Fanfiction» Fanfics» Shadow Forever

One month later. Location unknown

Knuckles' jeep sat on top of a cliff that hovered peacefully over the ocean below. Tails, still as blue as ever, leaned back against the passenger door of the jeep, a set of binoculars in one hand. A small breeze came by, blowing Tails' fur and hair. He swept some wild strands of blue hair out of his face, and stared into the sunset sky, painted with swatches of pink, orange, and purple, the rippling ocean reflecting the colors, flowing together with the sky at the point of horizon, making it seem like one flowing, marvelous piece of art.

Tails heard Shadow approaching from behind, but didn't turn to look at the black hedgehog that still looked to be sixteen, even though he was over half a century old.

"You know, you've been doing this a lot lately," Shadow said in his usual, quiet voice. "Keep it up, and people will begin to mistake you for a bishonen."

Tails chuckled. "Me, a bishonen? I'd rather stab myself with a Chaos Emerald."

There was a slight pause.

"Hey, look." Shadow walked around the jeep, and leaned back next to Tails. "We have to get serious here, Tails. Gamma did a good job of hiding himself, Sonic and Knuckles; we've checked out every single one of Eggman's old bases, including the ARK, and there's no sign of him or Amy. Angel Island has crashed into the ocean again, and the Master Emerald is long gone--and, according to you, Rouge was on watch there, and we don't know where she is. Knuckles' buddies, the Chaotix, are still under tight lock-down. We've got far too many priorities to spend all this time looking at the ocean. Tails...we need to stop screwing around and get something done."

Tails sighed and shook his head. "I know, I know. But I don't have my lab anymore, so I can't make another Tornado. That makes breaking into Prison Island practically impossible. And like you said, there's been dick-shit about Rouge, Eggman, Amy, Gamma, Sonic or Knuckles. It's times like these that make me miss the days where Eggman was dumb enough to set up an easily-escapable trap, and all Sonic and I had to do was run forward and jump a bit."

"If there's nothing we can do directly, we'll just have to keep looking, huh?" Shadow glanced at Tails out of the corner of his eye. "Come on, get in. I'm driving this time."

Dark.

The night sky cast empty waves of dark over the Egg Carrier, still floating in the sea, yet still unmoving. In six years, nobody had dared to set foot on the dead machination, the inner workings quickly rotting away to the ever-powerful elements. Water was starting to flood the lower parts of the thing as relentless currents finally started eating away at the metals of the hull. Even the maintenance robots inside had ceased to function, as their never-ending cycle of cleaning and repairing had worn their own parts down and short-circuited their low-capacity motherboards.

On top of the giant energy generator, long since halted in it's actions due to the combined forces of furries, robots, and water gods, plus the ever-present weather, lay the rusted and seemingly irrecoverable ruins of what could only have been, at one time, a robot.

And, for the first time in six years, an outsider disturbed the peaceful machinery graveyard.

Two feet above the power generator, a glowing rift in space, about seven feet in height and three feet in width at its widest, opened up, as if it were a jagged tear in reality itself. From this tear emerged a strange figure wearing dark clothing to disguise his features, and he landed in a crouch next to the robot's remains.

"It's been so long..." the figure muttered to himself, shaking his head. He looked around briefly and spotted the rusted old robot parts; a slight grin played across his face, and he threw the remains bit by bit through the rift, some of the more decayed parts crumbling apart in his hands.

Now, the robot's parts were completely gone, disappeared through the rift the stranger had opened. Taking one last glance around his dark surroundings, the figure looked forward to the rift and jumped through, the rift sealing itself soon after.

"So, we're just as lost as we were yesterday, are we?" Sonic yawned, stretching.

"It's not my fault you tried to drive and crashed the truck right into that tree," Gamma sighed a mechanical sigh, shaking his head. "If not for that, my navigational system wouldn't be in a state of complete disrepair, and we wouldn't have spent the past month WANDERING AROUND THE ENTIRE DAMN CONTINENT."

Knuckles growled. "If you two had listened to me in the first place, we could have tracked down the Master or Chaos Emeralds and found Tails or Rouge!!!"

"Shut up and take your tent down," Gamma yelled, rubbing his metal head. "Christ, if I have to spend much more time with you two..."

Sonic mocked Gamma silently, but went to work right away. After doing nothing but traveling for a month, Sonic found himself feeling like his old self again; no longer was he plagued by the multiple injuries he had sustained when he first crash-landed at LonLon farmlands so long ago.

