27. A Brief Reunion

Rouge scowled upwards a moment as it started to rain. At least she'd worn her waterproof makeup. And, honestly, it probably doesn't matter. Once we're under those trees the rain may not be able to find us. She had gotten as close as she could with her jet, then been stuck into this unit of soldiers for transport to the staging center. After half a day of fretting, she and they were being sent on to the ruins in the old-growth forest where the Black Arms had been supposedly cornered. She wondered how many of the eager young soldiers around her were aware that these were only the aliens that had been driven from Westopolis. Most of the comments she'd heard suggested that they thought this was the holdout remnant for the entire invasion. Not that she'd bothered to enlighten them. Better they be in good spirits now and disappointed later than go into battle thinking they had no chance. But she knew that Central City had been evacuated and essentially fallen and that two other cities the Black Arms had attacked were also lost. Further, she'd heard that something described as a 'bunch of flying buildings' had rained destruction on a couple of other areas, leaving behind small groups of aliens. Those actually worried her more - the capture of cities was SOP for an invasion, but the little squads dropped off in the wake of random destruction bespoke diversionary tactics. She wanted to know what the defensive forces were being diverted from. Further south, in the dokan-dominant regions, there was little or no sign of the aliens, although the dokan military forces were on high alert.

Actually, even this 'last stand' in the jungle seemed more a diversion than anything else. The aliens certainly had done enough damage to Westopolis to make it unlikely that they'd be so quickly pushed into a retreat as far as the forest. But that was the military's responsibility; hers was to merely be certain all the aliens were killed and then report back to the President. The radio in her ear clicked quietly and then the orders came across. "The Commander has authorized use of all tactical weaponry. Orders are to stop both the black aliens and the dokan known as Shadow the Hedgehog. Seek out and kill all enemies." Shadow! What's he doing here? It was the first she'd heard of him since talking to Knuckles in Central City. She silently prayed that she'd locate him before any of the soldiers did. Clearly the Commander was still convinced that Shadow was in league with the Black Arms; she wished she knew why.

There! Finally the signal she'd been watching for. As the young humans around her began their orderly surge into the forest she took wing, charting her own course for the trees. Technically, she was supposed to stay with the squad for her own protection, but that would hinder her missions (official and private) and probably not add much to her safety. Actually, sticking to either flight or the trees would likely be safer than staying with a squad of humans - less likely to attract attention. She disappeared quickly into the canopy before anyone noticed her defection.

Once among the trees, she switched to flying squirrel tactics - locate a suitably strong branch, quickly dash-and-glide to it, scan for signs of enemies or discovery, and repeat. Her main problem was that many of the trees here were relatively brittle, and even female dokan were surprisingly heavy for their height and build. Bats were lighter than the ground-bound races, but her muscles retained the extra density even though her bones were largely hollow. The southern jungles tended to have more trees that were either outright huge, or flexible enough to bend without breaking - in fact the flying squirrels did some of their most efficient traveling by using flexible branches to springboard them higher between consecutive glides. In the right terrain, they could easily outpace Rouge. At the moment though, stealth was more important than speed because the Black Arms were indeed hiding in the forest. Rouge located the first couple of aliens only forty feet into the trees. Steel toepicks and a couple of well-aimed kicks put the creatures out of commission with a minimum of fuss. Then it was back up into the branches and scouting through the canopy again.

She had a few problems when she ran into some decidedly abnormal plants. One enormous yellow bloom was spitting fireballs at anything that moved. While trying to get clear of that, she ran into a strange, rubbery red vine that nearly flung her back into the flames; it appeared to function like a slingshot or rubber band. And then there were patches of short, thorny, red things with glowing fruit that broke and released puffs of noxious green vapor when touched. She had barely gotten out of the patch of dangerous vegetation when she heard over her headset that the aliens had gone into some ruins near the heart of the jungle.

Just as she located the ruins, she heard the ominous rumble of engines above, mixed with cannon fire. Her trained ears recognized the sounds of the Doctor's whale ships immediately. Drat. I knew we should have made sure they were all out of commission. But... what are they shooting at? Surely even Eggman wouldn't just come firing randomly into the jungle. She clambered quickly upwards until she could see the sky - and got a eyeful of rain. Blinking fiercely, she wiped her face and looked again, more cautiously. The whale fleet was approaching rapidly, and it was fighting... was fighting... I don't believe it. It was fighting what looked like a bunch of ancient stone ruins, if ancient stone ruins flew through the air. Suddenly, a tiny shape dropped slowly from one of the whale ships, dimly silhouetted against the dark clouds. As it drifted closer on the wind, she recognized the shape of a dokan, hanging from one of Eggman's one-person helicopters. A flash of lightning illuminated the dark shape, and Rouge grinned. Dropping down to a lower level of the canopy, she began working her way towards the other's apparent landing zone, and dropped out of the trees to land behind him.

"Hey Shadow! GUN has driven the black aliens into the jungle," she said cheerfully. "Do you want to join me in helping GUN round up the last of them?"

The black hedgehog whipped around, crouching defensively. The scarlet eyes blinked at her. "Rouge?"

