The sparking, mangled chassis of laser and shield hunters littered the warpath left behind them as the entourage continued unopposed through the upper labs, drawing ever closer to the heart of the space colony. More doors and empty halls later, the walkers strolled loudly into one of the main research facilities, not far from the central control room. Circuits and wires ran across the walls of the area, feeding from skeletal power supplies and sparking angrily when it wasn't enough to sate their hunger.
Slowly stepping up to the circular reactor station in the center of the chamber, the Cyclone made a precision stop at the edge of a control panel only a finely-tuned machine was capable of. Tails winced as he got off from his wounded namesake, leaning over the side of his mecha and tapping on a panel until the light attached to it winked on. After a few seconds of the holographic interface failing to respond, the kitsune then pried the panel off and pulled a keyboard out from within, a thick layer of dust covering the buttons like dirty snowflakes.
Brushing off the lint shroud of years, Tails tapped a few buttons and was pleased to see the monitor flash to life and respond appropriately. "Let's see if we can access anymore entries from here," he said, typing in the strange password-proclamation of 'Destruction through Perfection'. Text whizzed down the screen as the system ran recovery scripts and compiling the data. After another short wait, the type decelerated down to a legible speed; a familiar, slow scroll crawling up from an unseen pen.
Biolizard is a failure.
None of my other colleagues may want to see it, but I do. Even as a prototype, we've accomplished little to nothing for all our efforts. I look upon this gargantuan lizard, blind and wracked with constant pain, its life only sustained from the massive tank upon its back, and we are expected to be gazing upon perfection? To be in awe? All I see is an abortion of nature, and all I feel for the creature is pity.
Of the diminutive data we have gathered, the only thing I can even determine is that our species, as well as any and all others on our planet, appears to be biologically incapable of eternal youth. Our very DNA is so grossly askew from thousands of years of evolution that is has has turned it into dirty strings which literally unravel as we age. No Earth-born animal has or ever will have the genetic template we need to complete the project.
I refuse to let this stop me, however. For Maria's sake, I cannot give up simply because something appears to be 'impossible'. I simply need to step back and look at this problem from another angle.
[ENTRY END. PLAYING NEXT.]
I have found the answer I sought and far, far more. The solution to Project Shadow does not exist in our present, nor even in the future… but lies hidden in our past.
Desperation drove me to this incredible discovery. After consulting countless medical journals, textbooks, and articles, I was beginning to lose hope. I turned to the works of the Great Civilizations, those who came before us in the ancient past and the empires of which spanned our globe, in the hopes their wisdom might be my salvation. And I found something as I compared them, or rather; it was what I couldn't find. We know of three, but I began to notice patterns that indicated there must have been at least five.
Perplexed, I delved further. My initial hypothesis proved correct, as there actually did seem to be a total Five Great Civilizations. The problem was that almost all traces of the fourth and fifth, the most recent, appear to have been thoroughly scoured from our world. Little more than hints and indication of their existence remain, but they are most definitely there.
Here I began to see another pattern as well: Every civilization seem to speak about a set of jewels whose names crudely translate to "Chaos Emeralds"
"He knew about the Chaos Emeralds?!" blurted out Tails.
From his own mecha, Eggman wiggled his mustache. "He must have. How else could he have designed the Eclipse Cannon to overcharge on chaos energy, or designed Shadow to tap into the emeralds' power?"
The ultimate life form remained only silent as he continued to read the journal entry, Tails turning back and doing so as well.
whose names crudely translate to "Chaos Emeralds" in our own tongue. The references go from acknowledging the existence of these gemstones to borderline worship. The Civilizations all seem to agree, however, that their power was enormous; a practically unlimited source of both positive and negative energy that could bend the very fabric of reality.
At first, I thought these emeralds might be the answer, though little did I know at the time that they no longer resided upon Earth. I thought that the chance to manipulate space-time could have given the edge we needed to have a breakthrough with Project Shadow. But the truth spiraled ever deeper, and I had only torn off a single layer. And that truth is that we are not alone.
Our world was once part of a much larger one,
"He knew about the two worlds too?" said the Kitsune aloud once more, and was promptly shushed by his companions as the text continued scrolling despite his interruption.
part of a much larger one, but has since been torn apart. It is similar in the vein of thought that our moon was once a piece of our planet's crust, blasted free from some unknown force and condensing into a body that orbits its parent. The difference, however, is vast. Our world and another, lurking somewhere in an entirely different dimension, reside on a very similar sort of 'co-spacial axis'.
This is why there are there are so few traces of the fourth and fifth civilizations, and why we have never found the fabled Chaos Emeralds. During the height of the fourth and rise of the fifth, the world was sundered in two by some unbelievably powerful force, so incredibly strong that it sent one of the planets into an entirely new timestream. The emeralds and the civilizations were separated from us, and our sister world is likely where they still remain to this day.
Something, and I am not certain what, tells me that my answer lies on this parallel world, severed from our own across dimensional boundaries. I shall follow my instinct on this, for surely there must be some way into this alternate reality.
