"Your ex-husband... has crossed the border, ma'am. I'm sorry, but it's out of our hands now. We can contact the adjacent police department in Mexico and tell them of our findings but... I'm afraid it'll be an entirely new investigation. I'm sorry we couldn't do more."
If the man said anything more, Mari didn't hear it.
The phone had already left her trembling hands, landing on the soft carpet with a barely audible thud.
Seconds passed, and she made no move to pick it up, nor answer the voice calling out for her on the other end.
No, because before she even knew it, Mari had sunk down to the ground right with it.
"Lilly," she whispered.
Mari's hands balled into fists, squeezing them so tight against her palm it began to hurt.
Still, she didn't stop.
She just squeezed them tighter, repeating those same two syllables but this time accompanied by agonizing heartbreak. "L-Li—lly...!" And yet her voice broke like she knew it would, sobs coming from her throat.
She was gone.
Her daughter was gone.
Taken.
For nothing more than the want to get back at her, out of pure spite, Gar had taken her precious little girl from her.
And she would likely never see her again.
Yes, the police had tried their best when a distraught Mari had called them hours prior, practically wailing that her ex-husband had stolen their daughter away from school that morning...
But they couldn't do anything.
Any trail they might have been able to follow was dashed the moment Gar had crossed that border.
Mari's entire form was shaking now, and she unashamedly curled into a ball, her sobs growing more and more erratic.
This couldn't happen.
This wasn't real.
She would wake up at any moment.
But even though Mari tried to tell herself things like that, her sobs didn't quiet, her teeth didn't stop chattering, and the tears leaking from her eyes didn't once abate.
How terrified must Lilly be right now?
What would the nine-year-old think when she realized what was happening to her?
And what would Gar do once his resentment faded, and he decided he wanted nothing to do with looking after a small child?
An image came unbidden to Mari's mind: a little girl wading her way through dirty streets all by her lone-some, running into who knows what type of people.
"O-Oh god, oh god, oh god," Mari failed to realize the exact moment she started hyperventilating, but it didn't matter.
Knowing didn't help, and it certainly didn't make it any easier to breathe.
Her vision grew shaky, either by tears or something else, and at any moment she felt she would lose her sight entirely.
That was when the doorbell rang.
Mari didn't move.
In that moment, that deafeningly quiet moment, Mari didn't do anything.
She didn't breathe, and she certainly made no move to get up to check her door, prompted only by a sound she may or may not have even heard correctly.
Prompted only by a sound that she couldn't even find it in her to care about.
Either way, in the endlessly stretching silence that followed, she all too immediately slipped right back into the coldness of her thoughts.
But, the doorbell rang again.
Mari bit her lip, and was about ready to cover her ears, curl further into a ball, or do anything else to banish the obtrusive sound.
Except then something else happened and she forgot to do any of that.
"...You, child, call out to her."
"Okie! Mommy! It's me! Can you let me in? It's REALLY cold out here..."
...huh?
Two voices, one gruff and one very much not, suddenly spoke past the doorbell's lingering chime, through the front door, and then right into the living room she had inconsolably curled up in.
And yet, it was only for one of them that Mari abruptly decided to start moving her body.
Clambering to her feet, standing up, walking towards the door...
None of it actually felt like it was being done by her.
It was like Mari was moving on autopilot, her entire body numbing over except for the single directive telling her to keep placing one foot in front of the other, and yet all the while, woefully unsure whether her final destination would be her salvation... or her undoing.
Even so, she kept moving, and it was with trembling fingers that she opened her front door.
And.
Mari burst into tears anew.
"Mommy!"
A little girl of around nine, familiar blonde hair separated into a pigtail on one side, all but leapt towards her the moment she came into view, and Mari felt like she could be forgiven in not being prepared for the force in the slightest.
In fact, she fell backwards onto her bottom.
But that was the furthest thing on her mind.
All she could focus on was the small existence hugging her tightly and refusing to let go.
"L-Lilly?" she croaked out.
Wishing.
Hoping.
"Mommy, it was SO scary..."
Aaaaahhhh...
That clinched it.
The damn broke.
"Lilly...!"
Mari couldn't have contained herself if she tried. She wrapped her arms around her daughter with the force only a mother could manage.
"L-Lilly, Lilly, Lilly, Lilly!"
And she just kept repeating that name, over and over again, like if she stopped for even one second, the warm, breathing little girl in her arms right now would vanish right along with the wind.
Like she thought was her new reality.
So Mari just squeezed tighter.
Like that, seconds turned into minutes, and she just basked in the feeling, thinking of little else.
And yet, even that eventually changed.
Because as beyond ecstatic as she was, it didn't change the fact that her mind was a jumbled mess, so filled to the brim with questions that even picking just one proved to be too much of a challenge.
Because none of this made sense.
How was Lilly here, in her arms, right after what the police had just told her?
After all, Gar, he had...
Surely, he wouldn't have brought her back out of something like a guilty conscience, right?
So, with apprehension, or even curiosity, Mari's gaze suddenly shot past her daughter's form and beyond.
Except...
No matter how much she strained her eyes, she couldn't see a single other person beyond their little porch. But with night having long since descended, she would be hard pressed spotting anyone to begin with.
Shadows, conjured up by the consistent streetlamps, were the only thing she saw, as far as the eye could see.
"..."
Mari pursed her lips.
But...
"Lilly, who... who was the person with you?"
As if those words had flipped a switch within her, with a small noise, Lilly immediately disentangled herself from Mari, but only so she could look around in the kind of frantic, over the top manner she had seen dozens of times from her precious child.
Then, it was with wide serious eyes that Lilly looked back to Mari.
"M-Mommy, the black and red kitty who saved me, I can't find him!"
...
...
...
It was a lazy day for Sonic.
So naturally, he chose to spend it flipping through channels on the T.V.
Of course, he was hardly by himself.
Behind him, in the kitchen, Maddie was busy teaching Knuckles how to cook. Scratch that, she was teaching him how to go about cooking. Specifically, cracking eggs in a gentle and clean manner.
Yeah, that was going about as well as can be expected.
"I am convinced! These eggshells are mocking me!"
"W-W-Wait, not the bowl, not the bowwwwl!"
Knuckles had yet to be met with success.
But since Maddie was ever patient, and since Sonic had faith in his muscley pal, he knew they'd get it eventually.
Probably.
Anyway, as for Tom and Tails, they were tinkering with something in the garage, a family bonding project they had taken to doing.
Sonic would be jealous if not for the fact they were making airplane figurines.
Really, watching paint dry would be more entertaining, and that was saying something, since that apparently was a big part of the crafting process.
Plus, it became a bit of a moot point when Sonic could just make the darn things himself in a matter of seconds.
"Ozzy, shake. Come on Ozzy, shake. Yes! Oh, who's a good boy? Tell me who's the best-est, most good-est boy ever!"
Right.
That just left one more person.
Sonic was very much fighting the urge to smile at the sight in front of him, but because it was far too cute for this world, and since he's never been the type to hide his expressions anyway, the goofy grin came out in all its glory.
Of course, that said nothing of the ear-to-ear joy radiating off of the pink hedgehog sitting on her knees, rubbing down a dog that had also never looked happier.
Why, Sonic could practically hear Ozzy's inner-voice.
—Me! I'm a good boy! It's me!
Still, Sonic's true attention was on the person playing with their precious golden retriever, the guest that had been staying with them, going on for a few weeks now.
Amy Rose.
That was the name she gave in that forest.
Of course, that was immediately followed by several more things, several ridiculously complicated things that Sonic was still trying to wrap his head around, but if he ignored all that for only a moment, it was truly as if they had another addition to the family.
Well, calling her family might not be accurate.
No such thing had been decided yet.
But as far as Maddie was concerned, and she was quite vocal about it too, Amy was as good as one of them. Although whether the adult woman saw her as a bastion of hope in a household full of guys, or maybe even a surrogate daughter, Sonic wasn't sure.
But either way, Amy was here, staying with them.
As opposed to where she came from, that being far, far, away.
