Chapter Ten – Reconciliations
Kintobor had never seen the Ultimate Lifeform before. Not in person. Though he learned of his existence from the Black Arms, and but two-and-two together. That the Ultimate Lifeform, Shadow The Hedgehog, and Project Shadow, were all one and the same person. He seen Project Shadow. The plans, the experiments, but never the end results. He had left before it was completed, but he was well aware of just how much Gerald was struggling with it. The years he'd poured into that project. The constant failures, so to then have sudden success. Kintobor frowned. So what changed?
But as he stared at the mighty Fire Elemental, he quickly noticed his jet black fur coat, and more specifically, the stripes, and eyes. Even though they were now a deep orangey-red and not the dark crimson they used to be, they still heavily indicated his alien origins, especially by their arrangement. His jaw just hit the floor, as he stared at Shadow, then at a nearby alien bodyguard and then back. He gulped and hard.
"Your Black Arm?" He stammered. "So that's how father did it." He spat, not approving. Suddenly, Shadow felt a small quiet voice in his ear, as Sonic just frowned, from behind him.
"Wait, Shads, he doesn't know?" He growled. "Watch your back." He hissed, which Shadow just nodded in response, grateful for the support. But Kintobor, again ignoring it, just exploded at the revelation, as he just paced the area. He growled.
"Father, how could you? Sell out the planet, all for some stupid experiment. Was that what the aliens wanted in return for your success. Gerald, how desperate were you?" He spat. But Sonic growled, about to defend Shadow, but smirking hard, the Fire Elemental grabbed his hand and shook his head, somewhat stunned that the Blue Blur thought that. Finally, Sonic stopped, gulped, and then backed down. This, very much, was Shadow's fight. But Kintobor rounded on the Fire Elemental. "But what of Maria? Did you kill her too?" He hissed, clearing showing the despair of a grieving father, he himself was. Sonic growled, but Shadow remained calm. Dangerously so.
"I didn't kill her, G.U.N. did." He declared. But Kintobor just screamed at Shadow, in pure frustration. He didn't dispute that claim, he already knew it, to be the truth.
"But you could have saved her? You had the speed and the power, so why didn't you?" He spat. But Shadow just deeply sighed. Those exact questions had been rolling around his head, for the last sixty years. But as he blinked in thought, he knew why, and now no longer blamed himself for it. He heaved.
"Because I didn't understand." He admitted. "I knew Maria was ill, but I had no idea just how bad it really was. I have since learned, and yes, G.U.N. was raiding the Ark. But, at the time, I had no idea who they were, why they were there, or what they wanted. But newly created, I was one, just following orders, and two, doing the best I could, with what little life experience I had. I fought off the attackers, but when Maria ran me to the escape pods, I didn't realise that she'd planned the pod for me, not herself, and when the G.U.N. soldier shot her, I just cried, as she launched me towards the planet, not knowing that I had the power to save her." He sniffed, but Sonic just gasped, from behind him, as he just stared at this fellow Elemental.
"Whoa, Shads. You were just a little kid." He stammered. But Shadow looked around and nodded.
"Effectively, yes." He admitted, as he faced Kintobor again. "But what happened, wasn't my fault." He spat, directly at the Human. "I never asked for any of it." He blasted. But Kintobor just exploded in roar anger.
"You liar." He spat. "Your father's ultimate creation. A G.U.N. Super Soldier. They paid for the project, and father desperately needed the funding, for the Ark and his research. Your the pinnacle of Gerald's life's work. You knew everything, but didn't save her, because you didn't believe my daughter was worth saving." He blasted.
Shadow gasped. What? He knew that G.U.N. closed down Project Shadow, deeming it, a failure, but the Black Elemental never knew that they were the ones who originally commissioned it. So he was always ever meant to be a Super Soldier, and never a cure. All of a sudden, it explained everything. Why G.U.N. were so incredibly keen to have complete control over him, and why they rebelled so hard, when Shadow denied it. They must have paid millions, if not billions of Mobian dollars for Project Shadow, for it to, one, not only fail, as Gerald didn't abide by the rules, by using alien blood. G.U.N. must have found out about it, hence their raid of the Ark, and two, the end results refused to work for them. It must have added a massive insult to the injury, and explained why Shadow was hated so much. He constantly reminded them of their failures and also explained why G.U.N. still pursued for Super Soldier project. They still desperately craved the ultimate control. Corruption as it's very best. Shadow growled, nothing had changed. G.U.N. was still exactly the same. He faced Kintobor, desperate not to show, the shock of the revelation on his face. He heaved and hard.
