"He's as damned as he seems." Amy's finger reached for her light switch as she sang, "a tragedy with more damage than a, soul should see."
[-Click-]
"And do I try to save him, my whole world could cave in."
The room was dunked into darkness.
"He's never enough." Her finger slid off the switch. "And still he's more than I can take." The bed's weight sunk as pink legs crawled into it. The weight bounced back as Amy Rose's head fell against the pillow. She pulled the covers up to her chin. "Oh and I don't know, I don't know what he's after." She rubbed her runny nose before rolling over and facing the open window.
The dogs were barking in the neighborhood and the cats were in heat. The night breeze played tag with the window's curtains.
"And do I...try to...change him. So hard not to...b-blame him..." The longer she stared at her windowsill, the more the darkness on her bedroom walls slithered up to the window's ledge like possessed strands of black hair.
Those black strands would then yarn together to morph the illusion of Shadow the Hedgehog crouched in her window on one knee. She visualized his black body with a blanket-twisting anxiousness. She visualized the splash of white in the middle of that black body, and his red racing stripes spiked on their quills. She visualized the whites of his eyes and the reds of their whites. A magnificent, fearsome, black thing standing in front of the moon's face.
The visualizations tuned out all other sounds around her. The longer she stared at the windowsill, the more bloodshot her eyes became. Her fists shook on her blanket. And then to mock her, everything she felt, everything that happened, the imaginary Shadow went 'poof' like a burst of black confetti.
The dogs outside started barking again.
Amy inhaled the tears that she might cry tonight. ""But he's so beautiful, s-such a...beautiful disaster…"
The cats outside began howling again. Amy yanked the blanket over her face. She took a deep breath, and then screamed. Kicked and screamed and squealed and whined until she was gasping for more breath. There was no reason to cry.
Life was going to go back to the way it was tomorrow morning. Life will go on.
...A dog outside yipped out a strangled wail.
"Huh?" Amy shifted her head on the pillow.
The cat in her window hissed, but then started screaming, till it all stopped.
Amy was tempted to lower the blanket and peek up into her pitch-black room, but it was horror-film-quiet. She could hear her thoughts and even her teeth.
[ - Creeeee-eeeek - ]
The pink girl cowered in her bed, frozen in stone from head to toe.
Was Michael Myers in her room? Was Freddy summoning himself from under her bed? Was it Lil' Slugger with his golden baseball bat, the boy who rescues the desperate from their crisis through bloody violence?
[ - Creee-EEEEK - ]
She flipped over onto the other side to face away from the constant creaking, and tried to sing her fears away, "A-A-And if I could hold on, through the t...t-tears and the laughter, would it be beautiful?"
[ - CREEEEEK - ]
Amy closed her eyes. "O-Or! Just a beautiful disaster!"
...And then the nightmare touched her.
'Th-This can't be happening...'
It transformed into a tangible sensation that made her eyeballs burn from the salt in her tears. It haunted down her shoulder like a finger on a map, a sharp, stomach-retching claw that raked its perverted curiosity down the goosebumps on her arms, down the elbow of her forearm, down the dip of her waist and to the slope of her hip.
'N...no...please, please...' Sweat rolled into the corners of her eyes where the tears accumulated. She dared not blink. Not move. Not peep. Not cry.
Because then she might die. The phantom might take her soul. Lil' Slugger might bash her upside the head just for the suspense of it.
She saw her hammer sitting there by her lamp, just inches away from where her finger lay. Amy clenched her teeth as a sweat-roll dribbled into her mouth. The nerves in her fingers constricted and twitched. 'I...I can't move...!'
It rode back the sheets protecting the thigh, protecting the leg, protecting the foot connected to the body the clawed nightmare seemed to examine.
Her toes curled up at the cold breeze cutting her ankles. 'I can't MOVE!'
The talon grazed her spine and hit her pressure point, making her arch and shake and shiver from pain. The vomit was sitting in the middle of her throat. Gods, no, she couldn't take it. Once the touch left her back and slicked the hair off her collarbone to expose her vulnerable little throat, she cringed, making the tears spring off her eyelashes.
That's when the phantom's warm, breathy voice murmured, "Shhh...do not fear me, Pink Rose. I won't harm you."
