Sonic Series Fan Fiction ❯ Released to Destroy ❯ The Doom ( Chapter 14 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Shadow 6271 
too late, no excuses, really bad, kill me if ya like.
Non Anime: Sonic Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Action | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 09.17.2007 | Pages: 7 | Words: 11.4K | Visits: 386 | Status: Completed
too late, no excuses, really bad, kill me if ya like.
Non Anime: Sonic Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Action | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 09.17.2007 | Pages: 7 | Words: 11.4K | Visits: 386 | Status: Completed
This is far too late.
All I can say is I’ve been reading a few other fics, and now I feel inadequate after reading Yamekanur’s fiction Sonic the Hedgehog. My advice to you, forget this crap and go read that. Its infinitely more emotional, funnier, and well written.
On top of that I had a lot of coursework to do and loads of homework, I also got distracted by a sexy woman. I mean, if you had the choice between writing a fic or talking to one of the most attractive woman youd ever seen would you really pick the fic? If so you’re a better author than me (or possibly gay/female).
Ok now for the proper notes, you’ll be happy to note my other fic will be updated soon after, cause I know exactly where that ones actually going ^^; plus its almost half done. Also, im looking to add a bit more romance into this thing later, cause at the moment its catering for a very specific crowd, the horny ones who want a little plot. And I think branching it out to a bit more romance couldn’t hurt I guess.
Oh, *insert generic beg for reviews here* to be honest I don’t fuckin care much anymore, this was only a practice fic and ive got my other one almost sorted in terms of plot. Plus my next will be a sci fi adventure, so whatever. Who knows, I may not even finish this..
(see that was review fishing)
Oh, and my Shadow in this fic is fucking insane ok?
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“Laugh it up Hedgehog!!”
“Oh I will!” Sonic could barely stand up from the intense giggling that was going through his system. Before him stood Princess Sally, properly dressed in what a Princess was supposed to wear. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good, the white regal dress was a beautifully crafted masterpiece that draped her in a delicate silken material. Covered in small gems and with a golden necklace around her neck that any monarch would be proud of.
But when you remembered who occupied the dress it suddenly became hilarious. The woman who walked around in muddied boots alone all day, the ultimate nudist, was wearing one of the most expensive dresses on the planet. The sheer irony was enough to make anyone smile.
Then there was the expression she had on her blushing face, in a class of its own somewhere between embarrassment and loathing, it was something Sonic would remember for the rest of his life.
“If you don’t stop laughing I am going to castrate you.” Sally would have walked over and hit him a few times but she was afraid of ripping the dress. First impressions were massively important in politics and she had to look regal to impress the Humans. It was the same reason she was using such an extravagant plane, appearance was everything. I’m supposed to be a Princess! Not a model! How am I supposed to move in these things anyway? They’re so.… constricting. As soon as I’ve made my appearance the dress comes off!!
Shadow was also part of that first impression, she hoped that by showing he was more or less under her control the Humans would know that she was not to be messed with. They were all pretty much terrified of him from what she could tell from the few complete files Nicole had managed to recover about him (mostly soldier reports, all the rest were to classified for her to get a hold of).
Sally knew that with a few hints on her part they would believe their secret weapon would do anything if she ordered him to. He wouldn‘t, he would likely do whatever he felt like, but that was how it would appear, the key word in these kinds of situations.
“Could you really catch me in that dress your Highness?” Sonic managed to get out between bouts of laughter.
“Hedgehog, I appreciate the humour involved at seeing the Princess wearing clothes for once, but you are… what’s the word? Ah yes, IN THE WAY!!!!” Sonic twisted to see his doppelganger standing behind him in the plane hatchway, frowning, easily carrying his and Tails’ bags with no effort at all. Behind him the other Mobians were all standing on the stairway all looking impatient.
“Keep your quills on Goth-boy, this is a historic moment!” He shot back to Sally’s continued growling. “We need to rec-” ZAT “OWWW!!.”
Sonic shouted and jumped out of the way holding his smoking back before running down the isle and into the galley, locating a cup of water and pouring it over himself.
“I warned you.” Shadow stopped the sparks coming from his hand and repositioned it under the mountain of bags.
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Shadow stared out of the window into the infinite majesty of space. Both beautiful and full, and bland and empty. It was here where he could think, about his life and about the planet below, looking so close but at the same time so unreachable. Shadow knew that he could easily travel there, but his love could not. And if she could not go, it wouldn’t be up to his expectations. They would go together, or he would not go at all.
“Shadow?” A girl walked in, barely 14 years old she was still maturing. Small breasts and a slender frail frame were being hidden by a pale blue dress in a style similar to a nurses. Although Shadow knew very well what was under that dress and enjoyed embarrassing his mate with small references when she tried so very hard to look prim and proper.
“Yes Maria?” He answered, turning and giving a small smile to his love. She was perfect to his eyes, although she had pale skin as a result of that terrible illness he thought it suited her in an odd way, although it may have just been the fact she was the template he had set for female Humans.
“What are you doing?”
“Just thinking, about that planet.”
“Just like always.” Maria chuckled and Shadow answered in a mischievous voice.
“Why Maria, not getting jealous of a planet are we? Don‘t worry, I prefer to look at you any day.” She blushed slightly, more from his tone than his words.
Maria had mixed feelings about their odd conversations and even their relationship occasionally. On the one hand she understood the fact that Shadow was a very proud and tough creature, that he found it difficult to just say I love you and he preferred to tiptoe around it with little bits of conversation or mischief like this one. Although he did have his romantic moments. But at the same time she wished he’d be a little bit more…emotional.
She knew what they were doing was wrong, but he didn’t care. She was practically his sister, his mother in the earlier days even. And definitely his cousin, if only by adoption. Yet he didn’t see it as relevant. She was sure it said in the bible somewhere not to do this. It probably said it numerous times!
“I’m not jealous of a planet. It’s a chunk of rock!” And their little conversation was complete. Within a few seconds she was sitting beside him being held by his strong arms as they both looked out onto Mobius. Listening to his steady heart beat through his fur and wondering what her Grandfather would have thought if he knew what his creation was like in his own time.
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Shadow tapped his fingers repeatedly on the plane chair. He knew the princess wanted to make an impression with this plane but he could have gotten them there in nanoseconds in a flash of light! That would have been as good easily.
Shadow was extremely patient, he had waited fifty years for revenge and was not bothered about waiting a bit longer. But it annoyed him that for now, he couldn’t even talk with Tails because of the blue Hedgehog’s presence in the plane.
He was near the front of the plane directly behind Sally and Sonic, who were engaged in chat about things he didn’t understand or care for but was forced to hear. Something called “Lange-er-rey” popped up a few times though, with Sonic apparently very interested whilst Sally seemed to claim it was the “only type she liked”. What type of what he didn’t know or want to.
Tails was wondering around the plane, sometime talking to the pilot but mostly seemed to be talking to the cyborg in the back, (who’s boyfriend had long ago fallen asleep).
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Tails finally got up the courage to ask, after walking up and down and making tiny tiny hints to the always sexual Rabbit. He had been thinking ever since he and Shadow had had their private time and needed her help.
“Bunnie, could I ask you about something?”
“Sure Foxy, I’m not busy like I should be!!.” The last part she aimed at her sleeping boyfriend.
“I’m sorry Bunnie.”
“It’s ok Tails, once he goes to sleep he just sleeps, an’ planes always get him. I should be joining the mile high club about now. What d’ya need?”
“Advice.”
“Huh? On what?”
“How to please a guy?” He asked quietly but was relieved when she didn‘t even sound shocked.
“Well you’re one aren’t you? Why do you need it so bad?”
“Well, Shadow gave me a really… good ur… thing. And I don’t think I can really repay him.” Tails was blushing brightly through his fur but knew Bunnie could (and likely would) help. She was more like his big sister than his Aunt and although she teased him, she also cared about him.
“Well you cou-”
“Nothing perverted!” Tails interrupted, hoping Sonic hadn’t heard.
“Damn, you saw through my clever plan.” The Rabbit huffed. “Oh well, sit down Tails and I’ll give you some tips on how to act as well as what to do...” If she had been a cat, Tails was sure she would have purred.
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They were getting closer to the Human colonies, flying over miles of forest and bombed out cities too worthless for even Robotnik to convert to his side, Shadow could practically feel the Humans and somehow knew this time it would be different. He had two emeralds, he knew the territory and his body flowed with a new energy. No more hiding or running from the Humans, he would face them head on and emerge victorious. The Hedgehog grinned evilly as he planned out GUN’s destruction and brought his fingers together in a classically villainous pose.
The more he thought about it the more he lusted for their destruction. Of all the things he would do to those who had taken his precious Maria away from him. His only friend! His love! Shadow’s entire frame went tense and splitting pain jabbed into his brain, he closed his eyes tightly and then heard it. The voice.
“Project Shadow, my son, my greatest creation. Do not be alarmed, I programmed this message in before you were frozen.”
It spoke on top of everything else and he looked around to see no one else phased by the sounds he was hearing.
And then Shadow remembered, he actually did. The Professor HAD reprogrammed him, his suspicions had been correct. It had taken but a few seconds to do it, he hadn’t even bothered with the dozens of codes. No, he had done something else…
“There is not much time Shadow, I have programmed this message to be played only when you were sure of your plans and of your resources. To remind you of what was done to you and what you must do.”
What had the Professor done to bypass those passwords? He needed to know to stop anyone else from copying him. And what did he mean “remind” him? As if he had forgotten!
“Shadow, you must fulfil the last wish of Maria and I both. You must be my tool of retribution upon the enemies who even now believe they have finally defeated me, who even now plan my execution for high treason against the colonies.”
Shadow knew the Professor had been murdered, he remembered it. He had been forced to watch over a video feed. He had been tied to a chair and shot.
“Shadow, you have likely already reached the conclusion that you must use our home the ARK to obliterate that pathetic planet of all life. Collect the Chaos Emeralds and insert them into the ECLIPSE Cannon, then charge it up and crash the entire colony into the planet. No one on it deserves to live. Man or Mobian, they are both sinful. Fulfil your promise to Maria.”
Tails wasn’t sinful. He couldn’t kill him, or destroy his home. The Professor hadn’t just forgotten about the other species in his rage, as Shadow had managed to half-convince himself, he wanted the planet obliterated indiscriminately. Shadow couldn’t do that! Well… he could. Very easily, but he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to! But his promise to Maria bound him. And yet, he loved them both, he couldn’t kill Tails any more than he could Maria.
“This is to remind you Shadow, your resolve must be absolute.”
“Remind me? What is he talking… a-about…” Shadow’s sentence was cut off as he drifted into his forced sleep.
“Stupid psycho talking to himself.” Sonic muttered.
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Space Colony ARK: 50 years ago
“Shadow, you have always asked if you had a purpose apart from living forever. To follow the instincts I gave you and be even more than the Ultimate life form.” Professor Gerald stared sadly out of one of the many windows on the ARK. Slowly, large grey rectangular shapes were approaching. GUN’s primitive troop transports were gradually getting larger and larger in his view, and Shadow turned to watch them in curiosity as the ARK’s gun turrets should have automatically destroyed them as soon as they came within 20 miles of the station. Obviously it had failed.
“Yes Professor, you always said that I had a another purpose, one that would be revealed to me one day.” The old scientist turned to him and the young Hedgehog could see the tears in his eyes.
“This is that day. Take this.” The Professor handed him a bracelet, not unlike his current ones except it was a grey metal and had an odd device on it. “Do not ask about it or put it on, it is simply a precaution. You should also have this.” This time he brought out a Chaos Emerald from a pocket, it glowed green briefly and Shadow clutched it to him, feeling the energy that had been previously restricted to his training sessions.”
“Professor, what is your wish?”
“Shadow, as you may have suspected, you are a weapon. That is the higher purpose I created you for and that is your reason for being. You must kill anyone who would threaten our home.” Gerald searched for a reaction in the Hedgehog‘s face, barely six years in age although twenty in appearance, but was surprised when his expression did not change.
