the two left the field and headed off to search elsewhere for the next one.

"See, now we only need six more emeralds," Sonic said. "We'll be able to get them in no time at all!"

"Sure," Knuckles scoffed, rolling his eyes at him. "Why must you be so optimistic about EVERYTHING? There's no WAY we can find all the emeralds in time before either Eggman blows up the entire city or someone else finds them first."

Sonic winked and said, "Don't worry, I've got everything under control."

"I don't like you," Knuckles pouted as he and Sonic were back on the streets again.

The sky was dark by now, the sun was gone, and the street lights were the only source of light besides the chaos emerald which Sonic kept hidden in a forest green bag he'd found lying on the ground a few blocks from an alley.

"Hey, nice bag," Knuckles said, observing the bag Sonic was carrying.

Sonic rolled his eyes and tossed it to him when he saw Chaos standing near a lamppost in ready position to fight. Knuckles guarded that bag with all his might as Sonic and Chaos got ready for a duel.

"So, you've finally decided to challenge me, huh?" Sonic chuckled, punching his fists together and taking his stance.