The tears broke through the dam as Amy's gasp inflated her lungs.
...She knew this voice.
Amy Rose glanced past her shoulder, still squinting out all her tears and her all-so-powerful weakness as the victim she had often been. Her eyes grew three dilations above-average at who she saw, standing behind her shoulder.
Looming over her bed in the dark was a shadow with red eyes like hellfire. His eyelids were lowered, drawn and eerie. There was too much black eclipsing his face from the dark, but she could make out the bronze color of his muzzle under a streak of moonlight.
"You...came back..." Amy flushed as she scooted onto her back, tears drowning her voice to a soggy blubber. She saw his eyes thin more, like a cat in the night, and a smirk of white fangs smiling at her. Amy's sentimental happiness browed down into a frown.
"Tell me...do you love me?"
She blinked between the wisps of her hair clawing her face as she searched these, red depths drinking up her reaction.
"Tell me, Rose..." The shadow's growl puckered into a purr. "Tell~ me..." The purr slithered into a hiss.
Amy wormed out of the covers and dove for her weapon in the corner of her room. "W-Who are you, and what are you doing in my room?!" Amy rubbed the tears and mucus from her face as her hand strained to steady the hammer.
The shadow laughed. She crouched low as the laughter faded away, like it was shrinking into the distance before it flew to the other side of the room. She readied her hammer in front of her between snivels and sobs of trauma.
"You were so eager for it, Pink Rose," the darkness hissed.
Amy growled. She had been violated and manipulated. She focused her terror on one corner of her bedroom, where she saw the darkness move - stand up and ghost across the room - and then the red eyes of Satanism flung open.
"So eager to be loved and not even fully bloomed." The silhouetted shadow began to drift toward her.
Amy's hand scrabbled for the light switch behind her. Her throat tightened up her airways until she was wheezing and convulsing once the shadow's shoes stepped into the moonlight.
Two steel shoes banded in leather.
Amy's wanderings traveled up the black legs, which were missing their stripes unlike another's she knew.
Up the freed claws and leathered hands unlike another's she knew.
Up the wrists jeweled with three sets of power rings unlike another's she knew.
Up the chest furred in one feather of white unlike another's she touched, and into the V-shaped glare sinking down into vengeful, but smirking eyes like another's she's stared down.
His fangs gave her a white smile. His horned-looking ears were bitten and tagged with laboratory numbers.
"Good evening, Pink Rose." The black hedgehog craned his neck up with a tilted grin, looking evermore cocky with insanity than the last second. "Blossoming season's not too good this year around, is it?"
Amy shook her head back and forth, dropping her hammer and backing away.
"What's wrong, Rose?" he threw a desk aside to advance closer. "Are you disappointed and disgusted now that you've looked upon me? Am I so, so hideous to you?" He pretended to be heartbroken while grinning with the same 'sad' expression.
"You can't be...! You can't be Shadow!"
His lip rode back. He stopped short and lowered his chin to exaggerate his growling, "That, is not my name. That name belongs to the one beneath me." He raised his hands in the air, announcing to the gods in laughter, "The world's ultimate abomination born from man's experiment gone wrong!"
"Shut up!" Amy threw her feist around. "Shadow's NOT an abomination!" The tears had swelled her eyes into pink veined yokes and her muzzle was dirty with all the sobbing, making her look about as mad as the shadow beckoning her out of her mind.
"And what would you know about Shadow the Hedgehog?" He chucked her dresser into the wall, causing it to explode in half. "How many DOCUMENTS have you rummaged through to know who he is?" He ripped open her unicorn with his fangs until the stuffing foamed out of its head. "Can you even read, little girl?"
Amy shut her eyes and brought her hammer down on the stranger's head...and then she opened them just to see his one, skinny finger had stopped the attack.
He dove into her air and breathed, "You have spunk, but spunk is nothing without strength." His claws suddenly shot out of his fingertips like elongated razors. He traced a claw along her face, a bloodline ripping through the skin on her cheek.
"Now tell me...does he love you, Rose?"
"M-My love-life is NONE of your business!" Amy hocked up her spit and spat in his eye.
"..." The shadow's grin convulsed. He swiped the bloody slob off his eyelid before flicking it at her.
Disgusted and frightened, Amy forced her sight away and buried her cheek into her shoulder as the tears rushed.
