Anonymous Review Replies!

DEV: Yeeeeeah, mittlerweile kristallisiert sich so'n bisschen was vom Plot raus, ne? :P Und nein, Sticks half nicht (Sticks hilft NIE XD) aber ich hatte *viel * zu viel Spaß mit diesem Unterrichtsblock...und jo, my inner Archie is showing, wenn Fiona und Co schon rumhängen, dann kriegt Sally natürlich auch n Auftritt! :D Ich krieg hier noch alle continuities unter, wart's nur ab XD (Tatsächlich war ich im Laufe der Szene aber selber überrascht, wie gut das zwischen ihr und Shadow lief :p) Shadow mit plötzlich fehlenden Worten war aber auch schön zu schreiben :3 Ob Tails jetzt mit sich reden lässt oder wir demnächst auch Shadow mit fehlenden *Gliedmaßen* erleben, nun...nur ein Weg, es herauszufinden! Wie immer mega vielen Dank für dein Review, so lässt es sich doch motiviert schreiben :D

Nick: Aw, thank you! I don't intend to stop, certainly not as long as there's still ongoing fics and the reception is this warm :D As for what'll happen next - please read on to find out!

LoneGarurumon: Hahahah, yeah! Mind you, I was also slightly surprised how well Shadow and Sally ended up connecting - I think she's the first person whose friendship doesn't completely exasperate him, lol. XD As for whether he's gonna manage to ask her to Prom...weeeell, if he finds the time in between Robotnik-related shenanigans I think he's certainly gonna try! :p (Just has to hope Sticks doesn't hear about it...) And for who robbed the bank...only one way to find out! Thanks again for the review! :D

Mantarays: Never without a cliffie if I can help it XD Glad it cheered you up, please enjoy the new chapter!

Guest: Yup, you're right, Tails' way of wording things is definitely not gonna go over with Maria (or Shadow) very well...let's hope they can sort this out!

Rei: Hah, glad to hear you like it!:D Doing my best to make the wait for updates not as long...^^; But it definitely won't be long until we see who was that mysterious bank robber! :p Thanks for reviewing!

The General Gist: Nope, you're right, it certainly wasn't *Shadow* who got his hands on an Emerald here...

LAST TIME on Shadow the Hedgehog: First Class...

Well, when we last saw our (not happy) protagonist, Shadow not only managed to form an almost-friendship with the new student, Princess Sally of Acorn, but also apparently LOST a friendship, because Tails has now shown up at his house, ready to do battle and accusing Shadow of having stolen an Emerald! Surely that is a misunderstanding? If it is, Shadow has to sort it out fast before bullets fly...and where on Mobius is Sonic? He certainly wasn't at school today, either...

xxx

Chapter 20: The Long Night

Shadow stared at Tails. He also stared at the giant mecha-walker the fox kit had arrived in, all of its weapons now aimed at him, its bulk blocking out the last rays of the evening sun.

"…excuse me, what?" he managed.

"T-tails?" Maria's voice came from behind Shadow, tone shocked as she slowly stepped closer to the door. Shadow moved again to block her from the line of sight of the weapons on instinct, but Tails' head snapped up, eyes fixing on her in an instant.

"Maria!" he yelled. "You…! I thought you were my friend! You fake…human!" he shouted, eyes shining for a moment, before he blinked them clear again. Shadow, however, had heard the hurt gasp behind him very clearly.

"What did you just say to my sister?!"

"No, Shadow, please-!" Maria called out to him, but to Shadow, the world had suddenly narrowed down to a fox kit living very dangerously.

"Either you get out of my family's garden right now or you will regret it," he snarled up at Tails' in his cockpit, Chaos around his clenched fists already crackling. "Does Sonic even know you're here?"

"Does Sonic-?!" Tails repeated the question disbelievingly as if that had somehow offended him even more – before he launched himself actually bodily from the mecha's cockpit at Shadow with a scream.

"Aaaaargh!"

"Agh!" Shadow echoed as Tails crashed into him somehow with far more force than an eight-year-old living exclusively off pop tarts and nerd hobbies should be able to generate, actually knocking him onto his back.

"OF COURSE he doesn't know!" Tails wailed at him, now kneeling on Shadow's stomach and hands clenched into black chest fur, carnivore teeth bared, "Because you got him arrested! Now give back the Emerald and make them release him or I swear I will – I will – do something!"

