It’s been a while now since he’s finished mapping out the city in his head along with its four wards--Cotes, Archimedes, Fibonacci and Golden. That part of the situation assessment is done with, and now it’s time to move on to the next part--figuring out exactly what had been done to him. He’d been deprived of a well of Chaos Energy to draw on before, he knows what that feels like, but this is something different entirely, something he can’t say has ever happened in recent memory; he feels completely cut off from it. He can’t even tap into that weak form of Chaos Control he’s gained mastery over without an emerald--and that’s not even the full extent of it. He’s definitely noticed a sort of sluggish feeling while scouting out the city, a feeling that he’s not going as fast as he knows he can, and his strength...
He glances from the bark of the tree he’s been ‘testing himself’ on, all scuffed and chipped and even missing patches in some areas, down to his own gloves, which are similarly scuffed. Trees wouldn’t normally stand up to the amount of punishment he’d been subjecting it to, and yet in the here and now the impact was even beginning to pain his knuckles. Perhaps Sonic would take this in stride, but to him this was nothing to chuckle about. He’s still the Ultimate Lifeform, and he always will be, he knows this with an absolute certainty; however, it looks like whoever’s brought him here has seen fit to bring Shadow down to their own pitiful level. ...Fine. If they fear his power that much, then as soon as he finds them he’ll show them how right they were to do so.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots someone, and his head turns slightly to acknowledge them--a human child, from the looks of it. The cherry blossoms in the Cotes Ward were a peaceful enough place to collect your thoughts if you knew the proper spots, but a downside seemed to be that sooner or later someone was going to come wandering in on your business. One or two is fine, but if it gets to be too many people then he doesn’t have time to shoo away everyone in this damn ward while he’s trying to think. “What do you want? I’m busy.”