Me and my view on a subject. Short, but I felt I did what I had to.

Thanks for reading in advance.

He fell.

He fell through the dark void of space, the lights of the space colony dimming. The blonde girl's face was still fresh in his mind as he smiled for the last time.

He fell, Earth's gravity claiming his body for its own. He fell, expecting to meet his end and his beloved Maria as he traveled through the atmosphere. He fell, his consciousness slipping away.

He fell, and that was when his struggle began.

Shadow became a shooting star, burning red hot as he streaked through space. Friction was poised to erase the black fur that covered his body, but even as the flames gathered onto him, they never were able to take hold. White wisps rolled off of him as he spiraled towards Earth's surface.

Shadow was ready to die, but his body carried too much pride to let it be. Not only his own pride, but the pride of countless others, the pride of Gerald Robotnik, the pride of Maria, the pride of the ARK teams, of GUN, of the alien overlord who lent his blood to give him life. Ultimate life.

The Ultimate Lifeform.

Shadow's body reacted, knowing that he couldn't. It tensed in defiance of the destructive forces tearing at it as the black hedgehog continued to fall, continued to survive the unsurvivable. The flames managed to take hold for a moment, scorching him badly. Bones started to crack under pressure, the g-forces pounding him as he travelled at speeds upwards of Mach 20. Internal organs struggled to stay intact from the violent turbulence, blood escaping through clenched teeth.

A falling, burning, broken star. Shadow smashed through cloud layers and felt gravity start to crush him to a pulp, the sheer cold of the upper atmosphere putting his body through intense strain. Sonic booms sounded as he rolled and tumbled to his doom.

He burst through a large nimbus cloud, singed fur popping and crackling in protest to the sudden moisture. The water was torn off like a sheet as he accelerated, hitting the ground with a muffled boom as he met a nearby jungle. He slammed through trees, breaking them into pieces even as his body flew about like a rag doll.

Finally, he came to a stop. Fur was burned away in random patches, exposing charred flesh and bloody muscle. His mouth hung open, bits of chipped teeth falling softly to the jungle floor. One arm was twisted the wrong way, one leg dislocated. Scorch marks covered his gloves, and the tuft of white fur on his chest was reduced to charcoal strands.

He was in bad shape.

A robot hovered over the area, having tracked the latter part of the black hedgehog's descent. It belonged to Doctor Eggman, who watched Shadow's smouldering form with amazement.

"So...it wasn't just boasting after all. The Ultimate Life..."

Eggman made preparations for the black hedgehog to be taken to his base.

In that sense, it seemed that the end was merely the beginning for Shadow.

There is always a reason...why we fall.

a/n: There is no need to compromise for something that you don't agree with. But respect is something that I advocate when something is plausible, and especially when it is possible. What you see as the end may be a whole new set of possibilities to the person next to you. This is one of the many essences of story writing, and one of the pillars of fan fiction itself.

There are things that we can't see. Never assume that they don't exist because of that fact.