It was getting closer to midnight, or at least that was what the young man was going to guess. It was hard to approximate when you were twelve feet underground, far away from the moon or the stars. That wasn't so bad though...If you lived down there all your life, if your people lived there and everyone you knew kept to these tunnels under the earth, you started to get a little used to it.

His hind claws were small, about the same as the Birds or Dragons. Feet, made for walking upright, a far cry from the hand-feet or paws of some species. Thick digging claws in the place of toes, that was about all. They dug deep into the packed down earth of the tunnels, leaving little dotted trails behind in the dust. It wouldn't be hard for him to be followed, but down here why worry about that? His people had one purpose, and it tended to be around them at any given moment. The oddly shaped crystals embedded in the walls would glow softly if you passed, lighting the way. They had a name, it wasn't hard to remember if you were hearing it your entire life.

Materia. On the surface, people thought it was a source of power and dug mines to find it. It was the Hedgehogs, his people's purpose to collapse those mines. Nobody was supposed to touch the Materia, because there was really only one good way to explain it. Looking back at his tracks in the dirt the young man reflected. When you leave a track in the snow or mud, that track is a representation of your existance. You yourself are another being entirely apart from the tracks, but without you the tracks could not and would never exist. And if you are wiped out, there will never be any more tracks like your own. It was that simplex. Materia was the person in the snow, people were the tracks. A shadowy projection of its presence out into the world. Many species didn't like that idea for obvious reasons, so the entire working ways of Materia was kept down underground, a secret in written works and the memories of the Hedgehog people.

Because they controlled not only their own lives but the lives of so many others in this way, people feared the earth-dwellers as well. Sure, you could try to explain to a Dragon or an Angel that you were only the keeper and not the master but damned if they listened. Hedgehogs could not control the materia but rather be controled by it, and they didn't mind. It was like living closer to the mute genius who knows the secrets of the world and may write them out for you one by one. It was also impossiable to distinguish anything about individuals from Materia itself. Age, race, colour, name, personality were all things that affected only the creature on the outer world. The Materia themselves were just crystals, no more and no less, and you could no better tell your own Materia from the fish you planned to eat for dinner. When Materia cracked, the person or creature it projected died. When the person died, the Materia did not neccisarily crack however. That was where ghosts came from.

Down the hallways lit by life itself, the black-haired Hedgehog moved at a leisurely pace. He was in his young or mid twenties, cool and self assured with the immortality being young brings. Meeting a friend down the tunnel to see if they could make heads or tails of the Materia around them, maybe find their own...Who knew? Up ahead another Hedgehog, one with darker skin and cropped short hair waved his front claws. Tridactyl and easily the size of a full grown man's chest, the front claws were the underground race's best weapons and tools. The blunt spikes along their backs did very little in the way of armor. The black haired Hedgehog waved back, picking up his pace to catch his friend quicker.

"I thought I'd find you here. You still looking over these two?" Raising a claw to scratch the scar on his left cheek as he reached his friend, the black haired Hedgehog, Zack, smirked. "Hell man, you really are a hopeless romantic."

The darker skinned Hedgehog shrugged and turned his gaze back towards the ceiling of the tunnel where two Materia glowed in a steady pulsating rythem. Black and Green, glowing in and out of white. Zack smirked as he watched the Materia beating with its own life. "What do they call that thing again?"

"Heaven's Aura," The other Hedgehog replied, folding his claws behind his head as he looked up, shaking his head. A few locks of short hair brushed in his face. "Whoever named it was worse than me, if you're callin me a hopeless romantic. It happens when two people on the outer world meet and fall in love completely."

"Which ain't so rare."

"It's rarer than you think, you dumbass. And this is even more rare, that they're not only both on the surface of a tunnel down here but that they're so close together. You almost never see it, sure as hell. Problem with the Aura is it doesn't descriminate."

Zack yawned and stretched, the glow like the slow fading in and out of a dying night light. "You're repeating the same stuff you hear all your life again. Worse than a brainwashed Angel, man. Come on. If we're going to go looking for something interesting down here, how about looking for something new? These two aint goin nowhere."

"God forbid we find yours and it starts glowing, huh?"

"Aww, Shin, then I'd be madly in love with you wouldn't I?" Zack flopped his huge digging claws around the shorter Hedgehog's shoulders and batted his eyes feminely. Shin rolled his eyes and made a disgusted sound, picking Zack's claws away and stepping aside.

"Shut up," He muttered, turning his back and walking away, the faintest outline of the spikes on his back showing under his teeshirt. He was starting to get annoyed.

Zack didn't care, bounding down the hall after Shin and throwing his words mockingly back at him. "Aw c'mon, you even said, Materia and the Glow don't descriminate between race, age, sex-"

"Will you shut up?"

"Rich, poor..."

"You're really fuckin askin for it, Zack."

"Youthfully handsome with long spikey hair and ass ugly shorties like yourself-"

"Oh THAT'S IT!"

The sounds of shouting cursing and a quick fight were absorbed into the dirt on the walls, but the Materia overhead flickered consistantly in rythem. Somewhere on the world above, two other beings glowed in the same rythem with one another.