Author's note:
This chapter takes place several days after Sonic Heroes.
.w.
What was left of Eggman's formidable armada after the battle against Metal Sonic had fallen near the seaside. Judging from its look and a lack of labour robots, neither the doctor nor his rebel creation found it useful in any way anymore.
From afar the Egg Fleet resembled a pod of whales washed ashore. From nearby it resembled a large heap of junk.
It took Shadow some time to find the former flagship. The metal surface was pierced in several places, and the hedgehog used one of the holes to get inside. He had no idea what exactly he was looking for, so he walked in the most random direction.
After a few very exciting moments the course was changed from 'in random direction' to 'in random direction, but slowly and trying to avoid running into stuff scattered all over the place'.
Minutes later his eyes got used to the semi-darkness around him pierced with occasional strings of light, and finding his way became much easier.
After entering a passage that presumably led to the control room, Shadow froze. It didn't take long for him to hear a quiet tapping. Frowning, the hedgehog reached forward cautiously. Stopping right before the door that was half-open, he closed his eyes and listened.
Several feet away from him someone was typing on a keyboard.
Shadow tensed, ready to jump back into the darkness any moment or attack if necessary, and stepped inside.
Rouge looked up. "Hi," she said.
The hedgehog barely nodded in response. As soon as he allowed himself to relax just a bit, he took an opportunity to look around. The place was evidently the former control room of the whole armada. In the middle of the room was a large spinning chair - which was currently occupied by the bat girl - with a set of monitors and control panels in front of it. To Shadow's surprise, part of them still worked. Smaller part, though.
"I thought the electricity was gone."
"This ship has emergency generators. They're not in the best state, but it's still quite enough to activate a couple of things."
Shadow nodded absently.
The whole wall behind the monitors was actually a huge window. During the flight it had probably provided a perfect view of the whole armada; now it provided a perfect view of a single smaller battleship hovering over the deck.
As soon as Shadow was done with the examination, he turned to Rouge again. "What are you doing here?"
The bat tapped the closest monitor. "Just looking if the doctor has left anything interesting here."
"And?"
"Nothing," she kicked something hidden beneath the panels with annoyance, and all monitors blacked out. "Either it was the doctor's work or Metal Sonic's, but everything was erased from the hard drives."
She turned to the hedgehog. "Well, and what are you doing here?" He hesitated, causing her to frown. "It's that copy that bothers you, right?"
"Omega told me it wasn't the only one."
The bat wavered for a moment and then sighed. "He wanted to find and destroy them after the battle against Metal Sonic. It seems that he did it well- at least I didn't find a single android when I was searching the ship."
The hedgehog turned away. No words came out, but Rouge knew enough to understand what wasn't said.
"Shadow… you don't think you're an android, too, do you?"
"I have reasons to think so."
"Think again," she frowned. "Omega himself destroyed all copies, yet he didn't touch you. Do you think he'd have left you alone if he hadn't been sure you're the original?"
Judging from the expression of the part of Shadow's face she could see, he wasn't convinced.
"Fine," the bat sighed and stood up. "One thing I know for sure is that we won't find anything interesting here. Let's get out- I can't fight a feeling the whole place is about to collapse."
…The deck met them with a light breeze. Saturated with smoky smell, heavy from the dust that wouldn't settle down even now, the air still seemed fresher than that inside of the ship. It became easier to breathe, and Shadow could feel some part of his inner darkness slipping away.
Rouge was flying leisurely a few steps in front of him. "What about your memory?" she asked without looking back. "Have the memories returned yet?"
The hedgehog hesitated. "No," he said finally. "Nothing I could understand. Looks like I'll have to track the doctor down one more time."
"He already let you know he's not going to tell you anything – haven't you got that yet?"
"Probably I was too soft with him."
Rouge hmm'ed; her partner's attitude obviously left her unimpressed. "Eggman has a lot of experience in fooling people while he's in a mess himself. Thank Sonic and his buddies for that."
Shadow stopped abruptly. "Maybe, but I have no other choice."
"Of course you do," the bat landed beside him and shrugged. "Old newspapers. Or archives. Believe me, there's no thing on this planet you couldn't learn about from the government archives. The question is how badly you need the information."
The hedgehog crossed his arms on his chest, looking at her from the corner of his eye. She endured his calculating look with only another movement of her bare shoulders. Not only once during their last team-up she informed him about her skills and work as a government spy. It was up to him to decide whether he should believe those words or not, but the bat girl already knew what his choice would be.
Finally the dark hedgehog spoke. "The question is also if you have any access to those archives."
"Well… not all of them," Rouge smiled slyly. "But this kind of stuff never stops me, you know."
"...Fine. Let's assume you can actually get into some archive and search it. But it won't be an easy task even for you… Why would you do that?"
"Oh, no," she rolled her eyes, "don't you tell me you don't believe I can do a good deed without gaining anything from it."
"I hope you're not going to assure me that it's actually true."
"Jerk," she snorted. "All right, if you're so intent on rewarding my efforts, you can start now with giving me a lift to Central City. You have a Chaos Emerald with you, don't you?"
"Yes, but—"
"Great. I don't feel like flying the whole way back."
"What does it have to do with the Chaos Emerald?"
"Um… Because you need it to warp us to the city?" Rouge blinked in somewhat funny way. "Don't you need it to perform Chaos Control?"
"Do you want me to stop time?" Shadow looked slightly confused.