And he wasn't talking about Paris far.
...Still can't believe she's from the future. Or was it an alternate timeline? Ugh, I already forgot what Tails said.
"Anything interesting on?"
Sonic blinked.
Amy was looking at him curiously.
"H-Huh? Oh, let me see." As if an unseen pressure was guiding him along, he thumbed through the channels at a quicker pace.
That was another thing.
Sonic, at random intervals, would get irrationally nervous when talking to the pink girl.
And no, he wasn't so dense not to realize the underlying reason, not when he had to weather watching Tom's atrocious flirting back when him and Maddie were still 'friends'.
Whether it's because she's a girl, probably the same age as me, or even because we're both hedgehogs, this awkwardness is a bit... Sonic mentally sighed. Geez, I bet human kids don't have to deal with this.
"Hm?"
Sonic abruptly paused his channel surfing, stopping on just one in particular.
"—marks yet another violent crime thwarted by an unexplainable phenomenon, where the would-be aggressors impossibly found themselves disarmed and/or incapacitated in a manner of seconds. Now, as near every instance happened under the cover of night, it is still too early to identify the cause of these mysterious happenings, and eyewitnesses have been few and far between, but we did manage to retrieve video footage of an attempted kidnapping, 'attempted' being the key word. However, please be mindful, viewer discretion is still advised."
"...Sonic."
Sonic had been put in a trance by the severe looking expression on the female news anchor's face.
That was why he all but jumped out of his seat the moment a voice suddenly called out his name from behind. That it just turned out to be Tom and Maddie, Tails and Knuckles past them, only slightly relaxed him.
Wait, why are they looking at me like that?
Besides one Amy Rose who wasn't even in his periphery, they were all looking at him with... mounting skepticism? Or was that faint disapproval?
The heck are they... ah.
Sonic blinked in belated realization.
The news report.
"W-Wait, wait, wait," he shot off, rapid fire, looking between them all incredulously, whilst also fighting the urge to look back at the television screen. "Y-You think that... that I'm still going around and...? No, no, no. No way. That's not m—"
Sonic was cut off.
It was because a scream suddenly cleaved the air in two.
Stomach dropping, Sonic immediately went still, and he was barely cognizant of the others doing the exact same.
Why, he actually thought the sound had originated from nearby, but then he saw everyone's eyes shoot to the T.V., and such a scary thought thankfully spirited away.
Except then he also turned towards the screen, and any would-be relief he felt died with the sight that awaited him.
For the briefest of moments, Sonic didn't know what he was looking at.
However, he was aware of the gaping pit beginning to open in his stomach.
With an almost completely dark parking lot as the backdrop, supplemented by the bird's eye view that was capturing it, two figures could be seen moving about.
But that was already wrong.
Because only one figure was doing the moving.
The other was being forcibly dragged, backwards, towards an open trunk. And this was all being done while the decidedly terrified girl tried and failed to scream and kick her way to freedom.
Only then did Sonic realize what was happening.
Time seemed to slow down as ice crept through his body, making his fur stand on end.
The wrongness in front of him, and then the surrealness of it, it almost became tangible.
But since Sonic couldn't pretend it wasn't happening, that it wasn't real, that he wasn't seeing what he was currently seeing, he just continued to watch, because in that moment he forgot how to do anything else.
Sonic felt frozen solid.
And Knuckles, Tom, Tails, Maddie, Amy?
It was telling that, just like him, not a single one of them said so much as a word. Not even a breath could be heard.
Why...?
Face contorting, Sonic asked this vague and meaningless question. And with it, an anger he didn't know what to do with.
Or.
Was that anger actually directed at himself? Because this had already happened, and despite being more than fast enough, more than capable, he was already too late to do anything to stop it.
And that truth was strangling.
Now, if Sonic had been of a clearer head, he would have remembered how the newswoman had prefaced this kidnapping.
About its degree of success.
But because he wasn't so calm, and since no such thing floated into his mind, what happened next had every right to surprise him as much as it did.
Barely noticeable, and in a blink and you'll miss it kind of way, the tiniest tendrils of red suddenly appeared somewhere off-screen.
They almost looked like sparks, even.
Bathed in the darkness as they were, Sonic would have thought he'd gone and imagined them if it wasn't for the sharp intakes of breath from Tails, Maddie and Amy too, right beside him.
But... that was it.
Not a single thing changed after that, leaving the hat-wearing aggressor, male by the looks of it, to continue to yank the struggling girl backwards.
When he all but threw her smaller form into the opened trunk, violently slamming it closed, Sonic felt like he had been punched in the stomach.
The guy immediately left the frame of the footage after that, most assuredly scampering off to the driver's seat, the camera's positioning cutting that view of the car.
And yet, with how numbingly distraught Sonic was, such a thing was the last thing he wanted to focus on.
But then?
The car's trunk opened right back up.
Sonic's mind went blank.
In this irreparable confusion, he even began to think he was seeing things.
And he wasn't the only one.
Because even if he ignored the continued bewildered silence of those not even millimeters away from him, no one could have been as helplessly lost as that frightened girl.
The footage showed a timid head popping out of that trunk, and without missing a beat, she clambered out of that small space, looking around like she couldn't believe it.
Still, absolutely nothing prevented her from picking a direction and booking it as fast as she could go, up until she left the video frame entirely.
And that was it.
No one said anything for ten whole seconds, which eventually, even Sonic had to break with something like a strangled laugh.
"...W-Well, that was a bit anti-cli—"
Hoarse tremendously loud screaming suddenly blared into the screen, making them all jump, sufficiently scaring the hell out of everyone present.
It was because the man in the hat returned, and he came from a direction that couldn't have been predicted.
From the literal sky, gravity wasn't kind in the slightest as that human body unceremoniously crashed into the car's back-shield window, instantaneously setting off the car's very loud alarm.
And all the while, Sonic didn't know what startled him more, the suddenness of it all, or the fact that the man was still screaming, fueled only by the jarring visage of his arm bent at the completely wrong—
Tom was already scrambling for the T.V. remote, hurriedly turning it off.
But just before he could, Sonic caught sight of something within the entrenching darkness that surrounded the scene.
And it wasn't something he would have noticed if he wasn't already looking in the direction that he was.
Orbs.
Two glowing red orbs that almost looked like eyes, gazing dispassionately at the man's screaming form.
The living room was now deathly silent.
Sonic was even forced to realize anew just how tense the air had gotten, contrasted only by how jumpy everyone looked.
Incidentally, nothing proved that more than when a sudden knock from the front door had Knuckles yelling so loudly and with such fervor, that he swung his weighted fists at the closest thing to him on instinct.
Tails may have been sent flying.
On a side note, when a cute but understandably strange looking orange fox all but flew out of their living room window and into the front yard, the pizza guy on the other end had every right to think he was being attacked and faint right then and there.
Yeah, dinner was a quiet affair.
...
...
...
/ Status report initiated. /
Observation. Scout units not returned.
Checking signals...
Error.
Metal-S_10 offline. Metal-S_15 offline. Metal-S_122 offline. Metal-S_33 offline. Metal-S_02 offline. Metal-S_57 offline. Metal-S_16 offline.
Likelihood of enemy contact... 89.56%.
Triangulating last known locations... New York. Scanning for enemy energy signatures in geological epicenter.
Strands found, two.
Processing...
Matches found.
[1] Amelia Rose, known insurgent to Eggman Empire. Wanted on counts of terrorism, obstruction of justice, 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree assault and battery of varying Badnik units: Peacekeepers, Royal Guards, Metal-S, etc.
[2] Sonic the—
.
. .
. . .
In a warehouse, eclipsed in darkness and completely empty of all human life, the single non-human entity present twitched.
And following that, a string of code assimilated before their optical receptors.
Priority target, Sonic the Hedgehog.
Triangulating energy signatures...
Triangulation successful.
/ Initiating Purge Protocol. /
Metal Sonic whirred to life.
...
...
...
Amy really should have known.
She should have known 'they' would have come to Earth, too.
