For The Love of Speed

Chapter 29: Midnight Stroll

POV: 3rd Person

Tails makes his way through the door, seeing all his friends at the dinner table. Sonic and Amy were setting food out and everyone turned to look at Tails as he walked in. "Tails! You're finally home. How was school?" Sonic dashed to the two-tailed fox, ruffling his head fur before he even got a chance to say hi. Tails chuckles "Hey Sonic, School was great. I'll tell you about it while we eat, just let me set my stuff down first." The blue male chuckled and scratched the back of his head "Sorry bud, I just haven't seen you since yesterday." Sonic goes back to the kitchen, helping Amy set the last few plates down before taking his seat. Rouge and Knuckles are chatting with each other, Sonic and Shadow are sitting in silence, and Amy takes her seat after making sure her mess is cleaned up and nothing was left on. Tails finally makes his way to the table, sitting down and looking around at the others.

About halfway through dinner, Tails speaks up. "So, my plane won the race against my classmate. We had to build a functional model based off pictures we got. Ironically I got a plane. It's basically a mini version of the Tornado." Sonic smiled and held up a thumbs up "Good Job buddy. Of course you won. You're the best." The others nodded and hummed in agreement. Rouge put down her fork, also wanting to share some of her day. "Well, I went on a date with Knuckles today. It was nice~ I'm kind of enjoying being able to do things for fun without Eggman attacking." Knuckles smiles and adds "It was actually nice." Tails turned to Sonic "So, what did you two do today? I saw something new in the driveway." Sonic smiles "Shads bought me a bike so I didn't have to awkwardly ride on the back with him anymore." He chuckles, elbowing Shadow in the arm. Shadow growls quietly at the unwanted contact and Sonic stops, with a light chuckle "Sorry." Tails chuckles "Well it looks really cool. The colors ironically match your colors too." Shadow snickers "Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed when he seemed to be in love with the thing. He was practically drooling when I was explaining how fast it can go and it's acceleration." Tails laughs quietly and says "Yeah, that definitely sounds like him. Anyway. I have something I have to tell everyone. I wanted to yesterday, but not everyone was around."

Tails went on and explained what had happened after school with Silver, and showed the picture he took to everyone. After answering everyone's questions, he explained that Silver wanted all of them to meet at the building sometime tomorrow. Shadow nods, thinking to himself 'I'm going to pay them a visit when everyone goes to bed so I can check things out for myself, in case this is a trap.' Rouge and Knuckles seem a little on edge, wanting to prepare for the worst. Amy is excited to meet new people, and Sonic is practically bouncing in his seat. Shadow smiles at the hedgehog's childish behavior, and Sonic takes a breath, asking the final question "Does that mean I can use my speed there? Do you know if there's a track or something?" Tails shrugs "I don't know everything they have there, but it is a huge place and Espio mentioned being the fastest one there, so that leads me to believe there's a way they could have tested that." Rouge stands up "Well, I've got to get to work. Thank you for dinner Amy, Sonic. I'll try to keep my eye out for drunk G.U.N agents and try to get some information disguised as small talk." Knuckles stands up as well. "I'm going with her to hang out at the bar. I'm also keeping an eye out, and I'll be there for muscle support if anything goes sideways." Amy giggles "Don't lie, you're bored and want to hang out with your newly established girlfriend~." Knuckles blushes and crosses his arms "Ok, that too." Everyone laughs at Knuckles' behavior, and with that the two lovebirds leave to head to the bar.

Shadow gets up without a word and puts his plate in the sink. He heads to his room, sitting on his bed to read his book until he knows the others are in bed. Sonic and Tails get up and help Amy put everything away, heading off into their rooms to get ready for bed. Once Shadow hears it is silent for long enough, he gets up and puts his book back away, standing far away from the door so the light doesn't flash under.