"Now Rose, your love life, is ALL of my business."
Suddenly, white hot pain shot up and down Amy's arm. She choked out a high-pitched scream and strained to reel her head down and witnessed the black claw buried into the juncture between her neck and shoulder. The red nerves in her eyes almost ruptured out of her sockets.
"So if you will not gossip with me, then...where IS your Shadow, hm?" The shadow slapped her cheeks lightly to get her attention. "Where's he at?"
Amy's bottom lip quivered as she burped up some blood from the claw pinning her into the wall.
"Look at me, Rose. You don't wanna go to heaven, do you?" Tempted by the oozing red her wound ejected, another claw stretched from his fingertip and threatened to penetrate her forehead with it. He held the scruff of her sweat-drenched bangs to bang her head back on the wall.
Amy sobbed.
"Stop wasting my time and TELL me the TRUTH," he snapped before whipping his fist across her face.
Amy curled the carpet under her fingers after having the wind knocked out of her.
The larger hedgehog kneeled down, threading his fingers in her bangs and yanking her head back to the point of her veins almost erupting out of her strained throat. "I'd be dying to kill you since this whole thing was ruined because of you, Amy Rose." His foot slammed into her rib.
The force, most likely having also shattered her bones, sent her flying into the wall. Amy's back sagged down the paint, leaving brush-strokes of red behind her until she sunk onto her knees and hands.
"Don't worry, you won't be alone for long." The hedgehog licked his claws, laughing at himself when he accidentally cut his tongue, and turned to her with the bleeding result dangled from his smiling mouth. "I promise Shadow will be joining you very shortly so you two can always be together forever and ever." The creature raised his palms, claws crowning his outspread fingers and ready to hack her up into chunks of meat.
Blood burned into Amy's left eye as she fought to stay awake. The world was flashing between old memories and new, the last bits and iotas of her life, the flashbacks of...Mystic Ruins, Sonic, a caramel smile...Shadow, and all the mysterious, but beautiful things he had proven to be in the end...
The last thing Amy heard was a crash, but the last thing her eyes saw was shattered glass raining over her like diamonded shards.
Amy's attacker slowly turned his head to Amy's window. There Shadow stood, all black and red and vicious and helpless. There he stood, still holding his head from the eerie ring that had now stopped with shards of glass at his feet, with his attention locked on one thing.
"...And there you stand," Amy's attacker licked his lips, flashing a disturbingly wider grin that almost inched off his very muzzle. "Shadow the Hedgehog."
Shadow's eyeballs swelled from examining the ball of pink drowning in the red at his feet. Red, and more red; red everywhere, freckling the pink's cheeks, grinning on the pink's body in red smiles, swallowing the pink, until there lay barely any pink...just a body dunked in blood and sparkling with broken glass. A gold bracelet rolled across the floor and hit his shoe.
"Having trouble breathing, Shadow?" The murderer flicked some ear wax off his finger.
"…A-my…?" Shadow's throat closed so that the name came out like a puppy's whimper. He elevated his focus to the look-alike who was waving their bloody fingers with a innocent smile. His lips twitched until they began curling back around his fangs. His jaw tightened to the point of almost breaking. The nerves that muscled his eyeballs were one strain away from exploding.
Shadow's glare darkened with bloodlust, his quills arched, his biceps pulsed as did the veins bulging out of his gloved fists. The rings that chained down his power freed his wrists.
"So then..." The murderer bowed. "The GREAT Ultimate Life form has finally come to join us!" His arms flopped back down as his shoulder shrugged between his quiet laughter, one eye narrowing at Shadow. "Have you been DYING to meet m-"
Shadow cannoned his body at his victim in a gold power-beam like an unstoppable bull. The target just about sprained his ankle jumping out of range. Shadow the Hedgehog thought of the blood that would be splattered along the walls soon, the red streaks from his meat exploding open, the howling scream as he stretched his meat's face until it was ripped open in two. The hate took over. All awareness of Amy's condition itself had been trashed, and the lust to slaughter was in its place.