"What you will do-" Shadow began automatically, voice very low, but then Tails' words actually registered and he stopped his growl. "...- come again?"

"Tails! We have no idea what you're talking about! What on Earth is going on?!" Maria also pleaded, dropping into a crouch next to the two Sapients on the ground. "Please explain, I'm begging you!"

"Also," Shadow added, now back to the growl, "You have about two point five seconds to get off me before you have one tail."

"Uh…" Tails darted a quick glance at Maria and then back to Shadow, and now his resolve and rage seemed to falter. (Which was now surprise to Shadow. Usually, when Maria turned on the 'Shadow, I'm begging you' routine, she had already brought him down rages ranging from the mild to the actually homicidal. The fox kit wouldn't have known what hit him.)

"One," Shadow began counting, "Two-"

"Okay, okay!" Tails scrambled backwards off him, retreating toward the safety of standing underneath the cockpit of his walker. "What…what do you mean, you don't know?" he asked Maria, expression changing between mistrust and confusion. "Shadow stole that Emerald last night! And you're probably all working together with Eggman! Your grandfather is with him right now, I bet!" he pointed an accusing index finger at Maria.

"…Tails, my grandfather is at a conference in Apotos right now. And unless my cousin has suddenly become interested in debates about Ethical Responsibility in Science, I seriously doubt Ivo is there as well," she said, also holding out the tablet still in her hand. On it she had called up an article about the conference with a picture of Gerald giving one of the opening speeches this afternoon.

"Also, I didn't steal any Emeralds," Shadow growled, picking himself off the ground. If I had, I would at least be able to do a proper damned Chaos Control, he added in his head.

"Oh, oh yeah?" Tails asked, now clearly more befuddled than before, but still not exactly calm or trusting. "Then where were you at 3am last night, Shadow?!"

"If you have to know, he was raiding the fridge like an animal," Maria said with a frown. "Which I know because I was still working on his shoes at the time since they were still having shortcuts after he fell into the bathtub while wearing them."

"Maria," Shadow said, the entire evening not helping his patience.

"But…but….!" Tails was now looking from one of them to the other, this encounter clearly not playing out with the dialogue he had probably been planning.

"Tails," Maria said again, gently. "Please, tell us what is going on and I promise we'll do our best to help. You're saying Sonic has been arrested? For allegedly stealing an Emerald?"

"Uh…I…" Tails' gaze was rapidly switching between Shadow's expression of genuine consternation to Maria's worried and concerned demeanour, stammering for another moment - until something in the fox kit seemed to break.

"…yes!" he wailed. "And now they've taken him into prison! And he didn't do anything, but there's footage of a hedgehog stealing the green Chaos Emerald last night from Central City bank and they've arrested him for it and that was why he didn't come back and they've taken his communicator and all of the Chaotix and Knuckles are on this stupid Emerald hunt on some sort of mountain made completely out of pumpkins or something and-!"

"Oh dear. There, there," Maria said, having carefully stepped closer, and, predictably, ended up with a hug full of bawling fox kit as Tails had evidently been under a lot of stress.

Thankfully, as soon as the crying fit had started, under Maria's back rubs and vaguely comforting noises it didn't take very long until the small fox was already calming down again and soon enough Tails was mostly only sniffling and rubbing at his eyes, now looking somewhat embarrassed.

(Which Shadow was thankful for. In his opinion, there was one person who was allowed to get backrubs and be consoled by Maria, and Tails was not it, thank you.)

"I'm…I'm sorry," Tails said, voice still thick as he swallowed. "I didn't mean to…"

"It's okay," Maria said, having crouched down again to be at eye level with him and giving him an encouraging smile. "Now let's take this from the beginning and find out what happened."

"Yeah," Shadow said, crossing his arms. "Starting with why the hell did you think they'd arrest Sonic for a theft when I was the culprit." He raised an eye ridge. "I mean, who would be seriously dumb enough to mistake a blue hedgehog for a black one?"

"Well," Tails said with another swallow and a frown, evidently getting some semblance of poise together again, "the footage they have is apparently really dark and low quality so they said the only thing one can tell is that's it a hedgehog and that he must be really fast. And I mean, I know Sonic wouldn't steal anything, but," – and here he gave a pointed glance at Shadow - "someone didn't register their powers and guess who the only known hedgehog with superspeed around here is."

