Author's Note: This chapter is based off of the cutscene from Episode Shadow where Infinite is beaten and insulted at Shadow's hand/paw/whatever you wanna call it (I say paw because they are animals but you can call it whatever)

Some early dialogue is taken directly from the cutscene, some are modified events from the scene but most dialogue and prose is 100% mine and not taken from Ep. Shadow/Forces in any way.

Enjoy!

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"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory." - Dr. Seuss

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"We've got an intruder! Shadow has entered the facility!" The Doctor began with both disbelief and urgency.

As soon as Infinite recognized the voice, he instantly began ignoring him, speeding up and sticking a heavy landing onto a tiki-like structure. He tried to tell himself he shouldn't too worried about it; the Squad had been trained by some of the best thugs from when they were young and had handled targets and enemies ranging everywhere from drunks to authorities and enforcement.

They could handle it!

The earpiece dinged once again with Eggman's next report on the intrusion. "Defense Squad Jackal has already been completely annihilated!"

Infinite stumbled, catching himself on a ledge. Lies! They're not gone! He felt his heart begin to race and his eyes began to burn, tears welling up inside him. Infinite! Pull it together! You can't ever let the client control you, stop this!

He forced himself to keep going, regardless of whatever was being sent through his headset, he would keep pressing on to protect the Jackal Squad. He had to, something inside him just screamed it. All he could to for the moment was continue in their direction and keep telling himself that they were all alive and well...

~~~

"Hey, you!"

Infinite continued to ignore him, now leaping between a few pillars, mere paces from what was considered the beginning of the Northeast Lab Sector.

"I know you can hear me!"

Yeah, I can hear ya; I'm just choosing to ignore you. There's a difference, I thought you were supposed to be smart enough to know that. Infinite rolled his eyes and growled a little, frustrated that Eggman was bothering him while he was trying to stop the intruder.

"You're captain of Squad Jackal, aren't you?!"

Correctly identified, present and annoyed, thank you very much.

"Your squad was useless! They provided no opposition towards Shadow's blasted attack and were killed instantly! Go clean up their mess already!"

Infinite snarled once more as frustration boiled over to rage, the pain in his heart struck him once more as tears once again began to build as he brushed his hair back.

Why did he believe him?

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." His voice rumbled as all the emotions bottled inside him began to leak out, he caught a glimpse of Shadow and turned towards him. "You." He began. "You destroyed my squad." He snapped his head down in a violent shake before continuing. "I'll show you why they call me the Ultimate Mercenary!" He took a large step backward with his left foot, proclaiming "Take this!"

Shadow jumped out of the way as Infinite jumped towards him from the ledge he'd been standing on, causing the already-disoriented mercenary to lose sight of him. Then, Shadow came up behind him and landed a harsh blow to his legs, tripping him before landing an arsenal of punches.

Infinite did the best he could to right himself so he could fight back, but Shadow would score another life-stealing blow just as the jackal was about to try his own.

Shadow landed an upward kick to the jackal, shooting his still-very-much-alive body high into the air and beat him once more with a sweeping kick that sent him on a painful crash course with the rock walls of the area.

Infinite, upon hitting the ground at a speed that, although was much slower than the speed he directly hit the stone above with, was incredibly painful. His instincts had him sound a low groan of pain and he covered his beaten, stinging face, curling away from his attacker thoughtlessly.

"Worthless." The hedgehog proclaimed, looking down at the wounded male. "Don't show your pathetic face around me ever again." His form then began to warp as he disappeared in a flash.

Infinite took a gasping breath as he felt Shadow's presence leave him, then pulled his paw from his face to discover a startling reality.

He was shaking!

"I'm shaking? Me?" He began with disbelief. "This, this can't, no... me, afraid?"

Voices came back to him, filling his mind with their words and surrounding his defeated being with their presence, haunting him.

Your squad was useless! Go clean up their mess already!

Worthless.

"No!" He cried out to nobody, forcing himself onto his two legs. "I'm.... I'm- not..." He stuttered as his emotional barrier shattered, a few tears rolling down his muzzle as he became alone and overwhelmed. "I'm not pathetic..." He gasped and shuddered again. "I'm not weak! I'm... I'm not... I'm not weak!"

As Infinite began to choke up on his breath at the sight of him shaking and howling as well as the worthless echoing tirelessly in his mind, a new voice emerged, shoving the cruel voices back to where they couldn't be heard.

