4. Black and Blue
Several of the jets swooped over Shadow, firing on the black hedgehog as he raced along the bridge leaping construction supplies and gaps in the roadway. More problematic were the Beetles and other GUN robots that arrived with the jets, spreading out in areas the planes couldn't reach. Hunters! he remembered, suddenly. Beetles and Hunters, THAT'S what they're called, as he smashed one of the humanoid robots and hauled himself up a pulley. There was some sort of rocket at the top. Hmm. Maybe it's to carry the cables over the supports? Whatever the reason he decided on a whim to grab the crossbar below it and launch the thing. It whisked him out across the next gap until he let go and dropped back to the pavement, where he had to cross a narrow girder to continue.
A little further on he approached to another too-wide-to-jump gap, this one spanned by a line of the golden rings, strung out above where the road should have been. A pair of Beetles behind him made him disinclined to stop at the edge. They're Chaos energy, he thought, glancing at the Emerald, could I...? As he hit the end of the road and jumped he pulled at the energy in the rings and found himself suddenly on the far side of the gap.
Continuing the obstacle course - and taking out not a few Hunters and Beetles as he went - he reached the other end of the bridge and started zigzagging through the streets. When he spotted a barrier and armed men across the road in front of him, he teleported to the top of the closest building and ran along the roofs for a bit. Although he had no qualms about smashing their robots and machines, he disliked the idea of actually harming a human - or at least a human he didn't know. The soldiers that had killed Maria he would have taken down without hesitation.
"Now," he said to himself, pulling his focus back to the present situation, "I just need to get back to the ARK, and open the way to the central control room. As soon as I lose these imbeciles, I should be able to locate the ARK and then..." He hopped across a narrow gap between two buildings and kept going. "Then I can put the plan into effect and keep my promise." His fingers tightened around the jewel he carried as he ran through the plan mentally. He dropped back down to street level, landing on something without really noticing what it was. Gazing into the green heart of the stone he felt an odd sense of certainty, that this was what he was MEANT to do. "It all begins with this... a jewel containing the ultimate power." Hearing someone panting he looked around - he was standing on a freshly smashed vehicle that resembled the one he'd dealt with in the depths of Prison Island, and being stared at by a bright blue dokan hedgehog.
"That's the... Chaos Emerald!! Now I know what's going on!" The blue hedgehog began advancing towards Shadow looking outraged. "The military has mistaken ME for the likes of YOU! So, where do you think you're going with that Emerald?"
Shadow was too busy staring at the other to give him an answer, even if he'd been able to think of one. His purpose was suddenly in conflict with his curiosity; he'd never seen a true dokan hedgehog except in pictures. This hedgehog looked surprisingly like Shadow himself, except that his quills lacked the kink that Shadow's had near the tips, and his fur was solid blue instead of red-marked black. Also unlike Shadow, the blue's arms and chest were bare of fur; the skin there and on his muzzle was a few shades paler than Shadow's own dark tan muzzle. As with all the male dokan, he wore only a pair of gloves and footgear, in this case bright red running shoes. Suddenly he was running, moving towards Shadow with surprising speed.
"Say something!" the blue challenged him. "You fake hedgehog!"
That caught Shadow off guard; one of his private fears was whether the dokan would accept him if they knew him to be a research project, and being so casually called a fake cut shockingly deep. Masking his reaction, he casually tossed the Emerald into the air and cried, "Chaos Control!" As he activated his odd time-slowing ability, the gem flared green and seemed to hang in midair. He snatched it back and glided casually past the suddenly stop-motion challenger. A chaos-powered teleport took him back up to the roof of a building behind the blue hedgehog, and he let the time slip end.
His challenger skidded to a stop below him, looking around and saying something Shadow didn't catch. As the blue hedgehog located the black one on the roof, Shadow introduced himself. "My name is Shadow. I'm the world's Ultimate Life Form. There's no time for games; farewell!!" He teleported himself to another roof far enough away to be out of the blue's sight.
He didn't waste time reflecting on the encounter; time enough for that once he set things up on the ARK. He closed his eyes and drew on the Emerald again, using it to extend his reach far beyond what he could normally achieve. There! Even dormant, the concentration of Chaos drives in the colony could still be felt. Can I teleport that far? Yes, he decided, but then I will need to rest. Even using the Chaos Emerald's energy, I have to spend some of my own to control it. Not to mention all the running and walking I've been doing. Can it REALLY be fifty years? Focus, draw power, reach...and there. In a flash of green light the night sky and buildings vanished and were replaced by bare, dusty corridors of plastic and stone.
He looked around and confirmed that he was in the Professor's wing. He stumbled slightly as he made it to the lab and activated the computer, adjusting the map to show the previously hidden central core of the Eclipse Cannon and the secret route to it. Then he staggered into his own room and crawled between the blankets despite the dust. He had definitely used up too much of his energy between the time break and that last teleport; he'd have to be more careful in the future. He was asleep before it could occur to him that he'd never learned how to alter the computer's map program.