Chapter 1: No. Mr Eggman. I quit!
The black hedgehog stood silently at his assigned post outside a large laboratory, keeping watch in the corridor with his ever vigilant crimson eyes which could see far further than those of any human eyes.
He felt the weight of the world upon his shoulders. He felt tears welling up in his eyes which he could somehow not cry out. His teeth began instead to grate compulsively and he balled his fist and stamped his foot in a vain attempt to control the increasingly violent movements his body was making without his permission.
He had experienced these sensations for some time now.
It was hard work standing guard over his leader Eggman's secret base. Hard work was something that never bothered the black hedgehog created to be the ultimate life form and science's greatest gift to mankind, but Shadow Robotnik had lately been feeling very much under the weather.
Though a flawless photographic memory was just one of Shadow's many gifts, it was impossible for Shadow to pinpoint the exact moment in time where these wholly illogical feelings had began to surface within him. He had been through this routine for as long as he could remember, and this was including in his previous life which had ended more than fifty years ago by now.
Back when he first created in a laboratory in a space station far above Earth known as Space Colony A.R.K, he had been created with two purposes. Keeping his creator's young and naive daughter Maria happy was one of them. Smiting down any would-be invaders who intended harm upon Maria and any resident of A.R.K was his other purpose.
In fact it could be stated that the sweet and joyous time he was able to spend with Maria establishing a deep and meaningful relationship with her, was dwarved by the sheer amount of long and gruelling hours he was forced to spend taking punches at a practice dummy, or charging chaos energy in his hands which he would then discharge at a dartboard on a wall.
And when he was not bogged down with so much training that his creator Professor Gerald Robotnik had forced upon him, he was mostly assigned to guard duty in which he had no choice but to patrol the entire perimeter of the massive maze of metal which he resided in. He even had to go out into space so he could check above and under the hull of A.R.K just to ensure there were no intruders coming to attack it or sneak in without his knowledge.
It was gruelling work, but he always had his play-dates with his one true friend Maria to look forward to when the shift was over and Gerald ascertained that the A.R.K would be safe for another day.
That was, until "they" came.
"They" referred to a truly irredeemable army of greedy mercenaries only out to make a quick buck pilfering what meagre riches were held abroad the space colony. A space colony which was built as a safe haven for Earth dwellers who had nowhere else to go and no loved ones to turn to.
"They" saw the operation which destroyed Shadow's whole purpose in life as nothing more than a quick paycheque which would net them a positive mention at their next pay review.
"They" deemed Maria, Gerald and Shadow himself as nothing more than three easy targets which could be added to their kill count, so as to increase their chances of earning a medal of honor at their next major military procession by just the tiniest fraction of a percent.
For as horrible as their atrocities would turn out to be, "they" were only a symptom of Earth's growing problems and not the direct cause of them. The loyal lapdogs of a totalitarian world government which had declared the virtues of chivalry and friendship as obselete.
Shadow did not like to think about what happened in the final moments of his previous life, before he was found fifty years later in a space capsule in which he'd been cryogenically preserved with the most highly advanced technology available to all humankind.
Suffice to say that all his loved ones were slaughtered before his eyes one at a time, and he could do nothing more than look on in abject terror and despair.
The screams he let out were so loud, that it would take no less than five extensive operations by his new employer to repair his badly damaged vocal cords and render him able to speak properly again.
Shadow preferred not to remember these things now. The truth of his past which was once his driving force motivating him to get out of bed every morning to obey his new master's whims, had become the terrible realization he wish he'd never gotten to grips with. A forbidden fruit he should never have nibbled the first bite from.
Learning the truth about himself, Maria and Gerald one piece at a time had not bought him the peace or new lease on his life which Shadow deeply desired. It had instead made him even more cynical and jaded than he ever had been before.
Even if Maria had been a normal and healthy young girl not cursed with an incredibly painful genetic disorder which her grandfather spent his entire life striving to cure her from, she would still be seven-two this year if she was alive now.
Gerald Robotnik was seventy five at the time of the A.R.K incident which claimed his granddaughter's life and bought him behind bars, where he died shortly afterwards when one of his captors showed him the corpse of his deceased granddaughter Maria.
