Chapter 1 Mission Variable
*Hello everyone! Sorry for the month delay, but I suddenly got invited to a special class for a week around the time I was supposed to start posting and had to put everything on hold so I could study. Also, I got a kitten! :D I Hope you all have enjoyed your summer so far; man, it feels good to be back and writing again!
I'm so excited to start this story, and before I begin, I just wanna say all credit for its inspiration goes to ScarletHedgie. I know I've mentioned their story a few times, "My Blue Baby Boy," and sue me, I will talk about it again! (it's good fight me! 😠✊) If you've read it before, this story has a similar plot, I.E., Sonic gets hurt Shadow has to care for him. They become Daddy and Baby etc. etc.
BUT! This is NOT a copy of that story cause that would be rude. Also, I've decided to go about this in Shadow's P.O.V. through most of the story. We change to Sonic's a few times, which I will note at the beginning of those chapters.
Oh! And I'm adding T.W. (trigger warnings) to the beginning of each chapter. There won't be much to t.w. If I miss one, please let me know, and I'll add it to the notes and tags.
Enough of my chatter...let the story BEGIN! 👏*

Shadow glares at everyone around the conference room, strongly disliking the situation that has brought them together.
Damn Eggman and damn Commander Towers and his constant need to show off in my face every time the doctor pops up on the radar.
With his arms crossed and legs up on the table, Shadow does his best to appear as bored as possible while the Commander drones on over Team Dark's pre-mission briefing. Something that is totally unnecessary because Shadow's team is far more competent than the rest of the jokers on base.
Another thing to add to his annoyance is that his rival Sonic is joining them this time.
What is the point of all this if that blue menace just goes off and does his own thing anyway?
Not that Shadow has ever done things by the book either, but at least he somewhat follows the rules; Sonic is just a flat-out wildcard, and Omega has already filled that spot in their 3 person team.
"Now, are there any questions?" Commander Towers asks when he finishes his lengthy explanation. Sonic slowly raises his hand, and the human nods for him to go ahead, "Yeah, so like...you're gonna give me a lifetime supply of chili dogs for this, right? Cause you know, I'm not one of your G.I. Joes. I ain't gonna do this for free."
Towers rolls his eyes, "Yes, we are aware of your civilian status Mr. The Hedgehog. However, because of your expertise and experience with Dr. Eggman, we require another individual with your skillset. Having you assist Team Dark on this mission is needed."
The blue hedgehog flippantly waves him off, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fast, and you need me got that alright, but am I gonna get paid for it? Tails will kill me if I do another mission with you guys without getting some kind of dough in return."
Rouge purses her lips and leans closer to the table, intrigued. "Money getting tight there, Blue?" she asks with a raised brow; Shadow does the same when he looks over to see the blue blur looking a bit embarrassed, "Well...ya know, making sure Tails has all the fancy tools and equipment he needs isn't easy on the old wallet and then with as much food as I go through. There's not much left to spare once it's all said and done." Sonic sniffs, then returns his attention to the Commander, firmly demanding, "So yeah, I'd like to be paid this time around, and don't cheap out on me with a booklet of chili dog coupons that I can't use after a week like you did last time. I want cash." he says, waggling his finger.
Shadow feels a small bit of satisfaction that his rival's demand makes the Commander outwardly sigh with annoyance but irritated that he hadn't been the one to cause it. The sharply dressed human grits his teeth in a poor attempt of a smile holding back his aggravation, "Fine. We will discuss payment in detail after the mission. Now is there anything else?" The Commander tersely asks; all in the conference room shake their heads, and with that, Team Dark and their plus one are dismissed.
The 3 Mobians and the former Eggman robot make their way through the compound to the outside airstrip, where they board a small jet. Once everyone has boarded and straps themselves in, Rouge gives the pilot a thumbs up, signaling they're ready for take-off. As the plane rises into the air, Sonic is the first to break the silence, not to Shadow's surprise.
