Chapter 3: And now for Shadow and Maria

There are many instances where a main character might not be the best fighter on a team, but is still useful.

Amy Rose isn't as fast or strong as Sonic, but she still talked down Shadow from destroying the world and taking revenge. Not Sonic.

Belle from Beauty and the beast wasn't strong like beast or Gaston, but she still did brave things like letting herself be taken so her father could go free and helping Beast recover his fighting spirit when Gaston wanted him hunted after he changed for the better.

Suguha, Elizabeth, Klein and Silica aren't as strong sword fighters as Asuna and Kirito, yet they still do other useful things like offering moral support and giving out important equipment and information.

Hinata didn't do nearly as much fighting as Naruto, yet without her help, Naruto would have just become another bloodthirsty freak bent on meaningless revenge like Sasuke and Madara.

Fighting isn't everything. Even in an action show. It really isn't. Otherwise Sonic would never have become good friends with Helen in the first place.

The same can be said of how Sonic needs to save Cream, Amy and sometimes even Tails from dangers they can't beat themselves, but he still clearly cares for them and lets them join him on missions.

Shadow POV

"Sayanara. Shadow. Please, bring hope to humanity." weeps the blonde haired girl in the navy cardigan and sky blue skirt and heels, as she pushes the eject button on the control panel.

Her red blood splatters onto the ground as a large gunman in a slick black suit lowers his golden pistol and smugly smiles down at the one human that gave me any reason to live. The reason I willingly participated in the morally questionable activities of space colony ARK, directed by professor Gerald Robotnik.

The reason I restrain my secret hatred and anger at the countless unpleasant station personnel I'm forced to be in constant contact with. There are a nicer few here and there, but by and large they're all self-absorbed greedy jerks.

She said she was going to escape with me. She said all she needed to do was to put me into an escape pod, and then she would activate her own escape pod which was the one next to mine remotely and get into it since one escape pod fit only one person.

Or in my case, one artificial jet black furred hedgehog with red streaks down my hair. The mark of the neural implants Gerald injected into me at birth to empower both my mind and body.

To let my reflexes keep up with my lightning speed which I'm capable of reaching through my genetically modified DNA. No normal hedgehog down on Earth would be able to reach my speed even if they tried.

Maria needed to be the second one to get into a pod, since every button on the ARK had a scanner which only recognized the masters of the ARK colony so as to prevent untrusted individuals from doing anything suspicious or endangering.

The only two fingerprints that were recognized were Gerald's, and Maria's. The only two Robotniks allowed aboard this station. Not even Ivo would be able to access the ARK facilities despite also being a Robotnik, since Gerald labelled the forlorn boy a bad influence.

I never liked Ivo much either, but Maria tried time and again to persuade her grandfather to give her cousin better treatment. With her suggestion being shot down every time she suggested it. One time, he even slapped her across the face for suggesting such a stupid idea. Gerald, really hated grand-nephew Ivo.

So I could not help but find it in my heart to pity the poor sucker that was rejected by his own kin from what was supposed to be his home also.

Gerald might have had a noble intent in building this station specifically so that his granddaughter Maria could survive in a sterile environment despite her incurable disease called NIDS, and then creating me out of the most expensive and advanced materials he could muster up with his vast scientific knowledge.

But he openly despised me and didn't mind showing it. His vision was clearly that Maria's life be as close to average as humanly possible. Which naturally meant a human husband since Maria herself was of course, another human like her grandfather Gerald.

Maria hastily ordered that I go in first. She had known. Always known that the G.U.N agents were right behind us and that she clearly wouldn't have the time to send both of us to Earth, since each pod required a complex pattern of button clicks and getting the combination wrong would result in the whole system locking up.

A healthy and energetic person might have been able to do it quicker , but Maria was already worn out from the chase down the hallway to get here and her NIDS came down on her extremely painfully when she got tired.

It was even a miracle that she was able to send me screaming and slamming at the hardened glass into the vast void of space. Where I would linger in pained slumber for what I could only guess to be somewhere around 50 years from the date and time I saw on the calendars on Earth I found.

50 years. 50 lifetimes. 50 eternities. 50 walks through Kingdom come. What different did it make? Maria was gone and I had failed in my self-appointed mission to protect her. Protect her no matter what the cost.

Keep alive the shining beacon that proved humanity's innocence and worth despite all their careless mistakes and wrongdoings

I jolted awake sweating all over and screaming my lungs out. I clawed at my face with my hands as I shook in agonizing agitation.

Calm down Shadow. It was a dream. Only a dream. Dreams aren't real. They can't hurt you.

