Chaos Needs a Leash

Ch.3

    Shadow awoke in extreme discomfort. All of his muscles were stiff and sore, and he felt a stabbing and a burning sensation in every part of his body. For a moment Shadow internally questioned whether or not it was possible to have arthritis throughout every bone in his body.

    Despite the pain Shadow slowly rolled out of the bed and steadied himself as he stood up. He stumbled over to the door, but right as he was about to reach the handle, his legs collapsed, and he plummeted towards the ground with an ungraceful screech.

    On the way down, he slammed his elbow into his plain wooden dresser, and twisted his ankle painfully. As he hit the ground with a resounding thump, the pain was only made worse.

    As he pitifully lay defeated on the carpeted floor, he let out an embarrassingly pained wail to attempt to grab Rouge's attention. After a few moments, he heard the familiar clack of her heeled boots on the wooden floor outside of the room he currently resided in.

    She slowly cracked the door to find the ebony hedgehog on the floor whining in pain. Her face twisted into one of concern as she quietly asked, "can you walk?"

    Though her presence was calming, in a way, she couldn't preform miracles, so he was still forced to answer with a defeated, "probably not." At hearing his own hushed, hoarse voice, Shadow silently panicked. He was sure that he'd never been in a situation of this sort before. He had never felt this pain, nor had he ever experienced a twisted ankle.

    While Shadow was busy internally punishing himself for his idiotic mistake, Rouge took the liberty of trying to carry him to the couch, where she could treat him better. All G.U.N. Agents had to pass first aid classes along with their training.

    It was then that the scariest of all thoughts entered Shadow's mind: telling the commander about his situation. Sure, Shadow has fast healing, but not even that could help fix his other problem. He was valued for his chaos abilities, and for them to be rendered useless... Shadow didn't even want to think about what would happen.

    Rouge noticed Shadow lost in thought, and decided to say, " don't worry, I'll tell him. You just rest." She had used the same tone as earlier, Shadow noticed.

    Shadow wouldn't admit it, but he was slightly happy that he would get a break more than a few days. Though, at the moment, there was no other solution. He couldn't even walk at the moment, there was no way he could get any work done at the moment.

    Shadow lifted the arm he hadn't injured, and held his hand in front of his face. He was trembling. It wasn't long after that his arm fell involuntarily due to a lack of energy. He couldn't even lift an arm... he was so weak. Shadow thought with frustration.

    "It's nice to see that you have weakness, even though I wouldn't call caring a weakness, I mean, it's necessary to have weaknesses and fears to live." Sonic's words came back to him. If weakness wasn't a limitation, what was it? Why did Sonic consider it necessary to live?

    Shadow realized he was pondering something Sonic had said. Sonic saying something so thought provoking... He has so much more dimension than Shadow had previously thought. It's funny, Shadow thought, recalling something else Sonic said the night before. The only ones that think of me as more than a monster are Rouge and Sonic, his rival, of all things.

    " Shadow, hon, are you okay? It wouldn't be very favorable if a situation if you were having petit mal seizures." Rouge tried asking with concern, while waving her hand in front of his face.

    "Yes, Rouge. I'm perfectly fine. And I'm fairly sure the new name for those are absence seizures, even though I will admit I prefer the old name for them. I mean, they replaced grand mal seizures with clonic-tonic seizures." Shadow stated harshly.