"…point taken," Shadow admitted with a scowl. "But how did they even manage to arrest him in the first place?"

"I think they must have taken him by surprise," Tails said, hands balled into fists. "Because otherwise he would have had a chance to call me on his communicator. I think…they just called him in and he went and he trusted them and…"

"'Them'," Maria asked as Tails' eyes began to dangerously shine again with anger and fear, "You mean GUN?"

"Yes!" Tails nodded emphatically, thankfully apparently not noticing the minute stiffening of Shadow and Maria at this new revelation. He swallowed. "And I think they're taking him to Prison Island right now or maybe he's already there…"

"Prison-…that's where they wanted to store me," Shadow said before he could stop himself, Tails' gaze snapping toward him at the words.

"That's where they wanted to what?" he asked, but before Shadow would have been forced to find a reply, he was interrupted by Maria who had been typing something into her tablet but now gasped.

"Shadow, Tails! Look!"

At the tap of one of her fingers a video expanded, and she had quickly turned up the volume to full strength. It was a news segment, the channel logo telling them they were currently watching FoxNews (a channel, of course, nearly entirely run by foxes, though the Equal Opportunities Act had forced them to hire a few humans as well).

In the foreground, there was therefore a (red-haired, FoxNews was still trying to remain on-brand) female human reporter, a crimson banner at the bottom reading "BREAKING" and red letters in the upper right corner indicating that this was a live streaming.

"…Scarlet Garcia here reporting live from Central City," the woman was saying, clearly a bit frazzled and in less than perfect make-up and styling, indicating that this was indeed some very unplanned programming. "After the astonishing escape of celebrity and hero-possibly-turned-culprit Sonic the Hedgehog just an hour ago from a police helicopter, GUN has been chasing the suspect through the city using their standard operating procedure of sending a 12 feet tall giant truck on a rampage-"

("What?!" Shadow asked at this point, but was promptly shushed by both Tails and Maria.)

"-which so far admittedly does not seem to have been a very successful method," Garcia continued, the camera now showing a street basically littered with smashed cars behind her and also a giant 12 feet tall truck crashed into a Walmart. "However, Sonic the Hedgehog does indeed seem to have stopped now-"

"Sonic!" Tails cried out as the camera swung out to show Sonic standing off to the side of the giant truck crashed into the shopping centre (which thankfully seemed to have been closed at this hour). From what it looked like, the blue hedgehog seemed to be doing a facepalm. Then he shook his head.

"Okay, this game of tag is boring. Not to mention insane. I'm outta here!" he said, as suddenly there was another crash! off-camera and the whole picture blurred for a moment, as if something had made the entire ground shake.

"What…?" Maria mouthed as the camera stabilized again, now showing another mecha-walker having dropped down a few feet from Sonic, its rockets that apparently were no problem at all to unleash in the middle of a friggin city gearing up to fire.

In response, the blue hedgehog gave a grin and dropped into a fighting stance.

"Finally decided to show up, ey? Bring it on!"

And that was the last of what they saw, because then something seemed to hit the camera, and in a second the picture was gone. For a moment, all three of them stared at the black screen, dumbfounded, before Tails abruptly leapt to his feet.

"Everyone, quick!" he shouted, already turning toward his plane, "We need to-!"

"Tails, wait!" Maria reached out, snagging the fleeing fox kit on the shoulder, thereby bringing him up short. "How fast is your plane?"

"Uh…just slightly sub-sonic at top speed, but wh-"

"Then it will take hours to get there," Maria pointed out, "Central City is on the other side of the continent, we won't get there in time to help."

"But-!"

"If what I read about Sonic is right, if he wins that battle and runs home, he'll be here much faster, right?" she said, releasing the tail she was holding, Tails fortunately looking like he was following her train of thought now. "Now what if he gets here needing help and you're in the air halfway across United Federation territory?"

