Chapter 7: Training
The armoured train had made it out of Station Square before the nuclear explosion erased the city from existence. Without anyone left to rebuild, its name would fall into obscurity. Man-made weapons succeeded where Perfect Chaos failed.
Albeit Tails and Cream survived the tragic events that led to the city's downfall, they did not feel very lucky to get out alive. Their lives now rested in the enemy's hands and the enemy had zero tolerance for stowaways.
They were beaten beyond submission. The duo's captors wanted them alive; no more, no less. Punch after robotic punch, the assailants saw that they approached the thin line that separated the living from the dead and stayed there for a long-long time. Such was the payback for being a nuisance to both GUN and Eggman.
Tails couldn't complain. Being knocked out cold was the closest to a restful shuteye he got since he had left Mystic Ruins. The worst a bunch of robots could do was hold him hostage until one of their bosses showed up to gloat, a sure thing considering that he had a Chaos Emerald. Anyone with an innate sense or the right tools would be able to find him. A walk in the park compared to what the corrupted survivors would have done to him back in Station Square.
He should not have underestimated his captors. When he eventually woke up, he was treated to a display of scorching fire and blood, his own blood. There wasn't a spot of orange left on him. Tails' fur was matted with dirty red that gave off an all-too-familiar scent. Blinking was a chore and he may have coughed out a few teeth the moment he tried to breathe.
"Cream!"
The fox vomited ahead of making another sound. Cake had never tasted so foul in his mouth.
Of all the nastiness that he had experienced, this one was in a league of its own. Just as he thought about facing the cruel world burning out around him, he felt something that needled his spine with fear. A pat on the back.
Tails recoiled from the touch and put up his arms defensively. They were hard to hold high, as a pair of catheters attached to some surgical tubing was draining him.
"Feeling better, kid? Let's get moving."
He was ready to lash out thinking somebody was messing with his head once he recognised that voice. The firm grip stopping one of his lousy punches dispelled his doubts. A dark hedgehog emerged from the inferno. He beamed at Tails.
"Shadow…" Tails mumbled, still astonished by the encounter. He wouldn't have the guts to say more until Shadow removed the tubes attached to his arms and pulled him out of an egg-shaped metal container. It resembled the miniature prison eggs Tails had seen back at the train station.
Disturbing images of the chain of events that led him to his current predicament bombarded Tails. He stood there bleeding as he stared at Shadow.
"How did you-" Tails began, his voice trailing off.
The hedgehog pointed behind him at the railway carriage ripped wide open. A mushroom cloud stood tall in the distance. "You weren't exactly hard to find. Where's Sonic?"
Shame weighed Tails' muzzle down. "I don't know…"
"I thought I heard you say-"
Tails interrupted him, incensed to be reminded about his failings, "I lied, okay? I did what I had to do and–wait a minute–how do you know about that?"
Suspicions barrelled right back to stomp on the hopes he had foolishly permitted himself in such a short amount of time after being beaten in more ways than he could imagine. This hedgehog looked different. No inhibitor rings, a faint shimmer on his fur akin to that of a force field and a pool of blood beneath his bare feet. It was coming from underneath the stripes of red fur.
No, Shadow had no fur on those stripes, just a visceral imitation. That was where the blood seeped from.
The fox got a punch in the liver for the outburst. Shadow grabbed his bangs when he was about to curl up to accommodate the pain and kept Tails upright, forcing him to regurgitate again.
Shadow was unfazed by the phlegm. He wiped whatever gunk got on him and looked away to the dying flames that lined the remains of the railway carriage. The radioactive hellfire responsible for the destruction of Station Square would burn for days, enough for the wrong people to get involved.
"Thanks for the reminder…" he said bitterly in the end.
Tails knew he didn't mean the city. Shadow had little regard for such disasters; they coincided with Shadow's idea of how the world functioned. There was something else, something stuck deep enough inside the ultimate lifeform for him to react defensively.
After some thought alone, he approached Tails while pretending to continue his last sentence, "That I'm the one asking questions. Where is the Chaos Emerald?"
Tails scowled at the brute. He couldn't be sure the hedgehog in front of him was the real Shadow, not some replica. "How should I know? Your friends at GUN took it from me."
The next hit came with the gusto of a serial killer. Tails blacked out for a split second, unaware where the agony was going to strike him. He hated the minute delay between a physical shock and the pain response.
He cried, whacking his head against the floor as his back arched like a beached fish. His back. That son of a Chaos elbowed him in the back. Shadow could have crippled him, the jerk!
"I have no friends at GUN. Not anymore."
