Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, Egmont and/or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 2: Welcome to Metropolis
Sunset over the treetops of the Great Forest was one of the great displays of natural beauty the Acorn Kingdom had to offer. So said the small army of local tour operators who'd sprang up in the wake of Robotnik's downfall. Unfortunately for Shadow, he was in no position to take a look for himself. Indeed, if he were to, he risked spoiling the spectacle for sightseers with a plume of black smoke.
Such were the perils of driving a motorcycle through the Great Forest at dusk. He would usually have driven slower in such close proximity to oaks, but he was running behind schedule. Aside from the time he'd lost on his stroll with Amy, Shadow had caved in to his conscience and given the tired and hungry preteen a ride home. Looking back, he couldn't decide if he regretted the act of generosity.
It wasn't the lost time he was ruing, even if it would take a miracle for him to reach Metropolis before nightfall. Rather, it was the terms they'd parted on. When he'd dropped Amy off outside her apartment building, instead of simply thanking him, she'd seen fit to ask if his shoes still worked. They did. In which case, she said, why did he insist on driving around on 'that big pollution machine?'
The best Shadow could do at the time was some nonsense about the superior carrying capacity of his saddlebags. The truth was wholly less rational. While he loved to feel the wind in his quills, he preferred to do so without getting blasted full in the face. In other words, he'd tried all manner of goggles and sunglasses but there was no beating a good old-fashioned windshield.
The Ultimate Life Form stopped sulking about being shamed by a child as he zipped by an LED screen at the roadside. In luminous white letters, it informed him Metropolis was 30 miles away. His mood lifted as he felt suddenly overcome by an alien emotions: a sense of gratitude towards GUN. Whether he liked it or not, it was the Guardian Unit of Nations who'd built this woodland highway.
In classic GUN fashion, they'd done so in the face of opposition from every Mobian in the Acorn Kingdom who didn't have a commercial relationship with them. Alas, neither speeches by former Freedom Fighters nor campouts by protestors had slowed the bulldozers' progress. In spite of his ambivalence, Shadow couldn't argue with the protestors' claim that almost no one but GUN would use the road. Except for a fleet of tour buses he'd passed an hour ago, the highway's four lanes were desolate.
By the time he cleared the Great Forest, twilight had descended. With only the bike's headlamp to light his way, Shadow eased off the gas slightly as he approached Metropolis's city limits. It was too dark to see much of anything in the scrubland at the roadside. The same was true of the city's skyline, with one notable exception: an enormous neon GUN logo which sat atop the central tower of the organization's new headquarters.
Shadow couldn't decide what was more offensive to his eyes: the gigantic white G or that gawking bronze chipmunk outside Station Square. The debate was still raging in his head as he came to a three-way intersection overlooked by a billboard. 'WELCOME TO METROPOLIS' it proclaimed in big white letters. Below the sign, a jumbotron displayed a large leftward-pointing arrow, accompanied by the words 'SOUTH SECTOR'.
The South Sector was one of the city's four main districts, and the only one to survive the Battle of Metropolis relatively unscathed. As such, it was where most Metropolitans who lacked the will or resources to relocate now called home. Bad news for the citizens crammed into overcrowded slums, but good news for the undermanned GUN. It was the only part of town they bothered to patrol.
Confident there wouldn't be a spontaneous rush of traffic, Shadow deployed his motorcycle's kickstand and dismounted in the middle of the road. He walked to the bike's rear and flipped open the lid of a saddlebag. Rummaging blind for a few moments, he fished out a tablet computer, a handgun, and a roll of duct tape. Once he'd taped the tablet to his handlebars and the handgun to the side of his seat, he climbed back on, fired the engine back up and turned right.
〜
Amy Rose paused to brush a stray braided quill out of her eyes before she tied a knot on the garbage bag in her hands. Stepping out of her bedroom into her apartment's hallway, she added it to the three black sacks bags already lined up by her front door. The pink hedgehog smiled contentedly as she beheld the fruits of her afternoon's labors. Instinctively she reached for her phone, but her baby-blue hoodie dress's front pocket was empty.