He had already suffered two heart attacks and was beginning to express the early signs of dementia, alzheimers and parkingsons. The perfect storm of terminal illnesses which were part and parcel of living to a ripe old age. The loss of Maria and the destruction of A.R.K; his beloved home had broken the salty old codger's heart.
Shadow could only hope that Gerald's belief of a heavenly afterlife was real so that he and Maria could at least reunite in heaven.
But even if heaven was real, Shadow himself knew that he had no hope of going there himself.
Shadow's Chaos abilities allowed his body cells to repair themselves from almost any trauma they sustained, making his body essentially unbreakable. Which made him immortal. Unable to age like other living creatures, and unable to die a natural death with age.
It was his blessing and his curse. His freedom and his captivity.
While it was true that Shadow could in fact kill himself if he really tried, he never found the heart to end his own life.
Along with all the other lessons on good conduct and morality that his creator Gerald had taught him, Shadow had also been taught that suicide was dishonorable and that life was a precious gift that should not be pointlessly thrown away for petty reasons like self-pity.
Or in Gerald's exact words "Heaven had no room for self-destroyers."
So Shadow continued to endure his dreary and joyless existence. He kept on sucking up to Eggman and pretending to have some degree of sympathy for his "partner" and cohort Rouge the bat, even though he trusted her about as much as he trusted a poisonous viper which had not eaten in three days.
All Shadow had ever longed for was meaning and purpose. He believed long ago that finding out the whole truth about his past would provide him with these two sacred feelings. But now that he knew everything from how he was made to how he alone survived the war that destroyed his interstellar home, he only felt drained of the will to go any further.
Or put more simply, he peered into his own truth and was transformed but not for the better.
A new emotion blazed within the black hedgehog as he stormed towards Eggman's office in a huff. Rage in it's most undiluted form. He had had it with long days spent patrolling an dull and empty corridor with nothing interesting to look at. He had gone on enough morally dubious missions where he was forced to relive the pain of his own past mistakes over and over again.
He had spent enough awkward and uncomfortable time with a certain batty white bat to know that he had no future with her. That he was merely her plaything to be thrown aside when he outlived his usefulness.
She had made the process of finding out the truth of his past as slow and painful as possible for him, and he had never forgiven her for this crime.
...
"Eggman. I'm done."
"Yes Shadow. You're shift is over and now I want you to..."
"You misunderstand me, Egg... Eggman. I no longer want to work for you."
"Heh. Heh. Hahahahaha! Now that's a good one Shadow. You? Not work for me? Need I remind you Shadow that you would still be rotting away in that capsule filled with Chaos fluid if it were not for my timely intervention? That it was I who gave you a second chance at life after my batty grandfather left you to die a slow and painful death alone and forgotten?"
"I WOULD RATHER DIE THAN BE LIKE YOU!" Shadow screeched, causing a small and jagged crack to appear on the plate glass windows in the small and cozy office. He gnashed his teeth and stamped his left foot with so much force that the entire room shook briefly and Eggman was forced to cover his ears.
"Ever since the day I was freed from my capsule, I have felt no love, no joy and no meaning." Shadow continued, staring daggers at his former surrogate father. "I have only felt sick, cheated and abused. I have only been put through the same daily six to ten routine over and over and over again."
"That's not true, Shady-boo. We've gone on plenty of exciting adventures together too." A third sultry voice chimed in as a white anthropomorphic bat strode into the room dressed in the most garish and gaudy outfit imaginable. "Have you really forgotten all those fun times?"
"Fun times in which I'm forced to kill people who've done nothing wrong, and steal from honest labourers who don't deserve to be stolen from!" Shadow hissed in reply, his previously loud voice suddenly soft and dangerous as he battled to get his feelings under control before his stoic image was wholly tarnished.
"Oh come on, Shadow. It was just a few gems. Don't be so hoity-toity. It's not like we were stealing food from starving children in..."
"Gems which didn't belong to you and gems you used to garnish your own personal collection no matter how much it would hurt the people you stole from." Shadow murmured, ruthlessly disregarding Rouge's attempt to humanize her inhumane actions. "Don't try play the good girl you're not, Rouge. Your sly tongue won't work on me. Not anymore."
