FOR YOUR HEART-BOOM

☆Ch65

"What's the matter?" Espio asked rather sleepily while coming to the living room, where Charmy and Vector were already waiting for him.
"We got bad news from Amy and Tails," Vector announced and that awakened the chameleon a little more.
"Great.. out with it?" he sort of demanded, due to being woken up so early by his teammates he was in a grumpy mood and thus got easily irritated. He decided to use some meditation session later today.
"Shadow has been taken away by a bunch of aliens," Charmy spoke for the crocodile and Espio stared at them, as if they grew an extra head.
"He... what again?" he raised a brow in confusion.
"Amy said, that there were some big aliens threatening everyone and some floating starfish demanded Shadow to leave with him, else someone would get hurt. Sonic was being held hostage as well," Vector elaborated and Espio had hard time understanding the sudden issue.
"Mhm, then Tails said, that Shadow and Sonic shared a goodbye ki-"
"AHEM, in other words, Shadow had to forcefully leave with the aliens, so everyone else would be safe," Vector quickly interrupted Charmy to prevent him from causing any awkwardness here, but Espio could actually care less about the two hedgehogs doing whatever together.

"I... see," Espio replied slowly and gently rubbed his aching forehead.
"Hey, you alright?" Charmy asked in concern, but Espio just scoffed in response and stopped stroking his forehead.
"Never been better," he retorted in sarcastic tone before crossing his arms.
"So, if I understand correctly, Shadow let the aliens abduct him, so everyone else would be safe?" he then repeated the announcement of the issue and received nods of agreement from his two teammates.
"Basically, yeah," Vector nodded again.
"I wonder why they wanted him in particular and where they took him exactly," Espio rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"To be fair, we really know so little about him. I think Sonic might know the most about him, when they even kis-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get that," Espio lifted his hand, not wanting this topic to be brought to the surface.
"I'll have a talk with Sonic," he added and headed to his room to change his outfit and pick his phone.
"We will go with you!" Charmy suddenly cheered up, but Espio gave him a serious glare after coming out of the room.
"No! I go alone and will keep you two updated," he opposed and left the house afterwards.
"Someone stepped out of the bed with a wrong foot, huh," Charmy tilted his head and glanced at Vector, who just shrugged in response.
"Let him be, Charmy, he'll come around eventually," the crocodile advised and went to rather relax on the couch with Charmy soon joining him.

Espio finally checked his phone, while he was on the way to the village and thus saw the message from Silver, which brought a small smile to his face.
📲How was your rest?
He typed a response and sent it before locking his phone screen and slipping it to the pocket of his sport jacket. The walk itself was really helpful for him, as it made him feel relaxed and eventually a bit better. Several minutes later, he finally arrived to the village and looked around for the blue speedster.
"Hey, uh, Espio?" a sudden familiar male voice spoke to him, so the chameleon stopped and looked at the voice's owner. The tapir himself!
"What do you want?" Espio crossed his arms and frowned at the mobian he wanted to see the least around here.
"I-I wanna apologise for... being so... weird and stuff.. and for doing that to Shadow," Mark lowered his head and gaze, looking genuinely regretful about his actions.
"You should be apologizing to him, not me," Espio retorted, not having a good mood to deal with this guy today.
"I know, but... I can't find him anywhere," Mark replied and looked up at the chameleon.
"Wait- how come you don't know about what happened?" Espio raised a brow, automatically thinking, that every single mobian living around here must know about such big turn of events.
"I was asleep. Did something happen to him? Like, something bad?" Mark showered the chameleon with questions, which irritated the detective a little, but he remained as calm as possible.
"He has been abducted by aliens," Espio said firmly and Mark found himself wanting to crack into a snicker due to how ridiculous it sounded. Fanfictions he read were full of such strange, fantasy events, including alien abductions, thus he thought, that the chameleon is just trying to be funny.