“Sonic will never love you!” Shadow screamed.

“No it is you who he cannot stand!” Mephilies corrected right before he teliported behind Shadow, immediately resuming their earlier fight.

Mephilies thrusts his hand forward a dark energy blast in his palm aimed at the back of Shadow’s head, but Shadow feels the attack coming and instantly falls forward onto his hands and kicks both his feet up, strait into the chest and chin of the crystallized other catching him of guard and sent him rocketing back into a large tree. The crystallized ebony slams into the tree and screams out in agony but stands right back up coughing blood as he did so.

The blood striped ebony spins around and dashes toward his enemy using his hover skates to give him more speed, all the while aiming chaos spears toward the other battered form. Still in fount of the tree and seeing the spears coming, Mephilies attempts to dodge all of them, but can’t avoid all as he receives various cuts, but still moves forward to meet his rival, a dark energy sphere in his hand. Not expecting this and having no time to counter, the red striped one is caught off guard when the crystal other grabs his face, dark ball connecting and continues forward forcing Shadow’s head back and slamming it into the forest floor.

All the while an extremely confused and stupefied speedy blue bluer stood to the side watching as the two viciously and savagely attacks each other. They were actually fighting… over him! What Sonic could not comprehend about the whole situation was the fact that they were fighting over him, for his love, but they were both his enemies! He had fought both of them several times before, with Shadow always trying to get all the chaos emeralds and helping Dr. Eggman to try and take over the world, and Mephilies destroying things and wreaking havoc while trying to become one with Iblis as well as the fact that he has actually KILLED Sonic at one point in time.

However truth be told the cobalt teen had always had a thing for Mephilies. His pure evil and twisted mind had always fascinated him. You could chock it up as one of those cases where opposite’s attack, seeing as how Sonic was a hero and on the side of justice, he had always wondered what made the blue striped ebony tick. On the other hand Shadow had also caught his attention. The midnight colored ones mature, take no shit, always serious dark and brooding attitude was externally attractive to the fun loving, cocky, layed back attitude of his own. He couldn’t help but think that there was more to the red striped ebony, and if they just sat down and talked they could come to a mutual understanding and not be enemies but best friends and even rivals!

Sonic was snapped out of his confused and conflicted thoughts as a large boom was heard, the force of the shock actually forcing him to step back several feet due to the heat of the colliding attacks. The two who had still been fighting and arguing with each other were thrown to opposite sides as several of Mephilies’s dark energy spears and Shadow’s chaos spears made contact and created a small but powerful explosion. The two stood up across from each other barley having enough energy left for one last attack.

“Why don’t you just give up Mephilies! Sonic will never love you!”

“And your any better? You’ve made his life a living hell!”

“HA! I bet you don’t even know what love is! You probably just want Sonic so that you can use him to destroy the world! Shadow scoffed.

“NO! I do love him! I LOVE. SONIC!” Mephilies screamed clearly at the top of his lungs.

His love and love rival stood there shocked as they listened to him scream out for the world to hear his undying love for the blue speedster. He looked into the gorgeously clear and vivid emerald eyes of his love with his own showing nothing but pure love, affection, and adoration. Sonic stared into the crystal hedgehog’s own green eyes and realized that, he did love him! In fact he loved them both but Shadow has already experienced love when he was with Maria on the space ark. Mephilies on the other hand had only ever had hate and other such negative emotions. He never had someone to care for him, only to curse and despise him.

Mephilies weakly walked over to the subject of his affection and gently pulled him in to an embrace, completely ignoring his many horrendous wounds. Sonic stiffened at the others touch and was unsure of how to react, however he did enjoy the crystal hedgei’s touch and soon relaxed into his chest fur. Shadow saw this and became full of rage, but when Mephilies suddenly grabbed Sonic’s chin and after staring into his emerald eyes for a moment, planted a passionate kiss on his soft lips, Shadows mind snapped. The red striped ebony charged up his strongest chaos spear yet and was so focused on his love rival that he completely forgot that Sonic was standing in front of him and let the spear fly towards its target, immediately gasping in horror at the huge mistake he had just made and screamed out, alerting the other two.

