"On your right, Faker!"
Shadow didn't even have time to shoot back a snarl, stopping so fast that he nearly gave himself whiplash and shooting back the way he came as a laser carved a path in the ground where his feet would have been. He roundhouse kicked a badnik's head off its shoulders in the same breath, eyes razor-focused on the large UFO-like vehicle floating just above them, crackling with energy just on the verge of overtaking it.
Any other day and Shadow would have been more annoyed with the doctor's usual antics than anything, sent straight to Station Square by G.U.N. when the volley of attacks began, but the madman had somehow managed to acquire six of the seven chaos emeralds, dazzling in their little see-through chambers surrounding the robot's cockpit. They should have known, in all honesty, that something like this was going to happen with how quiet he'd been lately, choosing to operate under the radar for the time being. It almost seemed against his nature to be so cautious.
The alarm bells only went off when the master emerald was taken, the echidna guardian just returning from some kind of excursion only to find that the place he'd hidden it was empty. Shadow was sure the poor fool was beating himself up over it and that he'd hear a tirade from Rouge about how stingy he would probably be with it for a while after in the future.
The incoming light show pulled him out of his thoughts, a barrage of lasers and bullets barreling towards them at speeds that the average person wouldn't even be able to follow. The attacks tore through buildings, leaving dust and debris falling from the sides and fogging up the battlefield. Shadow coughed, waving at the dust swirling in the air and irritating his eyes. In the dust, he could make out figures, some running from the chaos and others running towards it. He caught glimpses of colors, pulling people, both humans and mobians, out of the wreckage and leading them to the closest thing to safety they could find.
Besides the heavy rain of bullets and lasers, the UFO robot was fast, powered by both most of the chaos emeralds and the master emerald, the larger gem buried somewhere deeper in the bot. To the average fighter, it seemed to blip in and out of existence, phasing from one side of the battlefield to the other in the blink of an eye. If Shadow was a lesser being, he might have thought that Eggman had somehow figured out how to artificially induce chaos control.
Red and Pink flashed in his vision as the echidna and Rose tore through attacking robots like they were nothing, the former running on pure rage at his lack of foresight. In a flash, they were all overtaken by blue, a blur bouncing off of badniks in a mad dash towards the UFO that had the doctor flailing in his cockpit. A laser grazed his side as Sonic barely managed to grab onto the bot, staring Eggman down with a cocky grin.
"You know, we've been doing this back and forth with new plots and new bots for a long time now, and I gotta say with this one. Originality? Lacking."
Eggman growled. "Shut up, rodent! You're barely keeping up! My Egg Saucer will be your undoing!"
"Ha! Saucer? Really?"
"Gah! You won't be laughing for long, you annoying pest!"
Eggman's bot is already moving, spinning like a merry-go-round from Hell as Sonic gripped onto what he could for dear life. Shadow saw his chance, skating past and through badniks and leaping into the air with a warcry.
"Chaos spear!"
The bolt crashed into the saucer, the opening cracking with uncontained chaos energy. Eggman had the nerve to panic as the glass containing one of the emeralds cracked, spiderwebs encircling the encasing. The blast of lasers forced Shadow back, but he didn't miss the excited smile on Sonic's face.
"That's quite an oversight there, doctor!" he laughed haughtily, leaping into the air and coming down on the damaged encasing with a heavy axe kick.
The container shattered, Eggman shouting as the emerald flew out of the machine and into the sea of robots. Shadow dove after it, snatching it up before one of the bots could grab it while Sonic was finally flung off the saucer, rolling through the robotic army and coming to a smooth stop just by his friends.
Rose gasped. "Sonic, you're bleeding!" she cried, her hammer pounding a robot into scrap metal.
And she wasn't wrong, the spot where the laser had grazed him bleeding sluggishly. Sonic waved her off. "It's nothing. Don't worry about me."
She frowned, looking him over, then shook her head. "You better promise you'll get it checked out when this is all over!" she huffed, diving back into the fray with the echidna by her side. Sonic sighed, a fond smile on his face.
"She's right, you know." Shadow pointed out. "It could get infected."
