War is one of humanities curses as well as a blessing. War is a curse because countless souls are lost, a lot land and potential wasted. War is a blessing because it is a part of evolution, development in technology, learning from the mistakes, the discovering of new things. Interstellar War One was not a war, it was a full-scale genocide. Both the humans and the furies fought in this holocaust, and both suffered together. However, no good came from this war. Planet, after planet, was destroyed in some way or another. All the planets in the Sol System suffered. The glorious colonies of Mars, part of a debris field, and the research facilities on Venus molten slag on a naked world exposed to the Sun. The moon reshaped as a smooth ball of titanium and glass, and the Earth, now a lifeless world of acidic vapor.
However, it wasn't over. Everything has a balance; even planet-crushing campaigns have good outcomes, and bad outcomes. Five years after the war ended humankind and the furies began to terra-format the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, ensuring their survival for hundreds of years. But it can't last. They realize this and look to terra-formatting as a means to repair Earth, and quiet possibly make Venus a second home. But there is no way to land on Earth without having the ship and its contents reduced to particles. However, on of the surviving research facilities is still in orbit around Earth. Ark, built twenty years ago would do the job of repairing Earth, while machines head to Venus and start the restoration there.
Ark was the first space colony built by man in 2134, one year before the war, and soon it would truly live up to its name. The reconstructed government of the furies and humans elected a fifty-four-year-old man by the name of Professor Gerald Hess to head the research. At first he did not want to take the offer, because the Supreme Chancellor of the time, Francis McCormick, wanted Gerald to research immortal life. The reason Gerald refused was because he knew that such a thing was..."ridiculous," for an appropriate term. Nothing lasts forever. But Gerald's granddaughter, Maria, soon contracted a genetic virus called NIDS (Neuron Immunodeficiency Disorder), which killed his daughter Aida Hess, three years previous. Gerald did not want to loose Maria like he lost Aida, so he took the Supreme Chancellor's offering just so he could use the money for his own research in the disease.
Soon, Gerald Hess was sent to the Ark, the research station that promised the life of his granddaughter, but he still had the immortality issue to worry about. He supervised the restoration project on Earth, the immortality project—which wasn't his favorite—and his greatest passion: the research on NIDS. He worked for several years on the immortality project, which he called Project Shadow just for the butt of jokes because it was supposed to be secret, and he developed a cure for all three stages of NIDS. However, Maria was severely crippled in the legs by this time, and could hardly stand up without collapsing, but the antidote was given to her before she entered stage two. Gerald accomplished his goal. Wanting to find a way to get Maria's mobility back, he convinced Supreme Chancellor Francis McCormick to support Project Shadow. She agreed readily because of Hess' great success in the restoration project on Earth, which was now nearing its completion. But was suspicious to why Gerald was so enthusiastic about the project now when he was so anti-immortal three-and-a-half years ago.
The answer came when the Chaos Emeralds mysteriously disappeared several months later. The Guardian of Angle Island at the time, Earth's only region to survive the war, suspected foul play, but no one thought to blame the professor.
Gerald, backed by the government all the way, continued Project Shadow with gruesome diligence. It was then that the Bio-lizard, prototype to the Ultimate Life-form was finished. It was ageless, but proved to be a failure, because it attacked anything in sight and was nearly invincible. Gerald adopted the idea that this is what she wanted, but felt that he needed a failsafe, a dead man's switch of sorts to contend with the Bio-lizard. This became the finalized version of Project Shadow, Shadow the Hedgehog the Ultimate Life-form. Maria usually came to visit her grandfather and Gerald being the doting grandfather and realizing the importance of teaching Shadow kindness let Maria befriend the super weapon.
Four years passed by, and Gerald Hess was proud with the progress of Shadow, and how he could relate to humans and other furies, it was a success. Now he could focus his attention the Eclipse Cannon, a weapon the newly formed Guardians of the United Nations, he wasn't particularly fond of this but felt he should be true to the government he fought for during the war. Gerald was a patriot of sorts, but soon he would have everything taken away from him.
By 2153 the Eclipse Cannon was complete. Gerald, however, not wanting another war made it require tremendous amounts of energy to function, so he and his colleagues crafted a device to harvest the powers of the Chaos Emeralds. Maria, now sixteen, and Shadow now age six, but appeared to be eighteen could finally enjoy Earth because Gerald was going to retire once he passed all the red tape of G.U.N. However, this was where it all went downhill.
The new Supreme Chancellor now called President of the United Nations held a grudge against the Hess' for some unknown reason, and convinced Congress to permanently shut-down Project Shadow and detain all onboard the colony. Congress refused, which was a big mistake. President Graham secretly sent a spy by the name of Axe Monroe the Fox as a new employee on Ark to figure out what Gerald has been researching. Axe succeeded in finding information on the Bio-lizard, and where it was, and even the hedgehog Shadow. Axe also discovered that Gerald was also researching NIDS a few years back, and was now researching cybernetic implants to get his granddaughter's mobility back. Graham manipulated all of this information into a lie, and told Congress. Unfortunately Congress believed him, and ordered G.U.N to shut down the colony.
Everyone on the colony was killed, save for Gerald Hess and Shadow the Hedgehog. Shadow was put in cryogenic freeze in the newly reconstructed Area-51, and Gerald was detained on Alcatraz Island, or "Prison Island". A maximum security detention center near what was San Francisco. Several weeks after the "incident" Gerald was instructed to design a mechanized army for G.U.N, he did do without thought, but then he learned about how his granddaughter died. And the United Nations had the gall to say they all died because of a massive air leak, they even said he died. Gerald Hess felt betrayed, and went insane. Consumed by his hatred for the UN he used algorithms to communicate with the Bio-lizard back on Ark, secretly. Gerald Hess was added to the casualty list on April 20, 2163.
Fifty years have passed from that day to this, and this is where our odyssey begins to unfold...