Vowing to return if she thought up a suitably killer caption, Amy spun on her heel and ran to the kitchen at the other end of the hallway. Inside, the countertops were strewn with baking paraphernalia: mixing bowls, pastry offcuts, and a light dusting of flour on every inch of the kitchen island. The hedgehog studiously ignored the mess as she grabbed a fork and headed to the stove.
Getting down on her haunches, she opened the oven door a crack. She instantly slammed it shut again, spooked by the rush of escaping heat. That still got her every time. Trying again, Amy reached in and tentatively prodded the pie on the middle shelf with her fork. She sighed at how easily it perforated the pastry lid. It was going to need another hour minimum. Closing the oven, Amy glanced up at the clock on the microwave.
Green eyes widening, the pink hedgehog jumped up and ran to her bedroom. She arrived in time to hear the dying strains of one of Sonic's guitar solos blaring from the wireless speaker on her nightstand. She lunged for her phone on the bookcase and hurriedly switched playlists to a selection of piano ballads by Sonia. The last thing she needed today was a neighbor knocking on the door (or worse, texting Sally) to complain about the noise.
Revisiting the kitchen for a celebratory soda, Amy placed the still-closed can on the nightstand beside the speaker and flopped face first onto her bed. She lay there for a while, humming along to Sonia's dulcet tones and twinkling. Eventually, she rolled over and gazed around the room, struck by the curious sensation of not quite recognizing her own bedroom. Then again, the décor had changed quite radically from this morning.
It had started when she was eating lunch. Browsing on her phone for advice on how to handle unrequited love, one search result had shone like a beacon: 'Expedite Your Grieving Process!' Once she'd doublechecked the definition of 'expedite', she'd thumbed the link. Cryptic title aside, it sounded more promising than 'Knowing When Not To Give Up' and '5 Ways To Make Him See Things Your Way'.
The first step it suggested was to cleanse her living space of anything that reminded her of the so-called 'object of her affection'. She wasn't about to go throwing away photographs because Sonic happened to be in them, but she'd filled the four bags in the hallway with assorted posters, doodles, collages, and magazine clippings. Her bedroom's pastel yellow walls were now bare, save for a poster of The Forget-Me-Knots Amy had spared because she felt bad putting Mina in the trash.
Cathartic as the purge had been, it had created a new problem: walls dotted with white circles where the paint had come away with that white putty-like stuff. Glancing around at the pockmarks, Amy grimaced. Sally's next visit was shaping up to be a real hoot. She knew there were only so many secrets she could keep from the Mobian who paid for her rent, bills, food, and clothes. How was she supposed to tell the chipmunk she'd redecorated because their ex-boyfriend turned her down?
She doubted the internet would have much advice to offer, but she'd worry about it later. Getting up, Amy marched over to her bookcase. Narrowing her eyes, she scoured the four crammed shelves until she reached for an old favorite: Princess Blaze & The Flames of Disaster. With the dogeared paperback in hand, she grabbed her sweaty soda off the nightstand, sat down cross-legged on the bedroom's plush green rug, and flicked to the part where the heroine first meets her sidekick Silver.
〜
While avoiding the South Sector meant going unnoticed by GUN, travelling through Metropolis's ruined North Sector wasn't without its dangers. Having fled the cramped slums, gangs of scavengers had settled among the rubble. Intergang skirmishes over prime salvage claims weren't uncommon. Hence the handgun taped to the side of his seat. As for the tablet on his handlebars, its screen currently displayed a roadmap of the city, albeit one that predated the Battle of Metropolis.
Shadow had been forced to replot his preprogrammed route numerous times. He'd found one road after another blocked by collapsed buildings and burnt-out husks of GUN mechs. The motorcycle's headlamp was proving to be a mixed blessing. Anything brighter risked drawing the attention of scavengers, but it meant he only became aware of most obstacles as he was about to crash into them.