"Aww, Shads, I didn't know you cared!"
Shadow's eye twitched. "I was merely stating the obvious." he grounded out. "Where is the seventh chaos emerald?"
"Safe." Sonic assured him. "Tails has it."
"And he is...?"
"Evacuating." said Sonic, pride shining in his eyes. "Everything's under cont-"
"Cream?!"
Rose's shout pulled both of their attention towards the distant crowd, Sonic's eyes widening at the sight. Shadow wasn't sure why the little rabbit girl and her mother were here, though the forgotten shopping bag was an obvious hint as the mother turned and tried to run for her child.
The little girl had tripped on overturned rubble, scrapes littering her body as she tried to pull herself up. Her chao was yanking at her arm, trying to drag her along in their rush for escape. The crowd had since moved on as the hysterical mother struggled through the debris, practically swimming upstream to get through the throngs of panicked people. There was a familiar shout of alarm as the fox boy appeared, reaching for the mother in an attempt to go after the girl himself, and Shadow saw the countdown to catastrophe before it even happened.
"That idiot!" Shadow hissed, prepared to rush the fox before he got their only other chaos emerald nabbed, when a flash of blue shot past him so fast that it nearly knocked him over.
The average person wouldn't have been able to follow what happened, one moment to another tangling up and tripping over itself in a snowball effect into disaster. Even the most trained eye would miss it, overtaken by confusion and panic over what was essentially less than a second.
Unfortunately, Shadow is the ultimate lifeform. Thus, he witnessed everything.
He didn't turn in time to see the origin of the laser, much smaller than the others that had been firing at them all day. In comparison, it was minuscule, but its power was no less diminished by its size. The rabbit girl didn't even know what hit her, a blue blur knocking her to the side with the delicacy of a bullet train. She squeaked, knocked to her side, leaving much deeper scrapes that flowed with familiar red.
And Sonic staggered.
Shadow didn't see the girl's face as her mother rushed up to her, pulling her into a tight hug, but he did see the fox's, blank with dread as he hovered, frozen. Hysteric laughter pierced the air in a way that made Shadow's skin crawl, a madman losing his breath as he cackled, but he didn't pay it much mind as the fox suddenly moved, rushing to Sonic's side as his hand, hovering over his chest, dropped to his side.
The fox didn't make it in time to catch him as he bonelessly collapsed to the ground.
"SONIC!"
The young fox boy rushed to his side as his scream caught the attention of Rose and the echidna. Shadow stared back at the doctor, laughing so hard that he looked about ready to pass out. In his hand, Shadow didn't miss the small laser gun, the saucer's cockpit open.
"I KNEW HE WOULD DO IT!" Eggman howled. "OHOHOHO I KNEW IT! We've been doing this for too long, rodent!" He tapped at his head. "I know a weakness when I see it!"
There was a strange feeling in Shadow's chest.
For a moment, he wondered if he'd been shot too, but as he checked, he found no blood on his glove. He furrowed his brow, a deep frown on his muzzle as he glared down at his shoes in confusion. The feeling made him nauseous, a sort of roiling in his stomach that had him aching to move, to do something, anything other than just stand there like a fool and let the world go by.
He followed the idiots he'd become associated with to Sonic's side.
It was a sight to behold.
The fox and Rose were screaming, Rose's hands shaking as she rolled her friend onto his back. The splatter of blood on his chest glistened in the sunlight as he stared blankly at the endless expanse above them. The rabbit girl and her mother hadn't moved, knelt on the ground in a tight embrace as the child's head was buried against her mother's chest in a useless effort to save her little girl from the trauma.
Shadow nearly raced to his side himself when he blinked sluggishly.
"Sonic?!" the fox shouted through his blubbering. "Sonic, can you hear me?!"
"Sonic!" Rose cried. Behind her, the echidna was watching with impossibly wide eyes.
Sonic stared at them, the slightest glint of confusion in his otherwise dull eyes and blood pooling in his mouth, but he was still there, weakly lifting his hand to ruffle the fox's head. Hyperventilating, the two-tailed fox immediately pressed down on the wound, earning a hiss from his companion.
