Hello again. It took some time to write, but I've finished the second chapter. I'll keep this pre-show chat short, as I don't have much else to say. I know where I want to go with the story, it's just finding good times to write it all out is what will determine the frequency of the chapters. I have other projects that I work on, so don't expect a chapter every week or so. But I do have this all set on a pretty high priority. Other than that, enjoy the latest chapter, and again please don't shy away from any feedback if you can.
Chapter 2: Unknown Limits
G.U.N. Med Center
Floating across a weightless abyss. It was all too familiar. Shadow tried to scream, but he kept drifting away. To him, this was what death had felt like. Although he had never indeed died before, he could sense the similarities. This time felt different though. This time he felt… Hollow. And a spark trying to escape from within him. It was a dull sensation, but being left in a reality without anything else, this was starting to burn. Finally, a glow illuminates the depths of what Shadow assumed to be his mind. He turns to face the source of light and sees the planet. He knew he was fighting to stay alive, as imagery was not something he had experienced here before.
He felt more at ease, as seeing his home from above calmed the hedgehog a lot. 'I haven't forgotten your promise. I'll always keep the view nice for you.' He reflected. Even though his mind is soothed, he still cannot fathom the preceding events that had transpired. Again, the feeling wasn't one of agony, but as if something grasped away a part of his life. The stars and constellations start forming around him, he could tell his grip on reality started to return, and he would soon wake up.
Something else started to form around the rim of the planet. At first glance, it seemed like nine fingers had started to emerge from the edges. But it didn't take long for something more horrifying to surface. These nine "fingers" turned out to be the tails of a kitsune. Shadow is helpless to watch as they wrap themselves around the entire globe, covering it all in darkness. This corruption made Shadow furious, and by using his rocket shoes to propel himself forward in space, he dashes for the tails. As if the planet could emit sound, the wrath of a vicious roar travels far into space. Shadow is sent hurling back, and unable to control his trajectory. As he sees more of the planet get compromised by the tails, the stars around to group at the top of the world. They begin to form their own constellation and a pair of heinous eyes form to stare Shadow down.
The shock from the mere sight of them snaps Shadow back to reality. He is treated by a group of G.U.N. medics in a med center. Shadow immediately freaks out and tries to escape the confines of his bed. The medics do their best to keep him in place, but the hedgehog's persistence allows him to move past. He needed an answer now, and staying cooped up wouldn't help. He jumps forward and yells, "Chaos… Conto-" Shadow face plants into the hard floor. Strange, he should've been out of there before the blink of an eye. Something wasn't right, but he slowly started to realize what was going on. Shadow raises his hand and tries something second nature to him, to form a chaos spear. Nothing… Nothing even reacts within his palm. Shadow's patience runs dry and he concentrates harder, but all he can get out are a few meager sparks.
"Oh thank chaos, you're awake." Shadow looks up to see Rouge standing above him in the doorway.
"What's happening to me?"
"Shadow, this isn't going to be easy to say. But it's gone, all of it's gone."
"What's gone!?"
"Chaos Energy. It has been completely siphoned out of everything. Including you."
'Impossible.' That could explain the emptiness he's been feeling recently. But how could it be possible for something to not only absorb his powers but all other chaos energy at the same time too? Could it possibly have a relation to his vision? Without warning, the alarms start going off throughout the whole building, and the intercom blares over.
"Alert! Alert! Unauthorized personnel approaching the main gates!" Rouge advanced to her radio.
"What's going on? Who's out there?" Mumbling emits, and Rouge leans closer to the radio. "Why is he here!?" Rouge yells out, not of shock, but more in frustration. "Ugh, send him in"
"Who's coming?" Shadow inquires.
"Someone who always comes at the most inconvenient of times possible."