This version of Earth, anyway.
Mid-dash, Amy swung her hammer, watching with satisfaction as it sent her opponent flying. But she didn't dare halt her momentum. One of her feet pivoted, and she was already in line for another swing.
Her weapon impacted into a metallic leg, and its attached body immediately lost the ability to stand as a result.
But it wasn't downed.
Her follow up changed this, the uppercut of a strike sending the soon to be scrap metal into a few of its allies.
Achieving this brief respite, Amy risked a glance elsewhere.
Ah, good.
With some relief, she saw what she expected to see. That being the vibrantly bright forms of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, holding their own just as impressively.
The echidna was the most notable, barreling into throngs of the enemy, three, sometimes four at a time. He was closer to a glowing red battering ram at this point than an actual fighter. Still, Amy welcomed the advantage.
Tails was making his own dent in the battle, showcasing that air superiority and a strategic mind was a terrifying combination to be on the other end of.
Dropping lethal gadgets down like carpet bombs, zooming into those least expecting it, and then punishing their opponents hard when they tried to take to the air as well, Tails certainly wasn't making it easy.
Then there was Sonic.
With speeds faster than their metallic foes could even begin to think about working around, it couldn't be called a fight, not when the blue hedgehog's actions could be likened to perpetually bouncing through stationary objects.
The azure blur didn't let up for a moment and thus had him leaving heaps of broken parts in his wake.
They were doing well, handling it all with ease.
They had been ever since they were ambushed in mass without warning two hours ago.
If this wasn't apparent by Amy's, Sonic's, Tail's, and Knuckles' ever growing body count, then it was decided by the fact that the tide of battle had never once shifted out of their favor.
They were winning.
So.
If that was the case.
Why hadn't they won yet?
Frowning, Amy jumped, and as she did, she felt her power coalesce her entire form. Then, with her hammer raised, she brought it all down. The asphalt didn't stand a chance. But that said nothing for the dozens of similarly colored enemies that were instantly sent flying in all directions.
Still though, it wasn't long at all before a limb-sword all too quickly made a beeline right for her throat.
A simple dodge and lariat with her hammer easily dispatched the enemy.
And yet, that was just it.
Because no matter how many they took down. No matter how easy they were managing it.
More and more came.
From out of dark alleys, from even darker skies, from behind flaming cars.
They just kept coming and coming.
And, Amy's breathing was starting to get heavier and heavier because of it.
Why, it felt like it was only a matter of time before—
A cry of panic yanked her out of her thoughts, and she turned just in time to see Tails plummeting to the ground, courtesy of two Metal Sonic's hanging off both him and his glider.
All three figures hit the asphalt with force, and while Amy was worried if the fox was okay, she was even more worried about the speed at which their adversaries were going to capitalize on this weakness.
Clank, clank, clank.
And just like she thought, streams of Metals instantly began to collapse on the dazed and groaning Tails.
Amy was about to rush to help, but she suddenly had to put her hammer in front of her, blocking a saber wishing to run her through. She batted it away and then spun, her momentum sending a clean uppercut towards the off-balance opponent.
Or she thought she did.
Amy couldn't stifle her surprise when the Metal Sonic backstepped, avoided the attack, and then lunged forward once more, weapon extended.
But even in spite of this, Amy was still quick to leap backwards, throwing her hammer like a tomahawk as she did so.
Her weapon, guided by bright pink energy, was launched forward, and this time struck true, doming the Metal right in the head, sending it flying. Her hammer ricocheted back to her.
Now, Amy's head whipped towards Tails—
"Hey, hands off!"
Only to let out a breath of relief when a separate blue colored form suddenly blitzed through the mechanized versions hounding the fox, and with staggering speed.
And as Amy watched Tails shakily begin to stand up, the only thing she could say was that he had just a tad bit more bruises than he had prior.
But she couldn't focus on such things so leisurely.
In the time she was distracted, she had begun to get boxed in.
Luckily, it didn't take any effort at all to jump over the wall of bots that were encroaching.
That was her thought, right up until the sound of thrusters roared to life from all around her.
The Metal Sonic's had all-too-quickly flown up to match her jump.
Midair, Amy's teeth grit, and the grip she had on her weapon's handle choked downwards a tad, only so she could, with her power, spin hard and fast in a vicious pink whirlwind, knocking several Metals away in the time it took for her to fall back down.
And as she did, she gave one last present.
Hefting her hammer high, she once again came down with a mighty crash.
Wha—?
But her eyes could only widen as three different saber-arms had caught her hammer and were holding it in deadlock.
And yet, she had done her own share of damage.
Their weapons had chips in several places.
One of the three's legs, too, it had lost sizeable mass, resulting in it taking a knee on the ground.
Still, quickly, Amy performed a sweeping attack, knocking as many of them as she could away, but frowning.
That move, it's... almost like—
"W-Whoa! A-Amy!"
A frantic voice suddenly slammed into her ears, and it was the only warning she got before something slammed into her body next, something blue, and with wide expressive green eyes.
"Son—"
Through reflex and nothing else, Amy brought her hammer in front of her in time.
It didn't help.
Her feet left the ground, and along with the familiar voice that had crashed into her, she was sent bouncing and skidding along the asphalt.
And even after who knows how many seconds passed, when she was close to sure that she had definitely stopped moving, her head didn't seem to get that same memo.
Colors were blurring, lights blinked in and out, she found herself unable to decide even up from down.
"Ugh," Amy slurred out, and it took her ten whole seconds to figure out the hard surface her hands were currently splayed out against was in fact the ground and nothing else.
Once she realized that, however, it was just a matter of pushing herself up, which she managed, but with surprising difficulty.
Light groaning filled her ears, and she moved her head to see two blurry figures in front of her.
Both of them blue.
Amy reached for her hammer, only to grasp at nothing. But she didn't have the brain power to focus on that, not when she suddenly realized something off about the colors.
Only one of them had fur.
And the one who didn't was currently holding a raised glinting saber. Right over a completely dazed Sonic's head.
"I. DON'T. THINK SO!"
That booming voice echoed, and Knuckles came barreling forward with both the weight and subtlety of a moving train.
The Metal Sonic wasn't just tackled. The moment contact was made, sight and sound convinced Amy in the most persuasive of ways that its sockets, its springs, and its bolts had been shattered out of alignment.
Relieved, Amy released a tiny breath.
But then the oddest of sounds crept into her ears, and when it was accompanied by something even stranger, her relief withered away and died.
Wires, several in total suddenly shot off as if they had been doing little else but patiently waiting.
They were phantasmal, Amy wanted to say, because they truly seemed to come from absolutely nowhere.
And their target?
"Arghhh!" Knuckles protested loudly as the tensile cords instantly began to wound themselves around his stocky frame; arms, legs, the bulk of his torso, anywhere that allowed any kind of leverage.
The Sonic-look-alikes, in various positions surrounding him, had shot them from their thought-to-be-smoothly-shaped torsos.
Now, it looked like ten of them had turned into mobile tugboats.
But completely at odds with the somewhat cute comparison was Amy herself, who began to feel a hidden dread slither down her spine.
Knuckles laughed.
"HA! A warrior like myself will not be defeated by such cheap—!"
Only for the breathy grandstanding to be immediately cut off by the familiar sound of thrusters, and the Metal Sonics, nearly a dozen strong, all took to the skies in perfect synchronization.
Moving away from the fight, their dark blue forms began to become smaller and harder to see in the tremendously black night, but the word 'retreat' wasn't what came to Amy's mind in that moment.
No, instead, her mind couldn't help but be overridden by an altogether different concept.
Tact...ic, Amy realized with silent horror.
The wires went taut instantly, and for a moment nothing happened as Knuckles did his best to plant both feet down, determined to not give any ground.
And also for a moment, Amy really thought that would be enough.
It wasn't.
The Metal Sonic's flight capabilities were suddenly put into overdrive, where it didn't even take three seconds for the echidna to start losing his leverage.
One foot left the ground, then another, and then—
And then Knuckles was gone.
