Passengers (An ArchieIDW Sonic Adventures 2 story)

by Mauser-KAR98K

Finding the right Zone to return home to has been anything but home for Julie-Su. Everything she had suffered through with her people was met with a horrible truth: the people she knew and loved were gone. Arriving on Earth, she found G.U.N., and Shadow. But her safety, her security, he was only a shell, the Knuckles she loved not in it. Her Soultouch...still there for him. ShadxSu

7. 6: Morning Routine

Sorry for the delay, and the lengthy chapter. Went on vacation. Plus, this chapter I wanted to take my time with.

I hope I have established more backstory between Julie and Shadow, and I hope I conveyed a lot of well. What do you all think of his ice skating as a way to keep up with his technique and physical training? I also wanted this chapter to start seeding more of Shadow's feelings to Julie, with some of hers to him.

Please leave a leave a review and critique. How did the chapter read? Did it flow well? Did you get the meanings I laid out? And how was the ending scene? It has been something I've longed thought about, especially directed towards me, that I felt I should tell it through Julie-Su.

And again, thank you for reading.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything Sonic

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Part Two: Soul Hostage.

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know.

–P. McCree Thornton, The Star Spangled Son

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6: Morning Routine

And Frankie kicked a mine

The day that mankind kicked the moon

God help me~

I was only 19...

John Schumann (Redgum)-I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)

The roar of shouts were rhythmic in cadence; the searing pain in her left eye pulsing with them.

She wanted to cry–for she did. But blackness lurked in her vision, tears escaping from the clutch of her shut eyes. Warm. Stinging like a hot pin. Her scream matching, yet oddly in a tiny in pitch.

Small she felt; gentle hands under her, large enough she could feel the fingers and palms almost all over her body.

A feminine voice hushed her in an apprenticed motherly practice came from above her. "Oh, Julie, don't be frightened."

She tried to open her eyes, but only gaining a sliver of darkness a few shades brighter from the cocoon that was fighting her to stay in. With it, a tingling numbness washed through the nerves of her left arm. Warm–a sticky wetness from her bicep to her forearm. A patchwork of searing, burning aches and agony.

And the roar of voices beating through syllables with an energy and hunger for triumph. A cadence salivating for battle.

"Lu–Ger! Lu-Ger! Lu-Ger!–"

A man–an echidna peered when her right eye finally opened. He stood tall, his dreadlocks long that draped behind him as if a cloak across his back when he turned his head, his eyes proud in with a firm gaze, attuned to purpose and drive.

And his deep thundering voice projected it!

"Hope is not a strategy–but it is the optimism we use to perfect it!" The chants of his name kept the cadence and volume. "Here me, Legion! We shall escape our Cage in due time. And we will return home. We will be greeted either as equals–or we shall conquer their indifference!"

His head turned to her; his face never wavering from the affirmation of his words and his charge. Still, his resolute gaze didn't free her from the pain, her right eye only seeing him, her left eye dammed with the searing burn of wet tears.

Then the feminine voice from above her returned to her ear. "He loves us...he loves us all, baby."

But she couldn't stop screaming her cry. Fear–the unknown shouts of voices.

The pain!

"Lu-Ger! Lu-Ger!–"

He waved his hand–and the cadence of his name stopped close to immediate. He let the silence live before the drone of low tones and warbles from the magnetic sounds of space and time compressed back through the artificial atmosphere; the stars, a red and blue nebula–they were all around their bleak sky. And her screams maybe young, but her mature mind spoke finally through her terror and pain. Home–the Twilight Cage.

She let her right eye rise to level, her left piercing in agony when she tried to open it once more. It tried to break her just by the sympatric movement to match her right. Yet, she stopped screaming when her sight laid on a magenta furred-echidna, her blue eyes meeting hers, her smile soothing, taking away the searing burn from her left eye and arm for a merciful moment.

"You'll be just fine, my Julie-Su."

Her heart stopped from her words–Julie wanting to cry again, her inner self stepping forward as a challenge to the woman giving her a loving smile. Knuckles...he had said those words; she still remembered them before he left–

Did he?

Her father's voice leapt into the heavy, humid air, an air that never existed in the Cage.

"Legion! I promise...we will make our return–!"

The woman echidna above her whispered down into her ear. "And we will be free and happy, my daughter."

Pain, it filtered as a low murmur in her left arm before igniting back to a roar. Her left eye shouted with fire!

"Mommy," her small, child voice finally willed from her, "my arm...my eye. Why does it hurt?"

Her mother gave a smile, then looked up. "Why, Julie–" A shadow crept over her, her mother broadening her smile with it "–you found you sister's surprise she set for you!"

She closed her right eye tightly from the piercing burn of her left; then opened it, filled with tears. Her left felt sticky, warm. Searing. Useless!

"What surprise?" she nearly sobbed out.

Her answer came from a guttural, anguish filled scream from afar. An echo. She couldn't sense where it came from–but it grew louder–closer–

"Why you little brat!" Julie looked down, past her mother's hands cradling her, to the red furred echidna girl, her hair long but the same in color, her black one piece leather suit formed to her trimmed body, her eyes bearing a venom of hate and revenge. "You went the wrong way! And you found my little trap I set for you. I knew you'd go back!"

"Back," her mature voice now rising up. "Back for what?"

"For the other little brat!"

Kneecaps!

And the scream she heard made her blink tightly; the searing burn and ache in her left arm and eye pounding with a force she had never known–

Her right eye shot open as the screaming was crashing all around her.

It came from a girl!

It came from her!

"Ma'ma!"

Rykor's panic stricken voice matched her own piecing wail of agony. He was kneeling over her, his head turned behind him. "Get a damn, fucking stick right now!"

Another panic filled voice, female, older, yet tempered, overpowered a boy child's crying stammer not far from her. "Quick, get my spine wraps off, Wyn!"

"Hold her head!" Rykor ordered with a panicked bite.

And Julie finally took a fleeting breath from her deep screams. "Ma'ma! My eye!" But her cry was ignored. She tried to move her right hand to it, to caress it from the burning pain, but a strong set of hands held her in place.

"Komi, check her extremities for other wounds!" came Remington's urgent voice.

"Oh...okay, Rem," came the former teacher's reply.

A touch of her arm sent another sharp bolt of pain that bolted nearly up her spine, surging another long wailing scream to belt from her dry lips.

"Do you know how to do blood sweeps?" Rykor asked hurriedly over her to Komi-Ko.

"I–I think–"

"We need light!" said Lara-Le in a breathless voice, standing over next to a kneeling Komi-Ko. Julie barely could witness a brown furred echidna–Wyn–tearing off the white ribbons fromthe red furred echidna woman's long dreadlocks, her body cloaked in a soiled white robe.

"Press–stop–and look," Rykor instructed.

"Okay, but I can't see my hands in this darkness."

Julie forced her right eye open when it shut from another spasm of searing pain. It blurred from her tears, streaming out faster than she could blink. Her left kept burning, piercing through the socket and making it's way, it felt, to her brain. She tried raised her right hand, wanting to bring it over to her left eye–she was stopped when a firm hand clasped it. It was male in touch and feel. She fought to open her eye–hoping to see her Knuckles holding her–

"No, Julie, don't!" a soothing, scarred male voice said to her. It was high in pitch–not the baritone she was hoping to hear from her equal.

"It burns!" she let loose with a guttural scream. The force of her lungs seemed to release her pulse; heavy and fast, it shot down with a infernal agony down her left arm, beating more pain as if needles poking at her finger tips with every burst from her heart.

Darkness. Stars. She could see them through the blur of her tears, from the opening in the canopy of tall pine trees. Then a slow, glow of pale light over her, drowning out the stars and the dust of the galaxy.

"Here–here," a stammering voice over head eased in. "Try this."

"I can get a fire going with ease?" stated another female voice seemingly at her boot covered feet. The low glow let a glint refract to Julie a red ruby over the forehead of a lavender fur cat, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Dressed wrong for the forest, her long purple coat and heels were a far cry from the black robes and ragged clothes many of the echidnas still possessed.

"No," Remington said, standing just to Julie's left behind Rykor. "They'll find us for sure."

"Here!" shouted Wynmacher, handing Rykor a bundle of white strips of cloth.