Very soon, the three had packed away the tents they had bought while crossing through some nameless down in the middle of nowhere, and Knuckles and Sonic gulped down some food before the three grabbed their stuff and moved on.

Knuckles was airboxing again. He did it every time they were on the move, just punching the air with swift left-right combos. Sonic glanced over at him, and just shook his head.

"Knucklehead, give it a rest already--"

"Shut up, Sonic. I already told you that I need to keep practicing, unless I wanna become lazy and out of shape, like you."

"Hey, watch it! I'm in the best shape I've ever been in!"

"That doesn't explain the belly you got while you were down and out."

Sonic yelled something incomprehensible at the top of his lungs, startling Knuckles and Gamma.

"Geez," Knuckles commented, staring at Sonic wide-eyed. "Something certainly crawled up your butt overnight."

"THAT DOES IT!!" Sonic yelled. He spin-dashed right into Knuckles, and was instantly rolling around on the ground with him, the pair exchanging lightening-fast blows. Gamma stared, sweatdropping and wondering if he should stun the pair; then he realized that doing so would mean either waiting here for them to regain full control of their bodies or carrying both of them over his shoulders into the next town...and needless to say, the idea of waiting or exerting more personal effort on his part were not what he wanted to do at the moment. He simply shook his head and kept staring.

"Your dreads are on too tight, man!"

"Pull your spiky head out of your ass for a change!"

And the pair rolled, and kept on rolling, right past foliage and small trees and stuff--and right over a cliff.

Gamma plodded over to the cliff, Sonic's and Knuckles' screams fading away rapidly. He glanced down and saw the pair bouncing and rolling off a relatively smooth cliff-face, finally come to a hard stop at the bottom.

Gamma met them at the bottom using his rocket boosters to hover down slowly.

"Having fun, are we?" He asked.

"My ass hurts," Sonic whined.

"Good, hopefully that will teach you a lesson."

"You're starting to piss me off, Gamma."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Uh...hey, guys?" Knuckles said.

"What?" Sonic snapped irritably. Knuckles raised a gloved hand in the direction opposite that which they had come by. Sonic and Gamma turned their heads to see what Knuckles was staring at--and both allowed their jaws to drop slightly at what they saw.

"It's...it's..." Gamma whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. "There's no way."

"We're in the Mystic Ruins!" Sonic cheered, punching the air and grinning. "Look, guys! There's the old Echidna temple right there!" He crawled off of Knuckles and ran as fast as he could for the ancient, crumbling temple. Gamma and Knuckles slowly followed, both of them looking around slowly.

"This is unbelievable," Knuckles murmured softly. "All the traveling we've done, and look where we are now..."

"We should stop gawking," Gamma interrupted. "Tails' lab is nearby, right? He, Shadow and Amy should be there. Come on!"

The strange threesome could only stare at the month-old wreckage that had once been the magnificent palace-like domain of Miles Prower in stunned silence.

"The lab..." Sonic whispered, shaking his head. "What happened to them? To Tails and Amy? What about Shadow?"

"I'm not picking up any signs of life," Gamma murmured. "Not even frozen life. I don't even see any residue; whoever was here last had to have been a month ago. This heap is at least that old, because of the corrosion of those iron beams."

"So the other three are long gone?"

"I can't be sure," Gamma shook his head. "It's very possible."

Sonic turned too look at Knuckles to say something, but the red-furred echidna was already walking away. "Hey, Knuckles, wait up!"

"I'm sick of waiting," Knuckles called over his shoulder. "My Chaotix are still locked up in Prison Lane, remember? If we don't have a trace on where the hell Tails and Shadow are, then I'm going to free my people now."

Sonic stuttered over his next few words, then turned to Gamma for help, the robot wearing a passive expression. "Ain'tcha gonna do something about that red-headed egg-layer?"

Gamma shrugged metallic shoulders. "He's got a good point; we don't have any leads at all on the whereabouts of the others. If we can get more allies in this--GUN may still be after us, you never know--then it's a better hope for us as a whole."

"Fine, you go do that, then," Sonic scoffed. "I'm going to search for Tails."

"See you later, then," Gamma gave a slight wave, and shifted into Wheel Mode, trundling off after Knuckles at top speed. Sonic groaned, slapping his forehead with a gloved palm, before straightening his unbuttoned button-up T-shirt and charging off in the other direction.