His figure, his shouts, and the escorts that made it happen, all receded into the night.
"K-... Knuckles?"
It looked like Sonic was once again lucid, and he was just blankly staring at where Knuckles had been flown off.
Amy grit her teeth, forcing her eyes elsewhere, and thus almost let out a breathy gasp when she spotted the familiar form of her hammer on the ground nearby. She made an awkward swipe for it, elated when she wrapped her digits around the handle. She had just managed to use it to push herself into a standing position—
Behind.
Amy's instincts proved themselves razor sharp, because she whirled around just in time to meet the business end of a saber heading right for her heart.
Sweating, she dodged the worryingly fast attack, but not fully.
A splash of pain hit her as her shoulder was nicked instead.
But Amy ignored this in favor of stabbing her hammer forward like a rapier, pleased when it slammed into the Metal's shoulder and sent it back a few paces.
But even more importantly, it was now off-balance and reeling.
Inwardly smiling, Amy took that as her cue to change her grip and dash in, her hammer already flying in a deadly arc towards a steel head caught completely off-guard.
Hu...h?
That was why what happened next made no sense.
Impossibly, the Metal Sonic's movements changed on a dime.
The way its awkwardly flailing limbs and tilted posture slipped into a different stance entirely, the way it then smoothly sidestepped the attack Amy put all her weight into, and the way the steel digits of its off-hand had already clenched into a fist.
A feint.
It had just performed a f—
The fist slammed into her stomach, causing her to cry out, a strangled sound that came from the very base of her throat.
It hurt.
It hurt a lot.
After all, she had just been struck with the kind of force even Knuckles would find himself impressed by.
And yet, because it wasn't enough to send her flying, Amy could only uselessly fold over the metal limb, unable to do little more than gasp and wheeze as she tried and failed to breathe.
Still, her brain raced like crazy.
This... is wrong. The Metal Sonic's of my... world, my... time... they're not supposed to be this strong, this fast, this...
Capable.
"A-Amy!" someone shouted in concern, and her head weakly lifted up to see Sonic fighting back several Metal's, while at the same time trying to meet her eyes.
Except the sight was already off to her.
Because not only was Sonic starting to accumulate bruises left and right, but the way he was fighting... it was being done at a snail's pace.
But it wasn't because his powers had been taken away.
Rather, he was just not being allowed to make use of them.
With almost sacrificial-like behavior, the hedgehog's doppelgangers had taken to diving at his feet, holding down the blue-furred limbs and refusing to let go.
And that wasn't all.
Sonic's arms were next, and then after that his whole frame. It was to the point where every two Sonic was able to throw off, four more took their place.
Shouting, the blue hedgehog tried to spin-dash.
And it worked.
For all of two seconds.
Kinetic energy, even applied with a hurricane of force, was still kinetic energy, and that was why it took no time at all for metal body after metal body to slam right back into position, where their fists could score punches, and with their blades, chancing cuts.
Our fighting styles are being read...
Amy came to that hollow realization.
Their strengths and weaknesses?
Treated as lines of code to be adopted into plausible stratagems.
And... it was working.
Abruptly, something grabbed Amy by the back-end of her outfit.
She wasn't even aware she was being dragged until the soles of her shoes started skidding against the asphalt. With gritted teeth, she struggled furiously, but could not wrestle out of the grip.
"Let. GO!" She immediately swung her weapon in a wide arc, hoping to hit some part of her attacker's body.
It got caught on something instead.
No, that wasn't it.
A different hand had come from nowhere, stopping the hammer mid-swing—Ah...—and then pulling it straight out of her hands.
And it was strange.
Because even in spite of the actual blow Amy had received to the gut not even minutes prior... having her weapon ripped from her fingers like that, a silent ally that had been with her through countless dangers, that was by far the more painful attack.
And the Metal Sonic who took it? They didn't even give it a passing glance before it was tossed completely out of sight.
Amy felt something white-hot stir inside her.
With something like a growl, she lunged at what she knew was behind her, one of the humanoid-looking limbs of the Metal dragging her. And before she could be stopped, both of her hands clamped down on the part, then, with her entire body glowing pink, she PULLED.
The Sonic-look-alike immediately lost its balance, and she couldn't prevent the rush of satisfaction she felt upon seeing its steel-face slam into the ground.
But Amy's joy died a violent death when a hand suddenly wrapped around her neck.
Next thing she knew, she was being hoisted up, and she got a front row seat to the robotic unfeeling red eyes of a being she was starting to really, really, dislike.
But then the hand started squeezing and thinking things like that started to become incredibly difficult.
Amy Rose, in the years she had been alive, had never been able to say she knew the terrifying feeling that came with her oxygen being slowly deprived from her body.
I... I c-can't br—
She did now.
Her movements were erratic as she thrashed and kicked against the iron-like hold, but it didn't budge in the slightest.
And nor did its owner.
The Metal Sonic just continued to look at her, with not quite boredom, but patience. The calm, methodical patience of a worker completing their trivial task.
I-I— I can't...
Amy's vision started to black out.
"Let go of her!" Tails swooped in from absolutely nowhere.
Struggling to breathe, and thus barely aware, Amy's eyes only minutely shot up in surprise, tracking the fox's surprise attack. And it was a surprise. It couldn't be called anything else, not when Tails was almost a blur as he zoomed right for the Metal's exposed flank.
Time seemed to slow down.
An attack that fast, that advantageous, there was no way it would fail to land.
There was no way it would be dodged in time.
There was no way it would be hampered by others.
Amy was sure of this.
And then the Metal Sonic holding her sprouted a cannon from its other arm and shot Tails point blank without even looking.
The world froze.
Amy's face went slack, even as the grip holding her suddenly loosened, and she was suddenly dropped to the ground.
Oxygen returned to her with a vengeance, and she broke into a fierce coughing fit in a desperation to breathe.
And yet.
Even so.
Disbelieving, Amy forced her eyes back up.
Back to the death bot who hadn't even got the chance to fire on account of the plate sized hole now in its midsection.
I... I... huh?
Time started moving again, and a completely okay Tails crashed straight into the dead on its feet Metal Sonic, the fox unable to halt his momentum in time.
Both the organic and the android even tumbled right past Amy, but she hardly focused on that.
She couldn't.
Because all of a sudden, streams of bright lights assaulted her vision, and within seconds, history repeated itself.
One moment, there had been five of those blue murderers in her immediate vicinity.
Next thing Amy knew, they were all sent violently thrashing to the ground due to the hordes of crimson spears that were punched right through their metal skin.
What is... w...hat is...
What was happening...?
On autopilot and nothing else, Amy's eyes left the shocking scene, looking upwards in the direction the oddly colored light barrage had come from.
And what she saw confused her greatly.
Darkness.
Perched on a roof overlooking them all, the only concept she could recognize was darkness and nothing else.
Then her eyes adjusted, and she realized that darkness was actually a figure of some kind.
Of someone.
Someone with two halting red eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dark.
Eh?
But suspense, apprehension, fear?
Amy didn't get to feel any of that.
That was because the object of her attention was now gone.
And not even blinking her eyes yielded a different result.
The red eyes, and the surrounding figure entrenched in shadows; there was simply no longer anyone on that roof. They had completely disappeared.
Amy swallowed.
The sounds of metal shifting in place filled the air.
And when Amy whipped her head, she predictably did not like what she saw.
With an eerie harmony, and as far as the eye could see, countless Metal Sonic's downsized their retractable arms in an instant, forming ready for use cannons instead.
They promptly aimed them skyward.
And yet...
As a lengthy silence enveloped the deafeningly quiet street, where the only sounds that could be heard were the distinct crackling of enflamed objects, the subtle whirring of mechanized joints, and the barely audible breathing of Amy herself, it was really starting to feel like what just happened had been an unrelated coincidence, some kind of miraculous fluke and nothing more.
Amy managed a shaky breath.
Okay... they're not focused on us. This might be our only chance to—
Her brain stuttered and stalled as a gloved hand appeared out of nowhere and slammed an unsuspecting Metal Sonic face-first into the ground.
