Ring Ring Ring

"Hello?"

"Shadow"

"Yes?"

"This is your GUN superior and we have a special mission for both you and Rouge, get down here now."

"Sigh okay, when do you need us"

"The sooner the better, now get moving."

"Right."

"Who was that Shadow?" Rouge called down after having heard him hang up.

"The GUN, they say they need us both for a mission immediately" he called back up.

"Darn, I was going to see a movie tonight" she said, sounding a little depressed

"I guess it'll have to wait for tomorrow night, he sounded like it was urgent so we should probably just Chaos Control there….. we have a Chaos Emerald right?"

"I think we have one upstairs somewhere" Rouge said as she climbed upstairs again, only to return a minute later with a dark blue Chaos Emerald in hand.

"Here" she said handing the glistening sapphire to shadow.

Within seconds they were standing outside the large building where they both worked.

"Would it kill them to add a little decorative flare to anything?" Rouge said noting the very plain style of the large, almost windowless, black building that simply said GUN on it with nothing but a flagpole with the flag waving in the breeze atop it outside.

"Apparently" he said with a laugh.

They both went inside and checked into the front desk which neither of them were even tall enough to reach the top of, and then went to the briefing room as they always did to receive their mission from whomever was giving it to them, the heads of the departments that the crises were happening in would always assign important missions personally to make sure that there weren't any "mix-ups". As they went inside they were greeted by a man, maybe in his late 40's, with very many important-looking badges, medals, and color stripes, draped on his suit which he obviously displayed with great pride.

"Ah, there you two are" he said as they closed the door behind them.

"Greetings, my name is Colonel Brockston, I've heard quite a bit about you two and have wanted to meet with you face to face for quite some time, please do sit down" he said as the both pulled chairs up to a long table facing him.

"I presume you wish to know why you have been brought here"

"That would be nice" Shadow said

"Very well then, have either of the two of you ever heard of Avalon?"

They both shook their heads

"I thought not, Avalon is a small island about 3 miles in diameter about 30 miles or so off the coast"

They both nodded their heads as he continued explaining

"You see, recently we established a small base of operations there, for small time things only I assure you, mainly training and Marine studies but beyond that nothing else, Avalon is of no real strategic value."

"Interesting, but what does it have to do with anything?" Shadow said

"I was just about to get to that, Avalon is completely uninhabited, or at least that's what we thought, during the construction of the base we started receiving crudely written notes warning us to stop building and to vacate the island taking all trace of us ever having been there with us. We shrugged the threats off as simply another one of those fringe radical organizations trying to order us around. Every time we received a note the threats grew more and more hostile until the most recent one we received. I have it here for you"

He reached into a small drawer in the table and pulled out a crinkled and torn piece of paper and handed it to shadow, who put it on the table where both he and rouge could read it. Scribbled messily and almost illegibly onto the paper was a message.

You haven't heeded my warnings so far but I will give you one last chance, GET OFF MY ISLAND, this is my home and I will NOT stand for you to take it over. Consider this your last warning, leave or I will personally come down there and kill every last one of you with my bare hands.

"Somebody didn't want you there" Shadow said, pointing out the obvious.

"Quite so"

"You said Avalon isn't of any strategic importance, if that's true then why didn't you just leave?" Rouge asked

"By the time we figured out that these threats were not just some radical organization or a Cult living there or something we had already invested too much time and too many resources into this to cancel the entire project on suspicions." He said definitively

"So what happened" Shadow asked

"We finished the project earlier today and set up a defensive perimeter in case of an attack. One hour ago we received this transmission from the Avalon base."

The Colonel placed a small device with a speaker on it on top of the table and pressed a button on it the message had static over it the sound of machine-gun fire in the background but the message came through.

This is Unit Number 1337 calling out on a secure frequency, the Avalon base is under attack by something, its destroying everything, its unstoppable, breaching every line of defense, its destroyed all the tanks and vehicles, it just seems to point at them then they glow red hot and explode. Large explosion in the background Its destroyed the main fuel tank, nothing we do seems to work, oh god its coming for me, please, oh god no, god n--

"That was the last transmission from the island" the Colonel said "Soon after all life signs from the troopers suits flat lined and all signals from within the base were cut off, we need both of you to go to the scene and find out what happened."

"Seems a little dangerous don't you think?" Rouge asked

"That's why I asked for you two, because you're the best there is. We have reason to believe that the attacker is using some sort of obscure flame based weaponry the likes of which we've never encountered before and appear to be totally unprecedented. We also have selected you two because based on the few split seconds we've seen of the attacker on cameras before the island bases signals dead lined , we believe the attacker is a hedgehog. We think that maybe he will listen to you and you can reason with him."

Shadow and Rouge looked at each other

"A hedgehog?" Shadow said

"Yes, or something similar, definitely not human. Who or what-ever the attacker is he is obviously very dangerous and we believe he is still in the area, please be careful."

"As always" Shadow said

Both Shadow and Rouge got up and left his office and went outside

The sun was setting and the amber sky was beautiful against the pink clouds Shadow then took out the blue Chaos Emerald again and chaos controlled them to the island.