“I am a weapon.” Shadow searched his pre-programmed memory, hoping to find something to extend this explanation of his purpose. “I am an instrument of attack or defence designed to inflict harm or death on another party. ”
“Most elegantly put my son. You must have noticed all the abilities I gave you, and how we were training you.” Shadow nodded, although he had long suspected himself to be designed for fighting, and a lot of the colony even said he was, Maria had always said otherwise. Leaving him confused. No doubt the numerous combat techniques and disciplines were meant to destroy his father’s enemies.
“I created you, like all my other projects, for the military. But they are afraid of you, they wish to kill us all Shadow. You, me, Maria, everyone on the station to try and ensure your full powers are never unlocked. You must stop them by any means, and if you are incapable of this then I trust you to get Maria off of the Colony.” Shadow nodded as the station rocked with the explosions being used to force open the hangar doors. “Remember who you are my son, Project Shadow. The search for the Ultimate life form. You are superior to all, only you can decide what is right, only you know best. And if you learn anything from me, let it be the one idea that I have followed my whole life and use it to focus your power. Fate is cruel and random, to get what you want, you must reach out and twist it into your own path. The Universe is yours to control, to twist and manipulate at your convenience.”
Shadow bowed to his creator and turned away. He created the ARK, he created immortal life. In his perfect world he had those, in his world he made it so. I shall do the same.
“Your will shall be done Professor!” With that Shadow charged up the emerald and attempted one of the simplest of his powers. “Chaos Control!” Gerald didn’t even avert his eyes as the huge charge of energy lit up the room, waves of energy being drawn into the emerald before it flared brightly and his weapon disappeared.
“Shadow… that is your Ultimate Power.” He whispered to himself.
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The Hedgehog reappeared inside the Control room, the nerve centre for all operations in his home. All around him glowing green computers towered up to the ceiling high above, and flashing lights alerted to the ships intruding into his home. Overhead the limited artificial intelligence was worrying aloud.
THE INTRUDERS HAVE PENETRATED PRIMARY DEFENCES. NUMBERS ARE ESTIMATED AT A STRIKE FORCE OF AROUND FOUR HUNDRED. CHANCES OF REPELLING INTRUDERS ARE RATED AT TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT.
The Hedgehog smirked at the low odds, he had orders to protect the station and he would do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Anyone who wished to harm his love would be severely punished.
He approached a glowing blue terminal built into the biggest of all the computers. Searching momentarily for the access points and allowing the two winding metallic cables to emerge from his wrists and adjusted their attachments to enter into two separate holes.
This was his home mainframe, he knew it inside out. In seconds security systems were activated, safety protocols that normally stopped dangerous conditions inside the ARK were disabled, the P.A. system was turned on and Shadow set up a direct video link to Maria‘s quarters. She was asleep inside and Shadow took this opportunity to lock blast doors around her and order some old friends to guard her. That done he turned his attention to the soldiers.
He had quite an ordeal in store for them.
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The first contingent of soldiers made their way through the bright lighted corridors. There was 15 of them in total, each made identical by their fully black battle armour and shielded helmets. Behind them, the entire staff for cargo hangar 3C lay slaughtered, their blood being cleaned up by the robots who were puzzled by their master’s sudden wish to lye motionless and leak all over the floor in the most peculiar positions.
“This is Alpha team moving in, we have dispatched the cargo staff and have met minimal resistance. Please respond Control.”
“This is Control, proceed with caution. The project is not to be underestimated and the traitor may have more experiments that we do not know about. Clear the way into the main areas so that we can send in more soldiers and artillery.”
“Understood. This way men!”
The Captain lead his troop through the ARK, expecting no resistance. The hallways were grey and every so often there was a computer terminal built into the wall, every one of them displaying lines of code continuously being written or giving messages. They ran steadily through the different sections until the Captain halted them, hearing a crackling in the air coming from several speakers.
“This is Project Shadow speaking, to all residents of ARK, GUN forces are invading and have overtaken the Hangars. You are advised to lock yourselves in secure areas.”
“Damn it they know we’re here! Private Brown!” An otherwise indistinguishable soldier stepped out from the group with a toolbox.
“Yes sir?”
“Find a way to disable those speakers will you?” The soldier saluted before running to a terminal. There was a bang as Private Brown fired his pistol a half dozen times into the computer and pulled the cover off, revealing the mishmash of circuitry beneath and exposing the inner workings of the ARK to his tools.
“Oh I wouldn’t do that.” The voice suggested mysteriously as they realised he could hear them. However the Private ignored him and kept prying into the wires with his clippers and solders.
“Shut up! Surrender now or be destroyed Project.” His answer was a deep chilling laugh that sent chills down the soldier’s backs, made all the more terrifying by the echoing qualities of the speakers.
“Why should I do that? I’m always short of entertainment here, I’m planning on us having some fun before I leave.” The voice turned darker suddenly. “And I wasn’t joking when I said don’t do that.” The entire group of soldiers had to shield their eyes when a bright light erupted from the circuitry that the Private had been working on followed by a loud high pitched scream and a dull thump. “Too late.”
“Brown?” The Captain didn’t need or want to turn around, he could already smell the sickening stench of burning Human flesh. “God dammit. You’ll pay for that.”
“I’m terrified.” The voice said sarcastically.
“You better be, we’re coming for you.”
“We’re gonna make you pay for killing him!” Another soldier shouted at the speaker.
“Don’t think I can’t see you, your next….” There was a click as the P.A. system ended its message and the soldiers were left to wonder if they would survive.
A huge roar erupted from further down the corridor and the lights cut out, leaving the soldiers in pitch black darkness.
“These were some of the first of the Professor’s experiments, they’re very territorial and they love it when they find something that’s not supposed to be there.” The same chilling laugh erupted before the Captain sent a bullet into every surrounding speaker and it cut off halfway through.
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Professor Gerald was afraid. There were GUN soldiers on his station, his granddaughter was asleep in her room regardless, he had just let loose a practically invincible biotechnological weapon to his hallways and it had taken control of all defence of the ARK from the intruders. On top of that Shadow seemed to have unleashed several incredibly dangerous experiments to the lower levels and outside Maria’s room -presumably to protect her- and had somehow gotten them to obey him and take on a guard Dog mentality!
Then there was the fact that the four large troop transports in his hangar were carrying not only soldiers but battle Mechs, specialised tanks and explosives. They meant business.
“How did it ever come to this?” He asked himself as he took an otherwise ordinary USB drive and began to load it with new streams of code, before turning a monitor on and noting with something similar to pride in the method Shadow had used to repel the scout wave of GUN soldiers. New minds were so interesting in their problem solving abilities, and such things like morals weren‘t important to them.
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The creature loomed. Standing six feet tall it looked like a big lump of dimly glowing blue liquid with a helmet on. However boring it might have sounded described the lack of even basic humanoid made it terrifying up close.
“Fire at that thing!” The Captain shouted as he jumped over the blue tentacle aimed to spear his body. The soldiers crouch down and cocked their guns before firing full clips into the new threat out of pure terror at its form. The bullets flew directly into the soft blue, for lack of a better word, “torso” of the experiment and stopped dead in the centre of its body.
It growled and swung its tentacles around violently as the Captain gave the order to duck. The soldiers dropped to the floor immediately. However, the tentacles simply froze in mid air and changed direction in seconds before slamming down on the necks of two soldiers.
“Fire!!” The Captain shouted as it picked up the two screaming soldiers and held them high above. The others on the floor scrambled for their weapons and fired from the floor, a steady scream of bullets travelling up the creatures body. Still having no effect, the creature threw one soldier down onto the floor with bone-crunching force, leaving him lying there with blood leaking from crushed lungs through a mouth wide open in horror. The other soldier gasped for breath as the tentacle slowly tightened around his neck and he made last ditch thrashing motions before his spine splintered and the experiment threw his lifeless body at the soldiers.
Enraged the Captain dropped his gun and ran forward, surprising the monster enough that its normally pinpoint accurate tentacles were useless, and drove his foot into its main body. At the speed he’d been running it brought him up over the creature’s head and allowed the Captain to jam his combat knife into the back of the metal helmet.
It screamed and writhed around, its form disintegrating and the liquid burning purple as the Chaos energy contained within it was released.
For a while the Platoon lay there gasping for oxygen on the grey steel floor.
“You better not be watching this you sick bastard.” He choked out through his breathless lungs. His response was the same deep dark chuckle.
“I‘d be nimble, there are plenty more.” He couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from before he realised it was coming from all around them. The Captain slowly shone his torch around in the dark, not noticing his radio lying smashed on the floor.
“I am going to kill that mutant bastard if it’s the last thing I do.” One of the soldiers growled.
“You wish to harm my Maria, I will deal with you in any way I see fit.” The P.A. cut out and left them alone as the Captain’s torch reflected off of artificial green eyes above them and the soldiers began to see the soft blue glow in the darkness as the other experiments swung down from the ceiling and charge their lasers.
They were surrounded.
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The yawn came from the old worn single bed. Which looked as though it had been used for most of a young ones life (yet was kept because of the fondness a certain two people had for it) and even now held a young thin feminine form, draped in soft white silken sheets which wrapped around her body and would have made the girl in question blush had she seen how beautiful she looked from an outside perspective.
Soft blue eyes opened gingerly to face the new day and turned to her bedside clock. I slept in far too late. I shouldn’t stay up so late with Shadow. She yawned again and sat up before feeling a chill and wrapping her sheets back around her.
“Wow, its cold.” Maria looked around for Shadow and once she was sure he wasn’t around she jumped up for the en-suite bathroom with the covers wrapped tightly around her body. She knew she was being stupid about it, Shadow already knew every part of her frame yet she still insisted he didn’t see her at certain times. After a quick shower and another peek out of the door she dressed in a light blue dress and brushed her hair down.
The young female walked to her door, typed in the code to open it and came face to face with three inches of reinforced steel. For a while she simply stared at the metal in surprise and a raised eyebrow.
“That’s… unusual. I wonder what’s going on.” She decided to sit down at her computer and see if she could contact anyone.
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“Oh for Chaos’ sake. Its been too long. All they needed to do was scout and make sure there wasn’t any traps that could bother the battle mechs. I’m contacting them.”
“It has been too long sir, we should check their progress.” The Commander and his subordinate were sat in the control centre for the first GUN transport craft, and had been waiting far too long in their opinion.
“I plan to.” The Commander flicked a switch above him. “Captain, what is taking you so long? Report!” After waiting a while he decided to try another squad member “Private Hayes? Report!“ Now all he could hear was static and an odd rasping sound that sounded a little bit like… struggled breathing. “Is this on?”
Yes si-” He was interrupted as a frantic shouting suddenly came from the speakers.
“No! Get away from me you blue freak!” The breathing increased exponentially and they could hear similar piercing screams and begging in the background, presumably from the other members of the group. “GET OFF! AH-AAH!! ITS BURNING INTO MY LEGS!! STOP IT PLEASE, GOD GET IT OFF ME!!!” The rest was a horrible mix of whimpers, screams and intelligible begs for mercy together with a bubbling sound as a high powered laser melted the radio. Without even giving a chance for them to recover a new voice came over, confident and dark, yet almost cheery in an insane way.
“Can I assume I am speaking to the head of this operation?”
“Wha- yes, this is the Commander. Who are you? How did you get this frequency? What’s happening to those men??”
“Well Commander. First, I am Project Shadow, the Ultimate life form and unless you leave immediately - the tool of your destruction. Second, when you are directly linked with a space colony’s brain, jacking a simple radio signal is not difficult. Finally, those men are being ambushed by a group of creatures designated the code name P-1.”
“What kind of psychopathic creatures has the insane Professor created?” The Commander said mostly to himself.
“Its your fault, GUN ordered our creation. The P-1 series only has lasers because you wanted them.” Far from the calculating malice that the Project’s voice had contained only seconds before, it actually sounded confused for a second.
“Order the full compliment of troops to unload, they obviously have too strong defences for a scout team, we’ll just have to figure out which way to go without reconnaissance.”
“Yes sir.”
