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His body aches.
The last thing Shadow can clearly remember is being ambushed and handcuffed, strangely enough. He had felt his strength sap away and fainted before he could actually be concerned, but now that and the feeling of being thrown around was taking a toll on his conscious mind.
He keeps his breathing even, only cracking one eye open. It doesn’t sound like a battlefield, so he assumes he’s been captured. They’ve been getting better , he thinks, lifting his head ever so slightly. They accounted for my powers. He tries to survey his surroundings.
Nothing. He’s surrounded by blood and metal but no life besides weeds. He forces his body into a sitting position, grimacing at the pain. No large or piercing wounds, from what he can gather, but aches and a general sense of fatigue. The handcuffs, which appear to be a heavy-duty version of his inhibitors on further inspection, are far heavier than they appear; if he was at full strength then they wouldn’t be a problem, but the fact he was working at less than half capacity was worrying.
Eggman, he thinks, racking his brain. Either Eggman or that brainiac kid. Has to be .
He’s seen their inventions, however, and both usually had a specific… flair… to them. Ivo placed his logo on absolutely everything and the fox kit used yellow for most of his; the handcuffs were metallic, sleek, and silver, nothing recognisable.
Infuriating.
Shadow staggers to his feet, leaning against a busted robot. He glances around warily, only finding the wreckage of trees and machines. His patch of forest has been flattened, even the tree stumps torn out of the ground. My cave’s probably been destroyed.
He limps, searching for the general direction the battle took. That damned hedgehog had to have been involved, the scars of spin dashing etched into some of the surroundings. “What happened here,” he murmurs, tracing the marks. “and why was it so close to where I live, those idiots.”
A burst of golden light catches his eye and he hobbles towards it, craning his neck to see.
The various members of Sonic’s team are strewn about the field and he cringes at some of the injuries he spots. Even the brawler (his name has something to do with hands, he thinks) seems to be knocked out cold, motionless beside a shallow rise and fall of the chest.
However, the most worrying part is not seeing Sonic.
(He is not worried about that blue idiot. Just concerned about the difficulty of what they’re— he’s — up again.)
There’s the chance they also targeting him in some way and Shadow just knows that if that idiot actually got captured that he’d be roped into rescuing him at some point and that is not something he has the bandwidth to deal with.
The light flashes again from between the trees and he squints after it, trying to make out any kind of shape.
Calling out to an ominous figure that just so happens to be glowing strangely amidst an active battleground isn’t exactly the best course of action considering, well, everything currently going on. He bends down, grabbing a rock before retreating into the best hiding spot he can manage and chucks the stone into the clearing, staying out of sight the best he can.
It does the trick, the sound of rock crashing into metal drawing the attention of whatever is around, prompting them into the clearing.
Oh, Shadow thinks, eyes widening. That is definitely Sonic.
Sonic cackles, spinning to glance around the scene. “Had enough?” he taunts, grabbing a pipe and slamming it down. Ow. “Come on, I haven’t even broken a sweat yet!”
Well, that isn’t Sonic. A lookalike? He has the same body and voice as well as similar mannerisms, but he knows from experience that things like that can be deceitful if one isn’t careful.
“Who’s there?”
Shadow shifts, trying to hide as much as possible. That proves to be a mistake; if he had his normal movement then it’d be no problem, but his body failed to account for the giant handcuffs currently locked onto his wrists, banging them into the hollow metal beside him, immediately giving away his position.
The lookalike is next to him in less than a second, grabbing him by the shoulder and tugging him into the open. “ There we go, ” Sonic says, lifting his chin. “Shadow, how wonderful to have you.”
Shadow scowls, trying to break free. “Who and what are you,” he says, voice annoying and hoarse. “clearly you aren’t the Sonic I’m familiar with.”
“Oh,” Sonic blinks, tilting his head. “You’re a smart one; I see why he likes you so much.” He steps backwards, allowing Shadow to stumble forward and catch himself, snorting when he recieves a glare in return. “You can call me Super.”
“Lovely, explains so much for me,” he lifts up his hands, shaking the handcuffs. “You know what these are?”
Super hums, tapping his chin dramatically. “Wouldn’t know a thing about those.”
“... could you possibly help me out of them.”
“Maybe,” Super leans closer, closer, until their noses nearly touch and Shadow recoils out of surprise. “If you could help me out.”
Shadow frowns, regaining his footing. “What do you want?”
His eyes, Shadow notes, are strange. Spirals of red against white remind him of a target. Super seems entertained, crossing his arms. And he can fly , he thinks, watching him hover. Great.
“Nothing particularly hard,” he drawls. “Just a chaos crystal.”
“What makes you think I have one?”
Super grins wider, somehow. “You’re a beacon of chaos energy, of course, you’d have one.”
He blinks, slowly shaking his head. “No? I thought Sonic— regular Sonic, my Sonic, who cares— and his team had one.”
Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say because Super’s smile drops, evident confusion following. He reaches out, grabs Shadow’s chin and jerks his head up again, floating to get even more of a height advantage. “That can’t be right,” he mumbles, narrowing his eyes. “Nothing else could possibly give off that much energy; you are radiating chaos right now.”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you aren’t exactly incentivising me to tell you anything,” he says, back hitting a wall in his haste to create distance. “I might be able to find one if you get these off of me.”
Shadow shuts his eyes to protect himself from the gaze of the hedgehog crowding him and he could swear the spirals were spinning, trying to draw him even closer.
“I can see why he likes you so much,” Super repeats, rubbing circles on his cheek. “Oh, you are incredible .”
“Still not ringing a bell,” he responds, cursing himself for not just biting his tongue. They are so close and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t ever thought of Sonic in less than a purely wholesome way but wow this is different . “Wait, he likes me?” Shadowshutthefuckup —
Super’s face goes blank again. “It’s hard not to.”
His face feels red hot, practically burning up on the inside. “Okay, you don’t need to compliment me so much.”
“ Wow , he’s doing a shit job, isn’t he,” Super muses, the curse conflicting with the surprising softness of his voice. “doesn’t appreciate you nearly enough as he should, frankly.”
“ Where did this come from —”
Super is very very close and he won’t stop looking at him with those strange eyes of his. “You—”
The other hedgehog finally backs off, head in his hands, yellow glow flickering. Shadow watches with a mix of concern and intrigue, contemplating on whether or not to reach out when the yellow finally fades, familiar blue rising to the surface,
“Sonic?”
Green eyes glance back up and Shadow didn’t realise he’d ever be relieved to see them. “Fuck, Shadow, I’m sorry, I thought it was okay to let him out because everyone else was knocked out and it would be fine but you appeared and did he hurt you—”
Sonic rambles on, reaching out to latch onto Shadow’s forearms and looking at him with such regret that all possible quips dry up in his mouth. “No, I’m fine,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” the blue hedgehog squeezes his arms, suddenly looking incredibly worried. “Please. They can’t know.”
He speaks without hesitation. “I won’t.”
Honestly, he’s not sure why.
“... oh, those handcuffs—” Sonic takes them into his hands, fiddling with them. “I think my super form could take those off, but,” he smiles apologetically. “I don’t know if either of us wants that. I’ll ask Tails if he has a solution when he wakes up.”
“I can’t get around with these on,” he protests, his face screwing up. “And my house kind of blew up .”
The blue hedgehog lights up. “You can room with us?”
“I think I’ll stick with the woods.”
“Shadow, wait, I was kidding, come back !”
And now he has a headache. Fantastic.