Chapter 35: The Secret Weapon

The secret hideout of the Temporal Protectorate agents was located in a cave deep within the forests of Nostalgia Island. The island was aptly named. Due to an oddity of continental shifts, an island had arisen in the sea south-east of Central City that displayed the exact same soil and terrain as the Green Hills region of South Island. The island would likely have been given a different name if had been properly mapped by civil cartographers before years after Sonic's world-famous adventure on South Island. With the cave mouth being located halfway up a sheer chequered cliff it was inaccessible to most without futuristic suits designed to allow the wearer to shift through time and space at will.

The interior of the cave was actually quite nice. None of the Chaos-creatures patrolling Central City had paid any mind to a lot of comfy furniture disappearing from various stores around the city. Pia arrived back at the hideout to find Terkal Jr. snoring loudly in a very expensive-looking leather armchair. The secret weapon was sitting on the floor, playing with some toys they'd picked up to keep it happy.

Pia opened her mouth to yell, but changed her mind. She didn't have the energy left, and there was no point in upsetting the secret weapon either. Instead, she shook the young echidna awake by grabbing his shoulder.

Because she could tell the flustered boy was gearing up to produce a string of wild excuses as to why he'd fallen asleep on the job, Pia made sure to speak first. "Riven is dead. The Chaos Matron knows about us."

Terkal went from sleepy annoyance to full sober consciousness in an instant. Whatever he was about to say died in his throat. Like his father, he'd never been any good at dealing with serious emotional business. It wasn't necessary for him to say anything. Pia knew that the smarmy raven had been the only member of the team that Terkal would publicly call friend. The two of them went a long way back.

As a saving gesture, Pia looked away from Terkal's face and kept talking.

"It's been an hour since Riven's com line went dead. The last audible transmission was the voice of that monster. I know Riven would never give away anything about us no matter what she did to him, but Shadow is the only one of us who would have even a chance to resist the Matron's powers. I've called for a rendezvous in ten minutes. We'll have to relocate as soon as possible, and rework our strategy from here on."

Pia didn't mention that Riven wasn't the only one whose line had gone dead. The same had happened with Shadow. But Shadow had escaped life-threatening peril far more often than anyone in history, except maybe Sonic himself. Pia knew that the most likely scenario was that Shadow had ignored her advice and gone ahead with his plan of using the Chaos Emeralds' power to destroy both his evil doppelgänger and himself. Still, she had to hope. The secret weapon wouldn't help unless they had someone strong enough to protect the team until they could unleash its power.

Not a word was spoken until Jennifer arrived. The strong human woman took the news no better than Terkal, but neither lapsed into silence or let her emotions get in the way of discussing the mission ahead. Pia explained what she knew, having to try harder to avoid letting too much details slip about Shadow's assignment. While she talked, her thoughts slipped back to the experience that from her perspective had happened over a year ago. When she and Silver went Super, her Jumpsuit was destroyed. The silence from Shadow only meant that he'd used the Chaos Emeralds, not that he'd died. There was still a chance...

Just then an unnaturally bright light shone from the cavern mouth, bathing the rocky recesses within in golden glow. Pia felt a painful sensation. She'd just pinched herself, but doing so didn't affect the miracle taking place before her eyes. Both Terkal and Jennifer stared with their mouths hanging open. Pia remembered that neither of them had ever seen a Super form before.

The awe-inspiring sight meant that it took a little too long before any of the time-travellers noticed that Shadow wasn't alone. Conquest jumped down to the rocky floor while Super Shadow carefully put down his unconscious twin.

"Aunt Connie?" said Pia aloud without thinking.

Super Shadow nodded to the bat, who quickly dragged the defeated Shadow to the side while Super Shadow mentally prepared himself for an extremely difficult feat. Normally using the full power of the Chaos Emeralds meant that the precious gems would reform randomly around the world immediately after the user reverted to normal. To summon the Emeralds back into physical form without triggering that natural response was nearly impossible. The first, the only person, who'd ever achieved the skill easily had been Sonic the Hedgehog, who let the Emeralds scatter more for the sake of keeping them safe than because he didn't have a choice. No matter how much more powerful Shadow became, he never seemed to achieve the knack that Sonic had. Maybe it was because Sonic had always let the power of the Chaos Emeralds flow naturally through him, while Shadow's unique physical structure seized the power forcefully and channelled it without control, forcing the black hedgehog to wear Gerald's bracelets at all times simply in order to balance the power. Gritting his teeth, grunting with effort, Shadow forced the energies of the Chaos Emeralds to leave his body and reform around him. Those watching could see that Shadow was trembling with the effort of it while the Emeralds appeared in the air around him, one by one, each appearance causing the glow of his fur to fade slightly more.

Long ago, when Metal Mastermind demanded the Chaos Emeralds from Super Shadow, the act of surrendering the gems had taken as much of a physical toll on Shadow as it had on his emotional state.