On the press of a button and a few shouts into a radio the transports were on high alert. They had already landed in hangar 3C as the first wave but immediately ordered the other crafts to travel around and break into other hangars. They would attack from all sides in a pincer movement, travel up from the lower levels and accomplish the mission.
“You won’t win, I promise you that.”
“We will accomplish our mission or die trying!”
“So be it. I am perfect, I cannot fail.” The voice said calmly before the radio was turned off. The Commander had no doubts that at that time the creature was already planning their next moves. The others on the colony were simply scientists and their family, yet even though it was only one Project against all of them he was still terrified of what could happen. They had heard the stories about the Professor’s creations. Creatures able to stop time, programmed to kill instantly without remorse or hesitation.
Immortal life.
“Deploy the Marines and inform them to search for the scouts, the Captain will be important in this. He understands this place too well.”
“Sir?”
“He was a resident.”
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Marine Units 2-10 moved quickly through the pitch black hallways, a group 80 strong all equipped with night vision goggles assigned to find the captain and wreak havoc inside the ARK. They had encountered the same resistance but had been prepared for their presence, if not their form. The Artificial Chaos stood no chance against a force that large. On the other end of the station, several large flying tanks were being deployed to blow holes through the colony upwards and ferry soldiers up to start firing on scientists, while even more were heading down and trying to cut the power.
Shadow had laughed at that when he saw them head for the main energy chamber, modelled after an ancient civilisation, and finally released his “big brother”. No where nearly as advanced, but very destructive. It was weak now, and there was a good possibility that enough of them could defeat it, but it would slow them down and kill many and that was the important thing.
The 8 Units quickly found the Captain surrounded by bodies of fallen comrades. Although the rest of them were covered in blood he was clean and looking PISSED.
In one hand was a standard regulation pistol, in the other a combat knife. The soldiers who had originally came to rescue HIM found themselves staring as the Captain screamed and thrust his knife into the skull of the nearest P-1. After that he jumped back and fired a number of bullets into the lasers that had been flying to him, not even resting to see them explode violently before going after another enemy. In less than ten minutes the Captain had taken command of the unit and they were heading through the underbelly of the station, pausing only to wait for the battle mechs.
The soldiers marched through section three firing at anything that moved be it P-1s, scientists come to check their shipments, or hangar staff with nothing to do with the experiments above. None were spared the slaughter and the trail of blood continued until the soldiers moved into one of the four main transport compartments.
The room was about half the size of a foot ball field and filed with screaming people trying to escape through either the lifts or the suction tubes. With a wave of his hand the Captain ordered a dozen Mech suits to stand beside him whilst the other soldiers lined the outside corridors and checked weapons. Terrifying in their unity of appearance.
The Mech suits were 10 foot tall, dark green with large GUN symbols painted on the chests. The GUN motto still, in the face of all appropriateness, printed beside it. “To Defend Humans Everywhere”. The Captain however, had no truck with mercy and immediately ordered the Mechs to fire as soon as they got the crowd in their sites. With a mechanical click a chain gun emerged from the chest of each walker Mech and the crowd turned slowly to watch as the silver-grey barrels began to span and screamed in unison as the armoured war machines swept death over them in seconds. Then they were silent.
The Captain ordered the men to split up and led the first wave into the lifts, leaving the rest to either see why the team attempting to knock out the power had not reported in, or simply wait in case heavier reinforcements were required to take the Colony.
One thing was certain, no matter what the defences, they would break through.
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Shadow wished more than anything right now that he knew more swear words than he had on EXTREMELY rare occasions, heard Maria say. The Hedgehog was unsure but he somehow felt that saying “Oh darn!” when a battalion of homicidal maniacs had just broken into your home and were now setting about efficiently slaughtering the populace was in some way… disproportional.
Still, no matter. Maria was safe for now and the Professor was hardly going to be harmed, even GUN knew they couldn’t afford to waste his genius, likely why they hadn’t just bombed the Colony and ran. As for the other members of the ARK, the soldiers could do what they liked to them no matter what his Father said. The Hedgehog may have been the Professors creation, but the good Professor had never really caught on to the fact that his Master Registration Program was set on Maria. And therefore, at least at the times she didn’t set any instructions, he had been essentially living by his own rules since he had been born.
Still… even tied into the vast mainframe of the ARK he was unsure of how to repel the invaders now they had succeeded in getting into the higher levels. He had been designed to scythe through armies, not plan their defeat. Even whilst he was aware that he had been designed to be intelligent he had little in the way of options. There was only one thing he could do, he would face them face to face. This Captain seems like a worthwhile opponent from the way he fended off the Artificial Chaos, but he cannot match me!
Shadow lifted from the ground slowly on his Jet shoes and sped out of the door.
-----------------------
“WHERE IS THE PROJECT!?!” The soldier screamed at the elderly terrified scientist. The man had just sat down at his desk and had been trying to figure out what was happening on the station when four armoured men had burst the door and pointed guns at him.
“Which one?!? We have hundreds!!” He screamed back whilst keeping his hands above his head, terrified of the weapons pointed at him. This was very bad, the Soldiers had invaded the ARK’s residential areas and that meant they most certainly controlled a good portion of the station. All that was left was the Higher Research levels and the ECLIPSE Core running through the centre of the station.
“WHICH DO YOU THINK?!” The soldier screamed and swung his rifle into the Scientist’s face. He fell to the ground, a frail person he was bleeding profusely onto the floor. Choking on his shattered teeth.
“You’ll never get away with this.” The Scientist laughed and coughed blood at the same time before collapsing. One of the masked soldiers brought his gun down and shot into the mans body, pointlessly, for he had already died of a heart attack a few seconds before.
“You know, were really supposed to get the answer before we… oh never mind. Next room! Move Soldiers!”
“Sir! Yes sir!” They chorused before running out to bust through another door. When they were gone, the squad leader radioed the Captain.
“Sir, my men are basically just killing the scientists before they give us answers…”
“Never mind, I already know where Project: Shadow will be before he even does. Let them have their fun.”
“You know that? How?”
“I lived here remember? I knew that monster in the first stages of his creation. We simply need to work our way through the stations residential areas until we find the one door that’s been locked down. Then he’ll fall right into our hands. Now go.”
“Yes sir!” The Squad leader answered, despite how puzzled he was. How does he know that? Is the Project that predictable?
----------------------------------
Shadow walked through the door that lead to Residential Sector 1’s access corridor and noted in a detached way the blood stains sprayed across the walls from bullets and the hideously deformed bodies covering the floors. Maria is in Sector 4, she will be safe from harm behind the lockdown door. Pity I didn’t think of locking down the other rooms. Who on Mobius is going to clean up all this mess when they’ve just killed all the cleaning staff? Oh well, I suppose they were only there because the Humans didn’t like robots cleaning their beds, silly really. Shadow shook his head of his wandering thoughts, he seemed to think a LOT more than he talked and needed to get back on track. His sensitive ears could even now hear the gunshots of soldiers working through their systematic genocide of the colony.
Shadow ran through the corridor quickly, sending the occasional glance at the stars outside the window. The Hedgehog’s footsteps beating on the floor were soon replaced by the almost silent hum of his Air Shoes activating. He could feel battle instincts awakening inside of him, programming and senses whose only purpose was to help him come up with even more inventive ways to kill and maim. He could smell the blood from the body of a meaningless Human all through the corridor and as he passed it he took in all the details in barely a glance, the man was propped up like a doll against the glass but still leaking blood from the many bullet wounds in his chest. Either the man had been very hard to kill or the soldiers had just been in the mood for overkill, as even with the dozens of holes in him someone had still seen fit to jam a shining steel knife through his eye and into his brain, allowing even more blood to leak down his face.
Shadow passed him in nanoseconds, continuously building up speed until he was going fast enough to punch through steel. Unsurprisingly, that was exactly what he was planning. Senses beyond a normal creature’s physiology could detect his prey in the next room. He could hear them breath, see their body heat. Smell the gunpowder! All done in less than a second.
He pinpointed the first of his prey through the rapidly approaching thick steel door and smiled to himself as he launched his body towards it and threw himself into a spin going approximately two hundred miles an hour. His spines tensing to the point they were razor sharp and spinning at two dozen rotations a second. The door was punched through with a high pitched buzz-saw sound and Shadow was left crouching in the middle of the room, quills a burning red from the friction as the surprised soldiers turned and made feeble attempts to grab their weaponry. Shadow brought his head up with demonic smirk and launched himself into the nearest soldier and landed directly on his chest, knocking the younger soldier’s helmet off. Before he could even react Shadow brought his teeth in on an instinct and bit into the soldiers neck, forcing the man to take a sharp breath. His eyes were wide as Shadow ripped the flesh from his neck with every sign of enjoyment, sending the blood flying across the floor with a wet splat.
Wasting no time Shadow launched himself from the mans bubbling soon-to-be corpse and sprang into another soldier, flipping in air just in time to deliver a kick to the soldiers helmet, shattering the protective glass and leaving his face as a gory mixture of glass and blood. A quick outward thrust of the hand through the mess stopped both the screaming, and the life in him.
Shadow landed on his feet, as only now did the two bodies drop to the floor with a wet thump.
“St…stay back, I’m warning you Pr…Project.” The remaining soldier stuttered and backed away with his gun pointed at the Hedgehog. Shadow let out a dark laugh that could have sent chills down a group of battle hardened warriors, let alone a single GUN grunt.
“But how will you fire if you don’t have any ammo?” Shadow asked mockingly.
“But I d-” Shadow brought his Emerald up in his hand. Without even bothering to say the command he stopped time in the room, rearranging the very fabric of the Universe for his own leisure. He strolled up to the soldier, frozen for an eternity if Shadow so wished. Shadow quickly stripped the soldier of all his ammunition, and finding it interesting, a small firearm also which he placed in his quills for further use. Acting on a new found sense of perverse mischief, he also decided to take all the pins out of his grenades.
Shadow returned to his original place, and a flash from the Emerald indicated time getting its head in the game and the several universal laws expressedly forbidding this kind of mucking about were allowed to go about their business relatively free of hassle.
“-o have ammo.”
“Check again.” The GUN Grunt looked down and found his gun was empty and all his spare clips were gone, he scrabbled away from the grinning Hedgehog as he turned to leave though the door marked “Residential Sector 1”.
Shadow didn’t look back and slapped his hand on the door close button as a huge explosion flooded the room behind him and the door’s relatively feeble metal groaned containing it.
“What a pathetically stupid creature.” Shadow dropped the grenade pins he had taken on the floor and burst into a run into the sector. Shadow cared nothing for the inhabitants, they were not Maria or the Professor and he could count the ones who interested him on one hand. However, whilst lives meant nothing to him, the general condition of the ARK did.
Shadow sprang on a soldier carrying explosives and wrestled him to the ground, the man looked up with grim determination but obvious fear. Before the demolitions expert could move, a thin but powerful metallic tentacle sprang around his neck and tightened almost too much for him to breath. His entire body shook with fear when he saw that the attacking tentacle was leading from the Hedgehog’s wrist.
“What are you planning on doing with those bombs?” Shadow growled.
“That’s classified, freak!” The soldier spat at him but before the liquid even touched Shadow a small lightning spark sprang from his skin and vaporized it.
“Wrong answer.” The tentacle extended in an instant and still weaving around his neck it sprang at the closest of his eyes. The explosives carrier flinched and squeezed his eyes shut in fear of the metallic snake that was about to strike at his most vulnerable area. However, the attack never came. Opening his eyes again he saw the end of the metallic attacker, dozens of separate spikes and attachments for different computers were flexing less than a few millimetres from his pupil.
“You have two choices. You either tell me or I insert this into your head and pull it out of your brain.”
“We’re blowing up a lockdown door in Sector four.” He shrieked.
“Good Boy.” Shadow smacked him across the face and knocked him out before grabbing his Chaos Emerald and teleporting the rest of the way, Maria might have been safe until now, but his adversaries now had explosives, and that the Captain was far too smart. He would save her and if possible come back for the Professor.
