This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Sega, and are not used with permission.
Chapter 1: In Search of a Test Subject
Buried deep under Knothole was a chamber about the size of a small house. Inside, between the layers of earth that made up the ceiling and floor, illuminated by a series of soft white lights around the perimeter that passed itself of as walls, several citizens of the village above had gathered.
Sally, Geoffrey, Shadow, Bunnie, Rouge and a few more had gathered and were examining the large machine that took up most of the room. Rotor had been busy working on the device, but had paused to converse with the others.
Sally stood with her arms crossed in front of her, shivering; it was not from cold, but from the look of the monstrous machine before her.
Geoffrey walked up behind her. "Are you alright?"
"It looks just like that infernal machine." Sally almost couldn't look at Rotor's invention. "I only saw it once, but I'll be damned if I ever see it again."
Shadow noticed Sally across the room, but decided it best to let Geoffrey handle it, despite the fact that he believed the skunk had all the tact and sensitivity of a truck hurtling down a steep hill. He'd ask her outside.
Eventually, Sally called the group to attention.
"I don't have to remind any of you as to the extent of Robotnik's evil, or what he's capable of. One of his most terrifying inventions was the 'roboticizer', a devious machine that could transmutate living tissue to metal. Ever since, we have been trying to find a way to negate the effect, to restore the metal, back to flesh."
Everyone was paying close attention to Sally, as well as the frailty in her voice; she was one of the few to ever see the roboticizer in action and not be roboticized herself. Bunnie felt a chill running up her spine; though no one but Shadow and her knew, she was to date the only one ever roboticized, and subsequently deroboticized.
"Rotor says that the device is finished, but right now, we don't really know if it works. We need a test subject."
Everyone started to look back and forth at each other, but eventually all eyes started to focus on one individual.
"Alright I'll do it, if for no other reason than to get away from all you people for a while!"
In his tree house, Shadow was getting ready to head out when Bunnie came up to him, as almost always, Rouge was already there.
"I want to ask yah something."
"Sure."
"Privately."
Shadow glanced at Rouge.
"What? You can't tell me?" She realized that she wouldn't convince them otherwise, and shrugged her shoulders as she left.
With the two alone, Bunnie asked. "Shadow, yah saved me when I was roboticized, but why don't yah tell anyone? Yah could do anything that machine could, yet yah don't tell them, and leave them to build that monstrosity."
"Because they're too dependent on me as it is."
"But it would be easier."
"No!" Shadow snapped back. He collected himself and continued his explanation.
"You don't remember what they were like. After Sonic died, they were totally lost, and for a while, so was I. If they become too dependent on me, they'll never be able to live on their own. They'll become just like they were back then."
"Are yah saying yah plan to leave?"
"I argue that within myself a lot. There are times when I just want to pack it in and leave them behind. But more than that; Sonic died, so could I. If anything happens to me, they'll be lost, just like what happened when Sonic was killed."
"Yah actually care for them."
"I understand them, that's all."
Bunnie smirked. "And I was worried yah might be getting soft."
Back outside, Shadow met up with Sally before he left.
"Sally, are you O.K.?"
"Yeah, sure, why wouldn't I be?"
"You were acting real fidgety around the deroboticizer earlier, is there anything you want to talk about?"
"No, no, nothing."
Shadow didn't want to stop there, but he knew it would be futile to press any more. He was about to leave when Sally spoke again.
"I saw that thing, up close."
Shadow stopped to listen, but didn't turn to face her. Neither did she to him.
"A couple of years ago, Mobotropolis was a beautiful place; it was clean, lots of trees and gardens, you'd swear it was heaven. That was before Dr. Robotnik arrived."
"At first, he seemed a very strange man, but there was nothing sinister about him. He was almost a clown, a circus ringleader that demonstrated his technical prowess with these interesting gadgets and gizmos, unlike anything seen before. It was kind of fun to see the odd little metal shapes come to life and do various mechanical dances. I once spent three hours admiring a strange ballerina robot doing her moves." Sally choked a bit. "It looked so real."
