Greetings, prospective readers, and welcome back to Throw It All Away! Last chapter kicked things off to an okay start, so I say onward we go! Well, I don't really have anything to talk about for this opening Author's Note, so let's get started!
Chapter One
Waking Up
All was quiet on the hill where Sonic the Hedgehog was buried as a faint hint of sunlight peeked out from behind gray clouds, and a gentle snowfall blanketed the ground and the gravestone. Suddenly, without warning, a bright green flash of light appeared directly over the spot on the hill where the fallen hero of Mobius had been laid to rest, depositing a black and crimson hedgehog and a bright green gemstone with a much too perfect diamond cut upon the ground rather unceremoniously before vanishing altogether.
After a few moments that seemed like an eternity, the jet black and crimson hedgehog began to stir, his eyes struggling to open.
"Maria…" Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform, groaned as his ruby red eyes started opening before they suddenly flew open and Shadow looked wildly around in confusion.
"What the-? Where am I?" Shadow said, before noticing the Chaos Emerald lying nearby and that his Inhibitor Cuffs and Anklets were missing. Reaching into his hammerspace, a sort of personal pocket dimension and a trait unique to races of creature that had undergone an accelerated evolution due to their forebears being exposed to Chaos energy which also gave them remarkable abilities beyond that of mortal men, or so Professor Gerald had once told him and Maria when Shadow saw a picture of a so-called "normal" hedgehog in a book once, Shadow pulled out a set of golden bracelets and anklets, quickly placing them on his wrists and ankles to help keep his immense power in check, before picking up the Chaos Emerald and putting it in his hammerspace.
Okay, Shadow, think back, what was the last thing you remembered doing? Shadow thought to himself. Slowly, Shadow began to remember.
That's right, Shadow thought. That beautiful pink hedgehog helped me to remember Maria's true last wish, to give the people of Earth a chance to be happy. Then me, Sonic, Ivo, that fox kid, Rouge, and that spikey-fisted anteater guy all worked together to stop the Ark from falling, I fought that ultimate lifeform prototype, the Biolizard, it fused itself to the Ark, me and Sonic harnessed the power of the Chaos Emeralds, destroyed it, and then I used my full power combined with the Chaos Emeralds to place the Ark back into orbit, and then… I was here, wherever here is… I should probably figure that out.
Pulling himself up off the ground, Shadow stood up, dusted off the snow that had fallen onto him before something occurred to him… it hadn't been winter when he'd stopped the Ark… so, where'd all this snow come from? As he pondered this, Shadow turned around to immediately find himself face to face with a gravestone.
Well, that's an awkward place to wake up, on top of somebody's grave… thought Shadow before something about the grave compelled him to take a closer look.
What Shadow saw there made his blood run cold, and flooded his mind with several questions.
Here Lies
Sonic Hedgehog
Beloved Savior of Mobius, Brother, Nephew, Freedom Fighter
May His Spirit Run Free As The Wind
What the… Sonic's… dead? thought Shadow in blatant confusion. But, that's impossible, he still had plenty of rings left after I stopped the Ark, he should have been able to make it back inside! And these dates of birth and death… they don't make any sense! Last time I checked, it was the early 2000s, not the 3200s! What the Hell is going on?!
Out of the corner of his eye, Shadow caught sight of what looked like a large city of some sort in the distance. Okay, there's civilization. I need to get there and find some sort of public records access and figure out what's going on here, he thought to himself before giving an involuntary shiver. And maybe get something hot to drink too, and maybe find some kind of coat that doesn't burn to cinders when I use it with my speed.
With a click of the heels of his Air Shoes, Shadow rocketed off in the direction of the large city he'd seen in the distance, leaving an orange trail of energy in his wake at full throttle.
As he raced towards the city, Shadow saw a familiar sight, and one he'd seen just recently. Shadow was certain that the area around the city had once been beautiful, thriving with nature at full bloom in the spring, fall, and summer, exactly as Maria had envisioned the world. Now, however, it was a polluted and toxic wasteland that had only just started to recover. Shadow had seen this type of damage before, when he'd been looking into Dr. Eggman and his ties to Professor Gerald and Maria.
Needless to say, both the professor, were he both still alive and sane, and the girl who'd been like a sister to Shadow would be disgusted with the Doctor, and with Shadow for working with him.
As he drew near the city proper, Shadow slowed down to a stop and proceeded to walk calmly into the city limits, the city itself being apparently being called "New Mobotropolis," which was yet another red flag for Shadow, as he knew that, while there were all sorts of dazzling locales on Earth, ranging from metropolis-sized casinos to chemical plants even more poisonous than the wasteland outside the city, there was no such city as New Mobotropolis anywhere on Earth.
A sneaking suspicion creeped its way into Shadow's mind. What if that meant he wasn't on Earth anymore? What if, thanks to his hail mary of using Chaos Control with all seven emeralds without his Inhibitors, Shadow had been transported somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far from the world he knew?