--------------------------
Maria couldn’t get anything out of the computer, it wasn’t making sense. It just spewed random code and errors, she had no way of knowing that by now soldiers had reached the computer room and began to tear it apart looking for vital information. Instead of this she chose to try a different approach and placed her ear to the door. Hoping the large amount of metal wouldn’t completely block off sound.
“Get re…..blow the door…. soon as the ……….. get h….”
“Who is that?”
“No use…explosive…. Interrupted, someone attacked….got a better idea.”
“Attacked?? What’s going on? I hope Shadow isn’t hurt..” Maria didn’t have any more time to follow this line of thinking as sparks erupted from the door near her face and she screamed, throwing herself backwards. She had seen enough of the construction areas to know that it was a blowtorch. Cutting through the door. She tried to regulate her frantic heartbeat but Maria was terrified, her door was locked down and someone was trying to force their way in! The next thing she heard both relieved and frightened her, it sounded as though someone had disturbed the person or people on the other side, there was shouting and then a couple of loud bumps as several large things hit the floor.
The next thing she knew the metallic plate of metal was drawn back and Shadow walked in smiling at her. She jumped at him and flung her arms around her smaller lover.
“Shadow! What’s going on? Who are those people?” She could even now see the GUN soldiers lying on the floor behind him, next to some non-functioning Chaos Prototypes. D-Did Shadow do that to them?
“They are attacking the colony. ” She hadn’t yet taken her arms from around his neck so he felt her grip tighten. She looked at him, face paler than ever her usual colour. “Maria, are you alright?” He asked in a more caring tone from the sold authorities one he had been using.
“Yes, I’m fine.” Shadow could feel her though, she was shaking from head to toe. He ran his hand down her hair and hugged her to him even more, before they released and Shadow turned back to his battle personality, complete with the dark face. Something she had only seen once before, when the Chaos creatures had escaped and he had tamed them. “We have to get to the escape pods, we can get down to Mobius from there!”
Shadow considered this, it was true, Maria’s treatment was almost complete and he could easily continue giving her it on Mobius. The Colony was lost, he knew. And she did always want to see Mobius, or Earth as a small amount of humans continue to call it.
“We shall leave this place Maria, but first you must take your treatment.” Maria nodded and ran to get some of her syringes from her one of her drawers. Shadow locked down the door again through the use of a small password into the otherwise useless computer, and waited until she was ready. She handed him one of the empty sterilised needles and looked away, always feeling slightly guilty and sick when they did this. Shadow took the syringe and without even thinking about it stabbed it into his own arm without even flinching, he began to draw out his own blood and retracted it.
“You shouldn’t feel so guilty about this Maria, you know this was the reason I was created, to help you.” She nodded, still looking away and feeling slightly sick, even after years of this happening.
Shadow took her delicate arm and lifted up the sleeve, revealing the powder white flesh. Before, with infinitely more care than he had given himself, he moved it into her arm and slowly injected the blood he had taken. As he took it out he smiled briefly, already seeing the effect it had on her as she grew stronger and a small amount of colour came back into her face. There was no need for a plaster, the cut healed instantly. However, the effects wouldn’t last for long.
“Take the rest of the syringes, we may not be able to find more for a while once we are down there.” She grabbed them and slipped them into a pocket.
“The nearest escape pods are in our observation room.”
“Lets go.” Shadow took her hand, opened the locked down door with one hand and the two ran out of the door.
----------------------------------
“Sir! The project has taken the woman inside the lockdown room and ran. We ” The random Private informed him.
“Alert all the men. Tell them to shoot to kill.” The Soldier saluted and walked off, turning his head slightly in confusion as the Captain whispered something.
“I am sorry… Maria.” He took out his pistol and headed for the Tube station, the equivalent of the ARK’s train terminal.
----------------------------------
The pair ran through the sectors in minutes, Shadow not even bothering to take down the GUN troops at first, finding dodging them by using alternate routes easier. However, as they neared the escape pods the soldiers began to get thicker and with heavier weaponry and Shadow knew they were following them. Finally he came to the long corridor that stretched around a good eighth of the ARK on its outermost circle.
“Maria, there shouldn’t be any more soldiers here, all that connects to this is the storerooms. You keep running and get to the pods as quickly as possible.” He let go off her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek.
“What about you?”
“I will deal with the soldiers following us.”
“By yourself?” Shadow didn’t answer.
“Promise me that you will keep on running. Get to the pod and save yourself.” Shadow looked at the girl standing in front of him, ever since the Professor had told him to fight the soldiers he had thought of nothing but killing them for his own sake. Sure, he may have given protecting Maria as a reason, but he knew that he had thought of nothing but proving that he was better than them. He had wanted to show them that their weapon was more powerful than they could ever control and that he truly was the Ultimate Lifeform.
Now he realised that he had been fighting using the Professors programming, using whatever advantage he could and killing without mercy or rules. I should be fighting for Maria, she is the reason I am here. I should fight because I wish to save her, not because I am programmed to be able to.
“I promise. And.. I love you.” She whispered to him.
“I will always treasure that. Go, Maria.” She nodded with a few tears running down her face and began to run down the corridor. Looking massively slow in Shadow’s eyes.
The Hedgehog turned to face the door he had entered through and walked back through it.
Soldiers had lined up in the next corridor, all their weapons pointed towards him. The clicks and clacks of reloading was all that could be heard. Shadow walked towards them, knowing impossible odds faced him and happy in the thought that his death would ensure Maria‘s life.
“Surrender! You cannot win.” One of them shouted towards the Hedgehog. Shadow looked up at them, and they saw his eyes, blood red. Defiance of anything and everything ever present. Whether it was from some sort of mass fear, or by battle plans in advance, or even by a sort of telepathy. Every weapon opened fire at that point. Bullets ricocheted off of the walls and floor, the ceiling crumbled, wires burst out of their places and small fires broke out as every gun in a twenty man task force fired in one vague direction. Shadow knew there was no way at all he could dodge. He had no chance.
The Professor said the Universe is mine to control, to twist and manipulate at my convenience. If this is so then I will reach out and make my will law!!
Shadow saw a hundred bullets fly towards him. He stood still, closed his eyes and let them come.
I will not let her down. That is my perfect world…
---------------------------
Maria heard the crackle of hundreds of gunshots going off at once behind her. She ran even faster. Desperate to fulfil her promise to Shadow, even if she didn’t want to. Her vision went blurry as she wept and the tears soaked into her dress.
She had left him to his doom. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t have done anything, she should have been with him. She should have given her life for him!!
Maria’s lungs hurt and her heart threatened to give out but she carried on running for his sake.
She passed through the door to the main observation room, tears running down her face, she stopped and stared at the new figure.
“What are you doing here??” The figure lifted its weapon and a gunshot rang out.
Maria screamed and was flung backwards. The figure began to walk slowly down another corridor.
--------------------------
Shadow stood still. His every emotion had gone and left him with only determination. The bullets fired into him but he felt nothing, they were only resistance as he began to walk forward.
They fired more. A small sound could be heard between the gunshots, like the noise of sand falling on metal.
Serving her is my purpose.
Shadow took the small pistol out of his quills, he loaded it. The soldiers all had him in their sights, the sound continued.
When I kill, it will be to protect her.
They began to worry. Shadow’s gun fired six times, six soldiers fell to the ground.
When I protect her I will not let any harm come to her.
He reloaded, and fired again. More soldiers fell, he kept on walking. The soldiers kept on firing. They hadn’t missed. Metallic dust trailed behind him.
This is my duty and this is my world!!
One soldier threw a grenade. It fell at the Hedgehog’s feet and exploded. The explosion did not effect him, the flames consumed him but he stood in their heart and continued.
As he came closer the soldiers could see now, as he stepped out of the flames. Shadow was covered entirely in energy, it glowed blue in the fire light and everything that touched it turned to dust. One of the soldiers screamed and ran at him, swinging his rifle like a club. It struck the glowing blue Hedgehog and the GUN member froze in fear.
First the black paint was shed, then the silver metal underneath grew dents and notches, its colour darkened, and gradually, it fell to pieces.
On the floor each piece shrivelled and broke and eventually. Nothing was left but a fine metallic dust.
One by one every soldier backed away, Shadow gestured his hands backwards and the trail of metallic dust leaped into the air. Ever so slowly each one of them began to glow red, then orange, then white. So white it was burning the soldiers retinas. The Hedgehog chuckled as he was silhouetted behind the impossibility. He was pulling heat out of thin air, more heat than metal was supposed to be subjected to. There was a flare as even the atmosphere around the metal caught alight, although it did not spread, and what was supposed to be metal turned to bright blue plasma.
“What? What are you doing?!” One of the soldiers shouted at him.
“I’m reaching out to the Universe, I am grabbing it by the throat, and for once…” Shadow talked quietly, and they had to strain to hear him. Then, he grinned evilly and his voice changed to a terrifying grow.
“..I’m the one giving instructions!!!!” In an instant the blue plasma changed to red and they were faced with the ultimate depiction of hell.
Shadow threw his hand violently in the task forces direction. The energy flew past him. The soldiers were gone, the corridor silent. It hadn’t even singed the walls.
Shadow’s fur lost its glow and he dropped to the floor on one knee gasping at the amount of power he’d been able to access with but a single Chaos Emerald that he wasn’t even sure had been doing anything.
Dragging him back to the present situation, Shadow heard a high pitched scream that chilled his blood and made his heart fall to the depths of his stomach. His head shot in the direction of the observation room with the escape pods.
“Maria!!!”
---------------------------- ----
Shadow ran into the observation room and stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the room. He tried to run to her but he couldn’t, he tried to call out to her but his mouth was dry. He tried to change this fact but his powers had left him, his earlier attacks had played a cruel trick on him.
He had needed them to make it here, yet he needed them here just so he hadn’t used them in vain.
She was leaning against a control module, hair falling gracefully over her back even now. The wound in her chest leaked crimson blood, contrasting eerily with the blue on her dress and her powdered white complexion. He frail legs weakly slipped for purchase pathetically on a floor slick with her own blood. She had been shot.
He could hear her struggling to breath, her lips trying to speak to him still though no words were finding him, whether by her inability to speak or the sudden deadening of all his senses he did not know. Her head turned his way, and the large blue eyes locked on him. She had tears in her eyes, the beautiful full orbs, for a moment her concentration on him broke and he saw her eyes flick to the control panel above her and before even he could react her hand shot up with inhuman speed and slammed on the escape pod release mechanism.
Shadow didn’t move, he didn’t have time as the carbon glass tube shot down on him. But as soon as it did he found every sense return in a roar, immediately he began slamming his fists onto the almost indestructible material. He could see his punches had no effect but he continued anyway.
10..
9..
8..
“Sh-Shadow.” All attention was on Maria’s words now. “I want you to promise me you’ll do something.” He was amazed he could hear her through the glass.
7..
6..
5..
“Anything Maria!”
4..
“Shadow, you must listen to me. The people of that planet are evil! They reap death and destruction wherever they go, please, destroy them and avenge me!” The effort of saying this was too much for her, and she collapsed down in exhaustion.
3..
2..
“As you wish.. Maria.” Shadow was planning on spending the last few precious seconds simply staring into her eyes. However, movement behind her drew his eye, someone had left a door open, another corridor that stretched deep into the ARK. Someone stood there, eyes open in shock at seeing him.
1..
Their eyes locked, and mortal enemies were made.
“If it takes a hundred years I will annihilate you.” Shadow said quietly.
“I don’t know how you survived but next time your mine Hedgehog.” The Captain said to himself.
0.
The pod shot into space, and for the first time Shadow felt his eyes grow damp as he hit again and again on the carbon glass and screamed her name.
He had never been so certain of things in his life, he would never let someone down again and he would keep his promise to Maria no matter what.
He would wait until the right moment, then Mobius would burn.
---------------------------
“Shadow? Wake up, we’re here.” Tails looked down on his mate from the isle worried, instead of the usual calm Shadow held when asleep he looked angrier than he did when he was awake. Tails had only ever seen him look like this awake a few times and that was usually in the middle of a fight.
Suddenly crimson red eyes shot open ad stared at him.
“Have we reached the city?” He asked sharply, making Tails jump slightly.
