Shadow eyed the Doctor's newest prisoner, partly interested. It wasn't because it looked like a floating jester. It was because of a feeling.

Shadow had heard that this was also the newest addition to that blue hedgehog's gang. The only reason it joined was because of Dr. Eggman, there was a lot more unease in the dream world (Nightropica or something), where it claimed to have come from. It seems that, since people were in fear of Eggman, they had nightmares about him, too many nightmares for it to be relatively safe for its world's inhabitants. If Eggman were to be stopped, people could literally rest easy and go back to dreaming.

But now here it was, locked in a titanium-reinforced bird cage hovering moodily in the air. It had its legs and arms crossed, the latter over its chest, with its back to Shadow. A few minutes ago it had been flying high speed laps around the cage, and the trail of sparkles it left had almost been painful to look at. And Shadow had been assigned guard duty.

After spending a few minutes in the same room with the prisoner, Shadow noticed something odd. The Chaos stored inside him made him a bit more sensitive to others' aura, but he could only clearly pick up people like Sonic, who had come into contact with and could use the power of the Chaos Emeralds. He had to really focus on finding someone else's, and even then it wasn't enough for him to use Chaos Control to warp to.

The prisoner claimed to have been from a land of dreams (which Shadow couldn't help but be skeptical of). Thus, you would guess his aura would be light and pure. Its aura was, at first, when Shadow had boredly focused on it. But it slowly revealed that it was not what it seemed, because within that tightly wrapped ball of not-so-pure light was a dark shadow. The longer he focused on it, the darker it seemed to get, including the original ball of light.

It didn't make sense. How could something like that come from a dream? Why did it want to protect something so pure when it itself was tainted? Shadow was becoming irritated when questions like those kept buzzing around in his head, seeking answers. His hold on his emotions was beginning to fail, but he was able to keep the agitation out of his voice.

"What are you?"

The jester spun around, obviously surprised. Its eyes narrowed in suspicion a little, and confusion was evident in its non-gender-specific voice. "What?"

"What are you?" Shadow asked again. "There's no way something dark like you could've been born from a dream."

It grimaced and looked away, then returned to its pervious position except facing him.

"I was…" it began haltingly, "created… from nightmares."

Shadow kept silent as he digested this. Being made from nightmares explains the darker core. However, it joined up with Sonic to help stop nightmares and protect dreams. Why did it do that? Also there was one more thing it said.

"Created?" Shadow repeated.

It nodded solemnly. "Wizeman, the ruler of Nightmares, created me to be the strongest Nightmaren."

It was slightly familiar to Shadow's own story, but there was something wrong. It was trying to keep the Nightmares weak, but its creator is (or maybe even was) the ruler of nightmares. Shadow's look of contemplation turned into a hard glare. "You're rebelling against the one who gave you life?"

It glanced away.

"Why!?"

The hedgehog's scornful question rebounded off the walls unanswered for a minute while the jester seemed to have an internal struggle. One side seemed to have won as its indigo eyes became half-lidded. "I was… sent to the waking world once."

Seeing Shadow's angry glare, it turned sideways and clarified. "Don't worry, this is part of it. Wizeman wanted me to find the two dreamers who have the Red Ideya of Courage. He often ordered us to steal the Ideya of Visitors to power his legion of Nightmaren. Ideya represents the attributes of a person: courage, hope, wisdom, intelligence, and purity, each with their own color. Courage is by far the rarest one.

"And since the waking and dreaming worlds are close to each other, it's easy to pass between them if you know how." At Shadow's understanding nod, the aerial acrobat continued. "Everything started easy enough. I landed on top of the highest thing I could find, which was a bell tower. As I opened my senses to find them, however…"

It trailed off as it shivered from the memory, then continued quieter than before. "The place felt dead. Sometimes, I wondered what happened to people whose Ideya got stolen, but since there was no way to enter Nightopia without Ideya, I never had the chance to find out.

"But that city was filled with people without Ideya, and anyone with the slightest sensitivity to these things would feel like curling into a ball and finding a hole to die in. And knowing that I played a part in causing all that suffering…"

It trailed off and glanced at the black hedgehog. "Have you ever been to London?"

The answer was quick and stiff. "No."

"Good," its tone was filled with relief, "it's not a place to hang around in. Anyway, at the time I was beginning to think Wizeman shouldn't be stripping Visitors of their Ideya, and that visit convinced me of it.

"When I got pulled back to the Dream Dimension, I took off and became the unofficial protector of dreams. You should know the rest."

Shadow absently nodded, already focused on shifting through what he had just learned. Nightmares somehow steal the ability to dream from people through Ideyas. The captive Nightmaren felt guilty and started trying to atone for what it has done. Even though it went against his own ideals, Shadow couldn't help but feel grudging respect for trying to set things right.

