Chapter 4- Midnight Starfall
A familiar scene was set before the dark hedgehog. He stood by a tall, finely grooved oak tree, its leaves tinted the myriad shades of fire that the Autumn season brought. The yellowed grass of the hilltop overlooking the city swayed gently in the breeze, and the evening sky was slowly, sluggishly darkening, the first few twinkling lights timidly showing their faces.
At the foot of the hill lay the devastated and largely abandoned city, its buildings all in various states of degradation and ruin. Breathing heavily, Shadow began to slowly walk to the city, unsure of what he would do once he arrived.
He found the streets no more promising or inviting than the outside of the city, and in fact, it seemed more ominous, if anything. Skeletal, looming structures cast their long, cold shadows over him, and the pavement was cracked and overturned everywhere he looked.
Downed street lights and power lines littered the streets, and abandoned vehicles lay dormant, their windows smashed and tires slashed. Although there was sparse human habitation, this seemed to consist almost exclusively of huddling figures dressed in torn rags, and peering at him from the corners and alleyways.
Shadow was unnerved by the stillness of the city, although it was an improvement over the clamoring fans, to be sure. He had long gotten used to being widely despised, and now that he was almost universally loved, he was unsure how to act in any situation, especially one where he was being bombarded with questions and sounds. This whole "hero" shtick was entirely new to him, and required a whole change in strategy and philosophy; he could no longer simply kill those who annoyed him. The thought was almost enough to bring a tear to his eye.
Startled from his thoughts by the sound of an engine working, he was surprised to see a tiny Volkswagon lumbering down the road; as of now he'd not yet seen a moving vehicle. As it moved down the street, several of the ragged transients began ambling towards it, a savage look burning in their eyes.
The car accelerated slightly, but it was already too late, it was surrounded by a ring of grizzled, desperate men, and Shadow with it, entrapped in the center. Breathlessly he glanced into the bright yellow car, seeing the fear-stricken face of a young mother, and her infant child in the back seat. Thinking quickly, he jumped on top of the hood of the car, facing off with the looters.
"Back off!" he bellowed in a fearsome and commanding voice. The transients stopped their advance, but became turbulent, all speaking and moving at once in a terrible undulating circle.
The crimson streaked hero's voice rose about the clamor, thundering out one last time. "I don't want to hurt any of you, but I will not hesitate if you try to harm these innocent people!"
A particularly drunken and savage looter slammed into the side of the car, banging on the door with his fists and grinning as the woman screamed. Shadow jumped down from his perch like a swooping eagle, spinning sideways in mid-air to kick the attacker in the side of the head.
Fast as lightning, he followed up by landing three successive punches to the transient's stomach that earned him a loud gasp and a bloody cough. The man rolled on the ground as he landed, scraping himself on the pavement and coming to a stop as a heaving, bloodied mess.
Although, to tell the truth, he'd mostly been a heaving, non-bloodied mess before Shadow beat the fear of God into him.
"He got off easy. Now which of you stupid, ugly maggots wants to try it? Make my day."
Responding in collective fury at being challenged by such a small, seemingly insignificant creature, the ocean of gritty humans broke like a wave upon the immovable obsidian rock. Shadow warded off frenzied attacks by the dozen, replying with quick yet precise blows that hurled the attackers backwards and out of the swarming mass.
As he fought, Shadow didn't speak a word; he hardly seemed to breathe. He became a machine, registering information only on the combat level, merciless, and deadly effective, seemingly moved by pure instinct and reflex rather than thought or emotion.
He opponents seemed unending, but never did he relent, never did he slip up and take a blow. His style was flawless, elegant, almost like a beautiful, violent dance with a thousand teeming partners all surging about a great, blood-spattered ballroom.
The attacks intensified, and finally Shadow seemed to be strained to real exertion, as he released an animalistic battle cry. The dark hedgehog's eyes began to glow, as a deep scarlet light rolled off him in waves.
Leaping into the air, Shadow faced the onslaught of murderous looters, and unleashed his rage in physical form.
"Chaos Blast!" a massive sphere of undulating, blood-red light surged out from the warrior, racing outwards in every direction to form a blinding orb. All of the attacking transients were hurled violently backwards, thrown against the walls of the crumbled buildings to join the others who had been knocked away over the course of the fight.
The attack had left the pavement even further cracked, and various windows shattered, but the Volkswagon at the epicenter was completely untouched.
'How did I do that?' he wondered after his initial worry. 'Before, whenever I used Chaos Blast, everything was destroyed. But the car doesn't have a scratch, and it only knocked those men out. How did I control the Chaos Blast?'
