Chapter: Requiem For A Rose

::Edit:: I apologize - the chapter got deleted!

A shadow air-bladed down the row of sodium lamps; the street's lights dimmed upon the red smiles of blood grinning on the pavement.

Thunder beat on the clouds in the north-Thunder roiled on the underbellies in the south.

The skies bulked together to shape the head of Zeus roaring over the city.

It was coming.

...As 'Zeus's mouth' spun into a vortex of thunderclouds, showers and showers of lightning split down the heart of Station Square's sky like bloodlines severing the heavens in two.

The streetlamps' lightbulbs exploded into a thousand shatters of glass as lightning shot through them, one...by...one, one...by one, by one, by one, by one, by one-people screaming and protecting their heads and loved ones, clawing at the glass sliced into their cheeks and necks, gurgling on the blood that bursted out of their throats.

The lamp-patterning blackout chased down the shadow faster and faster and faster until it was at his heels, tearing the street apart, ripping it into hurricanes of rocks, cement, cars, and people flying through the air.

...Wrath sat on the rooftop of a building with his Chaos Emerald held overhead. He smirked, before lowering the magical gem, and turning back to the darkness.

'Sh-She's fine, she's not dying, she's fine, she's fine, she's FINE. She WILL be FINE!'

Shit, where am I going...? Where the FUCK am I going?

My eyes are too raw to see a damn thing, the hail's leaving dents on my forehead, my brain's throbbing inside my skull, the wind's popping my ears, and all that chaos behind me; I can't fucking F-O-C-U-S.

All I'm breathing is the stench of blood on the pink and red slaughter-victim curled into my chest. Her warmth - it'sdying. Her heartbeat - it's s-slowing. Her fingers, dirty with blood, are fisting in my chestfur, blooding its white, and I couldn't ask for more of a sign of life.

She NEEDS me. I can differenitate her hot tears from the cold rain and her dyin-...-dehydrated rasping from the storm's howls.

My feet keep fighting against the chucks of hail that have no doubt left its welts on my eyelids and the hard rain that's numbed me all the way to the frozen cells.

'I'm going to CASTRATE him, I'm going to fucking rip his testicles off and gag them down his throat!'

I want to butcher something, anything, and ever-y-thing. I want to gorge someone's eyes out, decapitate their body parts, crack their head open, tear out their esophagus with my own bare teeth. I want to see someone's blood in place of hers, I want to take anyone else's life for hers! God DAMN it, I can hardly breathe...I'm seeing red, I'm grasping my own throat, all and everything is blurring into jittery pixels.

"Sh-Sha~dow~..." - That pulls me down to the world I was slowly leaving.

The Light.

I can feel more tears on my chest.

However, I couldn't rift my lips apart wide enough to soothe her with the lie that she'll be just fine, or manage to keep my irrationability stable enough to even sanitize myself.

I could only so much bark, "Quiet."

Don't talk. Breathe; don't waste what you have left.

Amy Rose clings to me tighter and whimpers out her sobs and fears. I cradle her to me closer and growl between my 'asthema' attack.

I long to be naive like you, Rose, to believe everything will be fine in the outcome. I long to hope so boundlessly, the hope I was once not so short of. I long for the day I believed in everything and...knew nothing at all.

My fingers dig into her skin. My eyes burn with passion, "You will not die. Do you hear me?" ...I begin to feel this familiar, wet pressure on those same angry eyes as I snarl my hate for this twisted fate, "...You will not die."

Meanwhile, I wasn't watching the road. I didn't give a damn about that until I saw a set of headlights blind my vision into almost bleeding, but the second my pupils had abapted to extremity of the high-beams, the vehicle crashed right into me and...A-Amy! Shit!

Pulling her into me, Amy was well embedded into my chest as my body rolled and toppled over the hood of the god damn car and finally into the mud. The lightning that had tailed me down electorcuted the truck instead, causing it to explode into flames and scur into another car.

