Chapter 10: Fiend or Foe
The data did not make sense. At the time of the explosion on Angel Island, Chaos radiation outside decreased and had stayed on that level until very recently. Eggman expected the radiation readings to exceed their previous peak in less than two days.
"48 hours. Is that why Metal…" Tails mumbled to himself. It wasn't just him who was running against the clock. The tide of Chaos was coming and it would leave no one behind.
Tails shuddered as he sifted through Eggman's records. Angel Island stood in the epicentre of the initial Chaos outbreak. Station Square was the first urban sprawl in its path and took the heaviest hit. It collapsed into disorder too early to last till the minute relief brought by the explosion.
Eggman's sensor network revealed a more worrying trend: Chaos changed the moment Angel Island fell. Rather than bubble up in an area and spread outward, it began evenly saturating the entire planet. Some locations were affected later than others, but the delay measured less than a tenth of a second.
What kind of emitter could send this much energy at a speed close to the speed of light? Even a weapon as powerful as the Eclipse Cannon would have failed to produce this result. Its pulse would have either hit the planet at a specific point or diluted the impact by widening the area of effect. Neither would have lasted longer than a few seconds.
Tails looked up at the crimson dome protecting the underground outpost. It was all that stood between the outright poisonous concentration of Chaos energy outside and his sanity. He bit his lip at what he was about to do.
The dome generator managed to keep most of the Chaos out and Tails suspected he knew how it accomplished that. A dent with a smudge of yellow paint on the machine's maintenance button confirmed his suspicions. Metal Sonic had been in the tower and if there was any truth to his words, he would find his Chaos Emerald at the generator's core.
"Do you want to die?"
Shadow's disembodied voice couldn't hurt Tails, so the question was moot as far as he was concerned.
With the generator's core exposed, shock spilled over Tails' muzzle. It was a Chaos Emerald, like he had predicted, but it wasn't of the same colour as the one taken from him.
Tails looked at the depleted artificial emerald in his hand to make sure. They were different, which meant that another Chaos Emerald had somehow reached Eggman's outpost despite the dome operating at full capacity.
Not that it mattered. Tails grabbed the Chaos Emerald and quickly replaced it with the artificial one. The dome blinked prior to accepting the new gem. To an untrained eye, the outpost's protective layer was just as dangerous as before. It couldn't fool Chaos energy, though. Chaos poured inside and it was a matter of time until the outpost became contaminated like the rest of the planet.
The Chaos Emerald in Tails' hand gave him courage, but it didn't last. He spotted a pool of fresh blood with the corner of his eye. A black hedgehog was standing in it. Shadow finally decided to show his face.
A siren blared outside as the hedgehog approached Tails.
"INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT."
Shadow clenched his fists. "I'll take your answer as a yes."
"Go ahead," Tails sneered. "I know what you did to those poor people in Station Square. I saw what you did to Vanilla. This is your fault."
The anger in Tails' tone could barely cover the fear in his eyes as they met Shadow's cold stare. If Shadow wanted to, he could have taken Tails' life and no quantity of Chaos Emeralds would have stopped him. As much as Tails wanted to make it seem otherwise, he still had something he didn't want to lose. This bond prevented him from running or lashing out. Shadow, on the other hand, had the air of someone no longer attached to this world.
Shadow glared at Tails, disgusted by his inability to look past the surface, and smacked the fox with his own hand, the one holding the emerald. The gem's sharp edge made an ugly bruise on Tails' cheek. It hurt a lot more than a regular slap would have.
"I was saving them."
Astonishment gave way to blind rage as Tails pointed at Shadow accusingly. "You murdered them!"
Tails had thrown caution to the wind and was prepared to fight, if only to show Shadow he had no right to cull the inhabitants of Station Square, regardless of his reasoning.
The fight came to Tails in a flash. It glazed over his senses, so he saw himself in several places at once: thumped into the floor, crashing against Eggman's equipment and plastered to a wall. Lacking his tails to cushion the blows, Tails held on to the Chaos Emerald in hope it would prevent his body from falling apart while Shadow showed no restraint. Hit after devastating hit, Shadow had Tails soak up the punishment.