"So, what's the game plan?" he asks loud enough to be heard over the engines; Rouge points to the front cabin. "Jimmy here will fly us until we're about 5 miles away from Eggman's base. I will fly ahead to scope out what we're working with. Then Jimmy will circle back so you boys can jump out and make your way to the location from the opposite direction. I'll send the all-clear when the time's right."
"Are we looking for anything?"
"No. This is just a simple hit and run." Sonic cocks a skeptical eyebrow at her, "If it's so simple, then why am I here?"
Shadow answers this time. Hadn't the idiot listened to the mission briefing at all? "Because we're on a time crunch. The doctor has a factory inside this base that has been making hundreds of robots, and before you interrupt!" Shadow stops the blue blur just as he opens his mouth to make a snarky remark, "-these robots are more than just a normal Egg-bot. Bigger, badder, more deadly. We don't want to take any chances, so we'll blow up the whole factory before production is finished. Got it?!"
He watches as Sonic takes in this information. The blue blur's features change from seriousness to contemplation to mischievousness, "So a run and gun, eh? I'm down!"
Rouge smirks and crosses her arms, "You're just full of piss and vinegar." Sonic winks and throws finger guns at her, "You know it!" Shadow groans at the two and their crude language.
If Maria or the Professor had ever heard him say such things, he would have had his mouth popped, washed, and then be forced to clean the BioLizard's area for a week as punishment.
Honestly, some of the things that come out of people's mouths these days...disgusting! The days of the gentleman are truly over.
A shiver runs down his spine, and he shakes it off, turning away from the other two Mobians to take himself out of the uninteresting conversation. He leans back and closes his eyes, taking the chance to rest, absorbing the Chaos energy floating around him until they reach their destination.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shadow awakens with a snort, eyes slowly roving about the cabin as he gets his bearings. Sonic sits a few seats down from him, drinking a water bottle, while Rouge is standing and taping away on her communicator watch. The bat looks up, meeting his eyes, "Just in time, sleeping beauty. We're almost at my drop-off point."
Shadow nods and stretches, ready to finish this mission as soon as possible.
Rouge turns her head, hearing the pilot call out, nodding in confirmation, and opens the sliding side door. The cabin is instantly engulfed in the cold wind, with a high-pitched whistling piercing through the air; both hedgehogs wince at the expected but unpleasant sensations while Rouge acts unaffected.
She gives the two a wink and a lazy salute before jumping out. Shadow quickly goes to shut the door to save his ears from any more painful noise. Sonic uncovers his ears and looks through one of the small windows watching as the bat falls for several hundred feet before spreading her wings and catching her fall.
The blue blur watches with amazement, whispering, "She is so badass." Shadow rolls his eyes at the comment, raising his eyebrow when Sonic says at a louder volume to him. "And yet she hangs around you. How has she not been influenced by your emo ways?" Shadow scoffs, "For your information, I'm not emo; I'm punk."
"What the hell is the difference?"
Shadow clicks his tongue, affronted by the assumption. Honestly, this is insulting! Must I educate this child and supervise him too? Ugh!
The dark hog begins to explain slowly, as if the blue blur were a young hoglet, "Being punk is a mindset. Giving a damn about the abuse of power and being aware of yourself and how the world works, being respectful, having an open mind, and saying buck off to all that is corrupt. Emo is just an emotional, dark, and depressed teenager. I'm not an angst-filled teenager, and just because my fur color is dark doesn't mean I'm emo."
Sonic scoffs in disbelief at that, "Well, you sure act like one." he mutters. Shadow rolls his eyes, too bothered by the stupidity of the conversation to respond and not wanting to get involved in an argument with his rival before jumping out of a plane together. Conversations with the blue blur could be quite interesting, but sometimes Sonic picked the worst times to start one or had the goal to rial the Ultimate Lifeform up, such as right now. It got on Shadow's nerves.
A thought suddenly strikes the blue hog when he turns back from looking out the window and asks, "Wait, where's Omega?"