Station Square
Panic ensues, and the damage is great. Sonic zooms through the thick powder of dirt emitted from debris falling. It sure made it harder for Sonic to find anyone trapped or in danger. All he could do was rely on the cries for help. Anywhere in the dust wasn't safe, and whoever he could find, he had to get out immediately. As soon as Sonic finds a group of people, he swiftly picks them up and runs outside the layer of dust. "Help! Under here!" Sonic turns to find a mother and her daughter trapped under a large chunk of rubble. Although he tries his best, Sonic can't seem to lift it.
"Tails! Amy! I need some help here!" Out of the blue, the two arrive as they were called. With keen coordination, they give a good push together. But no matter the effort, they can't quite pull through in freeing them. Sonic hears a stampede from behind him, and he turns to see a group of G.U.N. soldiers coming in to help out, and combined, they are able to free the two underneath. "Thanks for the save." Sonic carries them back to a safe place before meeting back up with Tails and Amy. They can tell that the disorder around them is slowly starting to dissipate. "Not sure what caused all this, but one thing is for certain, our job here is far from done."
"We need to check the top of the tower, I saw a glimpse of the explosion from up there. If the chaos emerald is overloading, then we need to secure it." Tails states. "I know it's clogged up there, but we can't risk another episode. I can quickly fly up there and use this." Tails takes out a spherical metal container. "This will hold the power casted by the emerald." Sonic gives Tails the thumbs up.
"Just be careful up there." Tails nods and flies through the thick residue. As Tails closes in on the tower, he can see more of the damage. The outside walls are charred in red-tinted discharge. Tails hovers around the top of the tower and searches for what he assumed to be a red emerald, but he can't spot any hues along the top. Tails contemplates a risky move but decides on landing at the peak. He almost didn't see it at first, but the fox spots a blackened gem-shaped object laying in the shavings.
"No way!" Tails, without thought, picks up the now powerless emerald. Tails hasn't seen anything like this since the world had been fractured by Eggman. Could this have been a result of the building trying to absorb too much power? But that couldn't have been the case, as if it was, why would the energy beam into the sky and dart away, and not just simply leave it at imploding the building? Unless… "The machine!" Tails quickly flies back down to the ground and flocks to Sonic and Amy. "We need to get back to my house!"
"Whoa, what's the matter?" Sonic asks. What would Tails want to get back to so urgently? Tails then shows both of them the emerald. "How did that happen?"
"I can explain later, but we need to go now."
"We can't just leave, there could still be people trapped." Sonic wondered if Tails knew about what was going on. If he did, what could possibly be waiting for them back at his house?
"You two can go." Amy speaks up. "Whatever Tails needs to figure out must be important. There are more G.U.N. people here now, and they've been helping out. I'll stay and help too, while you both get going. I'll meet you back there soon." It didn't satisfy Sonic to leave the danger, but now I guess there wasn't a choice. Both Sonic and Tails begin to dash out of the city.
Tails' House-Moments later
Tails is the first to burst through his house door and race to his workshop. "Tails, explain what's going on." Sonic enters and hears the sound of rattling coming from behind the door of Tails' workshop. Tails enter his workshop and already sounds of scurrying occur. "Those don't sound like good sounds. Are you sure it's safe to enter?" Regardless of whether Tails responds, Sonic follows him into the madness, but he is met by Tails' arm trying to push him back from getting too close. From what? From the machine he had shown Sonic earlier. It's almost like something is alive in there, and its unsteady pivots don't give Sonic the confidence of getting closer. "What's gotten into it?"
"Sonic, you're gonna have to listen carefully. I don't think I can get in and out without seriously hurting myself. But you're gonna have to be the one to turn it on. Do you remember where the power switch was?" Sonic reluctantly nods. He wanted nothing to do with that thing. If he had to stick his hand back there, he'd be worried that the machine would move the wrong way and rip off his arm. But no one else around is remotely capable of doing it. Sonic takes a deep breath, and sprints to the back of the machine. He swiftly swipes the switch up and pulls his arm back just before the machine slams itself into the wall, narrowly missing Sonic's arm. Within a few seconds, the machine boots up, and it slowly gets less wild. It eventually fully calms down.
