This story is the sequel to Knuckles Boom, my previous fanfic. If you haven't read that, go read it and come back. This is what happens when the Sonic Boom Knuckles and friends run across chaos emeralds and Angel Island.
Shadow pushed open the hospital doors and walked inside. Outwardly he was his calm, tough self-a sleek black hedgehog with red stripes on his spines, arms and legs. Gold bracelets ringed his ankles and wrists. His shoes were red and white hover skates. He wore a leather belt around his waist with several pouches on it.
Inwardly, he was a trembling mess of terror and joy. Maria was here, in this hospital. Maria, his beloved sister, who had been lost to him for decades.
He approached the front desk, treading softly on the polished floor, as if afraid of leaving tracks. "I've come to see Maria."
The receptionist was a red squirrel who looked him over carefully. "She's available for visitors. However, threats have been made against her. You're not working for Eggman, are you?"
Shadow stood rigid, muscles tense. Threats? Eggman?
He forced a smile. "I'm here to deal with those threats. And no, I have nothing to do with Eggman."
"Second floor, room 212," the receptionist said. "You're Shadow, aren't you?"
He nodded.
"She's been asking for you."
The black hedgehog strode toward the elevators, keeping his stride measured, confident, in control. Inwardly, he wanted to run and scream her name, kick down every door that separated them.
The elevator took an eternity to travel one floor. Shadow's soul stretched like a rubber band, tighter and thinner every second, in danger of breaking. The doors slowly slid open. He stepped out and made his way down the hall toward room 212. Walking. Projecting confidence. Head high, eyes forward.
The door was closed, the final barrier. He grasped the handle. If it had been locked, he probably would have ripped it off its hinges. But it turned easily, allowing him entrance.
The room was dim. A single lamp burned low on a bedside table. Maria, a human, lay in the bed, propped up on pillows, eyes closed, hands resting on top of the blankets.
Shadow's heart swelled until it threatened to choke him. She was really here. It wasn't a lie or a dream. After all those years of solitude, of piercing loneliness, of hearing her voice in his dreams - here she was. Alive. Breathing. Free of the stasis tube.
He crept to the bed, heart thundering, hardly daring to breathe. His eyes devoured her face. She was so thin, so much older than he had last seen her. Her wrists and hands were mere sketches of bone under skin. Her eyes were sunken beneath her brows, the cheekbones sharply defined. Yet a tinge of pink colored her cheeks. He touched her hand and it was warm. Health would return.
Shadow's fingers curled around her thin hand. She was really here. Really alive. He bent over her hand and kissed it, then pressed his cheek against it.
Maria's eyes opened. They were brilliant, vivid blue, bringing her wasted face to life. Power burned within them, and such violent, compressed, vivid life, it was as if she contained the entire jungle with its riot of plants and animals-growing, expanding, fighting for sunlight.
But the vivacity was tempered by love. As Shadow stared at her, he saw the tenderness in her face-the adoration he shared so deeply.
"Shadow," she said, smiling. "I knew you would come." She held out her arms.
He sat on the bed beside her and wrapped his arms around her, pressing his cheek to hers. She was real. Really here, not a dream. His heart hurt and hot tears stung his eyes. "Maria," he choked. "It's been so long."
One of her hands stroked the other side of his face, gentle and welcoming. "I've missed you so, dear one. The others couldn't tell me anything about you. Have you no friends?"
"No," he whispered, his voice barely working. "Don't ever, ever leave me again." The tears overflowed and cascaded down his face. The first he'd shed in fifty long years. Not since the day they had slid her into the tube, filled it with fluid, sent her to sleep in the hopes that it might cure her disease.
Maria wiped them away with a corner of the blanket. "Don't cry, Shadow." Some of his own pain resonated in her voice. "We're together again. Aren't you happy?"
He sat up, wiping his face, grinning like a fool. "Terribly." The pain inside him went on and on, threatening to become all-out bawling. Control it. Control yourself. He sat with his eyes shut for a moment, breathing deeply, mastering the wild emotions.
"Shadow, I've changed," Maria said in a low voice. "I can chaos control now."
He slid back to sit at the foot of the bed, where he could study every nuance of her face. "They were training you before the sickness, remember?" His voice was steadier now. He could cry some other time.
Maria shook her head. "They plugged me into the Master Emerald. It's in my blood now. It ... changed me, Shadow. I don't think I'm human anymore."
That explained the life that burned in her eyes, the power he sensed inside her. "I didn't see the facility, Maria. What's the Master Emerald?"
"The king of all chaos crystals," she replied, gazing over his head and into her memories. "I am its princess. Its daughter."
Shadow's spines prickled, sending tingles through the top of his head, where the chaos crystal in his skin forced his spines to grow red. "Rocks don't have kids."
She beamed at him. "I meant that its power has infused me, silly. I worked chaos control on the way here."
"How did you escape?" Shadow asked. "All I got were confused impressions." Of Sonic, he didn't say. Of that stupid blue hedgehog and his stupid friends, rescuing Maria when it should have been me awakening her.
Maria recounted opening her eyes and seeing the red echidna as he wrapped her in blankets. "Then he carried me out of the complex. It was under attack by robots. Thousands of them, Shadow! A fat man with a mustache was their leader."
"Eggman," Shadow said through his teeth. "What did he think he was doing?"
"He claimed ownership of the entire island," Maria went on. "He said that included me, but the echidna didn't buy it."
One of Shadow's hands closed into a fist. Eggman had tried to claim ownership of Maria? Ferocious rage tried to build inside him. Shadow locked it away. No. Control yourself.