"Oh. I'm the crook am I!?" Rouge angrily retorted, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes. "Need I remind you Shadow that it was I who gave you all the information you now know about your past on A.R.K and your time with Maria?"
"Quite so. Quite so." Eggman added patiently from the sidelines.
What happened next was a complete shock to both the thieving white bat and the meglomaniacal and morbidly obese human scientist.
Shadow created a ball of pure chaos energy in his hand and discharged it at the wall nearest to where Rouge was now standing.
It exploded into a ball of green flames, causing Rouge to recoil in shock as she desperately beat her wings to try and put out the small speck of fire which had come in contact with them.
"Don't you dare bring Maria's good name into this." He ordered her sternly, his voice hardly louder than a whisper. "Don't you dare pretend that you helped me when you tried to keep me in the dark about my past for as long as humanly possible."
He shifted his gaze so as to be able to see the panicked reactions on both his teammates sweating faces.
"And don't either of you pretend you did me any kind of favor, when I could have gotten the same information if I just went along with that nice boy Chris and the rest of his friends."
"You're still obsessed with that snotty little brat who can't go two minutes without crying out for his mama? You're pathetic." Rouge nonchalantly purred as she stifled a laugh.
"I think you're the one whose pathetic." Shadow curtly replied. "That boy may not have been perfect. But he knew what love was. As did Sonic and the rest of their team. So for your own sake Rouge, I would stop right now before you say something you really regret."
"If you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you." Eggman wearily stated, now clearly knowing that this was a battle he could not win and that it was best to cut his losses. "But don't come crying up to me when you once again find yourself not knowing that to do with the rest of your days."
"But Eggy..." Rouge gasped before the fat scientist held up a palm in a concillatory gesture of peace.
"Now now Rouge. Be respectful. Shadow's decision to leave is his and his alone. And in a way, I have to applaud his tenacity. Let him go his way and when he finds out how wrong he is about not needing us in his life, he's sure to come crawling back begging for another chance."
"Pfft. Fine." Rouge reluctantly stated, as a single faint tear trickled down her hard face.
She turned back to Shadow.
"Be that way then! Run. Run away Shadow, and never return. I hope you get hit by a bus and that it breaks every bone in your body twice over. I hope you get into deep trouble and locked in the deepest, darkest prison for the rest of your immortal life. I hope that you lose every single one of the new friends you make so that you'll be alone forever. Go Shadow. GO!"
Shadow listened to Rouge's rant in complete silence, before returning her gaze with his own as the ghost of a smile came to his face and left it.
"If that's what you want." He replied as he began to make his way to the doorway leading out of the office as Eggman watched with dignified stoicism uncharacteristic for a power-hungry maniac, and Rouge turned her face to the wall so as not to let either Eggman or Shadow see the flood of salty tears raining bitterly down her cheeks like waterfalls.
Both of them believed that this would be the last they'd see of their indentured servant, but then Shadow turned to look at Rouge and Rouge alone one final time; just as Rouge had wiped the last of her tears away and stopped looking at the wall.
"You really could have convinced me to stay here if you were nice to me, Rouge. But at the end of the day, you really are no different to the other members of G.U.N. You're just as greedy, vain and pretentious as the gunmen who killed my family in cold blood. I suppose Rouge, once a G.U.N, always a G.U.N. Think about that Rouge, you daughter of a gun."
Then he turned his back once more and sped away, not even giving Rouge time to formulate a response to his closing sermon, which would echo in her mind for the rest of eternity. Rouge would go to bed that night with nightmares which would cause her to wake up sweating all over at midnight.
"He'll be back. He's just bluffing and hoping to scare us into submission, but I won't fall for his pathetic tricks." Eggman confidently said as the sound of Shadow's footsteps died away.
Rouge could not bring herself to reply. She flew madly out of the office like a bat out of hell, bumping into walls and crashing into the ceiling several times midair.
When she had gotten a safe distance away from the oppresive metal fortress that was Eggman's newest base of operations, she began to kick madly at a coconut tree on the beach of the tropical island the base was located on.
She screeched with the fury of a thousand banshees and bashed at the trunk of the large and healthy tree as wild as a harpy. She was so enraged that she didn't even notice when a large and ripe coconut fell from the tree as a result of all her kicking.
