Spoilers for Chapter 35, obviously. Don't read if you don't want it spoiled. I made Espio's Serious Chapters their own fic and uploaded the Shadow VS Espio fight to it. Just look up "Espio's Story - The Revenge of Shinobi" ;)
The in-chapter notes for this chapter were not complete, there are so many other things I wanted to reveal but couldn't because of the cursed word count XD So now, I'm just gonna regurgitate all the stuff I wanted to put in the end chapter notes.
Firstly, Shadow's POV was chosen for the chapter because I purposefully wanted to display the fight from a perspective that would heighten the confusion and misdirection of the battle. If we were in Espio's head, the whole chapter would be him spelling out each and every move in exhausting detail which would bog the chapter down. If we were in Charmy's head, which is the norm with Charmy Nonsense chapters, then it would be too confused and misinformed as well as not making any sense for the story because Charmy's supposed to be in the midst of his own tough battle with Rouge. So Shadow's POV was the only POV that made sense.
This POV is also good because it further develops Shadow's character from the previous Espio Chapter and focuses on his relationship with not only Espio but the Chaotix and the rest of the cast as well as GUN. Something that needs some serious attention in the games, how Shadow feels about the organization he works for, how Shadow views all the friends and allies he's gathered, how Shadow values Rouge and Omega, how he honors Maria and Gerald's memory in the toughest of situations.
And giving the Black Arms Invasion proper reverence, I mean the world was invaded by aliens led by Shadow's biological father and galactic tyrant extraordinaire. That's a huge deal and it seriously bothers me that no one brings it up or there was no follow up to that event. Everyone on the planet was effected drastically by that invasion, even more so our entire cast of characters, but especially Shadow obviously. So really there was a ton of good reasons to be in Shadow's head for the whole chapter rather than anyone else including an omniscient narrator.
Anyway, Shadow's characterization is very important to me, I don't know if you could tell XD I wanted to make it clear that Shadow was an actual person with morals, internal conflicts, and all that good stuff that makes characters feel like believable people. He doesn't want to destroy the Chaotix's home because he would feel bad about destroying his friends' home. He purposefully holds back his more powerful and deadlier techniques because he doesn't want to hurt Espio. He holds off on giving up on Espio because he still remembers how Espio stood by him in his time of need and helped him defend the world.
At the same time though, he is proud, boastful, and easily frustrated and fed up with Espio's psychological warfare. He views him as lesser than mostly everyone else in his life because he never paid much attention to his actual powers and skills. He is offended that Espio has been holding back his true power and that he has plans to take him out, ready to implement at any given moment. He can recognize how clever and impressive Espio is while still being enraged by the battle continuously going badly for him. Also he's easily grossed out and offended when Espio spits his tongue out and shoots needles into his face, because well that just seems to be in line with Shadow's sensibilities and sense of self.
By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but Shadow throughout the chapter refers to Espio as his friend but slowly changes his opinion of Espio to enemy and threat by the end. A change he notices and doesn't want to admit bothers him a great deal. So yeah, a lot going on with Shadow.
Next we have the different tactics each of our combatants use in the fight itself. Shadow's tactics are clear, he tries to quickly end the fight with as minimal damage done to Espio as possible but is forced to get more and more aggressive and use more of his powers to defeat him. Espio's tactics are a little less clear, intentionally of course. But Espio's whole goal was to get Shadow to pull out the Emerald so he could steal it, then incapacitate Shadow long enough to escape capture.
So first he had to get Shadow to stop holding back and use his Emerald, the only reason he would being to stop time. Espio needed to prove he was a worthy enough threat for that, which he does. Espio then had to snatch the Emerald somehow and replace it with a flash grenade, a task that was quite difficult because Shadow is Shadow. The exact moment he steals the Emerald is when he does his Axel Spin (Akuseru Kaiten) against Shadow's Homing Attacks. Remember, Shadow notes that "he doesn't have time to put the Emerald away" nor say "Chaos Control" to stop time. Espio was a sneaky boy and swapped the Emerald out with a flash grenade while Shadow was busy trying to find a weak spot in the Axel Spin attack.
The reason why Espio could circumvent Shadow's teleportation, at least in part, and dodge the Roaming Chaos without seeing or knowing they would follow him was because he has a Sixth Sense. This is canon, in Generations he tells Sonic that he has looked into the soul of the Time Eater and in Heroes he senses Team Dark behind them in Grand Metropolis. Even Forces continues this idea as he could sense Sonic's presence on the Death Egg. I just extended that into a Spider-Sense type precognition to give him an edge against a teleporting opponent.
His weaponry also got an upgrade, including knockout gas bombs, needles, and most notably the wrist blades. The idea for wrist blades came from Espio's gloves, the little triangle shape on the back of his hands looked cool and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if those were extendable?". That's it XD
The idea to let them be used as projectiles with chains attached is because I didn't want him to have to grapple with kunai and rope. It's kinda like Batman's transition from ropes with grappling hooks attached that he had to physically throw, to the much more efficient and iconic bat grapple guns he now uses. It's also a nice excuse for me to not have to explain where the ropes come from, because I can just say "well the chains are in his gauntlets, that's where he's hiding them". Though that will become more and more ridiculous as the chains get longer and longer, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it X'D
The Wrist Blades are why Espio teleported away when Shadow teleported, he attached one to his ankle when the two of them clashed their Boosts together. So again, another nerf to the teleportation. One that I feel is quite believable to have, it just makes sense. If you're attached to a teleporter, you teleport with them, therefore negating the teleporting advantage.
