A.N.: To fend off objections before they start, Professor Gerald (in Descent into Darkness) believed that the Gizoid was Babylonian and that the 'stones of the gods' mentioned on the tablet were the Time Stones, so that's what Shadow was taught. I know Sonic Chronicles gives a bit more info on the Gizoids and changes that, but Shadow hasn't gotten there yet. ; )
5. A Weapon's Responsibility
Shadow was sprawled across his bed, staring at the receiver and listening to Rouge's little game with Tails. He mind was far more active than his body, pondering what Rouge was up to, the ramifications of the Gizoid's reappearance, the relationship between it and himself ('another of Professor Gerald's weapons' the agent had said, relegating the black hedgehog back to a category he'd thought he'd escaped from), and what on earth he was supposed to do about it. Or whether he should do anything about it.
"Last one first I think," he said to the empty apartment. He imagined that Maria was there, sitting on the floor with her chin in her hands and listening as he thought aloud. "I'm Gerald's heir, the only one other than the Doctor and he's part of the problem. Therefore, it is my responsibility to do something, because: one, the Gizoid has the potential to destroy civilization, which could be a problem for me, since I'm used to living in civilization; two, Doctor Eggman is fiddling with things he doesn't entirely understand, as usual, and Sonic seems more interested in helping him then stopping him. Although," he added, "to be fair, I don't think Sonic realizes that he's being used, but clearly Eggman set him up to find the Gizoid and get it repaired by Tails and trained by Sonic, Knuckles and anyone else they can set up challenges with. And perhaps give it several Chaos Emeralds to increase its power, so the Doctor can retrieve it later, charged up and ready to literally take on the world." That part had already happened; he'd eavesdropped on Tails feeding it the first Chaos Emerald and finding that it actually powered the robot, and then to Tails and Sonic 'convincing' Knuckles to hand over a second, which had turned up on Angel Island after the fight with Devil Doom. He paused to remember where he'd left off counting. "Three, I promised that I'd protect the people of this planet. Four, I was created as an intelligent weapon, so that I could choose which battles were right, and I think this one is. Regardless of who thinks they're ordering me into it." It irked him that these people would think he was following their orders, but he wasn't going to let the Gizoid destroy civilization just because his ego would unhappy if he stopped it.
He wondered if he should report the mysterious agents to Mokie, but decided against it. He didn't have enough information, yet. "So, next question. Having decided that the Gizoid is my responsibility, what am I supposed to do about it? Destroy it? Father couldn't figure out how to do that. Stop it? I can try again to Link it to me after I recover a bit more strength, but that's a temporary measure. The Doctor's fleet, or that battle station Rouge said he used to have, could certainly re-transfer a Link to the Doctor." He frowned, thinking hard, then his attention was yanked back to the receiver.
"Thanks! Thanks!" Shadow sat up in surprise. A chill ran down his spine. A voice from the past, indeed. He listened as Rouge gave Tails and the Gizoid the lab pass, and left.
"What's a 'master'? You don't know, Emerl?" the cub was asking the robot. "Hmm . . . it's difficult to determine how much you understand when I'm talking. Let's go back to the Central Lab now that we have the lab pass. I should know more about you after an inspection!" He seemed excited by the idea. Shadow wondered if the cub would still be so excited once he knew what the ancient being really was.
"Let's go! Let's go!" The Gizoid again. It had rarely spoken on the ARK, occasionally mimicking other's phrases, as it was doing now, but more often reporting conversations if the Professor asked it to. Shadow thought that Professor Gerald might have asked it not to repeat randomly, but wasn't certain; it hadn't occurred to him to ask, fifty years ago.
"You again? How many times do I have to–" Shadow didn't recognize that masculine voice, which might have been human or dokan.
"I- I have this . . ." said Tails nervously. There was a shocked pause.
"Y- you're a friend of Ms. Rouge? I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, sir! Please come in!" The distant eavesdropper smirked; it sounded like Rouge had had her usual effect.
"All right!" the cub practically cheered. "Let's go, Emerl!"