"Hey, Tails? Next time could you find a spot where it wouldn't give me a free amputation?"
Later
Tails is seen clacking away at the machine's keyboard, with a stressful face clouding him. Sonic, however, starts to get impatient that he hasn't gotten any answers. "So, am I not to be filled in on this?"
"I just need to run a diagnostic before I give you the rundown. But you are not gonna be happy."
"I think I can live with it." At this point, all that he would take is an explanation. But it didn't excite him that he was being kept in the dark again. Banging on the front door alerts the two. Sonic gestures to Tails to keep working on the machine. "I'll see who it is." In the living room, Sonic opens the door to see Rouge.
"You got a moment?"
'Twice in one day? Why is Tails getting so many visitors from G.U.N.?' Sonic wondered. " What do you need?"
"Just a few questions."
"I'll be sure to send some answers in the mail whenever I get them." Rouge doesn't seem to have the time for bantering, but she'll get to the point. She tosses Sonic one of the blackened emeralds.
"That's just one of them, the rest at our base are exactly the same. I assume that the one in the city has also fallen under this fate?" Sonic nods.
"It doesn't end there!" From out of nowhere, Knuckles pushes Rouge to the side and confronts Sonic. "I was told that you had answers. Where are they?"
"Good to see you too, Knux."
"You brute! Don't you have any pride?" Rouge snaps at Knuckles. This was all falling apart quickly, and it all felt like Sonic had no control, and was just a spectator at this point. Sonic started to ponder why Knuckles was here with Rouge. Why would Knuckles involve himself with all this, except if the master emerald was involved? Then it hit Sonic, if the chaos emeralds had lost their powers, that would mean…
"Knuckles, is the master emerald ok?" It only took one look of despair from Knuckles to give Sonic an answer. There was no doubt about it now.
"It all happened so fast. One second the master emerald was flush with life, then the next it was just another useless rock. I recalled that G.U.N. wanted to relieve me of my duties as guardian, and I presumed that they had been responsible. But once I saw that they had been in a similar predicament, I had no choice but to heed their words. Which leads me here. Rouge says that there was something that Tails had to explicate." From within the workshop, Tails flicks his ears to listen in on the ongoing conversation.
"Maybe you can't give any light on this, but Tails could." Rouge takes out another emerald, but already something isn't right. This one has kept its color, and was the same sapphire-blue one that Tails gave to Shadow.
"Look he's really busy right now, maybe another-" Sonic is cut off by both Knuckles and Rouge barging into the house. Sonic is powerless to stop them both at this point. 'How serious is this getting now? What did Tails do?' Rouge and Knuckles bust into the workshop and eye down Tails.
"I know you've been listening in. You care to enlighten us?" Rouge demanded. Tails lets out a heavy sigh. He knew that his antics had been noticed. But he knew that what he did would only benefit them, and there was no doubt about it. He would sacrifice a part of his integrity, but not for others, for progress.
"See for yourself." With the press of a key, a little hatch opens up on the machine, and behind it is another layer of glass. Inside was indeed an emerald, and this one like the other had darkened. But this time, the energy that escaped its shell is stuck inside and is well contained.
"Clever one, fox boy. But I guess luck wasn't with you today." Sonic enters the room and sees the emerald inside the machine.
"Is that-"
"Yes, Sonic, this is the real emerald. The one I gave to Shadow was a fake."
"Why would you even do that?"
"Because I needed more time. I've come so close to making a breakthrough, and I wasn't going to let someone else take it away from me. I'm sorry that I tried to dupe you, but wouldn't it suck to let someone take away your hard work and purpose?" That last bit resonated with Rouge a little. She didn't let the others around her see it, but she knew what that meant. She felt like her whole job had let her become aimless. "So what now? Are you just going to take it, and put it on another plaque on the wall?" Knuckles takes a step forward toward Tails, but Sonic steps in his way to block him. He wasn't gonna let this get ugly.