The burgundy-furred echidna took them, steadying himself on his knees beside Julie. "Private! I'm going to have to hurt you, but I have to do this to get a tourniquet going for you."

A child's whimper was subsiding; hers only briefly with a gulping wince and moan when she nodded her head with a tremble.

"Keep checking, Komi!" Remington nearly commanded, his voice becoming wet.

A squeeze from the purple echidna's hands at her left leg, close to Julie's groin, released, then over to her right leg; squeeze...release. "Nothing."

The pale light moved around to her left arm. She turned her head and regretted it instantly.

"NO!" she cried. Rykor had his thumb on the two inch wide white fabric before wrapping it tightly high close to her arm pit. Her shout wasn't of protest, but of sheer denial of what she saw. Pink fur, skin, tissue; they had been ripped violently opened. And the blood glinting from over the ivory that was the bone torn through her bicep. Her breathing quickened; becoming too fast.

"Turn you head! Don't look Julie," Rykor shouted, his voice edging to panic and feeling. He tilted his head up. "You, white hedgehog!"

"Ye–yes," came the nervous stammer.

"Get her to count to four! Forwards on the exhale; backwards on the inhale!"

"Is she going into shock?" came Teri-Lu's voice kneeling by her right foot.

But Rykor didn't reply, only looking behind him. "Constable, where's that FUCKING STICK!" Rykor lifted her arm; she screamed with it! But he began wrapping the long white band around her upper arm, close to her shoulder and arm pit, removing his thumb after the first pass, pulling the band hard before making further tightening wraps before stopping. Her pulse through her arm quickened, the pain getting worse with every beat. And...and she felt now that she couldn't feel her fingers. Couldn't feel them move!

Warm was the inside of her stomach. She felt she wanted to throw up what meager contents she had in it, the adrenaline churning sickly inside her. And she couldn't ingonor the full pain in her head; the ringing in her ear...the reverberation from the small explosion that blew her–

"Moving!" came Remington's retort. He feel to his knees beside Rykor, passing a stick no longer than his hand and half his forearm to the former Legionnaire sergeant. "Here!"

Taking it, Rykor placed it at the top of the white band and hurriedly begin to wrap the band around it and her arm. "This is going to fucking hurt, Tempest!" She only nodded with a sharp wince. And Rykor cranked the stick clockwise; and the pain ratchet up with it! "I hope this holds!"

"Hey–hey! Look at me," came the voice from over her. She felt hands come to either side of her head. Tears washed down her right eye; but something warm and sticky ran down from her left. A quick blink, her right clearing, her left burning from the sympatric wince, let a silver hedgehog fill what vision she had left. "Ready...count with me, okay...One–two–"

She filled her burning lungs with the warm, humid air. "–Three–Four." Her jaw trembled; her lungs fighting her labor to steady her breathing.

"And in–Four–Three–"

And she obeyed. "Two–One–" Still, she heard a child sobbing, her mind flashing with it. "Kneecaps!?"

Lara-Le's voice came nearly as a sob, but composed. "He's alright. You saved him. He's alright, Julie. Just keep counting, baby!"

I've got him, Julie!" shouted Saffron from beyond the kneeling and standing echinda's, Silver, and the cat around her. "He's not hurt!"

Rykor gave two more cranks on the stick. The pulsing of her arm was numbing, her fingers becoming cold with tingles of pain.

"Okay," came the hedgehog. "One–Two–"

"Three–four–" She was breathing between numbers through her nose; exhaling them through her mouth.

"How's our security," Rykor asked quickly to Remington.

"Three-sixty as far as I know!"

But Rykor didn't like the answer, turning his head around. "Security!?" A large resounding "UP!" shouted all around them in a circle. "Keep eyes out for possible hostels!"

"She wouldn't?" Komi nearly seethed.

"Let her come," came the lavender cat, still looking from Julie's boot covered feet. "I will burn that echidna woman to ash!"

Remington, however, looked over once more at Julie, then to Komi-Ko. "Did you check her chest and back for other wounds?"

Komi's voice was in a panic stammer. "N–no."

"Check under her vest," Rykor said, giving one more crank of the stick at Julie's arm.

"Hey–hey, I see blood coming from her right eye," Lara-Le said. Julie could see the sorrow and horror in the red echidna woman's face. Her dreadlocks had fallen past her face, her red hair with it, only two of her dreads still possessing her decorative bands in a cris-cross ornament. "I think there is something in it!"

And Julie gave a nod in agreement, gritting her teeth with it. "One–two–" she counted without help from Silver.

The hedgehog counted with her. "Three–Four–" and he inhaled deeply; she mimicking him. "Four–three–"

"–Two–One–"

"The bleeding doesn't look to be stopping," came Remington's festering voice.

But Julie felt her black and teal vest being lifted from under her chest, Komi's warm hands going underneath, pressing down on her ribs; pulling them out and examining them under the glow from Silver's glowing backside of his hands. They were circles of pale, blue light. "Clean." Komi said, before reaching back under Julie's vest, feeling her hands press over her breasts and upper chest before retrieving them back out. She saw the ashamed look from Komi before her eyes went back to her hands. "Clean."

"Under her back!" Remington said firmly, Julie sensing his caring affection for both of them with it.

And Komi obeyed again, going inside Julie's vest, but under her back, repeating the quick check of her hands before doing the same to her sides. "Clean! No blood!"

"And I don't see any around her head...or her spines," Silver remarked, his left hand still holder her at her temple.

"That's good!" Rykor offered in relief. But his and Remington's eyes said things were anything but.

"Keeping counting, baby!" Lara-Le said with a hushed command. "Don't look, sweetie."

"I–I–I can't feel my fingers," Julie quivered in moan. "I'm feeling a little cold." And she started to feel her body begin to shake. Limbs and toes were also becoming numb. Her stomach twisted when she realized it was shock beginning to set in.

"Okay, baby," Lara said, kneeling now beside Silver, her hands wiping Julie's brow and hair.

A tightened jaw from Remington, his eyes wide with panic and anguish at her. He nearly bolted up from his knees, turned and marched straight to the lavender cat at her feet. "Blaze, you need to find us a zone–" he then looked to Silver "–or a time. You need to get us to a civilization with a modern medical facility–" he shot his head back to the cat "–or we're going to loose her! And we cannot not let that happen to her!"

Julie witnessed Blaze's lips come apart, breathing in with anxiety. "I know a planet I think that hasn't been affected by the Geneses Wave–"

Remington stepped closer to her, his voice higher in volume. "–Then get us there!" He looked back to Silver, the brown echidna's furrowed, black brows tightened with a growing anger of haste. "Now!"

Blaze hesitated before giving a nod. "Okay...but you're not going to like it...or what you'll find."

But Lara answered for Remington–

A harsh buzz racked the left side of Julie's head.

"We're going to have to live with it, then, to keep her alive!" Lara spoke, her voice straying away from her calm, diplomatic timbre.

Again, Blaze nodded–

Buzz!

Tears fell from Julie's right eye; her left arm still pulsing with pain, her fingers numb with tingles of pins.

BUZZ!

A heavy breath from Blaze, rising her hands up over her head; both possessing emeralds the size of stones. "Silver...I'm going to need you for this!" Blaze then casted her eyes around her. "Get everyone close. And get everyone ready to cross through the portal when we open it!"

Lara began to count when Silver stood up. "One–Two–Three–"

"–four–" Julie whimpered.

But the count stopped when a loud, female scream pierced the night air already filled with cries and sobs.

"BRAT! YOU GOT WHAT YOU DESERVED!"

A thunder from a male voice to their left ricocheted around them. "CONTACT, LEFT!"

Rykor's voice was louder in return as he looked behind him. "HOLD FIRE! HOLD FIRE!"

BUZZ! It blurred her vision; it shook her mind.

But Lien-Da's voice speared through it.

"I HOPE YOU DIE! I HOPE YOU DIE, SISTER! YOU'RE DADDY'S MISTAKE!"

BUZZ~~

"Four! Three!–" She kept counting. Then she felt hands around her body; she was being lifted.

Then a bright light–

BUZZ!~~~

"Two–One!"