"And he will win that battle," Shadow added with a scoff. "That walker model that just landed on screen?" he asked, when Tails looked at him with questioning expression, "That was a F-6t Big Foot. I already took apart the improved version, the B3x Hot Shot, when I was three years younger. From what I saw of him at the battle against that bird army, that thing doesn't stand a chance in-"

At this point, the video came back to life again, interrupting their conversation. On screen, as Shadow had predicted, there was a smoking heap that with some imagination had once been a F-6t Big Foot, Sonic standing next to it, looking just slightly the worse for wear and panting a little, but otherwise unharmed. Then something seemed to flash just off-screen and Sonic's gaze snapped around to look at it, eyes abruptly narrowing at whatever it was.

"-what?!" he called out, his voice now barely audible over the din of sirens, shouting of other people in the distance and an obviously damaged microphone. "…know what's going on!" he shouted, pointing at whatever it was. "The military has mis-!"

Which was when the camera went black for a second time and the three people in the room gave simultaneous frustrated cries.

"No! What was that?!" Tails looked like he was about to take the tablet and bodily shake it as Maria's eyes were narrowed in thought.

"He was looking up, so whatever it was, it must have been either flying or on top of a building," she said, "Maybe any civilians on the scene have caught it on their phones-"

"It's back," Shadow interrupted her as the picture stabilized again. Tails gasped.

"Sonic!"

On screen, something had obviously happened just as the picture had gone down - all they caught was the tail end of another flash, and Sonic now suddenly lying on his belly on the ground, just lifting his upper body up one one elbow and grasping the back of his head with his teeth clenched and eyes screwed shut, as if somebody had just knocked him down from behind. The next moment, he was already half-way blocked from sight as finally military units from all sides rushed in, cars and soldiers surrounding him, and the last thing they saw was the blue hedgehog's surprised face as a helicopter dropped a net on top of him, the camera then finally moving back to Scarlet Garcia, looking slightly shaken.

"It...it seems as if after a prolonged escape through the city, Sonic the Hedgehog has now been apprehended," she said, voice admirably steady despite the chaos surrounding her. There was another "Sonic!" cry from Tails, as in the background of the picture, an apparently now sedated Sonic was being lifted into the air inside the net, soldiers aboard the helicopter pulling it back aboard.

"Statements from GUN confirm that he will be transferred to a secure facility on Prison Island designed to hold powered individuals while awaiting trial. Social media is already in an uproar about-"

"-yeah, and here ends the useful information about this," Shadow said, pressing the mute button on the video. "Now what?"

"I need to go save him!" Tails exclaimed, jumping up again, yet his movement came to an abrupt stop again when Maria this time only managed to grab him by one of his namesakes.

"Tails, for the second time, wait! Honestly, what is it with you furballs, why do all of you always want to run into stuff without thinking?!"

Tails, who had been about to start pulling at his own tail in a sort of tug-of-war to free himself from Maria's grasp, paused for a moment and frowned, looking up at her."...Antoine says 'furball' is a speciesistically charged slur, and humans shouldn't be using it to refer to us," he said, before then abruptly starting to wave his arms wildly, "But also, Sonic is in danger, NOW!"

"Fine, fine, sorry!" Maria said, releasing Tails' tail and massaging her temple with one hand. "But my point stands. Running or flying in there now guns blazing is just asking them to lock you up, too."

"But then what?" Tails looked up at her. "I can't do nothing! And I also can't wait for them to figure out Sonic didn't do it, because that could take ages and Sonic would go crazy being locked up for that long!"

"Judging from his general behaviour, not an exaggeration," Shadow said, throwing Maria a glance. Then he paused. "…what do you think we should do?"

Maria gave him another look, a brief, soft expression in her eyes indicating that she had not missed the meaning of Shadow asking her here, for once talking to her before rushing off, like he had promised.

"I'm not sure," she said eventually. "Isn't there a chance that they'll realize they have the wrong hedgehog soon enough, if Sonic didn't do it?"

"I don't…I don't think so," Tails bit his lip. "The leadership of GUN, they don't actually like Sonic much, mostly because he always wins where they don't and it makes them look bad," he said, a bit of righteous indignation creeping back into his voice. "I don't think they'll try very hard to clear his name at all, not if arresting him also makes them look like they had a success in clearing up a high-profile bank heist."

What kind of judicial system even is this, if they can hold him on Prison Island without a trial? Shadow would have wanted to ask, but didn't. If they went at this the legal way, that would likely take ages – ages in which Maria's cousin would have time to make his next move.