"Did it get his heart?" the echidna asked, his voice laced with panic.
"I- I don't know..." Tails wept.
It took Shadow a moment to realize that his heart had plummeted, and all at once, the feeling came back tenfold.
He was sure that Rouge would make fun of him later for not realizing what it was that was ailing him. In fact, it would probably be best if he kept it to himself, or else the teasing he would receive would be merciless.
He was worried.
He was worried for this annoying, irritating, cocky, smug little bastard that called him faker and bugged him about racing at the worst times and bullied him into being something that almost aligned with the word 'friend'.
And Shadow hated it.
He hated that it hurt to see him like this. He hated that he cared enough to be, heaven forbid, scared for him.
He hated that he was going to die.
He was going to die.
Shadow grimaced, the roiling in his stomach eating him alive. The chaos emerald in his quills felt impossibly heavy.
His breath caught in his throat.
The chaos emeralds.
They were wasting time that they didn't have. It usually takes about one to three minutes for someone struck through the heart to die, and Shadow had wasted at least one of them gawking.
"Tails," Shadow's voice made the kit jump. "Give me the chaos emerald."
Eggman had shut his cockpit hatch by now, ordering his minions to swarm them and kill the rest as he sailed off to destroy more of Station Square. There was no time.
The fox stared up at him with wide eyes. "What?"
"I have an idea." Shadow told him. "Just give me the emerald, now."
"A...An idea?" he questioned, pulling out the chaos emerald.
Shadow snatched it out of his slack hand without fanfare, staring him in the eye with so much intensity that the boy flinched. "Keep him alive until I get back."
He turned to the others. "You two, fend off the bots as you were before." Then to the rabbit woman. "You, what is your training in first aid?"
"I-" the rabbit woman stuttered, holding her child closer. "I was a nurse during the war against-"
"Perfect." Shadow stood. "Help the fox keep him alive. I'll be right back."
He didn't bother waiting around for a response, dust spiraling through the air as he took off. His hover skates slid like they were on ice as he drifted around a corner, a golden streak behind him as he raced through the ruined city. The scenery of destruction was nothing but a blur to him as he reached for his communicator. "Rouge, come in."
"There you are!" was the immediate response. "Towers has been trying to contact you for ages! Do you need-?"
"Reinforcements? No." Shadow barked hurriedly. "Backup or medical, it doesn't matter."
"Medical-?"
"If I succeed, then we'll have the situation under control. If not, there will be no point, either way."
He could see the Egg Saucer in the distance and was approaching fast. Shadow danced around debris, riding along walls and leaping over rubble without slowing down, even almost tripping over jutting rebar before quickly regaining his footing and speeding ahead.
"Something happened." said Rouge. It wasn't a question.
Shadow only grunted as he gained on the robot, the magical gems inside glowing brightly. "All I can say is hope for the best and prepare for the worst."
"Huh. That almost sounds like something Big Blue would say."
Shadow grimaced. "Perhaps."
Scaling the wall of a building, Shadow shot through the air, curling into a spindash and sailing towards the Egg Saucer. It was ringing and beeping, almost as if it could sense him coming, and it slowly turned just as Shadow slammed into it.
The doctor hadn't been expecting it, believing that all dangers had been eradicated. The thought had aggravation blooming in Shadow's shriveled heart as he glared daggers into Eggman's eyes. The moment of terror was gone a moment later, replaced by irritation. "Shadow!? Get lost! I don't have time to deal with you!"
The pang of anger grew, a chaos spear forming in his hand. "Am I not worth your time, doctor?"
In the roar of the wind, Shadow drove the spear into the saucer, a storm of chaos energy spewing out and blinding him in its crackling light. He kept pressing, shoving it further and further down into the robot until cracks started to form. He could hear shouting, but he ignored it as he formed another spear and jammed it in, too.
He hissed as something hot and stinging struck his shoulder, almost throwing him off as he called all the chaos energy he had and forced it into the robot. In that moment, he didn't care if the whole thing exploded with him on it, only that the world be kept safe and sound, even with these vile people who live on it.