Boss... A feminine, yet rough and thuggish, voice whispered as if she was placing sweet nothings into his broken mind. ...why?

Infinite's choked breaths began to morph into tears and sobs. "Amara... please, no..." he begged to the voice, only experiencing what felt like her presence brushing his ear and running her thumb along where his ear began to meet his forehead.

Why would you do this to us, Infy?

She summoned a moment from earlier that day into his mind, a moment that could have changed the path of history had it gone differently.

"Alright, Squad, let's get ready to head over to the lab." Infinite had told his team when they were eating that morning.

"Boss, I don't like this job. It's stupid." Hunter protested, partially climbing up onto the table and banging a fist down to provide an additional sound to voice his disapproval.

"And why is it stupid, Hunter?" Infinite had asked.

"Because we were supposed to kill this guy and raid his junk! He's an enemy to everyone in both Mobius and Bloodpool and we're letting him control us! You're letting him control us!"

"He is not in control of us, Hunter." Infinite paused to let his counterargument sink in before stating his reasoning. "You're forgetting that we signed on for this and that we need the money."

"I agree with Hunter, Boss." Amara voiced, everyone turned to stare at her as if it was completely out-of-character for her to do anything but sass him. "We have to drop."

Infinite looked at her curiously. "And why is that?"

She looked down at the table, glanced at the food in front of her, perhaps uneasy, then cast another soft, swooping glance across all who sat at the table before looking up at Infinite without raising her head back to stare straight into his eyes. "Someone will get hurt." She paused for a few more seconds, then took an audible breath. "There are many, many other ways that all of us can earn money, ways that are deeper in Bloodpool and, therefore, safer ways."

"You are not going to start dealing again, Amara." Infinite instantly interrupted her with his firm rebuttal.

She seemed to pause and stutter. "I made that statement knowin' that you won't let me deal again... I have various skillsets, so do the others."

Infinite walked to her seat, which actually wasn't far from his own since she was the next highest-ranking mercenary, and gripped her paws with his. "Mara," His voice sounded oddly pleaful. "come on, honey... we've already got this job, got this client." He paused to think, she looked away from him until he gripped her paws a little harder in order to regain her attention. "There's just a month 'til the wedding, we'll do this job well, tie the knot, then all of us will go off-grid and the both of us will have a kid or do whatever you'd like. Can you make that deal with me?"

Her canines, which peeked out slightly as she considered the offer, did nothing more but add another degree of concern to her already worried demeanor. "I can't defy you, Boss." She said, somewhat trying to avoid making terms with him before leaning forward to kiss his lips. She then stood and walked away.

As the thought concluded, Infinite realized that he was shaking even more now than he was when Shadow had initially beat him up.

Was she right?

Was Shadow right?

I'm not weak! He proclaimed to himself once again, as if that was the only thing he could come up with to justify himself. I'll show them... the Jackal Squad's fine! I'll go find them myself and prove it!

He began walking away from the area, still shaking, and headed deeper into the sector. Infinite tilted his nose up to sniff out his squad. "Amara!" He began calling. "Hunter! Remy! QuickStrike! Where are you guys?!" Turning a corner around a pillar of rock, Infinite spotted jackal footprints. They were quite large, belonging to a male, but not quite large enough to be Remy's and were alone, so they likely weren't Hunter's, leaving them to be QuickStrike's prints. Infinite gasped and sped over to them, sniffing out the exact path the lower-ranked jackal had taken. Once he was on the path, he quickly identified the scents of all the other males.

So where was Amara's scent? It didn't matter how annoying or obnoxious the guys were, even if they were just harassing her for the sole reason that she was a female and they were all males, she would never just bail out on them... would she?

The notion that Amara had fled the Squad while Shadow had invaded and possibly attacked sent a blaze of cold terror down Infinite's spine. Thankfully, her incredibly strong scent, extremely unique due to her Defied heritage, was soon found closer to the site of a metallic structure that had recently undergone bracing to prevent its collapse.

Infinite sped up to the opening that he was approaching, fervent to see his squad after all that had just happened. He needed them to crowd around him like they always did, but mostly he just needed Amara to curl up next to his side, to bind her tail around his when no one was looking and nuzzle the crook of his neck. He needed her console, to tell her how wrong he was, and how right both her and Hunter were.

However, he was painfully in the dark that she had been murdered.