Maria was currently pressing her lips into a thin line, looking like she was riding much the same trains of thought while also fighting with herself. Then she took a breath. "...you know, Tails, for the past week, I've been researching technology which I think turned a robot invisible some days ago. And I think I managed to reverse engineer it in principle. If you can only wait a couple more hours, you can help me build a prototype and then we can install it onto your plane and we can all go there undetected, break Sonic out and then help him clear his name."

"What, really?" Tails asked at the same time as Shadow said "Wait, we?"

"Prison Island is much closer than Central City. If they're taking Sonic there, they're basically taking him to us," Maria pointed out. "Also, if you flew out now, what would you even do while he's still onboard the helicopter transporting him? Shoot them down?" she raised an eye brow.

"...hm. Yeah, now that you say it..." Tails rubbed the back of his head. "I mean, Sonic would probably be fine, he falls off planes all the time," he said, cheerfully disregarding Shadow's raised eye ridges, "But no, it's probably not a good idea to attack anything that has other people inside..."

"Exactly," Maria nodded. "We have a much lower risk of hurting anybody if we just wait until they've brought him to Prison Island and break him out from there."

"I still object to the 'we' in this part," Shadow said. "Also, our first priority should be to find out who took that Emerald in the first place if it wasn't either me or Sonic, and who knocked him down on that newscast, because it sure as hell wasn't that scrapheap of a mecha."

"...you think it was my cousin, don't you," Maria said, face hardening.

"I don't know how, but yes," Shadow said. "He stole the Emerald from those bird nutcases, too."

"Hrm," Tails said, rubbing his nose with the side of his curled finger. "Maria, do you have a computer terminal set up to potentially hack into a military or private bank server?"

"This is a Robotnik household, of course we do," Maria said. "Alright, let's see whether we can't get our hands on some of that footage they claim to have. Shadow, help Tails with the heavy lifting for building and installing that stealth prototype, I'll try and see if I can't find out who our thief really is..."

"And then you will stay home and me and Tails go to the military experimental prison complex, yes," Shadow tried once more to put emphasis on certain key points before turning to go to and carry Tails' walker to a place in the garden where it was a bit less visible from the street.

"Uh...Maria? Shadow?" Tails' voice let him halt. The little fox now looked slightly embarrassed, looking at the tips of his shoes. "I just...before we start, I wanted to say…thank you. For helping. And I'm sorry for thinking just because you were related to Eggman that you were working with him. And Maria..." he straightened up, "I'm also sorry for calling you a...human. I mean, in that way, " he added hurriedly, "I mean, obviously being a human isn't bad, I mean-!"

"It's fine, Tails. Apology accepted," Maria said, though her smile spoke volumes. "I'll also refrain from any more furball comments, alright?"

"Heh. Yeah, alright," Tails replied with a relieved grin. "Honestly, I'm just glad Sonic didn't hear me say that..."

"Hm-hm," Shadow couldn't help but raise an eye ridge. "You haven't been talking to Fiona and her friends by any chance?"

"N-no!" Tails immediately denied, blushing. "I mean…just a little, I mean...I thought I might try and get to know her a bit, just...just in case she maybe doesn't have a date to prom yet and...I mean, pleasedon'ttellSonic," he finished, now looking absolutely miserable.

"Well, as long as he's still in GUN custody, there's no chance of that happening, right?" Maria asked. "Better get to work…"

Xxx

Shadow stared at the clock at the lower right corner of the computer screen, the minutes ticking by slowly. By now hours had passed, Tails and Maria having finished installing a prototype cloaking device in Tails walker-cum-plane, and also having managed to get their hands on the available footage from the bank vault where the Emerald had been stolen.

Watching it had provided them with no new knowledge that the media hadn't already reported on – what was clearly visible was that the attacker was a sapient hedgehog or porcupine of some sort, and also one who moved at frightening speeds, often vanishing between frames from the observed area of one camera and re-appearing on the next. But wherever he moved, some strange distortion soon seemed to be going on with the footage, and the lighting of the entire thing was also abysmal.