"No, we're not here for that. In fact, your machine is gonna help us track the other emeralds down. Do you think you can come up with a way to do that?"
"I have an idea or two. "
Later
Outside the fox's home, Knuckles is pushing Tails' machine in the backyard while everyone else patiently watches him. "Is there any particular reason you had me shove this amalgamation of bolts so far away from where it was?" Knuckles exclaims.
"You'll thank me later for thinking that we need the space. Right there is good" Tails responds. Knuckles lets out a loud huff before leaving the machine where it sits. "Thank you knuckles. Now could you help me grab something else from my workshop?" Knuckles has lost his patience with Tails and chucks a small rock into his face. Tails really should've expected a response like that. "I'm kidding!" Tails says as he stumbles to the ground.
"What is the plan exactly?" Rouge queries.
"Is it true that the chaos energy back at G.U.N. HQ escaped through the roof?"
"Yup, after that it headed straight into the sky."
"Same with the one in Station Square. Think of what we're doing as connecting another wire to a harness of cable. I hypothesize that the energy drained from the emeralds are linked together like the energy in wires, and are being relayed to a central point. But because we have this little guy here–" Tails slaps the machine, emphasizing the crazed power inside. "I can use the reference point it gives me as a way to estimate a route, and we can follow where all the cables lead to." The plan seemed solid to all of them. Even Knuckles seemed to have processed all of that with great clarity. To Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge, the waiting had to stop, and all three of them gesture to Tails to get the ball rolling.
Tails gives them all an assuring thumbs up and begins to calibrate the hunk of metal. Through the glass, multiple lasers scan around the frantic energy, and on the contraption's screen, a projection of the emerald digitalizes. Through time, the machine succeeds in getting a reference point. Celebrations are cut short by Tails signaling the remaining three to stand far back. Tails equips a pair of goggles and climbs to the top of the machine. There is a latch located atop with a lever stationed not much farther away. Tails give it a good pull and the latch opens. The energy is now free and zooms into the sky. Tails drops back down to the computer and opens up another projection. One of the planet. The computer makes many attempts to detect a trail, and through trial and error, a path is found.
"Yes! It found it!" Tails couldn't be happier. He finally felt validated after all that time he spent slogging. Although a taste of bitterness seeped in. Did he really deserve this? He made Sonic worry about him more. He tricked Shadow and practically got lucky with how events turned out. 'Did I earn this?' Those thoughts had to wait, as Tails follows the trajectory created by the computer. 'Now where did you end up- What!?" The utter shock was enough to make him pass out. This could end up so much worse if they didn't hurry quickly.
"Hey, buddy? Did you find where to go yet?" Sonic cautiously asks.
"If you did, spit it out, we can't just keep standing here." Knuckles urges. Tails turns around in horror and looks up to the sky. Genuine concern envelop around the other three.
'I made a mistake. What have I done?' Tails' mind lingered on with regret and fear.
G.U.N. Training Quarters
Every day. Every day Shadow came here to brush off his weakness. Every day the bots he tore to shreds got stronger, and that is the way he preferred it. Every day was never an off day. But today… Today fate decided to not make the bots stronger but to make him weaker. Shadow enters the barren room, the stage has been set upon a slightly elevated rock where an opening widens from below. Everything in here was made to look real, but it all acts as a door to make anyone's time here a living hell. More openings form around all sides of the room and from them emerge G.U.N.'s own training bots. G.U.N. had remodeled a lot since Shadow had first come into contact with the organization, but scraping the old designs for spare parts seemed inefficient to them, so they just had them repurposed for training.
The bots spring to life and spear their way to Shadow. Although Shadow can outpace the bots, for the most part, a bit of his muscle memory is trying to call upon the energy that longer resides within him. But he will not let that hinder his ability to succeed. One well-placed kick or homing attack was all it took to shatter the bots to pieces, but these dummies had been programmed further based on the failed attempts from the previous ones, so Shadow is forced to think outside the box. In some cases, Shadow has had to resort to using an abundant amount of chaos to defeat a hoard of these bots.