For a full ten seconds, I was hobbling up on my feet in a state of paralysis that rattled and delayed my nervals, causing me double over, and what's more, hallucinate stars and the sounds of bells.

Closing an eye from my wooziness and the pressure point in my broken rib, I limped to Amy Rose. Her head is snapped back, her eyes are rolling like marbles and she's shaking from head to toe, a physical state very similar to when Maria went through her seizures. My fingers, convulsing more than Amy's body, uncurled and ached to touch the dying girl, as though one touch from me would renew her health. I swallow deeper and taste my vomit, exaggerating my trauma even more when I snatch my fingers away from her at one single brush of her cheek against my fingertip.

She's cold...her flesh is going white...

I...I can't even...

Fuck, get moving, Shadow!

I shut my eyes and clear the child inside me, and haul Amy Rose up into my arms again.

Once I arrived at the City's famous house of recovery, I barged through the doors, standing there, drowning in the rain and a pink hedgehog's blood whose was over-flooding the white floor in red.

...The humans shrieked. They shrieked. They, SHRIEKED! They didn't even h...elp me!

I run up and thrust Amy onto the counter where the nurses sat and sobbed, scattering the pen-holders and clip boards all over the front desk. One nurse looked up from her arms with a horrified face specked in Amy's blood.

"Help her," I panted through my fangs before opening my mouth big and wide, "NOW!"

"R...R-Right away, Mr. Sonic!" - She sure was taking her fucking time by just standing there!

"Are you blind, wench?" I pound the counter with my fist and then wrestled the wench forward by her uniform's collar. "Do you see her? I said LOOK AT HER! Do you see her?"

She went on slobbering and sobbing, "Yes! Yes! YES!" as I gripped her by the scalp and shoved her face over to Amy's body, forcing her to see this child DYING!

"LOOK at her! I said LOOK AT HER! Do you see her? Yeah? You see her? Then HELP. HER." I flung her back behind her desk, not caring if she broke a leg, a neck, I don't CARE.

Everyone's staring, everyone's gasping, everyone's clinging to each other in fear, but no one is HELPING me.

I turn to them all - the wounded, the sick, the dying, the workers - and scream in hysterics, "You god damn pathetic humans-HELP HER! Get someone and fucking HELP HER!"

Sprays of Amy's blood had peppered along my muzzle and fangs, making me look like the cannibal who had gnawed on the flesh that was gone from her, while being the savior caressing the back of her head into my chest, symbolizing the transition...and the affection.

For she will never mean nothing to me, in any lifetime, no matter what memories I would have lost. She has changed the course of my future on ARK, and she is changing it as we speak.

...We have met, and this is enough.

Amy's Apartment - Guestroom

...Sonic lifted Amy's bracelet to Tails, showing the fox all its blood and scuffed chippings.

"Amy was ATTACKED?" Tails tossed the covers off him, though had to massage his ribs from the damage they'd endured earlier.

His eye pried open to look up at a frowning Sonic. The cornea was discolored, but the droopy eyelid had a black and purple bulge on it that looked like a tumor. His nose was smashed in and he was missing a fang, Sonic noted, in addition to the tip of his left ear that had been chewed off.

"...Yeah," Sonic's mouth hardly moved to the voice and his mind wasn't on the words he spoke.

Sonic had went on a one-man search party for hours and hours in the storm. He found no Shadow, and no Shadow-clone. He searched so long and hard, that he was now sick with a chest-cold and mild fever, and there was way in this world or the next he'd spend two seconds lying down in bed.

"I mean I..." Sonic sucked in a breath, slurping on some mucus. "I saw blood on the carpet after Shadow took her..." Sonic's eyes replayed the scene he was describing, and his glare sunk in deeper than it had been. "...Damn it..." he fisted his hand and talked through his teeth, "Just where in the heck did Shadow TAKE her?"

