Shadow winced as another building started to crumble—he could see the frantic shapes of Sonic's friends rush in to it—the red echidna holding up an entire corner as everyone else rushed in, clearing out screaming civilians while glancing up in horror at the sky.

At the creature who was once their savior, and was now their destruction.

It had been a normal fight, at first. Eggman trying to take over the world, maybe a little more intently than usual with a few extra robots—thus the call for Team Dark as backup, and Shadow, Rouge and Omega had gladly appeared to stick it to the old doctor. Nobody thought more of it.

But then...Sonic had raced in, as he always did, without thinking or listening. And when he came out...he wasn't. He wasn't Sonic anymore.

The golden god—no, he wasn't a god, he was a devil, a demon, his golden fur seeming to speak of almighty divinity, but instead promising nothing but hell—yes, he had destroyed Eggman's weapons and robots, but then had turned his sights on anything and everything else.

Shadow turned towards the golden devil, red eyes to burning red eyes, their gazes meeting in a clash of pure will. Shadow's lip curled, his fangs glinting in the dim light even with the rising clouds of ash, and Super Sonic smirked. Shadow couldn't hear him from so far away, wasn't even sure if he was really speaking, but he could read the words on the demon's lips, “What's wrong, faker?” And then the golden being was shooting away, not bothering to go around buildings, but instead opting for the straightest path and damn whatever minor inconvenience might be in his way.

Shadow didn't have quite that advantage as he dashed after him, with a shout over his shoulder at Rouge and Omega to “Evacuate the city!” At least with chaos control he could make up some of the distance, teleporting through damage he refused to examine...if he did, he wouldn't be able to focus on his mission.

Stopping "Sonic."

He should have seen it coming. Of course he should have seen it coming, because as he teleported out of the guts of one building towards another, a golden figure suddenly careened into his side. It almost felt like slow motion as Shadow's trajectory was immediately perpendicular to his previous motion. Even so, his reflexes were good enough that he was able to direct a chaos bolt towards his attacker, which the golden devil dodged with a yawn and a subsequent grin.

Shadow wished that their fight could have been somewhere...anywhere else. In fact, any time he managed to land any kind of hit on the golden demon, he immediately tried to pull enough energy into himself to manage a dual chaos control. But Super Sonic must have known, must have sensed Shadow's intentions, because any time the dark hedgehog managed to land a hand on Super, he was immediately ejected with burning force, frequently shooting through several buildings himself.

He was purposefully not thinking about the startled faces he sometimes saw when that happened.

Or what probably happened to them after Super Sonic blasted after him.

The city had been minorly damaged by Eggman's attack. But now?

Now fires burned, turning the once-clear sky into ashy black. Rubble lay strewn around the street, and Shadow knew that he and Sonic would fully be blamed for it… fair..