Deepest Desire

Chapter 3

"He said something about it affecting left hemisphere of...er...cerebral cortex? And also something about hippopotamus...?" Sonic said, racking his brain for the term that Dr. Eggman had used when describing the serum's effects.

"Don't you mean hypothalamus?" Tails asked once he finished filling the syringe in his grasp with Shadow's serum-contamined blood, carefully pulling the needle out of the crook of the ebony agent's elbow; he did not want to cause extra damage to the surrounding tissues as he didn't wish to give Shadow more reasons to be angry with them. After all, the lone fact that Rouge and Sonic had teamed up on him to knock him out would surely be enough of reason for him to unleash hell on them once he woke up.

(Though it definitely made things much easier when he didn't need to reason with the ebony hedgehog.)

"Yeah, that's the word!" Sonic confirmed, nodding. "Mind translating the techno-talk for us non-scientists?" he continued, referring to himself and Rouge, who was currently just quietly watching the exchange from beside the bed on which Shadow was lying.

"Both terms are names of specific parts of the brain. However, neuroscience isn't exactly my expertise so I don't really know what is their exact function. I'll have to look it up later," the young inventor responded, at the moment dividing the obtained blood into three test-tubes for later examination.

"Though I think it'll be much more useful to know what exactly the serum causes instead of knowing what areas of Shadow's brain it influences. You haven't really told me how exactly does the serum affect Shadow," Tails explained, subtly inquiring for information that neither of the older Mobians bothered to share in those ten minutes since they had came into his workshop with unconscious Shadow. He knew that Shadow was under influence of some serum, but otherwise he knew nothing about the ebony agent's condition.

"Well, he's a little bit more, ehm, affectionate now..." Sonic started, his cheeks getting slightly redder as memories of past two hours flooded his mind.

"Affectionate?" Tails' eye-ridges flew up, the young inventor clearly having hard time believing that Shadow was even capable of being affectionate with somebody. And, wait a minute, was Sonic blushing? Golden eye-ridges furrowed in thought, the genius sensing that there was something hidden in his older friend's words. "What exactly do you mean by 'affectionate'?"

"Well, he...er..." the cobalt hero started, still trying to find the correct way to express himself. "He's just..."

"He wants to jump Sonic's bones," Rouge interjected, both male heroes immediately turning to her — Tails with a surprised expression, Sonic with an embarrassed one.

"Rouge!" the cobalt hero called, obviously not happy about her straight-forward approach.

But the female agent just shrugged her shoulders, an innocent smile on her face. "What? He wanted to know."

"Is that true?" Tails asked, an incredulous look on his face as he turned to look at Sonic, the cobalt hero laughing nervously and clearly uncomfortable about the sudden attention.

"Well, I don't really know what exactly is going on in Shadow's head as he said only about two words since he got injected with the serum. But he's been - well, touching me and kissing me a lot and he also tried to persuade me into doing other things," Sonic said with cheeks redder than Knuckles' fur. "So, yeah, Rouge is probably right about Shadow — Do you think you can fix him?" he added the last part in haste, clearly uncomfortable with talking about Shadow's sudden liking of his persona and thus trying to steer the conversation in different direction.

"Well..." Tails frowned and furrowed his eye-ridges in deep thought, thinking over his answer. "I suppose I can. But it'll take some time. With a serum this strong — as to alter his behavior like this —it'll surely take some time to come up with an antidote. And it will surely take few days to analyze his blood as well..."