"Calm d-down...!" Tails sounded congested with mucus too, and sniffed some up. "Shadow probably took her to the hospital...! You already said there were two black hedgehogs in the same room, so my guess is..." Tails rubbed his runny nose. "That oher black hedgehog was the one who-"

"Did this to you..." Sonic's fist was shaking out of his self-control.

Tails tripped over his words to change the topic, "...This guy could be Eggman's newest android!"

Sonic's fist stopped shaking. "But Egghead can't design something so...close to the real thing. So life-like." Solemnity shone on Sonic's eyes, but it disspitated when he tapped on his skull to personify. "His brain's the size of an embyro, Tails!"

Tails kneaded his sprained ankle, trying to prevent the smile that wanted to split his face open at Sonic's joke, even if he wasn't trying to be funny.

Sonic heartened Tails with an awkward chuckle, but then cleared his throat when the silence grew just as awkward.

Shyly, Tails looked down, and the same glowing happiness he got in Mystic Ruins obtunded the pain he cramped with, but he pushed the happiness to the back of his mind and reminded Sonic after a few stutters and harrumphs of his own:

"E-Eggman is the only scientist around that could make something like this, though. We don't have any other leads. But you're right, he hasn't taken that far of a step like his grandfather."

Both companions either lowered their head or looked on, both evaluating and thinking about two different importances. Sonic's eyelids saddened over dull neon greens, and Tail's eyebrow squiggled down into a fraction of a frown.

Suddenly, "That might be it!"

Sonic's ears popped back up.

"It just might be the project G.U.N. had been keeping in lock-down secrecy for forty-one years. "

"...Wait, so," Sonic tilted his head with the higher ear twitching. "it isn't...you know, Gerald?"

"No way! Gerald didn't have time to be making two prototypes. There was only the Biolizard, and Project Shadow. And there's a reason Shadow's name was pre-fixed with 'Project' during the ARK era - he wasn't finished being created on the ARK."

"...So Shadow's not really...?"

"I really don't know. But, besides all that, since the Shadow we know is, in no shape or form, going to be ordered around by the government like he was supposed to be made for other than Maria's illness, G.U.N.'s been trying to replicate what Gerald's done. Shadow thinks too independently - the military had complained that Gerald practically gave him a soul, and you can't break a soul or a free will, to the government's misfortune. They tried using some of Shadow's DNA for their own project, but it had none of Shadow's internal uniquities - like artificial organs enhanced by technical manipulations, authentic but unlimited blood, Maria's transplanted heart - I know, that sounds gross, huh? - and liquid metal bone marrow. If Shadow still really thinks he's a machine OR a weapon of mass destruction, he's dead wrong, and has got to wake up and smell the roses one day. G.U.N.'s attempt was made from metal and that's it. Its brain was almost as unique as Shadow's, just not quite as intricate or so close to mundanity. And from what I've dug up, the project was becoming a major failure. They cancelled it because it had too many problems. It...thought like a child, then was as unpredictable as a rabid monster at one turn, and then malfunctioned into shooting sparks at another. The project was called, 'Shadow Android.'"

"So in English, this guy is a rinky-dink, sleazy cloned version of Shadow built like a ton of 'internal' legos. But then how's it walking around and breathing if the project was cancelled, little buddy?"

Tails scratched his head guiltily, "I was just connecting some dots, Sonic. Maybe I'm wrong...we'll have to figure it out once we nab the guy, so then maybe I can run some tests on him? If we really want to be sure we need to ask Shadow."

Tails grinned, and ignored how much it ached his mouth's muscles to do so.

...Sonic nodded a slow, but sure enough uneager nod.

(((((Eggman's Hidden Base)))))

"Wrath, what in God's name happened to you?" Dr. Robotnik crossed his arms and bit the inside of his cheek; pissed. "You've wasted hours of my time having to give you a blasted FIX!"

The copy-hedgehog turned his head to the Doctor by an inch with a bored frown, but then smiled like a kitten getting his chin tickled.

