Thanks again to AlexJ, Hawk, and emzhao07010 for your dedication to Pandemonium! For those who didn't see the announcement on my profile or didn't just straight up find me first! :D I have gone ahead and uploaded this fic to Archive of our own as well! The name of the story is the same and my profile over there is Valiant_13. If you want to call me Valiant from now on, that's also good with me! As always! I love to see your comments, so please don't be shy about reviewing!
You know it! Don't own it! Enjoy!
Maria and Sonic were still asleep when Shadow woke up. Maria's long blond hair was a messy golden halo around her head gleaming where the sun touched it. The morning light on her face showed off the healthy glow in her skin, and the darker hedgehog found himself thanking chaos all over again. She was still pretty skinny, but a few months of regular meals would fix that.
Looking at her now was such a contrast from his memories of her on the Ark, and it struck him that the lighting on that space station had only emphasized the hollows in her cheeks and the dark circles ringing her eyes. Maria was certainly best viewed in sunlight. She seemed a lot happier as well. Now he just had to keep it that way.
His gaze fell on Sonic, and he frowned, the scene from the night before replaying in his head. He suddenly recalled something else the other hedgehog had once said about having stories no one liked talking about. Well, if anyone could figure out what was causing Sonic to act like this, it was his sister. She still had Sonic in her arms and was cuddling him like a favorite teddy bear.
Neither of them even shifted when Shadow slid out of bed. He had things to do today.
Rouge was awake when he peeked into the TV room where they'd set up the air bed for her. She was still lounging beneath the blankets, but gazing pensively at the light peeking in past the curtains of the window.
"I take it you're privy to the events of last night?" Shadow asked quietly as he slid into the room.
Rouge snorted softly and sat up, patting the bed in invitation for him to sit down.
Shadow cast a wary look at the air mattress and opted to sit on the couch instead.
"Oh right," Rouge said and threw her arms above her head in a stretch as she yawned. Her wings opened to their full span with the motion as well, closing as she dropped her arms. "Should have known you'd hear me sneaking around."
"So… What are you going to do?" Shadow asked.
"Hmm," Rouge said, smiling with amusement. "You know me too well. It's got my interest. I am going to go digging."
"I can't stop you," Shadow said, sighing with disapproval. "But I am going to wait until Sonic is ready to talk about this. It should be his decision."
"Alright, hon, you do that," Rouge said, sliding her legs off the bed. "But I'm not going to wait around for this to bite us in the rear. Knowledge is power, sweety, and it can sometimes be more valuable than the gems I love so much."
The bat got up and disappeared into the bathroom.
Shadow sighed again. She had a point, but it also felt like a breach of trust. He had no choice but to hope that Rouge would be discrete. She usually was, but still.
The rest of the house was still and quiet. Shadow was feeling restless. It had been a while since he'd been alone to think. He decided a quick run would be a good idea.
Maria thought she was holding Shadow at first when she woke up. The cobalt blue quills threw her for a moment, but then she remembered the night before. Sonic was still asleep, but his ears were starting to twitch, reacting to the noises of the house. It wouldn't be long before he woke up. She smoothed down his quills, then moved her hand up to scratch at the base of his ears.
Sonic opened his eyes, and glanced around the room, a note of confusion on his features. He looked up at her and his eyes widened as he clearly also remembered the events leading up to this point. His ears immediately went flat beneath her fingers and he curled in on himself, no longer able to look her in the eye.
"I guess it's too much to ask if we can forget about last night," he said, sounding very self conscious.
"You don't have to talk about it," Maria said, working at rubbing the tension out of his ears. "It doesn't mean that I'm not going to worry about you, but I can drop it if you need me to."
Sonic sighed and buried his face into the covers for a bit. "What about Shadow?" he asked and Maria was barely able to understand him.
"Shadow's not going to tell anyone," Maria said. "And if you ask him to let it go, he'll respect that. There are things he hasn't even been able to talk about yet himself."
Sonic made a non committal sound and remained face down in the blankets.