Shadow could almost picture what the younger Sally would have been amazed by.
"One day, he invited the royal family, me and my father, to a tour of his lab. Of course, being king my father was too busy, but I went with Julayla."
Shadow interrupted. "A friend of yours?"
"She was my retainer; with my being a princess, she was the closest thing I had to a real friend."
Shadow returned to simply listening.
"Anyway, the two of us were being given the full tour of his mobile lab. It was rather large, about 5 times the size of Knothole; I couldn't believe that it was able to move. In the center of his lab was a most unique device, a large conglomeration of equipment centered around a large glass tube, large enough for a person to stand in. Once we stood before it, was when everything changed. Behind us, two of his creations, which he called SWATbots, had come and grabbed us."
"He then called my father to declare war on Mobotropolis. At first, he was totally aghast at Robotnik's insolence, and that he had taken me hostage, but what I saw next was proof that he was totally serious. As an ultimatum, he took Julayla, and put her in the machine." Sally could barely proceed, and her voice was breaking up into tears. "He turned it on, and in a few moments… she was no more."
Sally cried, and then stifled back the tears.
"Standing in the tube, was a robot where Julayla was. It looked like Julayla, but it was no longer her. It was a mindless machine that now served Robotnik's every whim."
Sally stopped to cry some more.
"He told my father that he had one hour to surrender Mobotropolis to him, or he'd lose his only daughter too."
"He wouldn't give in, but he only had one hour to save me. He readied his army in secret and sent Geoffrey to rescue me. I think Robotnik knew all along my father wouldn't comply, because he had readied his robot army."
"Father sent his forces to attack while Geoffrey snuck in. Robotnik revelled in seeing the futile attempt being crushed under the might of his robots; I can still hear his laughing. But his laughing stopped; Geoffrey had found his way in and was dispatching his robots. Robotnik was quite impressed with his tenacity and skill, so much so, that when Geoffrey had broken me free, he just let us go without a fight. He ordered his robots to close in, but more to scare us off, rather than to kill us."
"But as we left, I heard that laughing again, that sickening cackle. He called to me, and told me to watch. Before I left, he summoned Julayla forward, and to prove his domination over her…" Sally voice was filling with rage. "…he ordered her to rip her own head off."
Shadow's eyes shot open in terror.
"I swore as Geoffrey dragged me out, that I would do to him, what he did to her."
The two stood back to back, Sally engulfed in rage, Shadow in fear.
"Don't you have to go somewhere?"
Shadow walked away, and whispered under his breath. "I won't let you down."
Shadow wandered through the forest, trying to keep his mind on his mission, though he was constantly distracted by what Sally had told him. He almost couldn't believe just how callously indifferent to life Dr. Robotnik was. It was one thing to fight a war, but to be so ruthless as to order someone to kill themselves.
He didn't know that he could ever possess such hatred towards one person before, but more and more, he was coming to despise Robotnik with every fibre of his being.
As Shadow paced through the woods, he failed to notice someone following him.
"Found you."
Elsewhere, Rouge had been searching around on her normal daily task of tracking down rings. As she flew overhead she looked down to see someone wandering around in the forest. Based on the erratic pattern the individual was walking in, she figured that whoever it was, was totally lost.
"Hello? Can I help you?"
The stranger turned around, a very unusual person to be out alone in the middle of the forest. It was a young hedgehog with pink fur wearing a red sundress.
She responded in a very youthful voice. "Maybe you can. Do you know where I can find 'Knothole'?"
"Knothole, yeah, I'm from there!"
"You are! What incredible luck. I've been looking for that place for years!"
"You've been wandering around these woods for years?"
"No silly, I only just got here yesterday. But I've been on the road for the last six months."
"Six months?"
Rouge was wondering why anyone would want to travel six months to come here, especially with Robotnik causing trouble. It would certainly be much safer and happier to stay where you were.
"So what brings you to our neck of the woods, or to these woods, period?"
"I've come to find my true love, the greatest hero in the whole wide world!"
