Edited November 22
All canon characters belong to Sega.
Reincarnate
Chapter 8: Into the Dark
Amy trails after Sonic, eyeing his quills in confusion. Normally Sonic would have been glad to dump her on some other group, but he had deliberately chosen her to go with him. He's finally giving her some attention! She feels…
Pleasantly surprised?
That isn't right. She's supposed to be ecstatic, over-the-moon joyful, hopeful, wondering what it means…
Actually, she is wondering what it means, but her heart isn't racing and her limbs aren't buzzing with adrenaline, or anything she would have expected from something like this. What's wrong with her? She puzzles over it until they reach one end of the wall, and Tails stares down the length of it. Amy follows his gaze, her eyes drifting to the two small shapes on the other end of it, one of which jumps up onto the rock wall and latches there, head snapping left and right – Knuckles. Automatically her gaze drifts to the figure still on the ground.
She doesn't know if it's tact or just a coincidence, but Tails glances down at them and says, "I'm going to examine the wall more closely."
He moves off in the Tornado, the heavy metal footfalls reverberating off the stone around them. Amy turns to Sonic almost cautiously.
"I guess we should start looking for an entrance, huh?" she asks, and makes to move around him, but stops dead when he takes her arm.
"Hey, Amy," he starts, looking thoughtful. She looks at him expectantly. He struggles for a minute, finally asking, "You're thirteen now, aren't you?"
His tone tells her that isn't what he wanted to say. This is too weird.
"I – yes, I am."
"I mean, you're…different," he tells her, although he's turned away and is examining the sides of the wall. She moves a bit to the side and does the same, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
"What d'you mean 'different'?"
"Calmer," he responds at once, and she lifts a shoulder, trying not to seem surprised – and admittedly a bit excited – that he had noticed. There – she's excited. That's the old Amy Rose returning. But why should she be relieved about something stupid like that?
"Well, I guess I just…got tired of jumping around like that all the time. It didn't do anything to help."
"That's another thing," he says, abandoning a search for a hidden entrance, "You fought the robots. You didn't even scream when one of them caught you."
What do you say to something like that?
"I did what I could," she murmurs uncomfortably, and he shakes his head.
"It's not a bad thing," he assures her. "Just not like you."
That's a little insulting. She feels a twinge of irritation somewhere in the back of her mind, but keeps her voice level when she says, "I guess ARK kind of made me mature…it's the first time I've really been that close to…to dying."
It's true. She'd been a hostage before, of course, but mainly she'd been ignored, left in a cell as bait for Sonic. But this time Robotnik had been clearly on edge. She doesn't doubt that if pushed far enough, he really would have killed her. Everything had been at stake for him, and she had been in a very dangerous position. Sonic regards her thoughtfully, and says, "But what's weirdest is…you're…well, you're acting normal around me. You haven't asked me to marry you or anything like that yet."
She bursts out laughing, and she doesn't even know why. Maybe because it sounds ridiculous when he actually says it out loud, or maybe because…he's acting like he's bothered by the absence of it?
"What?" he asks indignantly, and she says, "I didn't think you'd mind that I've stopped."
"I don't," he replies bluntly.
Her laughter dies down a bit, fading into little spurts. Oh. So it's not that he minds.
"You always know just what to say," she mumbles, but he doesn't hear her.
"Why's that, though?" he continues, not noticing her sudden change in mood. "You've always been like that before. Every time I'd rescue you, you'd ask."
"Well, then, I guess it's because you haven't rescued me yet," she says, surprised by the sharpness that's edged into her tone. But she has a right – he couldn't possibly think it's because she's matured, can he? Nooo, that'd be ridiculous! He doesn't notice her suddenly cool demeanor.
"Well, don't get captured just so you can ask," he says, and she fights the urge to roll her eyes.
"I was being sarcastic. Maybe I'm just…interested in someone else!"
The words slip out before she can even take the time to think about them. She almost claps her hands over her mouth – what did she just say? It's a lie, of course. She hasn't…moved on or anything, otherwise she wouldn't be angry with him right now for being so oblivious, right? He, in the meantime, has started chuckling.
"What?" she asks, annoyed, her temper starting to rise to the surface. "It's possible, you know."
It's been a year now, and you haven't done anything to give me that much hope, she adds silently. It is possible.
"Sorry," he says, controlling himself with an unexpected spurt of tact. Her anger simmers and dies down slightly. She can't help but note how odd the word 'sorry' sounded coming from him. As far as she knew, he'd never apologized to anyone for anything before. Hmm.
"Are you serious about liking someone else?" he asks, and she's annoyed again with how casual the question is, like he could care less.
"Maybe," she says, smirking slightly. He doesn't look overly convinced, but he isn't laughing at her either.
"Why, would you –"
Before she can finish the question, a blur of light yellow skids to a halt in front of them.
"Working hard?" Shadow asks with a hint of sarcasm that almost makes Amy blush, then adds, "We've found a way in. I didn't want to shout it down the wall."
"Cool," Sonic says, giving him a thumbs-up, and zips down to the other end, where Knuckles is waiting by a newly-appeared hole in the rock wall. Apparently they had forced the door open. Shadow hesitates, and Amy takes advantage of it, suddenly remembering what she should have said before.