Let's go! Let's go!" chorused the Gizoid as they presumably walked into the labs. It sounds a lot more juvenile than it used to, thought Shadow, I wonder if that's from being shut down so long, or if it assimilates non-fighting behavior patterns as well as martial ones.
There was a long space of movement-type noises - footsteps, doors opening and closing, elevators - before Tails said anything else. "Ok," he said finally, "it's time to find out everything about you Emerl! Let's examine your structural data."
There was an odd sound that might have been the robot signaling confusion. Or shorting out, but Shadow doubted he'd be that lucky.
"You structural data will tell us who your creator was, what you were created for, and so on," Tails explained. "Since I already know you were created by Eggman, I need to be on my guard." Shadow snorted. You know it was created by Eggman?
"Guard! Guard!" crowed Emerl. Hmmph. I think that robot's copied all of Sonic's enthusiasm but none of his sense. And the faker has little enough of that to start with.
"No, no," the cub was assuring his companion, "you don't have to be on guard! I'm just gonna plug this thing right in here . . . ." Something clicked sharply. "Scanning Emerl's structure," the cub muttered; Shadow guessed he was entering commands into the lab's computer. There were several minutes of silence before Tails spoke again. "What? What's wrong here? The lab computer should be able to scan even Eggman's machines . . . Hmm," he sounded genuinely perplexed, but Shadow caught an undercurrent of excitement. He'd heard a similar tone in the past when Professor Gerald's experiments didn't cooperate, and felt that excitement himself when an enemy or rival offered unexpected challenge. "Time to get serious," the fox cub decided. "Let me go through a security hole this time and," there were faint, tantalizing noises from the receiver and Shadow wished he had a video feed, "bypass Emerl's basic security protocols to get an idea of Emerl's basic structure."
Fortunately the cub continued to talk to himself - or maybe to the robot, for whatever reason. "Warning, highly confidential? That seems weird for an Eggman robot. 'Unknown item identified'," the cub was apparently reading off the computer screen, "'weapon found in ancient ruins and identified as 'Gizoid'?' What's this? What do you have to do with ancient ruins?"
The robot made no answer, and after a moment Tails continued. "'Technology to acquire all forms of weaponry is based on super-science technology - no apparent limitations and will continue to loop indefinitely.' You acquire . . . it can't be . . . . 'However, in repeated experiments, the continual data caused an overload' –oh dear." Shadow smiled grimly, hearing in the fox cub's voice that he was realizing exactly what sort of time bomb he'd been handed, although if the computer had mentioned the robot's ability to imitate fighting moves the cub hadn't read it out loud. Tails was scared, which was good, but he probably wasn't nearly as scared as he ought to be, yet. There was more, and Shadow listened to the cub's intermittent reading, about the Chaos Emeralds to power the machine and the destruction of the Fourth Great Civilization. "Gerald," Tails mused, sounding nervous, "that's Eggman's grandfather . . . and this 'mysterious' disappearance . . . that means . . . Emerl, you–" There was a faint buzzing from the robot, then suddenly an alarm began whooping. Shadow sat up sharply, then leaned closer to the receiver. He could just make out a robotic voice - not Emerl's - and Tails' arguing. Something about accessing restricted data.
Shadow rolled off the bed and reached for his hover shoes. I may not be able to stop Sonic from pursuing this idiotic course, but I can try to scare Tails enough that maybe we'll all survive it.
He raced the few blocks to the lab and intercepted the pair as they scurried out of the building, leaving guard robots milling in the lobby. "Shadow!" exclaimed Tails, skidding to a halt, "What are you doing here?" He looked truly alarmed, with his blue eyes wide and his fur standing up along his spine. Even his tails were bushed out.
Shadow eyed the cub, deliberately putting on his chilliest expression. "Looks like you discovered what Emerl really is," he said.
Tails' eyes went wider if possible, his ears drooping nervously. "Y-yeah," he admitted.
