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Maria...this is what you wanted, right?

Shadow relished in his memories on the slow trudge back to the place he had called 'home' for the past five years. The thought of a home at all seemed ludicrous to him now...after all, he hadn't ever had a home, ever. This was just a stop on the road of his life.

He came to the front door of the small, two-floored house that his family lived in. He glanced at all the windows on the front side...all the lights were on. In the main room. In his parents' bedroom. He guessed that his entire family was awake at this point...it must have been at least one in the morning by now.

"What're you waiting for?" Sonic asked weakly.

"I'm...afraid," Shadow admitted. "Afraid that they won't be able to let go of me. In the past five years, I've become rather attached to this family..."

Sonic chuckled. "I've never had a family. You're lucky."

"Depends on your point of view," Shadow muttered, finally reaching for the door knob and turning it, pushing the door open and stepping inside.

As he entered with Sonic's arm slung over one shoulder, Shadow looked at the main room table...ma, pa, and all of his sisters and brothers were sitting there. All but pa were staring up at him, in complete shock from seeing their oldest brother like that.

"So." Jerry, his oldest sibling, yet still younger than Shadow, stood up from his place at the table. "You're leaving."

"I have to." Shadow admitted. "I can't keep living here. Not now that I know who I am."

"Then, who are you? Certainly not my big brother Noctus. Not anymore."

Shadow took a deep breath. "My name is Shadow. Shadow the Hedgehog. I was created by Professor Gerald Robotnik."

"Noctus...Shadow..." ma's sad voice said suddenly. "How...old are you? Really?"

"I'm...not sure." Shadow said. "But by estimation, I'm over fifty-six years old."

Ma's face paled, and she heaved a mighty sob before burying her face in her arms on the table.

"Why do ya have ta leave, Noctus?" Anne, so innocent at six years of age, asked, her voice wobbling.

Shadow closed his eyes and grinned despite himself. He set Sonic down in a chair near the door, and walked over to the little human girl with a kind smile on his face. He kneeled down at her chair, and rubbed her brown hair, chuckling.

"I'm gonna try to say it so you can understand it," Shadow said. "Anne, how have you grown up?"

"To be a good girl, working hard on this farm and taking care of my family," Anne said with a sense of young pride around her. Shadow smiled.

"Do you plan to be that way your whole life?"

"Yes I do!"

"Anne...I was raised to be free." Shadow explained softly. "I plan to be free my entire life. I'm old enough to make my own plans and to take care of myself, but I'm simply too..." Shadow searched his mind for the right word. "Too confined. I need to get out and be free, just like you need to go out and continue being the kind, caring girl you want to be."

Shadow hugged Anne, and Anne hugged back. This girl was fifty years his junior, and yet, he admired her courage and pride; she hadn't shed a single tear this entire time, and still refused to. Shadow stood up, and walked back over to Sonic, helping him up again.

"I'm going into town," Shadow announced. "I'm going to try and get Sonic a doctor, then I'll come back to pick up my things. Is that alright? Jules?"

Pa flinched visibly at the use of his real name. "Y-yeah...that's fine. As a matter of fact...I'm going to drive you both into town myself."

Pa stood up, and looked at Shadow as seriously as he ever had. Shadow grinned gratefully.

* * *

--Tails' Lab, Mystic Ruins--

"Erm." Knuckles coughed uncomfortably. "Tails...can I ask you something?"

"Sure," the kitsune replied easily, smiling. "What is it?"

"Why're you blue?"

"Blue? I feel pretty happy right now, actually," Tails responded, walking into the kitchen and over to Amy, leaning over to give the startled pink hedgehog a quick hug and kiss before walking over to the fridge. Knuckles was still frozen halfway in his approach to the said food-cooling device. Tails pulled open the door, pulled out an apple, sinking his teeth into it gratefully, as if he hadn't eaten in an entire day.

"Uh..." Tails stopped snacking, glancing at Knuckles, then Amy. "Is...there any particular reason you two are staring at me?"

