Time Heals All Things

Chapter Fourteen: Blood Brothers Feud

A/N~ Apologies for taking so long with this chapter. A friend's mum passed away and I couldn't really summon the will to write while the funeral was going on so I chose to take a respectable time out to mourn.. Thank you for your patience.

"Omega, this is Rouge, do you read me?"

Nothing but static was heard as the huge hulking robot lay offline across the ground with a massive hole in his chest cavity, twisted broken metal and snapped circuit wiring poking out the gaping hole. His Chaos Drive lay abandoned on the now dry burnt out ground of the smoking forest floor around him.

A short distance away the earpiece that had dislodged itself from Sonic's cobalt pointed ear during his fight against the Dark Arms crackled into life.

"Sonic...... Sonic, are you there blue?" The static quality of Rouge's voice was sounding a little more desperate now. "Dammit....... Where the hell are you guys?"

"Shadow......."

The black hedgehog's eyes narrowed into slits as his breath huffed raggedly, his mind only filled by the murderous rage now fuelling his body as he moved at lightning speed through the thick undergrowth of the rainforest.

"Shadow, come in...... Come in Shadow...." Rouge tried once more to reach him but he was deliberately tuning out her voice and ignoring his wrist communicator as he continued to skate swiftly through he forest, chasing after Eclipse and his brood of alien-wisp spawn.

"I know you can hear me Shadow.... If you don't respond you'll leave me no choice but to presume you've gone rogue.."

A sigh came from Shadow's wrist communicator when Rouge failed to get the response she wanted. The black and red hedgehog knew exactly what she would do, she would presume that the assignment had been a failure and she would have Spider Troupe dispatched on a recovery mission to retrieve them all. Taking into account how long it would be before that team of highly skilled G.U.N soldiers would take to be briefed, suited and booted then piled into a shuttle he had less than three hours to find Sonic and rescue him from his vile blood brother's clutches before anything bad could happen to him.

"Alright Handsome..... Have it your way...." The line on his wrist communicator went dead and without even taking his bright red eyes away from where he was speeding to Shadow clicked a couple of buttons. This brought up a timer on his wrist communicator which he swiftly set to three hours and clicked a further button which activated the count down causing the milliseconds to swiftly run down as the seconds ticked behind.

"I'll finish this before they arrive.." The black hedgehog muttered darkly. Immediately he activated his boot thrusters and shot upwards through the trees, bursting though the canopy. Broken branches and dislodged leaves scattered, falling to the forest floor as colourful birds that had been roosting fluttered away at the disturbance. In the distance he could see where Eclipse was heading with Sonic, the same mountain range that he had suspected the night before.

Shadow then cut the power to his boot thrusters, not wishing his blood brother to predict his arrival and dropped down through the trees before his hands snagged onto a branch. Once he had swung himself around, landing feet first he slid across it swiftly, using his arms to propel himself onto the next tree branch making his way as quickly and quietly as he could.

The red and black hedgehog was not worried about Eclipse hurting Sonic too badly, after all he would need him alive to lure him into a trap. However the mental image of the forty year old blue hedgehog being hurt in any form by his alien brother by blood made his heart sting. He had promised that he would keep Sonic safe and he had failed to do that.. He was not about to let the blue hedgehog suffer because of him. He had spent so long in denial about his feelings for Sonic but he had always cared for him on some level, he had enjoyed the rivalry that they had, often not bothering to find an excuse just to drop in and 'ruin' his day for his own amusement. It would bring a smirk to reminisce about the irritated expressions Sonic would throw him for his inconvenient visits just to start a fight because he had been bored and in need of entertainment or simply just to prove a point to Dr Eggman. He had often wondered in his younger years why he always gravitated towards Sonic in his moments of loneliness or boredom but if he were honest with himself now, nobody else in his eyes came as close to being like him. He had never truly wanted to see Sonic defeated by anybody else, this was why he had helped him out in situations that required him to but these often came with the reminder that he really was just second best.