Shadow, the ultimate life form born from artifical creation, was grasping an ability he had never even been made with: the power to feel emotion. His smile remained unwavering on his face, and his eyes, for the first time ever, had been given a sense of life.
"Shadow...! What happened?" panicked Maria. "Are you feeling all right?"
"I...I believe so," replied Shadow. "But...there's this...warmth inside of my chest. It's comforting."
"Warmth? Comforting? Shadow, what happened to you just now?"
"I...I don't know. What is this on my face? I feel like there's something pulling my muscles."
She giggled. "That's a smile, silly. You smile when you're happy."
"Happy...? But...I don't know how to be happy."
"Well, how about we talk to Grandfather? I think you're feeling better, now. Right?"
"Y...Yes. I'm fine, now."
"Okay! Let's go back."
The two new friends returned to the infirmary, where they once again greeted Professor Gerald. The professor ran over to Shadow hastefully, hugging him tightly and squeezing him in his grasp. Maria couldn't help but laugh.
"Oh, Shadow, my boy! I'm so relieved to see you're all right!"
"Yes, Professor," said Shadow, gasping free of the crushing hug. "I am...all right."
"Ahh! Of course you are! You're my greatest project, after all. You won't go down without a fight!"
"Yes, Professor."
"Grandfather," said Maria, "Would you mind if I took Shadow to the park?"
"Hmm? The park?" He cleaned his glasses. "Well, I certainly don't mind. But may I ask why?"
"I...I wanna help Shadow understand emotions. If he can't understand them, they're only going to make him feel worse and worse, until he finally goes out of control."
"What? Shadow can feel emotions, now? Incredible! That's something I never managed to program into him!"
"Grandfather...I think this is our chance. Our one chance to help him become a real person, and not just some project. What do you say?"
He looked towards Shadow and smiled, then looked back at his granddaughter. "I think...that sounds wonderful. You two go off and have fun. Just make sure to come back before too late."
"Okay! Shadow, will you come with me?"
"Yes..."
She took Shadow by the hand and started for the exit to SciLab. Gerald watched the two with a reassured smile.
"To think...Shortly before all this happened, she didn't want anything to do with Shadow. Now, they're becoming friends."
Station Square park was a small little hamlet of nature, topped off with a steady number of benches and chairs to sit in and relax, as well as a little patio area with an overhead roof and a few tables underneath it. The sun shined through a small gathering of trees that overlooked a swing set at the end of the fences surrounding the park. The two had decided to sit in the grass near the swings, Maria waiting for the moment she could ignite some kind of emotion in Shadow.
"So," started Maria, "This is Station Square Park. Do you like it?"
He nodded. "Yes. It is a very nice place. Very..."
"Very...?"
"I...I don't know the word. It fills me with a peaceful calm, and it seems to wash over my entire body."
She giggled. "That means you're relaxed. It's a start!"
"A start? What do you mean?"
"Shadow...I wanna help you learn how to express what you feel."
"What I feel?"
"Yes."
"What DO I feel?"
"I don't know the answer to that question. Only YOU do. YOU are the only person who can tell anyone how you feel."
"How I feel...What does it mean to...feel?"
"It means your emotions help you to understand something. They help you understand happiness, sadness, anger, and any other kind of feeling. That's what it means to feel."
"Feelings...Emotions..."
She rose slowly from her seat, and she walked behind Shadow. Before he could process what was happening, he felt the sudden embrace of his friend. Her arms were wrapped around his torso, and her face lit with a smile the entire time she held him.
"There. How does that make you feel?"
It took Shadow a few moments before he could even process this moment. He didn't know what it meant to feel, but he knew he was feeling something. He would always call them "sensations" or "a calm that washes over his entire body." There was no telling what was going on inside of him. Even he had trouble expressing it.
"I...I don't know what this means..."
"What?"
"Warm...I...'feel'...warm."
"Warm?"
"Yes...My body is warm. And...I am relaxed. When I am in your arms, I...'feel' this way. Your embrace is...very...comforting."
She felt her cheeks blush a light pink color. She had never been told something so sweet, even from her own family. Even though she knew that Shadow did not quite understand what it meant to feel something, she knew he was trying. To her, that was all that mattered.
"Shadow, would you like to take a picture?"
"Picture? Oh, you mean a photograph."
"Sure. Here, I'll take one on my phone!"
