All over the planet, monitors came to life, and from every corner of the earth, the final curse of a broken, desperate man echoed in everyone's ears.
"This is a death sentence for every living being on Earth. If my calculations are correct, the Space Colony ARK will impact the Earth in 27 minutes and 53 seconds. All of you will be destroyed, along with your beloved planet earth. I plan to give you a taste of my revenge once all the seven Chaos Emeralds are collected. Once I initiated this program, it cannot be disabled. All of you ungrateful humans, who took everything away from me, will feel my loss and despair!"
In the sky above the world, the second moon, the artificial satellite, the fabled space colony ARK hurtled toward the planet, and the people on the planet flew into a desperate panic. Loved ones embraced in horror. Children cried in terror as they realized their futures had been stolen from them. Everything ceased as everyone looked up into the sky, seeing the object that had ruled their fears for the past twenty-four hours, ever since the laser had hit the moon.
The cannon was the least of their concerns, now.
"Is there anything else you want to say?"
"...No."
"Ready!"
The image on the screen flashed, then played again from the beginning, the old man's bitter words carving their way anew into the ears and minds of everyone in the room, as the space colony continued to shudder and tremble as it made its way towards the planet's atmosphere.
"What's going on here?" Amy demanded, holding tighter onto Sonic's arm as the spacecraft gave another lurch. "Who is that?!"
The lurches continued, settling into a consistent trembling. Knuckles glanced away from the screen, while everyone else seemed transfixed. "Hey," he called out, trying to get things back on track. "The vibration is getting worse!"
But, as though the world conspired to ignore him once again, the automatic doors slid open, and in strode Dr. Eggman, who answered Amy's inquiry. "Professor Gerald Robotnik," he announced, making his way across the room, focusing on the man on the screen as the recording continued playing his vengeful tirade. "One of the greatest scientific minds in the world… and my grandfather!"
"What?!" Knuckles bared his teeth, raising his fists. "I knew you were behind all this! Stop it right now, or else!" He punctuated his threat with a punch to his palm, but a scoff from the doctor effectively silenced his warning.
"I'd have done this a long time ago if I had the chance!"
"What do you mean?" Knuckles demanded, but Eggman's eyes flickered past him and he paid him no more notice. The echidna nearly growled; he was getting sick and tired of being ignored.
Up next to him, he heard the familiar clicking of light footsteps on the floor, and out the corner of his eye, he saw blue.
Of course Eggman had seen Sonic and refocused his attention. Of course…
"You're pretty persistent for a hedgehog, aren't you?" the doctor grumbled, sounding displeased but not upset. "You're still alive, huh?"
"Heh." Sonic swiped at his nose before elbowing Knuckles in the side, causing the echidna to jump and his face to turn a bright, flushed red. "Just letting Knuckles pilot the shuttle on the way over here was more dangerous than you could ever be!" he taunted.
Knuckles really wished he hadn't come on this adventure.
With a huff in response, Eggman began approaching the group, with something hidden in his grasp.
Shadow beat everyone else to the punch. "What's that?" he pressed, pointing at the doctor's gloved hand.
"This is my grandfather's diary," Eggman explained, holding it up and showing it off more clearly to the group. The silver disc caught the light, and rainbow lines refracted all over its surface. Then, to the surprise of everyone, he handed it to Shadow, who stared at it dumbfounded for a moment until Eggman grew impatient.
"Well? Go on! Play it! Or have you forgotten how a computer works?"
"Shut your fucking mouth," Shadow spat back, spines bristling, but he did as he was told and inserted the disc into the observation deck's computer, skimming his way through the files at mach speed until he came across the final entry. As the words flashed across the screen, the hedgehog read aloud, voice echoing confidently and clearly across the room.
"I don't quite know what happened or what went wrong. Was it a mistake to create the…"
Shadow stumbled, his eyes widening and his body tensing up until he was a mess of raised spines, but he found his tongue and kept reading.
"...was it a mistake to create the ultimate lifeform? I thought it would be something that would benefit mankind, but then the military guards landed on the colony that day. They were sent to destroy the research project that I had been working on…"
Shadow kept reading, and Gerald Robotnik's final thoughts crashed down on the room like a tidal wave. He wrote of his hopes for his colleagues and his granddaughter. He wrote of the shutdown of the ARK and how it was covered up under the guise of an accident. He wrote of his granddaughter's name displayed on the list of casualties and the overwhelming guilt he felt at her demise, all thanks to his research. All thanks to the development of the Ultimate Lifeform.
Shadow's voice quavered as he read aloud Maria's name.
Gerald Robotnik's diary continued, speaking of anguish and insanity and an insatiable thirst for vengeance that made the temperature in the room feel as though it had dropped several degrees. Knuckles felt his body tremble, and it had nothing to do with the constant shaking of the ARK.