The pilot calls out the signal, saving the dark hog from answering and waiting another minute on the plane, "Shut up and let's get out of here." Shadow growls. Sliding the side door roughly, Sonic grunts at The Ultimate Lifeform's blatant irritation and gets into position. "You got it, Captain!" the blue blur lazily salutes on purpose before swan diving out of the plane; Shadow follows with much less flair.
Several hours later, hiding in the brush, Shadow reads the message from Rouge on his communicator before turning to his rival, whispering the relayed message, "The doctor just left. Rouge gave us an opening at the southwest point of the base. She and Omega will meet us at the checkpoint after finishing our objectives. We have a few hours before the doctor is alerted of our presence."
Sonic nods with a smirk getting into a racing pose, "First one to touch base gets to take out the first badnick." Shadow doesn't respond, not giving away his pleasure at the offer of competition, only quietly getting into the same pose next to his rival, counting down in his head.
3...
2...
1...
The hedgehogs blast through the jungle, leaving a gust of air and swaying plants in their wake. Shadow gracefully dodges and evades any obstacles on their path, while Sonic does so with complicated flips and exaggerated moves worthy of the X-games as an audience of thousands cheers for him.
The black hog pays no mind to this showboating spectacle, focusing instead on the mission.
The 5 miles distance between them and the base is rapidly covered, and to no one's surprise, it's a tie, though Sonic insists that he got to the base first. Shadow doesn't argue, letting the blue blur have dibs at destroying the first Eggman robot they come across, which happens precisely 10 seconds after they enter.
Once the patroling badnick is out of the way, Shadow having the layout memorized, takes the lead with Sonic on his tail as they head for the production part of the factory.
Several winding hallways and destroyed patrol Egg-bots later, the two come across double-sided locked doors with a keypad next to it waiting for them.
Shadow takes a deep breath as they approach, pulling at the Chaos energy floating in the air; he concentrates, willing it into his hands. It crackles and sparks like an electrical current forming into a long white spear burning with pure destructive power. The ebony hog pulls his arm back, muscles taught as he yells, "Chaos Spear!" and throws the weapon accurately into the keypad.
It explodes with a loud Boom! sparking into a small fire on the wall blackening the pure white color. The double doors open, allowing the hedgehogs to enter the facility.
Ignoring the fire, the two enter and promptly stop before the railing looking over the factory floor with wide eyes and sharp inhales. "By the power of the Master Emerald." Shadow whispers; Sonic agrees with a quiet, "Whoah...Egghead sure has been...busy." they say nothing more, both in shock at the sight before them.
Shadow had been expecting, well...quite a number of robots for them to decommission for this mission. Eggman had the means and nerve to make a vast array of weaponry, spaceships, complicated doomsday inventions, and the like. The doctor was not one to hold back, which both Shadow and Sonic were no strangers to, but this was beyond anything they had ever seen from the doctor before.
He's really not holding back this time. Shadow realized with slight horror looking over the, not at the hundreds but thousands of Eggman robots standing still in rows fully loaded and ready for battle. Just like a bunch of lined-up toy soldiers but way more deadly.
Shadow steps away to make a call, trying to reign in his terror, never more thankful that his voice comes out in an even tenor, "Rouge. Come in, Rouge!"
"Bzzzzt bzzt...what's up, sugar?"
"Rouge, we-we have a problem."
"If you're calling to complain about how we split up, I'm going to stop you, right-"
"Rouge, this is serious! Sonic and I just entered the factory floor and whatever intel the Commander gave us is way off what I'm looking at right now!"
The communicator on his wrist goes quiet for a few moments before the bat speaks again in a much slower calculating tone, "What's going on, Shadow?"
"The commander said The doctor was building some dangerous Eggman robots, correct?"
"...yes."
"But he didn't mention how many, did he?"
"...no. Not exactly, only a rough estimate. Shadow, how many do you see?" the dark hog gulped. "A lot more than usual. Eggman must have been working on this since before I woke up. It looks like he almost has enough to take over Mobius in a few hours." Shadow gripped the golden inhibitors on his wrists to ground himself. They were as cold as he felt.
