Undying spirit

•~Ep4: Another planet?~•

Six years later, spring time

After all those long years, Shadow learned how to use his chaos abilities, which he was pretty scared of at first. And that is understandable, since he never meant any harm to anyone, not even to himself. The worst one is still a chaos blast for him, because this ability requires a lot of energy and mainly focus. Whenever he trained this specific ability, he destroyed a few machines in the training room and the lab personel had to work for weeks to fix it. The dark hedgehog felt bad for it however, so he decided to leave this ability for later. Not to mention that he felt exhausted after using it. Maria's desease seemed to slow down a bit during all that time, it was as if Shadow was somewhat affecting it. The state of her health was still basically the same, the only difference was, that she coughed more frequently and Gerald had to raise the dose of her pills, so now she had to keep consuming two pill per day, instead of one.

Shadow was now standing in the middle of the training room and with tightly closed eyes he seemed to focus on something. He felt his body warming up, as the chaos energy flowed through his system and he tried to control it. He even gritted his teeth while there was a dim golden light coming out of his palms, meaning that whatever he was trying to do, was working. Seconds later, he felt a swift wave of air cooling his body and after opening his eyes, he found himself standing in a kitchen, straight in front of a fridge. He dropped his arms and lowered his head while making an annoyed expression. A quiet sigh escaped his lips as he crossed his arms and scoffed afterwards. His ears twitched, when he heard a quiet giggle behind him. Maria approached him and wrapping her arms around him from the backside, she lifted him up and adjusted in her arms to make him face her. He unfolded his arms in the process and put them around her shoulders.
"Let me guess, you wanted to appear somewhere else," she said calmly and holding him with one arm like a baby she opened the fridge with her other hand and took a strawberry yoghurt out of it, before closing the fridge door and walking over to the table, where she sat on a chair. Shadow adjusted himself in her lap and leaned close to her, still feeling frustrated.
"I feel like I'll never learn this properly," he admitted and let out another sigh of discomfort. Maria softly dug her fingers to his quills and carefully not to get hurt by them, she started stroking them. Due to the hedgehog's irritated mood the were a bit pointy and Maria could sense the tension he was in. She shook her head, placed the yoghurt on the table and lifting Shadow she then put him on his feet next to the chair.
"Only because your attempt did not work  the way you wished, doesn't mean that you can't keep trying," she said calmly while looking straight into his ruby irises. He listened to her carefully, before nodding and changing his expression to an intent one.
"You're right," he responded and took a deep breath as he closed his eyes and focused on his chaos energy once again. Soon, the dim golden light surrounded his figure and made him disappear from his spot. Maria smiled while looking around the kitchen in hopes to see, where the hedgehog might appear, but he never appeared around here. A worry immediately washed over her body as she stood up and leaving the yoghurt alone there, she ran out of the kitchen, making her way through the long corridors she looked everywhere for her black-fured friend.
"Shadow!" she attempted to call his name, but there was not response. For a long minutes, she kept walking around the ark and trying to find him, until one thought made her pause for a moment.
"How could I forget!" she mumbled to herself and rushed to the big room at the front of the ark, where her eyes finally fell upon the figure she was so desperately searching for. The hedgehog was sitting by the big window and to Maria he seemed to be a bit sad.
"Oh, Shadow.." she whispered and slowly walked over to him, sitting next to him she looked at his face in worry. He looked back up at her and smiled lightly, which made her feel confused as her expression turned puzzled.
"Um.. are you okay?" she asked him quietly, he nodded and turned his gaze back at whatever he was watching outside the window.
"Perfectly fine," he said calmly, sounding convincing. Despite that, Maria still felt a bit worried about him.
"Do you see that?" he suddenly pointed towards some object while standing up, Maria's ocean blue irises followed the direction, where her hedgehog friend was pointing and gasped lightly as she also stood up.
"What? I-is that... another planet?" she asked in disbelief, Shadow nodded.
"I noticed it a few days ago and..  since then I wonder, what kind of planet that is," he confessed. The blonde slightly opened her mouth and placed her hands on the glass window, watching the orange-yellow planet moving very subtly. It was also much smaller than the Earth they could see out of the window as well.
"I don't know why.. but.. I feel like something is attracting me to it," another confession from the hedgehog filled the big room and reached Maria's eardrums and sank into her mind.
"Attracting? Like... you mean your chaos energy?" she asked while furrowing her eyebrows without moving her eyes from the weird planet.
"Maybe..." Shadow shrugged.
"Another strange fact is, that our radars did not detect it. For the ark, it is as if this planet did not even exist!" he added, remembering a conversation, he had about it with Gerald and some other people working here. Maria shook her head.
"That's impossible! The radars never failed!" she exclaimed, clearly being shocked from what she heard from her animal companion.
"Well, as you can see, the planet is there, so.. I don't think it would be fake," Shadow replied while still watching the planet. It was then, that he got an idea as he finally moved away from the window and stood at the center of the room. Maria watched him carefully and immediately knew, what he wanted to do.
"Shadow... are you sure about this?" she asked in unsure undertone, he looked at her directly and taking a deep breath he nodded.
"I need to find out, what kind of planet that is and what is it, that it still keeps attracting me to it," he replied firmly and his expression showed, how determined he was to try this out.
"Shadow..." Maria called out his name quietly again and held her hand out to him, but due to the distance, she could not reach him. The hedgehog shook his head.
"Maria.. don't worry about me, I'll be fine," he assured her and closing his eyes he tried his best to fully focus on this pretty difficult task. The girl hung her hand beside her side and just watched him in silence, the worry never leaving her kind, blue eyes. Shadow's figure was once more surrounded by the dim golden light and right at the moment, Gerald came to the room, only to see just a glimpse of the golden light disappearing to thin air.