"N-none at all," Knux mumbled, looking away from Tails at last. "It's just that...well, I wasn't expecting to...well, see you. So to speak."

Tails sighed through his nose, and tilted his head while staring at Knuckles, as if trying to solve a complicated puzzle. "Okay, Knux...spill. Why're you and Amy so bugged?"

Knuckles growled, and pulled off the Digging Claw he wore on his right glove, and held it out for Tails to see. "Look at your reflection!"

Tails grabbed the Digging Claw away from the echidna guardian, and stared at the blue-and-white-furred being that was staring back at him in awe.

"Hey, how weird," Tails mumbled, touching a finger to his nose; the reflection, although bent and distorted, did the same. "Knux, this claw's got some pretty strange-ass properties to it! Maybe I should analyze it to see what it's made of--"

"You IDIOT!" Knuckles yelled impatiently, slamming a fist into a nearby counter, cracking it, and a vein popping up in his forehead. Tails' eyes went wide, and he dropped the Digging Claw to the ground. Knuckles grabbed Tails by the collar, and practically carried the teen kitsune to the nearest bathroom, and thrust him violently in front of a mirror. Tails grunted, stumbled, and glared back at Knuckles in confusion and anger...but the red echidna had his gaze fixed steadily to the mirror in front of them, his arms crossed over his chest. Slowly, Tails turned his head to look at the mirror...and his eyes went wide with shock.

Gingerly, Tails touched a gloved hand to his face, touching the blue fur that had replaced his regular orange-colored fur...then he brought his glove away from his face in shock, realizing that the glove had a large rip in it...and was stained red with blood. Tails gasped, and ripped the glove away, throwing it against the far wall, turning his head away and closing his eyes.

"Amy told me something," Knuckles said coldly. "She said that, last night, when you picked up the shell with the Chaos Emerald shards in it...the shards separated from the shell and spun around you. When I came in just about a half hour ago, I found you on the floor. You had been sliced to ribbons, and by all respects, you were dead. But now you're alive, and you're blue."

"There's something you're not telling me," Tails muttered, not opening his eyes, not looking at anything.

Knuckles took a deep breath, and let it out with a whoosh. "I can sense Chaos energy extremely close by. So close by that the source could practically be standing...right in front of me." Knuckles took another breath before continuing. "Amy also told me that you were looking for the blue Chaos Emerald before she gave you the shell. Tails...the blue Chaos Emerald has been missing ever since we saved Amy four years ago. How did you get it??"

"Sonic and I...we spent about two weeks searching the ocean for it in the Tornado V. Then when we finally caught up to it, there was this...water monster. It reminded me of the robots GUN used in space, the ones that look like Chaos. Things were looking grim, but I grabbed the Emerald, and...the next thing I knew, I was on this rock. Then I spent a good portion of the next day trying to learn the Chaos Control, and I did at last...that's where I lost track of the blue Emerald--"

"You lost track of it, because you fused with it," Knuckles interrupted suddenly. "Tails, you know that you can't turn Super with just the regular Chaos Emeralds; the same should apply for the Chaos Control. Whatever it was that was holding you back gave way thanks to the imperfection of the Emerald, but the result is that the Emerald became a part of you; and since Emeralds attract each other, the shards naturally attracted themselves to the rest of the Emerald, but the only way to get to it was to get into you. The Emerald is your Life Force now; without it, you'd still be dead on the floor."

Tails' eyes went wide again, and he stared at Knuckles in shock. "No...it can't be!"

"Tails, I've spent my entire life around the Master Emerald; I know what Chaos Energy feels like, and you're practically glowing with its radiation."

Tails looked at himself in the mirror again, and sighed. "So...I'm a living Chaos Emerald, then?"

"I think a more accurate way to phrase it would be that you're alive because of the Chaos Emerald."

Tails closed his eyes tight, and shuffled out of the bathroom. Knuckles stared after his friend with carefully-hidden sadness, before deciding to go the opposite way, back to the kitchen. He sat down at the table with the still-bewildered Amy Rose, and Mika, Tails' Omochao, went about serving them a late-night course. Five minutes later, Tails arrived in the kitchen, dressed in fresh clothes, and sat down with the other two. Mika brought him some food, and set out to eating in quiet.