It plummeted through the air and struck Rouge squarely in the middle of her skull.
"Y,you b,belong to me S,Shadow. I,I'll h,have y,you back!" Rouge moaned weakly as she passed out.
...
Shadow dashed as quickly as his legs would carry him. He was eager to be rid of his connection to team dark as soon as possible.
He swore he could hear the beautiful music of Station square ringing in his ears, and that it was getting louder by the second. It drew him in like a moth drawn to a flame. He felt that the quicker he got there, the quicker he could begin his long and difficult journey of reforming himself into a better person or hedgehog in his case.
Pleasure filled his heart and soul with every block of Washington DC he sped past, but so too did a growing sense of guilt and shame.
Shadow should never have left Christopher Thorndyke behind so hastily. Not when the lonely young heir to the three and a half billion dollar Thorndyke fortune had treated him with such unparalleled compassion.
Shadow looked down at his gloved hands as he ran. He could still see the fold and crease in his left glove, which was formed when he gave Christopher a very painful left hook to the young human boy's fragile chin. A blow that almost killed him.
Any reasonable human being would have labelled Shadow public enemy number one for that one stunt alone, but Christopher (Or "Chris" as he preferred everyone call him) chose instead to extend the olive branch of forgiveness to Shadow. Chris was not afraid of Shadow. Since Chris had clearly withstood far worse abuse in whatever tragic past had molded him into the depressed state he was in when Shadow first met him.
Chris was Shadow's guiding light. He reminded Shadow of the promise he made to Maria, and was a better influence to the black hedgehog than Rouge and Eggman ever were.
Above all else, Chris understood the pain of having a disability. While he was seemingly physically healthy unlike Maria who suffered from a seemingly incurable genetic disorder known only as N.I.D.S (Neuro-immunuo deficiency syndrome), Chris instead had a mental handicap which he could also not cure himself of.
The bullies in Chris's school called it "Chris the coward being a wuss". Chris himself called it clinical depression.
More specifically, passive-dependency syndrome.
Passive-dependency syndrome was a neurological disorder that was most common in children and adults who grew up in the absence of their mum and dad. Gerald Robotnik himself had found a similar albeit more benign version of this trait in Maria near the end of their time together, as he began to give Shadow more hours each day standing on guard duty or training Shadow in harnessing his Chaos abilities to greater effect.
Sufferers of this disorder were desperate to never be left alone with their own thoughts. They were incredibly submissive to those whom they percieved to be more talented than themselves. They had no real hobbies and instead only wanted to join in on what other people were doing.
This was because they lacked any real identiy of their own, as a result of their human needs going unmet in their formative years when they were most vulnerable to being traumatized for life. Having been abandoned in infancy and forced to figure life out on their own in cold silence, passive-dependent people starved for human interaction of any kind.
They could not stand being alone. They were too quick to trust strangers for their own good. And they took the prospect of abandonment very poorly.
Maria had been left alone for increasingly long periods of time near the end of her short life. Some of A.R.K's citizens began to see her as a health hazard as her N.I.D.S worsened. Others began to turn their attention from Maria to the strong and healthy citizens which were whole.
Gerald began devoting more and more of his limited lifetime to his research, and that meant leaving Maria alone for extended periods of time. All while Shadow was pressured into training harder and harder. Like the ninjas in Naruto or the EVA pilots in Evangelion.
Maria had an IQ of 298. She was a quiet and reserved individual who preferred to listen to the thoughts of others rather than speak her own. She was unselfish. She had no fear of an early death, for she treasured each and every day.
All this being said; Maria still suffered as a result of Gerald and Shadow being away from her. She began to experience more violent coughing fits. She lost her appetite. Her already pale skin turned even whiter with each time Shadow saw her again.
None of this was a result of her NIDS; which was in fact being brought under control by a new experimental brand of immunue-suppresant drugs which allowed Maria to temporarily stop her own immune system from harming itself. Even though X-ray scans and surgial explorations seemed to show Maria's body strengthening as a result of these newly developed medicines, Shadow and Gerald both knew that she was only getting weaker.