Then Shadow got to the final part of the diary, and his voice dropped to a whisper.
"I was able to complete my project: Rouge. I had designed its mind to be perfect, pure. I will leave everything to her. If you wish, release and awaken it to the world! If you wish to fill the world with destruction…"
Shadow stepped back from the screen and whirled around to face Eggman, his face stricken with horror and despair. "So that's it?" he cried, pointing at the doctor. "That's why you freed her from the base?"
Eggman didn't bother responding to Shadow; the answer was obvious. "The core of the Eclipse Cannon is now highly reactive and explosive. This is because the energy of the Chaos Emeralds is overpowered. If the colony collides with earth, it will shatter into pieces like my grandfather predicted." He took a moment to laugh. "That mad scientist!" he exclaimed, sounding far too happy for anyone's liking.
"That should be you, right?" Amy asked, and the jubilation on the doctor's face instantly diminished.
"We have to stop the space colony! Now!" Tails insisted, stepping forward, his tails thrashing with anxiety, and finally, the reality of the situation seemed to fully hit Dr. Eggman.
None of them were going to survive this.
"The space colony ARK's position may have shifted due to the amount of energy given off by the emeralds," he finally yielded. "We have to stop the energy!"
Tails nodded, bringing a hand up to his face to rub at his chin. "But how?" he wondered, and everyone around him could practically hear the gears turning in his brain.
"There is one way," came a hushed voice, and everyone turned their attention to Shadow, who still looked seconds away from screaming or crying. Teal eyes roved blankly over face after face, until they stopped on Knuckles, who shrank under the attention. "We use the Master Emerald."
Knuckles blinked in surprise. Reflexively, his hand went to the hidden treasure, and the soothing energies from the now-restored heirloom melted some of his fears away.
"You said it yourself," Shadow continued in that hollow, hushed tone of his, while his deadened eyes bored into his own. "It has the power to neutralize the energy of the Chaos Emeralds."
The echidna drew out his massive emerald, still looking at Shadow in surprise. "You remembered that?"
Shadow's eyes narrowed in displeasure, and though it wasn't good to see per se, it was still a step up from that glassy, empty look that had been there before. "Of course I did," Shadow snapped, another fraction of his usual self returning. "Do you think I don't listen to a single damn word you say?"
Knuckles bit back his instinctive reply of 'yeah, basically'; they had a direction to go in, and bickering with Shadow would only eat up the precious minutes they had left. "He's right," he said to the room instead. "If I use this, we just might be able to stop the Chaos Emeralds."
The sound of furious typing from behind him caught his attention; it appeared that Tails had gone over to his own computer, inputting commands until a map of the colony showed on screen. "The reaction of the Chaos Emeralds is moving towards the cannon's core!" he determined as the trajectory showed up on the monitor. "It may be too late…"
Knuckles sucked in a breath. If there was ever a time that the group needed one of Sonic or Amy's famous pep talks, it was now.
Yet, to everyone's surprise, it was Eggman who interjected.
"There still may be some time left, if we pull together. We might be able to get to the shortcut that leads to the core!"
Eggman pushed past Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles on his way to Tails, and motioned to the screen, drawing a path with his finger as the map shifted and changed. Once the path to the shortcut became clear, Sonic spoke up again.
"No worries! Just leave it to me. I'm the world's fastest hedgehog!" he bragged, stretching out his legs and shooting Shadow an apologetic wink.
No one could miss the way Shadow's face burned with red at the gesture.
"Then let's get to work," Eggman commanded, and no one argued his tone of authority. It was time for action.
Tails was busy destroying the door to the cannon's core, while Eggman was busting in a security door further up the shortcut's path. Shadow had recovered enough from his state to search for a draining switch to empty the core's room, while Knuckles was swimming around, searching for the final entry point. Sonic was racing past the energy field to get to his destination before the emeralds did, and Amy…
Amy was left alone. Again.
"Ooh, I hate it when they leave me behind!" she griped, walking through the halls with nothing but the sound of her own feet hitting the ground to answer her. She didn't understand it; hadn't she proved her strength? Her capability? Granted, she hadn't done much in terms of fighting on this particular adventure, but it wasn't her fault that every time she found an opponent, he had a gun or a cannon or missiles or…
Amy huffed, crossing her arms. It just wasn't fair! Tails was younger than her, and he still got to do everything!
She hoped they didn't leave her behind just because she was a girl. She was going to break some skulls if that was the case.
A door to her left swished open as she passed it, giving the hedgehog pause. She saw a dark figure in the room, staring out into space. In the background, Gerald Robotnik's message kept repeating, and as the name 'Maria' was uttered once again, the figure flinched.