ONE–SEVEN–THREE–EIGHT–EIGHT–TWO–SIX–

The red text flashed in the blackness of her sight. Then her brain finally snapped to when another pulse from her cybernetic lock vibrated her senses awake.

Remington was calling her.

She commanded her right open, her left eyelid stuck closed from the sticky sleep protein.

"Oh...damn..."

And Remington's cell number flashed onto it from the small computer embedded in her lock and part of her skull. A quick tilt of her head, her brain finding the right wave to send to answer the call. She heard the click and connection along with her breathless, dreary voice.

"Rem...?"

"Hey, Tempest?" he answered. "Sorry to wake you." His voice was alert, yet comforting.

She shook her head, though he couldn't see her do so. "No...no, you...I'm–I'm glad you did."

His breathing was the pause, she knowing he was searching for the word. "Nightmare?" he offered.

She tried to swallow the cotton from the back of her throat. "Yeah..," She thought of what to say. Thought to tell him what it was, or let it pass. But a quaint flicker of amusement came instead to dilute the painful memory. "It's when your Komi got to feel me up."

Again, he held his pause on the other end, but she could picture him rolling his jaw at the comment. "Oh...that."

Yet, the jab of the joke touched at her heavy replaced left arm. It ached where her it connected to her shoulder socket. Her upper body's muscles were strengthening from the weight, though it wasn't much of an extra burden to shoulder around. However, it was the fusing of the nerve endings to the biometric wires and artificial reflex fibers inside the titanium and polymer that she was still finding her body and mind coming in synch. Most of the function came from the program sitting inside her cybernetic lock and the five small computer processing chips that had been implanted in her since the age of thirteen. The same chips her half-sister and brother had used to erase her memory of her parents. But in this case, her sacrifice to technocracy for once was paying its dividends. She had never been happier that her rehabilitation to her new extremity was quick, and nearly painless...nearly.

Losing what she had been born with, seeing the shattered mess of blood and fur, tissue and bone when she awoke three days later, her arm laying in a plastic box, her shoulder closed and fused before they operated to give her the replacement, held a horror and a sickly shame somewhere inside her she could still feel. And yet, she could also feel her soultouch, her equal, holding that same little girl inside her...comforting her. Giving her strength.

Would he see me differently if he were here today?

"Hey, Jay-Ess. You still there?"

Remington's voice brought her back to the present, and the pulsing feeling going through her fingers and artificial muscles. At least her arm nearly matched her natural arm in shape and femininity. It just would never give shape to added or waning muscle. She thought to wear her metal rings around it, but thus far, she was growing more comfortable with the look of it. After all, she still held many of the Legion's principles, including her innate pull to technocracy. Something her Knuckles seemed, somehow, attracted to.

"Yeah, sorry, nephew. What's going on?" She looked to the wooden dresser at the foot of her bed, the white sheets still covering her bare legs. She only wore a long, grey shirt with G.U.N. in black letters across her chest. Seeing the clock on the radio, it read 5:17. She could have had less than fifteen more minutes of sleep...though it would have been turbulent if she'd continued.

"It's okay. Hey, I'll be coming by to pick you and Saffron up in about an hour and a half. Something happened overnight."

She could still feel and hear the Dark Reaper's engine at a moderate roar as Shadow drove them back to Station Square the night before. She could see the passing road lights and lines, even through her ebbing tears, barely remembering when she blacked out, or snapped awake from the braking and turns when they got into town. Or looking to Shadow, finding his red eyes looking to her...like he had been worried for her. Like something had stirred in him because of her?

"Yeah...we didn't get in till about midnight," she said after a pause. Turning her head over on her pillow to the right, her shallow walk-in closet was open, a chair was in the back by a rack for shoes, yet it only held three pairs–her heeled sandals from last night, her black ankle high dress shoes she was dreading to wear today, and a pair of white running shoes. Next to all of them on the floor where two pairs of boots: her teal boots she's had since her service with the Dark Legion, and her tan issued boots from GUN. But draping over the chair was her black dress she had worn last night. She could still smell the wine from her chest; and oddly enough, Shadow's brutish cologne.

"Did you see the smoke from the south of town?" Remington asked, his voice becoming leveled. Professional.

Julie thought back, struggling to remember if she had looked up when they had passed through the tunnel to connect to the bypass around the south loop of Station Square, or if they had taken it north. Blue and red lights...flashing. "Barely," she answered, her voice still struggling from sleep.

"Well, if you had, that is where we are heading when I pick you up." She finally commanded her abdominal muscles to raise her up from her pillow. She pinched the bridge of her muzzle before she wiped the sleep from her eyes; even her replaced ocular. The exercise had unstuck her eyelid, and she was able to open it. The coming light of the morning that fought through the Venusian blind of the long single window to the one bedroom apartment filtered in to her sight.

"What about Komi-Ko?" she asked wryly.

Her question was answered when Remington's wife's soft voice spoke from afar in her head. "Morning, Jay-Ess." Julie smiled. She was getting used to hearing her nickname from their Sonic being passed around by her friends. Yet, she truly missed hearing it from him. They would both be alive...the smile Knuckles would beam to Sonic when he got one of the hedgehog's better jokes came to her.

Julie let a smile come to her lips. "Hey, Komi."

She heard Remington give a smile. "Tower is swinging by soon to pick her up. Brass is getting Teri and bringing her to us."

"And Shadow?" Julie asked, bring her natural hand up and rubbing her upper chest, massaging her left shoulder.

He paused for a beat. "Tower says he will meet us there after doing an errand this morning."

She cocked her head. "You know–isn't it weird that he gets to the office later than us."

But Remington breathed in. "Hey, Tempest. Stay in your lane...or Zone..."

She nodded. "Yeah, I know. Just...you know me."

"Yeah...you hate double standards. I know." He took in a breath, her skull feeling it from the bone receiver implants. "Anyways, get dressed, look sharp, make sure Saffron is up, eat, and bring lots 'ah coffee."

She gave a simple frown. "Think I can get a little Pee-Tee in?" Her quick glance to her firming right arm beckoned her to continue her physical conditioning. Earth's abundance of nutritious food–food they barely could find between the Twilight Cage and the other Zones–had aided in her regaining her diminished physical form she had trained hard to keep. The memory of sweating out the pain and discomfort not only to keep herself combat fit, but to also be a try equal and fighting partner to Knuckles. Something she realized she missed passing on to Amy with the training sessions she offered the pink hedgehog.

"If you hurry...oh, and, don't forget to write in your journal for Tower."

Her heavy, scratchy eyes turned with her head to the night stand to her left. Laying on the black surface next to a white lamp and shade was the grey hardback journal and a silver pen on top. The trepidation she had felt yesterday when Tower gave it to her wormed its way back up from her stomach. "Yeah...I'm not sure how I feel about this."

She heard the shift from him; a turn in his demeanor. "He means well. I understand your caution, Julie. But I don't want your insubordinate side to come out. Especially with what he is asking. These people are truly trying to help us."

She could not deny what he said. Yet, she couldn't deny the uneasy trust weaving in and out of her. History. Past betrayals. Ledgers of debt and capital with their realization as ruins in their wake. A sigh from her, however, gave her relented answer. "I know."

"Hey, I did mine when I got up."

Her eyes steadied to the mirror on the dresser. Her pistol was still in the belly-band holster she wore last night on top of it. "Anything worth sharing?"

"Nah...It's mostly my thoughts. I had a good night last night. No dreams. Just Komi waking me when she got up to use the bathroom and to get a drink of water."

"Wish I could say the same," she murmured.

"Then write it down," Remington replied, his voice soft, yet comforting. "We can talk more about it later."

"Okay..." she answered, her voice soft. Remington was still the only one, aside from Saffron and Lara-Le, she could trust her feelings to. Still, they were no substitute for Knuckles' listening ear...and his outlook to her.

"Alright...I'll see you in an hour or so. Keep your chin up," Remington offered.

Her natural hand went up to her muzzle, messaging it before drifting it to her chin. "I'm trying."

"We know. See 'ya soon."

A smile. A tear. "Bye, Remy..."

And a click before the line went dead, and her implants showed the disconnected icon before her full vision returned. For the moment, she pulled her legs in and hugged them, resting her forehead to her knees. Silence gripped the room, she welcoming it. The blue light from the coming sun filtered through, but she closed her eyes to darkness.