"Tails," Knuckles' voice was strangely hushed, and slightly muffled due to the bacon the guardian was stuffing into his mouth. "What happened to Sonic?"

"I don't know," Tails replied absent-mindedly, stuffing some miscellaneous dairy product down his throat. "I lost track of him after I grabbed the blue Emerald."

"Don't you think we should find him?"

"He'll live. After all, he's the almighty, immortal Sonic the Hedgehog," Tails remarked dryly, scoffing.

"Ahem." Knuckles set down the fork he'd been using, and turned his full attention to Tails.

"This should catch your interest: GUN is trying to get the Master Emerald. The Chaotix have been jailed for getting two-thirds of the information Rouge and I need; but now that they're incriminated, GUN's gonna be expecting me at their HQ. I need your help to get in there and find out their motivations."

Tails stared up at Knuckles yet again, this time in mild surprise. "Huh, really. Alright, then; soon as we finish eating, we'll set out." He winced suddenly, and looked back at Amy.

"Sorry, Amy...but I'll have to put you back into Cryosleep for a bit."

"Oh, I don't mind," Amy smiled. "Last time, I had that dream where you were blue, and it came true; maybe this time when I go in, I'll have my other dream again, and that will come true when I wake up." Amy winked mischievously, and Tails blushed, mumbled something under his breath, and played with the food in front of him with his fork. Knuckles eyed both Amy and Tails with a strange gaze, before popping the last scrap of food into his mouth and standing up.

"Look, the sooner we get this done, the better...I want to be able to bust the Chaotix free before GUN decides to execute them."

"It'll be a little tough without the Tornado V, but it's doable," Tails agreed, standing up as well. "Come on, Amy, you know the deal."

* * *

--In the middle of nowhere--

Shadow and Jules sat in the rusty, dingy old pickup truck, Jules at the wheel. The truck was bumping and banging it's dusty ol' way through the night, back towards the LonLon farmlands. The only conversation between the two had been a short one dealing with where Shadow wanted to take Sonic to get care, and the rest of the trip had been encompassed by silence, a deafening, painful silence that Shadow wished would disappear sooner rather than later.

"What do ya plan to do when you leave?" Jules asked at last.

Shadow shrugged uncomfortably. "I dunno...I still have to find a reason to live. A reason that goes beyond the farm, something that lies in my freedom. I'll have to find it."

"And that's your only reason for leaving?"

"That's all I need."

"I see...Shadow, there's something I need to tell you." Jules took a deep breath, and let it out through his nose.

"If you're planning on telling me that I'm adopted, I think it's past that point now."

"No, it's not like that at all." Jules regarded Shadow now with a tone of distaste and scorn, bitterness ringing with a deathlike tone in his voice. "Shadow...I have to kill you."

"Hmm...okay. That's interesting. I don't suppose that stems from the fact that I'm leaving?"

"No, you see...I'm not really some bumpkin farmer," Jules narrowed his eyes. "I'm not a hick. Neither is my wife. The children are as innocent as can be...and I have to admit that we've all developed a soft spot for you. But once my wife gets over the initial trauma, we'll have to do our job as proper agents of GUN and kill you."

Shadow laughed. "Oh please, cut me a break. If you're GUN soldiers, then why'd you save me instead of killing me when you knew I was alive anyway?"

"I'm not sure. It's a Superman complex, I guess. We found you like that and we just couldn't let you die."

"So now you're going to try to kill me anyway...well, sorry. I just came back to life; I don't want to lose that all over again."

Jules slammed the breaks! Shadow was caught off-guard, and was sent flying forward--he crashed through the windshield, hit the hood of the car, rolled and landed on the street on his back. Dazed, he cursed and struggled to sit up, but Jules was already out of the truck, holding a standard military-issue pistol in one hand, aimed at Shadow.

"Damn you..." Shadow muttered. "You..."

"I'm sorry, son."

Jules' finger began to tighten around the trigger...