She cocked her head at him. "You were expecting Tarzan's Jane, perhaps? ...Never mind," she added his expression shifted to confusion. "You know they're after you, don't you? GUN, I mean."

He grimaced. "GUN, and the Black Arms, and the Doctor." He hesitated a moment, and said, almost wistfully, "Are you after me too, Rouge?"

Rouge thought of a half-dozen replies she'd like to make, given a straight line like that - but restrained herself and said, simply, "I'm on your side, Shadow. No matter what anyone else is doing."

A little of the tension left the black shoulders, but he looked unhappily away from her and said, "I was looking for Doctor Eggman's base. I need to talk to him." He studied the vine-covered ruins that were just visible through the trees. "That's not what's left of the base, is it?"

"That? No. That's just some old ruin. Doc Eggman's base is more to the south of here." She waved vaguely in that direction. "Why do you want to go there?"

The dark hedgehog didn't answer; he just stood tugging lightly on one red-striped quill as he stared off into the jungle. "I need to know," he finally said, but softly, as if talking to himself.

Rouge scowled. Was he back on that again? "You're not a robot, Shadow–" she started.

The scarlet eyes swung back to stare hard into her own. "Android, not robot. Doctor Eggman– he cloned Project: Shadow, the Ultimate Life-form, and grew tissue that he shaped onto androids; androids with skeletons that appear real, androids that can bleed and heal. Androids that can utilize Chaos energy!" He blinked, his gaze as intense as his voice. "How can you be sure I'm real, Rouge? How can I be sure I'm real?"

Rouge scrambled momentarily for an answer, then reached forward and pinched his arm, hard. "You feel real enough to me," she said.

Shadow growled, knocking her hand away, and stalked off. "That's not funny."

"Wait! Shadow," she scrambled after him. "Look, I'm sorry. Although, I really don't understand. You're you, and you're free, so does it really matter what you are under the fur?" Having never doubted herself (except that one time in the vault) she truly failed to see the problem. If he was a rob– android, well, so what? He was free of the Doctor, and Omega didn't seem to have any problems with going his own way, even to the point of trying to eliminate all of Eggman's other robots. She seriously doubted Shadow was worried about that. So, he had a few odd memories; whether they were based on fact or not, they were in the past - fifty years in the past - and he had all the present and the future open to him now. The people in them were all dead anyway, so they weren't going to turn up and make demands on him.

Shadow turned his head enough to glower at her - scarlet eyes were good for glowering - then dropped his gaze to the ground at his feet. The toes of his hover shoes were beginning to look a bit battered, with deep scratches in the paint on the rims. Finally, he sighed. "You don't understand, Rouge," he said. "If... if I'm an experiment in immortality and healing, and I was created to... be a source of health to others, don't I have a moral obligation to offer that health? It's not like they'd take anything I couldn't live without. And if I was only created as a weapon of war, like some members of GUN seem to think... can I really run off and be free since it was their funding and their request that led to my very existence? Will they let me run free if they think I'm their property? And if–" he seemed to catch himself there, and she had the feeling he'd suddenly changed what he intended to say - "if I am an android of the Doctor's creation, do I owe him my allegiance for that creation? And if so, do I owe it forever, or just long enough to 'pay off' the cost of myself? And whether I do or not, how can I be sure that he hasn't slipped something inside me, some hidden program or override device, that might take control and make me do something I might not want to do?"

Rouge flicked her gaze upwards, from his shoes to his profile, then looked at the toes of her own boots. "Wow,"she said softly. "I don't know, Shadow." They walked on a little farther, and she thought vaguely how strange it was to be walking this way through a forest that was crawling with hostile troops looking for enemies. Occasionally there was a burst of gunfire, but it sounded far off and muffled by the vegetation. "What are you going to do?"

The black hedgehog paused, raising a clenched fist. "I have to confront Doctor Eggman," he said firmly. "If I am an android he created, then Professor Gerald's motives in creating the original Shadow don't matter; I do not belong to GUN, and whatever healing powers the original might have possessed were probably lost in the transition from organic to cloned android."

Rouge wasn't sure that the latter was true, but certainly the former was, if Eggman had funded the creation of this Shadow then GUN had no claim on him. Of course, convincing GUN of that fact might be difficult. And the Commander wasn't likely to care - he wanted Shadow dead, not conscripted. Oh! "Shadow," she asked suddenly, "do you know who the GUN Commander is?"

"The GUN Commander?" he repeated, perplexed. "That's the human in charge of the GUN forces worldwide." He looked at her, clearly wondering why she'd asked such an inane question.

"No, not the position; I mean the man. He hates you; not dislikes, not distrusts, but hates. He's convinced you're in cahoots with the black aliens, that you've been a spy or something for years, and he wants you dead."

"What? Why?" Shadow looked genuinely bewildered. "I've never met this person. I was created fifty years ago, and never knew anyone except a few people on the ARK, until I came to Earth and was put in stasis from then until now. Or the real Shadow was," he corrected himself. Rouge grimaced mentally. He really is thinking he's an android at this point. She had wondered at one time whether Shadow was the Shadow from the ARK or a clone Gerald had created after he arrived on Earth, but she had no doubts that this Shadow was the Shadow Eggman had freed from Prison Island. And she still wasn't certain why it mattered so much, but it clearly did– Something moved up ahead of them.