Her left arm began to throb, but she knew the sensation wasn't from real pain, but from the ghost of her lost limb. Willing her eyes open, she gazed upon it like she had since waking with it attached to her after they put her under to give her back some semblance of her body. It resembled her natural arm when she had her metal rings on that were more of a fashion than function for her past Legion life, which she had kept on until she slipped them off the night she lost her arm. She wondered if she hadn't, would the metal rings have blunted the blast and shrapnel? She would never know. It was, however, a hope that dwelled in–

Hope is not a strategy...

She turned over in her bed, swung her legs over the side, turning the lamp on before grabbing the pen and journal since the morning light was still barley coming in. Opening it to white pages that glowed from the warm light, she clicked the pen, circled it to prime the ink until it blotted black on the top of the page, and began to write:

Hope is not a strategy, her father's voice echoed from her dream, commanding her right hand to write. Her lips whispered the rest. "But it is the optimism we use to perfect it."

Then she wrote~why~?

It wasn't a question of what his meaning was, but one directed to her. Why now? And why was she remembering him? Or...the blue eyes of her mother peered into her...

Is my mind playing tricks on me?

It often did. After all, Dr. Quack had said to her back in Knothole that memories were malleable. Perception can change how past events had actually happened.

And that thought dug at her like an axe.

And she wrote why:

Memory wipe. Lien-Da. How am I dreaming this? She let her pen hover over the page, her eyes searching into the void of her brown carpet for answers at her pink-furred feet and toes. Pen to paper, she wrote, Are they real memories...or wishes of what they were?

Simon and Floren-Ca...she wrote down their names with, beloved parents...but not my actual parents. They had taken care of her, since they could have no children of their own. It was a decree by her sister and brother, and one Simon and Floren-Ca took well, even keeping Julie from knowing who her real parents were. She can still remember waking to them when she was five seasons, tears on her face, but not knowing why...

I had known...before the memory wipe..and maybe after, she wrote. Had she been crying before the wipe? Had she resisted?

Her right hand scrawled with a pace she kept with her mind, describing her mother this time. Blue eyes. Magenta fur. Caring eyes. Locks with metal rings and wires. Legion.

And then she wrote about her father. Commanding. He stood with pride; determination.

Her hand stopped; her mind echoing his voice to her from the night before...and she wrote what he had said:

It's a good hurt~

Tears welled from her eyes. "They loved me..." Her cracking voice made her close her eyes.

Her sister's voice from the past acknowledged this, hearing her scream it in hate:

Daddy loved you more.

A distrusting revulsion crept up inside her, making her question to write it down, to let Tower read it. To make him question her. She had no way to know. Trust did go both ways; she was seasoned with that notion. And her hand traced the name that helped her understand that...

~Knuckles~

She closed her eyes. She wanted him even more. Not just his presence, not just to know he was alive, but that trusting equal...her lover. The one she could drop the armor of her Legion soldier-self, and be a girl...a woman. He had been her peace; her confidante. And she wished him here, to talk to him about what she was dreaming. To return the favor that seemed more of their selfless purpose for each other.

When I had to be there for him when Locke...

She drifted with the thought. She could still feel her hand on his back, his shoulder, feeling every shutter from his body with every wail and sob that came from him. Then she would take him, hold him. Cry with him. They had both known true lose at the moment together.

Then...then he had become distant. She could see how he was trying to work things out internally. Felt it. But she still held on; and he to her. He would follow her, listen to her, nodding, or replying with simple words. And he would still protect her...watch over her.

But he wouldn't look at me...

The waterfall from Mount Fate, the melted snow from Ice Cap Zone, would be her only source to bath with running water when they settled back to Angel Island. She and Saffron had found a small fall that they could use that wouldn't beat them into submission. Sometimes they would go together, but most times it was just her and Knuckles. She would undress, taking off her vest, the only article covering her womanhood...to be vulnerable. And an ache would come up from an unknown part of her when Knuckles would turn his back when she pulled her vest over her head and would weave it through her hair and dreads, sitting on the grassy shore, his attention outwards, she hoping it would be to her when she leveled her gaze back to him.

He never would look at her for sometime. To see his purple hues stealing glances of her nakedness from before gave her a weird sensation of lewd intentions mixed with validation of his attractiveness to her. Yet, that had changed when Locke sacrificed himself to save his son. At the moment when she would rinse, to let the cool water wash over her with a pounding force, she would look to Knuckles, yearning for him to look over her when she was vulnerable...only to find him so instead, naked with his emotions, his anguish. His head turned down to his red and green shoes; his soul seemingly taken away from her, lost somewhere she wanted to go and find.

Months had gone by, the distance only ebbing with small smiles, small talks. He would bathe her with tears when he'd waken to nightmares. And again, she would hold him, caressing his head, her hands weaving through his dreadlocks as he cried himself back to sleep.

Those moments, intimate just her body keeping his soul alive through her warmth, became the light he needed for him to start opening further up to her, talking to her of the past, reconciling his past...his future...

She knew it was with her.

It came one day, again, when she was bathing in the waterfall, closing her eyes from the rushing water, only to open them as she stepped out from the rush and feeling her heart do the same when she saw Knuckles look at her as she was running her hands through her wet hair and dreadlocks. His gaze was brief, but it was enough. He hadn't even smiled when he suddenly turned his head away when he realized he had been caught. Yet, her heart had swelled. He had come back to her.

And she to him, never drying herself, never putting her vest back on, only to stand over him as he sat on the grassy shore, making his eyes cast up her body that unleashed a surge of raw, primal emotions through her.

It made her push him to the grass with a force she had never felt, and her falling on–

A heavy knock came with her front door opening pushed her mind awake. The feminine voice from the entryway that she couldn't see called out to her.

"Hey, Julie! You awake?"

She blinked her eyes, chasing her memory away with it. "Yes...I think, Saffron."

"Okay! I'll get coffee going if you make breakfast."

Julie smiled. "Sounds good," she said with a groggy voice.

She heard Saffron's feet shuffle to her room, hearing the front door closing. Julie turned her head, but kept her back to the bedroom door. The bee was in a nightgown, her blonde hair in a state of chaos from sleeping, her feet covered with a pair of pink bunny slippers. The bee smiled to her, "You okay?"

Julie nodded, returning her smile. "Yeah. Just writing in the journal for Tower."

"Yeah, me too, after I got off the phone with Remington."

Julie let the air have a moment. "You had a dream?" she asked, her voice seemingly begging for an alley.

The bee nodded. "Yeah. Charmy, again." She looked off, then back. "When he was whole." She blinked. "You?"

Julie looked down. "My parents...my father."

Saffron's eyes kept to her. "We'll get through this, girl." Julie nodded, smiling. "So," Saffron began, looking to the chair with the black dress on it. "What perfume did you wear? I can still smell it."

"Um...a white wine," Julie replied with a sheepish smirk.

With this, Saffron's eyes widen. "What the heck did you and Shadow do, last night?"

She tilted her head, her smile leaving her. "We...we killed some guys."

The bee's mouth nearly dropped open.

Stabbing at the ice, his right foot back, his toe the focal point, the long silver blade of the skate digging a shallow hole, Shadow leaned forward in a slight squat, his left arm at an angle out in front of him, his right tucked against his black fur. White gloves; gold inhibitor rings at hist wrist; two at his ankles. Heart steady, blood flowing steadily to all exposed extremities, red eyes forward to the walled partition ahead no more than fifty meters, a climbing row of bleachers beyond that. His attack forumlating in his mind was to sprint with his legs with his long bladed skates, their white synthetic leather tied with black strings, being weapons at his feet to cross the ice rink beneath him. He eyed his heart rate from the fit-bit at his wrist, willing it to slow more.

Time and heartbeats coexisted, commanding his feet and legs to propel himself forward. The first clack from his right skate echoed through the large ice rink, the sound flowing up and down the empty seats of the large arena. His left skate clacked down a quarter second sooner. He pushed, pumping his legs as if on level land, imagining his air thrustered shoes igniting from the chaos power flowing through his body, only never to let a neuron signal unleash that force he commanded to his clawed feet. His white and red metal air thruster shoes were meant for that; but his skates currently being used to push him across the ice would burn to ash off his feet if he let loose his chaos control.

