HI THERE and welcome to another one of my fanfics! Fair word of warning, the setting for this story is a High School, BUT! (HEY! Come BACK!) I make it usually my personal sport to take terrible, terrible AU settings and tell a story that's both adventure and comedy with it, sticking largely to Sonic games canon, and keeping everybody in character. Anyone wondering why on Earth canon Sonic would ever bother sticking around in friggin High School in the first place, rest assured, there's an explanation:P

That said, hope you're all looking forward to domestic sibling fluff between Shadow and Maria, an Ultimate Lifeform completely unequipped to deal with normal life, and Sonic driving everyone up the walls, as usual. Here we GO!

Shadow the Hedgehog: First Class

by Taranea

Chapter 1: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Shadow's first thought was that blowing up the class room was not likely to help.

"Good morning everyone! This is your new classmate for the final year," Ms Ebony, a young black cat, was cheerfully addressing the teenagers seated at the tables in front of her. Next to her stood a black hedgehog, who somehow looked far less happy with this situation than she.

"He has been enrolled in this school long-distance, and now come to stay since his family have stopped their travelling," Ebony told her multi-coloured charges, most of whom were gazing at the new arrival with various levels of interest. The most curious seemed to be some of the girls, a pink hedgehog further back and a red-furred vixen in the front - but also some of the boys, most notably a brown-haired human next to a blonde girl in a wheelchair. The only ones not appearing particularly excited by the presentation were a half-dozed off crocodile next to a chameleon, as well as a bored-looking blue hedgehog all the way at the back. Ebony's enthusiasm did not seem to let itself be deterred by the latter. "Please help make this a great year for our new student. Now, why don't you introduce yourself to the class..."

There was pause, and Shadow suddenly became aware of how now everyone, including the teacher, was looking at him, waiting.

Somehow, surviving a military raid aboard a space station in retrospect now seemed a lot easier than this.

"...hello," he managed. "My name is Shadow. Shadow Robotnik."

And the whispering started up almost immediately.

Shadow frowned. He had heard that teenagers were prone to gossiping, but he hadn't thought it would be this bad. The classroom consisted of 5 rows of two-seater tables all facing the blackboard he stood in front of, and contained perhaps two dozen students in total, most of whom were now exchanging glances with their neighbours or bending over to talk to them. The black hedgehog's artifically engineered ears twitched as he caught various fragments - 'huh, did you hear that, a human name' as well as 'Look at his quills, yeah, totally dyed' (and also one bit that sounded like 'OMG, HOT!' which he sincerely hoped had been a mistake). Really, all he wanted was to be seen as normal and be ignored, instead of standing out as the constant freaky experiment side-show he had been most of his life so far.

Well, that already seems to be going brilliantly.

For some reason, at the mention of his name, even the blue hedgehog, who had been sitting at the back of the class and had been completely ignoring everything in favour of gazing out of the window, now also gave him a thoroughly freaked-out stare.

"Uh...where are you from, Shadow? Please tell us about yourself," Ms Ebony tried again, as she could apparently sense that introductions were going slightly awkwardly.

"Um," Shadow managed. "I don't actually want to talk about that." I also don't even know how much I'm even allowed to say.

If it became known that his artificial creation and his creator's secret pact with Black Doom were the reason for the massacre aboard the ARK over three months ago, for example, he was pretty sure he could kiss his newly-gained citizen status goodbye.

"But Shadow, people want to get to know you!"

"Great. They can read the half a million research papers published on me."

"What was that?" Ms Ebony asked, sounding slightly concerned.

"Nothing." Shadow cleared his throat, sadly aware of how abyssimally this was going. "Can't I just take my seat? Please?" he tried. He really wanted to avoid people asking questions or making speculations, and the less info he had to give out about his background, the better.

The feline teacher sighed. "Well, I know we're a rather...lenient school...and I also know Sticks 'introduced' herself by bringing shrunken heads for everyone," she muttered under her breath, before then turning to Shadow again, "so tell you what. If you don't want to talk about where you're from, how about you tell us about your family? Then you can take your seat."

Shadow, recognizing a peace offer when he saw one, nodded.

"I live together with my sister and her grandfather. We only moved to Station Square last week."

This, again, prompted some more whispers. This time, Shadow heard someone (rather excitedly) asking 'Oh wow, he has a mysterious past! Do you think he was in prison? Are those prison shoes?!' The black hedgehog stared at the speaker. It appeared to be a sort of overexcited...orange...brown...girl...thing.

When she noticed him staring at him, she squeaked and vanished under her desk.

