Grrr! Once more into the breach! Editing skills, ATTACK!
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Eh heh heh...we'll just ignore that and move on to the chapter, shall we? Right.
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Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog
Claimer: Stuff I invented belongs to me
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Tugging at it never did him any good.
It was better than doing nothing, though, so tug he did. The main reason tugging never did him any good wasn't that he couldn't get it off just by tugging (although this was true), it was that too much or too vigorous tugging kept attracting unwanted attention.
"...Shadow..."
Like that.
Shadow let his hand drop, keeping his gaze firmly on the floor. Maybe if he ignored the other hedgehog standing dangerously close by, Raven would go away. That would be best. Or maybe Raven would start ignoring Shadow in turn; something else that he would prefer immensely...
"Oh, stand up straight and pay attention to me when I talk to you, Shadow!" Raven's voice chided him, "You know what'll happen if you don't..."
A stinging shock emphasized Raven's point, and Shadow reluctantly straightened up.
Damn this collar! Raven wasn't taking chances this time, especially since he no longer had the advantage of being bigger and tougher than Shadow was. Shadow had woken up aching and sore to discover the strange device wrapped around his neck, and had failed to discover a way to get it off ever since. Raven might be psychotic, power-hungry, and otherwise insane, but even his most reluctantly related younger brother had to admit that Raven was most assuredly a genius.
This collar was able to hook into his nervous system whenever it detected that Shadow was not doing what Raven wanted him to be doing. It would start off with hurting him, sending pain shooting his body. The more Shadow fought back, the worse it got. And if Shadow still disobeyed, the collar would take control and turn his body into a living puppet, with Raven as the puppeteer and Shadow trapped inside and forced to watch. It only took experiencing this once for Shadow to decide that if he had to be stuck in this situation, he'd rather be stuck while in control of his own body and not as a helpless slave.
He had some pride left, still.
"Looks like all that training I invested in you paid off," Raven said, tugging on one of Shadow's ears with a cruel smirk, "And really, I'd hate to think that you didn't appreciate all of the hard work and time that it took me to make this delightful little device. I did make it just for you, little brother...if I thought that you didn't like my little present to you, why, it would just crush me!"
'Wish it would crush you, literally,' Shadow thought.
As if Raven knew what he was thinking, the hand on his ear twisted and pulled. Shadow grimaced, but resisted an impulse to lash out at his tormentor. It wouldn't do him any good anyway.
Raven let go after a few minutes, then stepped away, gesturing that Shadow should follow him. Raven picked his way through the dimly lit room that served as his base of operations with the ease of long practice. Shadow had to be careful; it was so darkly lit that he couldn't make much out of the surroundings. Shadow still hadn't figured out where they were.
For all Shadow could tell, this place could be up in the ARK, or buried underneath Sonic and Tails' house, or be somewhere else that he had never heard of.
"Now, my dearest little brother, it's time to hear what your older and wiser brother has been planning all this time. Of course, I couldn't pull the plan off without you; a minor flaw that I was thinking of correcting, until I realized what a wonderful chance it would be for us to bond. We still have so much catching up to do, little brother...unfortunately, business must come before pleasure."
Raven stopped, and gestured. A large computer screen flickered on, providing more illumination to the room as well as temporarily blinding Shadow. He was still blinking tears out of his eyes as Raven idly tapped out a sequence of keys on the keyboard below the lit screen.
The screen now displayed a picture. It was some kind of ball, white in color. It was far from being a drab object, however, with how thousands of tiny, jewel-toned rainbows that seemed to come from nowhere at all played gently across its surface.
It was, Shadow had to admit, a very lovely thing. What would his brother want with something like this, though?
"I see you have no idea what you're looking at," Raven said, "It's almost shameful, you're so uneducated."
He sighed, then gestured grandly at the display.
"This, my pitifully ignorant little brother, is a legendary object known as the Fount of Light. It is said that he who can find and control this tasty little bauble will gain anything and everything he desires. Power, wealth, control, immortal life...ANYTHING! And so naturally this is something that I want."
Raven sighed dramatically at this point.
"I had to spend so much time putting together tiny little fragments of scraps from this legend and that legend to realize what I needed to do. Most of the blind imbeciles I had to...question...were of the opinion that I was chasing a fairy-tale. Unlike them, I'm not so foolish as to not know that the Fount of Light is real. Even better, I know how to get what I want!"
There was a flash of light, and a Chaos Emerald appeared in Raven's hands. He tossed it to Shadow, who fumbled to catch it.
Raven really was insane...didn't he know that he'd just handed Shadow a ticket out of here? With a Chaos Emerald, Shadow could Chaos Control! He could warp away to freedom and safety in a heartbeat - !
The collar erupted with a level of pain Shadow had never gotten from it before. He wasn't even able to scream before he dropped to the floor, the Chaos Emerald falling from his grasp and rolling off into the shadows of the room. Raven waved a finger at him, tutting at him with a vicious grin plastered on his face.
"Ah-h-h...you really are as much of an idiot as I remembered, my foolish little brother! Didn't you think I would have planned for that? The collar's power increases when you're near a Chaos Emerald, you ignorant little whelp! It can pick up the brainwaves that tell it you're going to disobey me before you can even finish making the thought! I learned from last time not to assume your obedience if I couldn't enforce it myself."
From his position on the floor, Shadow grunted as he felt something hard hit him in the side of the head. It was the Chaos Emerald that he'd dropped; Raven had kicked it back over.
The twisted hedgehog was holding a second Chaos Emerald in his hands, the Emerald's glow highlighting the manic gleam in Raven's silver eyes.
"Get off my floor and pick up the Chaos Emerald, Shadow," Raven ordered, still grinning, "We've got a stop to make with your old friends at G.U.N.; they have a set of Chaos Emeralds that I've just been dying to get my hands on! Well, someone'll be doing the dying tonight...and we'll even go on this errand as a family, won't that be so much fun? Just like old times..."
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Yay, another chapter brought up to more interesting and coherent levels. MUCH improved, if I do say so myself.
But what do YOU think?