Seven clacks further, speed achieved, his eighth and ninth foot fall with the blades to the ice, he slowed his running legs to a steady rhythm of landing his skates on the ice, pushing off with his leg and foot at an angled side before following through to his rear, letting what friction his bladed skates could find and grab at the smooth surface to push him forward before repeating it with the other foot.

It was the same method, the same technique he would use if he had to run at speeds he wondered if Sonic could keep pace with; if he'd removed his inhibitor rings to achieve those speeds.

His arms and hands swayed with each push he gave from his legs, his black tail doing the same as a counter balance. His red eyes kept tracing forward, seeing an imaginary red line to his left, the white wall that lined the oval ring to his right. The left hand turn to follow the oval was nearing, and his attention never strayed from it. He cut slightly to the right with a solid push of his left skate before leaning his body left, digging his right skate at the ice, then leaping his left skate back in front almost inline with his toes, before lifting and settling his right skate forward. And here came the delicate maneuver of crossing his right foot and scrapping it side ways, letting the sharp blade push him left, his unclothed body leaning to a forty, maybe fifty degree angle to counterbalance his turn, as if leaning his black vintage motorcycle, or his flame painted chopper, in a hard left turn. Then his left foot shot out, glided to the ice and found it, before his right foot used it as a pendulum to slide around and outwards.

Seven times he completed this action in the turn, the clack and scrapping sounds echoing through the large arena. Thus, empty...as he felt feelings intrude into him as he rounded the apex to the back stretch. With three forceful breaths, he settled back into the steady rhythm of blades to ice, legs starting to burn as they pushed him faster. The cold air penetrated through his black and red accented fur. His white fur chest wafted with the beating of the approximate twenty five mile per hour wind he created with every push. He tilted his left wrist, the black fit-bit saying his heart rate was coming to over a hundred and ten beats per minute. Have to make it more.

Eyes forward, his next turn closing...his thoughts catching up to him.

Despite how he was created, and despite his ageless body, he was still, after all, muscle, blood, bone, fur and quills. His given unnatural talents could only go so far. Skill and dedication to keeping his body strong, agile and healthy was still very much on him. Tower had explained it to him...and to Amanda Tower.

Closing on the turn, he did the same buttonhook slide to the right before leaning and carving his left turn with blade and body. He let his white gloved fingers on his left hand skim the surface of the ice; his momentum on this turn was stronger, making him lean further over toward the ice. Tail to the left, legs become tight with excursion, he held a slight smile from forming, the burn from his senses and limbs a wanting. A release. It was the closest he could get without breaking his moral barriers to go full send with his chaos control to feel completely alive and free. To go super if he held chaos emeralds. The very power that sent the Black Comic off the Earth.

And at the apex, like he would have come through if he were driving the Dark Reaper through turns at speed, he had exited the turn with his legs pushing harder. Again, looking to his fit-bit, his pulse had climbed to one-twenty.

And through the apex, his mind had drifted to the very woman, the very human that had taken him in when GUN had designated him more than just government property. More than just a weapon. The only thing that had kept him from falling further than his state of internal anarchy was his promise to his departed friend...

...Maria.

With his true enemies vanquished, and the Earth in relative peace, notwithstanding Eggman on the loose–an oversight that came back to haunt everyone three years later after defeating the Black Arms–he found himself at a juncture of internal strife with existentialism.

Who am I? The question to this day still haunted him. One he knew would haunt him for the internment of his agelessness.

The question had found him when Amanda Tower brought him to her home, a home he reminded himself was just thirty-three miles north of Station Square in a scenic mountain valley seemingly closed off to most from ignorance of its existence. Shadow was comfortable with that. Amanda and he may not have been the only inhabitants of the area, but she had been the only inhabitant of her large, rustic home...until he had stepped foot in it. The foyer had a large oak timber vaulted ceiling, three of the wooden braces that supported the obtuse angled roof held a large wagon wheel that had seven lights around the seven wooden spokes. He still remembered his neck straining to look up as he gawked at the new place he would reside. He would call home. Crude compared to the interior of the Space Colonial ARK that both Abraham and Amanda had also been residence of, yet the oak smell and the quietness the home brought birthed a silence in his mind that he soon discovered was a luxury for his soul to stretch out and rest in safety...to become the sanctuary for him to think upon himself. His future.

Crossing the line of his first lap, he pressed his legs harder, his heart rate doing the same.

And crossing from day to his first night not inside a military facility brought a foreboding notion when he slept in a bed he was sure had been meant for someone else. A future denied for the woman sleeping upstairs; his uncharted as he lay awake. And the feeling he possessed as he lay, starring up at the white ceiling, surrounded in a room filled with bookshelves, his soul was tormented with the notion of an unsecured peace he never knew he'd been missing.

The next morning saw Amanda not as the Commander Tower of a fighter squadron, nor the conscience of her older brother that she was honored he had done the right thing in not putting a .45 caliber bullet in Shadow's chest–or Shadow plunging the chaos spear into Abraham's–but Amanda as a caring soul. A guide; a shepherd to his. She had greeted him with eggs, ham and toast; tea, slightly sweetened, with fruit to his delight after the main course. And a morning that had been so new, he felt he had be reborn.

She had kept him away from the television and news. From the drama and the speculation. And from where Gerald and Maria had perished, leaving him in his stasis tube Maria had ejected him from the ARK, and had placed him in stasis until Eggman had found him, had woken him...had polluted his mind...Amanda did her best not to remind him of what lead him to where she had taken him to find tranquility. He had been amazed, looking back, he hadn't rubbed the skin on his lower jaw raw, or the fur from his ears away as much has he rubbed his hands in pensive thoughts as he searched for his meaning.

He shook off the thought, leaning into the first left turn around the rink on his second lap. His momentum was stronger, his legs beating on the ice faster as his feet found the surface, carving more cut-lines into it. He leaned further over, letting more of his gloved fingers touch the ice, his inhibitor ring dancing the in the rushing air, scrapping slightly on the surface. Through the apex he pushed with his fingers, sending him back up to race down the front straightaway. He settled in his current pace, checking his heart rate as he closed in to complete his second lap–one-thirty-one!

And his mind lapped to when Amanda had driven him to, at the time, Fort Collinsto meet with her brother. Abraham had been promoted to colonel, his own office new, and she and he had shut themselves in it. Shadow waited outside, his arms crossed over his bushy white fur chest, reading their lips. Their expressions gave him the emotional feedback of the near shouting match he could then start to hear through the wood door:

"He needs to know," he had read Amanda's lips, her eyes fiercely narrowed.

"It's still classified by the President! It's out of my hands, Amanda!"

"Bull-shit, Abe!" He saw their tempers flare, but then witnessed their stares to each other calm the fire after a moment. Like a long ago lesson from their parents meeting them to be civil siblings. "He was asking who he is. We can't help him answer that if he doesn't know what he is, first," Amanda pleaded with a caring stare.

A moment exchanged between them that neither spoke before Abraham launched out of his office, his back erected with anger and command, disappearing for a moment before returning with a large file that he gave to his sister. Her graying brunette hair nodded with her head, her hand reaching to her brother's arm, gently squeezing it as a thank-you.

They could read the paperwork about him only on the base, and only in a secured room. Abraham had even come in a few times, Shadow asking questions that he was sure the then colonel was weary to answer. Answers Shadow had concluded they all were uncovering together.

And so he began to find out what he truly was through the language of bureaucracy, science, and half-truths. For one, Eggman was right: the copies the fat human had made of Shadow were just that...robotic copies. But–there had been other black hedgehog's. Failures he had read. Twenty seven of them to be exact.

He was number twenty eight...the one to make it.

The biology of him, what construct Gerald and Black Doom had started with was what killed the angst he had known for the latter part of his waking life. The words, and Amanda's deciphering, became a weight he still shouldered he fathomed he would never be strong enough to go through life without it pressing at him.

He had had a mother.