Shadow heaved a very deep sigh.

Oh, brother.

And yesterday, it had all sounded like it wouldn't be so bad...

xxx

"Oh, Shadow, we've got our own house now! It's going to be SO exciting!"

"Hnh," the black hedgehog replied. To tell the truth, he wasn't actually so sure about it - they had moved into this house only yesterday and it had all gone so fast.

"Grandpa, can I have the room with the attached bathroom? Shadow hates bathing anyway!"

"If your brother is fine with it, sure. But I don't want bunches of quills backing up the drain in the communal bathroom either, got it?"

"You shouldn't have designed me with quills that come loose in the shower, then," Shadow replied smoothly, and earned himself a (predictably) flat stare from his creator.

"One more word, young hedgehog, and your room is going to be the dog shed in the yard."

Professor Gerald Robotnik was a world-reknowned scientist with an IQ of 300, who had uncountable papers and revolutionary inventions to his name, the latest of which was indeed Project: Shadow, the Ultimate Lifeform and also the cure designed to combat the deadly condition of Neuro-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome – NIDS.

A man who knew how to handle two rapidly growing teenagers, he was not.

"Grandpa! We just got Shadow his citizen papers, you're not going to chain him up in the yard," Maria protested, which of course, also was true.

When Shadow had been created aboard the ARK, he had been deemed an experiment rather than a sapient being, but had still managed to have a nearly decent (if somewhat strange) childhood growing up alongside Maria, both of them being raised by her grandfather. However, after a military raid aboard the same space station, his and Maria's escape capsule had landed in GUN's custody, the soldiers intent on capturing Shadow and killing Maria. Fortunately, Gerald had survived the raid as well and managed to launch an attack in time to free Shadow from the clutches of GUN before they could freeze and reprogram him as a weapon of mass destruction – and then he had also managed to save Maria's life through an emergency bone marrow transplant from the immune system of the Ultimate Lifeform, thereby curing her fatal disease forever.

You could say that Professor Gerald Robotnik was a pretty swell guy.

Afterwards, getting Shadow recognized as an actual citizen rather than a laboratory animal had been a bit of a bureaucratic hassle, but Gerald had managed even that (as long as they agreed to be silent on the whole corrupt-leadership-board-at-GUN matter, anyway).

Eventually, Gerald had announced that they could finally move to their new home, a house he had bought in Station Square, where he'd be taking up a post as a professor at their university. Maria was also beyond thrilled since she would also be starting at the same university as a freshman –and it was only Shadow who thought he could spot the tiniest flaw in the plan.

"I am to go...to High school?"

The hedgehog had stared at both his creator as well as his sister like an agoraphobic left behind on the open sea.

Gerald had nodded and Maria had smiled. "It's only for a year, Shadow. You do want to go to university, right? With me?"

"Yes, but..." Shadow managed, then trailed off. He did want to go to university, that much was true, but mostly because he honestly had no idea what else to do with his life.

"I already completed my high school education," Maria reminded him. "You still have a year to go."

"I know," the black hedgehog replied with some irritation. Maria, grandchild of his creator and youngest of the Robotnik line, was of course a genius like the rest of her family, and, despite only being 15, had already been offered several scholarships at different universities.

"But...can't I just be homeschooled by you? Like you did with both of us aboard the ARK?" Shadow asked hopefully, turning to his creator.

"I'm glad you enjoyed my tutoring, Shadow, but not only will I be vastly more busy with my new post at the university, but I also think it will do you good to have some more social interaction and learn more about the world outside," Gerald explained patiently.

The look the hedgehog gave him conveyed very succinctly that Shadow would like to take 'social interaction' out back and shoot it, but Gerald had not let himself be deterred.

"No, you will be starting school tomorrow, Shadow, just like I will be taking Maria to her first day at university. Work hard and I will be able to take you with us next year, too, alright?"

"...fine," Shadow said, in the tone of a hedgehog who knew when he was defeated.

"Don't look so glum, it's gonna be great!"

"Yeah. Maybe." It was safe to say that Shadow wasn't the most gregarious hedgehog by nature, but it was also somewhat hard for him to not to let himself be infected by enthusiasm of his human sister. No. He would take High School, much as anything else in his life, as a trial and he would not let himself be beaten by it.

If present-Shadow had been able to communicate with his past-self from yesterday, he would have smacked him.

xxx

"Very well, then. Please have a seat, Shadow," Ms Ebony said, and Shadow correctly guessed she only did that because everything else would probably have gotten her persecuted for animal cruelty.