"Then why don't you destroy it now? You must destroy it before it collects all the Chaos Emeralds and uses its true power!" Shadow was perfectly aware that Professor Gerald had tried - and failed - to destroy the Gizoid. Neither the robot itself nor its main power core had been susceptible to any weapon or tool he'd had access to, which was why the scientist had tried to reprogram the robot to make it harmless and unable to be used as a weapon of war. Shadow had been skeptical of the idea fifty years ago and was more so now, after the Gizoid's going berserk and Gerald's failed attempt at programming Shadow himself to destroy the Earth upon awakening. But he figured that if anyone on the planet could destroy the Gizoid, it would be Tails, so he suggested the option, even though he doubted the cub would agree to it.
He was right. The cub's expression shifted from fear to puzzled surprise. "Shadow?"
"There's no need to repeat past tragedies! Nobody else ever needs to go through the things that I have!" Suddenly he remembered his recent dream, the Gizoid knowingly causing the destruction of ARKauai that resulted in the attack on the ARK, putting it directly responsible for Maria's death. Shadow glowered at the blank golden face with its expressionless blue eyes. "Out of the way!" he growled. "I'll finish it now!" He couldn't destroy the Gizoid, but he could vent some of his frustration on it, and just maybe, showing Tails what sort of damage the robot could do would encourage him to try to deactivate it himself, permanently.
"Shadow!" Tails squared himself up, for all that he was a head shorter than the Ultimate Life-form, and planted himself between the red-striped hedgehog and the Gizoid. "I respect you, but," he gulped, slightly diminishing the effect of his bravado," Emerl's our friend! If you attack one of us then I'll do whatever it takes to protect him!"
Shadow paused a moment, startled that the cub thought he might attack him - he'd thought it was clear that he was only challenging the robot. Then he lost his temper. "How can it be your 'friend'?" he snapped. "Sonic only dumped it on you this morning! And it wasn't created to have friends; it was created to kill everything in sight when its masters ordered it to do so!"
"That doesn't matter!" Tails snapped right back at him. "Omega was created to destroy you, and that doesn't seem to have stopped you from making friends with him! And you still seem to be in one piece! And I've created lots of mechs that ended up getting different uses than what I'd intended - programming can always be changed!"
("Change! Change!" cheered Emerl, in the background)
"Not for this one," Shadow countered. "Do you really think that you can succeed where Professor Gerald - one of the greatest minds of all time - failed completely? He tried to reprogram the robot, and then he tried to destroy it - and it destroyed ARK island and killed four people! The Gizoid is not safe, and it's not one of your little toy machines you can play with and then lay aside to build something else!" ("Toy! Toy!") Shadow reined himself in and turned away. "Hmph. Looks like you'll never understand. The builders will never know how their creations truly feel." He suppressed a shudder at the memory of how Professor Gerald had tried to program him, and nearly succeeded in his posthumous revenge. If it hadn't been for his promise to Maria . . . . It had taken a lot of thought for Shadow to forgive Gerald that abuse of his 'son's' independence and free will. He was about to stalk away from the idiot cub and leave the world to its fate, when something slammed into the small of his back.
"Toys?! They aren't toys!" Shadow twisted as he pitched forward, taken completely off guard by the cub's attack. He managed to land on his back rather than his face, and got one knee up to shove the kit off him. Tails had his ears flat back and his teeth bared, and looked ready to eat the black hedgehog alive. Shadow teleported away without thinking.
I didn't know Tails could get that mad! He didn't have time to figure out what he'd said wrong, because the Gizoid chose that moment to spindash into the fray, knocking Shadow over again. He set thinking aside and focused on fighting.