The left side of his skull was plated in metal. The white of his eyeball having been drained of its color, was now raw, red, and plagued in myriads of tiny brown nerve vessels. His iris, no longer the oval characteristic of a hedgehog's eye, was the round orb of a robot's yellow sight-sensor. His arm, was now hairless and skinned, and nothing but bony metal. His ear was sliced neatly in half, but his other remained in tagged and twitching health.

...Dr. Robotnik's eyebrows shot up. He stage-whispered to the hedgehog swinging his legs back and forth on the tool-bench, "...Did Shadow do this to you?"

"Yes, quite the artiste, is he not?" Wrath tongued his eyeball to adjust it back in the socket, before licking around his mouth and blinking unevenly at the Doctor.

"Your face deforms itself with the more damage you take," Dr. Robotnik cleaned up his equipment. "Which means you're more useless than that Shadow. How do you plan to carry out my orders if you can't defeat one measly little hedgehog? The next time you meet, you'll be pieces of scrap metal crushed under his foot!"

"Do, not...DOUBT me. I will strangle that damn hedgehog with his very own intestines and hang him on City Tower like a Christmas ornament, I will bring you his heart," Wrath bared his fangs at the Doctor. "So do not DOUBT me."

He tried to threaten his way to the Doctor's trust by deforming his frown into a blood-thirsty grin, but the expression was thrown into a fit of shock and helplessness as he looked down at his foot.

It was destroyed.

His nose wrinkled up in denial of the handicap. He shifted his body to walk on it, but ended up dragging the dead foot like a ton of steel-weight.

Dr. Robotnik just wagged a screw-driver at him, "HA! What were you going to do with that leg of yours?" His humor rotted into disgust, "Now get back on that table. I'm not finished with you yet." The Doctor turned back to his tool-selections. "Such cheap hardware would hardly pass as a creation built by my grandfather."

"...You must not like me very much..." Wrath's fingers slipped over the table. He brushed the backs of his fingers up and down the handle of the screw-driver. "...Do you, Doctor?" He clutched the handle tightly.

A fang-full grin stretched out his muzzle's skin.

Hospital Room - 4:02am

I sat outside Amy Rose's room, gripping at the armrests of the chair the doctors had restrained me into after thoroughly washing all the blood off.

I had fought to go in with her, and almost cost a few persistent humans their lives in the battle to reach Amy. She had been calling me, with her hand straining for me and her head limp and the tears soaking down her cheeks; she had needed me, because she was scared...but these damn humans and their damn rules.

The armests snapped into wooden splinters under my fingers, and I flung the chair at the wall in impatience of all this.

I paced up and down the hallway, itching to destroy a number of possible candidates in my path, but muzzled myself for the better good. I was at my boiling point, but I can harness this compulsion to kill for another time, and another person.

In what seemed to be the eleventh hour, the doctor came up to me with a sadistic smile.

Well, you bastard? How is she?

"Well, she's breathing, at least. She's lost an uncountable amount of blood, and though the blood transaction could only do so much for her, she's improved somewhat from when you brought her here on the...counter..."

Then he...

Chuckled.

"..."

Feeling just how deep my frown is carving promises of a slow, agonizing death into him, he flipped through the forms on his clip board and adjusted his glasses. "A-Ah, she...yes, she's in a better state than she was, but she is still incredibly weak, and her heart-rate below average."

I growled out the a rage-a-holic I was, "And in other words, this means I can't see her at the moment, now doesn't it?"

"A...A-Afraid so, Mr. Sonic."

I reached for his white collar this time and tore him into me, making sure he'd feel my very breath burn the flesh off his cheekbones, "Don't...call me that…"

"F-Forgive me Sonic," He grinned ear to ear, his glasses lopsided on his face. "I-I-I-I-I...surely didn't mean to offend you…!"

My eyebrow twitched. There might have been a busted blood vessel in my eye. 'You just DID!'

I shoved him to the floor and walked off, trying to work out the knots of stress cramping my neck. Her being alive and well has rehabiliated me to an extent, but I still can't seem to hold back my bloodlust.