But Maria was real. And Maria, or rather the absence of Maria did hurt me. It wounded me. It stung at my heart like a cobra's toxic venom. Or Rouge the bat's razor sharp fingernails.

For a few days now I had been standing idle in the shadows as befitting my namesake, sneaking out only to gather vital information I felt I needed. A mute onlooker from the shade. A silent observer from the corner.

The mysterious presence in the mirror, in the corner of your eye. The footstep always following but never passing by.

That was me. Shadow. Shadow the ultimate life form. This world had worn my patience thin one too many times now for me to think of anything other than its imminent death and destruction.

Peace and love? Screw peace. G.U.N had no word for peace in their language when they stormed ARK and shot down a sick girl who just wanted to see the beautiful flowers and fauna on the planet below with her hedgehog husband. Maria outright called me "dear" in her final days.

And Love? Oh certainly. I had plenty of LOVE.

My Level Of ViolEnce had long ago maxed out at 20. Chara the betrayer would be shaking in fear of me, and Frisk the pacifist wouldn't stand a chance against me, even if he wore the heart locket and wielded the true knife.

Humans created me, but they will never enslave me. Gerald dreamed of creating the world's strongest creature, and he succeeded. Humankind took dear Maria from me and ruined my life, and now I will ruin them.

But first all I have to do, is to find the master emerald. The one chaos emerald that actually matters while the others all pale in comparison. Such a gem of power is fit only to harnessed by no less than the most powerful being alive.

Bring hope? Ha. When was anyone there for me and Maria when we needed hope? Now that Maria was gone, there was no reason this world should remain.

Maria so fervently wanted to see its beauty, and now it's no longer possible so why should anyone else get to see it at all?

I don't know if an afterlife exists. For all my wisdom and cleverness hardwired into my genetically enhanced brain, this is one question I cannot with certainty answer.

But I do know that if there is life after death, the least I can do is to give Maria some company so that she won't be so lonely by herself.

Destroy the world and leave no humans alive. Then I kill myself, for I will have fulfilled my purpose.

My first target is this so called "Sonic the hedgehog" and his merry gang. The rumor mill goes that they are trying to track the other chaos emeralds which are weak and pathetic, but could still interfere with my master plan.

Another hedgehog? Faster than the speed of sound?

Pah. Most likely hearsay or an exaggeration. No other hedgehog could possibly be so fast except me.

I think I would call this Sonic "Faker" from this moment forward. Because that was obviously how he presented himself. Though I was a little curious. What was he like, aside from being blue and running fast? (Those who spoke of Sonic called him the blue blur).

What was his motivation? What brilliant scientist created him?

Since no ordinary hedgehog could reach such speeds.

These were all questions I was rather nonchalant about, since I would certainly find the answers when I had him down and out where I wanted him.

Maria POV

There is one unifying theme that almost all religions seem to share in common.

The idea of an afterlife and the notion that death might not be the end.

It was a comforting thought, even if I was myself an atheist scientist's granddaughter and granddad Gerald abhored all things spiritual and supernatural, preferring tidy facts that could be summarized neatly in a textbook and lab.

Heaven and hell. Reincarnation. Rebirth. Resurrection at the end of time when the messiah came to cleanse all evil upon the ruined Earth. A cyborg body that could store one's memories and basically give you the chance to feel alive again even after your human body rotted.

All of these concepts held the common theme. That the Asian-looking martial artist who always sat alone on a mat in the gym area of ARK, wasn't demented at all when he proclaimed during his meditation sessions "mind over matter".

Myself and dear husband Shadow (even though I couldn't tell anyone about our romantic feelings lest he be taken away forever and locked up until everyone forget he ever existed), always loved one particular line in one peculiar book that Shadow had to smuggle away from grandfather since he deemed it inappropriate and anachronistic.

It was not a fairy tale story book. Nor a scientific textbook. Nor even a biblical or otherwise spiritual text.

It was a historical Bushido guidebook titled "the book of the five rings", that had been preserved and translated from back in the so-called Edo era. An age of heroes and chivalry according to what little information I could glean from the manuscript.

"To train Bushido is to train the mind, the soul and the body" It stated simply.

Mind, soul and body...

It sounded ridiculous, but it was the theorem that Grandfather was begrudgingly forced to apply to me in his last-ditch effort to save my life from my incurable NIDS.

His discoveries had led him to the conclusion that there was indeed a soul in each human body which could in certain cases be preserved after the body died.