However, despite the demented drive to have his earlier image fulfilled, Shadow's explosive charge was not successful. The edge of his spines raked the murderer's knee, leaving a loss of fur and an exposure to skin, but not a fatal wound. The only 'wound' he'd caused was the lack of a wall in Amy's bedroom. The impostor hedgehog snarled and flame-bladed to the other side of the room, waving at Shadow from the distance with a sweaty grin. The veins zig-zagged Shadow's forehead.
He attacked head-on again and again, only destroying the walls at each failure to drill into his enemy despite his power-pump, his quills suffering the damage even more.
The impostor taunted, "For the love of Chaos, you're the Ultimate Life form, a title well to be known of; especially once you're dead with pinkie over there, you'll be famous."
Shadow charged this time; the savage insanity malforming his face into a black, deformed monster with fangs to devour, but the hedgehog dashed to the left side of the room in a trail of red with his arms still crossed like he hadn't even moved a centimeter all along, yawning. He juggled his red Chaos Emerald, hinting that he had slowed time to achieve the technique. Breathless, droopy-eyed and still gnarring his canines from using up his so much energy, Shadow used his Chaos Control to warp through space and time. The impostor closed his eyes and set his ears on the alert.
"I can feel your energy, Shadow." He smirked, the corner of his mouth undergoing a fit of seizures to prove his inner intimidation of the hedgehog. "In approximately ten seconds you'll reappear to ambush me from behind." His smirk deflated when his ear suddenly twitched.
Shadow reappeared in front of him and lunged in his entire body weight to grab his meat by the throat, but the hedgehog had suddenly disappeared himself, leaving Shadow's hands to only grasp the air and put him off balance. This only enraged Shadow to the brink of mania; he flipped Amy's bed over and hurled it through the window. Pupils almost completely gone from the whites of his eyes, he roared out to the ceiling with shaking palms of curled, convulsive fingers, "STOP running away and let me RIP YOUR HEART OUT!"
From the other side of the room again, the impostor cut through the air and sliced through Shadow's waist with a Chaos Spear that resembled a thunderbolt in his hand. The fur tore and the blood sprayed as Shadow's yowl scowled into a growl. He straightened his fingers into alignment and made a dive for the hedgehog's chest to, quite literally, rip his beating heart out. Panicked for the first time, the impostor rammed his fist into Shadow who blocked, creating a thick gravity wave. It was Shadow who backed him into the corner between flying jabs of white fists and the ripples of gravity bouncing off each elbow-to-fist and arm-to-kick blow.
The blood from being scraped by the murderer's claws and Shadow's bare knuckles was splattering out of control and drying on both their faces like red paint. Though there was something strange about the fight's pattern. With every hit and every attempt to hit, the impostor hedgehog copied Shadow move for move, and for a moment, Shadow felt like he was battling his reflection and not a real enemy. Shadow's hand squeezed the green gem to where it might've been crushed a moment more once the panting impostor distanced himself. The agenda had cleared for him once again - get to Amy.
Salivating with madness, Shadow summoned up the spears in one hand and swung them at his target at the wrath of Zeus. "CHAOS SPEAR!"
The lightning spears soared earthwards in a rampage that would normally be inescapable.
The sweaty impostor held his ruby emerald at eye level. "CHAOS SPEAR!"
A substance of hellish glow swallowed up the impostor's fists. He fired the spears from his palms unlike Shadow's technique, but it remained a copycat move all the same. The spears collided into a massive explosion that destroyed the apartment's roof, causing Shadow to shield his face while attempting to sneak to Amy, while the impostor was grinning against the ripping winds as the unconscious Amy was thrown against the wall from the force of it. The minute Shadow's foot stepped in Amy's blood was the minute his enemy yanked him by his quills and snapped his head back to fling him into the collapsing wall. Shadow sat in a heap of rubble with blood in his eyes, numbed from the waist down and seeing crooked. He strained his eyes open between the bloodlines to send his dark glower back to the intruder.
The black hedgehog sighed playfully and sat down on the small cushion-stool beside Amy's demolished dresser as the ceiling continued to come down around them. "That's it...let's just take a break, shall we?"
Shadow grunted as he tried to remove himself from the crumbled layers of rock, but his arms were weak and his functions were beginning to shut down on him, reducing his body to plop back down into the stockpile. If he abused much more of his strength, he would fall into a coma. He peeked across his dead arm to confirm Amy's condition, but was squinting to see past the jitters in his vision. The need to reach her was in the way his fingers sunk into fists that bled from his claws digging into his palms.