Immediately the two split up, Shadow dodging behind a tree while Rouge darted upwards as swiftly as she could. A small group of GUN soldiers walked into view, and continued on past them out of sight. Shadow stepped out and looked after them, but before Rouge could join him a strange, octopus-like creature jetted up, apparently swimming through the air. "Shadow," she heard it rumble, "our surface operations are nearly complete. We must get out of this forest, now. There is no time to waste."

The pale bat felt her jaw drop nearly to the forest floor below. Shadow!? He... he is in league with these invaders? She shook her head, refusing to believe it. It must be some sort of trick. How could they have known anything about him? He was created fifty years ago!

Fifty years ago. She felt a sudden chill. The Black Comet passed by the Earth every fifty years. No. She shook her head again, stubbornly. I researched the ARK, all the secret files Gerald kept there governmental and personal. There was nothing in them about any aliens or... She paused mid-thought as she suddenly remembered - Gerald's son, Maria's father, was killed in an explosion while investigating the Black Comet. But, surely Professor Gerald wouldn't have collaborated with aliens that might have had a hand in his son's death! And yet– She remembered the failure of the prototype that Maria had named Biolizard. And the unparalleled success of the second Project: Shadow, using a hedgehog as a base.

Oops, where did he go? She looked around frantically, suddenly realizing that Shadow had left. Spotting him through the branches she swooped quickly over to join him. And for the first time got a good look at the ruins the Black Arms had taken refuge in.

Sheer treasure-hungry avarice instantly overrode all other concerns. She stared at the stone tower before her. Covered in moss and encircled in places by the aliens' red slime trails, it rose into the canopy with staggered balconies spiraling around it. Here and there she could make out geometric carvings in the walls themselves, and stone cobras stood sentinel on most of the balconies, carved hoods flared in warning. A flare of light and a sudden jerk on her arm yanked her out of her trance. Blinking, she realized that Shadow had just snatched her out of range of one of the fire-spitting blossoms she'd seen earlier. "Look out for that plant," she warned him belatedly. "It attacks with fire. It's some kind of alien organism."

Shadow snorted. "I should be telling you that, I think. Have you seen the red thorny globes? They're not native to this planet either."

Rouge nodded, then pointed upwards at one of the 'rubber band' vines she'd encountered earlier. It seemed to be another patch of alien or altered plants. "Some of them were, though. I think."

"Were?" asked Shadow, looking where she was pointing.

"That rubber-like plant growing there looks mutated. I bet it's the black creatures' doing. There are vines similar to that all over this forest, except for the rubberiness and that reddish glow. You know," she added, thoughtfully, "I wonder if they fused it somehow with that slime they use. It's got the same glow and is certainly flexible." She eyed the slime trails around the tower.

"Maybe," answered Shadow. "That slime stuff got fused somehow with the buildings in Westopolis, and did all sorts of weird things to them."

"Hmm," agreed the bat, rather vaguely. She was starting to focus on the tower itself again. "These ruins are a fine discovery. If these black creatures weren't here, I'd be searching for treasure."

"So I see," said her companion dryly. "Be careful, Rouge, and remember the aliens are there. I need to go confront Doctor Eggman." He pulled back into the trees as a squad of aliens appeared, with a GUN patrol in hot pursuit. Rouge took wing again and got clear. After a moment more looking longingly at the stone column, she decided that it might be prudent to be sure Shadow got where he was going; after all, there were two hostile groups out here, either of which might decide to go after him.

Resuming her gliding jumps from tree to tree, she headed south, and spotted the black octopus - or another just like it - floating idly in a clearing. Automatically she crouched close to the branch, moving silently into position for a better view. A moment later, Shadow ran into the clearing as well.

"Having a little trouble with those GUN agents, are we?" he asked, mockingly, as he waved a hand the way he'd come. Glancing that way quickly, Rouge spotted several alien corpses half-hidden in the brush. She looked back as the creature laughed.

"What a pitiful bunch," the thing all but purred.

"What'd you say?" Shadow took a step back into a defensive pose. That was obviously not the response he'd expected.

"We're not here to exterminate these poor creatures. On the contrary..."

"Wha–?," breathed Rouge, leaning a little more forward. "What is he talking about?" Her keen ears twitched, trying to pick up every sound from the pair below.

Shadow was equally perplexed. "What are you saying?"

The octopus somehow looked very smug and superior - a good trick for a creature with a single eye and no face. "All will be revealed," it said grandly, and paused dramatically. "...tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" murmured the unseen bat. What on earth were the aliens planning?

"Shadow," said the octopus with mock concern, "you should rest. You need to be ready for tomorrow's ritual." Rouge's brain was absolutely buzzing as she tried to figure out what was going on. And then she saw the monster bulling it's way through the bushes behind the tentacled thing. Immediately the octopus scooted away, leaving the clearing to Shadow and the blubbery beast.

Shadow jumped back. "You scum!" he called after the octopus, then faced the monster. You're going down," he growled. It merely tossed its one-eyed head and bellowed at him.