True Purpose Prologue: Enter Shadow
Shadow sighs, contently, reclining back into the torn red cushions of the small booth he was in. He calmly takes in the 80s-themed coffee shop he rests in, drinking in the vibrant, old-fashioned colors and the large records framing the patterned wallpaper. He briefly looks at the large black-and-white photo hanging on the wall next to his booth, his red eyes roaming over the unknown people smiling as they stare at the camera.
Out the large window beside him, Shadow witnesses people - both Mobian and human - milling around the cobblestone streets in the town he's been touring the last several days. The people slip in and out of shiny shops, chatting and grinning with each other, and ordering exquisite foods from the vendors lining the crowded streets.
Shadow sips the tea he's been nursing for the past couple of minutes, a bittersweet taste warming his tongue and a calming herbal scent tickling his nose. A golden bell jingles in front of the coffee shop, announcing the entrance of someone into the small shop. He ignores it for a second until his ears perk up at the familiar sharp clicking of heels tapping against the black-and-white checkered tiles beneath his feet. An overpowering flowery perfume makes its way to him, and he peers over the rim of the white teacup in time to see someone stop at his table.
"You're not the waitress," Shadow drones, and he places his cup onto the coaster sitting on the metal table before him.
"Well, hello to you, too," the someone purrs, and he settles his red-eyed gaze upon the ever-permanent smug face of Rouge. She stands at the edge of his table, smirking down at him with a hand on her hip. The bat wore tight black leggings that were partially hidden by her iconic white high-heeled boots, and a soft blue shirt that slightly slips off her tan shoulders with her black purse, revealing a bit of cleavage. "Long time no see, Handsome."
"Rouge," Shadow murmurs, nodding his head in a short greeting. Rouge takes that as an apparent invitation to sit down, sliding gracefully into the red seat across from him and sinking into the thin cushions. "How'd you find me?"
Rouge chuckles, a sound Shadow hasn't heard in a while, and a sly grin grows across her lips. She lowers her elbow onto the top of the gray table, and she rests her chin on the palm of her hand. "Is that any way to greet someone you haven't seen in over a year?"
Shadow chooses not to answer. Instead, he narrows his eyes.
Rouge laughs again. "Glad you didn't change much," she says, and her face - at least, in Shadow's mind - softens just a bit. "Although, something is definitely different."
Shadow looks to the side, thinking about how Rouge's white hair drips down her shoulders now. "I don't know what you're talking about."
There's a hidden message that hangs in the air between them that Shadow wonders - hopes- that Rouge understands. If she does, Rouge doesn't make it obvious.
Rouge rolls her eyes. "I mean, you look less tense. Like a weight's been lifted from your shoulders or something." Shadow didn't feel any different. "Nice to see traveling around for a year did you some good."
Shadow stares down into his teacup, his own reflection looking back at him from within the surface of the light brown liquid.
Not too long ago, he'd taken off on a journey to travel the world as a way to honor Maria. All he and Maria ever wanted to do from their time on the Ark, as they stared down at the blue-and-green world full of grass and trees and untold adventures, was to explore. Maria wasn't here to enjoy it as they planned, but Shadow liked to think she was still with him, even if he couldn't see her. So far, his self-proposed mission has been going well; he'd met new people - most nice and warm - and the new places that Maria always gushed about in the books Gerald brought her on the Ark.
Shadow pushes his teacup, and his thoughts, away. "You never answered my question."
Rouge sighs, and she promptly reaches across the table to steal his teacup. "You weren't exactly all that hard to track down," she states as she takes a sip. Her nose scrunches up, and she coughs into her fist as if the drink offended her. "Of course, someone like you would drink something this terrible and boring."
Rouge quickly places the teacup onto the coaster, and she leans over the side of the table to flag down a waitress. A young chipmunk girl wearing a blue shirt tucked into a black frilly skirt immediately skates down their section on white skates. Her curly red hair rushes down her shoulders, nearly covering the name, "Sally" on her nametag.
"Yes, ma'am?" She asks, sweetly, pulling a notepad and pen out of the pocket on her skirt. Judging by her tone, Shadow figures that the girl could not have been more than a couple of years younger than them.
"Hi, there," Rouge says in, what Shadow believes to be, an overly sugary tone. "Can I get a cup of black coffee with a couple of creamer and sugars on the side?" Sally easily writes down her order. "And, you can just add that to my friends-" she flutters her eyelashes at Shadow. "Tab, okay?"
Before Shadow could even open his mouth to protest, Sally bobs her head with a smile. "No problem. I'll be right back, ma'am."
She disappears down the aisle and, as soon as she's gone, Shadow frowns at Rouge. Unlike most people, Rouge simply grins at the sight like it emboldens her, snickering. "There's that handsome scowl I've been missing."
