Dust and Shadows

The Hunters or the Hunted

Sonic and myself ran as fast as we could to the other side of Central Park. Apparently Knuckles and Cream had somehow found the body of Silver, and had managed to locate the hotel room in which the other two team members were staying in. The Ironic part was that they were located in the same hotel that Cream and Knuckles were staying in.

I ran up to the elevator and immediately saw a sign, "Out of order? Oh this is just great!" I didn't like taking the stairs, it drained way too much of one's stamina. Well, actually it was more of the fact that during training I had to run up and down steps ten or twenty times over for cardio training. Needless to say, I hated that.

I threw the phone to Sonic, "Hey do me a favor, call Knuckles and ask them what floor they are on. I'll stay in front of you as we head up the stairs." Sonic nodded, caught the phone and began to dial the other team's cell.

I opened the door to the stairwell and starting walking up at a slow and steady pace for two reasons, the first of which being that in case we missed a floor we wouldn't have to go back very far to get to it. The second was, even though it took more time, it didn't drain our energy by moving very fast.

Sonic tried calling Knuckles and Cream atleast a dozen times. I had the great idea to check each floor, just to make sure we wouldn't miss them in case we couldn't reach them via phone. In any case though, we managed to hear from Cream through a text message:

Eleventh floor, room 1102. Get here quick before Knuckles murders you both.

Sonic showed me the text, and we both looked at each other.

"Better not keep them waiting, huh?" Sonic said playfully.

I rolled my eyes and we moved at a much faster pace, but not so fast that one could hear us coming. Within a few minutes we reached the eleventh floor. I opened the door to see two figures in the hallway, Knuckles and Cream, who were motioning for us to move quickly.

Knuckles didn't look too happy, but Cream on the other hand was just her happy little self.

"So.... I know you two had fun last night, and I don't mean with Knuckles over the radio either." She was apparently leading onto the fact that we had had sex last night.

Knuckles tried to shut her up though, "Cream, I swear to god if you..." Cream cut him off by assualting us with questions.

"So, Shadow, how was your first blow job? Did you really swallow Shadow's seed? How did it feel to mount Sonic? Does he really have a tight butt like I thought he did? How big is Shadow? What did it fee..."

Knuckles' expression was priceless, he even zoned out for a second, with his mouth slightly open as he watched her ramble off questions.

"CREAM!!!" Knuckles had apparently snapped out of it.

"What!? Women need specifics, It's in their blood. Trust me if Amy and I were going at it, wouldn't you ask us questions?" Cream had done what most people had thought to be the unthinkable, twice in a row, and that was make Knuckles completely speechless.

Sonic and I couldn't help but laugh. Knuckles, however, gave us a dirty look and we went back to the situation at hand. Cream walked up to the door and knocked on it a few times in certain places. She was checking for any sound discrepancies in the door, which could possibly lead to a booby trap or worse.

She stood about a foot away from the door when she kicked it in, only to have a grenade drop down from the ceiling and hit the floor.

"Shit! Grenade!" She yelled out. What she did next none of us expected to see. She picked the grenade up, threw it back into the room, and frantically closed the door. She held herself tightly to the door as it blew off its hinges from the shockwave of the grenade.

I grabbed the door and pulled it off of her as she laid on the floor. She slowly got up and held her head. I had noticed that she was bleeding, but not much, and that the pressure from her hand would stop the bleeding.

Cream, who unlike most people didn't get angry, now had a blood thirsty rage.

"Oh, I swear to god! I am going to kill the fucker that placed that grenade!" Cream picked up her custom Makarov PMM and moved into the room with such swiftness that she scared the hell out of the rest of us standing there.

We quickly snapped out of in and moved in, clearing rooms one by one. Cream had insisted that she clear each and every room, and that she be the first one in and the first one out of each room. Who were we to argue with her? This was the first time any of us had seen her angry.

We got to the last room, and didn't hear anything from here for a full minute or two.

"Cream are you alright?" Another 30 seconds passed by before I motioned to both Sonic and Knuckles that I was moving in. They nodded in agreement and I went into the room.

Cream had been on her knees with her arms to her sides staring at a figure hanging from the bed. I could only drop my weapon as I recognized who it was....

Rouge.

She was hanging by her arms, with her clothes ripped off. It looked as if she may have been raped and sotomized due to the extreme blood coming from her nether regions. Her face had been severly damaged and her mouth had been sown shut with copper wire which looked to be about eight to twelve guage, though I couldn't tell for sure. Her feet had been cut off at the ankles and left hanging under her body, as if it was meant to be a warning. The only other gruesome detail to this entire killing was the most of the cuts and bruises all over her body, which if I'm correct, looked pre-mordom. This meant that she had been alive through pretty much the entire ordeal.

Knuckles and Sonic came in after I didn't answer them for the first few times, and they saw what had taken my breath away. Cream almost lost her breakfast, but managed to make it to the bathroom before she did.

I clenched my fists and lowered my head... Vengeance had just filled the hearts of everyone in that apartment. I could only say what was on everyone's mind at that particular point:

"On my very own soul... I swear to you that will find the bastard who did this, and make them pay."

Oh, how I will make them pay....