8. A Weapon Distracted

Shadow spotted the Gizoid standing in the street and ran up to it. He hoped it hadn't Linked with anyone yet.

"Shadow!"

Oops, he hadn't seen Sonic, knocking on Tails' door. "Huh? Sonic . . . sorry, but I don't have time to play with you now. Hey!" he called to the Gizoid. "Can you hear me? Respond!" The robot gazed blankly ahead. "No!" Shadow groaned, more to himself than the robot. "You must have already established a Link!"

The golden form didn't move. The bulbous eyes made it difficult to tell if was even looking at him. "Shadow!" repeated Sonic, this time sounding more annoyed than surprised.

Shadow tried again. "Hey! You, over here!" He raised a hand and summoned a Chaos spear. Which inexplicably failed to appear. Well, there was another way to show the Gizoid his 'power'. "Won't listen to me, eh?" he challenged the robot. "In that case, I'll beat you with my bare hands!"

"Hey, stop that!" hollered Sonic, but Shadow ignored him. Suddenly Sonic was in front of him, slamming Shadow to a halt by planting a hand on his chest.

Shadow grunted at the impact and growled "Get out of the way, and give me that robot!"

"And if I say no?" Sonic cocked an eyebrow at his black rival.

"Then I will beat you too."

His speed rivaled Sonic's, and the hover skates gave him an edge, but he was unable to hit the blue hedgehog. He realized Sonic was toying with him, making a show of fighting, while Shadow's own skills were mysteriously missing. Suddenly Shadow remembered the Black Comet, and the mental explosion that had plunged him into darkness. There seemed to be afterimages rippling around him, echoes of unheard screams.

Shadow snarled with frustration. I still haven't regained my full power yet. "Listen to me!" he called to Sonic. "Whatever you do, don't let Dr. Eggman get hold of the Gizoid. I'll be back; until then, take care of it." He slapped the Gizoid on the top of its head, and skated off in a hurry.

Light blazed into his eyes, blinding him, as he stumbled dripping out of a small space, dimly feeling the chill of his wet fur. A white and black shape stepped backwards, but before his vision cleared another movement to the side alerted him, and he leaped forward, knocking Rouge the Bat to the ground as a machine gun opened fire on where he'd been standing. "Stay here," he ordered and charged the attacker, bouncing from wall to wall to avoid being hit. A large, red robot tried to bring another weapon to bear before Rouge ordered them both to halt. With irritation in her voice she asked the robot why it was attacking.

"I am E-123 Omega. I was created by Eggman as the strongest of all of his E-series robots, then he locked me up here to kill anyone who tried to come in and activate that unit." Omega, thought Shadow, he's another weapon, created to defeat me, then set to guard me, and angry with his lot in life. The dark hedgehog looked back and forth between the two robots, the scarlet E-123 and the golden Gizoid, as they stood spotlighted in the darkness. He was standing in a third shaft of light, he realized, coming from an unknown source. Where are we? He repeated the question aloud, "Where are we?" The robots turned slightly, bringing gold- and blue-glowing eyes to bear on him, but gave no answer.

"Looks like you both have one thing in common," said a familiar voice. Sonic himself was nowhere to be seen, however. Both? The two robots, or one robot and myself? What do we–? "Persistence," the voice answered Shadow's silent question.

Another voice, unfamiliar - or was it? - echoed in the darkness. "Sonic the Hedgehog . . . Awakening as a weapon of war . . . Chaos Emerald . . ." And other voices, or the same one many times, repeated "Chaos Emerald, Emerald, --rald, os Emer-, Emerald ." The voices grew louder, repeating , echoing, colliding like ripples on a pond, until the dark hedgehog clapped his gloved hands over his flattened ears crouching to hide, then leaping up to flee, skating through the unending darkness, faster and faster until he almost ran into–

Tails. The little orange fox looked up in surprise. "Shadow! What are you doing here?"

"Looks like you discovered what Emerl really is," said the black dokan, with surprising calmness. He looked around, but saw only a normal, daylit, Central City street. The only sounds were traffic noises and the breeze in the sickly little trees planted in the sidewalks. Where had the darkness gone, and the voices?

"Y-Yeah," said Tails nervously.

He ought to be worried, knowing what the Gizoid can do. His mouth seemed to be on autopilot, speaking of it's own accord: "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?" The cub frowned in perplexity.

"There's no need to repeat past tragedies! Nobody else ever needs to go through the things I have! Out of the way! I'll finish it now!" Around them, unseen by anyone on the street including Tails, images ran and died: Maria; researchers from the ARK; Professor Gerald, chained to his chair; the ARK plummeted Earthward and was deflected; the Biolizard - another Shadow, another weapon - screamed soundlessly. A metal hedgehog schemed and was reborn as a robotic monster, Black Doom swooped down over a kneeling red and black hedgehog, Doctor Eggman slammed a vault door shut on a sentient robot, leaving it to stand in the darkness and stew in its anger. Another robot, this one golden, was shoved similarly into storage, then loaded onto a shuttle, where it went rampaging on landing. But the fox was oblivious, yelling at Shadow.

"Shadow! I respect you, but . . . Emerl's our friend! If you attack one of us, then I'll do whatever it takes to protect him!"

Shadow whirled; the fox and the street had vanished, leaving the Gizoid again in its shaft of light, Omega in a second, Shadow in a third, but there were others as well: Metal Sonic; the Project: Shadow prototype known as the Biolizard; a red robot that Shadow did not know, but who resembled a Guard Robo; a Shadandroid, part robot, part clone; a Shadow android, entirely mechanical; a large purple cat who held a fishing rod and looked bewildered. Shadow stopped as he looked at this last. "Who–?" he started.