“Yes… Shadow? Are you ok?” Tails was worried about Shadow, he hoped the visit wasn’t going to make him mean or angry.
“I’m fine, lets go.” Tails walked to the exit and turned just in time to hear him whisper.
“Maria…”
All I can say is I’ve been reading a few other fics, and now I feel inadequate after reading Yamekanur’s fiction Sonic the Hedgehog. My advice to you, forget this crap and go read that. Its infinitely more emotional, funnier, and well written.
On top of that I had a lot of coursework to do and loads of homework, I also got distracted by a sexy woman. I mean, if you had the choice between writing a fic or talking to one of the most attractive woman youd ever seen would you really pick the fic? If so you’re a better author than me (or possibly gay/female).
Ok now for the proper notes, you’ll be happy to note my other fic will be updated soon after, cause I know exactly where that ones actually going ^^; plus its almost half done. Also, im looking to add a bit more romance into this thing later, cause at the moment its catering for a very specific crowd, the horny ones who want a little plot. And I think branching it out to a bit more romance couldn’t hurt I guess.
Oh, *insert generic beg for reviews here* to be honest I don’t fuckin care much anymore, this was only a practice fic and ive got my other one almost sorted in terms of plot. Plus my next will be a sci fi adventure, so whatever. Who knows, I may not even finish this..
(see that was review fishing)
Oh, and my Shadow in this fic is fucking insane ok?
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“Laugh it up Hedgehog!!”
“Oh I will!” Sonic could barely stand up from the intense giggling that was going through his system. Before him stood Princess Sally, properly dressed in what a Princess was supposed to wear. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good, the white regal dress was a beautifully crafted masterpiece that draped her in a delicate silken material. Covered in small gems and with a golden necklace around her neck that any monarch would be proud of.
But when you remembered who occupied the dress it suddenly became hilarious. The woman who walked around in muddied boots alone all day, the ultimate nudist, was wearing one of the most expensive dresses on the planet. The sheer irony was enough to make anyone smile.
Then there was the expression she had on her blushing face, in a class of its own somewhere between embarrassment and loathing, it was something Sonic would remember for the rest of his life.
“If you don’t stop laughing I am going to castrate you.” Sally would have walked over and hit him a few times but she was afraid of ripping the dress. First impressions were massively important in politics and she had to look regal to impress the Humans. It was the same reason she was using such an extravagant plane, appearance was everything. I’m supposed to be a Princess! Not a model! How am I supposed to move in these things anyway? They’re so.… constricting. As soon as I’ve made my appearance the dress comes off!!
Shadow was also part of that first impression, she hoped that by showing he was more or less under her control the Humans would know that she was not to be messed with. They were all pretty much terrified of him from what she could tell from the few complete files Nicole had managed to recover about him (mostly soldier reports, all the rest were to classified for her to get a hold of).
Sally knew that with a few hints on her part they would believe their secret weapon would do anything if she ordered him to. He wouldn‘t, he would likely do whatever he felt like, but that was how it would appear, the key word in these kinds of situations.
“Could you really catch me in that dress your Highness?” Sonic managed to get out between bouts of laughter.
“Hedgehog, I appreciate the humour involved at seeing the Princess wearing clothes for once, but you are… what’s the word? Ah yes, IN THE WAY!!!!” Sonic twisted to see his doppelganger standing behind him in the plane hatchway, frowning, easily carrying his and Tails’ bags with no effort at all. Behind him the other Mobians were all standing on the stairway all looking impatient.
“Keep your quills on Goth-boy, this is a historic moment!” He shot back to Sally’s continued growling. “We need to rec-” ZAT “OWWW!!.”
Sonic shouted and jumped out of the way holding his smoking back before running down the isle and into the galley, locating a cup of water and pouring it over himself.
“I warned you.” Shadow stopped the sparks coming from his hand and repositioned it under the mountain of bags.
-------------------------------
Shadow stared out of the window into the infinite majesty of space. Both beautiful and full, and bland and empty. It was here where he could think, about his life and about the planet below, looking so close but at the same time so unreachable. Shadow knew that he could easily travel there, but his love could not. And if she could not go, it wouldn’t be up to his expectations. They would go together, or he would not go at all.
“Shadow?” A girl walked in, barely 14 years old she was still maturing. Small breasts and a slender frail frame were being hidden by a pale blue dress in a style similar to a nurses. Although Shadow knew very well what was under that dress and enjoyed embarrassing his mate with small references when she tried so very hard to look prim and proper.
“Yes Maria?” He answered, turning and giving a small smile to his love. She was perfect to his eyes, although she had pale skin as a result of that terrible illness he thought it suited her in an odd way, although it may have just been the fact she was the template he had set for female Humans.
“What are you doing?”
“Just thinking, about that planet.”
“Just like always.” Maria chuckled and Shadow answered in a mischievous voice.
“Why Maria, not getting jealous of a planet are we? Don‘t worry, I prefer to look at you any day.” She blushed slightly, more from his tone than his words.
Maria had mixed feelings about their odd conversations and even their relationship occasionally. On the one hand she understood the fact that Shadow was a very proud and tough creature, that he found it difficult to just say I love you and he preferred to tiptoe around it with little bits of conversation or mischief like this one. Although he did have his romantic moments. But at the same time she wished he’d be a little bit more…emotional.
She knew what they were doing was wrong, but he didn’t care. She was practically his sister, his mother in the earlier days even. And definitely his cousin, if only by adoption. Yet he didn’t see it as relevant. She was sure it said in the bible somewhere not to do this. It probably said it numerous times!
“I’m not jealous of a planet. It’s a chunk of rock!” And their little conversation was complete. Within a few seconds she was sitting beside him being held by his strong arms as they both looked out onto Mobius. Listening to his steady heart beat through his fur and wondering what her Grandfather would have thought if he knew what his creation was like in his own time.
--------------
Shadow tapped his fingers repeatedly on the plane chair. He knew the princess wanted to make an impression with this plane but he could have gotten them there in nanoseconds in a flash of light! That would have been as good easily.
Shadow was extremely patient, he had waited fifty years for revenge and was not bothered about waiting a bit longer. But it annoyed him that for now, he couldn’t even talk with Tails because of the blue Hedgehog’s presence in the plane.
He was near the front of the plane directly behind Sally and Sonic, who were engaged in chat about things he didn’t understand or care for but was forced to hear. Something called “Lange-er-rey” popped up a few times though, with Sonic apparently very interested whilst Sally seemed to claim it was the “only type she liked”. What type of what he didn’t know or want to.
Tails was wondering around the plane, sometime talking to the pilot but mostly seemed to be talking to the cyborg in the back, (who’s boyfriend had long ago fallen asleep).
---------
Tails finally got up the courage to ask, after walking up and down and making tiny tiny hints to the always sexual Rabbit. He had been thinking ever since he and Shadow had had their private time and needed her help.
“Bunnie, could I ask you about something?”
“Sure Foxy, I’m not busy like I should be!!.” The last part she aimed at her sleeping boyfriend.
“I’m sorry Bunnie.”
“It’s ok Tails, once he goes to sleep he just sleeps, an’ planes always get him. I should be joining the mile high club about now. What d’ya need?”
“Advice.”
“Huh? On what?”
“How to please a guy?” He asked quietly but was relieved when she didn‘t even sound shocked.
“Well you’re one aren’t you? Why do you need it so bad?”
“Well, Shadow gave me a really… good ur… thing. And I don’t think I can really repay him.” Tails was blushing brightly through his fur but knew Bunnie could (and likely would) help. She was more like his big sister than his Aunt and although she teased him, she also cared about him.
“Well you cou-”
“Nothing perverted!” Tails interrupted, hoping Sonic hadn’t heard.
“Damn, you saw through my clever plan.” The Rabbit huffed. “Oh well, sit down Tails and I’ll give you some tips on how to act as well as what to do...” If she had been a cat, Tails was sure she would have purred.
-------------------
They were getting closer to the Human colonies, flying over miles of forest and bombed out cities too worthless for even Robotnik to convert to his side, Shadow could practically feel the Humans and somehow knew this time it would be different. He had two emeralds, he knew the territory and his body flowed with a new energy. No more hiding or running from the Humans, he would face them head on and emerge victorious. The Hedgehog grinned evilly as he planned out GUN’s destruction and brought his fingers together in a classically villainous pose.
The more he thought about it the more he lusted for their destruction. Of all the things he would do to those who had taken his precious Maria away from him. His only friend! His love! Shadow’s entire frame went tense and splitting pain jabbed into his brain, he closed his eyes tightly and then heard it. The voice.
“Project Shadow, my son, my greatest creation. Do not be alarmed, I programmed this message in before you were frozen.”
It spoke on top of everything else and he looked around to see no one else phased by the sounds he was hearing.
And then Shadow remembered, he actually did. The Professor HAD reprogrammed him, his suspicions had been correct. It had taken but a few seconds to do it, he hadn’t even bothered with the dozens of codes. No, he had done something else…
“There is not much time Shadow, I have programmed this message to be played only when you were sure of your plans and of your resources. To remind you of what was done to you and what you must do.”
What had the Professor done to bypass those passwords? He needed to know to stop anyone else from copying him. And what did he mean “remind” him? As if he had forgotten!
“Shadow, you must fulfil the last wish of Maria and I both. You must be my tool of retribution upon the enemies who even now believe they have finally defeated me, who even now plan my execution for high treason against the colonies.”
Shadow knew the Professor had been murdered, he remembered it. He had been forced to watch over a video feed. He had been tied to a chair and shot.
“Shadow, you have likely already reached the conclusion that you must use our home the ARK to obliterate that pathetic planet of all life. Collect the Chaos Emeralds and insert them into the ECLIPSE Cannon, then charge it up and crash the entire colony into the planet. No one on it deserves to live. Man or Mobian, they are both sinful. Fulfil your promise to Maria.”
Tails wasn’t sinful. He couldn’t kill him, or destroy his home. The Professor hadn’t just forgotten about the other species in his rage, as Shadow had managed to half-convince himself, he wanted the planet obliterated indiscriminately. Shadow couldn’t do that! Well… he could. Very easily, but he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to! But his promise to Maria bound him. And yet, he loved them both, he couldn’t kill Tails any more than he could Maria.
“This is to remind you Shadow, your resolve must be absolute.”
“Remind me? What is he talking… a-about…” Shadow’s sentence was cut off as he drifted into his forced sleep.
“Stupid psycho talking to himself.” Sonic muttered.
----------------
Space Colony ARK: 50 years ago
“Shadow, you have always asked if you had a purpose apart from living forever. To follow the instincts I gave you and be even more than the Ultimate life form.” Professor Gerald stared sadly out of one of the many windows on the ARK. Slowly, large grey rectangular shapes were approaching. GUN’s primitive troop transports were gradually getting larger and larger in his view, and Shadow turned to watch them in curiosity as the ARK’s gun turrets should have automatically destroyed them as soon as they came within 20 miles of the station. Obviously it had failed.
“Yes Professor, you always said that I had a another purpose, one that would be revealed to me one day.” The old scientist turned to him and the young Hedgehog could see the tears in his eyes.
“This is that day. Take this.” The Professor handed him a bracelet, not unlike his current ones except it was a grey metal and had an odd device on it. “Do not ask about it or put it on, it is simply a precaution. You should also have this.” This time he brought out a Chaos Emerald from a pocket, it glowed green briefly and Shadow clutched it to him, feeling the energy that had been previously restricted to his training sessions.”
“Professor, what is your wish?”
“Shadow, as you may have suspected, you are a weapon. That is the higher purpose I created you for and that is your reason for being. You must kill anyone who would threaten our home.” Gerald searched for a reaction in the Hedgehog‘s face, barely six years in age although twenty in appearance, but was surprised when his expression did not change.
“I am a weapon.” Shadow searched his pre-programmed memory, hoping to find something to extend this explanation of his purpose. “I am an instrument of attack or defence designed to inflict harm or death on another party. ”
“Most elegantly put my son. You must have noticed all the abilities I gave you, and how we were training you.” Shadow nodded, although he had long suspected himself to be designed for fighting, and a lot of the colony even said he was, Maria had always said otherwise. Leaving him confused. No doubt the numerous combat techniques and disciplines were meant to destroy his father’s enemies.