I need to see her, to hell with hospital regulations. My intuition is demanding that I need to see her. I nor know or trust these humans, no matter what their profession and duty, and I'll believe their pretend-concern once I see her for myself.

When all the nurses and doctors were cleared out of the hall, I slipped into her room and closed the door behind me with a soft "click", leaving my antipathy behind me, and replacing it with a...less-heavy, but sinking feeling.

There she was, sleeping in a bed with blood-bank-bags and tubes taped to her forearms, paler than the dead, grayer than pink.

I swallowed something thick, and I took a few steps further, but once I took just one step the images of Maria taking her last dying breath struck at me. I stood there feeling cross inside at similarities I wished not to make, but continued on.

When I reached her, I ignored the stool that would grant me rest and stood at her bedside. The beeping of her pulse on the machine made the air more morose and deader than it should've been, and I suddenly did not know what to say...what to do...

Should I watch her in her sleep, admiring the lighting and shading effects of the hospital's flickering lights on her face's proportions, or...?

Mm...

I close my eyes and gather up my regrets.

"Amy Rose…" I whisper, but since whispers of mine are never soft, it sounds more like a barrel. "…If you're awake…" my hands itch to be elsewhere, as does my body, "You'd be ready to know that I did not intend for any of this to befall you." My fists close. "This...is not what I had wanted, for anyone."

She breathed, in and out, an up and down of the chest, a rasp, a cough, then a hum.

She was listening, I was certain. Decisions rangled me.

What more will be brought on, if my enemies choose to target someone else who is involved in my life - a damsel in distress no less?

My hand is at it again; the finger-pads are a breadth's way from touching the wild pink bangs that beg for a comb and relaxer. More warmth melts my corpuscles and break me off from my sense of...sense as the tickly sensation of her hair beneath my finger frazzles me into a daze. Just one stroke, to imprint my care, that I do think highly of her, for it would be preposterous to deny otherwise.

The foolish girl has pleaded action upon action to be a part of me and my oppression. She has made it her New Year's Resolution to make my rock hard frown be friends with her flexible little smiles, then compliment each other with our dissimilarities and console the other with our similarities.

Perhaps I have met my match in stubbornness.

Perhaps I am her reality-check.

Perhaps that if I linger here in a hospital room muggy with her hot breath spinning off a million repetitions of 'perhaps', these wants will become needs and she'll haunt me, awake or sleep.

"...Amy...?" I've only heard my voice sound this way just before Maria's death - scared, weak, regretful, hoping...the voice of a child.

There I go, making the analogies.

Amy didn't come to life for me again; no hand-squeezing or uttering sobs, just the stabile elevations of her chest.

I withdraw my hand and turn my palm over and looked into its geometric patterns.

I...experience an overwhelm of alienation all of the sudden; this body...it...doesn't feel like it's mine. These hands that are mine, do not feel like hands of destruction. It's as though, I've forgotten that person - The Ultimate Lifeform. And am now, in place of him...me.

I jump when Amy begins slurring and whimpering things to me in her subconsciousness I couldn't hear loud enough.

My hand had been beside hers but not touching hers, yet she's here enough to snag onto that hand and squeeze the fingers.

I remind myself of the things she has said, the things I have memorized to heart:

"I know people do the most trivial things, and some people~...may be selfish, like the Professor said, but they're basically good, if they never give up on their wishes. They always have a reason to be happy!"

...I shut my eyes. 'Does this, apply to me too? ...Am I, basically good, because I have once been selfish, just like these humans?'

"You won't be lost like that forever. You were given a second chance because you needed and deserved it, maybe? All you had to go through...that you survived and stuff, rewarded you with a chance to live a better life now. You can be...whomever you want at this point. You can pick anything you like. The present and the future are everything. It's like...it's like you're finally free! No orders, promises, or missions! You can make up your own...for, well...well for you, I guess. So you can't mope about it. You have to get out there and make the best of it!"

