Wow, amazing that I got 20 chapters done to this Recourse series. I still have some ideas to run through yet so we`ll see if I can keep going for this one. A small scene here that`s of Tails and Maria is kind of constructed as a mini-gift for Cy-Fox. Cheers.
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Wednesday goes on without a hitch. The Banylonians have kept their distance from the Sonic Gang once again though it is certain that it`s not a direct result of the attack Shadow made on Jet the day before. No sign of Eggman still though it is believed that he is busying himself with some new plot. The Sonic Gang enjoy this vacation from the two troublemaking sides for however short it may be. Once trouble stirs up from one of them, they will have their hands full.

When the gang insist on Shadow and Maria doing homework with them, Shadow at first refuses it. But with Maria asking him, he caves in. This time around, everyone goes to Amy`s house for their homework time. During the homework session, she gets to meet the children of the group. Or at least one of them; Charmy is still away and she has already met Cream. Tails seems to take to Maria quite well and quickly. In fact, he asks her for assistance with his homework instead of Sonic or Amy, or at least he doesn`t ask them as much. Though it`s probably from the excitement of having a new friend.

Thursday moves along a lot like Wednesday. It goes smoothly for the most part. When the homework is done, the gang decide that they want to go to Twinkle Park. Feeling that he`d rather be off by himself with Maria and not wanting to overwhelm her, Shadow turns down the offer. He takes Maria back to their apartment while everyone else has a blast at Twinkle Park.

Friday, however...

In the early evening, Shadow is carrying Maria down the sidewalks of Station Square. They have just left their apartment heading to Club Rouge. They spent a little time at their apartment after school to get homework done, which wasn`t very much this time. Then Amy called Shadow`s cell phone and said for him and Maria to meet everyone at Club Rouge. With no word of what this is about, Shadow decides to go ahead and go for it.

Club Rouge is owned and ran by, of course, Rouge. There`s food, dancing and karaoke. It`s often a place that the Sonic Gang go to for fun or sometimes to have their meetings when they need to work up a plan to fight against Eggman. It is also used as a meeting spot if something big is happening. It`s usually only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights; the rest of the week the club is closed. Of course other people come to the club as well, even the Babylonians have been known to come to the club though mostly for the dancing or to start fights.

Arriving at the club, the inside looks dark. Well, it always is dark but it is even darker than usual. Strange. Everyone else is here, right? Since he has his arms full with carrying Maria, Shadow uses his shoulder to push open the door. He steps inside with her and the door closes behind him and he starts looking around.

Suddenly the lights flip on and everyone in the Sonic Gang pop out of their various hiding places and yell "Surprise!!"

The club has been decorated lightly with party decor. There`s a large banner overhead that reads "Welcome to Earth, Maria!" Balloons are scattered here and there. One table has a pile of presents on it.

Shadow widens his eyes at this. A party for Maria? Wait, how do they know she isn`t from Earth? Why are they doing this? They never thrown a party for someone outside of birthdays and Maria`s birthday isn`t until the summer. He is about to question them with his suspicions but decides to not say anything...for now.

Amy ushers Shadow and Maria to a chair that has been prepared for Maria. As Shadow sits Maria down in the chair, he finds that suspicious, too. Neither he or Maria or even the teachers have said a word about her condition.

Maria, however, seems quite happy about this. She clasps her hands together,"Wow, this is for me?"

Sonic gives Maria a wink and a thumbs up,"You bet! We decided to make you feel welcome here so we threw this together."

"Oh...All of you are so wonderful for putting so much effort out for me."

That`s something everyone in the gang has picked up on about Maria: her unrivaling sweet personality. She always has something kind to say in the short time that they have spent with her. She seems to be even sweeter than Cream.

Speaking of Cream, being the youngest of the bunch, she bounces excitedly,"Let`s do presents first!"

Both Maria and Shadow drop their mouths open at hearing that. Not only was there a party but there are presents as well? Maria turns her head to the side and sees the table of presents. Shadow looks over to it as well. Maria puts both hands over her mouth,"Oh my, that is a lot."

Tails bounds up to Maria. He puts his hands up on the arm of the chair and looks up to her,"Open mine first!"