“I created you, like all my other projects, for the military. But they are afraid of you, they wish to kill us all Shadow. You, me, Maria, everyone on the station to try and ensure your full powers are never unlocked. You must stop them by any means, and if you are incapable of this then I trust you to get Maria off of the Colony.” Shadow nodded as the station rocked with the explosions being used to force open the hangar doors. “Remember who you are my son, Project Shadow. The search for the Ultimate life form. You are superior to all, only you can decide what is right, only you know best. And if you learn anything from me, let it be the one idea that I have followed my whole life and use it to focus your power. Fate is cruel and random, to get what you want, you must reach out and twist it into your own path. The Universe is yours to control, to twist and manipulate at your convenience.”
Shadow bowed to his creator and turned away. He created the ARK, he created immortal life. In his perfect world he had those, in his world he made it so. I shall do the same.
“Your will shall be done Professor!” With that Shadow charged up the emerald and attempted one of the simplest of his powers. “Chaos Control!” Gerald didn’t even avert his eyes as the huge charge of energy lit up the room, waves of energy being drawn into the emerald before it flared brightly and his weapon disappeared.
“Shadow… that is your Ultimate Power.” He whispered to himself.
--------------------------
The Hedgehog reappeared inside the Control room, the nerve centre for all operations in his home. All around him glowing green computers towered up to the ceiling high above, and flashing lights alerted to the ships intruding into his home. Overhead the limited artificial intelligence was worrying aloud.
THE INTRUDERS HAVE PENETRATED PRIMARY DEFENCES. NUMBERS ARE ESTIMATED AT A STRIKE FORCE OF AROUND FOUR HUNDRED. CHANCES OF REPELLING INTRUDERS ARE RATED AT TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT.
The Hedgehog smirked at the low odds, he had orders to protect the station and he would do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Anyone who wished to harm his love would be severely punished.
He approached a glowing blue terminal built into the biggest of all the computers. Searching momentarily for the access points and allowing the two winding metallic cables to emerge from his wrists and adjusted their attachments to enter into two separate holes.
This was his home mainframe, he knew it inside out. In seconds security systems were activated, safety protocols that normally stopped dangerous conditions inside the ARK were disabled, the P.A. system was turned on and Shadow set up a direct video link to Maria‘s quarters. She was asleep inside and Shadow took this opportunity to lock blast doors around her and order some old friends to guard her. That done he turned his attention to the soldiers.
He had quite an ordeal in store for them.
------------------
The first contingent of soldiers made their way through the bright lighted corridors. There was 15 of them in total, each made identical by their fully black battle armour and shielded helmets. Behind them, the entire staff for cargo hangar 3C lay slaughtered, their blood being cleaned up by the robots who were puzzled by their master’s sudden wish to lye motionless and leak all over the floor in the most peculiar positions.
“This is Alpha team moving in, we have dispatched the cargo staff and have met minimal resistance. Please respond Control.”
“This is Control, proceed with caution. The project is not to be underestimated and the traitor may have more experiments that we do not know about. Clear the way into the main areas so that we can send in more soldiers and artillery.”
“Understood. This way men!”
The Captain lead his troop through the ARK, expecting no resistance. The hallways were grey and every so often there was a computer terminal built into the wall, every one of them displaying lines of code continuously being written or giving messages. They ran steadily through the different sections until the Captain halted them, hearing a crackling in the air coming from several speakers.
“This is Project Shadow speaking, to all residents of ARK, GUN forces are invading and have overtaken the Hangars. You are advised to lock yourselves in secure areas.”
“Damn it they know we’re here! Private Brown!” An otherwise indistinguishable soldier stepped out from the group with a toolbox.
“Yes sir?”
“Find a way to disable those speakers will you?” The soldier saluted before running to a terminal. There was a bang as Private Brown fired his pistol a half dozen times into the computer and pulled the cover off, revealing the mishmash of circuitry beneath and exposing the inner workings of the ARK to his tools.
“Oh I wouldn’t do that.” The voice suggested mysteriously as they realised he could hear them. However the Private ignored him and kept prying into the wires with his clippers and solders.
“Shut up! Surrender now or be destroyed Project.” His answer was a deep chilling laugh that sent chills down the soldier’s backs, made all the more terrifying by the echoing qualities of the speakers.
“Why should I do that? I’m always short of entertainment here, I’m planning on us having some fun before I leave.” The voice turned darker suddenly. “And I wasn’t joking when I said don’t do that.” The entire group of soldiers had to shield their eyes when a bright light erupted from the circuitry that the Private had been working on followed by a loud high pitched scream and a dull thump. “Too late.”
“Brown?” The Captain didn’t need or want to turn around, he could already smell the sickening stench of burning Human flesh. “God dammit. You’ll pay for that.”
“I’m terrified.” The voice said sarcastically.
“You better be, we’re coming for you.”
“We’re gonna make you pay for killing him!” Another soldier shouted at the speaker.
“Don’t think I can’t see you, your next….” There was a click as the P.A. system ended its message and the soldiers were left to wonder if they would survive.
A huge roar erupted from further down the corridor and the lights cut out, leaving the soldiers in pitch black darkness.
“These were some of the first of the Professor’s experiments, they’re very territorial and they love it when they find something that’s not supposed to be there.” The same chilling laugh erupted before the Captain sent a bullet into every surrounding speaker and it cut off halfway through.
-------------------
Professor Gerald was afraid. There were GUN soldiers on his station, his granddaughter was asleep in her room regardless, he had just let loose a practically invincible biotechnological weapon to his hallways and it had taken control of all defence of the ARK from the intruders. On top of that Shadow seemed to have unleashed several incredibly dangerous experiments to the lower levels and outside Maria’s room -presumably to protect her- and had somehow gotten them to obey him and take on a guard Dog mentality!
Then there was the fact that the four large troop transports in his hangar were carrying not only soldiers but battle Mechs, specialised tanks and explosives. They meant business.
“How did it ever come to this?” He asked himself as he took an otherwise ordinary USB drive and began to load it with new streams of code, before turning a monitor on and noting with something similar to pride in the method Shadow had used to repel the scout wave of GUN soldiers. New minds were so interesting in their problem solving abilities, and such things like morals weren‘t important to them.
----------------------
The creature loomed. Standing six feet tall it looked like a big lump of dimly glowing blue liquid with a helmet on. However boring it might have sounded described the lack of even basic humanoid made it terrifying up close.
“Fire at that thing!” The Captain shouted as he jumped over the blue tentacle aimed to spear his body. The soldiers crouch down and cocked their guns before firing full clips into the new threat out of pure terror at its form. The bullets flew directly into the soft blue, for lack of a better word, “torso” of the experiment and stopped dead in the centre of its body.
It growled and swung its tentacles around violently as the Captain gave the order to duck. The soldiers dropped to the floor immediately. However, the tentacles simply froze in mid air and changed direction in seconds before slamming down on the necks of two soldiers.
“Fire!!” The Captain shouted as it picked up the two screaming soldiers and held them high above. The others on the floor scrambled for their weapons and fired from the floor, a steady scream of bullets travelling up the creatures body. Still having no effect, the creature threw one soldier down onto the floor with bone-crunching force, leaving him lying there with blood leaking from crushed lungs through a mouth wide open in horror. The other soldier gasped for breath as the tentacle slowly tightened around his neck and he made last ditch thrashing motions before his spine splintered and the experiment threw his lifeless body at the soldiers.
Enraged the Captain dropped his gun and ran forward, surprising the monster enough that its normally pinpoint accurate tentacles were useless, and drove his foot into its main body. At the speed he’d been running it brought him up over the creature’s head and allowed the Captain to jam his combat knife into the back of the metal helmet.
It screamed and writhed around, its form disintegrating and the liquid burning purple as the Chaos energy contained within it was released.
For a while the Platoon lay there gasping for oxygen on the grey steel floor.
“You better not be watching this you sick bastard.” He choked out through his breathless lungs. His response was the same deep dark chuckle.
“I‘d be nimble, there are plenty more.” He couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from before he realised it was coming from all around them. The Captain slowly shone his torch around in the dark, not noticing his radio lying smashed on the floor.
“I am going to kill that mutant bastard if it’s the last thing I do.” One of the soldiers growled.
“You wish to harm my Maria, I will deal with you in any way I see fit.” The P.A. cut out and left them alone as the Captain’s torch reflected off of artificial green eyes above them and the soldiers began to see the soft blue glow in the darkness as the other experiments swung down from the ceiling and charge their lasers.
They were surrounded.
---------------------
The yawn came from the old worn single bed. Which looked as though it had been used for most of a young ones life (yet was kept because of the fondness a certain two people had for it) and even now held a young thin feminine form, draped in soft white silken sheets which wrapped around her body and would have made the girl in question blush had she seen how beautiful she looked from an outside perspective.
Soft blue eyes opened gingerly to face the new day and turned to her bedside clock. I slept in far too late. I shouldn’t stay up so late with Shadow. She yawned again and sat up before feeling a chill and wrapping her sheets back around her.
“Wow, its cold.” Maria looked around for Shadow and once she was sure he wasn’t around she jumped up for the en-suite bathroom with the covers wrapped tightly around her body. She knew she was being stupid about it, Shadow already knew every part of her frame yet she still insisted he didn’t see her at certain times. After a quick shower and another peek out of the door she dressed in a light blue dress and brushed her hair down.
The young female walked to her door, typed in the code to open it and came face to face with three inches of reinforced steel. For a while she simply stared at the metal in surprise and a raised eyebrow.
“That’s… unusual. I wonder what’s going on.” She decided to sit down at her computer and see if she could contact anyone.
------------------------
“Oh for Chaos’ sake. Its been too long. All they needed to do was scout and make sure there wasn’t any traps that could bother the battle mechs. I’m contacting them.”
“It has been too long sir, we should check their progress.” The Commander and his subordinate were sat in the control centre for the first GUN transport craft, and had been waiting far too long in their opinion.
“I plan to.” The Commander flicked a switch above him. “Captain, what is taking you so long? Report!” After waiting a while he decided to try another squad member “Private Hayes? Report!“ Now all he could hear was static and an odd rasping sound that sounded a little bit like… struggled breathing. “Is this on?”
Yes si-” He was interrupted as a frantic shouting suddenly came from the speakers.
“No! Get away from me you blue freak!” The breathing increased exponentially and they could hear similar piercing screams and begging in the background, presumably from the other members of the group. “GET OFF! AH-AAH!! ITS BURNING INTO MY LEGS!! STOP IT PLEASE, GOD GET IT OFF ME!!!” The rest was a horrible mix of whimpers, screams and intelligible begs for mercy together with a bubbling sound as a high powered laser melted the radio. Without even giving a chance for them to recover a new voice came over, confident and dark, yet almost cheery in an insane way.
“Can I assume I am speaking to the head of this operation?”
“Wha- yes, this is the Commander. Who are you? How did you get this frequency? What’s happening to those men??”
“Well Commander. First, I am Project Shadow, the Ultimate life form and unless you leave immediately - the tool of your destruction. Second, when you are directly linked with a space colony’s brain, jacking a simple radio signal is not difficult. Finally, those men are being ambushed by a group of creatures designated the code name P-1.”
“What kind of psychopathic creatures has the insane Professor created?” The Commander said mostly to himself.
“Its your fault, GUN ordered our creation. The P-1 series only has lasers because you wanted them.” Far from the calculating malice that the Project’s voice had contained only seconds before, it actually sounded confused for a second.
“Order the full compliment of troops to unload, they obviously have too strong defences for a scout team, we’ll just have to figure out which way to go without reconnaissance.”
“Yes sir.”
On the press of a button and a few shouts into a radio the transports were on high alert. They had already landed in hangar 3C as the first wave but immediately ordered the other crafts to travel around and break into other hangars. They would attack from all sides in a pincer movement, travel up from the lower levels and accomplish the mission.