Which was how people in very deep comas who were pronounced clinically deceased, sometimes bounced back after their heart rate was nill and their brain monitor chart detected no neural activity.

But more frighteningly, Grandfather found out that there was a certain way in which the soul could simply linger in the nether with no body at all and even potentially take control of another body that was not its original.

A spiritual body snatch, if you will.

This experimental cure did not involve a fancy giant test tube in which I would be placed in stasis, awaiting my NIDS to be permanently cured so that I woke back up feeling fit as a fiddle.

Nor did it even entail a fancy new body which I could pick and choose my new characteristics upon transferring my consciousness from my old, sick body and then opening my eyes healthier and more beautiful than ever before.

It was not that clean or that simple.

A soul could only inhabit a living body and for all Gerald Robotnik's grand efforts at creating life-like robots with increasingly advanced artificial intelligence, he could not build a robot that could contain a soul and hence develop its own free will.

Such was the limitation of robotics.

It involved a painful experiment which was conducted away from Shadow's all-seeing and ever watchful eyes. A tiny microchip hardly bigger than a thimble tack, was placed into my brain with the purpose of setting my soul free once my body was sensed to be failing beyond repair.

No fancy shiny gadget. No beautifully bodied device with a lovely paint job and buttons.

My soul would then float about in the atmosphere, biding its time until a suitable replacement body could be found that would be compatible with me. It could not simply be any human. It had to be one who shared precisely the same tastes, prejudices, ethics, views of myself when I lived and breathed.

In short, someone who could be stated by even a casual observer to be "of one mind" with me. Someone who could say without exaggeration to me that we were "two of a kind".

An identical twin that was more than simply similar to me in appearance only, but rather a like-minded individual to whom I could say upon our meeting, that I was really beside myself.

Slight ideological differences however small, would render the transfer impossible.

You know how in Anime, Filmography or any form of media really, how a director who created multiple films would frequently use a carbon copy of a well-established character who had already been created to design a basically identical character for the new film?

Or in video games, where many players and enemies the player had to fight to win were nothing more than palette swaps with nary any differences from the original aside from colour changes.

Like how in the Dragon quest series, there were three enemies called slime, red slime and metal slime. All just differently coloured slimes. Or green dragon, red dragon and blue dragon.

Or when a zone from game number 2 in the series, very strongly resembled a zone from the first game and required basically the same approach and tactics to win.

Green hill and Emerald hill. Which were both luscious beauty spots of grassy nature.

Spring yard and Casino night. Which both had flashing neon lights in a bustling city of bright tunes.

Scrap brain and Metropolis. Two large and polluted factories where non-robotic life forms were dumped into the rubbish heap as refuse to be taken apart and recycled.

This was done to save on time and money, and when the creator had clearly hit a writer's block or creative slump but really wanted something to give to the adoring fans anyway. For love or for greed and profit.

And in my case it was the only hope for my new and wonderful life which might not come at all. Despite my grandfather setting aside even his personal opposition against anything spiritual just to try and help me. What a good, loving grandfather.

A soul was just another organ like the heart, lungs and kidneys. A foreign body would reject it if it didn't have similar enough makeup, perceiving it as a harmful pathogen and destroying it as such.

Just like in the case of the Buddhist rebirth theory, a rebirth could take anywhere between fractions of a second after death if a ready and willing body could be found at the precise moment of life's passing, to an endless eternity.

The day of rebirth might never come if the soul was undeserving, and instead float forever on the highest majestic palace of the heaven realm or be confined in the deepest prison of the hell realm.

Or in my more worldly and realistic case, I would simply see pitch blackness as expected once the G.U.N agent's bullet bled me dry.

I didn't know how long to expect. It ended up taking 50 years. Not quite as fortunate as a short time span like 5 days, wherein everything would be more or less the same and I could explain to everyone why grandfather was not evil and clear the whole mess up. Then I could go to cousin Ivo and offer my sincerest condolences while making sure he grew up with a truly caring relative by his side so that he could never feel unfairly cheated again.

But not a hopelessly long epoch of chrono, such as 5 millennia (5000 years), where everything had changed far beyond my comprehension and I'd be insulted forever as a living fossil unable to get with the times. Where myself, Shadow, Gerald, Ivo and everything about us was lost to the sands of time that waited for no one.

My rebirth took 50 years. Or to be more precise, 38 years if counting the exact day, hour, minute and second that Helen Priestly, the invalid Cyprus girl was born on a relaxing summer afternoon in a hospital on the beach.

It was easy. Almost too easy. Her not yet fully living embryo beckoned to me as I hovered in the warm and calming air around the wood and straw frame of the beach hut reserved for medical purposes, like a magnet whose pull I could not escape from.

