Punishment. Thy Name is Ruin

Westopolis part 2

As Shadow continues through Westopolis, he stumbles upon more alien weapons, and a tremendous, highly destructive power.

On with the show! Err…story….

Shadow continued on through the city, the thought of him being a black creature wriggling to the back of his mind. He had other things to worry about now. Besides, if he got the Chaos Emeralds, he would figure it all out.

He reached an opening, or what used to be an opening. It was surrounded by rubble, and the doors were only half-closed because they were caught in it. Laser fire splashed all around him, and Shadow hoped one of the lasers would hit the rubble. A few seconds later, one did. For a moment, Shadow thought the resulting explosion would knock the whole tunnel down. But no, this laser had apparently been set to a weaker power. The rubble cleared, and the doors fell into the tunnel, ripped off of it.

Shadow ran though, just as the tunnel started collapsing. There was a loud crash and then it stopped. The way behind him was blocked. There was a small G.U.N. encampment up ahead, and he could see the corpse of a bird-like black creature with a knife through it's head. Green blood was still trickling from the wound. Shadow walked slowly. He could see metal boxes with the G.U.N. logo on them, and a couple of wooden walls.

Then he saw a few soldiers. Four soldiers. Three of them armed with pistols, and one armed with an SMG and a bullet-proof shield. There was also a G.U.N. Beetle sentry. It was a small, floating, semi-ball shaped robots with the number 01 painted on the side. Shadow could see a small barrel on it, indicating a weapon. 'Hmm…I wonder what effect this weapon has on the sentries?'

Shadow aimed at the sentry, and fired. Unlike with the soldiers, the effect was not immediate. It took around 4 seconds to take effect on the robot. For a moment, Shadow was unsure it even had an effect. Then it happened: the sentry started spinning around very, very fast. And it made a noise, a loud whistling noise. Shadow lowered his ears to drown it out. The soldiers all looked at the sentry. It continued spinning for a full ten seconds, then stopped so fast, it was as if it had not happened.

Gunshots rang out, and Shadow's immediate reaction was to dive for cover. However, the gunshots did not aim for him. The sentry had started firing on the soldiers! Even so, the weapon's accuracy on the sentry was not so good, and gunshots were flying all over the place. One soldier was hit right on the heart. He stumbled, and hit the ground face first. It took a while for the soldiers to get out of the initial shock that their own sentry had just fired on them. The one with the SMG recovered first, and fired four shots into the sentry. Three hit the sentry, but it did not fall. It continued firing on the soldiers. Then one of the other soldiers fired, and hit it right in its "eye". The sentry was shoved backwards, and fell to the ground. A few seconds later, it caught fire, and exploded. The whole thing lasted around eight seconds.

The soldiers stared, and then two rushed over to their fallen comrade. The third stayed where it was, still staring at the sentry.

"What happened? Why did it fire on us?" He asked no one in particular. He looked back to his two surviving allies and said "Leave him, he is dead. There is nothing we can do." The two soldiers nodded gently, and returned to their positions. The one with the SMG, which Shadow guessed was the squad leader, took out a radio. He turned it on and started speaking into it.

"All units in Westopolis, we have just been fired upon by our own Beetle Sentry. One of our comrades is down. Deactivate all Combat Beetles to prevent this from happening." He said. He deactivated the radio, not waiting for a reply. Shadow was quite surprised they had not heard the alien weapon fire. But then again, he was hearing it ring out all over the city. Shadow took aim, and fired at the leader, for he had dropped his shield to put the radio back into his pocket. The soldier's head exploded, and…ah, you know the drill.

The other two soldiers' reactions were immediate. They had heard the shot this time, and turned toward Shadow. Hey both took aim, and seven bullets were fired at him. They had all hit the metal box, which collapsed. Shadow had lost his cover, and aimed at one of the soldiers. He squeezed the handle, but nothing happened. He squeezed twice more, but still nothing happened. Shadow noticed its weight was heavier, and turned it over. A large piece of metal was lodged inside of it, which killed the gun. Shadow swore, and dodged two more bullets. He dropped the gun, and charged at one of the soldiers. He jumped so that his feet were at head level with the soldier. He activated his air shoes so that he would float, and then kicked, hard on the soldiers face. His foot slammed through the soldiers flesh, and he fell backward, dropping the pistol. The remaining soldier fired another four shots at Shadow, and missed. Then Shadow fired three shots to the chest, and two to the head. The soldier stumbled, and fell backward.

It took Shadow a moment to realize that the starfish was no longer with him. It must have gone off to check on the rest of his soldiers. Then, there was a flash of green light, and Black Doom himself was there. He looked around at the soldiers.