My eyebrows soften some...the lines of a frown reduced by just a bit.

What a character you are, Amy Rose.

I stroke her knuckle with my thumb, shakily and unsure of myself.

...Love...

My ears droop.

Friendship...

All the things, that I fear, and have forgotten how to express...

Do not matter anymore. All that matters, is that this fragile girl before me who has given me that second chance to believe in hope once more, is now clinging onto that little bit of life, and must be protected.

I squeeze her hand back with sudden determination.

She must be protected.

Closing my eyes, I bow my head in a silent prayer, praying...that she will make it through this night. I bow my head in silent prayer, returning...the hope that she's taught me to believe. I bow my head in silent prayer, to the only phenonmenon I believe in:

"...Maria," I look into the lights of the hospital room with half-lidded eyes, and try to whisper through my lips, something passionate without my throat swelling up, "...Please..."

I rest my hand on Amy's forehead. She pushes out a sigh.

"...Watch over her for me, until my return..." I tilt my head back down to Amy Rose, hoping I can restore the damage that has been done with, "...I have been here for you, and you will know this when you awaken." - With that, I steal my hand away from her, from the warmth that drugged me into obsession, and turned for the window.

As I gaze down on the bright lights of the illuminated city below, I begin to entertain myself with a sorrowful conclusion. I have been lost in the dark, and so had Amy, and unpredictably, we bumped into each other in that dark, and her fingertips had brushed my knuckles. Nothing more. That was...our relationship. Subtle, yet powerful.

As I was about to wrench her window open, I heard her faintly call to me, "…Sh...adow...give y...yourself a ch-chance...to be happy…"

Not 'them', but 'yourself'.

I spun around in hopes of meeting an awake Amy, to trip back into my sins and attach myself to herself until the gap closes, until we're no longer subtle, to object everything I stood for, everything that is my phobia, but all I saw was her sleeping form lying peacefully in that bundle of covers.

I hear the blood in my ears. The sweat on my palms. My heart pounding. Too fast and too slow. She knows what to say to make me go wild-

-No. That's enough.

I shook my head and pinpointed my newest purpose. Assassinate and dismember that fucking bastard for all it's worth. I'm not taking revenge because I have misunderstood Amy's wish, this is for my own hands, to stain them with that fucker's blood, and it's going to be a gory, artistic massacre...

The nerves under my grin are twitching with mania.

There will be blood.

Amy's Apartment

Tails had pressed Sonic to move them into Amy's bedroom. It was just a stab in the dark, but Tails had suggested Shadow might return, and tried to clean the damage-level as much as he could.

"Ugh," Sonic's head lolled back as he slumped in Amy's chair. "Come on, Tails~, just WHY exactly would Shadow come back here to begin with? Not to mention my legs are startin' ta' get BUTTERFLY-cramps from being in one spot for too long, and this room is-" Sonic's eye caught a flash of green in Tails's hand. "Eh?"

Tails winked, "Shadow forgot his Chaos Emerald."

And right on time, came the crashing of Shadow the Hedgehog entering the building.

Tails and Sonic recovered from dodging all the glass from the window to look over their arms and gape at him. The black hedgehog didn't look happy, either.

"Listen up," Shadow ordered and started giving them at the drop of a dime, "I know you have a Chaos Emerald radar," his finger panned between Sonic and Tails, before all five curled into a fist, "and I need it right this minute, no questions asked."

"Yeesh," Sonic fingered his ear, trying to get over his old and mistaken bitterness toward Shadow. "You'd think the Sheriff here would know how to say 'please'."

Shadow advanced on him, "I'm not here to play games with you, blue hedgehog."

Sonic raised a bored eyebrow at the dominating rage he spoke with.

"Sure, pal," he welcomed without a smile, "But first you gotta tell us where Amy is, and where this clone-you happens to be hidin' out. Then we can talk business."

