When Sonic awoke from the daze he was in, several moments after the kiss, the hedgehog discovered that—curiously enough—the entire rest of the world had not faded away in the wake of it. He was still on the ground, breathing, being. Looking down, he found the bag of cheetos he had dropped, though some of its contents had fallen out onto the grass. Carefully, Sonic knelt down to clean up what he could, reaching for the bag, only to pause suddenly. "Shadow..." he thought, a warmth building up in his heart. What was this? Sonic wondered. "Shadow..." he repeated, out loud, listening to the sound of the name curiously, before feeling the warmth grow in his chest.

For reasons he didn't yet know, a smile crept its way onto his face.

Not a thing had changed in the garden—or indeed the world at large—except for Sonic. Something new had awoken within him, something he still was only beginning to realize was there at all. Absently, he finally picked the bag up off of the ground and began to snack on it without giving it any thought. Through the hedgehog's emerald eyes, the world around him seemed at once more beautiful than it had ever been in all the years he had been to that garden, yet so uninteresting to him, now. He couldn't bring himself to care all that deeply about anything besides the hedgehog on his mind.

Instead, he could only look at the shimmering pond for but a moment before he thought, "His eyes are more beautiful." In just one deep breath of the life-giving fresh air, he knew in his heart that nothing could make him feel more alive than the one who kissed him. Seemingly just as soon as he had started, Sonic discovered he had practically inhaled the contents of the bag of spicy cheesy snacks in his ungloved hands. It had been fine, everything was fine, but—perhaps for the first time in his life—the sapphire hedgehog felt as though he had gotten his first taste of something truly amazing. At that garden, from the lips of the onyx hedgehog that once was his greatest foe, in just one kiss.

Once more, the blue hedgehog turned red at just the memory of it.

He swiftly disposed of the empty bag, which had once contained the snack that had enticed him so much before, then washed his hands of the cheeto dust before drying them and putting on his gloves once more. His eyes had watered, his nose ran, and his mouth burned from the spicy treat, but none of the sensations could hold a candle to that kiss and the warmth it had brought to Sonic's heart.

As though he were in a trance, he slowly left the garden and exited the island through the transporter in the lobby, causing his surroundings to suddenly change from cosmic stars with heavenly and hellish clouds to the bustling streets of Westopolis once more. It was in the middle of a breathtakingly gorgeous afternoon – the sun shined down on it brightly, but not irritatingly bright; a gentle breeze caused the trees to shake lightly, but only enough to add a soft sound to the ambience of the area. Anyone else would be stunned by the enchanting beauty of it all, if they would just stop to notice, but even as Sonic witnessed it all himself—more aware of it all than ever before—he could only think of how much more he would prefer to simply gaze into the deep red eyes of Shadow.

"What is this?" he wondered. He knew it was to do with the kiss, but no kiss had ever struck him like this before. All the times Amy had pressed her lips onto virtually every inch of his face, every time he had received a congratulatory kiss from a grateful citizen of Central City that had been rescued by him, none was ever like this. For all he knew, kisses were only meant to make him chuckle and smile if they didn't discomfort him, but this kiss didn't stop at his lips like the others – it went into his heart. There was only one thing he could do, in this time of confusion, he knew. Without wasting another moment, he left Central City to go to the one person he trusted to give him a solid answer.

"Wait, you're coming to me, about this?" asked the echidna, sitting at the steps of the Shrine of the Master Emerald, wearing a very confused expression on his face. "Are you sure you weren't thinking of someone else?"

Nodding to what Knuckles said, Sonic responded, "See, I could've sworn I was, but they totally slipped my mind, so I'm here now." He finished his sentence with a smirk he knew irritated the living hell out of the echidna, but that was no different from anything else he did around the echidna on the wrong day—that is, nearly any day. "I'm kidding, though - I've just got no clue what to do and you seem to know what you're doing most of the time.. y'know, when you're not buying into the 'ole doctor's latest trick," he chuckled, unable to resist the urge to tease the echidna once more.

Unamused, Knuckles rolled his eyes, sighed, and replied, "Well, I've never been kissed before so I wouldn't know what to do besides going to people who actually know anything about this... but," he continued, just as Sonic had hoped he would, "even I know it's weird to just kiss someone randomly like that. Whoever did that to you, you should ask them why they thought they could just do that to you, it's ridiculous!... Assuming we aren't talking about Amy, in which case I have no idea what that girl's deal is."

It elicited a reserved bite of the lip from Sonic, unsure of the things the echidna had told him while lacking most of the context. Promptly, the blue blur replied, "Nah, not Amy—not this time, anyway," clearing up the less-important matter as his mind raced to make sense of the rest. "... But, what if... the person who kissed me, what if they're just really out of it? What if they haven't exactly gotten a ton of social interaction and just don't know any better?"