"I don't work for G.U.N." He hissed slowly, emphasising every word. But Kintobor just laughed in his face.
"Oh, your good at this, you lying Rat." He hissed. "Your a Super Soldier, created in a laboratory. G.U.N. owns you. You don't have independent thought. You just follow orders, nothing more." He smirked. But Shadow growled. He was now a Fire Elemental, who had freedoms.
"Not anymore." He hissed, under his breathe, but loud enough to be heard. But Kintobor just laughed, rather brutally at him, again, very clearly not believing him. But the Human was completely unaware that Shadow's appearance, powers, abilities and entire species, had changed since he was first created. He just thought that the Ultimate Lifeform, had remained to the same. A Super Soldier, always. But according to his documentation, he should have, not knowing that Shadow could indeed alter. Finally, Kintobor's horrific howl petered out, as he, rather evilly, looked Shadow in the eye.
"Well, we'll see about that." He leered, rather coldly. "Father used my daughter as a means of controlling you, aboard the Ark." He smirked. "Well, two can play that game." He added, as he peered around Sonic and Shadow, to the main entrance to the Black Comet, and it's open front door. But before Shadow could register what Kintobor had just said, there was a voice behind him, made his blood run cold. The colour immediately drained, and he just didn't believe his hears.
"Hello, Shadow." She smiled, the female voice, sounding like she always did, a blast from the past, from more then sixty years ago. Small, dainty, high-pitched and very child-like, as Shadow's jaw dropped, as he tore his eyes away from Kintobor, to his daughter behind him.
Maria was alive.
But she hadn't changed, her appearance was exactly the same, as though the passage of time hadn't happened. She was a young human girl, still aged twelve, who used to stand taller then Shadow. Not anymore. She had wavy shoulder-length blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and pale peach skin. She wore a dark blue puffy-sleeved blouse with light blue trims over a light blue, knee-length dress with long sleeves, a dark blue hairband, and matching blue shoes with white soles. Around her, especially around her feet, and constantly dripping from her hands, and the bottom of her dress, was water.
He gasped as Sonic just blinked behind him, but stayed quiet. She began to walk down the ramp, with the intension of eventually, joining her father, united against the Ultimate Lifeform, but she desperately hesitated. There was the first time she'd seen her old best friend in sixty years, and immediately she knew something had changed. Shadow's sheer size, the change of colour of his stripes, and huge quantities of Chaos Power she could feel on the Ultimate Lifeform, immediately told her, that he grown. But she gasped.
What?
She'd seen all the grandfather's documentation on Shadow. She understood them. Gerald had designed and created Shadow to, very specifically, be certain size, and to never get any bigger. Perfect for a Super Soldier. Any smaller, and Shadow wouldn't have survived and any larger, and the controls they had over him would have failed, and he'd become too dangerous. But Shadow just smirked.
Too late.
Kintobor, however, didn't know any of this, as he never saw Shadow before he was transformed into a Fire Elemental. But he just growled, in pure joy.
"Yes, I saved my daughter, where you failed her. Now is your chance to redeem yourself." He spat, pointing straight at her. His plan was to use her telepathy, on Shadow, like they successfully did on the Black Arms, and force the Ultimate Lifeform to obey them. Maria, however, needed to touch the Black Hedgehog in order to this, as Kintobor had planned. But as she and Shadow just stared each other down, she was quickly having other ideas. Maria was gobsmacked. She had every intension of running to Shadow, and manipulating him, like her father had asked, as she now hated him for leaving her to die, but upon seeing him, she immediately changed her mind. Shadow was huge, extremely broad, and now, eye level with her, whereas he used to be much smaller. His deep orangey-red stripes really highlighting his changes, and as Maria now feared, ruthlessly more powerful and stronger then her.
Shadow too was also stunned, but finally, everything made sense, as the smell of her water, hit the Ultimate Lifeform and hard, immediately gave her away as the Water Elemental. He wondered how, as he never actually saw her die. As in, taking her last breath. He was in the plummeting pod, heading to the planet, from the Ark. She must have instantaneous changed, hence she still looked like a child, as the space colony, at the time had huge amounts of Chaos Energy aboard, and numerous explosions, from the raid. Coincidental events leading to her change. Kintobor must have returned to the Ark, soon after, to find it deserted, and his daughter alive but made of water. She'd turned into her own tears. So he took her with him, hence the knowledge he had of Shadow's time aboard the Ark, and G.U.N.'s raid. She'd told him.
But Kintobor was getting frustrated with Maria. She wasn't doing as they had planned. He growled, but kept his voice soft.
