Chapter Text
It was just another mission. At least, it was supposed to be. Sonic reached out his hand, desperately trying to reach his unconscious rival in time. Just a little faster. Just a little farther and everything would be okay. But sonic was just a second too slow and Eggman’s latest robotic monstrosity snatched Shadow up off the ground and threw him off the cliff’s edge straight into the abyss.
“No!” Sonic screamed as he watched Shadow fall into the abyss and fizzle out of existence, his stomach sick with the deja vu of it all. Despair and rage grew in Sonic and he turned around to face Eggman, who was operating his machine and attacking a new target, Amy. A metal arm punched out with such speed that Amy wasn’t able to counter it and she went flying across the platform, crying out in pain as her back hit hard rock. Sonic let out a scream of rage and charged at Eggman. Sonic didn’t understand how things could have gotten so bad, just that morning he had been hanging out with his friends, playing baseball when they were contacted by GUN about a mission involving Eggman. “What? Him again? Jeez, when will he give it up? His plans never work.” Sonic easily brushed off the threat of Eggman as he bounced up and down and stretched his legs. “Alright, where is he? I’ll go beat him up and be back in no time. Piece of cake!”
“You should take this more seriously, Sonic.” Amy scolded Sonic for his laid back attitude, “Just because we always win against Eggman, doesn’t mean that we should get careless when facing him.”
“Agreed.” Knuckles nodded. “It is never wise to underestimate your opponent.”
“Come on guys. You’re taking this too seriously. It’s Eggman we're talking about.” Sonic replied.
The GUN agent led Team Sonic, minus Tails who was currently attending a tech convention, to their base for a debriefing where they met up with Shadow and Rouge. “Hi, guys!” Sonic excitedly waved at them.
“Ugh. They’re who we’re working with?” Shadow sneered in annoyance at Sonic. “I’d rather go alone than have to work with that faker.”
“Hey! Who are you calling Faker? Faker?” Sonic glared back at Shadow, not one to let his rivals jabs go without a reply.
Shadow stepped closer to Sonic with his fists clenched, looking like he was getting ready to throw a punch. Sonic squared up, preparing to go at it with Shadow here and now. Honestly, it really had been way too long since the last time they sparred since Shadow had been going to GUN missions more frequently. Sonic actually kind of missed his grumpy presence. Before either had a chance to throw the first punch, Rouge interrupted by putting a calming hand on Shadow’s arm. “Hey, remember what our intel said, it could get really serious this time. The more help we have the better. Let’s not beat each other up before the actual fight has even begun.” Shadow broke eye contact with Sonic and turned his attention to Rouge, after a moment he grunted and backed away, crossing his arms and leaning moodily against a wall. After that, GUN started explaining what their mission was, but Sonic wasn’t really paying too close attention to the meeting. It was something about Eggman’s latest invention and Eggman getting ahold of another gemstone that he was using to power it up. Basicly they were supposed to beat Eggman up and bring back the stone. Pretty simple stuff, really. During the briefing, Sonic kept glancing over at Shadow, debating the best way to challenge him to a race and then sneakily convince him to stay after for a movie and some chilidogs. Now that was the real conundrum, not the Eggman fight that was definitely going to be super easy.
It was not in fact super easy. Sonic wanted to kick himself for even suggesting such a thing. The first thing that went wrong was that he, Amy, and Shadow had been separated from the others, by a portal that Eggman unexpectedly opened up and sucked them in. They found themselves trapped in some kind of floating platform that was surrounded by a pitch black abyss that seemed to vaporize anything that fell into it. Shadow tried to use chaos control, but the surprisingly fast machine knocked the emerald out of Shadow’s hand before he could do anything, almost like it had known what Shadow was going to do. From there, the fight had gone downhill, no one had expected one of Eggman’s machines to actually be this unbeatable, especially Sonic.
Sonic wished he hadn’t been so casual about this fight now. Maybe then, Amy wouldn’t be hurt. Maybe then, Shadow would still be alive. But he wasn’t, Shadow was gone and it was all his fault. How many times would he fail to save him? Why was he never fast enough to catch him when it really mattered. Thoughts of regret and rage fueled Sonic as he ran at full speed and punched the machine that had taken one of his friends from him right in the center of its body. Suddenly, a bright light enveloped the world and everything disappeared from Sonic’s view. What was happening?
“You should take this more seriously, Sonic.” Sonic heard Amy’s voice and he opened his eyes, seeing her standing in front of him, perfectly fine. Wait. What?