Currently, Shadow was watching it for the felt 100th time, but of course, that did not yield any new results – what they were waiting for, currently, was that the reconstruction and descrambling software Tails had (somehow) managed to cobble together would be able to clear up the film and show them a useful picture of the thief. Which… - Shadow glanced at the status bar - …could only take another 15 minutes or maybe 30 hours, depending on the wildly jumping time estimate. Oh goodie. Shadow rolled his eyes.

He took another sip of his coffee – not that he needed it, but he always did feel like it improved his focus – and let his gaze wander across the rest of the laboratory/workshop. Both Tails and Maria had dropped off on the couch some time ago after finishing their work, now both of them slumped against each other in a display that seemed sweet enough to induce diabetes by proxy. Shadow, of course, didn't actually need sleep every night and had decided to forgo it for now on the basis of feeling far too antsy to be able to fall asleep anyway. As soon as the footage had descrambled, he wanted to see it.

And he also wanted to be awake just in case GUN came knocking.

Shadow drummed his fingers next to the computer keyboard. This was incredibly frustrating. Only a very, very select few high-ranking government officials knew that he had been created as an experiment, an artificial lifeform imbued with alien-DNA-induced Chaos powers. And since Professor Gerald had also technically committed High Treason by bartering the Earth away for some strands of Black Arms DNA, and since GUN was still trying to cover up their illegal raid aboard the ARK in response as an 'accident', Shadow suspected that GUN command was also very interested that it remained that way.

So, most people in the police and military probably would not know that he could also very well be a suspect for this jewel theft, but a few people did, and it was a bit of a toss-up whether they would either continue their silence about Shadow's abilities in the interest of national peace, or send a SWAT team to also retrieve him and take him to Prison Island for questioning as well.

Prison Island. Just thinking about that place sent a chill down Shadow's spine and he could feel his muscles constricting around his lungs.

In the aftermath of the assault aboard the ARK, he and Maria had escaped in a capsule, but been re-captured by GUN. Shadow's memories of that day were in tatters, but he still recalled that he had woken up in an open stasis pod deep in the bowels of Prison Island, hands and feet already bound, with a GUN general leaning over him and telling him that his memories would be erased, that he would be reprogrammed to be the perfect, obedient soldier for GUN.

That he would be woken up in fifty years, when everybody he had ever known would have been dead for decades.

Shadow still remembered screaming as the lid of the cryostasis pod closed over him, screaming as the needle-thin electrodes meant to delete his memories and eliminate his free will had sunk into his skull.

Shadow hunched over on the chair in front of the computer, trying hard to get his breathing under control again. Professor Gerald had saved him only hours later, he had only lost a few scraps of memories from that day, Maria was alive, none of that had happened.

He glanced over to the couch at his sleeping and healthy sister – Shadow really didn't know why that particular memory haunted him like that, why it always seemed so real, like he really had been frozen and locked away and forgotten, deep in the bowels of that prison complex under the sea and all of this, this reality was wrong.

It's not. I know it isn't, he thought, fist clenching, feeling the agitated Chaos crackle underneath his skin.

"Mmh…Sha-dow…?" Maria started to mumble at this point, beginning to sleepily stir awake on the couch as if she had felt his agitation.

"Hey. Morning," Shadow replied, turning around and trying to smile at her despite his voice still being slightly raspy from disuse through the night.

"Are…you okay?" Maria blinked at him, apparently having seen something in his face that let her wake up quickly now.

"I'm fine," Shadow waved her off. "Just…memories."

"Oh, is it-?" Maria began, but then the computer interrupted her with a ping! and she gasped. "Shadow! It's finished descrambling the footage!"

"Oh, uh, huh…?" Tails was now also stirring awake at her gasp, then rapidly jolted upright after processing what she had just said. "The footage!"

Within a couple of seconds, both Maria and Tails had scrambled forward to join Shadow at the computer, Maria on his left side leaning forward on her hands, Tails on Shadow's right side standing on tip-toes and grabbing the edge of the desk with his hands.

"Run it," Maria said, staring intently at the screen. Shadow reached for the mouse, clicking on the descrambled file and they all waited silently as the picture of the bank vault footage filled the screen and began to play…

To be continued…

Well well well, the plot thickens! And speeds up. And maybe just seems so slightly familiar? ;p Anyway, hope you enjoyed the update, everyone's healthy and if you read, please review! I was so happy at last chapter's reception, you guys are the best :D