POV: Shadow

I close my eyes, imagining the picture Tails showed us. Once I get a clear enough picture and clear my head of everything else, I activate my chaos energy and chaos control. I open my eyes and look around. 'This is definitely where Tails took the picture.' I walk a few steps silently, blending into the dark and taking in every detail of the room I'm in. I'm in a large main entrance. There is a sitting area off to the left and a closed door to my right. Looking ahead of me I can see a smaller room. I head that way but pause as I come across a hallway on either side. I glance down the left hallway, and see that it stops after about 15 feet. There is a closed door at the end. I turn my head to the right and notice an even longer hallway. There is an open area to the right as soon as you walk down. I'm able to peek around the wall and see that it is a hang-out room with a couple game tables and a TV in the corner, hooked up to a game system. There are a few other things in the room, but none of which concern me. Continuing to examine the hallway I'm able to see four doors on the left and two doors past the lounge on the right. At the end of this hallway there is another door. I detect no movement, so I continue moving forwards, past the hallways, into the big room ahead of me. As soon as I walk in there I notice a dining table that can sit at least 10 people. Glancing to the left I see a decent sized kitchen. When I look to the right I see another sitting area, with a table in the corner that has a fancy coffee bar. I hear a sound behind me, so I turn around, chaos spear in hand, ready to kill whatever threat comes my way.

In the archway stands a silver hedgehog I hold off on throwing my spear, in case this is the Silver that Tails was talking about. Suddenly the smaller hedgehog speaks. "I figured you would show up tonight." I lower my spear, making it disappear, now crossing my arms. "And why did you suspect that?" Silver shrugs his shoulders "Tails said that you can chaos control and you used to work for the special ops team back in your dimension. Putting two and two together made me think that you would want to chaos control here without the others knowing, so you can check out the place. Probably to try and find possible threats before your friends get sent into a possible trap." 'Huh. He's also very intelligent' I give a simple nod, not feeling like talking much. He chuckles "Come on Shadow, I'll turn on the lights and you can look around without having to sneak. There are three rooms we can't go into, but that's only because they're bedrooms and the occupants are sleeping."

We look around the place and I get the rest of the layout. The closed door to the right when I appeared here was a meeting room. The door down the left hallway leads to Silvers bedroom, and the doors to the right lead to three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a staircase that leads down into the basement. Before heading down the stairs, we head to the door at the end of the hallway. It leads to a four car garage that was turned into a huge lab. It kind of looked like Tails' lab back where we're from, only more organized. Much more organized. We turn back and head towards the staircase and head down. Once we reach the end, there is a door with a keypad. Silver types in a code and opens the door. We enter a huge basement that has really deep walls. Off to the right, there is a shooting range and fighting ring. There is a huge arena off to the left that dips down into the ground and looks like a race track. There are a few other odds and ends stations, probably having to do with an ability of some sort. There's even a pool in the back corner. In the corner behind the arena, there is a fully enclosed clear wall room. By the looks of it, it seems to be able to withstand mass amounts of chaos energy. Probably made out of the same material they used back on the A.R.K. for my training. Having seen enough to be able to lower my guard enough to let my friends come here, I turn to Silver. "This eases my mind, for now. I will still be on guard and if anyone tries to hurt or capture Sonic... or the rest of the group, I will kill everyone, and I will show no mercy." I give a deep warning growl, thinking to myself for a second 'Why did I almost forget to mention the rest? Do I really care about Sonic more than I do the others? Eh. That makes sense' He seems to come out of his intimidated trance and nods "I would expect nothing less. I just hope you're as ruthless as you make yourself out to be. We are going to need that when we take on G.U.N." I smirk "You have no idea." I watch as Silver gulps and I chuckle darkly. "I'm going to head back. I will be here tomorrow with Sonic and the others. I'll chaos control us all here so we don't get seen." He nods and just like that, I'm back in my room. I lay down on my bed and have quite a bit of trouble falling asleep. I finally grab one of my pillows and cuddle it, satisfying me enough to drift off into sleep.

((Hey, its me again. Please vote and comment. It makes me feel good about my book when I see someone voted on it. I also enjoy reading everyone's comments, it's funny to see some of y'all's inner dialog. Plus I will try to reply if someone posts a question/comment about the book. Happy reading!))