Finally, the seventh Chaos Emerald fell to the floor. Panting, Shadow finally managed to utter "Mission accomplished."

"Well done," was all Pia could think to say.

There were too many questions to decide what to say next. What had happened? How did he get the seventh Chaos Emerald? Did he know anything about Riven? Was the other Shadow alright? Why was Aunt Connie wearing a Rouge the Bat costume?

-

See Silver's boots: Droplets of hardened lava proving the highly impressive workmanship of the hero's footwear.
See Silver's fur: Green grass stains and patches of fried hair testifying to the ordeal he'd just gone through.
See Silver's gloves: The patterns still glowing with psychokinetic energy from the spectacular feats of power he'd displayed.
See Silver's face: Serious, tired but proud.
See over a thousand Flickies hovering in the air above the hedgehog, watching the scene with interest and excitement.

The Flicky Chief finally made up his mind. "Very well. Our tribe will aid you in your battle against the evil chao you speak of."

See Blaze looking fine as ever, without as much as a spot on her clothes. The cat smiled. Whether it was fate or comic relief, nearly all of the perils and pitfalls of Flickies Island had met Silver while avoiding her.

-

Between Pia, Jennifer, Shadow, Terkal and Conquest there was a lot of exposition to be shared. Before the heroes could get to that, however, the bat took one look at the secret weapon and just had to ask:

"Is that Cheese?"

"That's right," said Shadow. "We saved him while raiding Prower Tower before the Chaos Matron transformed the place into her own twisted likeness."

"But why hasn't he been changed?" Conquest wondered. "He looks just like a normal chao."

"Because," said Pia, "this chao alone of all chao in the world, is immune to the effect of the Chao Cataclysm. That makes him our secret weapon to put an end to this mess and get the timeline back on the right track."

"How?" Conquest asked.

Jennifer, the history buff of the group, said "Cheese the Chao was the birth of Veronica Prower's Project Succession. A sample of chao substance from Cheese was what made her insane plan possible in the first place. Look at him. Do you see any animal traits at all? Wings? A tail? Flippers? Claws? Anything? Cheese is an anomaly. His biological structure is inherently flawed, but that flaw makes him all the more special. Did you know why Cream the Rabbit picked that specific chao to keep as her lifelong friend? Because she felt sorry for him. The chao breeder that oversaw the birth of Cheese saw the chao as a worthless freak with no merit to raise or breed from. The breeder voiced those very sentiments when the Rabbit family came to visit her chao garden to find a pet, and so for that exact reason Cream picked Cheese."

"You mean..."

"Cheese can't absorb traits. He (or she if you like), is the ultimate neutral chao. His biology allowed Veronica to begin work on a means to make all chao in existence the same. We can use his biology to reverse the process."

"My own assignment," said Pia, "was to infiltrate the peak of the Chaos Matron's tower in order to confirm that the machine she used to generate the Chao Cataclysm is still intact. It's there. I've seen it. If, somehow, we could get the machine working again with all seven Chaos Emeralds and then this time put Cheese inside as the origin point, we could create something like an Anti-Chao Cataclysm."

"That's...brilliant," Conquest admitted. "I thought all that was necessary was to destroy the Chaos Matron in order to put everything right."

"So did we, at first," said Shadow, "but the truth is that she is just taking advantage of all the Chaos, to boost her own power. Destroying her would just free the Chaos from her control. It would do nothing to return them to normal."

A fact that an omniscient overseer might take as indication that Buta was either wrong or he was lying when he suggested that destroying the Chaos Matron would suffice to undo the Change, as he called it. Indeed, as the chao so often said, his loyalty lay with his own kind first.

"The problem is keeping the Chaos Matron and her underlings away long enough to activate the machine. We're incredibly lucky that she...killed Riven before learning about our plan, or she would probably have destroyed the machine herself by now."

"Who's Riven?"

The expressions of the group told Conquest that it wasn't a tactful question to ask.

-

There were still plenty of pools of water within Eggman Nega's fortress, due to the floods caused by the good guys and the destructive Nega Replicoids. The severely beaten and now robbed Nega couldn't believe his horrible luck when his security sensors suddenly displayed the appearance of not only his two worst enemies, but a bizarre chao creature and innumerable Flickies.

Somehow the doctor's lot in life had become to serve as an information source for any number of heroes and villains. Silver and Blaze's justification for getting Buta to send them all here was because Nega would be the one most likely to know where to start looking for Shadow and the seven Chaos Emeralds. With far too many aggressive Flickies on their side, Silver and Blaze's subsequent interrogation of Eggman Nega resembled something out Alfred Hitchcock.

Ten minutes later, following Nega's desperate ideas as to which direction his surveillance drones had shown the victorious Super Shadow fly off, Silver's party emerged from the waves on the beaches of Nostalgia Island.

Very soon all the heroes would stand united, and the final battle would begin...

-

End of Chapter 35.