"What else is wrong?" Maria asked, squeezing his shoulder.
Sonic rolled onto his side, still refusing to look at her. "People depend on me, you know?" he said. "I can't be falling apart over a… d-dream."
"Have you told Tails about this?" Maria asked.
Sonic looked like he was about to curl up into a ball of spikes.
Maria sat up and deftly scooped Sonic up, hauling him into her lap. "Have you told anyone about this?" she whispered.
"No," Sonic mumbled, but still cuddled into her shoulder.
"Hmm," Maria said as she began to rock him back and forth. "Then… I'm going to tell you something I once told Shadow."
Sonic finally came out of hiding to look at her face. His big green eyes looked wide open and vulnerable.
"When something bad happens to you, that event does not make you any less. It can't take away from your inherent value as a person. I might have gotten sick, but that doesn't mean that I am weak or pathetic or anything like that. It doesn't make me a bad person either. It has no effect on who I am, on who I've chosen to be. Right?"
Sonic nodded, ears tilted towards her as he listened.
"This sickness that happened to me is something outside of my control, just like the bad thing that happened to you. What matters is how we handle it. I didn't lie down and give up, Shadow didn't, and neither did you. Look at yourself Sonic! You're here now, and you have so many people who love you. If you told them today what you've been through, no one would look at you any differently. And one day, when you're able to talk about what that bad thing was, I'll be here to listen, and I'll hug you for as long as you need me to."
Sonic nodded and laid his head against her again. "You told all that to Shadow?" he asked.
"Not quite like that," Maria admitted. "At the time, it was more like an agreement that neither of us would give up. But I did promise him as many hugs as he needed. And…" She hesitated. They had only known each other for two days, although it felt much longer with that. Maybe this was a little bold of her, but Sonic didn't seem to have any objections to her holding him like this so… "If you want, I could do that for you, too."
"I'm really glad you're here," Sonic said.
Maria smiled and gave him an affectionate squeeze. "Me too," she said.
Knuckles and Tails handled making breakfast, and Rouge seemed very content to sit on the couch in the living room with her tea and let them.
Maria would have offered to help, but she'd never been allowed to handle food. Preparations for her own meals had also been strictly specific on a few details. It had been strange to be able to eat what everyone else was having, and there was so much flavor! No wonder people enjoyed eating so much. All her life, it had been a chore. At that moment, she had a realization.
Also, right at that moment, Shadow came inside, looking a little windswept and dare she say it… chipper? She couldn't help bouncing up to him. "Shadow! Shadow! Guess what!"
Shadow looked a little surprised and overwhelmed, but he smiled. "What?"
"I can learn to cook now!" Maria said. "Or play the flute! Or- or anything! I could learn to swim!"
"Ooooohhhh yeah," Sonic said decisively. "We need to get this kid an ID."
"We should see how many classes she could test out of at the university, too," Tails said, waiving a spoon dripping with pancake batter.
Knuckles glared at the fox, took the dripping spoon away from him, and put it back into the bowl with a clunk.
"First thing's first," Rouge said. "We need to decide what our next step is."
"We need more information," Shadow said immediately. "I was thinking about this last night, and if Mt. Freedom is as much of a secret that even your associate didn't even know about it, then it's going to be much more difficult to get inside. Building schematics would be a good start, but ideally, I'd like to know the guard patterns and what security checkpoints they might have."
"That might be asking for a lot," Rouge said. "I get the feeling we're going to need a stealth expert. I'm good, but I can't turn invisible."
Knuckles, Sonic and Tails all piped up at once. "Espio."
"Guess I'm making a trip to the Chaotix detective agency," Rouge said.
"Guess that gives us time to handle a few things," Sonic said eagerly. "I gotta get over to the university and start kicking some doors down!"
Maria's heart skipped a beat. "Really?" she said excitedly.
"I think I'd like to come along for this," Shadow said.