"...Shadow~!" The impostor crossed his legs.
Shadow's nose wrinkled as he ran his desperate gaze between Amy's scars, imagining what hell this bastard put her through, seeing the blood gurgling from her mouth and the pale pastiness of her fur's color dying away. His fangs caught into a vice-grit to retort the desperation into watery-eyed fury.
How dare he.
How DARE he-
"SHA-dow." The impostor was suddenly in front of him, yanking his chin up to look him in the eye.
All the while, the mix of trauma and hate in Shadow's face remained on Amy, till he ultimately upturned his glare to the impostor.
"...I want to tell you things." the hedgehog pressed his thumb and finger into Shadow's chin, fueling Shadow to growl. "Things you were never born to know. Things that'll make you cry. I have it all on a recorder. Would you like to hear it?"
Shadow shot his arm up to clout the hedgehog in the mouth with his elbow, but the hedgehog caught his forearm in the making and twisted it behind Shadow's back.
"GRAH!" Shadow's fangs locked down on his tongue to hold his scream.
The impersonator slit his eyes as his mouthpiece replayed a scientist's recorded speech from an official G.U.N. documentary,"Project Shadow is the end result of 'The Ultimate Life Form' creation, the secret genetics project shut down a half century ago which objective was to reach immortality. Black Hole code-named Wrath was the in-between project among Project Shadow and Bio-Lizard. Black Hole was the second prototype, but was locked down by Gerald due to unfinished and malfunctioning circumstances. Or so, that is what the government tells us. Mmph-mmph, the details may run deeper than-"
"There were only THREE weapons aboard the Ark, you BASTARD!" Shadow snapped his fangs at the hand on his chin.
The hedgehog continued, "what they tell us. Project Shadow and Bio-Lizard were not originally programmed to destroy Earth or become the weapons of mass destruction. Project Shadow's body was meant to be a cure for Professor Gerald's granddaughter's illness, but was later re-touched to become the military's weapon, nonetheless being left with the mind, heart, and personality of Maria Robotnik uptill recent changes within his programming."
...Shadow's ears perked at this, but his jaw stayed clenched.
"Black Hole code-named Wrath was to be created specifically for the military's policy purposes so we could leave Project Shadow the freedom of his original purpose, but the Black Hole project was left incomplete and useless. Where Project Shadow is artificial, Black Hole is mechanical. Though detained by the military for fifty-one years, its, uh...its memory bank was connected to the former Project Shadow's, giving Black Hole code-named Wrath access to the events plagued in Shadow's life. It's like a, uh...aheh, like someone evading your diary on a whole 'nother level, you see. While Black Hole code-named Wrath's body is, indeed useless whereas he is much weaker than Project Shadow, his mind is his power-house, so we and the rest of my crew here plan to finish the final furnishings of this forgotten tool. It'll certainly be exciting for us all-"
The hedgehog's pupils returned to their regular state as well as his own voice.
"For them to meddle in my MIND as Gerald had done you, that is." He tapped his head. "Yet unlike you, I was created to know the truth."
Shadow tested the nerve-reactions in his foot. His energy was returning, but he'd strike when the stage was set.
Staring Wrath in the face, Shadow hissed under his breath, "I don't give a fuck WHO you think you are, stop prolonging your blood to spill!"
"Do not BLAME me," Wrath put a hand on his chest in gesture of himself. "Blame this...this Rose for the events of today. For if it hadn't been for Amy Rose, everything would've gone according to plan a year ago aboard the Ark. And now, since you have abandoned Gerald's death wish, you are no longer useful. There is no life for you to live, because of what you are. You have no PURPOSE, and a mere project, a runaway experiment, has no reason to walk the Earth if it is purposeless." he added in, "Destroy or be destroyed, Shadow."
The muscles in Shadow's fingers contracted. At last. He smirked up at Wrath with the blood-lust bleeding from his eyes and the veins clenched around his muzzle, "...I'm going to eat you alive."
Wrath smiled and tilted his head while looking into the madness of Shadow. "By the fury in your tongue, I can see your feelings for her are lethal to you like fire. Love is such a DREADFUL bond." As Wrath began to laugh, his laughter was suddenly hacked into a gagging choke once Shadow's hand trapped his throat.