Big the Cat blinked at him. "I'm sorry Mr. Shadow, I was looking for Froggy and I think I got lost." He walked away without actually moving from the light and was suddenly a chao with a bow tie. Cheese, realized Shadow after a moment. But he wasn't created as a weapon, even if Cream uses him to fight. The tiny creature looked calmly up at the red-striped hedgehog. After a moment Cheese opened his mouth, but instead of the usual chao-babble, what came out were intelligible words. "Cream is my friend, and I fight to protect her. She doesn't ask me to do it; I fight because sometimes fighting is necessary, and she doesn't like to." The chao flew up to hover at Shadow's eye-level. "It's the choice that makes the difference, but not all creators permit a choice to be made." With that, the chao reached up and yanked a thin chain, turning his light off and vanishing into the black.

"Hmph," said Shadow's voice, as he looked at the gallery of sentient weapons - including himself and the androids. "Looks like you'll never understand. The builders will never know how their creations truly feel." I said that– to Tails, wasn't it? So this is a memory?

"There it is again." His voice again, but this time coming from his mouth by his own will, "I feel it . . . someone's talking to me."

"A strong power," a chorus of soft voices, vaguely familiar.

"Who," Shadow turned again - he was turning into a top, here - but saw nothing in the void between the lights, "who is it?"

"This power . . . must not exist," was it the Gizoid? Or a group of them? (Now that was a chilling thought, but so far as he knew there was only one.) ". . . cannot allow it to happen again . . . the tragedy must not–"

"Tragedy?" interrupted Shadow. Hadn't he had enough tragedies - or near-tragedies? Must he now face another?

A pause, then faint as the wind, ". . . yes . . ."

"What tragedy?"

The chorus murmured something, but it was too faint or chaotic for him to make out. And then he sat up in bed, in his own room, feeling dizzy and with a strange twisting feeling in his gut. And there were still noises in his head, not voices exactly, but . . . he wasn't sure what. ". . . the same illusion . . ." he muttered as he stood up. "This is it. I feel the emanations over here." He turned, feeling that there was a direction to the 'sounds', and identifying it. "Well then," he picked up his green Chaos Emerald, and the noise strengthened somewhat, although he still couldn't identify it. "Let's see what we've got here!" Without even considering the risks of teleporting to an unknown area, or giving heed to his queasiness or his weakness during his last fight, he pulled power from the Emerald, "Chaos Control!"

Abruptly the voices were shrieking in his head, a cacophony of soundless noise. It was impossible to think or focus. He shook his head, spotted a golden form in front of him, and remembered that its voice had been in his dream. "This," his legs moved and the thing came closer, or he went closer to it, "this is what called to me."

Another voice joined the noise, he thought, one that his ears actually heard. Blinking, he realized he was in a filthy alley, with the Gizoid in front of him and a white, winged dokan behind him. "You," he started, then recognized her, "Rouge. What are you doing here?" Had she heard the voices too? She must have, bats had excellent hearing.

He wished his was a bit better; he saw her mouth move, but couldn't make out the words. The voices swirled around him like blizzard winds, tugging and shoving from all directions so that it was all he could do to stand up. Or like a jar of water being shaken, with water crashing every which way. One word got through, although he couldn't remember when he'd heard it. "You said it was a weapon?" Was that what the voices were? A weapon to guard against attacks, or bait to a trap, to lure him in and disorient him? He looked around frantically, were the GUN soldiers coming for him as they had come for the researchers? Suddenly, alarms were going off across the alley-- and simultaneously the 'voices' died back, not gone, but muted.

The world abruptly came into focus, and he was standing the alley still with Rouge and the Gizoid. The wall was sliding open to reveal a squad of Guard Robos. "Dang!" he growled. Rouge giggled beside him. "What's so funny?" he glared at her.

"It's been a while since we fought together like this!"

"Just don't get in my way!" The wall slid shut behind the robots, and a dozen guns swung into position.

"You too!" answered the bat flippantly, as she took to the air.

The alarms shut off, and the voices resurged, pounding against him again. He was badly off his timing, unable to concentrate, or else the robots were better than usual. He kicked, punched and blasted bubbles of Chaos energy at the mechs, then slung a few Chaos Spears for good measure. Too many of the robots dodged out of his way. He struggled for control, but lost his mental grip on the Chaos energy as it seemed to fray around him.

"Not bad," said Rouge, encouragingly, suddenly appearing beside him. Then a slash of pain whipped along his side, making him flinch sideways. "Shadow!" exclaimed the shocked bat, "What happened? That was just one of the Doctor's random robots!"

"It's nothing," Shadow started, but then was struck again, even as he started to dodge. He went to his knees, gasping, feeling a line of heat suddenly sliding down his arm.

"Hey, Shadow!" He hissed in pain as the bat shook his good shoulder. The voices wouldn't shut up, and he wasn't certain which way was up so he could stand. "This isn't good," said Rouge's voice in the distance. He thought she went away for a bit, then she was talking to him again. But the voices were louder and the blizzard was yanking at him again. He tried to stand up but the darkness took over the world once more, leaving him alone with the cries in the void.

Where had Rouge gone? She'd help him, he was certain, but she had disappeared . . . then he saw her standing the ruined lab where the doctor had imprisoned him, with Omega beside her, his guns still smoking. "Ally," said Shadow softly.

The bat locked hands with him and the robot, giggling. "Looks like we've formed a new team!"

"Rouge," he said gratefully, as the voices faded and he finally fell asleep.