It was a day like any other, listening to that worn out rock music. I wasn't sure what Espio was doing, but the horrible crash in the kitchen had to have been Charmy fooling around. Kid was trouble. He might have had a golden heart, but he was still trouble on a set of wings. That's when the door opened and more trouble walked in, and her name… was Rouge the Bat. There has to be a saying somewhere… Trouble comes on wings.
The lady walked with a purpose in her steps, those high heels clicking on the floor adding to the sense of business about her. Her blue eyes blazed with a question. Why else would she have come to the best detective agency in Station Square? I decided to ask what I could do for her.
"Did you need something, doll?"
Rouge stopped, and the look on her face could have melted steel. "I've got a job for Espio," she said, going straight to business. "It's a sensitive matter, so if he's interested in the details, we'll brief him at Tails' workshop, but it pays well."
"Espio, you should take this job," I called. "The lady says it pays w- I mean, It sounds like it's a sensitive case."
The chameleon himself seemed to materialize out of thin air next to the lady, but I could tell this one had nerves of steel. She didn't even bat a lash at his appearance.
"What time should I show up?" Espio asked, ever the efficient sleuth.
"Five in the evening should be fine," Rouge told him. "The others should be back by then."
"Was there anything else we could do for you?" I asked.
"As a matter of fact there is," Rouge said, taking a single step forward. "And I'll pay you even more for your discretion. I'd like you to look into the sudden appearance of Sonic the Hedgehog."
I closed my mouth. There were a lot of people who wanted to know about the true origins of the Hero of Mobius, but I was going to have to give her the same answer I gave everyone.
"Keep your money, Rouge," I said. "I may be a greedy old crock, but I'm an honest one. Someone else that will go unnamed for the sake of business already hired me for that job. I turned over every stone I could find, but I still only know just about as much as you do. Sonic's earliest appearance is in the Green Hills Zone. He may as well have popped into existence from thin air. His ID is in the public records of course, but they're new. Records say his birth certificate was destroyed when Dr. Ivo Robotnik swept through, which may be true, but it seems that the only one who knows the truth is the hedgehog himself."
Rouge looked puzzled and annoyed. I could understand. Unraveling mysteries was my business, but there was no thread to pull on in this case.
The lady sighed and looked at Espio. "Why is he talking like that?"
Espio also sighed. "Vector's been on a film noir kick," he said. The purple chameleon thinks he's the straight man of this group, but what would he know? He's purple.
"Oh," Rouge said, casting him a look of sympathy. "Good luck with that. I'll see you at five pm."
"Not a minute later," Espio promised and the dame walked out the door.
The hardest part of getting Maria back into the system was thinking of a new last name.
When Sonic had suggested 'Hope Kintobor,' the other two had shot him down hard.
They also eventually agreed that too many people were going to slip up and call her Maria anyway, so they opted to leave her first name alone.
Robotnik had its roots in the United Federation area, near Empire City, but with Maria's classic blond hair and blue eyes, they could get away with placing her much farther north in the Mercia region. Petterson was a little too generic for her tastes, and Sonic found Gustavson a little too funny to take seriously.
"What about Lindstrom?" Shadow asked, reading off yet another name from the list they'd found of surnames common to that area.
"Maria Lindstrom?" Sonic said.
"It has a decent enough ring," Shadow said.
"I think I can put up with that," Maria said. "It is just an alias."
"Sure," Sonic said. "But it'll be one you'll have to live under pretty much indefinitely."
"Are you sure?" Shadow asked.
"I think it's fine," Maria said.
So off they went to the city's government offices. Fortunately there were enough cases of lost records due to disasters caused by the planet's megalomaniacal madman that Maria just had to act as if she'd just had her life turned over. A few fake tears and a trembling chin had them falling over themselves to help her.
"Is this what they call feminine wiles?" Sonic asked Shadow in a hushed aside, watching Maria charm her way through the paperwork.
"And they call me a weapon of mass destruction," Shadow said.
Soon enough, they had her all set up as one of Sonic's dependents (on paper at least), because they thought it would be a good idea to leave Shadow's name off the records as much as possible.
