The Shadows of Harmony: Prologue

Why? Why? That was a question I struggled with for a long time. And yet the answer never seemed to appear for me. Answers did never come easy for me, but I still didn't know why I kept doing this. What purpose did it serve?

I made a promise to somebody a long time ago that I would give all the people on Earth a chance to be happy. And for the most part, I succeeded. I stopped the collapsing of the Space Colony Ark, Defeated the leader of the Black Arms, and joined G.U.N. to further help keep people safe.

So than why did I constantly feel the need to travel? I'm not talking about travel to other countries, like Adabat or Spagonia. I'm talking about traveling farther. To other worlds. Every once in a while, I release my full power to travel to a random destination outside of my world I swore to protect and go to some random world I have no connection to. Once there I'll usually observe the native creatures of that planet, while I wait to recover my energy to return home.

And yet I had no reason to be doing so. I had no reason to go off and spend my time that I could be using helping this world, to go off and visit another one. But, something just compelled me to keep going for some reason.

Sure, I lied to myself several time saying things like: I'm seeing if I can find a last remnant of the Black Arms, or maybe a last remnant of the Seedarians. But I knew that nether one was the reason I continued. I knew that I had no reason to continue.

So that left me with the first question, why? The question that I struggled with. At least…until I went there. At least…until I found her.

~

"Shadow, where are you going this time?" Rouge the Bat asked Shadow the Hedgehog for the umpteenth time. They had both just finished a mission together and Shadow once again dropped the bomb that he would be leaving. He has done this several times since joining G.U.N., yet Rouge is always surprised by it.

Shadow just turned his back on her—also putting his back towards the G.U.N. headquarters—and stared off into the distance. Rouge took Shadow's silence as a "Stop asking because I'm not going to tell you." Another thing the Rouge should be used to by now. Yet she is nothing if not persistent.

"Humph, fine. If that's how you want to play it, than I guess I just have to…"

"Don't try and follow me!" Shadow commanded, interrupting Rouge in the middle of her statement.

"Well, aren't we high and mighty today?" Rouge said sarcastically. She then walked up close Shadow and said "You can tell me what you're doing. You know I can keep a secret."

"I don't care. What I'm doing is nobody else's business except for mine. So I'll ask you to stay out of it," Shadow said, ignoring her attempts at charming the answer out of him.

"Fine! Be that way," Rouge said. She started walking back to G.U.N.'s headquarters, but before leaving earshot she said "I'll leave you alone for now. But don't you worry, I will find out about your little secret eventually Shadow." And with that, Rouge flew away.

"Fine, go ahead," Shadow said, mostly to himself, "But by that time, I'll hopefully have come up with a reason why I'm doing it." Shadow turned back to the building to make sure that nobody was watching him before teleporting out.

~

Shadow entered his house, carefully looking around in case anybody is snooping. When he made absolutely sure that nobody was around, he closed all his windows and locked all the doors. Good thing nobody is around, Shadow thought, otherwise I'd have to kick them out. If they know me well enough, it shouldn't surprise them, but they might end up becoming suspicious of me. Everybody I know has an annoying amount of curiosity in them, which doesn't help me one bit.

Shadow reached for his inhibitor rings to release them and access his full power. After taking them off, he placed his inhibitor rings in a bag and wrapped that bag around his neck so that he doesn't lose them during interdimensional travel. He finally let the full power of the Chaos Force fill him.

Now I just need to focus, thought Shadow as he closed his eyes. As I've told that kid numerous times, if you don't focus when using the power of the Emeralds than you can easily cause something bad to happen while using Chaos Control. And it goes double for me while I'm not using the Chaos Emeralds, because that power is harder to fully control.

In all likelihood, Shadow could use the Chaos Emeralds to transport to another world, and that would even speed up the time it takes for him to return. But Shadow doesn't bring the Chaos Emeralds with him in case somebody else needs them to protect this world. In fact, the world did once need the Chaos Emeralds while Shadow was gone. Though technically, Shadow thought, if I would have brought the Chaos Emeralds with me, then the Doctor wouldn't have been able to split the Earth apart with them and the Chaos Emeralds wouldn't have been needed to fix it.

Shadow snapped out of his thoughts and refocused. I shouldn't stray with my thoughts too much. I don't want to accidently warp to the sun or a star or something. I highly doubt that I'll be able to explain to anybody why I suddenly returned third degree burns.

After that thought, Shadow focused all his power, and after a loud "CHAOS CONTROL!" he teleported away from Earth and to a land that nothing could have prepared him for.