What they did not know was that they caused Maria's sickness by leaving her alone more often.
Shadow's experience of seeing Maria visibly shrivel up before his eyes as a result of her isolation from human contact allowed him to not only understand Chris, but to feel exactly the same way as him.
Abandonment was no laughing matter. It was a primal human fear along the same vein as hunger and thirst.
Shadow wished nothing more than to be welcomed as a guest to the Thorndyke manor. To eat the delicious and healthy food that Ella the maid and Tanaka the butler cooked for the Sonic team and Chris. To sleep in a nice and comfy bed in a quiet area with no noise, as opposed to the itchy bunk bed Eggman gave him.
But above all else; Shadow fervently desired to become the seventh ranger of the Sonic team. Member seventh; counting Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and their new human friend Chris.
He wanted to feel what it was really like to be fighting on the side of good for a change. To know that he was risking his life for a worthy cause. To have friends to pick him up when he fell down. To have teammates he could really trust.
Shadow found himself at the big, bright gates leading into the Thorndyke manor, surrounded by a gilded fence of brass which sparkled brightly in the midday sun.
Beyond this thin fence which was clearly more for decorative rather than security purposes, lay a vast and well-tended garden filled with the most exotic and beautiful flowers Shadow had ever set eyes on.
Maria would have a field day if she were alive to see so many rare and distinctive plants in one place. But Shadow forced himself to push aside his memories of his late friend as he stepped closer to the closed but not locked gate. He had never felt like more of an intruder than now. Not even when he was busy helping Rouge pilfer the vaults of the American government did he feel so ashamed of himself as he felt now.
Just a little over a month ago, he had beaten Chris half to death and put the entire Sonic team in mortal peril over nothing.
Or more specifically; because Shadow wanted revenge. Revenge on the world for taking Maria away from him prematurely.
He sobbed gently as he thought back to the fire in his eyes, and the hatred in his expression when he met the Sonic team for the first time.
The gargantuan amount of force in the evil punch he delivered upon seeing Chris, even as Chris did his best to comfort Shadow in his hour of need.
Before Shadow could reach the gate, a strong gust of wind blew them wide open. As Shadow cautiously stepped into the garden, the gates were immediately blown shut again with a mighty bang.
It was as if the heavens themselves were urging Shadow to press on and never turn back.
Shadow walked forward one step at a time, insisting to himself that he'd never go back to Eggman and Rouge no matter what happened next. Even living on the streets; sleeping in alleys at night and foraging for insects during the day (Shadow was a hedgehog after all, and hedgehogs ate insects as their main diet) wasn't as bad as working for Eggman. Hard work was something that never worried Shadow before, and his body was designed to weather long periods of time without food or warmth if it came to that.
If he could survive 50 years in a capsule filled with highly toxic Chaos fluid, then he could survive anything. Well, almost anything.
Shadow did have a few weaknesses, but they were few and far in between and he preferred not to reveal them to anyone. Just as Superman would never reveal that Kryptonite was his main weakness.
As Shadow pressed onward, he became aware of a faint outline of beautiful pink in the distance. Pink mixed with red, and a tiny glint of gold as well as a splash of white.
He knew who this was long before he heard her voice, as she immediately stopped tending the bed of roses she had been watering and stood up to greet him.
"S, Shadow? W, what a surprise. What are you doing here?" She gasped with hand over her mouth as she dropped the watering can she'd been holding, and let it clatter to the Earth with a metallic clang.
"Amy?" Shadow replied, unsure of how to greet Sonic's love-interest, and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his whole life excluding Maria.
There was something in the way Amy looked which took Shadow back to a better time. While it was Chris which reminded Shadow of his promise which he'd made to Maria in which he'd bring hope to humanity at any cost, Amy was the sight which gave Shadow a reason to want to live again.
Amy helped Shadow realize that his own welfare was just as important as the welfare of those around him.
Amy was the perfect hedgehog friend Shadow always dreamed of having back on ARK. She was another anthropomorphic hedgehog just like himself, and a very lovely one at that.
She was perfect in almost every detail. Her shining big emerald eyes, her little smile. Her neatly arranged red dress which perfectly complimented her beautiful pink fur. Her short, blunt quills which were in stark contrast with Sonic's long and sharp quills, clearly meant for attracting mates rather than pricking her enemies with a nasty sting.