This time, Knuckles was a little amused, chuckling slightly, "How much less social interaction can someone get than me? Have they been frozen for the past few decades?" Nervously, Sonic chuckled along. "Yeah, see? Who do they think they are?" Even as Knuckles spoke, Sonic's mind still wandered back to Shadow. He wanted to embrace the hedgehog, to see that intense gaze meet his, to feel his lips on him again and get just a taste of it—if only just one more time, or two more times, or as many times as fate and the whims of the ultimate lifeform would allow him to have. "Well?" Knuckles repeated.

He shook his head, returning to the conversation at hand for another fleeting moment. "Hehe, I guess I dunno, Knux. I've just never felt this way before... I don't even feel bad, it's... Everything is so different now... it's like I'm a new hedgehog." He wondered if it truly was just him, or if the world itself changed for everyone else. Could it truly just be his world that would never be the same again? He wondered.

A new look appeared in the echidna's amethyst eyes, this one much less confused. "Hmm..." he said, smiling a small smile that one could mistake for a neutral expression if they didn't look close enough, "yeah, I wouldn't know about that, I guess. You should go to Amy, I think – she knows all about that love stuff..." The echidna's insinuations from the vague words flustered Sonic, whose flushed face caused Knuckles to inquire, "Oh, sorry, is it not like that? I really don't know much about these things, it just sounded like what I've heard before..."

What to say in response felt impossible to discover, in the swirling chaos of the spiky head of the hedgehog. "This is love?" wondered Sonic, inwardly, as confusion swelled in his heart – a question he could not answer. "... I dunno," was all Sonic could say in response. Two words of surrender, all because of one powerful word.

"Okay, Sonic," Knuckles nodded, deciding not to press him any further on the details of it all, "no matter what, just don't let that person hurt you, alright? I might not know much, but I know these situations can get... difficult, if you aren't careful." Sonic did his best to listen, but it was hard to when the echidna's scarlet fur was so close to being remotely similar to the color of the tips of Shadow's quills. However, before he could get lost in thought about the dark hedgehog yet again, Knuckles said, "Now get out of here, Sonic, I can't help you anymore."

Snapping out of the trance before he could fall into it, Sonic nodded again. It pained the stubborn hedgehog to concede to the echidna, but when he was right he was right. "Okay, Knux, I'll get out of your dreads," Sonic nodded, smirking, "it was nice seein' you again, anyway! How long has it been since we last saw each other?"

Curiously, the echidna raised one eyebrow. "Uh... maybe a few days?"

"Phew, 'sounds like an eternity..." Sonic chuckled. He gave the echidna one playful wink, then sped off so quickly you'd be hard-pressed to prove he had only been there with the echidna mere moments before.

'Tap... tap... tap...' Shadow tapped the surface of the table he was seated at. The hums of all the machinery surrounding them filled the room, as he awaited the Commander's arrival for their first G.U.N. briefing as Team Dark. Rouge sat beside him, while E-123 Omega stood beside her. The bat seemed calm, even if she looked out of place sitting in such a stuffy room and not flying in the night sky with countless jewels hanging from her arms. Omega, however, was never calm – only quiet, as though at any given time it could snap and open fire at everything that so much as looked at it wrong.

Quite why the Commander was taking so long was anyone's guess, but the bat girl was getting impatient. "Stop tapping, hon, it's getting on my nerves," she said to the dark hedgehog, a sharpness in the beginning of the sentence betraying her calm demeanor. It wasn't a problem for Shadow, so he complied shortly after, eliciting a sigh of relief from the bat. "Where the hell have you been, lately, anyway?" asked Rouge.

No answer, just that same lost-in-thought look he'd had since he teleported into the secret headquarters of G.U.N. minutes before. "Fine," she responded, not looking to spend much more energy to convince her ultimate partner to take a break from his brooding session, "have it your way. I didn't even want to hear what you've been up to." She kind of did, in truth, but she also knew that, if there was one thing Shadow couldn't do, it was speak when he had nothing he wished to say.

At last, the Commander arrived in the stuffy room. "Greetings," he said, announcing his presence to the three as he entered the room and made his way to his chair. Omega had detected his heat signature minutes ago, Rouge had already caught the sound of his footsteps before he even reached the door, and Shadow... wouldn't have known, as he continued to dwell further into his own thoughts. "When this meeting was scheduled, we were moving forward with plans to assign your first mission working as a team... unfortunately, due to an increasingly-vocal group of people voicing their resentment towards one of you, we have decided to postpone any assignments that may have required all three of you."

Everyone in the room could deduce who was being spoken of – even E-123 Omega, who wasn't originally programmed to have the capacity to parse such matters. Shadow, for his part, casually decided to venture back out of his mind. "Is that all?" was all that he asked.