The bat hesitated for a few moments. It was almost possible to feel something shifting inside her head, thoughts rearranging and forming a fitting response. Finally she frowned. "I know that Sonic can teleport himself and others if he has an Emerald. I experienced that myself once already. When I saw you performing Chaos Control, I thought you can do that, too. Don't you?"
"Actually—"
A small sound emerged from somewhere above them, resembling both a nail scratching the glass and someone's evil cackle. The hedgehog and the bat raised their heads; most of what they saw were the remains of a smaller battleship.
Rouge stole a quick glance at her companion and took off wordlessly, but before she got high enough, a figure appeared from behind the battleship. The figure had luxuriant red moustache and was grinning like crazy.
Rouge didn't exactly relax after seeing Eggman; her tension more likely just shifted to some other state. "Ah," she said. "Of course. Who else could it be?"
The doctor gave her a nod. "I'm pleased to see you as well, Rouge. I was going to show up a while ago, but you two seemed so carried away by your conversation- very interesting conversation, I must admit," he smiled in a way that probably was supposed to encourage them to continue.
She saw Shadow clenching his fists from the corner of her eye and landed beside him quickly. "You're quite confident for someone who just lost his army of robots," she noticed.
"The army wasn't mine, it belonged to Metal Sonic. Personally I would never think of relying on these useless pieces of junk," the scientist grinned.
"Oh, how could I forget. So it means that your own useless pieces of junk can rise from this garbage any moment now?"
"I have something better than regular robots."
"Like what?"
"Like that android that is standing beside you. Why don't I order it to attack you?"
The bat could hear the hedgehog inhaling sharply. "Ha ha, nice o—" she began.
"What do you mean?" Shadow stepped forward.
Rouge sighed heavily. It looked like the ultimate life form still hadn't realized that every word from Eggman was a lie. "He means that he can't do anything to us right now and is biding his time. Let's go, Shadow. Central City, remember?"
She had to take Shadow away from the place before the hedgehog would get a bright idea to try and beat the truth out of Eggman, before Eggman himself would do something stupid…
"Well, as you wish," the doctor said rather kindly. "I'll save that order for later, then. Actually, I don't mind you two leaving - there's quite a few occasions upon which you'd expect me to do so, don't you think? I hope when Shadow last time demonstrated his ability to teleport to you, you looked carefully and remembered enough to help him out now."
Rouge felt the hedgehog's puzzled gaze upon her and raised an eyebrow. "You better go get your eyes examined, Eggman. That was Sonic, not Shadow."
"Really?" he seemed surprised. "I actually thought that was Shadow. I guess I should better ask Sonic himself when we meet next time." He shrugged. "Maybe talking to him would clear a couple of things up. Right now I can't help wondering why you wouldn't tell Shadow everything but insist on him following you?"
Shadow opened his mouth to cut into this exciting conversation. Instead, shrill scratching sound filled the air.
Everyone looked down. There, climbing the battleship's bow, was a giant robot who evidently was lucky to survive an encounter with a bunch of heroes and the fall of the armada. Although judging from a lack of a spiky hammer and some parts of the armor, its luck had its limits.
The bat studied it with slight interest. "Well, and whose is it? Yours or Metal's?"
The robot reached the deck and stopped, presumably staring at Rouge and her partner. The fact that its eyes were looking in different directions wouldn't allow to tell for sure.
Shadow looked at Eggman. The doctor's face was absolutely emotionless, although the hedgehog couldn't fight a feeling it hadn't been moments ago.
"Ah. M-hm. Yes," Eggman cleared his throat. "Of course this primitive construction was not created by me. But considering that Metal Sonic used my appearance most of the time, I can guess that robot won't have any problems fulfilling my order."
He straightened in his Egg-mobile and pointed at the bat and the hedgehog. "Get them!"
After a long pause Shadow said, "Looks like it obeys only Metal Sonic."
"Maybe its sound detectors are damaged?" guessed Rouge. "Try a sign language, this may work."
Eggman swore under his breath.
The hedgehog moved forward, gaining the speed to perform a homing attack. Actually, during their hasty race to catch up with Eggman the most tough and least breakable robots usually went to Omega, but the bat had no doubts her hedgehog partner would have no problem handling one single half-busted bucket of bolts. She closed her eyes and covered her ears though, just in case.
When she opened her eyes again, Shadow was already standing on the deck again and the robot was still standing on the deck. The latter made the doctor let out a loud snort. "I always knew you're full of surprises, Shadow… but I'd never guess you could miss such a large target from a distance this short."
"Just wait for a few seconds," the hedgehog barely grinned in response.
There was a sound as if someone yawned inside a huge trombone. The doctor looked up - and next moment he had to throw his Eggmobile aside, so that the smaller ship which had been hanging above the deck and which was now tumbling down wouldn't hit him.
Shadow jumped at the same moment as the ship collapsed onto the deck, burying the robot.
After some time Rouge emerged from a cloud of dust, coughing wildly. "Yeah," she said in a husky voice, "that was impressive, I'll admit. But totally inappropriate. That cloud hid us from Eggman all right, but it hid Eggman from us as well. And besides, if you really think that all this dust does my hair a good turn, then you're…"
Her voice trailed off as she realized that nobody was listening to her.
The bat raised her head. The sky above her was full of dust and absolutely clear of any signs of Shadow or Eggman.
"Oh, bugger," she said in a flat voice.