But the flow of time didn't care, because the owner of the gloved hand was already gone, that is, someone she was sure hadn't been Sonic, hadn't been Tails, and hadn't been Knuckles.
And that complete stranger, who had looked like a black blur and nothing else, once again appeared for the barest of seconds before completely disappearing from sight.
Except now, Amy could no longer tell herself she was seeing things.
The black blur blinked into existence once more, right in front of streams of those cannon-armed combatants. An organic might have panicked. Confusion shocking themselves into delaying.
The Metal Sonic's however did no such thing.
Saying all twenty of them pulled their triggers with inhuman-like speeds wouldn't be true. Because there wasn't even a need for even that, not when by mental command alone, every single one of those firing apparatuses glowed a bright blue before discharging all at once.
Ah...
And then, straight into their compatriots, Amy observed in a daze, on account of that black blur disappearing at the last moment.
But because the Metal Sonics were surely built with friendly fire in mind, she grimly expected the ionized cannon fire to bounce harmlessly off of their steel chests.
She was only half right.
The Metals did indeed have a sort of blast resistance to their own weapons.
However, that did not stop them from being sent flying when thousands of protons turned energy-fire slammed into them like a truck.
Several of them were immediately flung further down the street, some into the walls of nearby buildings. However, most inevitably collided with the one landmark that was even more commonplace.
Each-other.
It was like Amy had just watched the human sport 'bowling' in action, and she didn't know how she felt about the fact that she could make such a silly comparison, her situation being as tense as it was.
But, as these terrifyingly odd, near invisible guerrilla tactics continued, right in front of her even, where even out of the corner of her eye, Amy could see two, no, three of those steel enforcers loudly getting impaled by the now very familiar looking blood-red spears, their parts crumbling from within, ceasing to function, she was forced to wonder...
Could this... still be called tense?
An odd sound left her mouth. Or maybe it was the subtlest hint of a breathy laugh, stopped short due to exhaustion, deliriousness, or just her best attempt at the flat-out incredulity she was feeling.
"Amy, l-lookout!"
Huh?
That garbled and horrified cry from Tails, who just like her had been looking around at all the strange happenings with an indecipherable look, Sonic doing the same, turned out to be the only hint she got before horrendously loud stomping slammed into her ears.
And yet.
In that moment.
As Amy turned her head to the sight of a glinting saber mere millimeters from her eye, caught unequivocally unaware, where time itself seemed just as taken aback, now flowing with almost deliberate slowness, her subsequent thought came out with near perfect clarity.
Oh, I'm dea—
Steel met flesh.
Amy blinked.
She blinked because she felt no pain.
And because she blinked because there was no pain, she blinked again, because right in front of her was the reason.
A gloved hand had wrapped itself around the blade, uncaring for its sharpness.
And then, Amy blinked for a final time.
Because attached to that gloved hand was someone who only now she was getting a proper look at.
And yet, the bulk of Amy's attention remained on a singular point, how that glove, the black-furred arm attached to it, and then the complete stranger behind it all held the Metal Sonic's frighteningly sharp blade in place.
Even as the steel bit past the white fabric, even as the metal murderer struggled to shake it free, and even as dark red ichor leaked out from where glove met sword.
The sight of blood snapped Amy out of her daze.
But this worry quickly turned into confusion.
This was due to the look she chanced from the dark-furred stranger's side-profile. That is, she was referring to their complete and utter lack of reaction.
Amy eventually had to let her eyes fall away from that, if only to take in the rest of their appearance.
That they were a breed of creature just like her was surprising, but only because of how different they looked in comparison.
First, 'his' fur wasn't clothed, and she promptly decided that fact was alluding enough to the creature's gender. She need only look at the friends she made on Earth for proof, after all.
But Amy found herself swallowing nervously.
Because the fur she was looking at wasn't a bright yellow, blue, or red. It was all black. All black with just the subtlest crimson highlights mixed in with the quills.
And they were quills.
She was staring at another male hedgehog.
But, unlike Sonic's quills that drooped downward, these ones jetted upwards.
Amy didn't know how long she spent staring at this new person, but what she did know was that she eventually regained enough of her wits to try at wetting her throat and using her voice. "W-Who—" she immediately cringed at her raspy tone before trying again.
"Who are—?"
"Shadow...!"
Blinking, that shout suddenly filled Amy's ears. But she didn't look back. Because she didn't need to. It had been Sonic's voice. And that fact startled Amy, but for a different reason than she expected.
It was his tone.
There was such stark elation, naked relief too, that she couldn't help but be left a little bit mollified.
But... Shadow?
If that was supposed to be the stranger's name, she wasn't sure what he did next counted as confirmation. Not when he only barely turned his head to glance back at them.
Dreadfully similar red eyes greeted her, like Amy knew they would. And yet? Beyond the initial spike of surprise, beyond the slight hiccup her heart felt, it just...
Continued to beat like normal.
The fear and worry Amy expected to feel seeing this hedgehog share the same eyes as the metal creations that had decimated her timeline... none of it was there.
And that confused her.
Because they really were so similar.
Even now, not looking away as she was, those crimson orbs carried the same emotionless intensity as the ones across from them, if not even more so.
And yet at the same time...
Only one of them looked calm, rather than unfeeling...
"Be careful Shadow!" a squeaky voice suddenly called out from behind Amy, and she all too quickly recognized it as Tails. "The bots! Their learning cores are insane! If you're not careful, they'll—!"
The fox didn't get to finish.
The Metal Sonic, who had been still fighting for control of their saber-arm, decided then and there that their standstill had gone on for long enough.
With no warning whatsoever, the sleek metal blade retracted with terrifying speeds, a now iconic looking cannon taking its place.
And Amy, heart hammering in her chest, barely even had time to react herself, much less throw out any kind of warning that could help.
Not before it was too late, where the weapon's barrel had already moved scant centimeters closer to Shadow's face and fired, point blank.
But.
"...Pathetic."
With reflexes that suspiciously approached Sonic's super-speed, the black and red hedgehog pivoted on one foot, sidestepping the energy blast completely.
It further went way off target, disappearing into the night sky.
No one said anything.
Amy didn't even think she could if she tried.
But most notable was the Metal, who wasn't even staring at Shadow, but rather at their own cannon, and Amy could have sworn something approaching confusion was sparking in those husk-like red optics, just as confounded by the result as everyone else.
And then.
"Are you done?"
That same deep and toneless voice once again flitted into her ears, one that couldn't have sounded more out of place if it tried.
And this time, her brain could do nothing else but work on overdrive trying to ascertain where it had come from. But, since there was only one person it could have been, it was only natural for Amy's eyes to once again fall on that black and red back.
Just in time to see a gloved fist slam into the metal plating that made up the bot's head in front of him.
The color blue was immediately sent flying several feet backwards.
Now, Amy didn't know what to do with her disappointment when the Metal was able to correct itself midair, coming to a skidding halt along the ground. But then she saw the newly made sizeable crack applied to its entire visor, and suddenly, she didn't feel so cheated.
As if annoyed, the Metal pointed its cannon at Shadow.
To Amy's surprise though, the dark hedgehog was no longer even affording the robot any attention.
Instead, he was looking elsewhere.
Thoroughly confused, her eyes could only follow what he was staring at. Though, when she did, it wasn't an exaggeration to say her heart plunged down her chest like a faulty elevator.
Scores of mechanized hedgehogs suddenly launched off from the adjacent rooftops, each of them ready and poised to attack, with not only more cannons affixed to their arms, but just as many blades too.
And yet...
There was Shadow, remaining completely still.
And this didn't change even as they got closer.
He did nothing except watch their descent.
Amy quickly became worried, the thought that he was frozen in fear, surprise, or both, taking center stage in her mind. But then, with near critical timing, she heard Sonic's strained voice. "...Don't worry, Amy." And then, Amy heard something even stranger, what her dazed mind could only process as a chuckle. "Shadow doesn't lose. He's annoyingly cool like that."