"I don't understand the politics now," Maria concluded. "Has GUN disappeared?"
Shadow nodded. "They disbanded twenty years ago when the Western Union collapsed. Now it's a lot of little warring countries. I'm afraid nobody cares about you and me anymore."
"Except Eggman," Maria pointed out. "Who is he working for?"
"Himself. He provides the power for Bygone Island-that's where we are now. He harasses the village with robots, but Sonic and the rest hold them off."
Maria leaned forward, clasping her hands around one knee. "Tell me about Sonic and the rest. Who are they?"
Shadow clenched his teeth and looked away. "A bunch of meddling idiots."
Maria clicked her tongue. "Now, now, don't be like that. First, who is the red echidna?"
"Knuckles. Big, strong, and dumb as a bag of concrete."
"And the blue hedgehog?"
"Sonic. Runs fast, slightly less stupid, but not much."
Maria's face fell. "He was hurt."
Shadow couldn't imagine Sonic being hurt. "He was probably faking."
"He had a terrible laser burn across his chest. I could smell it."
Shadow shrugged. "He'll get over it." Sonic wasn't worthy of compassion.
"What about the fox with two tails?"
"He's called Tails. Eggman in the making. All he does is build machines. It's creepy."
"There were two girls. One was a pink hedgehog, I think?"
"Amy. Sonic's not-girlfriend." Shadow snickered. He had watched their not-romantic relationship for years and it hurt him inside. It was easier to make fun of them and disdain them than allow himself to feel any more pain.
"And the brown one?"
"Sticks. I think she's some kind of badger. Certifiably crazy."
Maria rested her chin on her knees. "So that's who they are. Why don't you make friends with them? They seem really nice. They care about each other."
Shadow turned his head and gazed out the window.
Maria tilted her head. "I can't read your mind, love. The psychic link is one way."
Shadow fiddled with a wrinkle in the blanket. "Fifty years has changed me, too, Maria. I'm so much older than any of them. I had to live alone so I could hear you. Too much noise drowns out the connection. I never knew if you might call for me to come save you." He tried to keep the accusatory tone out of his voice, but failed.
Maria gazed at him a long moment without speaking. "You're jealous that they saved me."
Jealous. Yes. It was shameful, petty, foolish, but he was jealous just the same. He couldn't meet her eyes and tried to smooth away the wrinkle instead.
She sighed. "Dear, dear Shadow, fifty years haven't changed you a bit. Now here we are, old, but not grown up. What will become of us?"
He took her hand again with another surge of tenderness. "You're not old."
She squeezed his fingers. "I'm sixty years old, Shadow dear. By human standards, I'm more than halfway through my lifetime."
"But you've been in stasis," Shadow pointed out. "It doesn't count." The long years weighed heavily on him, too, but he didn't mention it.
She smiled and shook her head. "Perhaps it would matter if I were still human. But I'm a chaos creature now. Age doesn't mean quite as much as it used to."
He opened his mouth to reply, but footsteps rang outside the hospital door. The knob turned, admitting a blue tiger and an orange hyena. Both wore business suits and ties. They didn't quite look like doctors.
Shadow stood, blocking their way to Maria. "Can I help you?"
The tiger gave him a cold smile. "What a pleasure to finally meet you, Shadow. I'm Tasha Hunter, and this is Hylee Snicker. We've come with a business proposition."
Knuckles stood on the beach as the sun sank into the ocean, his shadow stretching behind him like a fragment of the darkness in his heart. The wind blew his red dreadlocks away from his face and made his eyes smart. Still he stood there, fists at his sides, gazing out to sea as if considering walking into the water with no plan to return.
Sonic approached quietly, his red sneakers soundless on the wet sand. He hesitated a moment, as if he considered running away. Then he stood beside his friend and gazed at the sunset over the sea. The fading light picked out the white dressing that covered the laser burn that stretched from his shoulder to his opposite armpit.
Knuckles didn't look at him. "We have to get it back." His voice was low and intense.
"Yeah, I know." Sonic scooped up a surf-smoothed pebble and skipped it across the water, pretending his burn didn't hurt. "What a dirty trick. Buying the freaking island out from under us."
"It's ours!" Knuckles exclaimed, smashing his fists together. "The Speaker granted us the ability to become the island's crew! How can a piece of paper compete with that?"
"Oh, you know." Sonic skipped another pebble. "Real estate laws. Money. Corporations with more power than we have. The usual."
Knuckles roared his frustration to the evening sky and slammed a fist into the sand. A shockwave like a fat ripple spread outward from the point of impact.
Sonic jumped over it. "Maybe we can get Eggman to sell it back."
"With what money, Sonic?" Knuckles punched the sand again, creating another shockwave. "I've been kicked off my own island! It's not fair!"
"It's not fair for anybody," Sonic said, pointing at his bandages. "Exhibit A."
Knuckles stood up, panting, dusting sand from his hands. For the first time he seemed to see Sonic properly. "What are you doing out here? Amy said you needed to rest."
Sonic threw another rock. "Pain meds kicked in. I'm okay." He stooped for another rock, his arm moving a little slower than usual. Despite the expert flick of his wrist, the stone only skipped once. Sonic always skipped stones at least three times.
"No, you're not," Knuckles said in a low voice.
Sonic gave him a sharp look. "Lay off, Knux. You're Angel Island's guardian, not Sonic Hedgehog's guardian."
Knuckles opened his mouth to argue, but something punched him in the brain.