"There's a free seat next to Amy, you can take that one." The black cat pointed toward an empty chair between the pink hedgehog and the classroom wall, second to last row from the back. He nodded and made his way over. Most of the other students were quietly talking now, only occasionally shooting glances his way, which Shadow was fine with. If he could stay at this level of obscurity for the rest of the year, he would probably be okay.

Walking past, Shadow also noted that although the desks were all the same height, the seats were adjustable for the size of the student; the legs of the sapients – Mobians, they called themselves, he reminded himself – were dangling in the air or set on a small step embedded in the chairs, while the humans were sitting with their feet resting on the floor.

Well.

There were a few exceptions – some of the sapients, like the large green crocodile in the front row, or the giant purple cat, were noticeably bigger and at five foot something about the same height as a teenage human girl.

Shadow arrived at his seat and gave the pink hedgehog a cursory nod as he sat himself down. He wasn't very experienced yet at estimating sapients' ages, but she seemed to be slightly younger than some of the older teenagers in the class. Gerald had said this was a very small school, so some of the years could be pretty mixed. Shadow's fake birth certificate designated him as sixteen, so this girl was perhaps...fifteen?

"HI! I'm Amy Rose! Nice to MEET you!"

Shadow winced slightly at the pitch of the voice and mentally corrected that estimate to fourteen-at-the-most.

"Hello," he ventured, slightly wary. Amy was pretty, he supposed, wearing a red dress with a matching headband over shoulder-length pink quills, and her jade eyes were a fetching contrast to her chosen clothing. Nevertheless, the girl also seemed to exude a kind of bubbliness radiation that Shadow found himself slightly inequipped to deal with.

"It's really cool to meet another hedgehog with a human name," Amy informed him. "I grew up in an orphanage run by humans, so they gave me one. I like it, though, even if it's a bit rare for a Mobian. Now they're allowing me to live on my own, which is really great. Ms Vanilla checks up on me regularly, so I don't get too lonely. She's really nice! Her daughter goes to school here, too. You said you didn't live with your parents, did you also grow up in a home?"

Shadow blinked. He didn't have much experience in communicating with people other than Maria or Gerald, and talking to Amy felt like talking to three hedgehogs at once.

"...no," he finally managed. "No, I've always lived with my, er..." he paused.

Somehow, 'creator' would probably sound a bit weird.

"...with my sister and her grandfather", he repeated, not mentioning that he narrowly almost had ended up as an orphan if the GUN assault on the ARK had only gone a bit differently. "They're humans. They, uh, adopted me. That's why I have their surname."

"Yeah, your surname..." Amy suddenly asked, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Say, do you have any relation to -?"

"Ms Rose, as much as I appreciate you making our new student feel right at home, do you think you could possibly wait until I have finished the lesson? Thank you."

Amy squeaked. "Sorry, Ms Ebony!" Shadow could also see her immediately blush and fling her hands over her mouth, while some of the rest of the class was now snickering at them. For some reason, Shadow could now also feel the heat rising in his own cheeks – what the hell, this wasn't supposed to happen – and then also caught the gaze of that blue hedgehog from the window seat who was now staring at him suspiciously. As soon as Amy noticed that Shadow was looking at the blue guy and turned her head around to look at him, however, the hedgehog had turned with sonic speed and was now suddenly staring disinterestedly out of the window again.

It was at this point that Shadow decided he probably should never, ever, have come to this school in the first place, mostly because all of its students seemed to be about six years old.

He turned with a sigh, gave a low-grade scowl to anyone who was still trying to hide an amused grin when looking at him and tried to focus on the black board, wishing a bit that Maria was here.

I knew this was bad idea.

Shadow let his head sink onto the desk, hoping against hope that at least this day wouldn't feature any more events that would draw attention to him and lead others to ask more questions he was disinclined to answer.

This, of course, was totally not what would happen.

To be continued...

Hey everyone! Still around? Awesome. :D

That said, hope you liked the first chapter! If there's anyone around who's a new reader, btw, this fic is a stand-alone, meaning you can read it on its own, but if you want to know more about Shadow and Maria's past, have a look at my (completed) story 'Life Could Have Been So Different', which covers Shadow's childhood aboard the ARK, keeping mostly as close to canon as possible.

So far so good, though, next chapter should be up fairly quickly (for Taranea-standards, anyway...), meanwhile you can have a vote on the character poll on my profile, and, most importantly, if you read, please review! I gotta know which parts you liked so I can write more of them ;)