Shadow quickly discovered that the Gizoid's apparently random collection of attacks made it a very difficult opponent. The robot initially used several attacks and kicks identical to Rouge's, but when Shadow blocked them and responded with a strike he knew the bat couldn't block, the robot leaped away with Sonic's speed, then twirled back in to attack him with its tails. Wait, tails? The Gizoid doesn't have tails! But attempting to see what he'd just been attacked with gave Tails an opportunity to attack. The fox cub did have tails, and they were as effective as whatever the Gizoid was using in their place, but he lacked the heft and experience to be much of a challenge to the Ultimate Life-form, even in his weakened state. Shadow used a weak Chaos bubble to knock the cub back and restrain him temporarily. He'd been using his Chaos powers normally, not because he'd forgotten the pain from earlier, but because it had seemed to have gone, but now his head throbbed warningly. He was matching the Gizoid's spin dash with one of his own, and the minor draw of power he used for targeting simply failed. The robot's blow knocked him out of control and into the side of the building. Panting, the dark hedgehog jumped back to his feet, just in time for Tails to toss a small metal box on a wire at him. Confused, Shadow looked at it - just long enough for a boxing glove to erupt out of the box and catch him on the chin. His head collided a second time with the wall. Annoyed, his return spin dash was a bit harder than he'd intended, carrying him and the cub both out into the street. Horn blaring, an enormous truck roared down on them. Tails instinctively tried to duck, but Shadow grabbed him and teleported them both back to the sidewalk. He ended up on his knees, as the energy he'd thought he'd recovered threw up its hands and abandoned him. The Gizoid oblivious to what had almost happened, flapped its arms like wings and flew into the air, crowing "Let's play! Let's play!"
Gasping for air, Shadow met Tails' eyes and panted, "Your partner's not too bad . . ."
"What?" Tails rubbed an ear with one hand, panting as hard as Shadow.
"All right," a female voice rang out above the traffic noise. "All right now, STOP!"
"Rouge!" gasped the dark hedgehog. The bat didn't seem to hear as she strode forward, glaring equally at the Gizoid and Tails. She raised a receiver that looked very much like the one Shadow'd been given. "Guard robos are on their way. Unless you both want to get caught, I suggest–" She broke off abruptly as she caught sight of the third combatant, trying unsuccessfully to stand up. "Shadow, what do you think you're doing? You know you aren't well enough yet!" She stepped over and grabbed his arm, hauling him briskly to his feet and keeping him there. For all her outward femininity, the bat was every bit as strong as the male dokan.
Shadow tried to push her away. "I didn't push myself much," he muttered.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," scoffed the bat. She let him go and his knees nearly buckled, but he did catch himself before he fell. "You're built pretty tough. Now let's go! We don't have much time to waste!" She took him by the arm again and started to march him away.
"Rouge," said the fox cub in bewilderment, although he was already starting to hustle the Gizoid ("Tough! Tough!") in the opposite direction.
The bat looked back and winked at Tails. "Later!" She waved her free hand casually and escorted Shadow away.
The hedgehog allowed himself to be escorted; he could hear the whine of the approaching robots and was fully aware that he was in no shape to take them on. He hated it, but was intelligent enough to accept it. Besides, he wanted to talk to Rouge anyway. He stumbled beside her for several blocks, before she turned and shoved him down on a park bench. "Well? Just what did you think you were doing, fighting those two when you haven't recovered from your collapse yet?"
He blinked at her in mingled irritation and confusion. Confusion won, and his first question was, "Why are you so angry?"
It was the bat's turn to blink, and momentarily she looked almost as confused as he felt. "Because . . . because," she spluttered, then finished triumphantly, "because capturing the Gizoid is my mission from the President, and you're interfering with it!" She looked almost relieved, for some reason. Then she gave him a look so pointed she could have punctured a tire with it, and added, "Don't you dare tell me you're fine; you should have been able to take that fox boy down in three seconds without taking a deep breath, and he had you staggering."
Shadow looked away, embarrassed. "Yes, well, the Gizoid is another thing entirely. It has no fighting style of its own and is completely unpredictable, as well as a lot more powerful than Miles Prower." He looked back at the bat grimly. "Do you know what that thing is? Are you certain that giving it to the government is a good idea? I doubt anyone can really understand its real power except me and perhaps Sonic."
