Chapter 6
Shadow, Jack, and their new Wisp friend had only been walking down the corridor for another 5 minutes before they suddenly reached a dead end in the form of a large, metal wall. "Hmm. Seems solid enough." Shadow said, giving the wall a knock. "No...No, there's something behind there...It's just incredibly reinforced."
Jack said, scanning with his goggles, before reaching into his belt. "I used to encounter walls like this all of the time during the war. We made a solution."
With that, Jack placed several small, purple disks in a large circle on the wall. After all were placed, Jack backed up and aimed his Wispon at the circle before firing. As soon as the Void Wisp energy came near the disks, they absorbed the energy and seemed to warp a large, clean hole in the wall in the space within the circle. Shadow stood amazed as Jack gathered the disks back up. "I didn't know the Resistance had developed weapons like that."
"Well, if you hadn't been so busy protecting the humans during all of that, you might've been informed." Jack replied, somewhat non-chalantly. Shadow crossed his arms defensively. "You had your heroes, they didn't." Jack chuckled a bit as he placed the last disk back into his belt. "And yet, people still died. Funny, that."
"You got something to say, Jack?" Shadow said, looking Jack directly in the eye. Even past the goggles and facemask, Shadow could read the wolf's face as he visibly, and purposefully, untensed. "No. We all made our decisions in the war. Right or wrong, all we can do now is live with them." Shadow nodded as he looked inside the hole. Within was a large, metal chasm. It was too dark to see the bottom, but even Shadow could tell that just jumping down was a bad idea. The laser Wisp flew down, and even it was having trouble finding the end to the black chasm. Jack seemed to weighing his options. "I have one of those rope launchers, but I don't know if I'd be able to get close enough to the bottom with it." However, Shadow didn't seem to be paying attention, instead looking up at the equal blackness above. "Shadow?"
"There's something...Something telling me to head up there..." Shadow said, quietly. Jack just shrugged. "It's the best option we've got, I guess." With that, Shadow jumped from wall to wall until reaching a ledge in the distance, which he climbed up. Jack just stood in shock for a second. "...He heard me mention the rope launcher, right?" He said to the laser Wisp, before attaching the rope launcher to his wrist and following Shadow with it.
Back with the others, Rouge could observe the herd of Badniks noticeably thinning as she flew above. "HEY!" The orange cat from earlier called out from his hiding spot. Rouge quickly flew over, bobbing and weaving to avoid Badniks along the way. "What's up?" The cat used one of his eyes to project a hologram of a map for Rouge to see. "I think I've already got the hang of this whole cyborg thing. I managed to connect to the systems and find a way out of here we can take." Rouge observed the new route as the cat highlighted it. It was certainly less of a swim. "Can you lead the others down that path?" The cat nodded. "With protection." Rouge turned her head as she heard something lightly clanking behind the cat. She almost instantly grabbed him and flew off as a cloaked Egg Pawn rammed right into the rail that had been in front of the cat a moment ago, and she quickly brought the cat to Cyber. "This guy knows a better way out, but he needs an escort." Cyber nodded, and quickly made a special noise to call over Raccoon. After he had made his way past what Badniks were left, Cyber quickly gave Raccoon some instructions in sign language, which he followed by grabbing the cat, leaping him over to the other ECS Units, and letting him explain the situation before the whole group started going down the path to the new route. Omega, Cyber, and Rouge, in the meantime, formed up back to back with each other. "Guess it's up to us to finish up down here." Rouge said, gleefully pulling out another bomb.