The revelation came from a declassified folder the President had allowed after two weeks of digging and asking, once Abraham had come clean to his superiors, that he was letting the weapon know what he was. Everyone was worried about Shadow finding out; more so what he might have done if the truth had become too much. Yet, Amanda was his champion. His inhibitor to the swirl of undiscovered emotions.

All three had read the file together, Shadow staying mostly quiet in a serial trance that Amanda would break by taking his hand, Abraham squeezing his shoulder. Both drying his tears.

He read where his mother had come from a batch of islands in the far east. From a family of poor hedgehogs eking out a simple legacy, she had broken the strain and went to a university to become a scientist herself, her fur crimson color, her hair black. He felt she had been the reason for his red accents down his arms and quills, her lasting mark onto a son she never would know, or hold. Doom and Gerald were the reason for his black fur and red eyes; their holistic mark of their design of him. Yet, the question lay of what she had given to create him. What part of her was used to create a hedgehog named Shadow. That answer came from three pages that detailed how five embryos were extracted from her body. Embryos she had given up unconsciously as she lay dying after a fatal car accident. It had been her last wish from her will; to have her body donated to science upon her death.

And her wish was granted. She had no children of her own, dying at the age of twenty-seven from an inattentive driver running through a red light.

A question he had long imprinted on his soul rose from him. What would she feel knowing she was had a part in creating me...? Would she have been horrified? Would she have been proud of his accomplishments?

Her name was etched in his mind and soul from the text from the profile page...Akira Kumiko. Her first name was the latter, as her last name being Akira from the tradition and language she was from. And so, he had taken it, having a birth certificate made from Amanda's behest, and the name only marked on his GUN credential, and his heart.

Shadow Akira–Shadow the Hedgehog.

The turn for his life; and the left turn racing to him. He had found out what he was.

He kept the same angle of lean as he carved through the turn. The apex came faster than he liked, wanting it to last longer...or maybe for the feeling he held. The burn through his legs intensified, his heart rate kept steady around a hundred and thirty five beats. He had achieved his target heart rate.

Now he had to keep it there, breathing in as he let his ears twitch from the onslaught of air moving across them.

Crossing the line, he finished his third lap. Casting his eyes up and to the right, he saw the clock at the end of the bleachers read 5:20. He had maybe enough time to do his ten laps in the counter-clockwise direction before changing his direction to clock-wise to work his right turns. From there, he'd shower, brush quickly, and get his suit on before leaving the base so he make sure Hope stepped off the bus safely to school. Then back to CLIP–

He could still see Julie-Su, her pink fur visible in the passing street lamps, from the glow of the radio and GPS, the dim dash lights, the glistening of her eyes–even her replaced ocular–even though her head was turned away from him, entranced with the passing dark world as he set an easy cruise of a hundred and fifty miles per hour back to Station Square. He remembered when her crying had ceased after he wiped her mouth, still holding her in his arms to brace her from the crippling grief that he felt rampage through her body. Wojtek had helped him ease the echidna girl from the booth when her composure found her. She didn't seem embarrassed, nor even present, her eyes staring far-off as he and Wojtek helped her to her feet.

He'd seen such a look...seen it from his own reflections in the past. When he had come to terms with Maria's passing; when Abraham had driven him from Amanda's final resting place. After they both had placed drapes over the furniture and locked the empty house from where he had found his map to meaning...finding the route to his current constant.

"Well...I'm just beginning mine."

Julie's soft voice was the trigger for him to lean left, his right foot coming around, slamming to the ice before he scrapped it away from him to make the turn. Fingers to the surface, his vision turned with his cocked, leveled head to look through the turn. His blades clacked against the ice, the sharp slice with his right becoming more pronounced. His festering thoughts with it.

Why is she telling me these things?

She didn't seem to be one to open up from his first meeting with her when they were getting their weapons training at the range done. He remembered they both seemed hesitant to shake hands, him just being, well, himself. Her...she seemed scared of something, but it wasn't because of him. Just from the little she had told him of, well, him from her time–from her Mobius–he thought perhaps she had been worried of saying something wrong. Or...a memory? But from the conversation she seemed open for, there hadn't really been much of a history they had.

"But, yes, I think he had good reasons to smile–"

And what was it for that Shadow? Another Shadow...one who also lost his Maria? Possibly the same way? Had she saved him?

He had blinked from the rushing cold air drying his eyes to the find that he had completed the apex in the last turn, suddenly finding the start-finish line ahead of him. It jolted him to remember to keep his steady rhythm of clacks as he pushed on his skates forward on the back stretch–

"Do you know what a Soultouch, is?" Her voice, the way she said it, the murmur to herself, yet, she'd asked it with a conviction that had puzzled him. And her answer to him, the explantation of someone's soul...someone she loved, and evident that Knuckles had as well–trapped inside her. A love–a connection far deeper–

Her passenger.

A Knuckles from another time, another body. And he still resided in her in some way? He could not deny the grief and anguish he saw–what he felt through her as he held her to keep her from choking on the grapes that brought a flavor of happiness at first, but creating pain in just a blink. Yet, at the Havana Club, she had been dialed in–focused. To the point of almost being defiant to him. He'd seen traits of this from Sonic in a cockiness in an attempt to out shine him. Or even from their Knuckles when Shadow would make mention of something the red echidna should do.

But what Julie had done the night before, taking his drink and gulping a sizable portion down before tightening her jaw, then smiling as she committed on the taste and burn of the rum and coke...there was no swagger or mirth of chauvinistic malice from her impulsive action. No–for she was in the same state he had pulled himself out of with the help of Amanda and Abraham nearly five years ago. She was nearing the departure line to succumb to an inner-anarchy...only having caution preventing her from deciding if she could live with herself if she stepped over the line. He knew this well.

He had once been at that same line, at that same juncture.

"No...I need you to be a mentor to her," came Abraham Tower's subtle, yet commanding voice from yesterday.

Like your sister had been to me?

The question was left when he leaned into the final turn. Clack! Scrape! Clack! Scrape! His feet hurried now that he thought he felt his right skate touch his inner calf. Thus far the ice and his blades were keeping up. Yet, this pass through the turn was quick, noticing the pattern in his last pass was not as uniform as before from the cut lines and curves in the ice. Nevertheless, he pressed up with his fingers, keeping his neurons in his head at bay, least he fire a chaos burst from the exposed skin pads of his feet in his ice skates, and completed the apex with a drift of momentum close to the side of the passing walled partition.

Harder. Faster. His heart was becoming a hammer at his chest wall. His legs were starting to burn hotter from the fast excursion, his stomach beginning to moan with hunger. It switched a gear in his thinking, figuring he would grab a meal at the base chow-hall on his walk to the Reaper. He didn't like to eat in the car...but he feared he was about to make an exception–

He looked over to his right as he pressed faster, and his mind found the blue dress and soft white skin and features of Maria sitting a few rows up in the center of the empty arena, a smile tugged at her rose colored cheeks.

And beside her, another blonde girl, her face a little more angular than Maria's, she wearing a pink colored t-shirt under a set of denim overalls. Her smile...knowing, welcoming. And her hand giving him a wave. It nearly ceased his pumping heart.

"He is my passenger." He swallowed when Julie's voice came to him as he crossed the line to begin his fifth lap. "He's right behind me as I'm trying to drive forward, talking to me, begging me to look back..."

And so had he, casting his head behind him to see if Maria and Hope were still there, watching him. Instead of the young eyes and blonde hair, he only saw an older woman, her dark navy blue uniform neat and firm, her greying hair and weathered eyes watching him pass instead.

And he let a whisper escape from his heavy lungs."I'm sorry?"

Clack!

Clack!

He brought his eyes forward with another heavy push from his right leg only to find he had missed his mark to button hook–to slow–to lean. He thrust his right leg around, brought his body over as quick as he could as a wall of white neared him. His blade landed right, but when he tried to slide it over to push him into the left hand turn, the skate slide out from under him. He felt the cold, sharp pain hammer at his left side, his arm outstretched in time to not become folded under himwhen his body met the ice rink. He had just enough wherewithal from the slamming of his body, to his fur bunching up from his outer calf, his thigh and waist and side to tuck his legs in before his momentum slammed him up against the white partition. The steady rhythmic clacks and scrapes were replaced with a heavy thud as his body and arms collided, only the frictionless surface let him slide back from the force some inches away. It was here when all motion had stopped that he felt the pain of his limbs and side ache with every heavy intake of breath. Steam leapt from his mouth with every exhale, his eyes searching for his soul now scattered around him.

