Must...stop...reading...other fics...long enough to...finish...own...
Just kidding. I am writing my own stuff quickly. I'm just too lazy to post right away.
...As if any of YOU wouldn't enjoy sleeping to 1 PM every day. Jeeze, let a girl enjoy her vacation once in a while!
BTW, I have here for you the ONLY chapter that will not be in Shadow's POV. If you've been following the story, he's in no shape to actually notice anything for a while anyway. He'll be back soon, though, so don't worry folks!
Until then, please endure Sonic's POV. It will be over soon.
Disclaimer: The distortion you are seeing is normal. Do not attempt to reset your computer.
The first words that came to mind in this situation were 'Oh, shit'.
We had spent most of the last month tracking down Shadow, who had apparently gone suddenly insane, and now here he was trying to beat the bejeezus out of our dear friend Commander Cueball. Baldy was toteing a big laser with legs, Shadow now had fangs, and a lot of stuff had melted into icky green goo.
Plus, Shadow didn't look exactly happy to see us.
"What are YOU irritants doing here?!" Vox bellowed at us, when he finally noticed us.
"We're on one of those island tours," I told him, unable to keep from smirking, "Cause this happens to be the biggest tourist attraction this side of Mexico! Didn't you see the signs out front, Vox?"
"I thought we were here to find Shadow," I heard Amy whispering to Rouge when I finished talking.
"Is that a fact?" Vox sneered, "I'm afraid your little vacation is going to be canceled. Leave right now, or I turn your little black friend into a puddle of smoking black goo."
"If you are going to make idle threats," Shadow said in a voice that was definitely NOT normal for him, "Can you at least make then ones you could actually carry out? Your aim is embarassing, even for one of your ridiculous species."
Vox went so red that he actually began going purple around the edges, before opening fire on everything at once with his walking laser. Tails grabbed Amy and headed up; Red and Rouge took to the walls as well. Leaving yours truly to dodge on foot.
No sweat! It was even kinda fun, leaping and rolling and running circles around the laser blasts.
...Okay, so maybe the ends of my quills were getting toasty. Big deal - Vox was still missing me. As a matter of fact, he was trying to hit Shadow way more than me or any of the others. The still mostly-black hedgehog was moving like I'd never seen him move before, easily avoiding every single thing thrown his way.
Was it just my imagination, or was there something...wrong...with how he was moving?
I had seen the Faker fight - and fought against/beside him - enough times to know what his fighting style was like, and this was NOT his fighting style.
Why was he trying to kill Vox, anyway? After all the time he spent settling into normal life...what could have made him act so weird?
Especially...when he tried to aim an attack AT ME!!!
"What are you DOING?! Have you lost your MIND?!" I yelled as he followed up his attack with a really big Chaos Spear.
"No: you are merely becoming a nuisance," Shadow replied with a smirk - and since when did he get fangs, anyway?! - before powering up for a really big attack.
An attack I even recognized. I was too busy gaping in horror to get all the way out of the way before I was sent on a one-way trip to the ceiling by the attack known far and wide as Nightmare Ring.
It hurt, a lot, but before I could enjoy the experience of crashing into the floor below on top of it, Knux grabbed me by the arm and hauled butt back to the corner where the others were waiting. I shook him off as soon as there was floor under my sneakers.
"Okay, somebody tell me I was NOT just blasted by what I think I was just blasted by," I said.
"Sorry," Rouge said, "But that was definitely Nightmare Ring."
"How can Shadow use Cross's attack? We tested to make sure and he can't use ANY of those attacks!" Tails demanded.
"That's cause Shadow can't," I said, realizing what had been staring me in the face all along, "There's only one creature that can."
The nearest machine was half-melted, half-blown to pieces, leaving us in clear view, as I stepped forward. Vox paused in his crazed barrage as 'Shadow' smirked at us from atop of another machine.
"My ears are burning," he cackled, "Care to share this little insight with the rest of us? So secretive...whatever happened to information between friends, hmm?"
"You're no friend of ours - Project Cross," I snapped back, hearing the others gasp.
Now normally, I'm a laid-back kinda guy. Even when things seem there worst, I can always find a funny side to things that lets me relax. Well, I always figured there would be one time that I couldn't relax, and it hit me like a thunderbolt the instant that Cross threw back his head and laughed.
"Half right! Half right!" he cried between giggles, "Your little friend's still in here! He's watching everything that's going on! But as far as you're concerned, this is MY body!"
"Shadow! Snap out of it!" Rouge yelled, apparently coming to a really quick conclusion.
"Please," Cross sighed, "Scream all you want to, he can't retake control unless I let him. He might as well be unconscious - I've already gone back on the little deal I agreed to make with him and he can't do a thing about it. Any and all equipment for creating a seperate body and sending my awareness into that body has been destroyed...but there's still plenty of equipment left to improve THIS body."
"Your old tentacles weren't good enough for you? Now you need metal ones?" I asked. My voice only sounded incredulous, but I had never felt so angry before in my entire life. I think I was shaking under the strain of it.
"As if I'm going to tell YOU anything," Cross sneered, "Die in ignorance!"
A dozen balls of light appeared in the air above us: one also appeared in Cross's hands.
"Not as powerful as it used to be, but still effective," he said with a wistful sigh, flicking the one he was holding into Vox's walking lasergun to demonstrate.
With a flash of white light, the machine blasted into pieces. Vox screamed, but the scream cut off in the middle, leaving the rest of us with a very unpleasent mental image of what was going to happen to us.
Cross hopped over to the only other door in the room - the one that the survey record Tails found said went into the lower levels of this temple place - and gave us all one final smirk.
"Sayonara, Sonic the Hedgehog," he said, looking right at me, before disappearing into the doorway.
As soon as he was gone, the white balls of Cross's Scatter Bomb began to fall.
How's that?