Tails surrendered the temptation to ask for more. He was in no shape to further agitate the ultimate lifeform. Still, the thirst ached him more than his stomach and his spine put together because this hedgehog knew, he obviously knew what had happened on Angel Island and he was ready to punish Tails for the slightest mention of the topic.
He was sorry. He wanted to say he was sorry. Sorry to hear Shadow got even lonelier. To know Shadow remained so conceited he couldn't see the suffering he forced onto the living to honour the dead. Beating Tails to a pulp wouldn't bring Omega back.
Letting it boil over was the right choice. Tails had been through a lot and he could only guess what put Shadow in his current state. The hedgehog's wounds remained open despite his innate healing abilities.
Shadow must have noticed Tails' stare. He gestured at himself with odd satisfaction. "You'd wish you were bleeding out on end if we don't find your Chaos Emerald soon."
Tails gulped. Shadow was like this because of his ultra-fast healing abilities, not despite of them. If anything, it meant he wouldn't attack him at random.
On second thought, Shadow had already attacked him for no good reason. It was just that he didn't intend to eat him like the others, a reassuring line in the sand between friend and enemy.
"What was it you said when I rescued you?" Shadow asked.
"That I lied?"
"Before that!"
Something rattled at the front of the railway carriage. It was a pod like the one Tails had been in, only bigger and coloured red. A piece of machinery that loosely resembled a tripod was supposed to hold the pod in place, but it was damaged during the crew's fight with Shadow. Pieces of GUN and Eggman robots lay at its legs.
"Cream!"
Tails ran to the pod. Cream floated inside, out cold behind a see-through panel. Tails felt the pod for any switch or release valve to break her free while Shadow merely observed.
"Don't tell me you got her into this mess…"
The fox huffed. Shadow could have helped a friend in need instead of heckling him. "Yes. I do that to my friends. It is a deplorable habit."
"Leave her be. She'll only slow us down."
"Yes, Shadow. I know, Shadow. But she is a friend, Shadow, and I do these things to my friends, Shadow."
Just as Tails started thinking the irony was lost on Shadow, the hedgehog pointed at him and said, "I won't stop her when she tries to kill one of us."
"That'd make us a short-lived affair."
Seeing Tails continue wasting time around the pod, Shadow approached the device and punched a hole in the see-through panel before pulling the entire thing apart. Thick green goo covered the floor as Cream fell limp inside her containment.
Shadow stood back to give Tails space, or so Tails thought. Getting the unconscious rabbit out was a tricky task. A mesh of tubing and wires held her attached, and it didn't stop at the limbs. Tails struggled to pull some of the bigger tubes out, which resulted in a bloody mess. The goo glowed when some of her blood dripped on it.
Once she opened her eyes, stilled by fear, and took her first conscious breath, Tails couldn't contain himself to hug her. Cream started hyperventilating and, before long, Tails found himself knocked down to the floor.
"Cheese! Cheese! Give him back!" she screamed as she held him pinned, taking stabs at his head. Tails struggled to dodge her hardened claws and seemed to agitate her more by not keeping still. "Give. Him. Back!"
"A person with a low Chaos Energy pool capacity can be stored in one of these pods indefinitely. Pacifying those of power involves…trade-offs," said Shadow before nonchalantly lifting Cream by the hide on her back. "Cheese is dead. You let him die. Live with it."
Having broken Cream this way, he dropped her to sulk, no longer a threat. Tails didn't know whether to thank him for making her stop or chastise him about the brutal way he did it. She had already gone through an unspeakable amount of abuse and Tails feared for her psyche further down the line.
"The drugs will wear off. I'd keep her on a leash until that happens."
"T-thank you, Mr Shadow. I deserve it," she said as she sat on her knees, weeping at his bare feet.
Shadow pushed her away. "No, kid. You're a burden that deserves to die." As he glared at Tails, who was obviously incensed by the display, he gritted his teeth and said, "Let's go."
"Cut it out, Shadow! She's just a little girl!"
"She's a monster, like the rest of them, and it is your fault," Shadow replied, approaching Tails.
"My fault!? How can you-"
"Should have given her the emerald."
Shadow didn't have to hit Tails for him to fall. He was right. Had the Chaos Emerald stayed with Cream, her body and mind would have been free of corruption that had taken over Station Square. Tails acted selfishly, but it didn't hurt as much as having his mistake yanked out for everyone to see. Cream remained silent. Albeit she had a kind heart, Tails was sure she'd remember this.
"Get up. We don't have much time."
"We? Cream and I have all the time in the world where we're going!" Tails gasped at what came out of his mouth. He intended to neither say nor think it and he had failed to control himself. Perhaps his own time was approaching its end.
"Done?" the hedgehog asked.