Blue, not of the present but of the past, entered his vision, Maria's smile filling his eyes with blinding determination. He would protect the planet that Maria loved.
And he would do it by saving its protector.
A flash of light threw him off his feet, a chunk of the bot exploding and falling away. Two of the emeralds fell with it as Shadow was thrown off by the force of the explosion. Pulling out his own chaos emerald, he chaos controlled to one, lunging out of the way of lasers and bullets as he did. Now with three, he had time to breathe as he rolled behind a slab of fallen concrete.
"Where's that damn fourth chaos emerald?" he hissed, spotting it in the rubble off to his right. With a deep breath, he dove for it, wincing as bullets buried themselves into his quills and lasers scraped against his back.
Four down, three to go.
At this rate, all he has to do is break the other three chaos emeralds out of their containers, and then...
And then...
It might already be too late.
Shadow swallowed, but didn't waver, storming through the spray of attacks that surrounded him like a light show. It reminded him of fireworks, firing off and lighting up the sky in their wake. The fire glowed off of his fur in a faint reddish hue, the lasers running along his sides like tracks in the ground for an Olympic sprinter to follow. The world seemed to go in slow motion as Shadow stared, brought to the colors of sunsets and fireworks and light shows, and wished with everything he had left in him that Maria could see him, too.
The saucer was missing a section, but it still spun. Failsafes, Shadow thought, because Eggman always had backups upon backups. He thanked any god listening that the doctor was as impulsive as he was, or the world would have been doomed a long time ago.
"One last go should do." he said to himself. He gripped an emerald in his hand. "Chaos control!"
Apparently, Eggman was ready for him this time, as the moment he stepped foot back on the saucer, it started spinning rapidly. Shadow held on tightly, one hand digging into the metal as another spear appeared in the other, burrowing into the machine. He wasn't close enough to break into the last three containers and he was in a bad position to throw his spear.
That didn't mean he had no plan.
He clung to the spear as the skies lit up with gunfire behind him, another spear appearing in his other hand. He scaled up the saucer's rounded top like an ice climber, pulling the spears out one at a time and digging back into the metal exterior. Unlike the rest of the saucer, Eggman's cockpit didn't spin, so he'd have a hard shot to make with his little laser gun. Not impossible if he played his cards right, but at this point, he was likely flustered.
And flustered he was when the spinning slowed, the cockpit popping open as an outraged madman pointed his laser gun at Shadow's head. "Stop it! Stop whatever you're doing!" he roared. "I've said it before and I'll say it again! You are insignificant!"
Nothing but a shadow...
Shadow's eyes blazed with righteous fury, a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue. I am the ultimate lifeform. I am of greater blood, greater life, a greater being than you could ever hope to create.
Instead, Shadow just smirked, and something in the doctor's eyes changed. "I'd close the hatch if I was you."
Chaos energy brimmed under his skin, and Eggman realized what was about to happen with open terror as he shut his hatch a split second before red light enveloped the saucer.
"Chaos blast!"
The world exploded in a flash of light, the containers shattering as Shadow allowed himself to fall. Eggman still had the master emerald, he still had working sections of his robot, an army of badniks, and possibly one more trick up his sleeve. He was still a threat.
But as Shadow was surrounded by the seven chaos emeralds, there wasn't a doubt in his mind that whatever happened now, at least the doctor would be defeated once again.
A shimmering glow overtook him, filling his world with bright, golden light. His red eyes searched the landscape as it hovered below him in suspended animation. Eggman was screaming something at him, but he had no time to waste.
One to three minutes...
Shadow spared the doctor barely one more glance before he shot off like a rocket, the glowing gold of his fur glistening like blood in the sunlight. He soared high above the ruined city, ignoring the beeping of his communicator as he scanned the land below. The dust settled heavily over the horizon, but the spots of colors were unmistakable. With his heart pounding in his chest, Shadow shot down towards them, flying so fast that discipline was the only thing that kept him from nosediving into the ground.
"Shadow, what is going on over there!?" Rouge's voice filtered through the communicator. "They're saying you went super! Is it really that bad?"