[ENTRY END. PLAYING NEXT.]
[ENTRY UNRECOVERABLE. PLAYING NEXT.]
[DATA CORRUPTED. Skipping to first available section...]
G&Sy( *s n'ot% wht I had hoped for, but it was still an enormous success. Based on these studies from the ruins and the best records of the Chaos Emeralds that I could find, I have constructed a synthetic version of one. It is obviously flawed, the output is nowhere near as high as described in the records, and more than 90% of it is negative energy. Also, from experimentations with prototypes, I know that any significant power draw from it would cause the entire gemstone to breakdown within seconds. This remains a huge breakthrough, however, and I have high
"LOOK OUT!!" screamed Cosmo, causing Tails to jolt the controls on instinct and throwing the Cyclone to the side. It wasn't a moment too quickly either, a pair of green lasers blasting into the console the mecha had been just been standing at, the monitor exploding in an array of sparks and lights from blown bulbs.
The kitsune's first thought upon turning to face their assailant was surprise, for across the room hunched a watery, bipedal figure that he initially mistook for Chaos. Yet, it took only another moment Tails to recognize this was not the guardian of the chao. Its form was made from a thicker, more opaque ooze that quivered randomly, and far less symmetric than the smooth, transparent body of the real Chaos. Yet more obvious a clue was the head, which was made of coiled metal with narrowed green eyes just below a radioactive symbol stamped across its forehead.
Unfortunately, speed was not something that the two aquatic beings had in common. The ooze-monster suddenly and swiftly slid across the deck as if surfing, its three-fingered hands lancing out like spears. Tails pulled on the yoke again, the Cyclone responding by hopping up and over the attack. Landing to the side, he countered by firing three bursts from the front-mounted bazooka before getting behind the cover of the reactor.
"What is that?" the kitsune asked aloud, watching as Eggman now entered the fray with his own mecha from behind their shelter. The Chaos-like creature arced out its arms like before, which glanced off of the Egg Walker's armor. Chortling with evil glee, Ivo unloaded several salvos from his cannon while their opponent continued to dodge, evading a screw kick from Rouge as it slid around a stack of crates and regained a line of sight with its original prey.
Ammo flashed from the muzzle of the Cyclone's Bazooka, Tails pushing the mecha to the left in a strafing run. The copycat of the God of Destruction jumped up and over the attacks, its metal head lifted on a pillar of blue ooze before reforming upside-down from the ceiling. Sliding out of the line of Shadow's chaos spears, the clone's eyes lit up, another pair of energy beams blasting outward in a destructive arc. The kitsune pushed his mecha back to the right, but the attack had only been a feint to keep him out of cover, twin lasers firing again at the spot the Cyclone was stepping into.
Cosmo shrieked the pilot's name again, too late to do anything. Tails' head whipped uselessly to the imminent hit… And was left stunned as an emerald shield of light flared up between the Cyclone and its attacker, the beams of paler color bouncing off the barrier and into nearby walls. The Chaos copy made an alien noise, something displeasing between a hiccup and the drone of buzzing wings, slithering along the ceiling before vanishing into a vent, robotic head and all.
Blinking, the kitsune watched the glittering shield fade and turned around to see an equally confused Cosmo, her palm outstretched and gently glowing with the same energy. Before he could ask anything of her, however, a loud clatter of metal scraping metal caught the attention of both as Shadow kicked an iron crate over and stared at the vent their foe had used to make good its escape.
"Artificial Chaos," the ultimate life form named their foe. "Our 'guest' must have let it out of containment as well."
"It bears a strong resemblance to the original," said Eggman.
"You met it?" asked Shadow, his brows furrowing as he turned to face the Doctor.
Ivo grinned. "I released it."
The black hedgehog snorted, "It shouldn't be a surprise. You make a habit of awakening forgotten weapons." Not giving time for Eggman to snark, his head returned to staring at the grate. "It was created from the tablets that described the real one, using data from the Professor's original success of synthesizing Chaos Emeralds."
"You already knew about that?" asked Tails, still a bit shocked from the events of the last five minutes.
Shadow opened his mouth to respond, but was drowned out by the clamber of the metal plates falling from overhead. Apparently the ultimate life form's attack had done more damage than intended. The Cyclone, Egg Walker, Rouge, and Shadow all had virtually no time to react before half the ceiling came crashing down, debris and dust spraying out in destructive waves that splashed all across the room.
Another dozen seconds passed before the Cyclone managed to push free of the wreckage, Tails making sure his love was alright before looking for others. Rouge, aside from a small cut below her left eye was fine as well, and Shadow stood unscathed atop a small heap of rubble a little further off, the Blue Chaos Emerald glittering in one of his hands.
Well, at least Chaos Control worked well for him, thought the kitsune bitterly to himself. He still wished that the black hedgehog could have spared a thought for the rest of them though. Speaking of the rest of them… "Where's Eggman?" Tails asked aloud.
Only silence answered him.