It was a massacre. Tails didn't have the chance to defend himself or even react. Shadow delivered the blows in a way that sent Tails' pain response haywire, keeping him conscious beyond breaking point. Desperate, Tails tried to get rid of the emerald in case its healing effects were responsible for him continuing to feel pain, but found the gem's sharp edge impaled in his palm.
Tails wanted to scream at what he saw, felt and heard. His bones breaking, his brilliant mind abandoning him. All the while, Shadow used every opportunity to strike more fear, inflict more pain until the truth was irreversibly ingrained in every broken fibre of Tails' being.
His opponent lay bleeding out on the floor, but Shadow was not done. He turned his attention to the tower's key component: the dome generator. The massive device projected a beam of crimson energy to the top of the cavern for it to spread a protective layer around the outpost. If touching the dome at surface level was enough to repel most intrusions, the dome's power concentrated at the projection point was bound to suit his needs.
Shadow held the fox up against the energy spike shooting up from the generator. The gentle humming noise contrasted with everything else Tails felt. There was also a new sensation: heat. Even though the dome was aided by a depleted artificial Chaos Emerald, its power at the focal point had the potency to put an unruly fox out of his misery.
"I was saving them," Shadow reiterated, slowly uttering every word to let the message sink in to what remained of Tails. "I won't save you."
The hedgehog marvelled at the result, a fox puppet whose life hung by a thread. He lifted the fox in front of himself, a line of fire slicing through the fur on Tails' back once it came to touch the rising beam. The emerald drenched in blood coming out of Tails' hand glistened in the flames as did a spot on Tails' chest.
Hidden between patches of dirty chest fur was a badge, a GUN badge. The thorough treatment Tails had received damaged it, but the markings were discernible: Rouge T. Bat, Team Dark.
Echoes and blurred images had taken over Tails, so he didn't register Shadow's reaction. In the back of his head, he expected to be flayed, torn to pieces or worse. He was unlikely to live long enough to find out, though. With his backside on fire and the hedgehog about to thrust him into oblivion, there was not enough room in his body to acknowledge more pain.
If his faculties hadn't been taken from him, Tails would have smiled at the irony because he had come to terms with surrendering whatever he had to lose. Shadow, on the other hand, exposed himself through his rage. Having lost his teammates, the hedgehog held on to one thing and one thing alone – regret.
Release enveloped Tails in its shroud, scattering his senses and purging his mind. Tails embraced the thought of being no more. He longed for numbness to take hold and stave off the cascading pain. It was a fair trade.
When the suffering returned in full swing, Tails became restless. Those stories of afterlife couldn't have been true. He was expecting nothingness, not more of this. He did not deserve it. Tails wept and felt the saline moisture pour over a painful gash. He opened his eyes, gasping at what he saw.
The tower. He was still inside the tower. Alive, not dead. And no Shadow around.
Tails sat up, or tried to. His head felt like a fishbowl someone was stirring. How long was he out cold? What happened to Shadow?
Booms of a distant battle rang in his ears. He could have been hallucinating in his current state because it hurt when he tried to cover them. That was when he glanced at his palm and saw something not supposed to be there.
"The Chaos Emerald…"
It got lodged deep in his palm and was now sticking out on both sides. Tails tried to get it out, lest the damage would become permanent, and realised that his hand had fully healed. The clean fur that had grown over the skin around the gem made it difficult and quite painful to remove.
Tails eyed his hand carefully as an idea sprang in his head. If this was the emerald's way of suggesting him not to dispose of it, Tails was going to be discrete about it. He found a piece of cloth near Eggman's machinery and wrapped it around his hand like a bandage. Clarity had returned to him and it was high time the fox peered outside to find the source of the noise.
Eggman's sensors registering an influx of Chaos throughout the outpost boded evil, only he did not expect it to be so familiar.
"Vanilla!"