"It's nice to see you Shadow." Amy piped up, when Shadow was silent for half a minute. "Thank you for saving our lives back on ARK. It was really selfless and sweet of you to do that."
"Oh. Er, it's nothing. I was glad to help you." Shadow sheepishly replied, trying and failing to hide a blush from the lightly giggling Amy. In truth it had been something. He very nearly decided he would kill Amy and her entire group, and only gave up his life to save them because he remembered at the last second that Maria gave up her life to save his long ago.
They stared at each other nervously for the next few seconds, each unsure of what to say. Shadow lost in thought as to how to ingratiate himself to the kind souls who he'd nearly killed through his bloodthirst, and Amy at a loss for words at once again seeing the unsung hero who she never had a chance to properly thank for saving her lives and her friends lives through heroic self-sacrifice.
It was just as well, since they were both hedgehogs and hedgehogs were generally solitary creatures who rarely interacted with one another save to mate. And after two hedgehogs mated, the boar always left the sow to raise her hoglets alone. Since the male staying with his wife and offspring would usually only cause trouble for his litter.
This was at the very least how it worked for "full" hedgehogs. In the anthropomorphic animal society which Amy and Shadow belonged to, not everyone needed to follow the rules of the animal species they were based on to the letter. Though the rate of divorce among anthropomorphic hedgehogs in particular was still incredibly high.
"Did you need my help with anything, Shadow? Have Eggman and Rouge been mistreating you again?" Amy asked, breaking the ice.
How did this girl know so many things? How was she so empathetic and sensitive to the needs of others? Did she have a PHD in psychology at just age 12? If so, then this made her smarter than Tails and Eggman combined.
"Well, Eggman and Rouge haven't exactly been kind to me if that's what you mean." Shadow answered, choosing his words carefully. He was still not used to showing weakness in front of others, even those he placed his complete trust in. "Which is why I've decided to leave them behind, and come to see you. I need your help."
He had technically come to see Chris, but he kept this thought to himself. Chris was most likely busy with his responsibilities as heir to a large fortune, and was none too eager to see the bully who'd beaten him half to death anytime soon. Furthermore, Amy had been very kind to him and he didn't want to seem in any way rude.
Amy nodded. "Anything for the hero who saved my life, and the life of my amazing boyfriend Sonic. Tell me what you need from me, and I'll do my best to give it to you."
The longer Shadow stared at Amy's flawless visage, the more he became reminded of Maria's radiant beauty which was the only thing that made his hard days on ARK bearable.
At a glance, Amy looked and acted nothing like Maria. She was a hedgehog. Maria was a human. She wore pink. Maria wore blue. She was bold, brash and outgoing. Maria was shy, reserved and emotionally distant.
But those were where the differences between Amy and Maria ended, at least according to Shadow.
Amy Rose was Amy's full name. A rose was a special flower which bloomed even in adversity, making it a symbol of bravery and determination. But most importantly, it was the name of a flower and the last name of Amy.
Flowers were Maria's life dream, and gardening was Amy's greatest hobby when she wasn't chasing after Sonic for his unrequited love for her or fighting Eggman.
This fact alone ranked Amy far above legions of potential significant others Shadow was considering at that moment.
"Tell me Amy." Shadow asked. "What is your opinion on war and conflict. And be honest when you answer me."
He noticed that Amy's hammer which she normally carried on her at all times was not anywhere near her. He wondered how she was able to draw it out so quickly during battle. Perhaps she hid it really well in a part of her dress. Or maybe she had some kind of supernatural ability to hide her hammer somewhere and summon it to appear in her hand whenever she desired.
If the latter was true, it would mean that Shadow had met a fellow "wizard". Which would make him feel far less lonely as the only being on this planet capable of using magic and superpowers to enhance his battle prowess.
Amy understandably didn't reply right away. She gently ground the dirt beneath her feet, keeping her emerald eyes trained on Shadow the whole time to let him know that she was being completely forthright and trustworthy.