It was as if Sonic's words served as the signal.
Because Shadow was no longer where he was standing.
But he hadn't teleported.
In a show of red and orange sparks, he had sped a few meters forward, just narrowly avoiding the multi-pronged attack that came crashing down on the street below.
But it was the speed at which he had done so that surprised Amy the most.
Because it was the kind of speed that Sonic possessed, the kind where even a single blink would be enough to miss it all.
But at the same time, it was different.
That was the only way Amy could describe how Shadow impossibly seemed to be kicking off along the ground, as if it were made of ice. But if the Metals thought the black hedgehog's sudden evasive maneuver was him going on the defensive, they were dead wrong.
Because as if he had been rebounded by an unseen force, Shadow was already zooming right back towards the Sonic lookalikes. But again, rather than dashing into a sprint, he zigzagged in place, as if he was bouncing off of invisible walls for momentum.
And this speed turned him into that very familiar yet unrecognizable black blur.
As if enraged by this, the Metal Sonic's quickly raised their circular cannons, ionic energy lighting up the barrels.
With reverberating cracks, they fired in perfect unison, with close to a dozen searing hot blasts shot straight out of them. And yet every single one missed, Shadow dashing right, left, and right again in quick succession, and with unrivaled speed.
Even when his opponent's aiming capabilities should be near perfect.
Even when their hive-mind's continuous streams of data-salvage should be making victory an inevitability, not a possibility.
Ah.
And that was it, wasn't it?
Shadow was a complete unknown.
Tails, Knuckles, Sonic... and so many others, they were all known figures in history, regaled as dauntless heroes, names forever etched into the limelight. But Shadow? A hedgehog with black and red fur? At the very least, from the future Amy was from, she had never heard of such a person...
Shadow slid into one of the Metal's, instantly knocking their feet from under them. Then, he spun around and delivered a wild haymaker to the bot about to slice at him from behind, sending it flying. Abruptly, Shadow jumped, dodging several blasts of energy.
But it was hardly a normal jump.
Bewildered, Amy witnessed the confounding sight of two twin strands of blue flame shooting of from underneath him. But rather than this energy originating from his body, it instead came out from his footwear. In a manner of seconds, his rocket-assisted shoes already had him up and above his metallic adversaries.
A complete reversal.
And Amy couldn't figure out what shocked her more.
The fact that the hedgehog was outfitted with the kind of gear you would find on one of the Emperor's Badniks... Or, how Shadow promptly decided to make use of them. Because with the kind of efficiency that scared her a little, he descended on the Metals with the kind of force that could only be described as vicious.
With a rocket-assisted-flip midway down, the momentum bled out into a fiery axe kick, where it unkindly bludgeoned a robotic skull.
Saying it broke was an understatement.
The thing's entire upper body immediately caved in, becoming unrecognizable.
But that violent landing strategy wasn't the end of things.
No. Shadow was already in motion for another attack, not stopping even once, and with not a single movement wasted.
Kicks, punches, impossibly timed blocks; in a word, Amy found it all seamless. And the hedgehog had more than enough speed to get away with all of them and more.
He could fight.
And in a way different from Amy who picked up a hammer and where life and death struggles forced her to be proficient with it. Different from Knuckles, too, whose tribalistic past gave him warrior training but little else. In every sense of the word, Shadow actually knew how to fight.
No.
He knew how to one-sided-ly attack.
A fact their enemy soon seemed to realize.
Thrusters roared to life behind Amy, and several additional Metal Sonics rushed past her, the very same ones that had been overwhelming Sonic and Tails.
It was as if their programming decided a change in priority was necessary. And now, every single one of them was racing towards Shadow all at once.
Four, ten, sixteen, twenty, no...
Amy's throat grew dry when she now counted more than thirty of them in total, and they were crowding around the black hedgehog so much that she could only barely see him amidst it all. But...
Even if it was only flashes...
"..."
The red-eyed hedgehog still looked completely unimpressed.
In a burst of something that could have been mistaken as rage, one such bot, a fist dent-shaped one that Amy was able to place as her would-be-murderer, suddenly speared forward with mute killing intent.
Shadow side-stepped with ease, and in the same motion spun and delivered a rocket-propelled kick to the side of the Metal's head.
The force applied sent it lazily spinning for a bit before its back crashed unceremoniously on the rough asphalt. But since it wasn't a killing blow, the mechanical warrior would have been more than able to pick itself right back up, joining the melee once more.
Shadow didn't allow that.
With a swift warp, he was suddenly towering over the supine robot, gaze unreadable. Then his boot fell down on their steely neck, and he un-hesitantly used the leverage to rip its arm-blade from its body completely, limb and all.
And.
The weapon remained in his hand.
From behind, a Metal tried to shoot Shadow point blank. Except it never even got that far. It just stood there, unable to react in the slightest, right until the moment that black blur cleaved the blade straight through its plated and wire-infused neck. And then Shadow sliced the new sword into another.
And another.
And another.
Even with something new, Shadow didn't show any signs of slowing down.
The blade almost looked like it was bouncing between targets, what with how its wielder was able to fluidly weave through them all without stopping. And yet... weave.
An innocuous word.
Therefore, it wasn't fitting at all, not when each moment of contact spelt disastrous consequences for those on the other end of that crimson glare.
Limbs were separated.
Heads were punched with the business end of a serrated edge.
Sparks flew, due to well-timed parries, yes, but just as more from unmitigated blows coming from every direction.
And all the while, Amy didn't know what was more chilling, the discordant sounds of metal scraping against metal? The low growls and snarls coming from the one causing all that damage?
Or the fact that she didn't once try to get up, didn't once need to, throughout it all...
The battle may have continued after that.
Amy wasn't sure, having lost focus at one point.
It was like time was moving with hypnotic slowness, and she couldn't decide if that was secretly healing whatever state her mind was in... or hurting it.
But even that became a passing curiosity, as something happened to snap her out of her self-inflicted trance. That is, the sensation of something cold suddenly brushing against one of her still collapsed legs.
Amy blinked, and with surprising difficulty, aimed her gaze downward, where a freshly decapitated metal head was staring at her.
And, she didn't react in the slightest.
In truth, the head was only one of many that were currently littering their surroundings.
Also, it was missing its eyes, or at the very least, the power required to make the frontal visor have a semblance of having eyes.
Maybe that excused her non-reaction.
Maybe.
Huh...
Amy just realized.
How strange was it that she had the time to entertain such irrelevant and simplistic thoughts?
When not even minutes prior, her life had been hanging by a thread. When she had been at the complete mercy of those unfeeling red eyes from her nightmares. Nightmares taken from a world that had followed her to this reality.
So, Amy felt her next question was a good one.
Don't... the nightmares normally win?
Scraps of metal.
Limbs missing the rest of their body.
Exposed circuits.
Shadow stood in the middle of all of this, and it took Amy a moment to realize the rhythmic up and down motion of his shoulders was because he was breathing.
And that really was all he was doing.
Not panting, raggedly gasping, or anything like it.
It was only the measured breaths of someone who looked like they could keep going.
In fact, the barest trace of a scowl still marring those features almost made it look like he wanted to keep going...
But.
Then he closed his eyes.
And just like that the layer of wrath disappeared, and an expression of neutrality replaced it.
It wasn't better, warmer, or more welcoming, not in the slightest, but Amy found she definitely preferred it over the alternative.
Still, when those gleaming red eyes all too abruptly zeroed in on her, she could do nothing to prevent the stiffening of her shoulders.
"..."
He didn't speak initially.
But.
"...If you plan on contributing, your chance is behind you," he said flatly.
Blinking, Amy failed to understand what that meant.
But then the moment passed and she realized Shadow wasn't even talking to her. No, he was talking to those behind her.
Uncomfortably, she managed to twist her body's grounded form sideways. Except when she did, her mouth fell open. And it wasn't due to the still shell-shocked forms of Sonic and Tails.
It was the sight beyond them.
Three Metal Sonics were booking it down the open street.