For a long pause, Shadow just stared the hedgehog down. A frown cut deeper between his eyebrows.

He then muttered with a fairly controlled tone, "...Have you not patched up all you need to patch, before you can admit to giving me an apology?"

At that, Sonic's ears flattened and his mouth twisted up like he was going to be sick. Not from disgust or humor, but from guilt. Sonic opened his mouth just to stutter.

"Hold your tongue, Sonic. I shall save you the embarrassment." Still not blinking, Shadow reported Amy's welfare to his audience, "Amy is currently being held at a hospital, out of harms way for a short period of time. If I don't get that device now, that short period of time will be up."

Tails rubbed his chin and hummed his brain-stormings, "So I see...Shadow, maybe-"

"Since when did you decide to make yourself Amy's body guard?" Sonic devastated Shadow with an all-serious and disturbed look on his face.

"So you choose to retort to enemies once more instead," Shadow took a readying step onward.

"...That's not what I'm saying," Sonic's head sunk sideways as he squinted out his attempt to read Shadow. "Just..." he talked with his hands; trying to get the right words. "...Just, just when did all this happen, y'know?" He laughed at nothing funny. "When did you and Amy get so close...?"

Something in Shadow's eyes came alive. A feeling being relived. A memory.

Sonic's eyes widened as he tried to name the passion he'd only seen in Shadow's when he had been fueled with revenge, a purpose, to be frank, and an intense emotion, to be specific.

"U-Uh, Shadow?" Tails stepped in. He had never really had to talk to the black hedgehog one on one before. "How about...we all just help each other? I mean, we have your Chaos Emerald too."

Tails teased Shadow's eyes with the Chaos jewel's emerald, but Shadow just smirked, finding the manipulation of the deal funny.

"I could snatch that right out of your little palm, Fox boy," Shadow opened his eyes to him after humoring himself. "And take the radar along with it.

"...Yeah there is that too, huh?" Tails sweat-dropped.

"Hear me when I say this, because I will only say this once," Shadow's chest puffed out as he stood tall and superior to roar, "This is between Wrath and I, and no one else. This is my business, and if I need to persuade you to cooperate with my demands by force to take care of that business, I will not hold back."

"Oh cut it out, Shadow," Sonic flung his hand out. "Amy's in this, and she's more than OUR business, she's our FRIEND, so this is more than just you and the score you have to settle! This is about Amy too!" Sonic's lecture-tone started to die as his voice grew sick with more emotions, "...And you know neither one of us can get her out of this with a one-man-only ego."

Shadow's lip ticked as well as his self-restraint, "...How dare you mock my agenda, Faker-"

"Wait, hold the phone, you guys!" Tails poked his index fingers together. "...Y-You see, Shadow, we have the radar, but..." Tails shut his eyes tight with his face flushed over in his embarrassment. "...i-it's at the Mystic Ruins in my Workshop, and it needs to be fixed!"

Shadow just about detonated like a bomb, "...Was that supposed to be FUNNY?"

...It was the first time Sonic had laughed in a long~ time.

"...Hmph," Shadow whirled to the side and crossed his arms, eyes shut and nose snubbed down, "Shut up, Faker." He lazily peeked back at the hysterical Sonic, the corner of his mouth being tugged at by a...well, almost a smirk.

Hospital Room

"You know, I~ think [[[think]]] it's time [[[time]]]...to get up now [[[now]]]..."

I hear a girl giggling. An echo of a girl, I think. But, I can't see her. Everything is...black, just...just the kind of black that has no ceiling, no floor, no walls, no gravity, and your body isn't really...isn't really there. When you look down, there are no hands or feet to look down on, because you're not a part of this place, you're just a spectator of it. That's how I feel.

"Shadow would be so happy [[[happy]]] if you woke up..."

This girl I keep hearing, she sounds so sad and happy all in one take. She sounds like a ghost on a broken tape recorder.

"...And we want Shadow [[[Shadow-Sha-Sha-Shadow]]] to be happy, right?"