For a moment, he let the cold ice take him. No thought crept in or out; not even to command him to check his fit-bit, for he knew his heart was above a hundred and forty beats. He felt it with every throb of pain; he swear he could hear it through his ears.

Steadying his breathing, he steadied his hands out in front of him, slowly climbing back to his skates by pushing up from the ice and finding a hold and balance with the tip of his baded skates. Equilibrium was found as he was hunched himself over, his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths that eased the stitch in his side.

"Ha–Ha–Ha–Ha!"

The high digital laughter spurred the black hedgehog's head up, his right hand finding the ledge of the partition to hold onto as he scanned where the mocking voice was coming from.

"You were too fast into the turn! Too much carried momentum over the frictionless surface, and the over compensated lean created the result of you falling! Good thing the wall was there to stop you!"

At the other end of the arena from the open double doors to the locker rooms and the lobby of former Winter Olympic ice rink that was now part of Fort Amanda, stood the black and red and grey round hulk of the former E-100 series Badnick droid. The yellow painted head housed the piecing red oculars, its black broad shoulders seemingly dangling the large black and yellow painted arms that for the moment possessed three claw like appendages that Shadow knew full well could retract and produce a six barrel rotating blaster from each arm. On the driods right shoulder was the symbol painted in red that Shadow was about to announce the name it represented.

"Thanks for the observation, Omega!" He didn't have to project his voice much. The echo of the arena carried his annoyance just fine.

The droid let out a husky digital voice, his head rotating some to gather his surrounds as he spoke. "It's only to aid you!" The droid took one heavy step forward then stopped. "General Tower has been trying to contact you. Ordered me to–as he said–go fetch you and help find your misplaced phone!"

Shadow brought his head down before pushing off with his right skate towards the closed door on the half-wall to exit the rink. "It's not misplaced," he replied in a slight growl.

Omega took three more steps forward. "Did my sarcasm not come out clear?"

Shadow didn't reply, skating to the door, which he used to stop him, open it and step through. Like balancing on rebar, he gently stepped onto the black carpet to the bench seat where he had his piled grey GUN logo hoodie and black track suit pants. Below them was his white air thrustered shoes, the red tongues of the special socks sticking out. Sifting through the pockets, he found his Cyrptex phone and the small black case for his ear buds. Omega had just walked up beside him when he placed an earbud in his right ear, unlocked the phone with his pass-key, and saw Tower had been trying to calling him for almost fifteen minutes, the clock on the phone reading 5:46. Touching the missed call icon, it dialed the General's number. It only took two digital rings before Tower's voice came through.

"There you are...good morning."

He answered in a breathless, lean voice. "Morning, sir."

"Figured you be in the arena," Tower said with even voice. He wasn't angry at him for not keeping the fit-bit tied to his phone. Shadow wanted the solace this morning. "You generally speed blade on the weekends." Which he does. No traffic in the mornings so he could practice his footwork around narrow and winding, unpredictable streets to keep his reaction cognition sharp on his roller blades. Tuesdays and Sundays he dedicated to strength training. Monday's he was at the range; last Monday being where he met Julie-Su for the first time, letting her try his 1911 when she asked about it. And every two weeks on a Saturday evening he would drop himself in his stasis tube to recharge through the synthetic nutrients, which he would sleep through. He didn't necessarily have to do this, but it had become a rejuvenating ritual to arching muscles, and replenish minerals and vitamins where natural foods couldn't.

"How was the drive home?"

Shadow let his breathing ease before he spoke, his stare falling between sections twenty-four and twenty- five on the third level of the bleachers. "Uneventful," he half lied. If Julie was this open to him, she had to be open to Tower as well. Right?

"What time did you come in?"

An inhale of anticipation of something coming from the General. "I think after midnight," he answered.

"Did you see the emergency lights on the south end of town?"

They both had. It was the thing that seemed to grab Julie from her numbness. "Yes. But it was far off. We were coming through the tunnel before the west end exit."

Tower held a pause, Shadow holding his breath, eyes casting up to the tall driod to his right. "I figure'd I tell you before you heard it from the press when they get a hold of the details." He heard him swallow through the earpiece. "Rouge the Bat was abducted last night from her limo on Broadway Avenue."

Just the mere mention of the white furred and peached skinned bat made his heart come to an abrupt stop in his chest. "What!?"

"That's why I'm telling you. I know you two worked together during the Egg War and the Metal Virus fiasco. We still have her as an asset but she's been in cold status now for over a year."

"What happened?" he nearly blurted out, fighting to keep his rear emotions in check.

"So far it looks like it was a coordinated attack on her security motorcade. Most of the team is heading over there now to assist with Station Square's finest in the investigation. You will be meeting miss Su there."

He breathed in, looking up at the clock on the far end of the arena. "Give me the pin-drop and I'll be there as soon as possible–"

"Negative," came Tower's firm voice. It made Shadow twitch his left ear. "I'm picking up Komi-Ko soon. Brass is getting Rykor and miss Lu. You will meet them and Remington after you make sure Thumbtack is safely off the bus."

His eyes widen, mouth nearly a gap when Tower's word drove into him. For a moment he had to command himself to breath. Hope has a codename!?

"Finish your workout. I'll see you later today. Do your job, Shadow."

The Major General's voice was fatherly, more so than he had heard him come across in the turbulent seven years he had known him. It had been a stunning hit that landed in an awkward part of his soul. With it, he fought for the question that was now burning in his mind to ask. He let his lips open, his breath churning nearly as fire–

The line went dead before he could speak.

He hid the scowl from his face, though he stared at the black screen that read DISCONNECTED with a furrowed brow of distrust. Had Tower said something he wasn't suppose to hear? What was he hiding with–

"Is something not agreeable?"

Shadow turned to Omega, the hedgehog still holding his phone in his hand. He thought to lie, but he knew the former Badnik could easily deduce if he did. His rogue programing gave him a dry sense of humor that Shadow was certain the driod truly didn't make it out to be. "Yes...but it's not of your concern," he said in a soft tone, doing his best not to sound rude to his mechanical friend. But he sighed, looking on to the large driod. "Rouge has been taken."

Omega straightened on his servo legs. "What!? We must go out and find her! And of course, obliterate those who abducted her!"

Omega began to retract his mechanical fingers inside his arms, Shadow knowing the driod was changing them out to his blasters. He turned with a stern look. "No! I'm going when I can and I'll help the Police and our new team. Stay here." He shifted in his stance, placing his phone down on his clothes. From there, he leaned down to start untying his skates. "What do they have you doing today?" he asked.

The driod leaned back, then bent down to Shadow. "I've been ordered to try a new set of blasters, but they are cartridge based firearms instead. Something ancient like your model One-Nine-One-One handgun." Shadow raised an barbing eye to him. "If you could control your chaos power better–"

"No! If Section Nine would make a better blaster prototype, then I would consider it."

"But instead, you have them create a new model One-Nine-One-One pistol in ten millimeter. I hope you have spares, considering the motor pool keeps losing their ten-millimeter sockets. It seems anything with a ten-millimeter designation becomes missing in short order."

Shadow spun ever slightly to sit on his clothes to pry his skates off his feet. Looking down, he saw the bare metal chips from the red paint on his air thruster shoes, reminding him he would need to place another order for a new set possibly soon. And what happens when Section Nine is gone...what then?

"You look as if you are about to leak from your eyes."

This brought Shadow's face up to Omega, giving him a perturbed stare as he sat to take off his skates. "What do you mean by that?" Though, he knew exactly what the driod meant.

"Just an observation. Something does seem to be troubling you...more so than you're natural demeanor."

He only shook his head. "I'm fine, Omega. Just things have been..." He trailed off, looking down as he pulled his last skate from his left foot, seeing both of his five toed feet, black fur ceasing where they began, "interesting the past week."

"Oh–are you talking about those new Islanders that have appeared recently. Witnessed one the other day. He looked like Knuckles, but his fur was a dark red."

"That would be Captain Rykor," Shadow pointed out, sliding his thruster shoes over to his feet.