They... were fleeing.
These Metal's weren't scouting units; the ones who had attacked Sonic upon their first meeting. These were attacker types, designed purely to hunt down and kill. And kill they did. They were responsible for so much death in that gray world of hers that it was sickening.
Men, women, children, human and creature alike. Her fellow allies of the resistance, too. Friends, and...
Family.
Those same steel monsters, were running away?
That was... she didn't even know. Words were failing at her. But, Amy supposed that was okay, since claiming to know what she was feeling, both now and twenty minutes ago, also seemed to be an arduous task. ...Wait. Amy suddenly had to pause, and this time for an altogether different reason.
In the distance, was that...?
"Haha! Knuckles the Echidna allows no survivors!" With a roar, and his fighting spirit apparently on fire, Knuckles burst onto the scene, coming from literally nowhere.
And also, uncaring to those he surprised.
Either way, he wasted no time using his larger mass as a battering ram. The fact that he was sporting a familiar reddish glow and was moving at impressive speeds? It went without saying that the retreating death-bots were caught completely flat-footed.
The unstoppable object slammed into the three, and they didn't stand a chance.
And watching it all, Amy found herself sighing, both in exasperation and relief.
"Knuckles!"
"Knuckles, you're okay!"
Sonic and then Tails cried out in such a way, faces nearly crumbling in shock and relief.
It wasn't that any of them had forgotten about Knuckles.
But with how quickly things had gone from bad to worse, the echidna quite literally taken somewhere far away, there hadn't even been any time to agonize over it.
And even if they had immediately wanted to stage some kind of rescue attempt, such a thing wouldn't have been possible without first managing to rescue themselves.
Amy paused.
...Rescue?
Knuckles had long since finished reducing the three Metals to scrap, and as such, Sonic was the first to reach him. "Knuckles, how..." The hedgehog's smile was matched only by his obvious confusion. "Where did you come from? Wait, no. How did you escape?"
"I do not know," Knuckles declared proudly.
Huh?
As Amy managed to push herself off the ground and into a standing position, wincing as she did so, she couldn't have been the only one confused. That said, she was immediately proven right by the two very blank looks from Sonic and Tails.
"What do you mean, Knuckles?" Tails asked patiently.
"Hm." The hulking red creature lightly tapped his head with his massive gloves. "Again, I do not know. One moment, I was getting hauled off by those hedgehog bots, and the next, there were some bright lights, and I was falling. They were hit by something. Something red and flashy, I think."
Blinking, iconic spears came unbidden to Amy's mind.
Of course, immediately after, her head spiked with pain, and she doubled over. She might have even fallen over if Sonic didn't notice and sped towards her.
"Amy. Are you okay?"
In her periphery, Knuckles and Tails were already approaching too, and despite Sonic asking the question, their expressions said the exact same thing.
Amy waved it off with a smile. "I'm fine. Just a little out of it. But, um..."
She trailed off.
The reason was obvious.
Because even without being prompted, Amy felt it only natural for her attention to be once again drawn to that fifth presence among them, the one standing irrationally still with his arms crossed.
He was fielding their stares with one of his own, just with no particular expression.
"... Shadow?"
Sonic chose that moment to take hesitant steps forward.
"That's... really you, right?"
The blue hedgehog's voice was barely above a whisper, and it had such a brittle quality to it, too. Just like before, Amy found herself surprised by it. It was truly as if every part of Sonic was desperately hoping that what he was seeing wasn't an illusion.
"..."
Meeting Sonic's gaze, the black and red hedgehog didn't answer for the longest time, and with that face that betrayed absolutely nothing, it was enough to make Amy think Sonic had made some kind of mistake somewhere.
But then.
A heavy sigh.
"...If I was an impostor, I'd just say yes you idiot."
Still frowning, Shadow rolled his eyes, and combined with the unfriendly words, it paused Amy's thoughts in their entirety.
After all, hearing such a thing at this crucial moment was the very last thing she expected.
And yet Sonic's face lit up in absolute joy.
"Shadow, it is you! You're alive! You're really alive!" The color blue blurred towards the darker hedgehog, and Amy watched with incredulity as the blue speedster enveloped the other in a mighty embrace.
Or he would have.
Her incredulity came from Sonic having latched onto absolutely nothing but air on account of Shadow disappearing completely, only to then reappear a few feet away.
Now, Amy had seen his abilities numerous times by now.
She had.
Still, her mouth was parted.
Perhaps it was unwarranted considering the powers of those next to her, her own too, but she couldn't help it. How could she be anything other than mind boggled upon witnessing... teleportation, bona-fide teleportation, up close?
But the dark-furred hedgehog didn't seem to care for her shock.
No, he was busy staring at Sonic with the kind of look that would even make 'His Magesty, The Emperor' Eggman freeze. "...Don't try to do that again."
"Eh? Shadow, I was only trying to give you a hug..."
"I'm aware. That's why I avoided it."
The brutal words found home, and Sonic flinched as if struck. But as if finding some inner wind, the blue blur shook it all off, looking at Shadow up and down with that same all too visible cheer.
"Still, I'm glad you're alive. Really, really, glad."
Sonic's voice broke at the end there, and Amy found she wasn't the only one whose eyes widened slightly. Shadow, however, didn't seem to react in the slightest, that perpetual frown remaining ever affixed to his face.
But right when Amy started to feel uncomfortable...
Shadow looked away, voice soft.
"...This is the world she wanted to live in... and protect. I can't do that if I'm dead. It's as simple as that."
A wave of confusion assaulted Amy.
But then she saw the way Sonic's face softened, the way Tails and Knuckles seemed to exchange indecipherable glances, and any words she might have wanted to voice died in her throat.
A brittle smile slipped onto her face instead.
I... feel like I'm missing some things...
Amy concluded as much, thoughts all over the place.
But even if that was very much the case, she didn't want to ruin what looked to be some kind of a heartfelt reunion...
Well, heartfelt for some.
I don't think Mr. FrownyPants has even cracked a smi—
Shadow's eyes shifted to her.
"Eep! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!" Amy immediately cried out, taking several steps back. She even went as far as to hide her face with her hands... not that it would be offering her much in the way of protection from the guy who had literally been ripping off arms just a few minutes ago.
In any case, Amy expected to get immediately torn into by the black and red hedgehog.
However, as nothing but silence stretched on, she began to feel self-conscious.
Amy slowly lowered her self-made barrier.
The first person she noticed was Tails, and he was giving her a wry smile, and it was somewhat at odds with the confused one Knuckles was wearing. Sonic followed his lead and tilted his head a bit. And Shadow...
Amy felt her nervousness spike.
Shadow wasn't looking at her in any particular way. No, he was just staring at her in complete silence.
But since that was somehow even more nerve-wracking than any other emotion she could have gotten from him, Amy felt like she couldn't be blamed for the way her heart spontaneously decided to start beating off-tempo.
"Oh, yeah! Totally forgot. I still haven't introduced you guys yet." Thankfully, Sonic chose that moment to jump in. When he suddenly got between them too, Amy barely withheld the urge to sigh in relief.
"Shadow, this is Amy. She's, um... let me think. She's from a VERY faraway place and is trying to get back home. We'll, uh, get back to that. But Amy, this is Shadow. We saved the Earth together not too long ago. Why, I'd even go as far as to say we're besties."
The reply came without missing a beat.
"Me no longer wishing to kill you is not synonymous with me liking you, hedgehog."
"A-As you can see, he's still a bit shy."
Amy looked between the two of them, unsure. But since if nothing else it was becoming increasingly apparent what kind of dynamic the two had, she settled on a nervous smile instead.
Kind of like the one Sonic was wearing, even.
Shadow just closed his eyes with a sigh.
Now, whether that was annoyance towards this entire situation, or just Sonic in general, Amy couldn't claim to know.
But that abruptly changed when he opened them again, and it was like a switch had been flipped. And that was because he was now looking at Sonic with an edge that hadn't been aimed at him yet. "...Your earlier statement, amend it," Shadow demanded, glaring.