"Come on, Maria. Don't you want to reconcile with an old friend?" He hissed, indicating Shadow, but Maria, now utterly terrified, backed away, up the ramp and to the front door of the Black Comet. She shook her head.
"No." She squealed. "That's not Shadow. That monster is not the Black Hedgehog I saved on the Ark. He's changed." She cried. Shadow growled. That stung, as her words hurt him and hard. Yes, he was, but reading the situation perfectly, he kept his mouth shut, and indicating Sonic to do the same. He nodded. They both watched on, as Kintobor was stunned, not believing her. But she was very frightened of Fire Elemental, which again hurt Shadow deeply, but considering what had happened to him, truthfully, he wasn't that surprised. A lot of the Resistance were also scared of him, but he just had to stomach that and move on.
This confrontation was coming to a stalemate, and Shadow could sense Sonic getting incredibly edgy behind him, now very keen, for something, anything to happen. But as he looked at the Blue Blur, it gave the Fire Elemental a brainwave. Experience from years of fighting Eggman, told Shadow that this wasn't over, and the fact that Kintobor was a Robotnik, he suspected that the Human had an ace somewhere in that Black Comet. Time to force him to play his cards.
Shadow knew Kintobor had it somewhere aboard that spaceship. The external weaponry of the Black Comet had been removed, or as Shadow growled, more likely, destroyed or just not manufactured. This version of the mothership was the secondary machine to the main one, the Ultimate Lifeform originally disintegrated. It even may not have been weaponised. Therefore, travelling through the vast hostility of space, Kintobor needed a weapon, of some kind, to defend himself, beyond the remaining Black Arms. That was what he was fishing for.
Unfortunately, he knew the Blue Blur wasn't going to like this, and it was going to test Sonic's trust of him to the limit. Now playing to the Human, Shadow smirked and hard, as he rounded on Kintobor, making absolutely sure his voice was as cold as ice.
"Oh, but your daughter is correct." He hissed. "I have indeed changed." He leered. "I am that one and very same monster that was created on the Ark, and whom she saved. A decision she'll now regret." He spat, as suddenly, he rounded on Sonic, he growled and hard. "Sparky, kill her!"
Sonic blinked.
What?
Outright panicking and desperately trying to not let it show, Sonic looked desperately at his fellow Elemental, but then frowned. There was definitely something else going on here. Shadow had said 'Sparky', not 'Sonic', which meant that there was a significantly deeper meaning to what he was being asked. But the Fire Elemental just heaved. With Maria being immortal, he knew that the electricity wouldn't actually kill her, as the Black Hedgehog heavily suspected that Kintobor didn't know that she was an Elemental. Regardless, it didn't stop Sonic shaking his head, flat out, refusing.
But Shadow growled, as he rounded on the Blue Blur, as impossible speeds.
"Use your nose, you idiot. Maria is the Water Elemental, we're been fighting. The stench of the tears is all over her. She'd as immortal as you or I. Your electricity will hurt her, but it won't kill her. I need you to force Kintobor's hand." He hissed, under his breath. "Trust me." He added, his voice barely a whisper.
With all this happening over the course of several nanoseconds, as the speedsters were expert as communicating to each other, that fast. Sonic, however, quickly looked between Kintobor, Maria and then back to Shadow. He blinked, still not happy about it, as he'd be causing harm on purpose. But as the Fire Elemental nodded, Sonic then realised that Shadow was willing to personally take the fallout for this, directly leaving the Blue Blur out of it. In other words, he knew exactly what he was doing. Sonic sighed. Yes, this still was, indeed, his fight. Finally, he nodded.
Gulping hard, the Blue Blur charged up his Elemental powers, and within seconds, Sonic lets loose his electricity on the girl, with bright blue sparks and lightning bolts everywhere. Suddenly, Maria screaming, exploded into water droplets everywhere. It was shockingly brutal. Shadow stopped, sighing hard. That was excruciating to watch, especially hearing Maria's pain like that, but he growled. She'll recover, unlike her father.
Screaming in pure despair, Kintobor runs, straight past the Hedgehogs, right for his daughter, and finding nothing, he rounds on Shadow. With his eyes streaming in tears, he roars at the Fire Elemental.
"You'll pay for this." He declared. Suddenly, he activated a hand device, and the entire Black Comet disintegrated, revealing an enormous boss robot within. All of the last remaining Black Arms soldiers just dropped dead, which the Resistance fighters were utterly bewildered at. Now finished with the alien species, he just killed them all, as this had now just gotten extremely personal.