"Shadow, I never thanked you for saving me from that robot," she blurts out.
Is it her, or did his deadpan expression soften a bit at that?
"Sure," he says, "Anytime. But we should go…"
He indicates the others, who are moving towards the entrance. She nods and follows him as he jogs towards the rest of the group,
"About time," Sonic says, suddenly paying her as little attention as he would a rock. The nerve, and after all that talk, too! Fighting down the annoyance she feels, she follows them into the dark tunnel, her irritation sliding away and being replaced by a sudden nervousness.
But of course, that's to be expected. After all, they're walking right into the new not-so-hidden-anymore base of their greatest enemy. But for some reason, she feels like her heart is thumping almost excessively. She glances at Shadow, who's standing directly beside her, and he gives her a small, but reassuring smile.
Is it healthy for your heart rate to be this high? It can't be normal.
-
Shadow glances at Amy, who looks very nervous all of a sudden. That's fine – it's normal to be a little anxious about plunging into the depths of enemy lines. But she isn't looking around her worriedly, or really giving any notice at all to their surroundings. Her expression is somewhat unfocused, and it's obvious she's thinking about things besides what they're doing now.
Is it something Sonic said to her that's distracting her like this?
Why does he feel irritated with that possibility?
He'd ask her what she's looking that way for, if it wasn't imperative that they be silent for fear of detection. The only light is a few electric bulbs at well-spaced intervals throughout the tunnel, just enough for him to read her expression.
She's biting her lip, and staring at the ground. He tears his eyes away from her face, annoyed with himself for concentrating this much on her instead of where they're going. He's been paying more attention to her than to a lot of things lately. Strange…
"Here we go," Sonic says softly – a rare sign of discretion – and they find themselves looking at a metal door, with a dividing line down the middle where it would separate to allow robots through.
It'll be them going through instead of robots this time, he thinks as Knuckles pries them open, revealing a well lit – and deserted – chamber with an odd machine in the middle.
It's not unlike the cannon on ARK, Shadow decides, examining it curiously. But there are no niches for the Chaos Emeralds. In fact, it doesn't seem to have any power source at all. He frowns, noting that a section of the machine near the floor looks like it would slide up if the proper amount of force was applied.
It strikes him just how utterly abandoned the place looks. You'd think there'd be robots around, at least, if not the doctor. Just because Robotnik might have been expecting them to try coming in through the large and rather obvious door at the front doesn't mean that every robot would be there, waiting for them. That wouldn't be logical.
He casts another glance at the machine. Maybe Knuckles could pry open the door to the compartment on the side. He turns to call for him, but a loud, slick hiss, a gasp from Amy and a little yelp from Tails makes him whip around. His eyes go wide.
A section of the metal wall has slid away, revealing a large test tube full of an eerie green liquid, inside of which floats…an exact replica of Shadow.
Or at least, Shadow as he was in his old body. The black quills with red streaks float lifelessly in the green substance, and Shadow suspects that if the eyes were open, they'd be red like his had been not too long ago.
But what's a look-alike of him doing floating in Robotnik's base? And what the heck is that machine?
He would have given this more contemplation, but at that moment, while they're all distracted by the content of the large tube, a soft hissing sound breaks the heavy, confused silence that's descended on the group. Shadow glances around just in time to see a red dart embed itself in the back of Sonic's neck. Amy screams.
The blue hedgehog teeters, eyes drooping.
"Wha…?"
He collapses on the floor. An alarm starts blaring and red light engulfs the chamber. For a second all of them stand stock still, but then, as if they've all read each other's minds, they make a bolt for the door, Tails grabbing Sonic by way of the handy claw on the Tornado. Several more darts whip out of hidden niches in the walls. Shadow grabs Amy's arm and yanks her aside, the dart smacking into the wall where her neck would have been. A dart hits Tails, whose Tornado, although strong and multi-functional, is too slow to dodge things.
Amy gasps as Knuckles crumples. Robots pour into the room, the walls sliding up in areas to reveal doorways. Gunfire adds to the mayhem, and Shadow tugs a dumbstruck Amy out of range.
"Come on!" he calls over the noise, "Fight!"
Shaking, she whips out her hammer, and Shadow demolishes the first robot he can reach with a well-placed homing attack. With a loud clang, a dented, sparking robot smashes into another, sending them both tumbling to the floor in a pile of twisted metal.
But there are so many robots, and only two of them. And the darts keep flying. Another one finally hits its mark, and though Shadow is at Amy's side in a second and tugging the dart out of her neck, whatever was in it does its job. She droops, her eyes drifting shut.
"Amy!"
She passes out, and to his horror, he feels a sudden, painful prick in the side of his own neck. Instantly his limbs feel heavy, and it's hard to keep his eyes open. The action stops, and so does the alarm, although it might only be because the substance in the dart is dulling his senses. The room swims in front of him in a red haze. A dark shape casts a shadow over him as he sinks to the floor, and Robotnik's familiar chuckle fills his ears as he loses consciousness.