She reached into her pocket by releasing Shadow briefly, and when she found her phone, she wrapped her arms around him once more and angled the phone's built-in camera to show them both in the picture.
"Smile!"
"Smile..."
As she pressed the button on her phone to snap a photo, she could have sworn that Shadow had smiled at the camera. And he did. It was a rather sheepish smile, but it was a good start nonetheless. She took the phone and placed it back in her pocket, releasing Shadow and sitting back up. She walked back next to Shadow and sat down next to him.
"So? Did you like the picture?"
He nodded slowly while looking at her. "Yes...I did."
"So, you know what it means to enjoy something! It means you like it!"
"Yes...To enjoy something..."
"It's another emotion you need to learn. Now...lemme think of something else..."
It was only a moment afterwards that Maria's phone started to ring. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the phone, flipping it open.
"Hello?"
"Maria! It's your Grandfather. Please bring Shadow here back to the lab."
"Umm, sure, Grandfather. We're on our way."
"Was that the Professor?" asked Shadow.
"Yeah. He wants us back at SciLab. Let's get going."
"Yes."
Back at SciLab, Gerald awaited the two in the experimentation laboratory on the second floor.
"Maria, Shadow, thank you both for coming."
"Yes, Grandfather? You needed to see us?"
"I want to put Shadow back in the lab for a short while."
"What? Why?"
"I'm going to program emotions into him. So he can feel and act on those feelings."
"Wait...you could have just programmed them into him from the start? Why didn't you do that, Grandfather?"
"Those GUN fools who were funding the project forbade me to give them to him. They figured that if he possessed emotions, Shadow would soon grow far too unstable and eventually go on an uncontrollable rampage."
"That wouldn't be good at all..."
"But now, I believe Shadow deserves to have his own emotions. With the technology we have here at SciLab, I can make it so that he's a real person. He'll be just like the rest of us."
"That's terrific! But Grandfather, won't that jeopardize your career?"
"Shadow IS my career. Without this boy, I...I would just be a lowly scientist whose opinion had no impact on anything. But when I decided to create Shadow, I decided to do it for the sake of mankind. I wanted the world to know that there would always be someone here, whether it be artificial or a real person, that will protect the people. Someone to give them the chance to be happy."
"Grandfather..."
He turned his head to look at his creation. "Shadow...you are more than just an artificial life form. You are the physcial manifestation of my hopes and dreams."
"Professor..."
"If you want feelings...if you want emotions, then who am I to strip you of them? You deserve to be just like the rest of us, feelings and all."
Maria turned to face Shadow. "Shadow, I...I think you should do this."
"Maria..."
"Not just because I want you to, or because Grandfather wants you to. I want you to experience life through the eyes of a real human, and that means you need to have the power to feel emotions and act according to them. I want you to have a happy, fulfilling life. Just like all of us."
"Yes..." He took Maria's hands slowly, which caused her to blush. She gazed into his garnet eyes, which seemed to shine brilliantly into her soul. It was odd; she had never noticed such an enticing gaze before. Not on Shadow. It was almost as if though she was locked onto his eyes; she couldn't look away from them. They were so...mezmerizing.
"I'll do it. For both of you, as well."
"A...All right."
"Now," started Gerald, "It will take you a while to adjust to the changes, so even if you go through with this, you won't be able to understand emotions for a short period of time."
He turned to face his creator. "Everything comes at a price. This one is worth paying for."
Maria had felt a sudden wave of surprise. Those words, so courageous and brave. If there was one thing about Shadow that stood out amongst every other quality he could possibly have, it was his maturity, able to make tough decisions with not an ounce of doubt or fear. He was the mighty knight with the shining armor of gold that embarked on a quest to slay the evil dragon of his only weakness: the power to understand what it means to feel, and to act upon those feelings.
"I'm ready, Professor."
"All right. Step into the pod."
"Yes." His feet paced him slowly towards the glistening pod, and as soon as he entered, the glass door gracefully shut itself tightly behind him. He turned to face Gerald while still inside, who was doing his best to hide his uncertainty with a smile. Sadly, it was too strong even for him to mask.
With the push of a button, Shadow's consciousness slowly drifted away, leaving him within a pod of a green liquid that slowly filled all the way to the top of the pod. Numerous light beeps exhaled from the machine that operated the chamber, and Gerald couldn't help but stare into it with a look of distress.
"I'm just not sure of this..." he mustered.
"What is it, Grandfather?" asked a concerned Maria.