I can't discount the possibility, I guess. Even I don't know what Chaos Control is fully capable of, Shadow thought as he entered the city proper, the guards eyeing him with a degree of suspicion that was befitting of their post he supposed, only to stop dead in his tracks as he gazed upon New Mobotropolis and its people.
Yep. This definitely was not the world he called home.
Everywhere he looked, Shadow didn't see a single human, only anthropomorphic animals like himself, although for some strange reason, a good number of them were either partially or completely robotic, although they still acted no differently than their organic counterparts. There were also sleek vehicles and other futuristic devices as far as the eye could see, all of it proving to Shadow, beyond any trace of doubt, that he was not in Kansas anymore. At least, not his Kansas anyway.
I need to find a library or something similar, and I need to do it now. I need to learn all I can about this place, its people, everything, thought Shadow as he moved farther into the city, soon catching sight of a female rabbit with brown fur wearing a purple corset and had sleek chrome robotic legs and left arm.
"Hey, lady!" Shadow loudly called out to the rabbit, only to facepalm a second later once he realized what he just said. "Erm, excuse me, ma'am?" he said more politely as he approached the cyborg.
"Huh?" the rabbit said with a thick southern accent as she looked in Shadow's direction. "Sugar-hog? But Ah thought-" the rabbit said before she shook her head. "Sorry 'bout dat. I thought you were somebody Ah used to know. So, what can Ah do ya for, hun?"
"Ah, yes, I was wondering if you could give me directions to some sort of historical records database?" asked Shadow. "It's to cross-reference some data for a project I'm working on."
The cyborg rabbit gave Shadow a funny look, almost as though she knew he was lying. After a moment, she gave the black hedgehog the directions to both the local historical database but warned him that he might only find data from up to eight or nine years ago, as they were still putting things together from the Robotnik Wars, whatever that meant, although that likely meant if he had to spill the beans about his past, he'd need to omit Maria and the Professor's last names, unless he wanted to create complications. Shadow thanked the woman, before heading off in the direction she had indicated.
The cyborg rabbit, who was named Bunnie Rabbot-D'Coolete, watched Shadow walk away, a frown on her face. There was something about that guy that didn't sit right with her. His crimson eyes burned into her soul with the intensity of a raging inferno, the seemingly-permanent frown he wore on his face… not to mention those eyes reminded her of Sonic's after that sonuvabitch Snively got his hands on him…
And so, with her suspicions pushing her forward, Bunnie followed the red, black, and possibly-evil-all-over hedgehog.
Meanwhile, On The Edge of The Great Forest…
The unkempt, skinny, and overall wreck that was once the teenage twin tailed fox genius known as Miles "Tails" Prower, wasn't sure what to make of what he'd just seen. At first, he'd just been curious as to what in the world that green flash he'd seen over Sonic's grave had been, and when he'd gone outside to investigate, he could have sworn he saw a hedgehog-shaped shadow standing next to what he knew very well to be the shape of Sonic's gravestone, before the shadow took off at super speeds, leaving an energy trail not dissimilar to the one his fallen brother would leave when he used his speed, albeit orange instead of blue.
As he tried to make sense of what he'd seen, something tickled the fox boy's mind. It was a memory, an ancient Overlander seafaring legend he'd read about back in the good old days. It spoke of something known as the Green Flash. It was said to happen at the last glimpse of sundown, and was pretty much a signal that meant someone had returned from the afterlife back to the realm of the living… but that was impossible.
And yet, didn't he, as a failure of a scientist and member of the Mobotropolis Defense Force, know that every legend had a grain of truth in it?
Tails looked out to the hilltop where he'd buried Sonic. He didn't know what he'd seen, but he was very much going to keep a lid on it. Both to keep Aunt Sally from gaining false hope, and to keep her from biting his head off, as the ruler of the Kingdom of Acorn's emotional state had become somewhat volatile in the past month since Sonic died. Tails and the rest of the former Freedom Fighters knew that their leader was suffering from a broken heart, but still, he couldn't help but worry about her, considering she had issued a standing order for all citizens of the Kingdom of Acorn to at least attempt to kill Snively on sight. Not to mention her vastly shortened fuse…
Tails shook his head before turning back towards Knothole and began making his way back to his house and laboratory. With Sonic gone, he had a bad feeling that, unless someone worthy to take up his fallen brother's mantle appeared out of thin air, Mobotropolis was headed towards a disaster that there would be no coming back from, not this time.
Question was, who'd be playing the fiddle as the city burned?
And that's a bingo! If you liked what you saw here, be sure to fave, follow, review, and join us next time as Shadow has his first encounter with the former Freedom Fighters and Snively's forces, while dark forces begin to stir in the shadows… see you then!
