Stage 2: Lethal Highway

By the time I caught up to Shadow, we were out by the highway, Freeway 48. It had one of the highest accident rates in the world for a while, before they added a bunch of extra lanes and before everybody moved out of Westopolis, so the locals called it Lethal Highway. The part of it we got to ran along a huge stretch of abandoned buildings… If it weren't for the aliens I think it would have been pretty to see. Old, abandoned buildings made outa bricks, with different colors of bricks fillin' up the windows… There were rusty fire escapes working their way down the sides of some of 'em. Half-faded logos of old factories stared down the highway, although some of 'em were hard to see next to the bright billboards people had put up. Most people travelled that stretch of town to get to a swankier satellite city; when I was in the neighborhood I usually went out there to sprint because the road is nice and straight, and nobody drives in Westopolis at night.

Or at least, that's how it had been.

Not that night. No. Half the lights were out in the city, so you could almost see the stars. I take it the lights were out because everything was trashed. The pavement was cracking from the force of tanks. Overpasses were collapsed everywhere, blocking huge sections of the road. There wasn't a soul in sight who wasn't in uniform, which is kinda a relief and not a total surprise, given the city's reputation. There was a strange rumbling sound creeping up through everything, instead of the usual car horns and gunshots.

"Shadow, wait up!" I called, running up to him.

He was tinkering with a beat up old motorcycle with some Chun-nan brand across the side, revving its engine. "Look at this, Sonic! It was just sitting there, keys in."

"It's not yours. Will you help me stop the aliens?"

"There are a bunch of little blobs that bite… I think I can run them over with this."

I could feel my eyes widening. "Shad… they're probably kids."

"They tried to eat my shoes," he whined.

"So… smack 'em?"

"So they can eat my hands?"

Do you see why you remind me of him, Chip? In some ways, you're like what he would be if he were nice and had a conscience.

I started to shout at him, but suddenly he lunged off the bike, at me. Before I could react, he gripped my hand and jerked it down, throwing me face-first onto the ground. I was just about to hop up and kick him when I felt a tingly feeling over my legs. That rumbling, bubbling noise was close, and something was catching on my spines, bending them a little as it passed. They twanged uncomfortably as they snapped back into place, and I let out a little moan of pain. I lifted my head and saw it pass over me, floating… It was strange, shaped almost like that freaky alien guy's head, with a central ball and plane-like wings sticking off it… but it was a gray-blue color, not like the other aliens. It seemed… innocent, somehow. It didn't seem as menacing as everything else, like it was just trying to get away.

Shadow growled behind me, and I could hear gunshots ring out as I saw something whiz over my head. Instead of hitting the floating thing, though, the area around it lit up with this crazy blue light. It was the most beautiful blue light I'd ever seen… it was like what would happen if you took my spines in the daytime and found a way to run light through them like they were water.

A floating tank with a shield.

It plowed into a contingent of soldiers, somehow able to get behind them as easily as it had behind me. It didn't stop, it didn't slow… a few of the soldiers fell right off an overpass. I jumped into action.

Now, I don't know if you know much, but you know I can break the sound barrier. Still, that assumes that I'm starting from standing and I have to take a certain amount of time to accelerate. Plus, I can't fly. I would have to run down a slope to catch someone falling unless I wanted to go splat too. The rate things fall at is just about three floors of a building per second. I fall at the same rate as anybody else… and I was at least that far away.

By the time I got to the edge, I couldn't even bring myself to look down it.

I don't know how long I stood there, just staring at that tank as it drove away, trying not to think about how badly hurt those guys were. Trying not to think about how I failed.

I heard the purr of a motorcycle as one pulled up next to me. I could hear Shadow step off, but I couldn't move. Something about this whole situation was too familiar to me, too wrong. I couldn't place why. I couldn't look down. I was afraid of water, not heights.

Then came a voice from below. "Hey, that's my bike!"

"It's mine now."

"That's not fair."

"I could put you back where you were before I chaos controlled you to safety."

Chaos control is this neat little trick Shadow can do. Warp time and space, appear and disappear places. It's similar to what I do when I boost or quick step, but a lot more complicated. Apparently he had used chaos control to take them from the top of the overpass safely to the ground.

Finally I looked down. The soldiers who fell were standing there, holding the body parts the tank had hit, unharmed. One of them was shaking his fist angrily at Shadow.

"You win this time, hedgehog!"

"You can take it back when I'm done with it. Why don't you jack one of those convertibles along the way," He cooed helpfully, "That's more your speed, I'm sure."

I just watched his face curl up with anger, disgust, helplessness. I couldn't see much under that helmet, but his lips were enough. It seemed like such a little thing, to take away someone's bike after stranding them somewhere. Shadow was a bully for sure, but something about seeing that look on a man in uniform made me think of something…

Then something hit me across the face.

"The hell is wrong with you, Sonic?" Shadow snarled. For a second, all I could see was his white glove near my face, open-handed. Of course. I'd zoned out, and he'd hit me. Not like me to drift off like that, but I thought I'd failed and those people had died. I don't do well with failure.

"I thought I was too late." I shook my head, looking into his cold, red eyes. "Shadow, we've got to stop that tank thing. It could kill more people. It might even be on autopilot…"

"I think aliens that are actually trying to shoot people are more important, Sonic."