“You won’t win, I promise you that.”
“We will accomplish our mission or die trying!”
“So be it. I am perfect, I cannot fail.” The voice said calmly before the radio was turned off. The Commander had no doubts that at that time the creature was already planning their next moves. The others on the colony were simply scientists and their family, yet even though it was only one Project against all of them he was still terrified of what could happen. They had heard the stories about the Professor’s creations. Creatures able to stop time, programmed to kill instantly without remorse or hesitation.
Immortal life.
“Deploy the Marines and inform them to search for the scouts, the Captain will be important in this. He understands this place too well.”
“Sir?”
“He was a resident.”
--------------------------------
Marine Units 2-10 moved quickly through the pitch black hallways, a group 80 strong all equipped with night vision goggles assigned to find the captain and wreak havoc inside the ARK. They had encountered the same resistance but had been prepared for their presence, if not their form. The Artificial Chaos stood no chance against a force that large. On the other end of the station, several large flying tanks were being deployed to blow holes through the colony upwards and ferry soldiers up to start firing on scientists, while even more were heading down and trying to cut the power.
Shadow had laughed at that when he saw them head for the main energy chamber, modelled after an ancient civilisation, and finally released his “big brother”. No where nearly as advanced, but very destructive. It was weak now, and there was a good possibility that enough of them could defeat it, but it would slow them down and kill many and that was the important thing.
The 8 Units quickly found the Captain surrounded by bodies of fallen comrades. Although the rest of them were covered in blood he was clean and looking PISSED.
In one hand was a standard regulation pistol, in the other a combat knife. The soldiers who had originally came to rescue HIM found themselves staring as the Captain screamed and thrust his knife into the skull of the nearest P-1. After that he jumped back and fired a number of bullets into the lasers that had been flying to him, not even resting to see them explode violently before going after another enemy. In less than ten minutes the Captain had taken command of the unit and they were heading through the underbelly of the station, pausing only to wait for the battle mechs.
The soldiers marched through section three firing at anything that moved be it P-1s, scientists come to check their shipments, or hangar staff with nothing to do with the experiments above. None were spared the slaughter and the trail of blood continued until the soldiers moved into one of the four main transport compartments.
The room was about half the size of a foot ball field and filed with screaming people trying to escape through either the lifts or the suction tubes. With a wave of his hand the Captain ordered a dozen Mech suits to stand beside him whilst the other soldiers lined the outside corridors and checked weapons. Terrifying in their unity of appearance.
The Mech suits were 10 foot tall, dark green with large GUN symbols painted on the chests. The GUN motto still, in the face of all appropriateness, printed beside it. “To Defend Humans Everywhere”. The Captain however, had no truck with mercy and immediately ordered the Mechs to fire as soon as they got the crowd in their sites. With a mechanical click a chain gun emerged from the chest of each walker Mech and the crowd turned slowly to watch as the silver-grey barrels began to span and screamed in unison as the armoured war machines swept death over them in seconds. Then they were silent.
The Captain ordered the men to split up and led the first wave into the lifts, leaving the rest to either see why the team attempting to knock out the power had not reported in, or simply wait in case heavier reinforcements were required to take the Colony.
One thing was certain, no matter what the defences, they would break through.
-----------------------------
Shadow wished more than anything right now that he knew more swear words than he had on EXTREMELY rare occasions, heard Maria say. The Hedgehog was unsure but he somehow felt that saying “Oh darn!” when a battalion of homicidal maniacs had just broken into your home and were now setting about efficiently slaughtering the populace was in some way… disproportional.
Still, no matter. Maria was safe for now and the Professor was hardly going to be harmed, even GUN knew they couldn’t afford to waste his genius, likely why they hadn’t just bombed the Colony and ran. As for the other members of the ARK, the soldiers could do what they liked to them no matter what his Father said. The Hedgehog may have been the Professors creation, but the good Professor had never really caught on to the fact that his Master Registration Program was set on Maria. And therefore, at least at the times she didn’t set any instructions, he had been essentially living by his own rules since he had been born.
Still… even tied into the vast mainframe of the ARK he was unsure of how to repel the invaders now they had succeeded in getting into the higher levels. He had been designed to scythe through armies, not plan their defeat. Even whilst he was aware that he had been designed to be intelligent he had little in the way of options. There was only one thing he could do, he would face them face to face. This Captain seems like a worthwhile opponent from the way he fended off the Artificial Chaos, but he cannot match me!
Shadow lifted from the ground slowly on his Jet shoes and sped out of the door.
-----------------------
“WHERE IS THE PROJECT!?!” The soldier screamed at the elderly terrified scientist. The man had just sat down at his desk and had been trying to figure out what was happening on the station when four armoured men had burst the door and pointed guns at him.
“Which one?!? We have hundreds!!” He screamed back whilst keeping his hands above his head, terrified of the weapons pointed at him. This was very bad, the Soldiers had invaded the ARK’s residential areas and that meant they most certainly controlled a good portion of the station. All that was left was the Higher Research levels and the ECLIPSE Core running through the centre of the station.
“WHICH DO YOU THINK?!” The soldier screamed and swung his rifle into the Scientist’s face. He fell to the ground, a frail person he was bleeding profusely onto the floor. Choking on his shattered teeth.
“You’ll never get away with this.” The Scientist laughed and coughed blood at the same time before collapsing. One of the masked soldiers brought his gun down and shot into the mans body, pointlessly, for he had already died of a heart attack a few seconds before.
“You know, were really supposed to get the answer before we… oh never mind. Next room! Move Soldiers!”
“Sir! Yes sir!” They chorused before running out to bust through another door. When they were gone, the squad leader radioed the Captain.
“Sir, my men are basically just killing the scientists before they give us answers…”
“Never mind, I already know where Project: Shadow will be before he even does. Let them have their fun.”
“You know that? How?”
“I lived here remember? I knew that monster in the first stages of his creation. We simply need to work our way through the stations residential areas until we find the one door that’s been locked down. Then he’ll fall right into our hands. Now go.”
“Yes sir!” The Squad leader answered, despite how puzzled he was. How does he know that? Is the Project that predictable?
----------------------------------
Shadow walked through the door that lead to Residential Sector 1’s access corridor and noted in a detached way the blood stains sprayed across the walls from bullets and the hideously deformed bodies covering the floors. Maria is in Sector 4, she will be safe from harm behind the lockdown door. Pity I didn’t think of locking down the other rooms. Who on Mobius is going to clean up all this mess when they’ve just killed all the cleaning staff? Oh well, I suppose they were only there because the Humans didn’t like robots cleaning their beds, silly really. Shadow shook his head of his wandering thoughts, he seemed to think a LOT more than he talked and needed to get back on track. His sensitive ears could even now hear the gunshots of soldiers working through their systematic genocide of the colony.
Shadow ran through the corridor quickly, sending the occasional glance at the stars outside the window. The Hedgehog’s footsteps beating on the floor were soon replaced by the almost silent hum of his Air Shoes activating. He could feel battle instincts awakening inside of him, programming and senses whose only purpose was to help him come up with even more inventive ways to kill and maim. He could smell the blood from the body of a meaningless Human all through the corridor and as he passed it he took in all the details in barely a glance, the man was propped up like a doll against the glass but still leaking blood from the many bullet wounds in his chest. Either the man had been very hard to kill or the soldiers had just been in the mood for overkill, as even with the dozens of holes in him someone had still seen fit to jam a shining steel knife through his eye and into his brain, allowing even more blood to leak down his face.
Shadow passed him in nanoseconds, continuously building up speed until he was going fast enough to punch through steel. Unsurprisingly, that was exactly what he was planning. Senses beyond a normal creature’s physiology could detect his prey in the next room. He could hear them breath, see their body heat. Smell the gunpowder! All done in less than a second.
He pinpointed the first of his prey through the rapidly approaching thick steel door and smiled to himself as he launched his body towards it and threw himself into a spin going approximately two hundred miles an hour. His spines tensing to the point they were razor sharp and spinning at two dozen rotations a second. The door was punched through with a high pitched buzz-saw sound and Shadow was left crouching in the middle of the room, quills a burning red from the friction as the surprised soldiers turned and made feeble attempts to grab their weaponry. Shadow brought his head up with demonic smirk and launched himself into the nearest soldier and landed directly on his chest, knocking the younger soldier’s helmet off. Before he could even react Shadow brought his teeth in on an instinct and bit into the soldiers neck, forcing the man to take a sharp breath. His eyes were wide as Shadow ripped the flesh from his neck with every sign of enjoyment, sending the blood flying across the floor with a wet splat.
Wasting no time Shadow launched himself from the mans bubbling soon-to-be corpse and sprang into another soldier, flipping in air just in time to deliver a kick to the soldiers helmet, shattering the protective glass and leaving his face as a gory mixture of glass and blood. A quick outward thrust of the hand through the mess stopped both the screaming, and the life in him.
Shadow landed on his feet, as only now did the two bodies drop to the floor with a wet thump.
“St…stay back, I’m warning you Pr…Project.” The remaining soldier stuttered and backed away with his gun pointed at the Hedgehog. Shadow let out a dark laugh that could have sent chills down a group of battle hardened warriors, let alone a single GUN grunt.
“But how will you fire if you don’t have any ammo?” Shadow asked mockingly.
“But I d-” Shadow brought his Emerald up in his hand. Without even bothering to say the command he stopped time in the room, rearranging the very fabric of the Universe for his own leisure. He strolled up to the soldier, frozen for an eternity if Shadow so wished. Shadow quickly stripped the soldier of all his ammunition, and finding it interesting, a small firearm also which he placed in his quills for further use. Acting on a new found sense of perverse mischief, he also decided to take all the pins out of his grenades.
Shadow returned to his original place, and a flash from the Emerald indicated time getting its head in the game and the several universal laws expressedly forbidding this kind of mucking about were allowed to go about their business relatively free of hassle.
“-o have ammo.”
“Check again.” The GUN Grunt looked down and found his gun was empty and all his spare clips were gone, he scrabbled away from the grinning Hedgehog as he turned to leave though the door marked “Residential Sector 1”.
Shadow didn’t look back and slapped his hand on the door close button as a huge explosion flooded the room behind him and the door’s relatively feeble metal groaned containing it.
“What a pathetically stupid creature.” Shadow dropped the grenade pins he had taken on the floor and burst into a run into the sector. Shadow cared nothing for the inhabitants, they were not Maria or the Professor and he could count the ones who interested him on one hand. However, whilst lives meant nothing to him, the general condition of the ARK did.
Shadow sprang on a soldier carrying explosives and wrestled him to the ground, the man looked up with grim determination but obvious fear. Before the demolitions expert could move, a thin but powerful metallic tentacle sprang around his neck and tightened almost too much for him to breath. His entire body shook with fear when he saw that the attacking tentacle was leading from the Hedgehog’s wrist.
“What are you planning on doing with those bombs?” Shadow growled.
“That’s classified, freak!” The soldier spat at him but before the liquid even touched Shadow a small lightning spark sprang from his skin and vaporized it.
“Wrong answer.” The tentacle extended in an instant and still weaving around his neck it sprang at the closest of his eyes. The explosives carrier flinched and squeezed his eyes shut in fear of the metallic snake that was about to strike at his most vulnerable area. However, the attack never came. Opening his eyes again he saw the end of the metallic attacker, dozens of separate spikes and attachments for different computers were flexing less than a few millimetres from his pupil.
“You have two choices. You either tell me or I insert this into your head and pull it out of your brain.”
“We’re blowing up a lockdown door in Sector four.” He shrieked.
“Good Boy.” Shadow smacked him across the face and knocked him out before grabbing his Chaos Emerald and teleporting the rest of the way, Maria might have been safe until now, but his adversaries now had explosives, and that the Captain was far too smart. He would save her and if possible come back for the Professor.
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Maria couldn’t get anything out of the computer, it wasn’t making sense. It just spewed random code and errors, she had no way of knowing that by now soldiers had reached the computer room and began to tear it apart looking for vital information. Instead of this she chose to try a different approach and placed her ear to the door. Hoping the large amount of metal wouldn’t completely block off sound.