"I have no love for war." She muttered after close to a minute of dead silence. "While that might be hard to believe with how quick-tempered I can be sometimes, it's the honest truth. I don't like hurting others if I don't have to. I only have a hammer because I can't curl into a ball properly like Sonic can, which means I can't fight using my spines like he can."
"What do you mean?" Shadow asked with affectionate concern, now truly interested in the truthe behind his new enigmatic friend.
"Some time ago, I was running from Eggman's robots." Amy explained. "They killed my parents and then tried to kill me. I was able to get away by jumping from the three storey window of my family mansion, but I fell badly and injured my back in the process."
"You're kidding." Shadow whispered under his breath as a lone tear dripped from his left eye and trickled down his left cheek, which he quickly wiped away as discreetly as he could.
"After my injury, I had no money to pay for an operation because Eggman took my entire family fortune for himself." Amy continued with suprising stoicism considering the magnitude of what she was telling Shadow. "By the time I met Sonic after living two years on the streets, it was too late for my back to heal completely. While I can still run and do most things well, I can't curl into a ball and spin-dash like other hedgehogs can. So I keep my hammer on me to defend myself instead."
"You can't be serious." Shadow murmured sadly, this time a bit too loudly for Amy not to hear him.
"I'm not joking Shadow. Eggman ruined my life. And so did Rouge."
"No." Shadow pleadingly moaned.
"Yes Shadow. I mean it. Rouge took everything good I managed to get my hands on, and made me incredibly sad. When I found a silver coin in a drain, Rouge said it looked too shiny for a scruffy beggar like me to have and took it for herself."
Amy paused, stifling a sob as she clenched both her fists to steady herself before continuing with her tragic tale.
"When someone nice gave me cotton candy at a fair for free, Rouge snatched it from me and ate it before my eyes. Every time Rouge came to me, I was very afraid of her as I could do nothing to stop her from stepping all over me."
"I never trusted Rouge completely. But I didn't think she'd stoop to such low depths" Shadow remarked in complete shock. "Is all that really the truth Amy? You know all I want is the truth."
"Every word." Amy insisted. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
Shadow swore.
"Why the swear words all of a sudden?" Amy gasped, her hand over her mouth at the pain of hearing such vulgar language, which she had been trained all her life to avoid using.
"Sorry." Shadow quickly said, bowing his head to show how ashamed he was at his loose tongue. "I shouldn't have said that."
"That's okay. I forgive you."
"That's big of you, Amy. Thank you. Maria always hoped that I'd grow out of my colorful vocabulary, but I never did. It won't happen again. Amy. I promise."
"Of course. So what did you need my help with?"
Shadow looked the pink hedgehog up and down once more. He reflect once again upon her answer to his final test of her character. He took in the sincerity of her words as well as the fact that she was able to look him straight in the eye when she told him that she had no love for war.
He realized that for once in his life, he was being told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
He felt gripped with gratitude to have met Amy. Not only had he met another anthropomorphic hedgehog like himself, but another pacificist in the same style as the deceased Maria.
While Amy's short fuse would prove to be a bit of an obstacle in the relationship he wished to begin with her, this was nothing she couldn't be trained out of. Especially when her so-called temper tantrums didn't happen nearly as frequently as others liked to believe.
"I want you to play with me." said Shadow.
Amy looked puzzled, and a little shocked. She had spent her entire life trying to romance Sonic, and now Shadow was trying to jump straight into a one-night stand with her after barely getting to know her.
"I want you to play Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards with me." He said, getting out a deck of ornately painted cards from his pocket and shuffling them in his hands. "Neither Eggman nor Rouge share my interests, and I've gotten so bored of being under their thumb."
"I love Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards." Amy replied, thinking back to the days in which her only source of income was to challenge passer-by's to play the titular trading card game with her. If she won then she ate for the day. If she lost, she starved.
It was her alternative to robbing banks and mugging strangers, which was how Rouge made her fortune and the crimes she tried to encourage Amy to join her in.
Amy politely refused. She didn't believe in stealing unless the safety of the world was at stake. There were some depths she simply didn't stoop to, even if it put her at risk of starvation.
"You do?" Shadow eagerly asked as he dealt Amy half the cards from the deck.
"Yes. Shadow. I do." Amy answered as they sat down at a table with two chairs by a majestic fountain with a marble statue in its centre.