The corrupted rabbit was fighting Eggman's robots on her own near the tower. She was holding out well, considering the growing pile of broken bots around her. They swarmed her relentlessly and it looked like Eggman's patience with the tenacious intruder was running thin: the giant robotic spider that had nearly incinerated Tails was stomping her way.
Fight as she might, she was pinned and unable to escape anywhere a round of bullets would not have been waiting for her. Tails gawked at the action below, wondering why Eggman hadn't stormed the tower yet. Was she the only intruder the sirens had warned about?
Eggman's focus on taking her down played into Tails' hands. With luck, Eggman didn't know the dome was reduced to a light show that would fail to fend off a meaningful threat. The window of opportunity was decreasing, though; Eggman was bound to learn that something went wrong from the rising level of Chaos contamination inside the dome.
The man himself was absent from the scene. Tails found it strange since Eggman preferred to deliver the coup de grâce in person. This time he delegated the task to an Egg Pawn piloting the spider robot. Tails attributed it to Eggman's recklessness. He would have never guessed the man felt rightfully confident to send the simplest of drones to handle an opponent that had put Tails in a difficult situation on several occasions.
Rather than pepper Vanilla with bullets that had little effect besides slowing her down, the spider robot fired wire projectiles at her and sent a powerful electric current once they sank in her flesh.
Vanilla cried out loudly enough for Tails to hear her high inside the tower. Her shrieking continued until her lungs ran out of air, only to break out again the moment the spider robot ramped up the power surge. She couldn't pull out all the wires, as the spider robot spat out more the moment she ripped one out.
Other robots stopped attacking. They stood there and watched the rabbit contort to electricity generated by the other survivors from Station Square, imprisoned in pods on the spider's abdomen. Eggman designed a needlessly grotesque method to dispose of an annoyance. Vanilla's hyperthrofied endurance kept her animated while the current slowly cooked her alive.
She deserved to die. She deserved to stop being a monstrous caricature enslaved by an alien hunger, but not like this. Vanilla did not choose to become a monster; it was a fate forced upon her by the likes of Shadow.
Tails was going to undo Shadow's mistake. Otherwise, he wouldn't bear to look Cream in the eyes.
He broke out of the tower through the window and spindashed along its height before leaping off close to ground level. The emerald stuck in his hand helped him reach incredible speed, so not even a high-speed security camera would record more than a passing trail of orange.
When he reached Vanilla, she was a miserable sight, having been disfigured further by the discharges, some of which went straight through her face.
She noticed him in the fraction of a second that he stopped by between her and the giant robot. The look in her eyes was that of relief, albeit he did not come to offer her any. He was not going to fight on her side.
It was too late for her to realise that. Once Tails thrust his emerald-imbued hand forward, the burning sensation in her chest dwarfed everything the spider robot had thrown at her. The glimmer of sanity Tails had witnessed in her dissipated completely and the monster that had taken over Vanilla's body followed suit.
There were no witnesses. The robots recorded but a flash of light that ate through the rabbit's chest. Her corpse fell limp to the ground and failed to respond to any amount of shock.
Tails would make sure Eggman paid the price for making him do this.
His speed carried him through the spider robot's open hangar into Eggman's compound. Maniacal laughter echoed in the hallways leading up to the man's laboratory; the robots standing guard fell sooner than they registered Tails' sonic boom. He found Eggman boasting in the safety of his lab about defeating Vanilla once and for all. Eggman's pomp filled Tails with determination to expose his delusions of grandeur.
Tails felt the door leading to the lab. Cold bulletproof steel, a sack of hot air blowing hard hiding behind it.
"My enemies are falling like flies, wouldn't you say, Omega? Once I get Sonic out of the way, I'll be finally able to-"
The steel curled like cheap tin when Tails spindashed through it. Eggman paused, his arms still raised excitedly from what he had wanted to say. He gawked at the intruder in apparent disbelief.
"Surrender, Eggman."
"Tails? Impossible! Guards!"
A round Egg Pawn shell rolled through the entrance. The damaged door sparked as it failed to open fully, but it was enough for Eggman to realise that Tails had reduced his entourage to fresh scrap.
"Checkmate. It's game over, for you."