I imagine her trying to smile all her sadnesses away and try to hide all fifty-one of them away from me, if I could see it.

"...Because he's dreaming [[[dreaming - oh, he's dreaming]]] again."

"...I know you..." - I heard myself say in my head. "You're...that girl...Shadow's, 'little sister'..."

The picture starts to paint itself in the darkness like that was the password needed. I can now see her face, or rather, her eyes, but I couldn't see anything below the 'V' groove of her lip. She's looking down, and her brown eyelashes are dipping into eyes that aren't looking at me; each lash curled, each lash thick and perfect, and the blonde strands that fell in between those lashes made her look like a live portrait with cute little freckles on the bridge of her little nose. It was like a camera had switched to 'zoom' to home in on her melancholic eyes like in one of those sentimental music videos you see on MTV.

Then she looks up at me, with the flitter of her pretty lashes, and I see that her eyes are blue like the sky.

How pretty.

I see her freckly cheeks dimple, like maybe she's smiling at me and I just can't see it, "...He dreams about what his future would look like if he could just have a conservation with you every day in pure isolation...without a care in the world. You're like his fairytale. With you, reality doesn't mean anything anymore. He's half-awake to that realization. It's in his subconscious, but he has a clue of it."

...R...Really?

I see the back of her fingertip press against the groove of her lip, and then a, "Shhh...it's our little secret [[[secret-s-s-secret]]]."

...And then it goes black again. The darkness beings to peel apart when I open my eyes, and I-...wait...

I'm... - I blink - I'm awake...

I gasp and touch my face.

I'm alive! That must mean that evil Shadow look-alike was defeated!

"Shadow!" I toss the sheets off my legs and unfold them off the bed to climb out. The mattress springs up as my head leaves the pillow. "A-Ah!" I bite my lip in pain to stop the tears from squirting out.

Once I look down, I saw the glitch - my shoulder's stitches are torn apart, my side feels like I've been h-hit by a Rhino, and I've got tubes and wires and needles and...all these weird hospital-things attached to me everywhere. I've never been in the hospital before, and I couldn't help but feel like some lab experiment.

I clap my hand over the wound and duck my head down, whimpering against my lips, "...Mmm...Sh-Shadow...where'd you go?" My body hurts so b-bad. I take another look around, but because everything's so blurry and my eyes feel like they're imaging objects. "Shadow?" I'm panicking, and I feel it rise up my throat. "Sh-Shadow?"

I'm scared to be alone when I'm this handicap, and he LEFT me here all alone! Shadow, I know you brought me here, so why'd you leave? Why are you and Sonic always leaving? I raise my head up high to get a hold of myself; gotta be strong, gotta be strong. My head's already starting to feel funny from jumping up so quickly, at that. In doing so, I saw something I never thought I'd see again, lying there on the table-lamp beside me.

Two roses, one red and one white, entangled in each other's stems, and they look so in love...

My eyes washed over with tears. He knew what those meant to me...oh, he knew. I hobbled as far as I could with all the equipment attached to me and cradled the roses' buds once I reached them. He didn't leave; he just...heh, he just left something behind. Something that says he'll come back really, really soon.

"...Thank you, Shadow…thank you so much," I tuck the roses into my chest and hug them, smiling wider than I've ever smiled before, even if all my tears are bouncing off the roses' petals.

...I'll never let anything happen to you, roses. I promise.

Feeling particularly heaven-sent and magical that he had her feelings in mind before he left, Amy limped back to the bed and crawled under the covers with her roses.

The small hand on the clock ticked around the digits.

Tick.

...

Tick.

...

Tick.

...

-Amy's sudden gasp blubbers into a blood-gushing scream. The tiny hospital vase meant for her flowers broke at the sonar-screech of the scream. Legs and arms kicked and thrashed about underneath the bleeding sheets as the bed squeaked and bounced. Sick laughter fell in sync with the the sobbing, until the mattress was sliced open.