"Impressive…" He said darkly. This time, Shadow noticed something strange with his voice. It was impossibly deep, it seemed to have a three millisecond echo, and Shadow could hear…whispers…behind his voice. They stopped as soon as Black Doom finished speaking. If Black Doom ad not threatened him with death if he did not obey him, he would be pretty cool. Black Doom waved his arm, and there was a flash of blue light. Where Doom was, there floated the starfish thing.

"Not many humans left Shadow…get going and destroy them." The starfish said in Doom's voice. Shadow raced on, and found the exit to the tunnel. He ran out, and saw another sentry. This one, however, was not armed. But it had little plane wings on it's side, which probably made it faster. This sentry was built for reconnaissance, not battle, and had therefore not been deactivated, and it had spotted Shadow. It zoomed off in another direction. Shadow was more alert now. G.U.N. knew he was here now. He was expecting an ambush or something. He moved slowly, cautiously. Is eyes darted in every direction, and his ears were perked up for the slightest sound.

Shadow heard a loud BOOM. He brought his ears back down, and rubbed them. The sound had hurt his ears, and keeping them sensitive to the slightest sound had not exactly helped. Shadow looked around. Certainly something that had made that huge sound would have been pretty big itself.

And then he heard treads. He looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a large tank being dropped by a dropship. The dropship had apparently tried to fire a missile at Shadow, as Shadow saw a missile pod with no missile. The tank started moving slowly toward him. It fired its main cannon, and missed Shadow by inches. Shadow could hear it whistling past his ear. Then he heard an explosion behind him. Shadow had no idea what to do. While reloading the main weapon, the tank fired it's .50 cal machine gun. The bullets had explosive head on them, so Shadow was continuously dodging bullets and small explosions.

Then he saw a black creature. It was fumbling with something that looked like a large, black toad. The toad had a single, very large crimson eye with a dark yellow iris, located on the middle of it's head. The toad was long and fat. It was black, with a single red streak running from it's eye to it's tail. It was also apparently slimy, or very smooth, or had some characteristic that made it hard to hold, as the black creature had dropped it three or four times. The last time it dropped it, a grenade had landed just below it's legs. The black creature looked at it curiously, and then it exploded. When it had cleared, the toad-like thing was still there, but the black creature was gone.

Another loud boom had brought Shadow's attention back to the tank. It had fired a round at three black creatures huddled together, almost touching each other. It hit right in the middle of the group, and they were all flying through the air, and hit the ground hard. Green blood was pouring out of their mouths and backs. The tank was aiming for Shadow again, firing it's machine, and was about to unload a round from it's main gun.

Another black creature was running toward the toad. He had more luck in holding it that the other one. He picked up, and threw it at the tank. Shadow wondered what it could possibly do.

The tank unloaded a round from it's main cannon, heading straight for Shadow. Shadow saw it coming, and jumped to dodge it. However, the pilot was smarter this time, and fired at Shadow's feet instead of his chest. It exploded right below him, Shadow swore at the top of his lungs, and flew upward about twenty feet before landing on the ground.

If Shadow had any bones, he was sure he would have broken both of his legs. But in a situation like this, you don't have time to feel sorry for yourself. Shadow got off the ground. He was amazed to see that his legs were cooperating. They were healing fast.

The tank was firing it's machine gun at Shadow. Shadow jumped around very fast. It reminded him of when Rouge woke him up from the Doctor's base…

The tank unloaded another round from it's main cannon. Shadow ran backward this time, dodging it completely. When the smoke cleared, he charged at it. When he got near it, he jumped onto the main cannon. He was going to shoot the pilot, which should stop the tank, and maybe Shadow could pilot it himself.

A powerful shock made Shadow jump off the tank. He stared at it, wondering what could have possibly done that. The tank started going spastic, moving in circles and spinning its main cannon in different directions. Then it stopped. Shadow wondered what had happened.

Flash of red light surrounded the tank. It started to fall apart slowly…slowly…treads fell on to the ground, wires shot out of the sockets, and the cannon toppled off. Then the light thickened, and the tank exploded. Shards of metal flew everywhere, and Shadow retreated behind some rubble.

Well, that had put an end to it…and Shadow's desire to drive it.

Wow…took me until just now to realize just how long these chapters are going to be…I'm probably going to have to break each level into three-five parts.

Well…uhhh…as you can see…the "destructive power" has not been found yet. I'm sure most of you know what it is. If you have not played Shadow the Hedgehog, it's ok if you do not know.

If you have played, and you do not know what the destructive power is, you are an ignoramus.

Seeya next time!