Tails took a breath to calm down, his heart pounding from how close he was to apprehending the villain. After everything that had happened to him, he was destined to best Sonic. He walked confidently towards the panicking doctor.
"Why, Tails, what happened to good sportsmanship? This is an illegal move!" Eggman looked around in hopes of finding reinforcements. There were none; most of his forces were by the dome generator's tower. His grin had turned into an angry grimace.
Eggman stepped back in a pathetic attempt to get away from Tails and fell down. He put his arm out in front of his face and said, "You can't call checkmate unless you've actually cornered the king."
Tails had little appreciation for the theatrics. His hand swished for a grab and went right through Eggman, distorting his image. A chill ran down Tails' spine. The Eggman in front of him was a fake. Looking around, Tails located equipment used to make the 3D projection.
"A hologram!"
"And the game goes on!"
Eggman's laughing face appeared on the many monitors in the lab. The whole room seemed to shake from the echoing noise.
"Wuahahaha. You may have trumped my bots, but you will watch in despair as I break Omega's resistance and implant his AI into a willing host. Thank you for pacifying her for me."
Two screens at the far end of the lab showed different images. One of them had an Egg Pawn carrying Vanilla's body. The other had a distorted rendering of Omega. That one had a terminal with Omega's chip plugged in. A lot of other equipment was connected to it. Tails recognised cooling tubes, a dedicated power supply and a workstation.
"You won't get away with this."
"No, you meddling mutated mutt. You won't get away."
The tremors intensified, leading to some beakers crashing in the background. Tails wished it was an earthquake.
"WARNING! BUFFER OVERFLOW! USER ERROR! ERROR!" Omega sounded off through a tiny workstation speaker.
Tails smashed the screen that pictured Vanilla. He couldn't stop Eggman from defiling her, but he could save Omega. Tails went to remove the memory chip from its slot and got blasted to the ceiling by the power discharge.
If that was how Eggman intended to play, Tails would take no prisoners. He smashed through every piece of equipment other than the main terminal to isolate it. When he had just one screen to work with, Tails let his computer prowess loose.
"Stop it! This is valuable property! Don't touch those buttons!" Eggman was obviously aware of what was going on. The sound of incessant typing and Tails' lingering smile hinted that he was close to upending the villain's plan.
"Heh, you should have gone further with the hologram gimmick. You never think more than one step ahead." He reviewed the code one last time and nodded to himself, satisfied with the result. "And done."
With a click of a button, Omega's rendering on the screen normalised. As emotionless as robots went, it was easy to tell this one had an active gratitude subroutine.
"MILES PROWER."
Omega spoke his name in a slow, almost timid fashion. The robot seemed confused by the sight of the tailless fox at first, but ended up showing a thumbs up.
Tails leaned against the terminal. He suppressed a laugh, disbelief catching on to him. Finally, he could talk to someone reasonable about the events that transpired on Angel Island. "You won't believe how glad I am to see you…"
"NEGATIVE."
He chortled. Tails couldn't tell whether it was pent up stress or just appreciation of unintended robot humour. Omega waited for him to continue and Tails couldn't begin to list the questions swirling in his head.
The shaking reached its climax, followed by a loud crash. Eggman forced himself into the lab piloting the giant spider robot. He had destroyed half of the building compound to reach Tails and looked particularly incensed about it.
"Trapped like a rat to die like a fly." The spider robot's legs hinged underneath the lab's ceiling and peeled it off before chucking the concrete slab away into the distance.
Tails gulped at the blatant overkill. The robot didn't seem as big the first time he had seen it. Was this the sort of machine Eggman reserved for the final battle with Sonic?
"Give me Omega's chip and I'll make this quick."
Omega disappeared from the screen as Tails powered down the terminal and removed the chip. He glanced at the killer robot in front of him before turning his attention back to Omega. Eggman made a huge effort to recover the chip, a notion all too familiar to Tails. It was time for Eggman to familiarise himself with something else Tails learned to cope with – loss.
Tails broke the Omega chip in half.
"I've got all the time in the world."