Shadow ignores her comment. He's used to it by now, even with a year of merely communicating through letters and postcards. Speaking of which-
"What do you mean I haven't been hard to track down? The last postcard I sent was about two weeks ago-"
"Which was adorable," Rouge adds. "And, you do realize you can just call, right? No one really sends letters through the mail anymore."
"Rouge-"
"Right, right, right," Rouge waves her hand, dismissively. "You're always so serious. Anyway, I'm a treasure hunter, remember? I know how to hunt down my prize. Besides, you don't exactly blend in. Ask around enough and, eventually, someone would've recognized you. Now," she leans back in her seat. "It's my turn to ask a question."
She pauses, eying something behind Shadow. He cranes his neck in time to catch Sally skating back to their table, balancing a white cup and a coffee pot in her hands. "There you go, ma'am," Sally says, carefully putting the cup down on a coaster before Rouge. She pours a stream of coffee from the pot, wisps of steam drifting from the fresh coffee. With her hand free, Sally digs into her pocket, and she produces a small mountain of creamers and multicolored sugars.
"Thank you," Rouge smiles, pulling the cup closer to herself.
"No problem, ma'am," Sally says. "Let me know if you need anything else."
With that, Sally skates away, her skirt swishing around her knees.
"Alright," Rouge begins once Sally's out of earshot. Her gloved hands pick at the creamers and sugars, and she tears a couple of them open. She pours them into the coffee. "You didn't seem all that surprised to see me here. Why is that?"
Shadow's eyes fall upon the bright red smudge of lipstick smearing the lip of his teacup. He brushes it off with his thumb, studying how the color stands out against the white of his gloves. "I figured you would have to track me down at some point. GUN needs its weapon, after all."
He'd been expecting it for a while. GUN, specifically the Commander, had always made sure to keep a close eye on everything that he did. Shadow imagined that it had something to do with the fact that he's been the only survivor of the Ark "incident," and he was the creation of a mad scientist who nearly destroyed the planet.
Rouge hums, taking a wooden stirrer from a silver container on the table. She spins it around and around in her cup, watching as the liquid lightens to a tan color. "GUN didn't send me here." At Shadow's unimpressed stare, she continues. "I'm serious, Shadow. I'm here of my own free will. Besides," her blue eyes wander to the window, and Shadow finds himself following her lead. "I'm sure you noticed the GUN agents following you around," she states, her voice low.
Shadow nods, scouring the small crowd for anything out of the ordinary. No familiar faces or anyone acting strangely draws his attention. They'd been on his tail for the past several months now. Every time he thinks that he lost them, a poorly disguised GUN officer was there, hiding around a corner or peeking from behind a comically large newspaper. Truthfully, he'd expected as much. There was no way Commander Towers would've given him that much time off otherwise without some kind of insurance.
"Luckily, I've saved up some favors," she breathes in her coffee. Shadow knows, even if Rouge didn't say it, that 'favors' usually meant blackmail. "No one knows we're even here together right now."
Shadow purses his lips.
Rouge still reads him like a book, despite a year apart from each other. "Hey, would I lie?" He scowls. "Okay, okay. I know I don't have the best track record, but this isn't something I wouldn't lie about. You know this." She sips her coffee, humming in approval. "This isn't half bad."
Tension drains from Shadow's shoulders, slightly slumping his body into the cushions.
"With that said," Rouge pulls her purse over her head and sets it on the table. She tugs it open and unveils a cream manila folder. "If GUN did send me, then would they give me these?"
Rouge slides the manila folder onto the table, and she removes her hand from the folder. Shadow's eyes widen when the GUN insignia stares back at him, stamped across the middle of the folder in red ink. He picks it up, flipping over the folder in his hand.
"What is this, Rouge?"
Rouge shrugs, sipping her drink. "Look for yourself."
Shadow frowns, but he does as he's told. He peels the manila folder open, and he instantly notices a name sitting in the middle of a white page written in all black capital letters.
MARIA ROBOTNIK
His fingers tighten on the edges of the manila folder, crumpling the thin paper material underneath his grip. He forces himself to turn the page, revealing a collection of notes - some handwritten in wobbly cursive, or printed in ink - and black-and-white photographs. His eyes roam over a photograph of Maria smiling brightly with her pale face towards the camera, and long hair sweeping over her shoulders. Her expression was full of cheer; it was different from the bloody, sorrowful smile she wore as she pulled the lever and sent him to a world without her -
Shadow sucks in a breath, shoving his poisonous thoughts to the back of his mind, and he cast a scrutinizing gaze upon Rouge. "How did you get this?"
Rouge snickers and the corners of her lips twitch upwards. "How do you think?"
Shadow raises a brow. "You stole this from GUN?" He's not sure whether he's surprised that she did it, or that she's managed to get away with it.
"That's what it says, doesn't it?" Her eyes gain a mischievous glint. "It was heavily guarded, but no problem for me. No wonder why Towers always keep getting upset when Eggman steals guarded information from us. We're not exactly the most secure."