After inhaling deeply, Shadow turned around and knocked on the car window. It slowly rolled down, showing the awed expression of the mother inside.
"Excuse me, are you alright?" he asked sheepishly. It took her a full moment to collect her thoughts and respond.
"Oh, oh! Yeah, I'm- I'm fine, thanks to you," she was visibly shaken. "Um, you must be that hero I've been hearing so much about."
"Correct. Although I can't seem to get away from all the incessant pestering, so I came here to hide," he paused a moment and scrutinized her. "What are you doing in a place like this?"
She began to sniffle slightly, a truly pitiable sight. "Me and my husband lived here before the invasion, but we were separated in the evacuation, so I came back to look for him, and was attacked by those lawless heathens!"
She spoke a bit finely for an average person, and he wondered idly if she was a foreigner. "This city is dangerous now, and chances are your husband is gone."
At this she began to sob openly, prompting similar cries from the baby in the back seat. This greatly distressed the Ultimate Lifeform, partly because the child managed to hit that exact octave that rings in your ears, and partly because despite his rough exterior, he was a sucker for tears. It reminded him of the plea Maria made, her face stained in bitter tears.
"It's not safe here. Go to the hill with the oak tree to the East of the city and wait there for me," he breathed.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find your husband."
The lone warrior stalked through the streets, his crimson eyes flashing to sounds and movement in an unnecessary display of alertness. The woman had provided him with a picture of her husband, a Mr. Isaac Henderson. He was an ordinary sort of guy who worked for a mundane office supply company.
Now the inhabitants of the once great city were wary of him, watching from their hiding spots but never daring to show themselves after his ample display of power.
Admittedly, he wasn't exactly sure where he should look, but he knew that he couldn't return to those weepy eyes empty-handed.
So he trudged on into the city, ignoring the gradually approaching nightfall and pangs of his weariness.
Just as Shadow began to give up hope and contemplate how he would go about telling the woman that Isaac must be dead, he heard a muffled clang echo from down a dark side street to his right. Climbing over an overturned slab of pavement, he walked up a low hill of rubble, the chunks of steel and plaster intermixed with shattered glass and beaten appliances.
The alley was narrow and housed an acrid stench, like the smell of a mountain of rotting corpses that decaying garbage had been tossed onto, which had then been submerged in a sea of excrement.
The Ultimate Lifeform's eyes watered at the scent, and he had to force back his vomit reflex. 'As if I need to add another foul smell to this plethora of odor!'
Accumulated in the gutters was a murky liquid that teemed with rats, and piled everywhere were piles of accumulated rubbish. Huddling in the midst of this horrid environment and seeming not to notice it was a trio of raggedly dressed men standing around a makeshift fire build inside an oil drum.
One of them was rummaging through a can, doubtless to salvage some piece of garbage, as the dark hedgehog approached, and the three of them glanced up fearfully.
"Hey, it's that guy who beat up Frank and Eddie earlier, and now he's come for us!" one of them exclaimed.
A particularly ragged an stinking transient in the group drew a worn knife from his pockets. "Take one more step, buddy."
"I think there's been a misunderstanding. Whatever you think I did to your friends, I did it to keep them from harming and stealing from a defenseless woman," he replied, his sense of chivalry being obvious to him, but confusing the others.
"Heartbreaking. That's life: you only get by if you take from those weaker than you. Only the merciless survive."
"I don't have time to deal with scum like you properly right now," he growled threateningly. "So I'm going to ask for your help, and you're going to give it to me, or I'm going to apply your twisted philosophy to you. I'm going to be merciless."
One of the looters scoffed, but halfway through the expulsion of air from his lungs, he was cut off by the violent constriction of his throat. With one hand, Shadow had lifted him into the air by the neck of his shirt, pressing him against a wall. With the other, he swiftly twisted the air that held the knife, doubtless spraining the looter's wrist.
The pitiless transient released a muffled scream, while clawing fruitlessly at Shadow's hand. The Ultimate Lifeform released him, but got up into the man's face, pushing him against the wall and seething with rage.
"Killing you would be easy; like snapping a twig, like crushing an ant. So why don't I, huh?"
"It's easy for you to survive! But some of us don't have a choice!"
"You always have a choice," he returned snidely. "And life has never been easy for anyone, especially me. So cut the crap and help me out."
The trio clumped together, the grimiest one (who also seemed ironically to be the leader) massaging his neck.
"What do you want us to do?"
Shadow produced the picture and thrust it forward, making sure all of them saw it very clearly.
"I'm looking for a man named Isaac Henderson. He disappeared after the initial evacuation."