Rouge snorted. "Sonic? He's all fired up to turn this thing into some sort of pal, I think. He's got no clue as to what it can do–"
"That's not what I mean," Shadow interrupted her, shaking his head. "I know he doesn't understand the consequences - I'm not sure he can really comprehend that people seriously might want to destroy the world, his skirmishes with Doctor Eggman are just games to him. But that robot is designed to utilize the full power of the Time Stones, which are equivalent to the Chaos Emeralds - and only someone else who's used those powers can really know what that means. Knuckles and Tails might have a glimmer, since they did something with Super Sonic during the Metal Overlord crisis, but I'm not sure they got the full effect. You saw what I can do as Super Shadow, facing Devil Doom and teleporting the Black Comet into space, but you don't know the power because you never felt it." He frowned, not sure he'd gotten his point across. He knew exactly what he meant, but the words didn't seem to have enough force.
"I'm not sure that giving it to the government is the best of all possible choices, no," answered Rouge, " but I do think it's a better idea than letting Eggman take it back. I suspect the best thing to do would be to destroy it, but I know that Gerald Robotnik couldn't manage that, so I'm not sure what's next."
"How do you know the Professor . . . ? Oh, you heard me tell Tails."
"Uh, no. When I was given the mission, I tried to talk to you, but you were still unconscious, so I went up to the ARK, and read Gerald's online diary. I also -well, I learned a few things I didn't know, but nothing really helpful in stopping it. Although he said something about trying to reprogram it to feel emotions."
Shadow eyed the bat thoughtfully. He was pretty sure she'd changed what she'd started to say, and he wondered what she was hiding. "He hoped that if the Gizoid could feel friendship and pain, then it would refuse to do anything that might harm its friends. There was supposed to be a code to reset it, and defuse its martial programming entirely. But it's extremely risky."
"And that's why he didn't do it? I'd have thought an idealist like Gerald would have jumped at the chance to make this thing safe, no matter what the risk."
"I'm not entirely certain; the reprogramming was done after I was already in stasis." The dark hedgehog paused, recalling painful memories of the one, brief awakening between the tragedy on the ARK and Eggman's freeing him on Prison Island. "I only know about it from his journal files and some of the other information you gave me. He couldn't do it while under GUN observation, and I think it may require the Gizoid to be fully awake, whereas the Professor never had more than a single Chaos Emerald. That's why the plan is so risky - you have to give the robot the ability to unleash all its power, and risk it going berserk, in order to defuse it. I don't know what happened to the Gizoid after that, though, how it got off Prison Island or how it ended up in Eggman's hands."
Rouge walked a few steps away, then back, pacing as she considered what he'd told her. "So in other words, we have to let Eggman get away with this plan for Sonic and Tails to educate and power up this robot, and then try to get in and defuse it before he can take it back."
"What? And not train it to be a robot thief?" Shadow asked, as deadpan as only he could manage.
The bat stared at him in shock. "Where did you hear that?" He offered her the disk recorder, and she played enough of the disk to recognize the recording with a wry grimace.
"I'm not sure who gave it to me, but they were some sort of government agents, probably ex-military," he explained. "They want me to catch the Gizoid for them, rather than the President. And they don't seem to trust you, for some reason," he added mildly.
Rouge made a rude noise, inspecting the gadget carefully. "GUN emblem, but that doesn't prove anything, of course. A lot of the governmental and military aides don't trust me. I try to keep it that way, as long as the top officials do trust me. Hmm." She told him about the 'janitor' that had planted the bug on her, that had been the source of the recording. "Let me know if you hear any more from them, will you? I prefer to know who my enemies are. Can you get home by yourself?"
Shadow stood up cautiously. He was feeling a lot better after the brief rest; in fact he was feeling normal, which worried him a bit. It's hard to judge how far to push it if I don't get weak until after I've gone too far. But I should certainly be able to get home from here. He assured the bat of this, and bid her farewell. "But do let me know if you pick up any more pertinent information on the Gizoid, please, or this mysterious agency. I don't know who these people are, but they're trying to use me and I object to being used." Rouge cheerfully assured him of nothing, and he returned to his apartment - and the receiver for the bug that was still planted on his robotic target.