Shadow could not help but notice that the marble statue's face and body reminded him deeply of Maria, although it was quite clearly not her but someone who looked a lot like her.
"That's a statue of Chris's secret girlfriend, Helen." Amy pointed out as she saw how fixated Shadow had become on the main attraction of the Thorndyke garden. "He had Mr Tanaka and Ella carve it for him to show his undying love for her. It had to be redone ten times before Chris was finally satisfied that they got every detail right."
She sighed, lost in reverie at the prospect of a love so strong. The love between a healthy, rich boy, and a disabled, working-class girl.
"Oh" Shadow simply stated, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from the statue and back to the deck of cards he now held in his hand. "Well, do you know how to play this, Amy? Do I need to teach you the rules?"
"Of course I know how to play. I used to play this every day before Sonic found me. I actually have a deck of my own at home, but I had to leave it behind when Eggman's Chaos portal teleported us into this world, away from our home world Mobius ."
"Well when this game is finished, I want you to keep my entire deck as my gift to you so you can sharpen your skills for when we meet again." Shadow said as he took out a dice and rolled it on the mahogany table in front of him and Amy.
The dice landed on a three. One less than four and one more than two.
"You go first." Shadow announced as he produced a notebook seemingly out of nowhere, and wrote his name and Amy's at the top of a page. In the row underneath their names which he had titled "Turn 1", he wrote 4000 life points under both his and Amy's names.
4000 was the standard number of life points each player started with in a Yu-Gi-Oh trading card match.
As Amy eagerly drew a card from her deck, checked over it briefly and laid it on the table face up for Shadow to see; Shadow finally let the smile tugging at his lips become fully visible. Finally he had found someone who shared his esoteric hobbies.
He could already tell that his friendship with Amy would be long and beautiful.
And from an upstairs window in which the curtains were open by just the tiniest fraction, a short boy with a slightly bruised face and red hair was also smiling.
His team of Mobian anthropomorphic animal friends was about to gain another member. Eggman's evil team was about to lose a member. Their strongest one yet.
He had really gotten through to Shadow after all. His efforts to help his new friend Sonic in any way possible weren't wasted. It was well worth the beating he endured at the hands of Shadow to see him playing so confidently and happily with Amy.
To see that even a powerless human such as himself could make a positive impact upon the world, brought tears to his eyes and Chris closed the curtains as he made his way back to his room, gently weeping. Unlike the countless times he'd burst into tears beforehand, these were tears of joy.
What made him even happier than Shadow turning over a new leaf for good this time; was how Shadow had clearly taken a moment to admire the exquisite artistry of the statue of Helen which he'd comissioned specifically in her honour.
Chris loved Helen but couldn't bring himself to confess his romantic feelings for her, not wanting to ruin their pure and innocent friendship until they came of age. He told himself that if Helen still liked him on the day she turned eighteen and was finally allowed to both drink and drive(not that a sweet girl like her would ever want to drink alcohol, especially not when she was driving); he would get down on one knee before Helen and pull out the biggest diamond ring the world had ever seen.
But alas, that was an event to look forward to and not to dwell on endlessly. He still had to hold on for six years before he could even consider that possibility. Six years for him to prove himself to Helen and her family, that he could be a truly loving husband to her and take good care of her.
So for now, Chris waited and he watched. He had humbly resigned himself to the fact that he his role was not that of a fighter but a diplomat instead in the Sonic team. Like Lord Varys the spider in Game of Thrones.
Sonic, Amy and Shadow were hedgehogs and Cream was a rabbit. Vector was a crocodile, Charmie was a bee and Espio was a color-changing chamelon. Chris was a spider. And he was proud of it.
...
Thank you for reading the first chapter of "Shadow quits".
Please review and tell me if there's anything I could do better, and what you'd like to see in the next chapter.
I wrote this story because I feel that the relationship between Shadow and Amy should be explored more, and that Shadow should just become a full member of Sonic's team instead of pointless agonizing over whether to work for Sonic or Eggman.
I also wanted to explore Rouge and Amy's backstories a little more from my perspective, and really delve into why they hate each other in the modern day.
Thank you and see you all next time. Bye.