Jolting awake, (Name) wipes the sweat off his face. The dreams have come back, worse than ever before. It's been fifty years since sweet little Maria died, yet he is still having nightmares about the day. What a time to be alive.

Groaning, the realisation that now he's awake, he should get out of bed dawning on him, the grey hedgehog slips off the plush bed. Sock-covered feet hit cold hardwood planks as he stands tall, stretching out his body. Another dull day of existence. It wouldn't even matter if he did nothing today because he had not aged a day in fifty-five years. Physically he had been made around the age of twenty-three—apparently, the age he was as a human before the procedure—yet here he was fifty-five years later and still looking the same he did back then.

He supposed the only way to call himself alive truly, would be to prove he could die. But it didn't matter in the end. All attempts failed. It's like his body wouldn't let him die so effortlessly. Sighing as he moves across the room, (Name) begins getting himself dressed. Or, well, as dressed as most Mobians were, mostly just fingerless gloves and a pair of shoes. The same shoes he was given back on the ARK.

Man, he needed to stop thinking back on those dreams.

Well, now that he thought about it...the foggiest bit of dream still clung to his mind. In it, he wasn't himself. Instead, he was a human...or, at least, he thinks he was. After he had woken up for the first time and adequately calmed, the Professor had told him that when he could properly process everything, his memories of being a human would likely never return. The probability of it was bordering on highly impossible. But now, as he scratches an itch deep in his quills, he can't help but feel like he's finally getting inklings of that lost life back.

He needs to stop watching so much pulp fiction before he falls asleep.

Whatever it was, the vagueness of it barely clung to his thoughts. Only a few things stood out. Maria as a minor child, a set of crutches and a lot of pain. It didn't matter if it was a memory or just a figment of his imagination trying to fill in the blanks from everything the Professor had ever told him about his past life. What mattered was it freaked him out, and the more he let his thoughts fester on this weird dream, the more he could feel his anxiety rising. The other dreams seemed to pale in comparison now.

The most haunting part of the dreams is that they began and ended with him shouting at Maria. (Name) had no idea if this was some morbid dream or if there was a reason for this.

Whatever it was, it wasn't necessary.

Sighing, (Name) makes his way out of his room, feet shuffling lazily across the cold hardwood floor. He desperately needed something to pick him up, and coffee seemed appealing right now. Letting his feet take him to the small kitchen of his shitty apartment, the grey hedgehog turns on his coffee machine before turning on the small TV on the counter. Maybe the news would take his mind off the dreams. He thrums his fingers against the counter, waiting for the machine to finish heating the water he had put in the night before. When the small 'ding' went off, he opened the top and dropped in a coffee pod, grabbing a nearby mug and lazily checking if it was clean before settling it under the spout of the coffee machine. The news became idle background noise, mixed with the whirring of the coffee machine as it ran hot water through the coffee pod.

After a few moments of waiting, finishing the lazy art of making a shitty coffee, and leaning his back against the counter, the grey hedgehog finally started sipping at the coffee as he focused more attention on the news. Everything seemed so dull; petty thefts, a drunk car chase, some lost kitten—none of it was attention-grabbing. He takes a sip, pushing off the counter and moving to turn it off.

"This just in," the female newscaster says, a somewhat disturbing look on her face. "Local hero Sonic the Hedgehog has robbed a bank. Witnesses describe him stealing what seemed to be a chaos emerald at the scene." Well, now, this was interesting! (Name) stands straight, moving back from the screen a bit to watch the story unfolding. That annoying blue blur, a newfound thief? This day was getting better already.

"If you see this hedgehog, turn him in immediately." The newscaster gets replaced on the screen with footage of the break-in, and (Name) drops his mug. He can barely hear the shattering of ceramic on the tile.

There had to be no way...

But he could see it with his own two eyes. The Mobian they thought was Sonic was the ebony hedgehog that vanished after he was ejected from the ARK fifty years ago. Shadow the Hedgehog. He can feel himself panic, yet at the same time, he feels so numb and disconnected from himself. Where did he go, then? Why was he here now? Why did everyone think he was Sonic?

(Name) He collapses to his knees in a puddle of spilt java and broken ceramic, trying to process what is happening mentally.

His rival, his successor, his dearly detested; he was back.

(Name) has no idea how long he spent on the floor, trying to process what was going on, but he does know it was nightfall when he finally came to and picked himself off the ground. Today wasn't his day. He'd try again tomorrow.

With that in mind, the perplexed hedgehog returns to his room. Maybe he could sleep things off and pray to have no dreams.