Chapter 14: To Turn the Tides

Shadow had sent Silver and Blaze to the safest place he knew.

"Where are we?" said Silver, prodding at the leather armchair position in front of the wall-length window into space.

"Space Colony Ark," Blaze answered, already poking at the computer terminal with the peculiar square-within-square flat monitor. The ACCESS DENIED messages she kept bearing all had the Ark insignia as part of the layout.

Maybe Shadow had wanted the pair to watch. This particular room gave an unsurpassed view of the Ultimate Overlord and the remains of the beaten GUE fleet.

"You HAVE met Shadow before, haven't you?" Blaze said to Silver in a tone of voice that clearly suggested that she knew.

"Yeah... He was there on Onyx Island along with Sonic and Knuckles. I was so worried I'd accidentally end up doing more damage to history than Nega. That's why I didn't say anything about encountering Shadow in my report. I didn't want to get the blame if something went wrong. Er, sorry about lying to you, Blaze."

Blaze smiled wryly. "Did you know that your eyes twitch when you're lying."

"What?"

"Like a five-year old with a guilty conscience."

"Oh."

To wash away his embarrassment, Silver tried to shift the focus away. "I wonder how Shadow's doing down there," he said.

"He's probably finishing off all those Metal Sonics right now," Blaze answered. "Must have been fun pretending not to know about them."

"Huh?"

"Sonic, Knuckles and Shadow."

"Oh yeah. Er... Well, I tried my best."

"Hopefully you didn't make too much eye contact at the time."

"Aww..."

Any notion of further idle conversation went away when suddenly the duo watched the Ultimate Overlord become encompassed in golden light, then vanish from space.

"Wha-!?"

"Shadow must have used Chaos Control," said Blaze. "I wonder where he sent it."

Nowhere, as it turned out. The Ultimate Overlord reappeared in the very same spot it'd left, no worse for wear.

"Well, that was pretty pointless," said Silver.

"Maybe he didn't mean to do that. Remember how we saw all those robots get sent out to fight the GUE ships via Chaos Control?"

"You mean Metal cancelled out Shadow's power? That's hard to believe. You saw him, he's used Super transformation. No one can beat Shadow now. Unless..."

Silver didn't look so certain anymore. He was remembering something he'd read not too long ago.

"Unless what?"

"Oh no!" Silver exclaimed as he saw the last pieces fall into place. "Coming into space, eating up all those satellites, creating all those copies - it was all for one purpose. Those history geeks were right! Metal Sonic has been trying to copy Super form data all along. That was how Sonic beat him in the past, right? He's done all this just to make sure it wouldn't work this time!"

"Oh my god. I think you're right, Silver. That means Shadow's walked into a trap."

"We don't have much time. Shadow must have all seven Chaos Emeralds with him. If Metal gets a hold of those, we're done for!"

"But what can we do?"

It was a rare role reversal. Blaze at a loss while Silver carried himself with determination. This side of him only seemed to come out in the most dire of times. Only when things got so bad that there was no time to second guess or worry did Silver throw all his doubts aside and stand tall.

"The Metal Sonic I saw in the past on Onyx Island was nothing like the one we're dealing with now. I'm certain now that Nega built a copy of the original to serve as his minion back then. If Nega knows the workings of Metal Sonic well enough to build a duplicate, then maybe he knows how to find a weakness. No matter how many or how big this robot villain gets, it's still the same robot at the heart of it. If there's a flaw in the original, then it'll be in the rest as well. We've got to find Eggman Nega and convince him to help us somehow."

Momentarily awestruck, Blaze nodded.

"When Dr. Eggman took control of the Ark two centuries ago, he used a teleporter to travel quickly between here and his pyramid fortress east of Central City. If the teleporter still works today, we can use it to get back to Earth fast."

"Let's try it!"

All doubt and hesitation gone, Silver and Blaze ran through the vast corridors of the Ark, searching fervently for the transporter station. At least Prof. Gerald had been thoughtful enough to place You Are Here maps at most junctions. The two made it nearly all the way before running into an unexpected adversary.

The Artificial Chaos hovered before them, a robotic head atop a ball of gelatinous blue liquid. It paused only for a second before transferring its mass into violent tentacles and lashing out at Silver and Blaze. Still riding on adrenaline, Silver reacted fast and caught the tentacles with his psycho-kinesis. While the Artificial Chaos was restrained, Blaze shot through its semi-liquid body and smashed its head in with a flaming kick.

Silver and Blaze nodded to each other, then started running again, jumping over the defeated imitation of the ancient chao god.

They found the room containing the teleporter, only to discover that it hadn't been included in Shadow's scouring of the Ark. Why would Shadow bother with the place when he could use Chaos Control to go where he pleased? Two GUN beetles were floating by the teleporter, still standing guard after 250 years. If 50 years of decay wouldn't ruin the GUN sentries when Dr. Eggman and Sonic fought for control of the Ark, then 200 more years wouldn't make much difference. Immediately, both beetles discharged their guns, spraying hundreds of bullets at the hedgehog and the cat.

Blaze looked at her friend, at the bullets hanging motionless in the air before his glowing hand, at the beetles, and then narrowed her eyes. She smashed the left beetle against the wall while Silver projected the bullets back into the right one, shooting it to bits.

In the aftermath, Blaze looked the ancient teleportation device over.

"Well," she said, "this will either get us to Dr. Eggman's old base or disperse our atoms and kill us instantly."

"If we stick around here with the Ultimate Overlord, that's bound to happen anyway," said Silver. "Let's go."

((Author's note: Oh, it's well in character, believe me. Not to spoil anything from Sonic the Hedgehog (360-PS3), but at the end of the game, with the assembled Sonic cast, including two geniuses, who is it who comes up with the plan to save the day, turning a hopeless situation into a promising one? Why, it's Silver. It's also him who comes up with the plan to properly defeat Iblis at the end of his own story. When the poop hits the fan, Silver is a go-to guy.


Oh, and yes, he CAN catch bullets in the game. It's not just a blatant Neo rip-off. Actually, it might be, but blame the game designers))

In the next chapter:
- Silver and Blaze face off against Eggman Nega.
- Metal Mastermind demonstrates the true destructive power of his ship.
- Conquest the Bat has another one of those "best-laid plans".