Again, Shadow's muscle memory almost catches him at a bad time when he tries to use chaos spear on one of the bots, but he recovers away from the awkward predicament. The room starts to fill up more with the bots, and Shadow is starting to lose more breathing room as more time passes on. Shadow doesn't doubt that he'd be able to claw his way out regardless if he had chaos energy or not, but he wouldn't come out unscathed. It was a risk, but Shadow wasn't just here to release the pent-up anger that had been boiling in him since the incident. He had been instructed to test to see if he had been physically hindered by the sudden loss of power and if he could find another way to tap into it if some had remained trapped inside him.
Shadow releases his inhibitor rings, and waits for any reaction to simmer out. There it was. That flame he was all so familiar with, but it felt different. More violent and uncontrollable. Nevertheless, Shadow is able to manifest an aura made from chaos to boost into the bots. Never had he needed to resort to this before, but this needs to end. Before, when he would remove his inhibitor rings, all the energy stored inside flowed out to give him a substantial boost and worked best in short bursts to not over-exert himself. However, a sharp pain arises in Shadow's veins and grows through him.
His chaos aura begins to grow at an alarming rate, and Shadow seems to have lost control. His attempts to stop are futile as his power speeds him into walls and pinballs him with destructive force. Shadow quickly thinks to put back on his inhibitor rings and seals away that dreadful aura. He lies on the floor as more bots approach to finish him off. Before they could, however, they are deactivated. Shadow looks up to the side of the room and watches as the illusion of a sky disintegrates into static and manifests into a window, where Command Tower safety watches from the other side.
"You had control. It's not much now, but you'll master it all again." Tower affirms to Shadow.
"It won't be fast enough. This whole situation must've been calculated. Whoever orchestrated all of this could be announcing themselves as we speak."
"We have a list of threats we can try to link this to. We ruled it as an accident but there could be a possibility that this is Dr. Eggmans-"
"No, I don't even think he could pull off something like this, as crazy as that sounds. I think something new is headed our way." A beep on Tower's wrist transmitter steals his attention away from Shadow.
"Rouge, Did you find what you need?... Good, now seize the... say that again, I thought you said… What?!" Tower's outburst startles Shadow. He rarely sees his C.O. ever freak out like that. "I'll send a shuttle over. Don't wait for us, just get up there!"
"What's going on?"
"Get to the nearest shuttle! They found it." Tower commanded with great urgency.
"Where did they find it?"
"The ARK." Never mind the idea of an invasion of the planet. If the chaos emerald's power had been transferred to the ARK, it doesn't take much more to reduce everything to rubble. Shadow dashes out, and heads for a shuttle.
Space Colony ARK-Later
Deep in space, the space colony orbits ominously across the planet. A graveyard staring deep down into everyone who lives, ready to blow a fuse and erase everything that had been built. Many attempts have been made to disable the eclipse cannon, but the whole infrastructure was a mess to navigate, and the idea had been halted to find alternative ways around that laser.
A shuttle approaches the ghost station and parks in a hangar located in the mouth of the whole thing. Shadow exits the shuttle and looks around. The place seemed even more abandoned than before. The power has been turned off, and the hallways and corridors leave little light to navigate around. Shadow came prepared and takes out a flashlight to shine through the darkness. This didn't seem right to Shadow. If someone called the emerald's power here, why would they not take the time to turn everything back on?
These halls still haunt him to this day. Not to the point where he was hearing ghosts, but the silence was what was breaking him. He remembered everyone who roamed through these halls. How they greeted him as he too walked beside them. And now they are gone. How much he wished that he was stronger that day, and he felt like was granted strength later on to protect those who were important to him now, but now that it's gone. Those fears started to return.