Unfortunately, even with Maria's acting, so much time had passed that there wasn't quite enough of the evening left to go start carving her a path in the world of education. So they went out for pizza instead.
"No! I'm telling you!" Sonic said. "You haven't LIVED until you've had pizza from Pizza the Action."
"I thought you liked chili dogs," Shadow said.
"I can be a connoisseur of other foods!" Sonic argued.
"I've never been to a pizza place at all!" Maria said, practically vibrating in place from excitement.
"...Well I guess that kinda settles it, doesn't it," Sonic said, giving the girl a fond smile.
"I'd be remiss in my duties if we didn't," Shadow agreed.
As it turned out, Sonic knew the owner of the place. He was a horse mobian named Galloping Graeme, and after only a small wait, they were shown to the best seats in the house. Sonic sat down with a relieved sigh. "Man, I thought the one kid who was there for his permit test was going to ask for your phone number Maria," he said. "At least, he was until Shadow glared at him."
Maria turned pink. "Probably for the best that I don't have a cell phone, yet," she said. "I only just got here, and things have been completely crazy from the start."
"You haven't had a lot of time to adjust," Shadow said. "If you wanted, I could get you to some place safe so you can-."
"No! No!" Maria interrupted him, holding up a hand to stop him. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be than right here! All of the people I've met so far have been so wonderful, and I feel like I'm already making a difference! Really, it's all I've ever wanted, just to be included. The last thing I want to do is go back to any kind of isolation."
Shadow nodded and leaned over to check her with his shoulder. "I'm glad you're happy, despite everything that's happened," he said.
"As much as I'd like to see if there's any equipment we could salvage from the Ark," Maria began thoughtfully. "I think… I think I never want to go back there again. Ever."
"We might not have to," Shadow said.
The pizza arrived and the conversation drifted to Maria's plans to pursue a medical degree so she could legally help people in an official capacity.
Sonic also very much liked the idea of her having some legal protections in place as a practicing doctor. Hopefully, getting this all set in place for Maria would be easier than it had been with Tails. Honestly, academia must hate young talent or something. Now though, the university of Station Square knew his face, and he was hoping it was just going to be a matter of him popping in and announcing the arrival of another child prodigy.
It was beginning to get dark by the time they left, and Shadow was worried that Maria might start getting chilled in the early autumn weather.
"Shadow, I'm fine! Really!" Maria was saying. "Besides, if we use chaos control right here, wouldn't that cause a stir?"
Sonic grinned. "Not as much as you'd think," he said. "The people here have… have… that's weird."
Shadow instantly began to look around.
Sonic had stopped smiling and was gazing around at the occupants of the street in confusion. "There are a lot of Freedom Fighters around today," he said. "I wonder what's happening?"
"Do you think they're on a mission?" Maria asked, voice lowered.
Shadow began to reach for his chaos emerald. "Whatever it is," he began. "I don't want you-."
A sharp popping sound interrupted him and some kind of dart struck Shadow in the chest. He had just enough time to look down at it with surprise before it crackled to life with a large jolt of electricity. Shadow curled in on himself with a convulsive jerk and lay on the sidewalk, muscles contracting in tight painful spasms.
Sonic was also down by the same method.
Maria would always kick herself for letting fear take over, but seeing her two best friends go down like that with the sharp realization that they were under attack had her mind in a state of roaring white panic. She had no weapons, no resources and no plan.
Mobians in dark suits and balaclavas poured out of a nearby alleyway, bringing a set of two small and very sturdy looking cages with them.
"NO!" Maria finally was able to move. "NO!" she screamed. "Don't touch them! Stop it! Some one help! Please help me! Don't hurt them! Stop it!" She'd run at one of the masked mobians shoving her hedgehogs into a cage, but another one grabbed her by the arm, and she fought as hard as she could but her underdeveloped muscles were already trembling under the strain.
Some one clamped a cloth over her face and a sweet but sharp scent burned in her nose. The world went dark.