Sonic goes over to the table and fishes out the gift that is from Tails. While he is doing that, Shadow examines the gifts from his spot standing beside Maria in her chair. Some of the gifts are rather large in size, what in the world did these people get for Maria? Sonic finds one that is on the large side and picks that one up. He passes it over to Tails,"Here we go. It`s kindda heavy for Maria, Tails, so you might have to hold it for her."

"Ok!"

Tails takes the gift from Sonic. Holding it for Maria with one hand, Tails uses his other hand to open the box and pull out the object that`s inside. A fair amount of the box`s size is from the padding for the object to protect it from damage. But the actual object that is the gift is a laptop! Custom made and put together by Tails. Both Shadow and Amy`s jaws drop. Amy pulls on Sonic`s arm to pull him towards her and she whispers in his ear,"(You had Tails build a computer?!)"

Sonic shrugs,"He wanted to do it for Maria. Besides, it got him to stop dismantling the appliances in the house for a couple of days."

As Maria thanks Tails for the laptop, Tails smiles and takes it to another table for the opened presents to sit on. Shadow watches as Tails execute this task. While Tails does that, Maria adds an additional comment that this would be the first computer that would be her own. This makes Tails feel pretty good and makes the laptop extra special in his eyes.

The next one up to give Maria a present is Cream. She has a bag full of things. The bag itself is one of those gift bags you buy at the store that have designs on them. This bag`s design is blue that is very shiny and sparkly. The first thing that Cream pulls out is a drawing she made of Shadow and Maria. They`re holding hands in the picture. Maria has a happy smile on her face while Shadow has a angry face that is similar to the expression he normally bears. But there is a heart draw between them over top of their heads. Maria finds the drawing charming and amusing. She can`t help but giggle at how Cream drew Shadow`s expression. Shadow just folds his arms and lets this pass over. The next thing Cream pulls out of the bag is a set of headbands that are all different colours. Cream explains that this is so that Maria could wear a headband that would match whatever outfit she is wearing. The final item Cream pulls out of the bag is a blue hedgehog plush. This catches Shadow`s attention. How did Cream know what Maria`s favourite animal is? Though the other items get placed back in the bag, Maria wants to keep the hedgehog plush with her. She hugs the plush delightfully as Cream puts her bag of things on the table next to the laptop.

Amy is next up. Her gift seems kind of small, especially when compared to Tails` gift. It`s a bouquet of roses, a dozen of them. Half of them were coloured blue while the other half were coloured black. Shadow assumes the colouration is to symbolize Maria and him. In addition to a bouquet, Amy presents a highly decorated card that says that Maria could get any flowers she wants from Amy`s flower shop for free. Amy explains that it would carry over to Shadow, too, if he were getting flowers for her. At the end of that explanation, Amy gives Shadow a wink, in which the winking makes him feel uncomfortable.

Vector is a bit excited about his gift so he comes up after Amy. His gift is, not surprising, a portable music player. It can accept a few different kinds of media, such as CDs and MP3s. It also has a radio with it and with a handle for easy carry. It would be great for picnics!

Espio`s gift is more knowledge-based. It`s a book on Earth history. But not the old history stuff like the kind you read in school. This about more recent history, things that took place after Maria was frozen. This gets Maria`s interest as she is interested in learning about Earth. It`s an extensive read as the book is quite large. It would take Maria some time to get through it. Interesting...

Sonic`s gift is pretty simple and reflects him quite well. It`s a gift card to a restaurant. Not just any restaurant either. It`s one that is highly regarded by most of everyone in Station Square. It`s located near the Casino and has some pretty good food. But it`s usually more expensive than a place like the Burger Shop so Sonic himself doesn`t eat there as often as he would like to. But it might be nice for Maria and Shadow to go a time or two. The amount on the card would cover two trips for them both. Even when giving gifts to others, Sonic`s mind is on food.

Mighty`s gift is a handful of DVDs. They are of various genres with most of them being entertainment movies. He wasn`t sure of which genre was Maria`s favourite so he chose several that he was sure she liked. Only one of the DVDs is a documentary. The documentary is on the evolution of music, from the early forms of music to how it has evolved into what it is today in the modern times.

As each person gives their gift to Maria, Shadow watches on and see clues in each gift that have some relation to Maria. This is all very suspicious to him. But there are more gifts to be given to Maria yet.