After another sequence of U-turns, Shadow rounded a corner and felt his hopes rise. From what he could make out in the semi-darkness, the broad avenue ahead of him looked clear of any insurmountable debris. Furthermore, a glance down at the tablet suggested it would see him safely to the West Sector. Breathing a tentative sigh of relief, he set off again, the encroaching silence broken only by the purr of his engine and stones dinging off the fenders.
Then, a gunshot rang out. Shadow frantically steadied the bike after his initial jolt of fright put the front wheel out of alignment. Encouraged by the lack of tire punctures tires or obvious injury, he sped up. Up ahead, an offline-but-mostly-intact EggRobo lay spreadeagled in the road. Hurriedly, he squeezed the brake lever. It had no effect. Further frenzied attempts achieved similar results.
Without a second thought, Shadow threw himself off the bike. Before he hit the potholed road, the motorcycle plowed into the EggRobo. The force of the ensuing explosion slammed him against a wall. He landed hard on the sidewalk. Winded but conscious, the hedgehog's head shot up as he heard something plasticky clatter onto the road nearby. He curled into a ball, seconds before the mysterious object exploded in a flash of harmless white light.
Deeply confused, Shadow unfurled and checked himself for injuries he couldn't quite believe weren't there. Scrambling to his feet, he moved a millisecond too late to evade a hail of automatic gunfire from one of the rooftops. Unfazed, he charged headlong over the road, hurling himself at what he hoped was a boarded-up window. The brittle planks gave way with surprising ease.
He landed on the cold stone floor of a pitch-black room amid a storm of dust and splinters. Willing himself to get up, his body refused. He let out a low groan as the pain receptors in his right thigh asserted themselves. Unable to inspect the damage in the darkness, Shadow tried to drag himself towards a doorway he could just about see the outline of in the gloom.
With pain and panic clouding his thoughts, it took the Ultimate Life Form longer than it should have to question how he could see a door but not his own leg. His eyelids contracted as the doorway grew more defined. His right hand twitched, as if groping for the handgun that might be on a rooftop for all he knew. Reluctantly accepting his own helplessness, Shadow watched on tenterhooks as a figure appeared in the doorway wielding a flashlight. To his amazement, it wasn't attached to a rifle.
"Ouch. That sure looks nasty," remarked Rouge, shining the light on his right thigh and the slowly expanding puddle of blood beneath it, "Just a sec, big guy."
Putting the flashlight between her teeth, the bat unzipped a bag hanging off her shoulder. After a tense few seconds, she eventually produced a blue Chaos Emerald. Setting the oversized jewel down on the ground, she kicked it to him.
"Now get out of here," said Rouge before she disappeared.
As luck would have it, the Emerald ran aground on a sandbar of splinters, just beyond comfortable reaching distance. Undeterred, Shadow shifted himself onto his front and strained to touch the nearest facet of the upturned gem with outstretched fingers.
〜
"And perhaps you could allow for the not-so-radical reality that this girl is a child!" said the reptilian attorney as he rounded on the witness.
Engrossed in the courtroom drama on her TV, Amy almost dropped a forkful of pie as her apartment's doorbell buzzed. Furrowing her brow, the hedgehog shoveled the last of her dessert into her mouth and grudgingly paused the episode of Monopole Law. The buzzing went on as she made her way into the hallway, past the garbage bags she'd decided could wait for tomorrow.
"Hello?" she said, picking up her intercom's handset.
No reply, but the buzzing persisted. Mindful of the stories she'd overheard neighbors swapping about recent problems with ring-and-runners, Amy considered going back to her loungeroom and cranking up the volume. However, much as it had done that time she followed Sonic to the Never Lake, her curiosity won out.
Adjudging her hoodie dress to be acceptable attire in the event of roving neighbors, Amy slid her feet into a pair of flipflops and sauntered down to the lobby. Her assumption that a delivery driver had gotten the wrong apartment number proved mistaken. Through the lobby's plate glass front door, she saw Shadow slumped on the building's doorstep.
Although his scarlet eyes were half-closed, she seemed to catch his gaze. It was the only way she could explain the fleeting smile he flashed her before his head sagged to one side.