"You want to know why I aborted my orders to Gerald Robotnik?" Shadow slowly stood from the rubble that fell off his shoulders and dangled his replica off his squirming heels. "Because of Maria."
"Yes!" Wrath's tongue arched to the roof of his mouth as he choked between cackles. "Yes, your little 'sister' Maria told Project Shadow, but she didn't tell you."
The hedgehog once again replayed the recorded session of Rouge the Bat's oral letter report, "During my latest criminal investigation, I found secret information about Project Shadow through a Security Hole in GUN, and informed the President. It was a letter addressed to Professor Gerald from the President of its time, thirteen Presidents ago, confidentially requesting him some new research. The subject of the letter is as follows."
"...Shut up..." Shadow rasped, still choking the hedgehog off his feet, the hedgehog who still continued to replay live voice information.
"Mankind's ultimate eternal dream, researching for immortality. Gerald had refused this request stubbornly, for it crossed over Man's limits. However (although ironically), in the end, Gerald's dearest granddaughter "Maria Robotnik" gave him a reason to look over the plans. Maria suffered from an illness "NIDS: Neuro immunodeficiency syndrome", by which medical treatment was difficult to provide. Although she seemingly could not expect recovery from this, medical treatment research was continued aboard the ARK, before they finally thought the incurable disease could be conquered because of Gerald's declaration of his new immortality studies. Advanced research was strictly confidential inside the ARK. Records state, "Project Shadow" was named this because of the sarcasm involved in not actually being able to create a Shadow (Which didn't exist in the world)."
"I told you to SHUT UP!" Shadow slammed Wrath into the wall.
And still, the now robotized hedgehog's mouth did not stop moving, "At first, everyone thought that this plan was far too reckless and far-fetched to have ever been fabricated by Professor Gerald's gifted mind. Chaos Emeralds were researched and resulted in the creation of Chaos Drives, which were a test to apply their infinite energy to a life, while the main project would only be started once the prototype was complete. The "Prototype of the Ultimate Life-form", made after the image of a lizard, showed many signs of wonderful growth; regeneration, restoration, and self-reproduction. The researchers were thrilled at this."
Shadow jumped on top of Wrath's immobilized body and snatched the back of his head, jabbing it over and over and over and over again into the wall to break the hedgehog's skull.
Despite having his head blown through the wall and his voice box being cracked down to a malfunctioning robot, the hedgehog's program kept running on Rouge's report, "But_while_their_joy_of _how_w-w-w-w-w-well_the Prototype_was doing_quickly went to their heads, it became unruly and hard to control causing many problems. A voice of doubt soon arose, as they questioned their continuation on this project, as well as the safety of others aboard. The truth is uncertain, about who had leaked private information about the Project to GUN, however it was considered to have been one of the few who were concerned with the Prototype, as it became reckless."
Shadow dropped Wrath's mangled body as the bedroom seemed to change its format to the outer galaxy. His body in suspended space seemed to be slanted above the Ark.
"Those who were among the top ranking of GUN, had a strong disliking of the research organization, and formulated a plan to shut down the ARK itself, taking advantage of its current situation. Their secret plan was code named, " Ark's Indestructible Seal."
The background walls dissolved into melting squiggles that soon spiraled into the colors of another room - a team of scientists arguing beside the heart of the Eclipse Cannon's designs.
"All of the colony's residents were to be evacuated from a bio hazardous calamity generated from within the ARK research institution, and it would be sealed away. This was their ostensible purpose of the strategy. Of course, the true purpose was to close the ARK research facility, erase Project Shadow, and put the blame to Professor Gerald as the person who had caused the accident."
The scenery spun back to the metallic halls with the emergency alerts blaring and commanders shouting to, "Stop them!"
"The plan was carried out, on the premises that GUN knew nothing, and within only seven days of the Plan's commencing, all the residents of the ARK were moved to the planet. All the research facilities aboard the ARK were frozen by GUN, and all persons involved in Project Shadow, except for Professor Gerald, were announced as victims of the disaster. The plan was finally completed, when the "Prototype of the Ultimate Lifeform" was found, and then sealed away in the deepest part of the Colony."
Shadow froze on the spot to behold the scene-replay of Maria and 'Project Shadow' heading straight for him.
"…Maria," Shadow whispered.
He reached out to touch her as she drew near, but her body ran right through him like a ghost from a sick dream, leaving him with a tingly sensation all down his spine. He just stared into space like a helpless, speechless fool deaf, dumb, and blind by all that was happening around him as silent tears came to his eyes.
He stared into the mouth of the gun being pointed at him by the G.U.N. soldier whose name he desired to hunt down. Shadow's tears were blinked into mid-air as the bullet ripped through his translucent self. What came next was Maria's shrieking cry and 'Project Shadow's' memorable, "MARIA!"
"...But, there was miscalculation in their plan. It seemed Professor Gerald was already finishing off the Ultimate Lifeform "Shadow", but using another desirable form, when the plan was being executed. When GUN's Special Forces rushed into the research institute, Gerald escaped, and entrusted it to Maria, his granddaughter, checking to make sure that the one escape capsule was ejected toward the planet. (In addition, the whereabouts of the capsule at that time were not known.) Now, it is not known if the hedgehog "Shadow the Hedgehog", being the "Shadow" that was sealed away in Prison Island, was a copy created by someone else, or was the original "Shadow" that was ejected toward the planet. There is no real way to confirm this anywhere..."
Shadow went on staring, mouth agape, and pupils shriveled.
"'Shadow the Hedgehog' was never created during the week GUN's plan was executed, so 'Shadow the Hedgehog' never knew about the Prototype, or the destructive powers it possessed. But, at the moment GUN's plan was executed, Gerald had told Maria to escape with Project Shadow, and ran away to escape any intentions of being caught. Gerald had watched out of a monitor/out a window, to see the capsule Project Shadow was in leaving the colony."
The background rippled back to Amy's battle-field bedroom, and Wrath, now climbing back onto his feet, was himself again.
"Note the text mentions an 'Original piece' of Project Shadow." He wiped the blood from his chin. "It's most likely Rouge doesn't believe that the 'Shadow' standing before me was actually the one from fifty-one years ago. She and even me, believe that, perhaps, the original Shadow that was in the capsule, died upon impact. Someone else found 'Project Shadow' and made a clone to revive it. The clones of original life forms usually can retain certain memories that they had before. How else could you only remember part of the past and portions of Maria's dying death wish-"
"Shut..." - Shadow smashed his fist into Wrath's cheek, beating the blood out of him - "the HELL..." - he kneed him in the jawbone before slamming both fists down on his back to bury him in the ground - "UP!"
On his hands and knees, Wrath coughed up the blood souring his throat and leaking through his broken teeth. His under-eyelid was bleeding as well in a sign of the right side of his face beginning to sag off like melting skin.
"I don't have TIME for your pathetic lectures of whom or what I am!" Shadow dragged Wrath out onto the floor by his hair, and bashed his head through the window before jerking him back in.
Wrath gurgled, croaked, and coughed up bloody saliva with a few chips of broken glass wedged inside his mouth and punctured eyeball.
Shadow roared as proudly as any lion despite the red fluid sliming his cheek, "I am SHADOW, Shadow the HEDGE-hog, and that is all I need to know!" He said it out of consideration for Amy. His gratitude for her everything, for all her efforts and pressing persistence to guide him through the walls he couldn't walk around. As of right now though, this, 'Wrath' person was the wall in his way of Amy herself. Shadow's eyes crossed over to her worriedly.
She was still breathing - still clinging to life.
'I'm running out of time.' Shadow closed his eyes as the sweat beaded his brow, before forcing them open on Wrath's grinning face. 'He, MUST die.'
Outside
Sonic knocked on Amy's apartment door for the fifth time.
"Come on, Amy! It's...it's me, Sonic!" He winced at his choice of greeting as if he were being slapped already. 'Maybe it's not a good idea to let her know it's me, but still…I would've heard her say 'go away' or 'Get lost, Sonic' by now…'
Sonic pounded against the door this time, but soon it flew open and hit the wall. He blinked blankly in the gesture of his fist knock and looked around the empty place.
"Well now that's uncanny; her door's still unlocked?"