Silence reigned for all of five minutes, until the prisoner spoke up again. "You remind me of someone."

Shadow gave him a half hearted glare for interrupting his thoughts. It didn't seem to care and continued. "I guess you could say we're siblings, since we were made at the same time by Wizeman. He actually pities me for going against the ruler of Nightmare. But by now, it's too late for him to understand why I'm doing this."

"To atone." It came out as more of a flat statement than a question.

"Well, that and…" The black hedgehog was beginning to loose his patience with the captive's constant pauses. Its eyes shifted back and forth, as if looking for any eavesdroppers (which there weren't any. The security cameras didn't have audio feed), before opening its mouth and barreling on through. "Yes, Wizeman made me, but I'm not an extension of him. I learn from my mistakes without having to be told what they were and how to avoid them in the future. I can form friendships with people who like me, not the leader of the Nightmaren. I have free will, I have emotions, and last I checked I can feel hunger and pain and everything that a normal, sentient being feels.

"I'm me; my own person and not a weapon to be controlled."

Shadow blinked, his only outward reaction. Everything that the jester said went against nearly all of Shadow's beliefs. He expected to feel outraged, to lash out verbally and physically at the Nightmaren and counter its words with those that had comforted him for so long.

A long moment of silence passed. The feeling didn't come. He became frustrated with himself and tried to find the reason he didn't want to tear the prisoner limb from limb.

When he found it, he didn't exactly like the answer.

The hedgehog found that the young Nightmaren's words had more than an ounce of truth to them. All that was said made logical sense, and he could tell it believed in what it said with every fiber of its being. For some reason, he was reminded of Maria, and how they had quickly befriended each other despite the Doctor's initial disagreement. (It hadn't taken him very long to relent, however, when he noticed how much happier his girl had become.)

There was one other reason, one that faintly disturbed even the stoic hedgehog himself. The facts of this nightmare's life seemed to closely match those of the blue faker, and Shadow would bet money that the jester's sibling was a lot like himself. A few things were off, such as Shadow being created by his current boss's grandfather, there being more than a few years were between Shadow and Sonic, and that Sonic wasn't made by Robotnik per se. Yet their stories were so close, so similar, it was almost possible to believe someone had orchestrated their lives from the very beginning.

Shadow got the odd feeling he was just given insight into Sonic's thoughts. Not much, really, but more than he had before.

All further thoughts were drowned out by a blaring klaxon accompanied by a flashing red light. Shadow's attention became focused on the red light, and the jester—NiGHTS, he thought it was called—gave a startled jump. The automated female voice came over the speakers.

"Intruder alert. Priority One Hedgehog. Intruder alert. Priority One Hedgehog."

Or, in laymen's terms, Sonic is in the building.

The jester's face broke into an ecstatic grin, and it pumped its fist in the air with an exclamation of joy. Shadow didn't look too irritated—just thoughtful with his ever-present scowl currently missing. He turned his head to look at a small object on the side table, reaching out and picking it up with one of his gloved hands. The hedgehog studied it for a minute before letting out a small sigh and his eyes drifted shut.

"Here."

Despite the screaming klaxon and how quiet the statement was, NiGHTS turned to Shadow and caught the yellow blur that had been thrown to him. The acrobat's eyes widened as he realized the significance of the comically large key, and it looked up to the hedgehog's retreating back as he exited the room. The Nightmaren held the item close and allowed a hesitant smile to cover its face. As the door slammed shut, NiGHTS whispered the one dream that it dared to dream.

"Maybe… there is some hope for Reala after all."

Please, allow me to explain my reasoning.

I came up with this idea while I was looking into the Fleetway Sonic comics. According to them, Sonic was originally a regular, brown hedgehog and Robotnik was Kintobor, a kind scientist trying to help the world. They started out as friends, and during an experiment to see if Sonic really could break the sound barrier, there was some sort of reaction with the Chaos Emerald in the machine that made the machine explode and turn Sonic blue. Through another accident that I'm not entirely sure of that involved a rotten egg, Kintobor was turned into the evil warlord Robotnik. The rest, as they say, is history.

It struck me as creepy that NiGHTS/Reala's story is so similar to this Sonic/Shadow's story: made by (relatively) the same person, one continues to follow them unquestionably and the other works against them. Sure, both games were made by Sonic Team, but... still.

I only have one other oneshot planned, but this one is pretty much the cream of this crop. This one would happen about halfway through the story, with this scene planting certain seeds in Shadow's head. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with it.

As always, I own nothing and hope for reviews.