I growled, trying to think of a way to make my idea make sense to Shadow. I mean yeah, the aliens were actively trying to hurt people, but they also went down with about two shots from Shadow's gun, or two smacks from my spines. This tank must have taken a bunch of fire from Shadow and some soldiers, and there wasn't even a scratch on it. If it drove into a place with civilians… Or even agents who weren't ready for it…

Rouge.

"What if it goes to Central City? I'm sure Rouge is on assignment there," I erupted.

He sighs. "Fine, we'll stop your damn tank. But keep up with me, will you?"

We took off after it, Shadow shooting at it with guns, occasionally stopping to rob an army vehicle here and then. When we went under one of the few surviving overpasses, though, a bunch of aliens jumped out at us. Some of them were the black soldiers, with claws and the weird knees, but there were a couple new things this time. I saw the flying ones first, giant winged things, bigger than us, who launched some kind of energy beam at us. When I rolled to dodge that, I felt something warm stick itself to my leg as I hit the ground. Before I could react, as I finally got to my feet, this terrible burning started. I shouted and smacked at my rear end with my hands. After a moment, a little red blob fell off me onto the ground. It hit with a splat and scooted away.

By the time I was done dealing with that, one of the bird like things screamed and collapsed over a burning car.

"You take care of the blobs! I got the fliers," Shadow ordered.

I didn't have the heart to stomp all of 'em, they were so cute. Little red blobs crowding around me, looking at me with these big, yellow eyes. Three little antennae stuck out of the area around their eyes, and they quivered with each scoot toward my feet. I started sliding the toe of my shoe underneath 'em and flippin' em upside down onto their eye, one by one; none of 'em could seem to right themselves. After a minute, though, there were just too many. One of them managed to get ahold of the side of my foot, and as I flipped his buddy, he started working his way toward my leg. I reached down to get him off with my finger, but another one grabbed my glove. One snuck up behind me… then the burning started. I could feel the bites, burning like acid in Eggman's factories, maybe it WAS acid for all I knew, as they began to advance up my legs, up my arm, what if they got to my eye, oh my god how did he chaos control again, get off my chest, what are you doing, get away from my face….

I felt the edge of a sticky underside grip my chin and pull. Then there was a burning pain all over me, all at once. By the time the pain cleared… by the time my eyes started to focus again… Shadow was standing there, looking down at me. My arms and legs, my chest still burned a little, but it wasn't getting worse.

"You're an idiot, Sonic!"

"What did you do?" I asked, holding my hand out. He gripped it and yanked me to my feet.

"I don't know. I was able to release some kind of energy. It worked. Now quit being an idiot and kill the damn things!"

I looked around. "Not if I don't have to. We have to catch up to that flying tank thing."

"If you insist."

I took the lead this time, running ahead of him, dodging anything we ran across. Somehow, even though he was clinging to that stupid motorcycle, we still managed to catch up to it as it curved along an entrance ramp. He opened fire on it again, lighting what felt like half the city up with blue fire. As he ran out of ammo, I leapt up and jumped into it, trying to carve a hole in the shield with my spines. It felt tingly, but I was able to home in on it over and over again, running after and jumping into it. The shield suddenly turned green and it veered right off the overpass, flying through the air as I leapt into it. I careened into the guard rail and went over it, catching myself with one hand as it flew away.

"It s heading toward the river!" I shouted, looking back to see where he was. He was… still back where we were when we spotted it, gunning down slugs.

"Shadow!" I roared, louder, "It's heading toward the river! If the bridge is down no one will be able to stop it from getting to Central!"

He hopped back on the bike and drove after me, at a snail's pace.

It was almost ten minutes before we saw it again, with few interruptions from aliens or soldiers aside from the occasional patch of hungry little blobs. Sure enough, as I thought, it was near the waterfront, where all the streets were straight .

"Shadow, get off the bike and run!"

I burned toward it, pushing my legs as fast as I could go. He was able to fire a few shots off before I could almost hear the empty click of his gun, but the shield still stood. I took a leap into the air and drove myself into it, and I heard a terrible shattering noise like glass as the shield seemed to dissipate. I landed to get a good jump on it, to finally leave some damage on it…

And then water was in my socks, on my belly, in my noise, my eyes, my ears.

I leaped out of the water, trying to see where it was going, but by the time I surfaced it was already on the other side of the river. I waded back to shore, wringing out my gloves. Shadow came up to me and started so speak, but I glared at him, and he stopped.

"Damn," I spat, "they got away!"

"Maybe if you hadn't-"

I started to yell at him for tinkering with the bike, for messing with the soldiers… but the fact was that I had made mistakes too. His mistake may have protected him from a fate I almost suffered. I was long past the point in my life where I need to point the finger at other people for mistakes I made.

"There's no time for that." I shook my shoes out. "I'm going to find the bridge and go after it. You can do whatever you want."

I ran off, looking into the distance, hoping the bridge into Glyphic Canyon was still up. It took me a while, but I caught the tank, and it crumbled to the ground after one more hit. After that, I tried to limp out of the city, into the canyon, but I blacked out before I got there.

Author's Note: I had to edit this a little to clean it up a bit. FFnet's guidelines are a bit more stringent than dA's.