Three uneventful months followed Shadow’s battle against the nefarious Doctor Eggman, and little noise was coming from anywhere. Shadow was merely playing a game on his computer, eating some of his favorite foods: three cold pieces of pizza, a block of cheese, a jar of jelly beans, and two cans of Mountain Dew soda. Okay he isn’t exactly Mr. Perfect-Diet…. But his active nature greatly made up for it. He never did lower his guard… except when he was in a deep trance, usually fixated upon a single object… in this point it was a game he had downloaded off the net called “EarthBound: War Against Giygas”.

Shadow thought about it silently for a moment, “Man, I hate losing… a lot…” he then popped a single jelly bean in his mouth. Then, a hard metal arm slammed over Shadow’s head! “GRRAAAAH!” Shadow screamed, surprised and spitting up his jelly bean, he turned to see Forte standing there, laughing. “Man! I hate that even more than losing! You ought to quit that…”

“You’re late again!” Forte announced.

“Am not! See, I still have--” Shadow pointed at his clock above his computer only to see he was, two minutes was all, “A problem…” he finished.

This time, it was not a presidential speech. Instead, Forte, Kindarspirit, and Shadow had all decided to head out for ice cream, and Shadow had forgotten, completely engrossed in his game. Kindar simply giggled and walked up, “C’mon already! Bum!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know…” Shadow sneered, turning off his game. And the three set off. A unique bunch, a 4-foot-flat hedgehog, a 6’8” robot, and a 5’9” blonde woman. No one was surprised, though, the three had been friends for quite some time. Shadow gracefully skated with his friends while Kindar’s lady-like walk smoothly followed Forte’s heavy-footed “clank-clank” style of movement. Shadow then suddenly stopped, tense, “Something is wrong… I feel it…”

“What? I don’t feel a thing, Shadow!” Forte looked around them.

Kindar began to get worried, “What do you feel, Shadow?”

“I’m… not certain… let’s move faster, maybe it’s just the wind…” he sighed, still uneasy about the strange atmosphere about him. It almost felt like he was being followed. Regardless of Shadow, Forte and Kindarspirit dismissed the idea of a threat being afoot. They eventually reached “Luigi’s Ice Cream” and they sat at the stools in the front of the shop. Then, a tall, spindly Italian man walked up to the bar in front of them.

“Welcome! What can I get yous-a guys today, eh?” Luigi said.

“The regular,” Forte and Kindar both proclaimed.

Shadow, being a first-timer here only got a soda (and denied being accused of being bloated with cheese). “You really ought to come out with us more often, Shadow, I mean, things have been cooled around here for quite some time, but you remain on edge all the time!” Forte exclaimed.

“I gotta remain on-edge, Forte…” Shadow replied, “A psycho like Eggman isn’t just beaten once and then gives up forever… I must remain vigilant!”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t just put down the sword for one day and hang out!” Kindar interjected.

“I hang out with you guys a lot! And you know it…” Shadow snickered, sipping his drink, “Probably too much for national security! Regardless of what that Saturn-ringed prez thinks of me!”

Forte snickered, “Yeah, it’s a pity he does more for us than you!”

“HEY!” Shadow raised his voice, playfully.

Kindar giggled in her usual feminine way, “You’re way too vamped! Shadow, you need a vacation! A nice sunny beach or something!”

“I had my fill of vacations and resorts when I whooped Eggman’s round hide!” Shadow snickered.

Shadow tensed then for a moment, and he felt it again, something bad was close, but he decided to keep low, in case someone there were to panic. “I gotta go, guys, I just remembered I had some other things to tend to, catch ya later!” Shadow then zoomed off before they could respond. “Something is wrong,” he told himself, and moved as quickly as he could to the maximum security prison, where Eggman was kept.

Shadow then requested a brief visitor’s session with Eggman to see if it was possibly him to posed the threat there. Later, as prior his request, Shadow went into a small secluded room and Eggman was escorted there by a matter of armed guards. “Shadow the Hedgehog!” Eggman exclaimed, “What a pleasant surprise!”

“Can it, Egghead!” Shadow glared, “What are you planning? What’s the big ‘nuke the world’ scheme now?!”

Eggman shook his head, “Shadow, I have been locked in this prison for three long months, without any privacy at all, even to go to the bathroom! If I so much as said anything wrong, they would’ve come down on me, I have no plans and I have nothing.”

Shadow blinked, Eggman looked quite serious, which was unusual for any man like him if he wasn’t. Shadow pressed, “You sure? Nothing about those three losers I trashed before? Do they have the ability to make massive powerful weapons?”

Eggman shrugged, “I strongly doubt it, Shadow,” he sighed, “I may have an IQ of 300, but they certainly do not. I doubt they have the mental ability to, they are probably slacking off anyway!”

The tiny hedgehog hero looked down at the table, “I sense something very dark coming this way, Eggman. And if I learn it was even a hair off your mustache there, then I will come down on you for lying… but maybe it’s nothing after all…” Shadow then dismissed him and returned to his house, locked the door and let himself fall onto his bed into a deep, deep sleep. It was about midnight that night, that Shadow realized he had forgotten to put his cheese back in the fridge.

The next morning, just before dawn, Shadow decided to take a look across the vast city. He checked on the chaos emeralds (hidden in a chest in his attic) and took one step outside and shivered instantly! “Geeeez!!!” He whined. Then he shut the door and dug through his messy closet. “Here we go!” Shadow then chose a long, flowing brown cloak that belonged to his dad years before, and pulled it on over his head. The zipper-less, button-less, and sleeve-less cloak covered his mouth and all the way down his body to his ankles, and with Shadow’s eyes created one fierce look! “Cool!” Shadow exclaimed. Shadow then leaped out his door and locked it behind him only for it to occur to him, he had again forgotten to put his cheese back in the fridge. “Meh, I’ll get it later, when I get home,” Shadow told himself, then set off.