All Tails found himself able to do was nod.
"Good."
Shadow threw a punch at the door and, to everyone's surprise, his arm went through it as if he were a ghost. Before long, his fur started losing colour and the hedgehog vanished into thin air.
His disappearance frightened Cream more than his presence. Without his help, they'd still be imprisoned. As she was about to speak, Tails found the switch that opened the door. The armoured train wasn't on lockdown despite their intrusion. Those in charge of running the train were either exceptionally confident or stupid.
Upon entering the next wagon, Tails and Cream merely stared at each other because they saw Shadow materialise at the other end and bust the door down.
He looked upset, even more so than usual. Tails took it as a sign they should pick up the pace. There was more wrong with Shadow than he wanted them to believe.
Tails stopped midway. The carriage was full of pods, a few of which were red. It was impossible to tell whether these were the remaining denizens of Station Square or prisoners hauled off from other parts of the world. Tails intended to use the train as a means of escape, but what was its destination and who stood at its helm?
One answer came to him when he saw the sky go dark as he moved on to the next wagon. The train entered some sort of tunnel, the owner of which had a penchant for garish smiling logos on the walls and railways going above bottomless pits. This wasn't a new facility.
Shadow met their tardiness with more animosity, "Ignore my advice again and I'll show you where you're going. Go on, fox, I dare you."
Tails didn't have the chance to refute Shadow. Another voice did that in his stead.
"Why don't we take a break and settle our differences, Shadow?"
It was Vanilla.
The hedgehog warped in front of Tails and Cream, now standing between them and Vanilla. "You're dead, I'm not. What is there to settle?" He gave Tails the nastiest glare, seeing that the fox didn't get the memo the first time. "Scram!"
Vanilla saw them off with a distorted cackle. The way she could switch back and forth to her usual tone gave Tails the creeps.
After the door to the wagon closed, he risked ticking Shadow off further by lingering behind it in hopes of learning what was going on between those two. Vanilla, or the creature that assumed her identity, had encountered Shadow before if she behaved so casually around him.
The things he heard through the door didn't make much sense, but he listened until the battle became too heated to stay nearby.
"She's eating me inside and I barely knew her. I can't imagine what it must feel like for you," Vanilla said. A metallic crunch followed. "Was it worth throwing me out the window?"
Cream gently pulled on Tails' arm. She was yet to learn how to use her claws properly. "Maybe we should go like Mr Shadow suggested…"
Tails jumped, and so did Cream. Only she thought it was because she hurt him by accident and started apologising. Tails didn't listen. His focus was bad enough for him to hit the wrong button trying to open the next door.
In his mind, he visualised himself hitting the right button. Out in the real world, he saw the result of his folly: the railroad carriage with Shadow and Vanilla in it detached from the rest of the train.
This should have relieved him, but it didn't. Tails rushed forward, ignoring whatever stood in his way, be it hundreds upon hundreds of capsules with people inside them, explosive crates or the severe lack of opposition. He wouldn't stop until he had lost count of how many wagons they had been through and bumped into one that looked different from the rest. They made it to the front of the train.
A distant explosion rattled everything inside the tunnel. A high-pitched scream followed.
It was a load off his back. Looking at Cream, she was less sure about that. Nonetheless, Tails believed she would eventually understand his reaction. Right now they had a more pressing matter at hand: retrieving the Chaos Emerald.
Tails could feel it. "We're almost there, Cream. It's time to be brave."
She nodded timidly. It was as good as it could get.
They used a different approach to enter this carriage. Rather than open the door in a civilised fashion, they spindashed through it. The train operator, a caped figure with a large striped engineer cap, stood dead ahead with their back turned.
"Metal Sonic, I presume."
The robotic hedgehog replied, "Tickets. I want to see your tickets."
"Nope, sorry, forgot my wallet at home."
"Then you will pay with your lives!" Metal turned around with an arm cannon shot aimed squarely at Tails.
He dodged it without breaking a sweat. When Metal fired a whole volley at Cream, she manoeuvred the shots and even managed to bounce one back at Metal. His cape caught fire and he had to take it off without the fanfare from his Neo Metal Sonic days.
"What's the matter, Metal? Can't take on a pair of kids?" Tails teased.
Metal eyed the two carefully and snapped his fingers. Two dozen robots crashed through the roof, encircling Tails and Cream. Egg Hammers, Hunters, Egg Pawns – all alert and heavily armed. It would be difficult to fight them off in close quarters.
The robotic hedgehog walked up to them, too close for comfort, "Come again?"
Tails noted the distinctive arrogance in Metal's tone and a GUN badge on his chest. Rouge T. Bat, the badge read.