Rouge's face went pale. Here was a hedgehog looking for the greatest hero in the world, calling him her 'true love'. If she left six months ago and hasn't heard about what's transpired in the last four months, then this was really bad news.
"So you're here looking for…"
"The totally awesome SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!!!"
Amy pulled out a huge banner sign that read: "ULTIMATE I LOVE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG FAN CLUB!"
"I'm Sonic's number one fan! So much so that I created my own fan club of him, of which I'm the only member of course, since I'm the only one who loves him this much."
Rouge was standing in total shock.
"Now, can you tell me where I can find Knothole?"
"Yes, but I have some rather bad news for you."
"What is it? He isn't married, is he?!"
"Not quite that bad, he's dead."
Amy looked at Rouge in amazement. "Dead? What do you mean dead?!"
"Dead, as in dead and gone. I mean deceased, dearly departed, late, passed on, no more, bereft of life, and resting in peace. He's gone towards the light, passed through the pearly gates, gone off stage and joined the choir invisible. He is an ex-hedgehog."
[Author's Note: In memory of the late Graham Chapman, the Monty Python alumnus who wrote "The Dead Parrot Sketch".]
Amy stood there, trying to assimilate what Rouge had said.
"What the Hell are you talking about, I just saw him a minute ago."
"You saw him?! Wait, was he black with some bits of red and a white chest?"
"I only saw the black part as he was speeding by over there, wrapped in a green light." Amy pointed out in a rather general direction.
"That's not Sonic, that was…"
"Don't give me that nonsense, no one can move like Sonic."
"I'm telling you, Sonic's gone."
"Well! If you're going to be like that, I'll just have to find Knothole myself!"
Amy stormed off.
"Shadow ain't gonna like this."
Shadow eventually found some of Robotnik's robots, accompanied by some of Mobotropolis' roboticized citizenry. Shadow triggered the Chaos Control and jumped into battle.
The robots turned to see Shadow racing towards them in his full green glowing glory.
"Emergency procedure: Initialize anti-Shadow attack subroutines."
"Don't you get bored saying that?"
Shadow charged into the robots with the intended effect. With each robot, he hit it with a punch or kick; charged by the Chaos Control, the effect was deadly against the mechanical opponents. He made sure to only strike the robots and none of the roboticized people, knowing full well that they were once alive.
Within seconds, all of the robots were decimated, leaving a handful of the desired zombies still standing.
"Alright, I need one of you. Any volunteers?"
The lot of them charged the hedgehog with intent to kill.
"It nice to know you're all really eager, but I only need one of you." Shadow sprinted out of the way of the oncoming horde.
The robots looked around for Shadow. Once they spotted him they moved in again.
"Time to put a stop to this."
The Chaos Control flared, and Shadow ran right through the mob. He didn't attack, but simply zigzagged through them, letting the wake of the Chaos Control blast them back. Shadow stopped and looked behind him at the six robots now lying on the ground, not destroyed, but not fully functioning either.
He went back and selected one of them. "You'll do."
As he approached, he heard a twig snap in the forest in front of him, then looked forward to see the stranger that was tailing him.
"That was pretty impressive. Have you always been able to do that?"
"No offence buddy, but that's not the kind of question I like answering."
"Then what kind of questions do you like answering?"
Shadow crossed his arms. "None."
"Figures."
Shadow looked into the trees to try to make out the figure of the stranger. "So, what are you doing here?"
"Frankly, I don't like that kind of question."
"Answer it anyway."
The character humphed. "I was looking for you."
"I see. Should I be honoured, or worried?"
"It makes no difference to me."
"Then why are you looking for me? Do you even know who I am?"
"It doesn't matter who you are, but you have something that I'm looking for."
"What?" Shadow was getting angry. "Who the Hell are you?!"
The stranger walked out, his fur was a fiery red and circled around his head like a pair of wings on the down flap. He wore sneakers and gloves, much like Shadow did, but on his hands were a set of claws that seemed to grow out of the back of his hands. On his face was a menacing stare.
"My name is Knuckles."