Hearing Shadow’s gasp and desperate scream the crystal hedgehog’s head snapped up and seeing that his love was in the direct line of fire, Mephilies spun Sonic around so that his own back was now the target and shoved the surprised azure backwards out of harm’s way, just in time to get impaled by Shadow’s chaos spear. Smiling all the while as he fell to the forest floor, knowing that with his already heavily battered body, he would not survive the fully powered attack, but was immensely released that he was able to protect the horrified sapphire hedgehog that was staring at him from his own place on the ground.

“NO!” Sonic cried tears falling in rivers down his peach muzzle as he crawled over to the dying hedgehog.

Mephilies gasped for air and coughed up a large amount of blood as he looked down and placed his hand over the gaping hole torn through his chest. He let his head fall back eyes closed, before taking a shuddering breath and looking over at the azure’s tear stained face so close to his own.

Shadow ran over to within a few feet of the couple on the ground and stared completely horrified at what he had done. He had never meant to kill the other hedgehog , not even during their fight. He had just gotten so furious when h had dared to kiss HIS Sonic that he just lost it.

“Now Sonic is going to hate me forever!” Shadow screamed mentally as he started to tremble violently.

“Why Meph WHY!?” Why did you save me when you knew that you were in no condition to take that attack?!? You KNEW that would not live through it! If I had taken that hit I would have survived, but not you! Not the way you were!” Sonic screamed in despair.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of you getting hurt, even if only a little.” Mephilies gasped as he coughed up and choked on his own blood.

“But your DIYING now!” screeched Sonic as tears continued to fall down his peach muzzle.

“Mephilies, I – I lo-“

Before Sonic could finish what he was saying the dying hedgehog grabbed the back of his head and brought it down to his own, sealing their lips together in a final passionate kiss before gathering energy in his right hand and punching the blue in his stomach causing him to go limp. As soon as the wounded hedgehog punched and Shadow saw his love go limp, he feared the worst and tensed up, preparing to destroy his lovers killer when-

“RELAX! He’s only knocked out.” Mephilies said as he violently started to cough up more blood before relaxing once again.

Shadow heaved a sigh but remained tense in case the other was thinking about trying something. Green eyes stared into red and vice versus as a moment of silence passed before it was shattered by Mephilies’s rough voice.

“I don’t have much time left so I’ll make this quick.”

Shadow came forward and kneeled by the dying hedgehog prepared to listen to his last words. Once he was situated the other began to speak.

“Sonic loves us both but we are torturing him by forcing him to choose when he isn’t ready to.” He pauses to take a raged breath before continuing.

“YOU will have to be the one who takes care of and protects him. I’ll take his memory of our fight ad my death, but he will still be unstable and won’t know why so you will have to watch over him closely and be there for him until it passes.” He pauses once more before continuing, his eyes already dull and already fading away fast.

Shadow grabs hold of his hand gently and leans forward so as to better hear the dying whispers of the fast fading hedgehog.

“Please, keep him happy and give him anything he wants, he deserves it. Keep him safe from harm and above all else, DON’T LEAVE HIM! He’s already losing me, if he loses you too it would destroy him and he will be completely alone in the world and become a very bitter person or just end up taking his own life. Promise me you will do this!” He begged as he stared desperately into the ruby eyes of his rival.

“I promise.” Shadow said as he comforted the fading hedgehog.

“Thank you.” Mephilies said relieved as he completely relaxed, patted the azure hedgi next to him and gave a smile full of love and adoration, before closing his eyes for the last time and slowly let out his last breath completely content, moving no more, his cold hand still grasped in between Shadow’s two warm ones.

Shadow placed the now cold unmoving hand gently down on the ground by its owner, got up and walked to the other side of the body to Sonic who was still unconscious and gently lifted him up bridal style when he noticed Mephilies body glowing as it slowly turned from solid to dark wisps, the gentle breeze whisking them away into the either.

He watched as the last of the dark tendrils was gently blown away leaving no trace of what it once was. Once gone Shadow turned away, an azure hedgehog in his arms and slowly descended down a slope past trees till he could no longer be seen. The only evidence of what had taken place in the glade were broken trees, singed ground that was gouged up in places, smashed boulders and…..an ebony red streaked hedgehog with a never forgotten memory.