Shadow makes his way to the central control room, where he is surprised to see that everything here was powered down too. If someone wanted to use the cannon, this would at least need to be on and have the energy to support it, yet it is as dead as the other rooms before. As Shadow steps up the stairs and to the terminal, he lightly trips and drops his flashlight down into the abyss below. "Damn it!" The room is impossible to see in at this level of light, and in any other case, Shadow would've just used chaos spear as a torch. Shadow can barely navigate through by using the glints of metal. As he reaches the top of the stairs, he is caught off guard by someone running up behind him.
Shadow swiftly turns and redirects the hidden figure away and it slams against the terminal. The figure gets back up and continues to engage Shadow in a fight. Shadow is surprised by how fast the figure is and even takes a few blows from the person's punches. This fight would be over in a heartbeat if Shadow could use his chaos powers, but he admired the challenge and was overall glad that we would get answers. The figure was too fast to get a good bearing on what they looked like. Something was off though. It didn't seem like his opponent was well acquainted with the dark either, which led to a slip-up in one of their punches. Shadow quickly capitalizes on and sweeps their legs. He grabs their arm mid-air and hangs them over the ledge.
"Wait, just who are you?" That voice. It was infuriatingly familiar.
"Don't tell me… Sonic?" Suddenly, the power turns on, and the room lights up with life once more. Shadow sees Sonic pleading with his eyes to lift him back up, to which Shadow frustratingly pulls him up.
"Really thought I had the jump on somebody. You should try being the villain more often. You sure do like to walk in the dark a lot." Just then, Tails, Knuckles, and Rouge enter the room.
"Shadow, we didn't realize you already made it here." Rouge says.
"Found him snooping around in the dark."
"Why were you walking around in the dark?" Knuckles asks.
"I… I dropped my flashlight." That was something he felt embarrassed admitting.
"So, if you weren't the perpetrator, then where are they?"
Later
Inside the observatory room, Sonic, Shadow, and Tails await. With nothing to do, Sonic does his usual stretches, Shadow stares out the window, and Tails fidgets with his Miles Electric. Not much later, Knuckles and Rouge enter the room. "We've checked the core and found nothing. Neither I nor Knux could pick up a trace."
"Tails, did your machine direct us in the wrong way?" Knuckles pressures.
"I ran through it more than once. This is where the chaos energy wound up." Tails quickly responded with. He was certain that they were here, but he wasn't certain why they had been called up here if they weren't going to be used to power the station.
"Maybe whoever led them here did it to waste our time? If the energy had been called back on the planet, we'd probably find them much sooner. This was the safest way to throw us off, and quickly nab the power of the emeralds." Rouge intruded.
"So what now? Do we have any more leads?" As Knuckles tries to get any hope from the situation, Shadow ignores it altogether and continues to stare out the window. Although he didn't feel like participating in the conversation, it was merely because he didn't know what to say. As far as he knew, there were no leads, and nothing else to get them on the right track. From the window, Shadow could see a lot of the station. He hadn't truly been up here for quite some time, even though he'd rather leave this all behind. Not in a sense that he'd forget what happened, or his promise, but it was best for him to not have his mind on this place.
Shadow's eyes twitch to look at an antenna not too far away from where he was. He knew that it had been there before, but something caught his attention. There was something flickering red at the top of the antenna. That was something he certainly did not remember. "Kill the generators."
"What?" Everyone except Shadow says.
"Someone kill the generators." Shadow repeats. Tails races outside the room and zooms off.
"Shadow, what's going on?" Rouge asks.
"This place was my home. Didn't matter how big it was, I knew every corner like the back of my hand." A few seconds later, the lights cut off, along with all the other electronics connected to the station. Shadow looks out the window again, and his suspicion is confirmed. Even with the power off, the red light still flickers. "So I know when something is not where it's supposed to be."