The inspiration for the Wrist Blades (actually called Katar Blades) are the Hidden Blades from Assassin's Creed, the Automail Blades from Fullmetal Alchemist, and Lord Shen's Feather Blades from Kung Fu Panda 2. I just took the idea a little further by turning it into a grapple gun as well. I'm going on about these blades because they are going to be very prominent for the rest of the story. So get used to seeing them.
The invisibility power is explained in the story proper, but I didn't cover the "power over light" bit at all. The Light Aura is simply the ability to manipulate light in several different ways. Either refracting, reflecting, diffracting, and absorbing light rays to manipulate what people can see. This obviously helps creating illusions, mirages, afterimages, etc. The other is using light to imbue attacks with greater power, this is how Espio knocks away Shadow's Chaos Bullet technique with his Wrist Blade. He coated the blade with some Light Aura to ensure the "bullet" wouldn't damage the blade. This is why there was "a trail of light" behind his slash.
Creating Illusion Clones is a higher form of manipulating Light Aura, as the energy condenses into Hard Light Constructs, a concept Marvel comics or DC comics fans will recognize. Basically it means light is given tangibility through mastery of this aura type, which is why the clones have a physical presence and effect on actual physical things. So yes, an Illusion Clone can grab Shadow, throw real shuriken and kunai, and get coated with dirt. This is the same ability that Infinite and Mephiles utilize, only instead of using Shadows/Dark Aura or Phantom Ruby blocks, Espio uses his Light Aura.
The more solid an Illusion Clone is, the more aura it takes to create, so for all the clones that Shadow could beat in one hit, those were not that solid, therefore Espio got to conserve energy on those ones. The Clones that could actually take some punishment, those required significantly more energy from Espio which is why he used them sparingly. In truth, it is much easier and intelligent to use brittle Illusion Clones to conserve energy, manipulate the opponent further, and when necessary use their tangibility.
Oh and I swapped the "Confusion Boost" ability to "Wind Boost" because I felt that fit my Espio better, though Confusion Boost is still going to be a move he has access to. I just didn't want to use it yet.
Espio's techniques are performed by using hand seals, which Shadow sees at various points during their fight. This is important for later as well, but basically it's a way to focus his aura/chi to better execute his techniques. More on that later.
The final thing I wanted to talk about is where the Emerald was hiding this whole time. As you all know, Sonic characters do not have pockets. Yet they have items in their possession all the time and can pull them out from "behind them" or something. The meta explanation for this is a little thing called "Hammerspace", an invisible space where fictional characters can pull out objects into the physical space the characters inhabit. Also referred to as Magic Satchel in other series, usually RPGs.
This is of course video game logic and you can hand wave it away as nothing to think deeper about. But I'm me so I wanted to give an in-universe explanation, so here it is. Hammerspace is a commonly understood phenomena, everyone has access to Hammerspace, their own personal pocket dimension that is always around them. It can only be used to store inanimate objects and normally nothing bigger than a handheld item.
However, there are special people that can take this pocket dimension idea and expand it through aura abilities, i.e. Amy's Piko Piko Hammer has been stated to have magical properties and she herself is a magic user. See her abilities with Tarot Cards as evidence for that. So her Hammerspace is capable of holding her Piko Piko Hammer, in all its forms including the Large Piko Piko Hammer featured in Advance 3.
This is where Shadow holds his Emerald and this is where Espio holds his arsenal of weapons, including the giant shuriken he uses. Now, Sonic X has portrayed an interesting in-universe explanation of Hammerspace, such as Amy being able to summon her hammer with a flick of the wrist. She can also, in the Sonic X comics, feel her hammers which further solidifies their magical nature.
All of this to say, Hammerspace or Magic Satchels or Pocket Dimensions is a prominent concept in the Sonic series because of the lack of pockets and stuff. Hammerspace is essentially the way all the characters store their items in a literal "pocket" dimension. Shadow's use of pocket dimensions are more easily explained because of his various Chaos Control abilities, whereas Espio's is more like Amy's. He has a magical expansion of his pocket dimension where he stores an unlimited number of ninja tools.
Espio needed Shadow to take out his Chaos Emerald because he couldn't reach into Shadow's Chaos Controlled pocket dimension and take something out. But he could time his sleight of hand maneuver at the right moment to trick Shadow into thinking he still has his Emerald and store the flash grenade in his "pocket" while being oblivious to the truth until it's too late. This is why the word "pocketed" is in quotation marks in the chapter, because it's not a literal pocketing of something, but storing it in a personal pocket dimension. So pocketing, but not in the sense that we commonly understand it to mean, hence the quotation marks.
And that's it for this chapter, hopefully my notes for the other fights in the Team Dark VS Team Chaotix battle will be less extensive. But who knows, I am long winded XD Thanks for reading, see you next chapter C:
