Shadow followed the signature of the seven Chaos Emeralds, ignoring everything in his way, walls and shields included, dully burning injury in his leg included. He'd briefly considered warping back to the others and just as quickly realised he couldn't - the seven weren't in range, and he bitterly wondered if that had been an intentional design point of the Black Comet. They'd apparently foreseen everything else that he and the others had thrown at them.
At last, he smashed his way through to what had to be the central control room, with Dume still floating on that platform, the Chaos Emeralds inset into the wall above him. From the back, Shadow saw the band for what it was: an effective seatbelt, anchoring Dume to the platform by way of a slender post. Dume turned his vehicle around as Shadow made his crashing entrance.
"Shadow... I'm very impressed. But it's time to bring an end to this foolishness."
The black hedgehog charged for him, snarling fiercely.
"STOP."
The command had been spoken in a very deep voice, and something about it reverberated in Shadow's head with a combination of harmonics like nothing he'd ever heard before, pinning him, driving the command into his bones with irresistible force. Against his will, his legs locked, halting him.
"You can't really think that you, a mere hedgehog, not even knowing who or what you are, can stop us." With that bizarre resonance in Dume's voice, if it was his voice it was in, Shadow was finding it nearly impossible to even think about anything else, let alone move. "I hoped you would remember... you would have made an ideal right hand for me, as you were created to be for my father. But your professor was betrayed by one of his own, and so... the knowledge we gained was passed on to me.
"I can control you, Shadow. You can feel it."
Shadow tried to say something. Anything. It came out as a throaty whimper.
"You cannot escape me. You can't run or fight. Watch with me as our plan is fulfilled..." Dume activated the control room's main screen, which was just below the Chaos Emeralds. It showed the ruins of what might have once been Westopolis - now, the city was shadowed by the immense Kayzen, four sturdy metal limbs delved deep into the land, heedless of the destruction wrought. "This will be the seat of our conquest."
Shadow twitched. He still couldn't think.
After less than half a minute, the screen fuzzed itself out. Dume leaned closer to it.
"Something's interfering with the transmission... what is this?!"
The screen cleared again to show old, undated footage of Gerald Robotnik. Shadow pricked up his ears. Just looking at him, he realised the recording had to have been before the attack: Gerald's stooped frame was ever so slightly portly, as he'd been before sorrow and insanity had melted the flesh from his bones. The professor was just as Shadow remembered him from the old days, bushy grey moustache brushed but never quite tamed, face lined with age but not grief, though his expression was unusually serious and solemn.
"Shadow, my son..." Gerald paused, collecting his thoughts. "If you're listening to this, then the worst has happened... You need to know the truth. I'm afraid this station will have been shut down... that all of us who know about you will have been imprisoned." He bowed his head, the ceiling lights shining on his bald scalp. "It's my fault, Shadow... I'm so sorry."
Gerald lifted his head again, looking into the camera as if he could see Shadow's eyes on the other side, though it was fifty years too late. "My research was always funded because of the war, but I wanted to stop it... I wanted peace, for all of Mobius." The professor paused, taking a deep breath. "When my team were unable to create you alone... I made contact with a scientist of Soleanna, Professor Banel Dume."
Shadow's shoulders sank. So that much was true.
"His research focused on life and the mind, where mine concentrated on Chaos Energy... I knew that with his help, we would succeed. In return, I promised him the Chaos Emeralds... I could already see that where I wanted peace, he wanted victory. And his researchers had as much drive as our own."
Gerald slowly shook his head, and Shadow felt like the worst thing in the world. It was true. He'd been a bargaining chip against the Chaos Emeralds, a weapon in the war.
But the professor continued. "Please listen very carefully, Shadow... no matter what has happened, or what they tell you. Dume and his fellows will take our world from us if they are not stopped, and I am afraid that without you, the only way to prevent it will be with crimes as great as theirs. That is why I have done this... you, and only you, have a chance to put an end to it all.
"The government believes that the Eclipse Cannon is our weapon against them, but I cannot allow that to happen unless there is no alternative. They are designing a flagship powered by the results of my own research, an invincible flying fortress they call the Black Comet. It will be their military headquarters, their base of operations. There will be no civilians aboard..."
Gerald paused. He looked away from the camera briefly, but the enormity of his next statement forced him to look back into it. "If you cannot stop the war any other way, Shadow, then you must use Chaos Control to take that ship into space and turn the Eclipse Cannon on it. I am sorry, Shadow... sorry for this burden, for what I have done. But the future of this planet depends on you..."
Off-camera, a door opened. Gerald looked to the side, alarmed and still sorrowful; a moment later, none other than Maria came into shot to hug him, concerned. "What's happening, Grandfather?"
"I'm recording a message to Shadow... asking him to protect the planet when I'm gone, for all of us."
Maria's response was cheerful and innocent. "Don't worry, Grandfather, Shadow and I will protect it." From her angle, she couldn't see Gerald's expression as it twisted into fear and self-hatred; she turned to look at the camera without ever seeing his face. "Right, Shadow?"
"I know you will." The professor's voice was so sad, so quiet. He reached forward, and the recording ended.
In the Black Comet's central control room, Shadow and Dume were both silent in the wake of the recording as the screen fizzled out and returned to showing the devastated Westopolis. Dume spoke first, quietly, thinking out loud without quite seeming aware of it. "Professor Robotnik... you old fool! You never thought we'd have some way to counter such an obvious move?"
Below him, Shadow straightened up. Gerald had called him his son at the start of the recording, and the rest of its message was clear: no matter why he'd originally been created, Gerald believed in him to stop the ancestors of what would become the Black Arms, to protect Mobius from those who would destroy it. Knowing that truth, he felt lighter, more clear-headed, like he had just dropped a heavy weight - not just because of Gerald's words, he suddenly realised. The compelling tone was gone from Dume's voice. He could think again. Barely moving, Shadow looked around the room, and for the first time realised he was surrounded by speakers with somewhat odd curves, designed to give full surround sound. Dume's left hand had its forefinger out, all but hiding a button that was no longer quite depressed - that button had to be the control mechanism.
Shadow moved.
Curling and jumping, he charged for the nearest speaker, and at nearly the same time Dume saw him and issued a "STOP!" command. Shadow hadn't quite reached top speed, and the resonances still caught at his nerves and jarred his reflexes - he hit the speaker awkwardly. But he did hit it, simple momentum carrying him there over the resonance, and at the speed he was going the sound was Doppler-shifted out of true, taking some of the force out of it. Despite feeling off-balance, Shadow kicked off and spun through the air for the next speaker. The next rebound jarred his injured leg badly, pain flaring through it, and Dume was yelling at him repeatedly to STOP; Shadow felt half-paralysed, but momentum, the Doppler shift, and sheer stubborn will kept him going. He refused to let things be this way, to let the Black Arms win. Dume even fired on him at one point, taking a shot from a sidearm Shadow hadn't noticed before, but he missed completely.
Every speaker destroyed made Shadow's head clear further, the sound coming from fewer angles, until at last the final one was caved in and useless. The hedgehog landed tall in the centre of the room, satisfied in seeing Dume, for the first time, look alarmed for more than an instant, though he got himself under control quickly, backing his floating vehicle into a recess in the wall.
"Well, well, well... seems like you figured out the control mechanism."
Shadow took a deliberate, full-weight step forward on his injured leg, ignoring the blood he could feel oozing down it. "You're boring me to death, Dume. I'm not your puppet. This ends now."
"Very well, then! Say goodbye, Shadow!" There was a click as his hovercraft touched something in the recess - and he was gone, propelled upwards so quickly he had to be using artificial gravity to counteract the acceleration and keep himself from blacking out.
Shadow watched it go, but a crackle turned his attention back to the room; a small speaker, too little to have been part of the deep bass resonances that had been controlling him, had come on. The voice that came through was rather tinny, and it sounded strained and hoarse, but it was unmistakably Tails. "I think I've-" and he broke off to cough, "-got him. Shadow? Shadow!"
Surprised, the hedgehog darted across the room and put his hands on either side of the speaker. "Tails?! Are you all right?!"
He heard Sonic cough. "We're - we're fine, Shadow."
"Sonic got us out of there!" Even Amy's voice was oddly harsh, a far cry from her usual slightly childish one.
"We all - all made it," said Tails. "We're gonna be okay!"
Shadow let out a relieved, shaky breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. They were all alive, and the second weight fell from him. Above him, quite a ways above him, something loud activated, and the room's screen blipped out. Shadow looked up at it, frowning, but quickly turned his attention back to the speaker as Rouge spoke next, the normally sultry bat sounding like she'd spent a solid week yelling, all the smoothness in her voice gone. "Can you find a remote - ...'mote headset?"
"Even a phone?" Tails offered. "We're tapping into the... ship's systems. I can - can keep a line open to you as long as-" He coughed again. "...as long as you have something to receive me with."
Shadow looked around the trashed room. "I don't see anything. But I have the Chaos Emeralds - I'm going after Dume with them."
"Good!" Sonic said. "Something s-seriously weird is... 's happening out there! You can do it!"
"Be careful, Shadow!" croaked Amy.
"If you-" Tails still seemed to be having even more trouble than the others, pausing to take a sharp breath. "-find anything to receive us - we'll help you!"
Shadow nodded in an automatic response, even though the others couldn't see him. "Got it." After a moment, he backed off, taking a deep breath and looking up at the seven Chaos Emeralds. He closed his eyes, calling on their ancient power, there as it always had been, the slots in the wall no hindrance. He felt their power as they drifted down to float around him in a circle, their light shining brighter and brighter behind his eyelids. Chaos Energy coursed through the air between them and around him like a wild thing, taking every bit of Shadow's focus and strength to control it until it reached that plateau of equilibrium he'd only passed once before, and Shadow opened his eyes, staring at himself.
This wasn't what he'd done with Sonic - it was harder, stronger, much more intense, black fur turned blazing golden instead of silver, the Emeralds' power wreathing him in visible tracers. Was it because he was using all of their power instead of sharing it with Sonic?
He shook his head. No time to ponder it, not now. He rose upward with the Emeralds' power, jets unused, going relatively slowly, slow enough that he could see what the other rooms held. The Emeralds saw to it that the Kayzen's layers of ceiling didn't stand in his way, tearing holes through the metal as if it were paper. A few floors from the outer hull, Shadow saw what he was looking for - a little communicator, even designed for Mobians of his own basic ear shape. Very carefully, managing to not melt or crush it, he clipped it on, and his ear flicked involuntarily several times, sensitive even through this state's invulnerability. Shadow wasn't sure why, and for the moment, he ignored it. "Tails, are you there?"
"I hear you, Shadow! I have-" a cough "-your frequency!" Tails' voice was coming through with a bit of static, further distorting his poison-altered voice.
"He's taken off in some... big ship thing!" Sonic added.
"I guess I'll see it once I'm off the Black Comet." No longer needing caution, Shadow rocketed upward, slamming through everything in his path, the thick outer hull and shields combined not even slowing him down. The scene outside was of utter devastation.
All around the Kayzen, and around the four gigantic support rods it had driven into the earth, fires were raging, turning the sky a smoky, sullen red. Only a handful of fighters were around the ship now, looking like dumb autonomous drones probably built by Ivo, insect-darting their way around the hull as its remaining outer turrets attempted to shoot them down. Their battles weren't of any importance. Slowly turning, Shadow saw through the haze what he had to have been looking for.
Dume's craft was small compared to the Kayzen, but still as large as a good-sized building, symmetrical fore and aft to the extent that Shadow couldn't actually tell which was which at this distance, gravity plates covering its hull, surely more than it needed to keep aloft. The human's voice crackled in his earpiece. "My father helped create you, Shadow, and now I will destroy you!" The extra gravity plates activated, shimmering, warping space around the ship. Debris began to rise up from the ground, starting small: street signs, trash bins, twisted shutters torn loose from their shopfronts; progressing up to entire cars, planters still full of soil, uprooted city trees; even vast chunks of building, all surrounding Dume's ship in a protective field. "You will not stand in our way!"
Shadow knew Dume couldn't see his expression, but suspected he could hear it. "I made a promise, Dume. I'm keeping it." He surged forward, for the moment ignoring the debris and tearing straight through it, though it did slow him down a little; what was important now was assessing weak points. A half-circle around the giant machine showed him what he was looking for: what had to be the aft, sporting a white-hot radiator raised like a wing-flap at the top, extending over some form of green-glowing engine. The power he could feel from it was much akin to the green orb in the activated temple in the canyons where he'd fought alongside Knuckles. Oddly enough, he could feel another power source much like it, identical even, at the fore end, though nothing but flat plated metal showed there.
The craft turned with Shadow as he arced toward its exposed systems, trying to keep him away, but he was naturally faster. The defensive beams began firing, carving bright swathes through the air that would have left Shadow dazzled if he hadn't been using the Emeralds' power. At best, they could only delay him while he was in this state.
Even so, the engine was much too large for even a charged-up Shadow to do effective damage from within. Focusing and summoning the Emeralds' power, he charged and loosed an enormous Chaos Spear, a hundred times more powerful than anything he could normally do, blazing through the air with an intensity to match the defensive lasers, burning clear through the outer shield shell like it was nothing. It struck the engine in a coruscating display of sparks and smoke, shaking the entire ship - the debris fell as the power supply faltered, Shadow arcing away to both watch it and loop through concentrated rings of Chaos Energy, maintaining his hold on the seven Emeralds.
It wouldn't be that easy, of course. The ship righted itself before it could fall, and as the smoke cleared and a new debris field lifted up from the wreckage of the city below, Shadow could only see smoothly plated hull. The other one had to be some kind of backup.
"It's using some kind of power source like the temples had!"
He heard Knuckles give a startled exclamation of some sort, too far away from the microphone for Shadow to pick out; it was Tails who actually answered him. "I have some of- of the schematics! It's - got redundant engines - at both ends! It can fly - fly e-either way just as easily! Pilot's in the - shielded centre! The gravity plates will - keep you back-" and he broke off completely, coughing helplessly.
Sonic again finished the thought Tails had been trying to. "You've gotta cut the power to them!"
Shadow attempted to get underneath the ship - a lucky sweep from the defensive beams caught him and sent him tumbling back and into the side of an airborne building. He came blazing out, charging up another Chaos Spear and loosing it at where he could sense the second power source. It arced unerringly toward it - only to be intercepted by a tumbling car, where it spent its power on reducing the vehicle to a few sorry drops of molten metal.
He had to get closer.
After weaving through some of the lasers, Shadow summoned the Emeralds' power for a Chaos Control as he was halfway through charging another Spear, aiming to come out just above the second power source. It worked better than he'd expected; the gravity plates and their intense warping of the nearby space affected his aim, but he was in place to fire. Sure enough, this end of the ship now looked exactly like the other half had a few minutes previously. Even as the lasers rushed to compensate, they were only swinging back around at a medium sort of speed for Shadow, and he was unresisted as he fired off his charged bolt into this engine.
By virtue of where his Chaos Control had popped him back into regular space and the way the confused wind was eddying, he just about saw what happened next: the Chaos Spear left a deep, burning scar straight into a section of the engine, shutting that part down for good, and the assembly closed again into the protected hull, the falling ship righting itself and rising again as, he could only assume, the other end opened up once more.
"Go Shadow!" cheered Amy, a celebratory yell that broke off into coughing and wheezing behind Rouge's hoarse encouragement.
"Keep it up!"
Shadow had a go at getting closer to the other side of the ship, keenly aware of his own limits; he'd need to run through more vortices of energy if he couldn't get a perfect shot off now. The debris field was thicker than ever, though Shadow could sense the weakened power supplies labouring under the strain. He got a good third of the way there when something slammed into him from behind.
Tumbling through the air, he could see that Dume was now using the debris field as a weapon in its own right, augmenting the lasers. Once he'd recovered himself, Shadow streaked off away from the flying mech, taking a minute to absorb more Chaos Energy to maintain his use of the Emeralds. It was easier than it could have been, the forces wracking the ether leaving it tangled and twisted, collecting hoops of power just as surely as dents collect rainwater. The ship bore down on him, either because its pilot realised what Shadow was up to or simply because he thought he was running away; whatever the reason, Shadow dodged most of it easily, looping through energy rings until he was satisfied.
He paused once he'd finished, hovering in the air to look back at the ship, calculating his next move and readying a new attack. "...Chaos Control!" Shadow was suddenly above the exposed engine, almost right next to it, and it was clear it couldn't take much more abuse. At the same time he arrived, though, all the beams flashed on at once, intersecting just past the current rear of the ship and sweeping outwards; Dume had been ready for that.
So, instead of a focused Chaos Spear, Shadow let go of the energy he'd stored all at once, blasting outwards in a golden sphere of destruction. Dreams, after all, could provide good ideas. The beams failed against the outer edge, and the engine - the engine died a smoking, crippled death, radiating only feebly and unable to fold away. The first lance had been a precision strike; the second barely-controlled blast was more superficial. Combined, however, they brought ruin deep within. Dume's great ship faltered, tipping wildly sideways, debris plummeting from the sky. It took him longer than before to restabilise, and only then at an angle, longer still to pull the debris field back up, now dancing around the remaining engine in a protective tornado, the beams again active and attempting to converge on Shadow.
The golden hedgehog, however, still had one more trick to his name. For the final approach, he summoned the positive power of all seven Emeralds, speeding up faster than ever, so fast he guessed anyone watching would be seeing him less not as a continuous presence but more flashing through the air, too fast for a normal human or Mobian to track - but, for Shadow himself, time slowed to an inch-by-inch crawl. Easily, effortlessly, he saw debris come for him and pulled lazily out of the way. The beams? They were nothing, exposed gaps between them laughably easily to pick out and exploit. He overshot the engine and swerved, the air itself a thick syrup through which he glided, finally stopping above the second power source at last.
As he finished charging his last Chaos Spear, Shadow contemplated its glowing greenness and the patterns of the smoke emanating from it. He didn't pick anything in particular out of the smoke, but looking past it, he saw naked a perfect target in the core of the engine to strike. The Spear emerged and flickered its way into the engine in jumpy little starts, thread-thin, forking out into dead ends as the main part of his lightning sought out its target. Inch by inch, foot by yard and it struck, Shadow's time returning to normal as the bolt pulled energy up into itself and obliterated the power supply.
That had taken a lot out of him, but the results were clearly worth it. The debris field made a final descent, crashing into the ruins below, and Dume's ship quaked and began to follow, all the beams shutting off, the ship tilting wildly on the way down - and slowing, just barely, as an emergency generator activated perhaps one in twenty of the once-powerful gravity plates. All power was given over to keeping the ship in the air: it was unshielded, helpless, it and the pilot completely at Shadow's mercy.
Shadow had soon crashed into the cockpit, bringing his golden light with him to shine on Dume, and he glared down at the human. Dume was frozen in his seat; he still had his sidearm, and was clearly aware it would be worse than useless against that, that if he so much twitched a finger toward it, Shadow would probably kill him. Neither moved for several seconds.
"...Brutus."
Dume blinked as Shadow spoke, confused.
It took several moments before Brutus answered through the static. He was very quiet, aged somehow beyond even what the gas had done to them all. "Yes?"
"Where are your closest soldiers who can handle an arrest?"
"Wha-" The old general coughed. He evidently couldn't say any more for a moment, for Tails took over.
"GUN seem to have pulled out of the city, but there's a - a presence on the outskirts. Would - would they be - robots?"
"...Most of them, but not all. They'll - have tacticians and technicians in command."
"Very well," Shadow answered. He snapped his attention back to Dume. "Drop your weapons."
The human slowly lifted his hands away from his control panel and up into the air, staring at Shadow with unreasoning fury in his eyes, fury kept harshly leashed by the cold logic of his situation. One wrong move could still mean his death. Shadow relieved him of his sidearm and pulled back, looking at it. He held the weapon clear of the ship's hull and squeezed on the muzzle - it disintegrated with a squeal of metal, leaving the back end to plummet to an unseen fate below. "Anything else?"
Still fixing Shadow with that icily burning glare, Dume shook his head a minute fraction, just enough to answer.
"You'd better be telling the truth." Shadow grabbed him by his right arm and concentrated. "Chaos Control!"
They reappeared on the outskirts of the broken city, as luck would have it right above an extremely surprised soldier, who shielded his eyes against the bright gold of Shadow's charged-up glory. The robots around him automatically turned to track a target appearing well within their threat range, but a "Cancel! Hold fire!" from their commander stayed them.
"If I leave him here," asked Shadow, "can you hold him?"
The soldier blinked. "...Yes, of course. FD-12, restraints, maximum security." To his credit, his voice didn't waver despite the disbelief in his tone. One of the more humanoid robots nearby obligingly opened a panel in its side, offering a set of high-tech handcuffs and matching ankle shackles to its commander. Dume gritted his teeth, and Shadow felt him tense as if to kick out or otherwise struggle. The hedgehog lowered them abruptly down, enough to send a message and force Dume's knees to buckle, but not enough to hurt him. Dume glared at the still off-balance soldier and spat something in a language Shadow didn't speak, but if he was understood, the soldier didn't react to him.
"Pin his legs, FD-12."
The robot walked around as stolidly as it surely performed all its duties, bending to grip Dume just below the knees. The insurgency's mastermind started struggling instants before he was touched, cool control finally snapped. He struck the robot's tough metal plating, a move that had to hurt his hand more than it damaged FD-12, and he couldn't budge Shadow even a millimetre. The hedgehog grabbed Dume's other arm as it swing by, stopping him as surely as if he'd just been pinioned by an entire mountain; this set off an explosive string of what sounded like curses on Shadow and Gerald and possibly other things as the soldier shackled his legs together. The hedgehog flattened his ears to his skull, drowning out a good chunk of it. He held steady and firm until Dume's hands were also bound and FD-12 locked a broad and solid hand around his left arm. The leader of the Black Arms could only look on, trembling with fury, fear, and failure, as Shadow addressed the robots' commander.
"Do you need anything else?"
"That... that will do. Thank you. We all owe you for what you've done here today."
Shadow was quiet for a moment, finally acknowledging the statement with a nod. He turned and set off for the Kayzen again. "Tails? Where exactly are all of you?"
"Still... still near that room. It was - pretty tough to get this far."
"It's not - so bad!" Sonic added, somewhat undermining his point as he broke off into a rapid-fire coughing fit.
"We're outside the gas..." breathed Rouge. "That's what's important. We found a room..."
"And locked the - door," Knuckles finished.
"Right. I'll be there shortly." Shadow flew easily over Westopolis, collecting energy as he went. Below him, he spied what looked like a refugee camp, and noticed an international medical aid symbol. Good - that would do nicely.
He spent a good few minutes collecting as much Chaos Energy as he could from above the now-downed ship he'd just done battle with, knowing he'd need every scrap he could get for what he was about to do, before warping himself into the Kayzen, into the hall just before the fateful audience chamber. A little to his left side, he heard Knuckles announce him arriving, and again warped, this time to the room he heard the echidna's voice coming from, where he cast a worried look around at his friends. They were all sitting around, in chairs or against walls. Most of them looked up as he entered, kept looking at him while squinting. Brutus almost immediately lowered his head again, unable to look directly at him for one reason or another.
"You did - did it!" cried Amy.
"Hy-yper, eh?" Not even Sonic looked well, his permanent restlessness quelled, movements oddly shaky. They all seemed to be experiencing tremors, and Tails coughed.
"Hyper?" Shadow shook his head. "You can explain later. I'm getting you all out of here."
"Thanks... we found some antidote, but - " and Rouge grimaced, "it was fifty years out of - of date."
"At least," said Knuckles, pausing to suppress a cough and mainly succeeding in hacking, "it worked enough to keep - keep us alive."
Shadow swallowed. They'd be okay. They would be. "Is everyone ready?"
At a hoarse chorus of affirmatives, Shadow activated a warp, doing his best to make the inevitable landing a little easier on his friends. The flash of their arrival and the golden glow from Shadow understandably shook the refugees. It was a doctor who got over the shock first, crossing to the group with two assistants flanking her.
"What in the world?!"
"The Black Arms poisoned them; some kind of nerve gas. They found some antidote, but it was very outdated. Can you help them?"
The doctor's eyes widened, but her response was confident, already directing her nurses with hand gestures as she spoke; they ran back to the main body of the camp. "Of course! Do you know what they were hit with?"
"Um... not by name." Shadow looked worriedly down at his sick friends.
Rouge named something, some fairly long-named compound Shadow couldn't repeat offhand. The doctor, at least, seemed to understand, which was the important part.
"Yes, we can handle some preliminary treatment. As long as we get you all to a proper hospital by this time tomorrow, I daresay you'll be all right."
Help from the nurses and some of the able-bodied refugees was arriving, carrying a set of stretchers among them. Brutus was getting loaded up first, no doubt because of his advanced age compared to the rest; Shadow heard a light clatter as he emptied his pistol's bullet chamber. As the refugees moved in to help the others, Sonic rose, fairly unstably but as stubborn as Shadow himself. Seeing him stumbling his way toward the camp with two people flanking him, the others carried off to safety, Shadow was satisfied. He disappeared from the refugee camp, reappearing underneath the Black Arms' gigantic flying fortress.
There he rested his hands on the bottom hull, closed his eyes and concentrated, at last pulling off a Chaos Control second in power only to the one he and Sonic had used to save Mobius from the falling ARK. Once the ship was in place, drifting in the start of an orbit, Shadow warped again, directly into the ARK's central control room, where he slowly began charging down, concentrating as hard as he could to do it in seven equal stages.
Green first, the first Emerald he'd discovered, handed over by the Black Arms.
Deep dark ocean blue, the second, snatched at the cost of a shot to his leg that had been mildly hindering him almost since this madness he'd come through had begun.
Red as Knuckles and found with him, resting on its tip on the outskirts of beautiful, stately old ruins.
Frustrating white, carried away from him by the Cyclone and briefly returned to its owner after memories and morality returned at last.
Purple, snatched from out of Ivo's virtual machine.
Light sky blue coming back to its last crystallisation point inside the abandoned colony, or very close to it.
And, finally, yellow, handed to him by the military - by Brutus with the heterochroma, his friend all grown up.
Shadow dropped to the ground, fur finally black again, and panted for air. The Chaos Emeralds were arranged neatly in front of him as if waiting with their mysterious ancient patience for whatever he wanted next. He barely allowed himself half a minute to collect himself before he stood up and picked the Emeralds up again, slotting them one-by-one into the cannon's control panel. He knew Gerald's program had only meant to run once, for the obvious reasons. With it already come and gone, what he was doing was perfectly safe, at least for Mobius as a whole. With all seven Emeralds in place, the cannon charged up to full power in instants, and Shadow aimed.
Locked on.
Fired.
He watched through the ARK's cameras as the cannon's pulse lanced through space at the Black Comet. The Kayzen was tough, but not even its sturdy, shielded hull was any match for the might of the Eclipse Cannon. It resisted at first, only to abruptly give out, buckling, the entire ship imploding, its superstructure falling inward as what had previously lain within was annihilated. Shockingly soon, the entire ship was gone but for chunks of hull plating and other chance debris, and the cannon's pulse ended.
Shadow stood there, unmoving but for his breath, for quite some time.
He'd just done that.
Eventually, he called the Chaos Emeralds back to him, storing their power but letting it lie quiescent, and wandered off, across the catwalk from the Eclipse Cannon's controls and out into the rest of the ARK. He didn't know quite where he was going, nor quite what he was thinking.
The halls he was in were familiar enough. He'd been around and through them repeatedly when Gerald had taken him back to the ARK, their hearts and minds twisted with sorrow, and when he'd carried out his creator's plans for dropping the colony into Mobius like an extinction meteor, but he'd never been in that part of the ARK before the attack. Secret projects weren't allowed to be wandering into other secret projects. Back then, though, he hadn't cared. He had plenty of friends, a safe environment, wide enough spaces to roam what felt like endlessly. Testing was fun, for the most part, and if the researchers pushed him at times, it was because he could handle it and enjoyed pushing himself.
Shadow stopped, looking up at a door. He recognised the designation - access for Project Shadow personnel only. The hall beyond led to where he'd first woken up. And past there... past there was the secured entrance to where he'd been quarantined, his bedroom.
When had he wandered into this part of the ARK, anyway? He had to have gone on autopilot, feet carrying him back to the halls he'd been familiar with. A little more walking brought him to the exterior entrance to his old room. The hedgehog stopped again, steeled himself for a few seconds, and opened the door. It didn't look as bad as it had when he'd first come up with Ivo, but he hadn't had time to do much beyond clean the most obviously broken items off the floor and put some of his intact possessions away. Most of his old things had been damaged or destroyed, GUN searching frantically for him before they must have received the intelligence that he'd escaped.
Still, Shadow entered, steps slow, and looked around. Over there was his squat bookshelf, and he saw the photograph collection, published by esteemed explorers, that Maria had brought over once and left as a gift. They'd spent hours marvelling at the wonders of the planet neither had seen, awe-inspiring storms and eruptions, sprawling cities and backwater villages, animals sapient and not with incredible skills. Next to it was a companion from the same series, that one about the huge cosmic world of the stars and quasars, black holes and white dwarfs, some of the pictures even taken from the ARK itself.
Shadow looked away, eyes lighting on an old toy. He didn't really want to think about how grand Mobius was and how much more enormous the universe was right that moment. Despite or because of what he'd just accomplished, he felt plenty small enough already. He stepped over to the toy, a little non-Mobian hippopotamus with a head attached to the body by a spring; it had survived the ransacking intact by some miracle, and he'd taken the time to restore it to its proper place on his reading desk the last time he'd been in.
He flicked down the head with one finger. The smiling hippo nodded at him. Shadow felt completely absurd for a moment, and another later realised he didn't care. He made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh and turned toward his bed's end table. There was a framed picture laying face down on it. Shadow swallowed. He turned and flicked the hippo's head again, watched it bobble a few times, and abruptly snapped around to walk up to the table, where he grabbed the photo without looking at it and nearly jogged out of his room, leaving the door open behind him.
Slowing to a proper walk again, he knew, then, exactly where he was headed. His thoughts were still another story.
Eventually, Shadow reached his destination: one of the ARK's observatories, looking peacefully down at the planet below. It was the very same where he and Maria had spent a lot of time gazing down in wonder at Mobius, longing to go down there, see what it was like, find answers. The very same where Maria had died.
He hesitated on the threshold for a few moments before entering, walking right up to the window and looking down. Mobius was blue and white before him. At last, Shadow turned over the photo and looked down at it.
Gerald, his creator - no, his father - looked back at him, his sister-in-spirit Maria holding on to the back of Gerald's chair and looking Shadow's way as well. Or their images did. Both of them were long dead. Shadow swallowed on nothing and looked back at Mobius, stretching a hand to lightly rest his fingers on the window's triply-reinforced glass. For the first time since leaving the refugee camp, he spoke.
"I think... you'd have been proud of me." He looked down at the picture in his left hand and all but squeaked his next word. "Right?"
There were tears on the old glass. Shadow didn't care. No one was around to see it. He sniffed and looked back at Mobius. "...I won't forget. I'll make my own destiny. What both of you really wanted... I want, too. I'll keep them safe."
Mobius was safe.
Shadow's friends - the ones still alive, that he'd made in the terror and splendour of the last few days - they were safe.
In the end, that was all that mattered.
