Ugh…obviously, one of Eggman’s larger robots must have fallen on me, or I’d been hit by a freight train (or maybe more than one)….I think even my spines hurt right now.

With some effort, I tried to move my body, which was unusually hard to do, as well as to recall exactly what had happened as I finally forced my eyes open and began to notice I was apparently in my home laying on my (five star) couch. Though why it looked like I also had a bit of ash on my fur and shorts, I couldn’t really understand….Well, I remembered we’d been heading towards a G.U.N. base that was under attack, then encountered, unsurprisingly, Shade. She’d made use of her totally cool teleport powers to leave us in the dust, after making the offer to meet up and talk with her on a (probably not a trap) island….We’d talked there, and then she, more or less, had admitted what her real goal was….Oh, man, that had really been depressing…and then….

“Oh, Sonic, I’m so glad you’re okay!!!”

About the same time as these words interrupted my thoughts, a familiar vice-like hug surrounded me….Uhm, ouch….Oh well, it’s nice to have friends who care about you, and, by now, what had happened had all pretty much come back to me. And, once the ‘hug’ had loosened a bit, such that speaking was an actual possibility, I spoke up:

“Oh, hey, Amy….Sorry to have worried you, but, uhm, could you maybe let go for a moment…kind of feeling a little sore right now….” More like my insides had been trampled upon by an army of Eggbots–and, now, thanks to Amy, just compressed to half their original size–but no need to worry her about that unnecessarily….I’m sure I’d be fine…eventually.

“Oh, sorry!!”

Amy sprang back from giving me her hug of friendship (and death) to settle on just hovering nearby, while looking extremely embarrassed but also incredibly relieved.

“I’m so sorry about that. It’s just after Shade launched that attack….”

Oh, yeah…‘that attack’....I’ve been hit by a lot of attacks in my life, but that one…‘Chaos Burst’, I think she called it…it was something else….I guess I finally understood now though what she meant when she said that she was ‘sorry’ about having ‘forgotten’. Truthfully, I probably had ‘forgotten’ as well.

“....Everything around you was so burned and destroyed…and you weren’t moving….”

Amy was beginning to tear up, and I was about to try to interject when she finally began to look a bit more together…though also sort of confused.

“....But then, Shade told us that you’d be ‘fine’ and that she had been ‘careful’, and I noticed that as destroyed as everything was around you, that you didn’t really look harmed and were still breathing, if apparently unconscious….”

Ah, Shade…why couldn’t you just be an actually evil hedgehog, instead of one who had just been really messed up and so clearly seemed to be feeling forced into doing something it seemed incredibly obvious even she didn’t really want to be doing….Of course, I didn’t really want that first part to be true and was strangely glad to see yet more evidence that, despite everything she was doing and probably planned on doing, despite everything that had been done to her and those she cared about, it seemed like she really was still one of the ‘good ones’ underneath it all….Wouldn’t make things any easier though.

Beginning to finally feel a bit better, I managed to work myself fully into a sitting position and noticed that Tails was apparently also in our living room as well, though clearly asleep. Amy noticed and looked a bit sad, though with an obvious fondness to her expression as well.

“...Yeah, he sat here with me waiting for you to recover until he just fell asleep….My ‘little bro’ he really pushes himself too hard…especially recently….”

I sighed. Yeah, things had been a bit much recently, even for the kinds of things we were used to. Anyways, I found Amy looking back at me…a lot of her usual cheer and confidence missing.

“...So…Sonic….what…what do we do next?....”

I sighed again….That really was the question, wasn’t it? Because Shade had basically succeeded in her mission to show us that it would be ‘pointless’ to try to stop her, or, more accurately, that the cost of stopping her was likely to be extremely high…if in the end we could even manage it at all.

I think Amy, Tails, and probably even Knuckles, who I assume must have recovered some time earlier and headed back to his ‘post’, truthfully, probably more than a little happy and excited over Shade’s very clear demonstration of ‘warrior spirit’….Anyways, I think it was obvious to all of us that the only reason I, or any of my friends, had left that clearing in (relatively) one piece or even…alive…was because she didn’t really want to harm any of us.

But how long would she keep pulling her punches….?

I couldn’t be so sure that she’d decide to do the same the next time, even if it seemed clear that not doing so would be something she’d deeply regret. Unfortunately, that just didn’t seem to be something that someone like Shade would allow to stop her from acting if she felt she needed to.

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Could I really ask Knuckles, Amy…Tails…to continue going up against someone like that? Could I, knowing that if I did, my friends would be sure to follow me, no matter what I wanted or asked them to do instead?

