#767mphs

     “Sonic! Quit messing around!” Amy demands. She puffs her cheeks, all rosy and frustrated, looking every bit the stubborn girl she claims she isn’t. “There’s no way you forgot another date!” That would make this number three — yes, she keeps track — and Sonic wouldn’t do this to her three times. He just wouldn’t! Sonic is a gentleman when he wants to be, and he always takes care to remember important things.

     Amy drops her shoulders and sighs, taking on the appearance of a deflated balloon. Sonic is also Sonic, which means…

bluebell :   does your muse learn from their past ,   or are they prone to repeating the same mistakes ?

Oooh...hmm. My Shadow holds the past in such reverence I think it's easy for him to stagnate entirely because he's afraid of making the same mistakes. Combine this with some notion of the idealization of pure perfection which is typically associated with being un-moving while at the same time Shadow finds it impossible to stay still and relishes highly in his speed. He learns so much from his past he can be inclined to simply not move from that arbitrarily picked spot even though his personality and habits might encourage him to keep moving.

Post-fall it's inevitable for him to go through the same motions and make mistakes that he did pre-fall since he has no memories to learn from and the ones he does have are very nebulous especially with only Rouge and Omega for true companionship. But I think Shadow is so...intentional with everything that he does that he's prone to just pick one way to handle all situations and go by that book every time even if something might require a different approach or more nuance or a gentler touch or something.

Perfection cannot be incorrect, it cannot be wrong or evil--it can't even be right or good either--but it has to make the same motions every single time and be an unbiased gavel. It has no room for hypocrisy. Risking changing your actions for the sake of a changing world that you have to navigate as a person and not as some automatically employed authority is always a dice roll on if you're making an accurate call and I think Shadow kind of finds that scary; however, it's also something he's actively working on, especially thanks to Sonic's devil may care influence and whimsy.

I see Shadow as someone who employs the Ultimate Lifeform as a title over an ego-driven word; he was always going to be the Ultimate Lifeform no matter what--and then he was given a personal name after that. If he is to be 'the perfect existence' there's no room for error and that's where Shadow's self-esteem issues come into play. When he does mess up and suddenly feels like he wasted everyone's time (and everyone's lives were lost for nothing). Hence he can get in his head about doing something that feels like it upholds that wish even though he might act more quickly than he claims to.

SEND MEMES 🔪

"i look to you as a beacon of truth," scratch says blandly, not even bothering to glance over to sonic as she steadies herself on the tree branch they're both occupying, leveling her wispon at a corner of the eggbase she has centered in her sights.

she switches the device over to grappling gun mode, sparing only a quick peripheral glance to sonic. if she were that wolf, gadget, she'd ask him to come along -- provide backup, clean up messes, protect her from any roaming eggbots. scratch can't let herself ask for help, not from someone like sonic, not from someone she can't really trust.

"i'm sure you're right that there's nothing i'd care about in there." sarcasm drips from her words. the wispon gives a little kickback as the grappling hook deploys, latching onto the side of the base. scratch tugs on it once, twice, before finally looking over to sonic. his eyes almost glow in the night, as if perpetually caught in headlights.

SEND MEMES 🔪

"yeah, you really strike me as someone who gets stuck and feels helpless a lot," scratch mutters, crossing her arms, tail low and swishing.

for all the cold-shouldering she's attempting to do at sonic, blitz, her lightning wisp best friend, doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. blitz swirls around sonic, curling under his arm and zagging through his quills, little jolts of harmless electricity sparking off him in obvious joy, despite not having the ability to make a matching expression.

a part of scratch thaws at that and she unclenches her fists, claws no longer biting into her palms. it's strange how easy background pain can be to forget, a sensation that dulls into something normal, something forgettable, something you start to think you deserve. why wouldn't you, if it's there all the time?

SEND ME MEMES !

"tch, what makes you think you're on my mind, hedgehog?" if only it weren't true -- there's a buzz going on in the underground, people starting to take notice of the newcomer who flashed on the scene during eggman's world grand prix.

the first few races were honest -- jet didn't need them to be rigged to weed out the competition, all those high-dreaming wannabe randos, desperate for a chance to win. who did they think they were, trying to compare themselves to him?

but sonic... he's already making trouble. for an amateur, he shouldn't be getting as close to the finish line as he is. hell, jet saw the guy's first time on an air board. nobody's supposed to be that good without years of practice. and if he makes it all the way to the finals and screws everything up --

no. jet will just have to ensure that doesn't happen. for his family. for the syndicate. for his father.