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Married: Chapter 4: The mission Part 1
"So this is it?" Rouge asked as the two of them stood in front of the factory, a large building that stood in the middle of the abandoned industrial district.
"This is it." Shadow said, confirming her suspicions. Both of them were looking up to the building that casted a big foreboding Shadow on the two.
Shadow took the first step towards the building. He looked around to see if there was a hole in the fence they could use to get in. He followed the fence to try and find a way in until he stumbled upon a rip.
He went to his knees in front of it and studied it closely. He was determining if it was even worth trying to make it larger or if he should look for another opening, one that could be larger.
His ear twitched as he could hear footsteps approaching. It sounded like heels on gravel. Shadow paid the sound no mind as he didn't even need to guess who it was that was walking towards him.
"Did you find something?" Rouge asked as she came to a halt behind her husband and looked over his shoulder to see what he was up to. Shadow, who had been looking up to her, simply nodded as answer and went right back to studying the gap in the fence.
Shadow reached for it and began to pull the loose part up. He stood up and kept the hole as far open as he could. He faced Rouge, who was looking back at him and awaited his request.
"Rouge, can you see if you can fit through here?" He asked. Rouge nodded and muttered a quick 'sure' before going to her knees in front of the fence. She made herself as small as possible as she crawled through while her partner held it open.
"It's wide enough for me to go through even with my wings. You should fit with no problem at all." Rouge said as she dusted herself off after standing back up straight. It was true that Shadow could fit if Rouge got through with her wings, he should be able to aswell. He just hoped that his quills wouldn't get stuck on the fence.
Shadow let go of the fence, hoping that it would stay atleast a bit open. But as he let go the fence shot back down, ripping through the hedgehog's thin gloves and creating long and shallow scratches on his hand. He winced as they stung a little.
"Are you okay?" Rouge asked him.
"It's nothing. They're just a few scratches." He said.
The hedgehog went back to his knees and pushed the fence aside so he could crawl through. Thankfully, none of his quills got stuck while crawling through it. Shadow stood back up and faced the building again along with Rouge.
"Now we just need to find a way in without getting noticed." He said and looked around. Rouge looked up on the wall of the building and immediatly laid her eyes on a large tube that protruded on the edge of the roof.
"There! That must be from a ventilation shaft." She said, pointing at the tube to show her partner what she was talking about.
"That could work." He said, approving of the idea.
Spreading her wings, Rouge only need one or two flaps of her dark leathery wings to lift herself off the ground. Extending his hand up to her, Rouge took it and flew up into the sky, taking both of them up towards the roof of the factory.
Once there, she carefully dropped her partner on the surface of the roof and landed herself. Shadow looked over the edge of the roof at the hole in the fence. He sighed at his own stupidity as he and Rouge could've easily gotten over it with her flight ability.
Pushing the thought to the back of his mind, Shadow concentrated on the tube that stood in front of them. He reached up to the edge and climbed up over the edge. He leant on it and looked down.
"You were right. This could be our way in." The hedgehog said and swung one leg over the edge and then the other. He let go and jumped down the shaft. Unfortunatly, the shaft was a big longer than he thought at first and grunted when he landed on his behind.
"Are you okay?" Rouge asked as she flew still about the entrance to the ventilation.
"I'm just fine. Although i doubt i will be able to sit down for a week." He groaned and rubbed the area around his tail.
"Unbelievable. This mission has barely started and you already got hurt twice!" The bat sighed as she carefully lowered herself. Shadow crawled out of the way so his partner could land.
"It doesn matter. Let's get moving." The hedgehog suggested and began to crawl through the small ventilation shaft. It seemed like Rouge was having a difficult time getting through with those wings of hers.
"Maybe we shouldn't have chosen the ventilating system to get inside." He muttered as he noticed how much of a difficult time she was having.
"No, i'm fine. Atleast i get a nice view." Rouge joked, reffering to her husband crawling in front of her. Shadow's ears flattened against his skull and he muttered something along the lines of how Rouge should be in the front if she didn't like it to stay in the back.
"I'm just joking, hun. No need to get so worked up over it." She laughed lightly. He may not look like it, but he could be quite self-conscious at times. Rouge's guess was that it definitely had something to do with his childhood in the laboratories on board the Space Colony Ark and inside the laboratories and cells in the military base of G.U.N.
Being born unnaturally from a machine with no real parents except for a floating monstrosity that was hellbent on destroying the world and use humans and mobians as a food source did leave quite a dent on his self esteem.
'Now that i think of it. He acts tough and fearless in front of me and the others, but does he really have any pride or self esteem left?' Rouge thought as the two crawled through the shaft, while making as little noise as possible. She had heard small bits and pieces about what went on aboard the Ark and after it was shut down, but what she heard wasn't nice either. And Shadow was being strangely secretive when it came to his childhood.
Whenever Rouge had asked him about it, Shadow would either change subject or go to the bathroom. Even though, there were a few times in which he had already gone just a few moments before.
'You don't need a brain to figure out that he's obviously trying to avoid talking about.' Rouge thought. She wished Shadow would be a bit more open towards her about the matter, but she could also understand why he kept quiet about it. Talking about it seemed to make him uncomfortable. Even just hearing the words 'Ark', 'Experiment' or 'laboratory' seemed to make him cringe.
"Rouge!" Shadow said on a louder tone than his usual calm one. Rouge gasped as she was startled out of her train of thoughts. The hedgehog in front of her sighed.
"You weren't paying attention were you? Just where and how far away did you go?" He asked, guestioning the reason why his wife was so absent all of a sudden. While they were crawling, he stopped and turned to tell her something, but instead saw her in an absent trance as if she was deep in thought. If he hadn't said anything, she would've ended up colliding against him.
"Huh? Oh! Uhm... Nowhere. I went absolutely nowhere. I was just thinking and i didn't even notice you were trying to talk to me. Sorry, hun." Rouge apologized. She laughed a little, it sounded a bit nervous.
"What were you thinking about?" He asked, curious what troubled his dear wife so much she would completely forget that she was supposed to be concentrating on their mission.
"Oh nothing!" Rouge chirped cheerfully. She knew that Shadow wouldn't want her to mention anything that had to do with his self esteem or his childhood. So she decided the best way to take was to keep quiet about it.
Shadow just shrugged if off and brought his attention back to the mission. He gestured over to Rouge as if he wanted her to look at something as he went to the other side of the grid, so Rouge could look aswell.
As the two mobians looked down through the grid, they saw someone sitting in front of a large computer. At the door stood two heavily armed guards. One was a mobian and the other was human. As Shadow pointed at the computer which had a mobian sitting in front of it, Rouge knew that the computer must have what they had been looking for.