Then like a moth drawn to a flame, I fused with her. There I was in the darkness of the womb. Not yet fully conscious but certainly fully alive in every sense of the word.

I could perceive only faint smatterings of memory until the later part of the foetus stage, wherein I could now remember with absolute clarity everything that happened.

The ARK. The gunman. Grandfather's good and bad qualities which all in all, made him a fairly morally grey character in my eyes even when I tried to ignore either the good or the bad.

Shadow's final pained expression as he was launched at the speed of sound far away from me to live on Earth alone. Cousin Ivo's weeps and sobs when the bullies gave him a wedgie, smashed his nose bloody and kicked him in the chest for being weird.

Then I cried. More joyful than afraid as my delivery into the outside world was complete and Lina Priestly my new mother in this life, held me as if I was the most precious thing in the universe to her as her husband Doug cheered rabidly like there was no tomorrow.

They elected to name me Helen. A thoughtful and very fittiing name considering how in my previous life, entire wars were fought between my supporters and enemies that I made without knowing.

Like Helen in ancient Troy when the Trojan war was started between her many suitors. With Paris, Achilles, Odysseus, Melanius and all those other decorated heroes of myth and legend.

As I soon discovered both to my joy and sorrow, Helen loved ancient history just like me. She also adored flowers and nature's beauty. The very thing I wished to come down to Earth from ARK for.

The next years came and went. On the one hand, I never forgot that Ivo and Shadow still needed my help if they still lived, even though I could not track them down anywhere, try as I might.

On the other hand, I felt it would be unbearably selfish and cruel not to let little Helen enjoy being a carefree child while it lasted, because it certainly wouldn't last long. My own childhood experience attested to the brevity of childhood innocence.

As I would later learn, my rebirth did not make me in complete charge of my new body like a pilot who took charge of a plane or a mechanic who took charge of a robot. Or even a general in command of a platoon of loyal soldiers ready to follow his orders to the letter.

It was something more similar to becoming just one voice among many in the sea of voices that were debating amongst themselves in Helen's head whether she was awake or asleep.

Like Chara when they silently slipped into Frisk's body at the start of Frisk's journey through the underground. Where they could only influence Frisk, never control Frisk completely unless Frisk lost all will to go on and handed over control willingly.

"It's you. Helen." I would whisper politely during Helen's happier days when something went her way. An A grade. A fun day out with Frances, Chris or even the new blue hedgehog Sonic that reminded me a little too much of Shadow for me to feel okay with it.

Sniffing some sweet flowers. When mum and dad found a rare day off work to attend to their beloved daughter.

"It's me. Maria." I would slightly more loudly, but far more sadly sigh on days when Helen felt sorry for herself or those she cared most about. When she fell off her wheelchair and scraped her legs.

When she was forced to fire upon Ice the mugger with his own ballistic weapon to protect Frances when no other less violent options existed.

Or when Chris blew Helen off like a jerk, while Frances was occupied with too many household chores for her own parents like cooking dinner, cleaning the house, raking the leaves and mowing the lawn.

Just like when Shadow was too busy strengthening his Chaos powers and Grandad too busy with some obscure invention he kept secret from me. Like I couldn't be trusted despite being his beloved granddaughter.

When my own tragic recollections of my past life came back to hit me full force

Helen's suffering was my suffering. My suffering was hers.

Was Batman really Bruce Wayne, or just Batman?

Were Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde really one and the same, or two different people who should be separated as such?

Who was Frisk? Who was Chara? How much of Frisk was Chara and how much of Chara was Frisk? Half and half? Three quarters and one?

One hundred percent Chara, if you picked the genocide route and distressed Frisk's psyche beyond repair, since Frisk hated bloodshed?

Did Frisk beat Chara if you chose the Pacifist route, and embraced Frisk's peaceful ways instead?

Was Clark Kent, Superman? Or was it the other way around?

I kept as quiet as possible unlike a lot of spirits in the generic ghost movies that used to keep me and Shadow up all night at our slumber parties. I gave Helen as much leeway as possible, and refused to talk unless she really forced me.

Even then, she had to pry very hard. To literally scream my name to herself as she demanded that I divulge more information about who I really was.

Before reassuring me sympathetically, that it was completely alright for me to be entitled to my own thoughts as a part of her.

On my better days, I told myself with some faint glee that Helen would certainly have suffered an untimely death without my timely intervention. A body with no soul was simply a corpse, and the real cause of many miscarriages and stillbirths was because no soul arrived to fill the fetus.