"Well...he seems to have Brass' attention and affirmation. What of the female with the cybernetic prosthesis?"

Again, he sighed. "That is Captain Julie-Su...and Tower has me as her partner."

The driod leaned back on it's servos. "She seems capable. Her stride has confidence from what I observed of her."

This Shadow gave a nod to, but back tracked to something Omega had mentioned in order to change the subject as he slipped on his thruster shoes. "So, what are they having you do today?"

"Testing a new set of multi-barrel guns and ammunition, plus working on my targeting program. I surmise they are wanting to see if I can shoot aircraft from the sky."

"That would be a nice capability."

"But where am I to store all the linked ammunition, Shadow? My battery storage takes up most of my frame.I will deplete all three-thousand rounds in under fifteen seconds."

Shadow stood up, taking his clothes in one arm after placing his phone and earbud in the pocket of his pants, before reaching down to his skates. "I'm sure Section Nine will come up with something."

"I truly hope so. But, after they are done, I get my barrels swabbed clean. It's such a joy a driod can have with people clinging around you to clean your barrels of doom!"

Shadow nearly swallow what spit he had in his mouth. He wasn't entirely sure Omega was being serious, or this was another vein attempt of humor. And a thought trickled to him with a scant smile over his lips. "Do you care if it's male or female service members, Omega."

The driod leaned over to him, his red digital eyes meeting Shadow's. "I have no preference. Just as long as they clean and lube the barrels and gears to specification...this unit really doesn't care. Clean guns makes me an agreeable driod."

Shadow could not hold the small laugh. Omega had been serious, but still working on his sense of humor. "Omega, you are a good friend."

"And you, as well, black hedgehog of chaos." The driod turned as if ready to guide Shadow to the double doors to the locker room. "Please, have good luck in finding Rouge. Wish I could be of service."

"I will send for you if it gets too heavy."

"I will be on stand-by..." Shadow looked up to Omega, the driod's digital stare only breaking and turning down to him. "Do you think this female echidna Captain will also be a friend?"

Shadow...he had not thought of this. How could he. Friend's hadn't come easy...mostly his fear that they would pass, and he wouldn't. "I don't know, Omega."

"And what was her name again...?"

Julie-Su had managed to open her apartment door without spilling her coffee or dropping her black backpack, exchanging it from her brown leather case she used the other day. Something told her from Remington's call, and his subsequent call that he was waiting outside that something was very different about today. Possibly lot's of traveling...and hopefully no more killing. That was something she never had entertained she would have done, much less witness, on her first full day. Not to mention in a full, half toga dress. And she most certainly didn't want to engage someone in the attire she picked out this morning: a black, nearly sleeveless blouse, closed up except showing her clavicle, with three imitation pearl buttons that were almost as large as her eyes, with a broad teal stripe going across her chest. Bra, panties, and a loose skirt that came down to her knees, she whispered a prayer when she turned and stabbed at the closing door to her apartment with her foot to keep from shutting that supply would have her grey battle dress uniform ready at least today. She did sigh, however, knowing she would still have to wear business attire to keep her personal security and operation security appearance up. Brass and Tower had been adamant to check her surroundings, and not to draw attention to herself. Her appearance and presence, they advised her, was a big part of it. Don't dress to catch someone's lustful for either her figure, or her possessions. She may feel safe as Earth had a relative peace, even with Eggman less of a threat being behind bars.

In all honesty she admitted to herself, the mission she and the rest were a part of what kept her checking her back. And in this case, it was a lesson that she had been instructed to do that made her squat down at the ajar door, placing her backpack and coffee on the cheap brown carpet of the second floor hallway of her and Saffron's apartment complex, she reached in to the top flap of her nylon backpack, and pulled out a small sliver of pink paper no longer than her pinky finger, and pinched it in her right thumb and index finger as she took the handle of the door with her left. Once in place, she slowly started to shut the door on her tell–

A high soprano voice shot around the white hallway, Julie looking right to see the coming sun through the two windows down the right side shining on the red furred cat, her long black hair braided, her chest covered in a halter top, her navel exposed, her legs concealed in a pair of weathered form fitted jeans.

"Okay, gang! Today, we'll, like, go to the park and see how this new mascara holds up to the sun."

Julie held her pose, the girl cat shutting her door, holding her phone up to her face as she spoke to it. She had not had time, or even motivation to meet her new neighbors, her only concern being Saffron. She didn't have a choice in where GUN had put her, or the furnishings she got; just a bed, a simple cloth couch, two lamps, two end tables, cookware, a coffee maker she and Saffron were so thankful for, and a bed she decided not to make after using the ledge of the frame to hold her in place to do her crunches as Saffron made coffee and even breakfast instead of her. Which meant she didn't have a choice if her neighbor two doors down seemed to be a girl in a feverish pursuit of her vanity. Just the mere fact she was holding up one of those square mobile phones and talking to it was all the evidence Julie needed.

"And from there, we'll see if the new body spray can attract any of the single chads!"

A choirs of female whoops and ahs came from the speaker as the cat turned and began walking toward Julie. Her red tail flicked, her hips thrusting side to side with every step. Her eyes stuck on the screen. So much so the girl nearly stepped on Julie-Su when she came a few inches from her.

"Oh," came the surprised eye and high voice. "Sorry! Didn't see you there–"

The girl's voice may have been exaggerated before she cut herself off, but the shocked look she gave Julie was not. The girl had green eyes, and they were scouring up and down Julie's body; she could feel them laying on her cybernetic arm, her lock, the wires and metal bands, and lastly her replaced left eye with the small scar and blemish from her blinking eyelid and socket. Julie kept her mouth closed as she herd the latch shut on her door. For a small moment, the two kept their stares on one another.

Then, the cat smiled before she turned her body, along with her phone, and pointed it down to Julie. The pink echidna could see her image on the screen as it was being real-time recorded.

"Cool Cyberpunk look, there, chick!"

Julie neither frowned or smiled, holding a her face even, though a boiling anger was starting to foam in her. "Uh...thanks," she said in a weird, sheepish manner. She was about to release her hand and fingers from the door and her tell, to stand, to say something, but the girl stopped her cold.

"Oh, hey everyone, this is my new neighbor. She and another girl moved in. Say hi, everyone."

Julie witness a small block of multiple screens moving, waving, saying "hi" and "hello"...and she was certain they were all girls.

Then, one of the cat's fans said something through the feed. "Oh, she looks like she fought in the war and lost her arm. I think she's a veteran."

And the red furred cat's mouth dropped with the realization, one Julie was about to stop her from saying.

She had no chance.

"Oh, God. I'm so sorry–" The girl closed her eyes, but kept her phone turned to have some frame of her in it with Julie so the other's could see. Her eye's may have been sincere, but Julie could hear the pressure to signal her social virtue exhume from her lips that Julie felt didn't seem quiet genuine. "–Thank you for your service!"

Julie held what she hoped what was a genuine smile, but felt it came more out as embarrassment than posture of gratitude. Training and mission statement called for her response, and she shyly replied, "Um...thanks. Don't mention it." She was still over her haunches, her thighs beginning to burn along with her abs from the small morning workout she was able to do before she showered and ate with Saffron.

"Oh, no problem, girl. Anyways–" The cat turned back to her phone "say bye, everyone."

Julie heard the byes along with more "thank you for your service" before the cat turned and moved away from her, going past Saffron's door before turning down the sunlit stairwell and disappearing, still talking to her phone.

"I'm not getting one of those," Julie announced to herself with a grudging voice. "No, fucking way!"

Grabbing her pack, and the most important thing, her tumbler full of coffee that was devoid of cream and sugar, she stood up, but not before she eyed the pink sliver of paper close to the bottom edge of the door. She could barely see it. Tilting her head, she hoped she could remember to check it that it was still there when she return back in the evening. It would tell her someone had entered her apartment while she had been gone if she found it missing, or on the floor. She would then greet them with her pistol out, ready to kill them if need be.

Turning, she headed to the stairwell, knowing Remington and Saffron were waiting in the black SUV GUN had given the former constable.

And she shook her head, the cat's voice rolling in her conscience, along with Julie's screams from a far away planet.

"Thank you for my service?"