Amy blinked, squinting to get a better look at who it was, and let out a soft gasp. She had seen her before! On the island! She knew who this was!
"It's Rouge!" she whispered under her breath, and one of the bat's long ears swivelled in her direction. Amy knew she had been heard, yet the bat didn't move.
For a while, Amy puzzled over what to do. Should she leave her alone? Should she try to make her help them survive this doomsday?
The ARK made another great lurch, and Amy made up her mind.
"I've really got to stop whining!" she chided herself. "Everyone is trying their best to help out, and so must I!"
With that in mind, she sprinted over to Rouge, watching as the bat's ear followed her movements. Rouge's eyes, however, remained fixed out to the void, deadened and cold. She looked worse for wear, and Amy almost reconsidered her plan until she saw how close they now were to the planet.
Gerald Robotnik's message repeated one more time.
"Rouge!" Amy called out loudly to drown out the sound of the vengeful old man on the screen. "We need you! Please help us!"
"It's all going according to plan," Rouge responded in a monotone, her eyes never leaving the vast expanse of space. "There is no reason for me to help them. Besides…" The bat's hand gripped at her arm, fingers digging into the insignia on her jumpsuit. "...there's no way to save anyone."
The name 'Maria' filtered out over the speakers again, and Amy saw Rouge's grip tighten even more. The pink hedgehog's heart ached at the sight; she was no stranger to love, in any of its forms, and she could see that Rouge had loved Maria just as much as Gerald Robotnik had. It was almost enough to choke her up.
"There has to be!" she insisted, her voice rising in pitch as she fought back her upset and her desperation. "I…" She looked down at the planet below them, hearing the professor's harsh, damning words, spoken out against all of mankind. "I know that people fight over the most trivial things. Some people may be selfish like the professor said… but they're basically good! If they try their best and never give up on their wishes, then they always have a reason to be happy!"
Through her speech, Amy felt her love for mankind grow. Her feelings, strong and pure, had never led her astray before, and she wanted, more than anything, for Rouge to understand them. "That's why you should help them out… saving them is a good thing!"
Amy stared at Rouge, whose mouth had thinned into a hard line. Crimson eyes narrowed, countless thoughts swirling behind them, and Amy had to finish her heartfelt appeal. "Rouge, I beg you, please do it for them! Give them a chance!"
The result was instantaneous. Rouge's eyes grew wide, her pupils shrinking into tiny pinpricks, and her wings shot out as the ARK gave another heavy tremble. Amy squealed, struggling to keep her footing, but her eyes never left Rouge, who was once again staring into the distance.
But it felt… different, now.
"Rouge, I beg of you, please do it for me, for a better future!"
"MARIA!"
"For all the people who live on that planet… give them a chance to be happy! Let them live for their dreams. Rouge… I know you can do it. That's the reason why you were brought into this world…"
"MARIA! MARIA PLEASE, DON'T-"
"Sayonara… Big Sister Rouge…"
The ARK shook again and Rouge gasped in a breath. Her head pounded and ached, and her mind swam with thoughts.
She knew that this, too, could be a fake memory, a fake memory for a fake person, but just like before, she was going to choose Maria's wish, even if she wasn't real. Maria's will was all she had now.
Or maybe… maybe she had more than she realized.
Rouge's eyes screwed shut as her chosen truth dawned on her. "That's what I've promised her, and I must keep that promise. That's what Maria wished for…" A tear escaped her shut eyelids, sliding down her cheek and falling to the floor. She couldn't believe that she had it all wrong this whole time.
Maria was not a vengeful person. Maria was kind-hearted, and warm, and generous, and loving, and… and…
And her older, little sister that she would never forget like that again!
"Rouge?"
Amy's soft voice registered to Rouge's ear, and the bat broke out of her trance, determined to do at least one thing right in her life. Without a second thought, Rouge went over to the hedgehog and pulled her into a hug, her wings encircling her arms as she felt Amy stiffen in shock. "Thank you," Rouge whispered, fighting back any more tears that threatened to fall. She had to be strong, now. "Thank you for reminding me."
"You're welcome?" Amy sounded uncertain, but she returned the hug with a soft squeeze around Rouge's midsection before the two parted and Rouge stepped away.
"I have to go now," she said, wiping at her eyes to make sure they were dry. "I have to keep my promise to Maria… and you."
Her heart was softening again, but at that moment, Rouge couldn't bring herself to care.
The bat sprinted from the room, navigating her way through the maze of hallways, while behind her, Gerald Robotnik's message of doom faded from her hearing. Rouge didn't look back; she had an impact to stop.
Next chapter: The biolizard is set free, and Rouge and Sonic summon their true power.