That night, Sonic had a dream. But it was more like a nightmare. In this nightmare, he came across none other than Shadow.
It was nighttime in a big city. Shadow was standing up high on the railing of a bright red bridge with his arms crossed. In fact, the bridge looked suspiciously like the Golden Gate bridge. Spotlights were on him.
"Pathetic humans!" he said, scorning down at the crowd of people below gathered below to see him. And then he saw Sonic. He jumped off the railing to confront him.
"You! Blue boy!" said Shadow, "I challenge you to a race! First one to run the length of this bridge wins!"
The police had closed off the bridge, so there was already no traffic on it. So it was the perfect setting for a sprint.
"You're on!" replied Sonic.
The crowd of people cleared the way to let the two hedgehogs race each other. They were ecstatic to see who would win. And then, from out of nowhere, one of those flying chaos with a propellor on its head appeared.
"On your mark…" said the chao, as Sonic crouched down, framing his foot with his hands. Shadow remained standing beside him, still with his arms crossed.
"Get set…" continued the chao. Sonic took a deep breath in. Shadow yawned.
"Go!" shouted out the chao.
A few seconds later, as Sonic was nearly at the halfway point of the bridge, Shadow had already crossed the finish line.
"Anything you can do I can do better! I can do anything better than you!" ridiculed Shadow as Sonic made it across the finish line a few seconds later.
"What!" exclaimed Sonic, "Impossible!"
And it turned out that, in this dream, Shadow could not only do anything Sonic could do but better, but he could also do things Sonic couldn't even do in the first place. Such as fly.
Shadow started effortlessly sprouting out black angel wings from his back.
"Admit it, Sonic!" said Shadow as he started to take flight, "I'm the superior life form!"
The crowd started chanting "Shadow! Shadow! Shadow!"
And then he spit on Sonic from up above, the spit landing in the blue hedgehog's eye.
Sonic woke up panting, in a cold sweat. He felt like his reputation as the world's fastest creature was at stake. A fire was growing in his belly. And in his heart, he knew he had to do whatever it would take to stop Shadow. Even if it meant killing him.