The gift from Blaze is in another designer gift bag. This one is an outfit that she thought Maria would like. It is a skirt and a top to go with the skirt. They look quite lovely and Shadow is sure that Maria would look beautiful wearing it. Silver`s gift kind of goes with Blaze`s gift as his is a pair of knee high boots that are meant to go with the outfit. They lack any high heels so Maria shouldn`t have difficulty walking in them.

Rouge gives Maria a silver coloured locket necklace to wear. It doesn`t have any pictures already put in it but Maria could get whatever picture she wants placed inside of it. At first, Rouge had thought of putting Shadow`s picture in there but darned if there were any photos of him that could be used for that.

Knuckles` gift to Maria would help solve that problem though. It`s out of character for him to go to such lengths for gifts. It is a digital camera. Not any $800 kinds, mind you. It`s inexpensive far as digital cameras go but still quite a highly prized item for a gift. Knuckles isn`t usually the camera using type, so Tails will have to be the one to show Maria how to use it. In fact, Amy suggests that they get a group photo of everyone together with the camera. Everyone is in agreement with the idea. It is rather good that Tails got Maria the laptop, this way she could take the photos out of the camera and save them on the computer. Maria would have lots of fun taking pictures of lots of things.

Ray, though scared as anything of Shadow, becomes brave for a moment and comes up close to Maria (which meant getting close to Shadow) to give her his gift. He has a pile of activity books for her. Among those are her favourites such as Sudoku, Word Search and Mad Libs. She would play these activities with Shadow on the Arc all the time back in the day. They were a lot of fun.

For once, Big didn`t have his mind on fishing when he was choosing Maria`s gift. His gift was rather thoughtful, actually. It`s another collection of items and this one almost resembles a medical kit. Obviously he was thinking of the condition Maria is in. There is a bottle of sun block for her fair skin, an ointment for cuts or scrapes, a set of knee wraps to give her knees a little extra support for walking, a wedge pillow and a pad that could be heated or frozen to help with any sores or injuries that which heat or cold would help aiding.

Fang is the last one to go and he`s a little hesitant to give Maria his gift. It`s a bracelet that has a clip to it so it would clasp around her wrist similarly to how Shadow`s inhibitor rings clasp together. It`s silver coloured and is small in size for emphasis on her delicate appearance. He puts it on the wrist which Maria has her medical bracelet on.

With all the gifts handed out, Amy gets everyone together for that photo she gave the idea for earlier. Everyone surrounds Maria around her chair in various poses and places. Tails sets the camera up on a timer so he can be in the picture, too. He darts to the group to get in his place and off goes the flash. The camera has taken it`s picture.

The photo turns out as this:
Maria is sitting in her chair with the hedgehog plush in her lap. Shadow is standing behind Maria but off to the side a little. His arm is down, holding Maria`s hand over her shoulder. Maria`s other hand seems to be patting Tails on the head who looks quite happy about that. Amy stands to the left side of Maria while hugging Sonic`s arm. Sonic`s free arm has his fist on his hip, giving his signature smirky smile. Knuckles is beside Sonic standing pretty nicely. Rouge is front of Knuckles, down on knee on the floor though a little on the suggestive side. Luckily she doesn`t go too far with it where the overall photograph could still be appropriately shown. Cream, since she is gifted with being so short, stands between Tail and Rouge, posed in one of her usual "cute" poses. To the right of Maria, Blaze stands with Silver having an arm around her shoulders. Ray stands beside Silver with his enthusiastic smile and seems to be punching upwards in the air. Espio and Fang are kneeled down in front of those three and seemed to have worked out a pose among themselves that look like they are in victory over a battle; Fang`s being that his arms are crossed with his pop gun in one had and Espio is doing some sort of ninja pose with his arms. Being the tallest, Vector and Big are in the back row. Big is waving with a huge smile on his face while Vector is giving two thumbs up. In the front most row and centered, Mighty is laying on his side, similar to how Sonic does sometimes. But instead of looking bored, Mighty looks quite happy and is giving a wave to the camera.
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I know it wasn`t stated very often but I left it out because it would have gotten quite repetitive to say that Maria thanks so-and-so for the whatever gift. I`m taking the time here now to say that she does thank each one for their gift to her, because she`s a sweetie that way.

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