Still, the alternative seemed increasingly likely to be to allow Shade to destroy the planet and all of us along with it anyways…though she’d clearly be doing so…regretfully.

“....Honestly, I’m not sure, Amy….I think you know as well as I do what might happen the next time we go up against her….”

Amy looked sad, then thoughtful.

“...Yeah…but…” She paused before continuing. “...for a moment, it seemed like she was actually enjoying herself….Honestly, it looked for a moment like you were both just having…fun….”

I sighed once more.

“Yeah, I think we both were...until she ‘remembered’.”

Amy looked back at me puzzled…then understanding.

“I think it’s clear enough that Shade…doesn’t really want to be doing this….It’s just that she doesn’t feel there is any other alternative for her…that there is any other choice she can make….”

Amy’s sad expression showed that she also had come to the same conclusion.

“For a moment there, we both just ‘forgot’, I think, and instead of two ‘enemies’, or whatever, it was just two hedgehogs who liked a bit of adrenaline, battle, and…speed…just having some fun….”

And, it sucked. I was having fun. She was having fun. I could tell!! She’s clearly an amazing fighter and obviously gets a thrill from it, just like Knuckles and I do, to a different extent (there was no way I think either of us could compare to just how much it seems my red friend ‘delighted’ in ‘honorable’ combat). Her speed was also seriously impressive. Definitely, I could just imagine how much fun it would be to challenge her to a real race (Though, her ‘cheat-like’ teleport ability would probably have to be banned, that is, unless she could teach me how to do it too!! That would be rad!!).

“But then, she ‘remembered’ that she had a ‘point’ to make, and she wasn’t allowed to have fun anymore….She had to get back to her ‘mission’…to doing what she ‘needed’ to.”

Ugh, I just wish we could all be hanging out instead. I don’t think I had to be a Rouge or a Tails or even an Amy to figure this part out…and I definitely wasn’t a Knuckles, so I was probably pretty close, even if I hadn’t gotten it all right. And, the fact that Amy hadn’t cut back in yet was probably proof enough that I was on the right track.

“....I just don’t know if there is anything that is going to allow her to let go of what was done to her or, I’m sure, more importantly for her, to the people she cared about. Probably, nothing short of something…extreme…for someone like her is going to be enough to feel that she isn’t just letting what happened to them be ignored, as if they were unimportant, as if they hadn’t really mattered to her….”

And, I don’t think I or any of my friends had the slightest doubt that Dr. Gerald and Maria instead had meant everything to Shade….That she might consider a world without Dr. Gerald and Maria, a world that had instead taken them from her and treated them so very horribly (probably the only two people Shade had ever met who had treated her with kindness or even as a person at all), didn’t deserve to exist…it wasn’t that hard to see.

Amy looked away from me for a moment, clearly troubled…and not disagreeing…before she turned back to me and finally spoke.

“Honestly, Sonic, if something like what happened to Shade’s…family…” Because that was clearly what they had been to her. “...happened to you or Tails…or Knuckles and Rouge….I’d probably do something pretty extreme too….”

I couldn’t help my eyes widening a bit at her response, because, seeing Amy’s expression, I could tell she was being 100% serious right now. I guess, wow, Amy, that’s…uh…nice to know that you care about all of us so much, but also kind of…scary. Not that I’d ever say the latter part aloud. Fortunately, it didn’t seem I needed to respond yet.

“It’s….I think I do understand maybe why Shade feels she needs to do all this, whether it's really what we're worried about or something else. Why she may not feel she has a choice…or instead she would feel like she would be turning her back on the people she loved….Just ignoring something like that having happened to them without…doing anything about it…..She…I…we’re just not people who can let things happen to those we love…without doing something about it.”

Amy’s expression had now become nothing less than determined and definitely more fierce than I could ever recall seeing. It was touching to see just how much she cared about me and all our friends, and in a way that clearly went beyond the ‘crush’ it seems she was never quite ready to let go of concerning me….It was also, again, a bit frightening…but that really wasn’t the important thing right now.

Amy sighed.

“...So, I guess….what…what is it we should do?”

Amy was once again looking at me hoping for an answer, an answer I’m pretty sure we both knew we didn’t really have…maybe didn’t even really exist….I sighed again.

“....I guess…whatever we need to….” Honestly, I was beginning to hate that word…and just how much I sounded like Shade right now. Man, G.U.N., you have definitely fallen off my holiday gift list over all of this.

Amy looked back at me disappointed but also understanding.

“Yeah…I guess…that’s all we can do….”

And, really, neither of us had a better answer than that.