"Negative," the Commander answered, "the rest of you hold no risk of bringing negative attention to our organization or anything else that could potentially interfere with our operations, and so you will receive assigned missions that don't require Shadow's abilities later today." Omega absorbed the info in a way that someone unfamiliar to the robot could read as neutral, while Rouge simply pursed her lips before nodding. "Rouge, Omega, you are dismissed. Shadow, I require your presence just a little longer." With that, Omega moved out of the room at a pace one could hardly tell was not one hundred percent efficient without Omega's processing powers, while Rouge herself swiftly made her way to the door. Meaningfully, the bat looked back at the dark hedgehog one last time—concern flashing briefly in her eyes—before departing from the briefing.

The room grew lonelier, lacking the energy of the bat and the bot. Sympathy filled the gaze of the Commander as he focused his attention solely on Shadow. "I know I was wrong about you, but... I'm afraid there's not much we can do to help everyone else understand that too," he told the hedgehog, "so, it is with a heavy heart that I must instruct you to continue to keep a low profile until further notice. It could take anywhere from a month to a year for all of this to blow over, but I assure you we'll contact you as soon as we're—"

"Very well..." Shadow interjected, not desiring any further consolation for the situation from the commander. "Will that be all?"

To his surprise, the commander's face lightened slightly. "Negative," the grandfather informed Shadow, "I also wanted to thank you for the visit. You really made my granddaughter happy, and that means more to me and my family than I can ever adequately put into words. Thank you, Shadow, you're always welcome in our home," he said, with a rare smile on his face.

Softly, Shadow smiled back at the commander. "Thank you, sir," he said, before leaving his seat and walking out of the room.

Immediately to his right, Rouge stood by the door, having listened in on the remainder of the conversation she had been dismissed from. "Good with kids, hm? I wouldn't have guessed, but I can see it," Rouge commented with a smile, eliciting merely a cold glance from the ultimate lifeform, before she joined Shadow and walked beside him. "It's not fair those humans have decided you of all people should be their next scapegoat, especially after you saved them all," she sighed, "I hope I don't have to miss you in the field for too long, Shadow."

As Rouge looked into the dark hedgehog's eyes for answers, she noted that they looked tired, with dark circles appearing below them. "Shadow," she said once more, gaining his attention for the moment as he looked back at her, "if you need anything, you know you can come to me, right?"

His ear twitched. "Hm," he responded vaguely, before walking past her and disappearing into the sea of other agents of G.U.N. shuffling about in the building. He could faintly sense her worry, as well as her indignation at being walked away from like that, but he left her behind him even so.

When he was sure he was alone, he grabbed hold of his blue chaos emerald and held it tightly, closing his eyes and focusing on the image of his destination as best as he could. Briefly, the image of the stunned emerald gaze of his former rival flashed in his mind, but he pushed it aside once more. At last, he opened his eyes and found himself in that chao garden once again.

It was empty, not a chao or familiar face in sight, which he had counted on. Quietly, he sat at the edge of one of the cliffs in the garden, looking up at the bright blue sky. He could hear footsteps coming from the entrance to the garden, boots with heels that clicked in a very specific way on the hard floor of the lobby. He knew who it would be even before he saw her vibrant red dress and pink hair. She carried in her arms a chao – darker, black and red. "What is that?" Shadow said, revealing himself as he kicked off of the cliff and onto the grass.

Calmly, Amy Rose deduced what Shadow referred to and said, "Oh, this is the chao that Rouge has been taking care of the most! We both ended up taking our chao to kindergarten at the same time, it was such a funny coincide—um, Shadow?" Shadow was still studying the dark chao when he picked it up out of Amy's arms and looked at it. "I think it likes you," Amy commented, with a smile so bright it could have made Shadow squint if it were any brighter.

Sure enough, the chao formed a toothy grin with its sharp teeth while Shadow held it. It appeared very happy, yet not overwhelmingly so, with the situation. "Hm," Shadow hummed, before he gently put it down on the grass. "It is a good chao," the dark hedgehog remarked, as favorable a 'review' as any chao could hope for from the ultimate lifeform. They both watched it take a few steps on its own, only for it to fall on its face shortly after. Frowning, Shadow moved quickly to its side and picked it back up, placing it on its feet once more. "Rouge won't be able to take care of it for some time..." Shadow stated, a feeling of worry hinted in his words and tone of voice.

Warmth in her voice, as usual, Amy replied, "Then it's a good thing it has you, isn't it?" Shadow's ear twitched. "I've gotta go find Sonic, my intuition tells me he needs me now," she giggled, "I'll leave you two alone now!" She then skipped out of the garden and back into the lobby, leaving the dark hedgehog with the dark chao.

Now that he was mostly alone again, he could return to his thoughts. Even if it was a presence, the chao was simple enough to take care of without being too distracting, he thought. He picked a nut from one of the trees growing in the garden and proceeded to feed it to the chao that Rouge had apparently been raising in between all the saving of the world she occasionally partook in with the others. "I envy you," Shadow spoke to the chao, in spite of how little the winged creature could understand what he told it. "Your past is so new... and you've never missed someone you'll never get to meet again," he quietly said, petting the little one while it ate.

Perhaps it was easier to talk when the other couldn't understand.

To Be Continued...