"Huh? Amend wh—...oh. Yeah, yeah... I know. You don't want to be friends with me. No friends for Shad—"
"Not that, you imbecile. I didn't, save, anything. You did. I rectified a problem I myself was integral in causing. Don't lump me in with your ensemble of heroes. And don't lie on my behalf out of some mistaken notion of kindness."
The air seemed to freeze.
The venom beheld in those words, and the look on Shadow's face as he said them, it would have been enough to make anyone cower in place. That was what Amy thought as she found herself swallowing slightly, stuck in the middle of something she knew nothing about, but felt the invisible weight of it crash into her all the same.
"Yeah, that might be true."
Sonic seemed to agree.
And yet, it was slightly at odds with the wide smile stretching across his face. "But are you sure I'm the one being kind? Or is it the person who just showed up to save all our butts?"
"...That's irrelevant."
"Then," Sonic, now definitely smirking, suddenly jabbed a thumb at Amy, and she blinked in surprise. "What about trying to convince a new face you're the bad guy? I dunno, Shadow. You say you're not a hero, but you're not really doing a good job on not being one." The blue hedgehog further tilted his head at him. "Right, Mr. Vigilante? That's you, right?"
Shadow immediately bristled.
Knuckles and Tails were wide-eyed.
Amy kept whipping towards them all, now even more confused. Huh? Vigilante? What the heck are they—
Something tugged at the back of her mind.
The chilling television footage from yesterday.
The girl who had been about to get dragged towards a fate worse than death, and yet miraculously, something arriving to stop it just shy of happening. And whatever that something was, it was either near invisible, or so quick that it just appeared that...
"..."
Amy's eyes widened ever so slowly.
That was her face as she immediately turned back to Shadow, just in time to see him giving Sonic a very unfavorable look.
"You are ...insufferably annoying."
"That didn't sound like a denial~!"
If Amy was honest, Shadow being the person that had appeared and saved that girl, such a thing was hardly a reveal, especially in light of everything else that had happened today.
Still, it felt like a lot to process, if only because it was expanding the ever-growing folder of the frowning dark-furred hedgehog across from her, someone that didn't seem to exist in her time.
Or.
Maybe that was wrong.
Maybe he did.
Maybe he was someone who just came and went, like the wind, heard by no one, seen by no one...
Amy shook away these mental cobwebs, too introspective for her tastes.
That said, she still took a step forward, and even as a knot began to form in her stomach, she offered her hand towards one person and one person only.
"L-Like Sonic said. I'm Amy. Amy Rose. It's nice to meet you, Shadow."
Admittedly, the unapologetic way those crimson orbs dispassionately zeroed in on her was a bit intimidating, but thankfully, it didn't look like any of the annoyance that had been present with Sonic was aimed at her.
Though as the hedgehog did nothing else but stare at her and her extended gloved hand in what seemed to be distant interest, she wasn't sure she was getting the better treatment.
"..."
Amy cast Sonic a somewhat frantic look.
His chaste shrug did nothing to ease her nerves.
Still, even with her hand now awkwardly dropping, she turned back to Shadow, trying her best to say the words she wanted to say. "Um. Well. I just wanted to say th-thanks. For earlier, I mean. You really saved me. H-Heehee."
The words themselves weren't strange.
You were supposed to thank someone for doing you a nice thing, after all. So, why wasn't her loudly beating heart getting that memo? Why did she feel so embarrassed?
Amy was very much lost in her own head.
That was why she almost didn't notice.
The way the look on Shadow's face completely changed.
...
...
...
It was a simple memory.
A tragic one, yes, but made ordinary by how common it was.
But, since it was one of the very few Shadow had left of her, he held onto it like it was a precious treasure.
Maria had been sick.
Back then, it was a disease that had been ahead of its time.
Her body was constantly wracked with weakness.
Though, not that one would be able to tell, not as she displayed energy that bordered on endless. Of course. That was only when she wasn't being rendered completely immobile one day, perhaps two days later.
The sight of that girl, stuck to a bed, unable to move, her unkempt blonde hair messily strewn about around her pillow, tubes coming out of her body... even back then, it filled Shadow with more rage than he knew what to do with. But that white hot anger wasn't directed at the Professor, nor the other doctors.
It was aimed at himself.
For all his power...
For all his genetic makeup that defied reason...
What good was it if he couldn't even cure one innocent girl's illness?
The ultimate life-form?
Project Shadow?
What did that even mean when all he could do was hold her hand?
A hand that sometimes couldn't feel, attached to a body that sometimes couldn't hear, couldn't see, and couldn't even speak.
Just holding that girl's hand.
That was all Shadow the Hedgehog was good for.
But...
Even so...
Every time she woke up...
—"Ahh... Sh-... Shadow? Is that... you? G-Geez, what have I... told you. Don't worry... about me. You need... to sleep, too, silly... ...B-But... th-thanks. I was... a little scared this time. You really... saved me. H-Heehee."
"Shadow, is something wrong?"
The memory collapsed.
Shadow blinked.
He even... briefly forgot where he was.
But in that moment, he swore he still saw two sky-blue eyes, and then, blonde hair that framed an almost pale looking white skin tone. Except he blinked again and absolutely none of that was there. The blue eyes were now green, and the blonde hair was replaced by bright pink fur.
In other words...
He was back in reality.
That sobering realization, which then turned into a festering irritation for having mistook what was real in the first place, caused Shadow's teeth to clench together tightly.
"Shadow?"
Almost robotically, his eyes blinked back into focus.
The pink hedgehog, the newest addition to the blue rat's group of friends, was still staring at him.
Naturally, he didn't have any qualms about that, something that wasn't even his business. The way her mouth had been apparently moving prior to his episode, too.
No.
What he instead found off-putting was the way her eyes were softened in an almost believable level of concern.
...Wait.
"..."
Having noticed something else entirely, Shadow frowned, before getting closer, not particularly caring when it caused her to tense up. But all he did was raise a hand off to one side of her, simply waiting for her green eyes to track it. Then, he repeated the action with his other.
Of course...
"You have a concussion..." he muttered, more to himself than anything.
"Huh?"
"A concussion. You have one."
The girl gave him a very slow blink, as if still trying to process what he just said. A few seconds passed before she finally managed intelligible speech. "No... no I don't."
Shadow didn't respond.
What he did instead was vanish and reappear.
That's how simple it must have looked, anyway.
What actually happened was him tugging at a familiar iridescent-colored energy inside his body and then channeling it to warp between two points in quick succession. The object he had just retrieved had been halfway through a nearby car's windshield, after all.
While idly surprised by the weight, Shadow gave the slender pink hammer a light twirl, even as he was very aware of the annoyingly wide pairs of eyes watching his every move.
Methodically, he reversed his grip, holding it out towards the still stunned pinkette, silently telling her to take it.
And she did so, face blank.
"...Ah?" Except her eyes went wide, and for a second time. The silently watching Sonic and company did the exact same.
It was because the effeminate hedgehog had grasped nothing but air.
She had missed the hammer's handle by a full meter.
There was a brief silence where no one said anything.
Shadow just continued to hold out the hammer, in not quite patience, but rather tired acceptance. When it finally was taken from him, it was done by two hands, their pink-furred owner not even looking at him as she did so, her head dipped so low that it was a miracle she even managed in the first place.
"A c-concussion, r-...right," she squeaked out, made a little strange by the fact she was hugging an object made for demolition close to her chest like some kind of stuffed toy.
And all the while, the peanut gallery, that is, the hedgehog, fox, and musclehead, continued to watch with varying degrees of distractedness and amusement.
"..."
In short, Shadow found it all vaguely irritating.
Sighing, he looked up to the sky, where he just now noticed the moon, perfectly round, bright, and out in all its glory. And... it was a sight someone long departed would have wanted to see more than anything else.
Shadow's gaze lingered there.
...Hero, huh.
Such a thing was an unattainable ideal.
A child's fantasy and nothing more.
And yet...
She would have wanted him to try.