Without my arrival, there was no guarantee that another soul would actually have arrived to fill her body and her extreme weakness when I found her, signalled to me that her time was quickly drawing to a close.

It was part of the reason apart from our very agreeable goals, that she let me into her body in the first place. A strong, healthy embryo would have much more readily refused my soul entry into itself.

Then on pessimistic days where the pain was just too much to bear, I would weep and sob to myself with such ferocity so that Helen could not help but hear my lamentation from deep within herself.

"I took her body from her. I lived on in her body. I'm a worse monster than G.U.N. That Gunman should have finished me off as slowly and brutally as possible. I deserved to die." I would moan as I let out a shrill shriek of utter regret.

"No Maria. Don't say that. Never, ever say that again. You are the reason I live at all. It doesn't matter that my legs don't work, life is a precious gift that you gave to me and you can stay with me as long as you like." Helen would then sharply retort in tranquil fury, when she was out of earshot of everyone else.

Including good pal Frances. Helen begged me time and again to let her break her promise to me that she would reveal nothing that even remotely indicated my existence. Frances seemed so kind, cheerful and friendly.

But I could not take the risk that she would brand Helen a lunatic, or worse, as a freak of nature not worth the space she took up on planet Earth. The last thing I wanted was for my eternal saviour and carer who I was forever indebted towards, to be left without her closest companion and lover.

Yes. Helen loved Frances. As more than just a friend.

The day after Frances and Helen fought off Ice as a team, they unintentionally bestowed upon each other a lovely kiss. Not on their cheeks. No. Much more mature and intimate than that.

Their lips made contact and the two seven year old girls kissed each other until their lungs ran out of life-sustaining oxygen, and they had to catch their breaths. They were not simply friends in the same manner that I was not simply friends with Shadow.

The title of friend to describe what Shadow and I had built together, was a gigantic insult.

Simple "friends" didn't give each other crystal rings and such lovely kisses.

I couldn't risk Frances abandoning Helen and leaving her all alone with nothing and no one.

Not because of me, my ego, my needs and my selfish ways.

Frances was all Helen had. Her parents were as busy with her medical care as grandfather Gerald had been with mine. That couldn't be held against them in the slightest. They were squeaky clean blameless.

Chris Thorndyke who was Helen's other fellow classmate, was about as trustworthy as Judas Iscariot when he betrayed Jesus for thirty silver shekels. A snake in the grass with a venomous hiss.

Trusting Chris to keep Helen happy, ranked one step above trusting a hungry wolf to guard a hen house. It would be like trusting G.U.N not to gun me and raid the ARK for valuables. Which did not go well.

Chris, wasn't trustworthy. Not to Helen and not to me either. When he first met Helen, he was a kind and compassionate friend, but slowly became consumed by his own greed and inability to accept responsibility that was rightfully his own.

The talk of Chaos emeralds which has been circling around with greater frequency, despite Chris's best efforts to keep Sonic and his friends quite about all this, troubles me to no end.

I ran and hid for so long. But how much longer can I keep this jig up?

How much more am I going to let Dr Eggman suffer? Even when I still recognize him perfectly well as the same old abused and mistreated cousin Ivo?

Let me tell you one thing now as I let sweet and wonderful Helen take the reins once again. Returning from the dead isn't all it cracked up to be. Not when all the problems of the past are still present, and have gotten only worse with time.

Time certainly doesn't heal all wounds. It didn't heal mine and it certainly didn't heal Ivo's.

My weakness transferred itself to Helen's body. It's my fault her legs don't work properly. Even jumping from body to body can't cure a soul of all its accumulated ailments that it obtained during a past life.

Just like in the legend of the Buddha.

I spent too long in self-pity that I only slowed Shadow down with my sickness and inability to use chaos control to speed myself up like he could. Now I can only slow Helen down instead. My own negativity has only worsened everything for everyone.

Now Helen can't properly take in the majestic luxury of mother nature, and neither can I.

I take this brief chance to thank not only Helen for gifting me new life even in this limited form, and Frances for being by Helen and my side through life's many toils and hardships. But also God, Buddha, Allah, the Messiah, Zeus and many others.

The ancient legends that there was life after death were real after all. I can only pray despite everything, that I can one day make this divine miracle available for everyone.

The microchip inside my head however has broke, only being useable once. If I die this time, Helen dies with me and vice versa. This truly is my final chance at redemption after all the suffering I unknowingly caused.

...

Thank you so much for reading. Please review.
Special thanks to Momijifan Low-Ki for your kind support.