Later
Outside the ARK, Shadow is wearing a G.U.N.-issued space suit and using his rocket shoes to move. He approaches the antenna and the red light. As he gets closer, he gets a better look at the light. It appears to be some kind of computer chip, with a symbol imprinted on it. Shadow removes the chip from the antenna and examines it closer. The symbol is a wheel of nine kitsune tails. Shadow widens his eyes in disbelief. Was his vision warning him of this?
Later
Shadow returns to the observation room and tosses Tails the chip. "What can you get out of it?" Tails plugs the chip into a port on his Miles Electric. On the screen, a 3D schematic of the chip pops up for Tails to start analyzing.
"It appears to be some kind of transmitter, but not for communication or data transfer. No, this has a unique design, one I've never even considered being possible." Tails swipes the screen, causing the schematic to split into three pieces. Two of which are the outer layers of the chip, and the other being the middle. Tails takes interest in what's located in the center of the middle layer. "Curious. There appears to be some sort of mirror surface here, although its material is similar to what I would use to reflect chaos energy. I have a theory, but it's not concrete."
"It's better than nothing, what do you have?"
"Scanning further into the coding of the chip, I found a set of coordinates. I think that the emerald's powers were sent here because the desired target was too far away to gather all of it in one go. So they were sent to an amplified surface to propel them quickly to where they are needed, that would be this chip here." Tails projects the nine-tails symbol in the middle of the room for everyone to see. "Intriguing design. I've never seen this one before."
"I'm relaying all of that to Tower. He needs to be briefed." Rouge says as she activates her comms watch.
"So we got another space adventure. Can't complain about that." Sonic exclaims. To him, things had been picking up, and he was ready to get going.
"The shuttle we have should be enough to bring us to these coordinates." Tails added.
"Then there is no time to waste. We head out now-"
"Tower! Slow down, what are you saying?" Rouge cuts off Shadow. Shadow leans in to try and listen in, but Rouge simply extends her wrist to Shadow. "Here, you can try to talk to him."
"Commander, is everything alright?"
*Shadow, you are not to head on to this mission. You are needed here.* Tower relays over the comms.
"Sir, I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be without getting my powers back."
*That symbol, it's not new. We've encountered one like it before.*
"Where?"
*In the rubble of Dr. Eggman's last whereabouts.* Everyone in the room is shocked. Sonic can't stop thinking about how long ago that was. A year was how long it was since their first move. What more could they have planned?
"You didn't think to let any of us know about this?" Shadow barked at Tower.
*That information was withheld from all personnel except the highest-ranking officers. I'm calling active duty on all G.U.N. agents to form control and commence a greater investigation on this. This doesn't end with you Shadow. Rouge, you are also mandated to stay.*
"That's fine, but we expect to be briefed when we get back." Rouge responds. Shadow stays silent, feeling conflicted about what to do. If he was able to get his powers back, he'd be a greater asset when he gets back, but who knows how long that would be. If the problem was that urgent, then would it be best for him to stay? Just then, a hand is placed on Shadow's shoulder. He turns to see Sonic giving him a reassuring look.
"If the world needs you, then you should be there for them. We'll head out into the unknown, and bring back what was lost." Shadow seems somewhat satisfied with that remark, but all he could muster in response was a simple nod.
Later
Back in the hangar, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles begin to depart in their shuttle, followed by Shadow and Rouge in theirs. It isn't until they reach far outside the ARK that the two agent's shuttle continues down to the planet, while Team Sonic turns to face the deep limits of space. Inside the shuttle, Tails is typing in coordinates on the computer. He sets the ship to auto-pilot, and they begin to cruise. "Glad of you to join us, knucklehead." Sonic says, breaking the silence.
"How could I resist? I need to teach these thieves a little lesson of what happens when you mess with a guardian brawler."
"Here's hoping for a smooth trip there and back." Tails cheerfully comments. Those worrisome thoughts start to plague Sonic once again. Something about all this didn't spell excitement, but there was much to turn back on now.
To be continued…