Coming into the opening, he saw the bushes where Shadow had ambushed the Squad, QuickStrike's body laying lifelessly by a wall near the bushes, saw the pile of rubble where Hunter and Remy eternally rested, and saw the tree where Amara had been spotted escaping and the boulder where she'd been brutally slain; unable to see the blood splattered all over its rough surface due to his angle. Her body laid in a twist due to her falling to her knees, then the ground, as she breathed her last and died. From Infinite's distance and angle, it was impossible to see the spear wound in her chest that had killed her.

At the sight of her, Infinite began running straight towards her, catching sight of Hunter and Remy's bodies and taking a detour to them. "Hunter! Remy!" He began as he jumped up onto the small maze of rubble, catching full sight of Hunter's body. "Hunter... no..." It was clear to Infinite that his neck was snapped, the jackal's head was tilted almost horizontally to his body's position, having an unreal appearance. Tears began to build and slip from Infinite's eyes as he bowed his head in a final reverence for his squadmate, then turned to Remy as if he had some sort of notion that the third lieutenant had survived even though his higher-ranked jackal buddy hadn't.

Third Lieutenant Remy, however, did not hold up to that hope. As soon as Infinite saw he was also deceased, his knees buckled. "No...please, get up..." he gripped the jackal's face and tilted it up towards his as he dipped his head and began to sob lightly. "Please...."

Even with Infinite's devastated pleading, both Remy and Hunter remained dead, there was no stirring from either and Remy's body had begun to grow cold. His body slipped out of Infinite paws, which had begun to shake more violently now that two of the Jackal Squad members had been found dead.

Infinite stood up and sprinted towards the body of QuickStrike, afraid of going over to Amara.

He, too, was far gone; his body already cold in places where Hunter and Remy were just cooling.

No, no, no! Infinite began shaking and wails slipped from his lips. Amara's still alive! She was the best and smartest out of all of them! Infinite continued telling himself this as he raced over to her, his mind so foggy with pain that he apparently didn't see the blood staining the boulder above him, or if he did notice, assumed that it came from Shadow or someone else that she had wounded. He didn't take an instant alarm at her lifeless state, as he had been sleeping with her long enough that he knew she liked to play a little joke where she stayed as lifeless as possible for as long as she could, but instead put a paw on her dead shoulder and began to talk to her as if she was just laying down. "Hey, Amara, time to go. This place is damaged, gonna be evacuated, let's go get paid then outta here."

Like the others, she did not move.

"Mara. It's time to go. Let's go home."

She, however, was still not responding, her soul already departed from her body.

Tears began spilling out of Infinite's eyes as he tried shaking her for a response. "Mara! This isn't funny! C'mon, babe, knock it off..." He began to cry, the few tears he'd shed before were followed by a river of painful concern for his fiancée's life. "Please, Mara, don't leave me here... don't leave me here alone..." Once again, Infinite felt a strange sensation in the fur of his ear, Amara's spirit stroking him before tilting her own body so that Infinite could see where Shadow had run her through and killed her. In an instant, after being able to see the gaping hole in his lover's chest, Infinite instantly knew the large smear of blood on the boulder belonged to her, and that it had been spilled deliberately.

The Assassin Queen had been assassinated.

Infinite gasped and his whole being trembled viciously as his grief, previously a quiet reverence, erupted into a hysterical shrieking. He tore off his gloves, threw them to the ground and slashed at both the landscape around and himself. Desperate to cause a secondary pain that would nullify what he was already enduring, Infinite reached over and slashed his left shoulder. "No! No! Amara! Amara, wake me up!" Tears burst from his eyes and ran down his face and muzzle in a fierce, unending flood. He howled in grief, his voice bellowing off the walls and causing a few small landslides in an unstable region nearby.

Robot soldiers soon filed into the area, mobilized after the deaths of the Jackal Squad, and advanced towards an agonized Infinite who had gone primal and noticed them approaching, bounding towards them on all fours and tearing into the front lines with his teeth, claws and sword. One came up from behind and sunk its metal appendages into Infinite's right shoulder, painfully immobilizing him and causing him to topple onto his right side, lamenting for his deceased.

"Captain! Stand down or else!" Eggman snapped through the jackal's headpiece, hearing the whole of Infinite's brutal breakdown. "Don't forget who you bow to."

Infinite snapped his teeth at the surrounding robots before growling, trying to hide his tears from them. "I bow to no one." He glanced at Amara's body. Not anymore...

"You bow to me now, Infinite!"

"And just why is that?"

"Because I'm the only thing you have left."