"This will completely rewrite Shadow's very existence. At first, a machine. Now, a human? It will be the biggest change of his life. Once this is done, I...I won't be able to reverse it, should things take a turn for the worst."
"So no matter what, Shadow will be stuck as a human?"
"Yes..."
The circulating air through the room constricted, and it echoed a cruel chill down the spines of the two siblings. Neither one of them wanted to cause any kind of permanent damage to Shadow. Yet, in the end, going through with this project could very possibly do just that.
"If Shadow can't go back to the way he was," continued Gerald, "Then there's no way he can regain his strength and capabilities as my creation."
"He's going to lose his power? But wouldn't that defeat the entire purpose of the Ultimate Life Form?"
He sighed heavily. "Precisely."
"So, that means..."
"GUN will more than likely step in, and when they do, they'll take Shadow and forcefully revert the process, turning him into a life-threatening tool for war."
"No...!"
He turned around to see his precious creation. "I just hope he makes it out of this...with little to no repurcussions."
"Yes...I do, too."
It was difficult to witness such a process take place, for the both of them. Gerald was immediately fond of Shadow, since he was the greatest creation known to man that he, himself, had planned and developed. Rather, he was the one who actually received authorization for the project. Maria knew that Shadow was a machine-a tool to be used-that was authorized by the higher-ups of GUN and SciLab, but in just a short amount of time, she had been scared out of her wits, insulted, attacked, and almost forced to have sex with a group of disgusting gangsters during the time Shadow had been created...and even after all of that, the two of them still managed to find reasons to be friends.
Or, heaven forbid, anything more than that.
But honestly, she wasn't positive about what to think of Shadow. Although, yes, he was still technically a machine, and he was essentially created to be her loyal bodyguard, she couldn't help but sense a sort of odd attraction to him. Sure, he was still a product, but even so, she had managed to see past such ridiculous details, and she even attempted to see into Shadow a way no one else could; she wanted to find the heart he never truly had. That's why she felt a senseless guilt in all of this.
Perhaps she had found it.
She could have possibly stumbled into the brick wall, which had served as a blockade from his heart. Maybe she had crashed into the gate of stone and rocks, and upon doing so, she had left a dent in its heavy sheet of armor. And maybe, just maybe, when Shadow came out of that pod-IF Shadow came out of that pod...
The barricade would be no more.
The passing six hours had seemed like an eternity of solitude, wishing for someone to break the cursing silence and embrace the possibilities of success for the black-haired android. Yet, nothing remained to be said until he had found a way to exit that pod. In all honestly, it was the only thing both Maria and Gerald requested, at least at this point. His eyes had been shut for six agonizing hours, a peaceful, careless expression across his face. Gerald had fallen into a state of slumber merely four hours into the operation, while Maria could not stand to simply drift off to sleep as her first true friend remained in a state of purgatory. Her legs moved her, almost on impulse, to the outside of the pod, and her right hand had placed itself gently upon the glass. Her cerulean eyes had hooked themselves onto the qualm-free look on Shadow's face, where not even the eyes of crimson she had all but memorized stared back at her.
"It's odd. You look happy, Shadow. Like you're in a wonderful dream."
She wouldn't dare consider the thought that his dreams would last throughout eternity. She refused to think that he would remain in there, lifeless and empty, forever. Finally, at long last, her doubts slipped away as her ears shuffled with the muffling sound of draining liquid. She glanced downwards to see the green fluid draining completely, and within a matter of seconds, it was gone. She sprinted over to Gerald and shook him roughly.
"Grandfather! Wake up! It's Shadow! He's waking up!"
Gerald had immediately reached for his glasses and did his absolute best to stand up straight, though he was obviously still half-asleep. His eyes sprung open as he witnessed the pod opening. Maria's had done the same. Merely seconds later, Shadow's eyes had shifted awake, and the life within them did not seem to dissipate. The sound of his steps echoed through the silence of the room, almost as if they were the shallow beatings of a child's heart.
"Shadow...?" Gerald had incentively tried to get closer, and as he did, he placed his hands on the boy's shoulders.
"Shadow! Can you hear me?" He stared into his eyes to see any sign of response. To his surprise, Shadow had executed a large smile at his creator, spreading forth an open smile from both Maria and Gerald, with the scientist's face glistening with tears of joy as he heard the first words Shadow spoke after the test was complete.
"So this is what it's like to be human."