Sonic flattened himself against the wall and slinked down the hallway like a thief in the middle of the night. "A...Ames? Are you here? Please don't be hiding behind any doors to ambush and score me on the head with your mallet…"
He mentally shivered at the image.
Sonic paused when he saw the light and dancing shadows underneath her bedroom door.
He gulped and slowly set his fingers around the doorknob. "Amy? Are you in there?" his uneasy eyes found the red fluid seeping under the door.
His ears stood up erect. "AMY!" he barged the door down, assuming the obvious and the worst, "AMY-..." Sonic's ears sagged down just to find two black hedgehogs fighting to the death. "D-Daaaah..." Sonic sweat-dropped. "Two Shadows?" He scratched the top of his head, "Well that's definitely not right…"
Shadow had his enemy pinned to the floor with one of Wrath's broken and elongated claws suiting up to skin Wrath's throat for that lovely red 'wine' Shadow so badly wanted to see. Wrath, however, was the first to see Sonic there looking completely confused and aggravated.
Shadow looked to his left to see his blue double as well. "...Sonic?" He suddenly twitched with anger. "What the hell?!"
"...Okay, can somebody PLEASE explain to me what the heck's going on?!"
"Shut up, Sonic!" Shadow and Wrath both remarked.
Sonic withdrew. "SHESH, you two share looks as much as you do TEMPERS!" Though not one second short, Sonic's solemnity kicked in when the original quest to find Amy grasped back at him. He threatened them both, not out of resentment for neither, but stress, "...Where's Amy?"
While Shadow had been distracted, Wrath used the time to kick Shadow off of him. "Ohhh, BLUE...you're a little LATE for the requiem!" A battered, bloody-faced Wrath made the move to confront and block Sonic from the view of Amy Rose.
Shadow on the other hand, tripped to Amy's side upon sensing his chance. His knees crawled into her blood as he collapsed on his hands beside her head. His iris sucked back as his horrified fingers stretched out to her face.
There was no Maria. Just Amy. A stepped-on Rose crushed into the Earth. The one who gave him the name, "Shadow the Hedgehog."
His fingers stopped their wobbling as they rested on her pink hair. He stroked the matted, blood-stenched tangles out of her eyes, his fingertips dyed in red, his teeth suddenly chattering against his growl.
"Mmph..." Amy's teeth bit together as she pants through her nostrils. "Sha-dow~..." the onslaught of tears streamed with the blood down her muzzle. "I...I-It...it hur-"
"Shhh," He placed his hand on her temple to silence her. "You must, stay, strong," he breathed out like he was being strangled, but tried to gulp down his building heart-attack.
Shadow shot his attention to the other black hedgehog for a long hateful stare deepening under his eyebrows.
The sound of more glass breaking caught Wrath's attention.
"Why that little SNAKE!" he yelled a moment before spinning around to visually meet his worst fears. But soon he wiped his mouth to reveal a smile. "…No, that's alright. This will do just fine. So let the sick games resume, so-called Shadow."
Without Chaos Control, he warped out of sight, leaving a very confused and pissed off Sonic screaming his lungs out for him to come back.
There was no need for Sonic to scream for answers or abuse and bend his foot by kicking the overturned dresser anymore when the thick, ear-pounding smell of blood tickled under his nose.
Shutting up, Sonic followed his nose and found the source of his nose's nightmare.
...He dabbed his hand on the carpet and lifted his fingers to his face to rub the blood between finger and thumb.
Fresh.
His other hand patted the carpet beside his foot to find the bracelet his foot had kicked when he stood up. He didn't bother looking for it with his eyes - he was slowly fighting with reality to convince himself that this wasn't happening, and that it wasn't real, and he'd wake up if he pinched himself.
When his fingers graced it, he gulped, unprepared to face the truth, but gripped it into his fist anyway. Clinching his eyes shut, Sonic reopened them upon the bracelet in his palm.
Amy.
...The bracelet hit the floor.
A drop of blood clung to the lip of windowsill before dropping away and 'pinging' off the bracelet.
The pinch didn't work.
Attention: I don't own 'Rouge's final report letter document'. KojiChao of the StH Area51 MB had translated a Japanese document that answers many secrets about Sonic Adventure 2 that weren't revealed in the English version for those who have only played the English version like me.