“Get re…..blow the door…. soon as the ……….. get h….”
“Who is that?”
“No use…explosive…. Interrupted, someone attacked….got a better idea.”
“Attacked?? What’s going on? I hope Shadow isn’t hurt..” Maria didn’t have any more time to follow this line of thinking as sparks erupted from the door near her face and she screamed, throwing herself backwards. She had seen enough of the construction areas to know that it was a blowtorch. Cutting through the door. She tried to regulate her frantic heartbeat but Maria was terrified, her door was locked down and someone was trying to force their way in! The next thing she heard both relieved and frightened her, it sounded as though someone had disturbed the person or people on the other side, there was shouting and then a couple of loud bumps as several large things hit the floor.
The next thing she knew the metallic plate of metal was drawn back and Shadow walked in smiling at her. She jumped at him and flung her arms around her smaller lover.
“Shadow! What’s going on? Who are those people?” She could even now see the GUN soldiers lying on the floor behind him, next to some non-functioning Chaos Prototypes. D-Did Shadow do that to them?
“They are attacking the colony. ” She hadn’t yet taken her arms from around his neck so he felt her grip tighten. She looked at him, face paler than ever her usual colour. “Maria, are you alright?” He asked in a more caring tone from the sold authorities one he had been using.
“Yes, I’m fine.” Shadow could feel her though, she was shaking from head to toe. He ran his hand down her hair and hugged her to him even more, before they released and Shadow turned back to his battle personality, complete with the dark face. Something she had only seen once before, when the Chaos creatures had escaped and he had tamed them. “We have to get to the escape pods, we can get down to Mobius from there!”
Shadow considered this, it was true, Maria’s treatment was almost complete and he could easily continue giving her it on Mobius. The Colony was lost, he knew. And she did always want to see Mobius, or Earth as a small amount of humans continue to call it.
“We shall leave this place Maria, but first you must take your treatment.” Maria nodded and ran to get some of her syringes from her one of her drawers. Shadow locked down the door again through the use of a small password into the otherwise useless computer, and waited until she was ready. She handed him one of the empty sterilised needles and looked away, always feeling slightly guilty and sick when they did this. Shadow took the syringe and without even thinking about it stabbed it into his own arm without even flinching, he began to draw out his own blood and retracted it.
“You shouldn’t feel so guilty about this Maria, you know this was the reason I was created, to help you.” She nodded, still looking away and feeling slightly sick, even after years of this happening.
Shadow took her delicate arm and lifted up the sleeve, revealing the powder white flesh. Before, with infinitely more care than he had given himself, he moved it into her arm and slowly injected the blood he had taken. As he took it out he smiled briefly, already seeing the effect it had on her as she grew stronger and a small amount of colour came back into her face. There was no need for a plaster, the cut healed instantly. However, the effects wouldn’t last for long.
“Take the rest of the syringes, we may not be able to find more for a while once we are down there.” She grabbed them and slipped them into a pocket.
“The nearest escape pods are in our observation room.”
“Lets go.” Shadow took her hand, opened the locked down door with one hand and the two ran out of the door.
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“Sir! The project has taken the woman inside the lockdown room and ran. We ” The random Private informed him.
“Alert all the men. Tell them to shoot to kill.” The Soldier saluted and walked off, turning his head slightly in confusion as the Captain whispered something.
“I am sorry… Maria.” He took out his pistol and headed for the Tube station, the equivalent of the ARK’s train terminal.
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The pair ran through the sectors in minutes, Shadow not even bothering to take down the GUN troops at first, finding dodging them by using alternate routes easier. However, as they neared the escape pods the soldiers began to get thicker and with heavier weaponry and Shadow knew they were following them. Finally he came to the long corridor that stretched around a good eighth of the ARK on its outermost circle.
“Maria, there shouldn’t be any more soldiers here, all that connects to this is the storerooms. You keep running and get to the pods as quickly as possible.” He let go off her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek.
“What about you?”
“I will deal with the soldiers following us.”
“By yourself?” Shadow didn’t answer.
“Promise me that you will keep on running. Get to the pod and save yourself.” Shadow looked at the girl standing in front of him, ever since the Professor had told him to fight the soldiers he had thought of nothing but killing them for his own sake. Sure, he may have given protecting Maria as a reason, but he knew that he had thought of nothing but proving that he was better than them. He had wanted to show them that their weapon was more powerful than they could ever control and that he truly was the Ultimate Lifeform.
Now he realised that he had been fighting using the Professors programming, using whatever advantage he could and killing without mercy or rules. I should be fighting for Maria, she is the reason I am here. I should fight because I wish to save her, not because I am programmed to be able to.
“I promise. And.. I love you.” She whispered to him.
“I will always treasure that. Go, Maria.” She nodded with a few tears running down her face and began to run down the corridor. Looking massively slow in Shadow’s eyes.
The Hedgehog turned to face the door he had entered through and walked back through it.
Soldiers had lined up in the next corridor, all their weapons pointed towards him. The clicks and clacks of reloading was all that could be heard. Shadow walked towards them, knowing impossible odds faced him and happy in the thought that his death would ensure Maria‘s life.
“Surrender! You cannot win.” One of them shouted towards the Hedgehog. Shadow looked up at them, and they saw his eyes, blood red. Defiance of anything and everything ever present. Whether it was from some sort of mass fear, or by battle plans in advance, or even by a sort of telepathy. Every weapon opened fire at that point. Bullets ricocheted off of the walls and floor, the ceiling crumbled, wires burst out of their places and small fires broke out as every gun in a twenty man task force fired in one vague direction. Shadow knew there was no way at all he could dodge. He had no chance.
The Professor said the Universe is mine to control, to twist and manipulate at my convenience. If this is so then I will reach out and make my will law!!
Shadow saw a hundred bullets fly towards him. He stood still, closed his eyes and let them come.
I will not let her down. That is my perfect world…
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Maria heard the crackle of hundreds of gunshots going off at once behind her. She ran even faster. Desperate to fulfil her promise to Shadow, even if she didn’t want to. Her vision went blurry as she wept and the tears soaked into her dress.
She had left him to his doom. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t have done anything, she should have been with him. She should have given her life for him!!
Maria’s lungs hurt and her heart threatened to give out but she carried on running for his sake.
She passed through the door to the main observation room, tears running down her face, she stopped and stared at the new figure.
“What are you doing here??” The figure lifted its weapon and a gunshot rang out.
Maria screamed and was flung backwards. The figure began to walk slowly down another corridor.
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Shadow stood still. His every emotion had gone and left him with only determination. The bullets fired into him but he felt nothing, they were only resistance as he began to walk forward.
They fired more. A small sound could be heard between the gunshots, like the noise of sand falling on metal.
Serving her is my purpose.
Shadow took the small pistol out of his quills, he loaded it. The soldiers all had him in their sights, the sound continued.
When I kill, it will be to protect her.
They began to worry. Shadow’s gun fired six times, six soldiers fell to the ground.
When I protect her I will not let any harm come to her.
He reloaded, and fired again. More soldiers fell, he kept on walking. The soldiers kept on firing. They hadn’t missed. Metallic dust trailed behind him.
This is my duty and this is my world!!
One soldier threw a grenade. It fell at the Hedgehog’s feet and exploded. The explosion did not effect him, the flames consumed him but he stood in their heart and continued.
As he came closer the soldiers could see now, as he stepped out of the flames. Shadow was covered entirely in energy, it glowed blue in the fire light and everything that touched it turned to dust. One of the soldiers screamed and ran at him, swinging his rifle like a club. It struck the glowing blue Hedgehog and the GUN member froze in fear.
First the black paint was shed, then the silver metal underneath grew dents and notches, its colour darkened, and gradually, it fell to pieces.
On the floor each piece shrivelled and broke and eventually. Nothing was left but a fine metallic dust.
One by one every soldier backed away, Shadow gestured his hands backwards and the trail of metallic dust leaped into the air. Ever so slowly each one of them began to glow red, then orange, then white. So white it was burning the soldiers retinas. The Hedgehog chuckled as he was silhouetted behind the impossibility. He was pulling heat out of thin air, more heat than metal was supposed to be subjected to. There was a flare as even the atmosphere around the metal caught alight, although it did not spread, and what was supposed to be metal turned to bright blue plasma.
“What? What are you doing?!” One of the soldiers shouted at him.
“I’m reaching out to the Universe, I am grabbing it by the throat, and for once…” Shadow talked quietly, and they had to strain to hear him. Then, he grinned evilly and his voice changed to a terrifying grow.
“..I’m the one giving instructions!!!!” In an instant the blue plasma changed to red and they were faced with the ultimate depiction of hell.
Shadow threw his hand violently in the task forces direction. The energy flew past him. The soldiers were gone, the corridor silent. It hadn’t even singed the walls.
Shadow’s fur lost its glow and he dropped to the floor on one knee gasping at the amount of power he’d been able to access with but a single Chaos Emerald that he wasn’t even sure had been doing anything.
Dragging him back to the present situation, Shadow heard a high pitched scream that chilled his blood and made his heart fall to the depths of his stomach. His head shot in the direction of the observation room with the escape pods.
“Maria!!!”
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Shadow ran into the observation room and stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the room. He tried to run to her but he couldn’t, he tried to call out to her but his mouth was dry. He tried to change this fact but his powers had left him, his earlier attacks had played a cruel trick on him.
He had needed them to make it here, yet he needed them here just so he hadn’t used them in vain.
She was leaning against a control module, hair falling gracefully over her back even now. The wound in her chest leaked crimson blood, contrasting eerily with the blue on her dress and her powdered white complexion. He frail legs weakly slipped for purchase pathetically on a floor slick with her own blood. She had been shot.
He could hear her struggling to breath, her lips trying to speak to him still though no words were finding him, whether by her inability to speak or the sudden deadening of all his senses he did not know. Her head turned his way, and the large blue eyes locked on him. She had tears in her eyes, the beautiful full orbs, for a moment her concentration on him broke and he saw her eyes flick to the control panel above her and before even he could react her hand shot up with inhuman speed and slammed on the escape pod release mechanism.
Shadow didn’t move, he didn’t have time as the carbon glass tube shot down on him. But as soon as it did he found every sense return in a roar, immediately he began slamming his fists onto the almost indestructible material. He could see his punches had no effect but he continued anyway.
10..
9..
8..
“Sh-Shadow.” All attention was on Maria’s words now. “I want you to promise me you’ll do something.” He was amazed he could hear her through the glass.
7..
6..
5..
“Anything Maria!”
4..
“Shadow, you must listen to me. The people of that planet are evil! They reap death and destruction wherever they go, please, destroy them and avenge me!” The effort of saying this was too much for her, and she collapsed down in exhaustion.
3..
2..
“As you wish.. Maria.” Shadow was planning on spending the last few precious seconds simply staring into her eyes. However, movement behind her drew his eye, someone had left a door open, another corridor that stretched deep into the ARK. Someone stood there, eyes open in shock at seeing him.
1..
Their eyes locked, and mortal enemies were made.
“If it takes a hundred years I will annihilate you.” Shadow said quietly.
“I don’t know how you survived but next time your mine Hedgehog.” The Captain said to himself.
0.
The pod shot into space, and for the first time Shadow felt his eyes grow damp as he hit again and again on the carbon glass and screamed her name.
He had never been so certain of things in his life, he would never let someone down again and he would keep his promise to Maria no matter what.
He would wait until the right moment, then Mobius would burn.
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“Shadow? Wake up, we’re here.” Tails looked down on his mate from the isle worried, instead of the usual calm Shadow held when asleep he looked angrier than he did when he was awake. Tails had only ever seen him look like this awake a few times and that was usually in the middle of a fight.
Suddenly crimson red eyes shot open ad stared at him.
“Have we reached the city?” He asked sharply, making Tails jump slightly.
“Yes… Shadow? Are you ok?” Tails was worried about Shadow, he hoped the visit wasn’t going to make him mean or angry.
“I’m fine, lets go.” Tails walked to the exit and turned just in time to hear him whisper.
“Maria…”