They landed on the beach and were looking out onto the waves, the water was crystal clear and looked clean enough to drink, there was a mountain looming out about a mile behind them with sparse shrubbery on one side but with a thick forest on the other, the forest side led down to a valley which was the islands thinnest point, with a beach on either end of the valley, one of them being the one they were standing on. The other side of the valley led up to a significantly smaller mountain which continued on as rolling foothills for about a mile.

"It's beautiful" Rouge said "absolutely stunning"

Shadow was thinking the same until his eyes drifted down to the other end of the mountain where at the edge of the island there was a small building that was burning surrounded by burning wreckage that casted greasy smoke into the air.

"That part isn't so beautiful" he said pointing it out to Rouge

"Oh, I hadn't noticed that" she said "Well, I guess that where we head first"

Shadow agreed and even though it was on the other end of the island with his jet shoes and her ability to fly they were both there in 2 minutes.

"Let's go in and have a look" he suggested

They went inside and it looked as if a tornado had hit the place, it was dark with the only light coming from a single flickering fluorescent light and a cable hanging in midair from the ceiling which periodically sent sparks flying across the room. They went upstairs to see how it was up there and found it in much the same condition except for several black streaks across the walls. Shadow slid two fingers down the wall and looked at his gloves.

"Ashes and soot, Command was right" he admitted "whoever did this was using something involving fire."

Just then one of the doors about halfway down the hall burst open and something stepped out and began walking the other way but stopped when he heard something behind him.

"Whose there!?" he yelled

There wasn't enough light to tell exactly what it was but it looked like a hedgehog

"I can see your silhouettes in the dark, whose there?"

"Were here to investigate what happened, who are you?" Shadow asked

"Oh, you're just more agents, DON'T YOU PEOPLE LEARN?" he screamed

"WELL MAYBE THIS WILL HELP YOU REMEMBER!"

Within a second he was down the hall and punched Shadow, sending him flying back into the wall, he then turned to Rouge who returned his stare, trying to seem tough and ready to fight, but after looking at her for a second he turned away.

"I can't hit a woman, It's not right" he said

"What?"She replied, sounding very surprised

"I just can't, I won't do it"

"You just randomly attack my friend punching him through the wall but you won't even touch me because I'm a woman? Whoever the hell you are you are some piece of work. Wait, you aren't a hedgehog"

But before she could finish talking Shadow got back up from the first blow and charged at his assailant tackling him and sending them both to the ground skidding across the floor punching and kicking. He then punched shadow away again and got up, aimed a fist at the wall and blew the wall away in a huge blast of flame. He then jumped out and landed in the entryway closely followed by shadow.

Now illuminated by the firelight shadow could see his attackers' markings. He was mainly a dark yellow color but had patches of reddish orange mixed in, his quills were yellow but tapered to black at the ends and he had three small quills protruding from his forehead, like tails, but those quills were all black, he also had a long jagged scar running down the right side of his face. But his most prominent feature was that now that shadow could see him he realized that it wasn't a hedgehog, it was an Echidna. But before he could make out anything else his attacker charged at him building up another punch which shadow only barely avoided. Growing annoyed with his attacker he charged up a Chaos Spear which obviously caught him totally off guard for an attack like that and he barely missed the Chaos Spear.

"What the f-"but before he could complete that statement he had to dodge another spear

Shadow kept throwing spears at him until he had pushed his attacker to the edge of a cliff and he had nowhere else to go. With Shadow getting closer he wasn't able to have enough time to dodge the last Chaos Spear and it sliced him across his right arm.

"AAARRGHH" he screamed as he fell to the ground clutching at his wounded arm.

Noticing Shadow getting closer he pointed his good arm at Shadow.

"STAY BACK" he yelled "I'M WARNING YOU"

Shadow continued walking slowly closer to him but another large blast of flame erupted from his hand and sent Shadow back a good 20 feet.

His attacker stood up, swaying slightly and still clutching his wounded arm and turned behind him and saw how high up he was, but he knew he couldn't hold off Shadow forever so he looked between them, his eyes darting between Shadow and the at least 500 foot drop below him. With nowhere else to go, he jumped. Both Shadow and Rouge ran to the cliffs edge assuming he would rather kill himself then be defeated or something but about halfway down a continuing stream of flame came from his good hand and propelled him like a jet through the air to the other end of the Island.

"What in the hell, was that!?" Shadow exclaimed

"Well, I saw it was an Echidna" Rouge said

"I saw that too" Shadow said "But that's impossible isn't Knuckles the last one?"

"I think he's supposed to be but that was definitely an Echidna"

"Hmmmmm"

beep beep

Both Shadow and Rouge pressed their fingers against their ears

"It's me, Colonel Brockston; have you two found anything yet?"

"Yes we found the attacker and engaged him but he got away, we have reason to believe he is still on the island."

"Pursue him and restrain him however you can, I want you to bring him in here alive."

"Yes sir"

"Over and out"