The dull, haggard eyes inspected the photo with a look of disbelief.
"This is the guy you're looking for? He's the leader of one of the gangs that control the city now," they pronounced, the quivering of their voices revealing a fear just a strong directed at Isaac.
"Where can I find him?"
A ring of oil drums holding fires crackled in an empty lot, small groups of assorted hobos and thieves huddled around them, some cradling weapons in their hands. Shadow glanced in revulsion at the dregs of human society, some of them wearing tattered button-ups and ties left over from their former lives.
Although they were undoubtedly looters and gangsters, they did not appear malicious, instead more resembling a skittish, mangy pack of wild dogs. He stalked through their number, never once turning to the right or the left as he waded through the sea of human flesh.
The transients avoided making eye contact with him, and moved out of his way as he walked, almost seeming to hold a holy reverence for the dark hero. In the center was a man with short, dark hair and piercing hazel eyes. He word a dark burgundy trench coat, and was the only looter who had relatively neat whiskers.
Despite clearly being the most presentable of the transients, he was visibly more scarred and muscled than he appeared in the photograph, to be sure he appeared nothing like a mild-mannered cubicle worker.
"Isaac Henderson, I presume."
Isaac was the only one who seemed not to be afraid of him, and the only one who did not gasp at his mention of the leader's true name.
"I haven't gone by that name since Hell came to Earth. Now I"m known as Kaigar," he had a definitive ice in his voice that suggested a sense of bitterness, particularly at the state of the world. "I've heart of your exploits in my city. Now, what do you want?"
"I have a message for you," Shadow smirked, his claret eyes sparkling with amusement. "Karen sends her regards."
Isaac or Kaigar froze in place, staring openmouthed at the Ultimate Lifeform in bewilderment and amazement. "Karen is alive? I thought she died in the invasion!"
"She's alive, and whatever you heard about me fighting your men, it was me protecting her from them," Shadow revealed, and Isaac turned away to hide his emotion.
"I'll make sure the offenders are punished," he growled. "I'm grateful to you. You have earned my trust."
"Keep your trust. Karen is waiting for you outside the city. All I care about is taking you back to her."
Kaigar was silent, and pulled his crimson overcoat more tightly around his body. "I'm not even remotely presentable..."
"Shut up man, she just wants her husband back," Shadow smiled wickedly. Turning to face the Ultimate Lifeform, Isaac nodded.
"Bring me to her."
By now, night had fallen over the ruins of Westopolis, and without the interference of the city lights, the Milky Way had come out to reveal its splendor lighting up the sky with a swirling streak of sparkling pinpoints.
Shadow walked slowly along, glancing up at the heavens periodically to marvel at its beauty. Behind him was Isaac, his face dead set and unflinching, his thoughts doubtless traveling a thousand miles an hour.
As the two of them approached the hill outside the city, Karen's yellow bug came into view. Upon seeing Shadow returning with a companion in tow, she sprang from the car, rushing towards them with such velocity that it surprised even the ebon speed demon.
She jumped at Isaac, wrapping her arms around him as tears filled her soft brown eyes. Shadow began to quietly walk away, but Kaigar spotted him and called out to him.
"How can I thank you, Shadow?" he smiled, the light of true joy shining in his eyes for the first time in a long time.
Shadow paused for a moment, his face a stony mask, before a slight smirk twisted the corner of his lips. "Never leave the one you love," he sighed before continuing to walk away.
Soon finding that the reunited couple left his favorite oak tree hilltop, Shadow happily returned there to turn in for the night. He sat leaning against the tree's withered trunk, his fingers relishing the feel of the grass and dirt. The deep night was incredibly peaceful, and he found himself drawn irresistibly to staring up in wonder and admiration at the canvas of light and darkness above him.
The full moon hung idly in the sky like a ripe, silvery fruit, the teasing illumination it provided gentle enough to let the night be deep and full, but bright enough to reflect brilliantly off Shadow's crimson irises.
Sighing in contentment, he sunk down to lay at the foot of the tree, the blades of grass both ticklish and incredibly soft against his back.
Suddenly, a streak of cobalt light flashed across the sky, catching his attention.
'Maria always said that if you see a shooting star and make a wish, it will come true,' he smiled slightly and dreamily as he remembered. 'What should I wish for?'
His thoughts were interrupted by a procession of more than a dozen blazing lights streaking out over the Earth, throwing off trails of myriad colors. The obsidian hedgehog's mouth hung open as countless falling stars filled his vision. The beauty of the midnight starfall reminded him of someone, and he made his wish.