Most of the robot army was down, Rose openly sobbing as she slammed her hammer into a bot so hard that its limbs tore clean off. Nearby, the echidna drove his fist through another bot's chest before slamming it into the ground with brute strength and a vengeful cry of grief.
The rabbit girl and her chao, tears streaming down their faces, sat idly by as her mother and the fox fretted over the fallen hero. The mother's dress was torn, large pieces of it being used as towels to soak up blood and put pressure on the wound while the fox held his hand, talking to him.
There was no reaction from Sonic, still as death.
And despite how much the hedgehog irritated him, this stillness scared him.
"Step aside." he ordered flatly. The fox and mother rabbit jumped, the mother shuffling back as instructed. The fox didn't move, but Shadow didn't bother with him as he knelt down in the spot the mother had vacated. "Is he still alive?"
The fox flinched. "I- I don't-... He's not responding to me, anymore. I-..."
Not a good sign, but not necessarily too late, either.
Shadow nodded before he could say anything else, hovering his hands over Sonic's prone form and closing his eyes. There was no time to check for vitals or perform life-saving protocols. If he was still in there somewhere, chaos would do its job.
Chaos energy filtered through his body, flowing like a waterfall, like tidal waves in the ocean. It shined behind his closed eyes, a dazzling, blinding glow of familiar warmth at his fingertips. Shadow allowed it to run rampant, transferring from one body to another, the overflowing energy happy to circulate into another outlet.
It was difficult without high quantities of it, but chaos energy did have the capability to heal.
There was a swirl of golden and cyan, a fire in his hands with the power to grant Maria's final wish, and Shadow opened his eyes to watch as the light of chaos energy began to transform deep blue into gleaming gold. Even as the light became overpowering, the fox didn't let go of the hedgehog's limp hand, clinging to it like a lifeline. With a grunt, Shadow grabbed at his rival's torso, still slick with blood, and pressed all the chaos energy he dared into his body.
For a moment, time seemed to sit still, warping and keening as it fought to fix what was broken, what was wrong and make it right, and slowly, like a flame flicking to life, red eyes slowly blinked open.
"Huh...? What?" Sonic questioned eloquently.
Shadow backed off as the fox kit wailed, clinging to the golden hedgehog as if their very lives depended on it. Somewhere in the distance, there were cries of relief filling the air amongst the destruction of the last of the badniks.
"Mr. Sonic...?"
Sonic sat up slowly, padding at his chest before turning to the little rabbit girl, staring at him with wide, teary eyes. With a kind smile, he held an arm out. "Are you okay, Cream?"
The girl sobbed, falling into his embrace and clinging to him as the fox did, both crying against him as Sonic quietly held them, golden light shimmering off his body like sunlight against a city skyline. Shadow watched on, arms crossed.
"I hate to interrupt," he huffed. "But we still have a madman to defeat."
"You didn't beat him yet?" Sonic questioned.
"No. I was too busy keeping a certain someone from dying."
Sonic was silent for a moment, looking down at the rabbit girl's quivering form pressed against him before staring back up at his rival. "Thank you, Shadow."
The sincerity nearly knocked the breath out of his lungs, but Shadow hid the roiling feeling, melting away into something far warmer. "Learn to watch your own back." he quipped.
With one last affectionate squeeze, Sonic let the kit and rabbit girl go, floating to his feet. With just a shared glance, the two hedgehogs shot into the air, streaks of gold lighting up the sky like a nebula full of stars. In the distance, the battered remains of the Egg Saucer, where the master emerald still was, was flying away in a haste, a desperate escape to regroup and come back stronger. Shadow was well aware that they couldn't let him escape with that emerald, lest the echidna throws a fit and the doctor comes back with something far stronger.
"You ready?" Sonic asked, a smirk on his face.
Shadow narrowed his eyes. "Are you?"
A smirk turned into a brilliant smile, and Sonic answered with a burst of speed, flying towards the Saucer before Shadow could blink. With a sigh, Shadow tore off after him.
And if Shadow had a smile of his own, no one needed to know.