Shadow brushes his thumb against Maria's smiling face. He feels Rouge's eyes searching him, compartmentalizing his actions like when they first became a team. "Why are you giving me this?" Why now, he wants to tack onto the sentence but swallows the words at the last second.
Rouge tips her head to the side. "For two reasons, Handsome. One," she raises her pointer finger. "We were never given access to it before. So, you never got to read up on what all went down the Ark." She clasps her hands before her on the table. "You're welcome, by the way."
"What's the second reason?" Shadow demands, placing the folder full of documents on the table.
The amusement that always seems to be embedded in Rouge's expression suddenly drains away, leaving behind something unreadable, even to Shadow. "Well," Rouge sighs, her voice taking a slight ting of exhaustion that wasn't there before. "That's the main reason why I'm here."
Shadow's not sure when or how, but the air around them abruptly grows tense and heavy. Shadow leans back like he's trying to avoid it, and pushes the folder across the table to Rouge, studying her face with his intense eyes. "There's always a catch."
Rouge smirks a bit, though it's leaden with a hint of sadness, and she pulls the folder closer to herself. Shadow cooly watches as she flips through the pages, scanning each of the contents, before she pasues. Silently, Rouge takes out a small stack of papers, slips the paperclip off the top, and she passes it back. Shadow stops the papers with one hand, and his eyes investigate the large, bold letters staring him in the face.
NIDS
Rouge's cheek finds its way back into the palm of her hand. "I assume you know what that means."
"Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome," Shadow recites, flawlessly. That particular phrase and what it means had long been drilled in his head by Gerald Robotnik every time he let Shadow play with Maria. It reminds him of the days that Gerald would open the door to Maria's room, warning Shadow to be careful as they stare at Maria's sickly body lying in bed. She lifts her head, her blond hair sticky with sweat, and she smiles - or grimaces, Shadow could never tell the difference - and holds out a trembling white hand for him to take -
The memories swell and press against his skull, nearly drowning him in his burrowed heartache, but Shadow quickly locks them and Maria's kind face behind a door. It's almost funny to think that, at one point, he'd been lost without his memories and, now, he's trying so hard not to think about them. He swallows hard, his throat dry, and takes a moment to drink his nowd displeasingly cold tea.
"Why are you showing me this?" He asks when his mouth finally decides to cooperate.
"Back in the mid to late 1990s," Rouge begins, hollowly, as if she hadn't heard Shadow. "NIDS was a rare, incurable disease. It was similar to a virus in the way that it attacked the immune system and left its victim weak-"
"I know this, Rouge," Shadow grinds out. "Get to the point."
"Sorry," she says, and Shadow can't tell whether she means it or not. "Basically, what I mean is that after Maria, you know," she clears her throat. "She was the last person to ever be recorded as having NIDS. As a result, no one ever tried to create a cure for it. You know, until now."
"What?" Shadow hisses, confused. He straightens in his seat, and he scours Rouge's guarded expression, trying and failing to find an answer there. "You mean, someone's trying to develop a cure for NIDS? Who is it? GUN?"
Rouge shakes her head, a few stray strands of her hair waving in the air, and she drains the last bit of her coffee. "GUN had these particular files buried pretty deep." She casually raises her hand, signaling for Sally to refill her coffe, as if they weren't currently having a serious conversation. Nevertheless, Shadow doesn't try to stop her. "I'm pretty sure that they never intended for it to see the light of day. Much less for them to develop a cure for something that no one has been publicly recorded as having since Maria."
Shadow patiently waits for Sally to refill Rouge's cup, ignoring the kind words the chipmunk says to the both of them. As soon as Sally's skating away to a different table, he leans forward, quirking a cuirous brow. "Then, who? Don't tell me it's the Doctor."
Rouge tears open more creamers and sugars from her lessening pile and pours them into her cup, her eyes downward. To Shadow, it feels as it she's trying to avoid making eey contact with him. "Eggman? No. He hasn't been seen in a while. It's actually a mutual friend to both of us." She finally looks up at Shadow, and she smiles at whatever she sees on his face. "I know, you don't really have any friends-" He ignores the jab. "But, this one's important."
Whatever was left of the playful attitude that Rouge showed at the beginning of their conversation disappears, her face hardening into stone. It was a look Shadow rarely sees; it was only reserved for their more difficult missions.
"This," Shadow jabs his finger into the papers before him. "Is serious, isn't it?"
Rouge purses her lips, and she's digging into her purse again. She reveals another folder; this one is a dark shade of green and smaller than the one from before. She holds it out to Shadow, like it was too fragile to be slid across like the other one, and he takes it. He opens it, and his breath's instantly stolen by the contents of the folder.
"Is this true?" Shadow questions, stiffly.
Rouge nods with a gloomy chuckle. "Unbelievable," her hand shakes as she brings her cup up to her lips. "Isn't it?"
Shadow immediately stands from his seat, slapping the folder onto the table, and his palms, flat against the table. "I need you to take me to him."