This was too much; this was way more than they had prepared for. They were more than their little group could handle, even with all the firepower they carried.
Shadow watched his communicator, clearly imagining Rouge's face on the other line as she was no doubt contemplating their next step. He was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say, so it was no surprise when she finally replied after several agonizing seconds. "You boys need to get out of there. Get some evidence we can take back to H.Q. and meet us at the checkpoint."
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on!" Sonic blurts, jumping into the conversation at this point, waving his hands in a hold-on gesture, "Aren't we going to do something about this?! We can't just leave!"
"Do you see how many badnicks there are?!" Shadow retorts back, pointing to the crowds of robots below.
"Yeah, I do, and there's no way we can leave."
"Again, I ask. Do you see how many badnicks there are? Since you can't get it through your thick skull! There are too many! We've taken down hundreds before but not THOUSANDS! I don't care how fast you are. There are too many for us to knock out. We need to regroup-"
"There's no time for that, and you know it!" Sonic blared on, growing more frustrated by the minute at Shadow's reluctance. "Eggman could come back tomorrow, next week, next year, or even at this moment and catch us. Doesn't matter. We can't leave knowing that all of this," he waves to the growing amount of robots, "is waiting for us at any second. We don't have time to get the troops. Do you really think G.U.N.'s lackeys will be able to handle this in the next few hours?"
Shadow opens his mouth to answer, but Sonic beats him to the punch, "No! And you know it!" he growls, poking the dark hog accusingly in the chest. "If anybody is gonna be able to get rid of this mess, it's us! We're here and can do a whole lot more damage in a few minutes than a whole legion of G.U.N. soldiers." Shadow watches as the fire in Sonic's eyes burns with wholehearted determination, clearly telling the dark hog that he is not letting this go. With each poke on Shadow's chest, his rival's tone becomes harder, with no intention of backing down, "So go ahead and crawl back to your lousy bureaucratic 'governmental protection agency' and hide. But I'm staying right here and doing something about this whether you like it or not!"
At the end of his declaration, Sonic huffs and flairs out his spines, making himself appear big and threatening before turning and leaping off the railing down to the waiting army below.
Shadow sighs, looking back at what stood before him, knowing that the blue blur was right no matter how much he hated it and would rather regroup than jump into this mess. The least he could do was join Sonic, so he wasn't alone.
Shaking away his jitters, Shadow lifts his wrist again. "I don't know if you caught any of that, but the blue idiot's right, Rouge. We can't leave now; Eggman is gone, so we need to take advantage...go ahead and leave if you want; I know this isn't your scene. I'm going to help this idiot and cause as much destruction as possible."
"I understand, Shadow. It's ok." the sultry voice soothes, then pauses when a clipped static voice mumbles on the other end; he hears her laugh before speaking again, "Omega says he's coming to help you guys out."
"ALL EGGMAN BOTS MUST BE DESTROYED. YOU WILL NOT KEEP THIS VICTORY AWAY FROM ME!" Shadow can't help but chuckle at the enthusiastic robot, "Very well." he says, clicking the communicator off; the dark hog's smile disappears as he becomes serious once again, looking out into the massive floor below. He sees Sonic at a distance, a trail of blue and red fire explosions following him along with growing pillars of smoke. Shadow closes his eyes, holding on to the rail so tight the metal creaks in his hands.
Maria...if you can, please help watch over us.
Saying his silent prayer Shadow opens his eyes alight, burning red; he stretches his arms out, silently calling to the Chaos energy, asking for its power. He feels an electrical warmth fill his chest and arms, pulling and pulling until it burns; with a roar, Shadow leaps off the railing, tucking into a ball, spin, dashing into the first group of Egg-bots before him.
The robots explode, pieces of metal, wires, and hard drives raining down, some even on fire. Shadow lets out another battle cry as he enters the battlefield after Sonic causing as much damage as he can in his wake.