Anonymous Review Replies!
Guest: Making fandub jokes? Never! XD (well, apart from the new chapter, maybe...XD)
DEV: JAAAA, omg habe ich gerade Spaß mit dem Highschool-Quatsch, Shadow is DER perfekte straight man in dem Ganzen. Es funktioniert auch erstaunlich gut als setting um so vielen Charakteren coole Szenen zu geben, von Espios date-Hilfe, zu Amys Date-Plänen...Was Mr Stone angeht, ich bin tatsächlich noch ein bisschen am Überlegen wo/ob man ihn unterbringen könnte, gerade im Sonic 2 Film fand ich ihn zum Schreien. In dieser fic wäre seine Lehrtätigkeit vermuuuutlich vor seinem Stint als Assistent...Natürlich hat es mich auch gefreut zu hören, dass Daves Auftritt ein kleines Highlight war, ich mag am Sonic Universum echt, dass es so viele verschiedene Charas gibt und jeder irgendwo besonders beliebt :D Ich muss auch zugeben, ich hab gegiggelt wie blöd bei der Vorstellung von Sonic, der mit einem Dakimakura seiner selbst präsentiert wird, dieses AU muss SEHR loses Medienrecht haben...XD Aber ja, dein Kommentar war wie immer mein Highlight der Sektion, ich hoffe sehr, dass das nächste Kapitel auch gefällt! :D
ComanderShadow: Aw thank you! My updates aren't as frequent, but I do aim for high quality always - I loved mixing all the Sonic continuities for this AU, hope you like the new chapter, too!
Guest: There will be blood. Yes. :D
Melodia: Ahaha, welcome aboard the story, super happy to hear you liked it! :D Interesting theory re: Scourge there, and, well, he IS my third fav character...we shall see ;P Hope you like the new chapter, too, and thank you for the comment!
Last Time On Shadow the Hedgehog: First Class : Well, when we last left our heroes, the moon had just blown up! All while Sonic, Shadow, Sally and Amy were just trying to enjoy a (mildly taxing) date at Twinkle Park no less. Surely, the perpetrator can be none other than a certain rotund scientist...(and as for Shadow and Sally, I admit I'm *still* super surprised, I never would have paired them up before. Now, let's see whether your proposed timeline can really work out that way, if yes, our heroes sure do have a full calendar...;P Thank you for your comment! :D
OoO
Chapter 28: Only Hedgehogs to War
"What - what the…?!" Sally yelped, as everywhere around them people were gasping and screaming, the happy soundscape of the amusement park having turned into a cacophony of terror underneath the red light of the moon's explosion.
"OHOHOHOHOH! Citizens of Earth, lend me your ear!"
"No. Way," Amy breathed, looking up at one of the screens formerly displaying the times of various shows and events in the park, but which were now all featuring a very familiar rotund scientist, clearly in enthusiastic show-and-tell-mode.
"My name is Dr. Robotnik, the world's greatest scientist, and soon to be the world's greatest pingas!"
"The world's greatest what?" Sally asked, sounding slightly shocked, as the video was obviously glitching for a moment, non-understandable cursing coming from Robotnik as he was trying to get it to stabilize again.
"ANYWAY, as I was saying, this is the beginning of the greatest empire of all time! You have just witnessed the power of the Eclipse Cannon, and if you won't surrender the Earth to me in 24 hours, I will start destroying one country or Zone every hour until you do! OHOHOHOHOH!" he laughed again, as at the same time a red timer of 24 hours appeared at the bottom of the high-jacked screens, starting to count down.
"BUT! I am not a heartless ruler," Robotnik continued, raising an index finger, "You see, I destroyed half the moon as a demonstration of my power, but of course, doing this would have completely disastrous consequences on tidal systems, animal ecosystems and the tilt of Earth's rotational axis," he nodded, while in the background of the screen educational diagrams appeared, showing stellar gravitational mechanics, most of them decorated with unhappy smilies in the depictions of moonless systems.
"Which is why I am also immediately replacing the half of the moon I destroyed with a metal half-sphere of equal size and mass, which is the only way this plan to destroy the moon as a demonstration of power would make any sense at all," he continued, just as in the sky a metal sphere started drifting toward the remaining half-moon, grafting itself onto it to make it a round shape again.
"Why is he lecturing us about lunar mechanics?" Sally asked, flabberghasted, while Robotnik was currently doing just that, using a pointer stick to explain various parts of his diagram. "I mean, surely everyone knows about the importance of having an intact planetary system."
"How did he even manage to harness that much energy?" Amy asked, swallowing as she stared up at the Frankenstein-moon above, the metal half of course having a giant grinning Robotnik face emblem emblazoned on it.
"Has to be the Chaos Emeralds," Sonic said. "So he was collecting them."
"You think?" Shadow snapped, once again for a moment wondering how the planet had survived with this kind of lackadaisical approach to protecting it from the Doctor, but was already interrupted by Maria's cousin having finally finished his astrophysics lecture -
"SO!" Robotnik piped up again from every screen in their surroundings, "You have witnessed my power and my generosity! I will therefore expect a formal surrender and the yellow Chaos Emerald as a symbol of it, within the next 24 hours or…." here, he then actually turned towards a thing that looked like a slot gambling machine, turning big lever, the three wheels of it spinning for a moment, until all three of them stopped while showing a picture of a castle in the middle -
"...or Liechtenstein gets it!" Robotnik shouted, pointing at the machine. "And every hour another country or Zone will follow! OHOHOHOH!"
"This man," Shadow said in wonder, "is completely deranged."
"Unfortunately, yes," Sally said, grimly, "Shadow, I'm so sorry, but I have to go. My country needs me right now, even if I can only coordinate logistics from here. Rain check on this date?"
"Uh - sure," Shadow nodded, a bit overtaxed as all around him, panic had started to overtake the amusement park guests, speaker announcements trying to restore order.
"What on Earth is the Eclipse Cannon?!" Amy asked, holding onto Sonic's arm in a vice grip. "That thing fired onto the moon from outer space!"
"Long story. It's a weapon my creator built into the Space Colony ARK, my former home," Shadow gritted out. "But it was supposed to have been shut down, they didn't even leave life support online."
"Well, maybe he isn't even up there, but controlling things remotely?" Sonic asked. "We need to find out where he's broadcasting this from. Our best shot is probably Tails and your sister - they're at your home, right?"
"Should be, yeah," Shadow said, only briefly looking back at Sally, "Uh, so you're heading back to your place-?"
"And see what I can do to help my kingdom, yeah," Sally gave him a slightly strained smile, that turned a bit softer at the end, nodding toward Sonic already looking for the nearest exit. "Go off. Your turn to join the comic book madness. Just don't be surprised when it starts involving…resurrected wizards, gods, or him somehow going on a year-long space trip and ending up on a Donut planet."
"I would not mind him going on a year-long space trip," Shadow stated. "How high do you think that chance is?"
Sally laughed. "Just make sure you make it back."
"Alright," Shadow nodded. This was finally it. They were about to go off and confront Maria's cousin, he would be able to execute the man who had dragged his family's name through the mud and was right now threatening to annihilate the planet Maria just wanted to live on, this was what he was made for -
"Though, uh, this still counts as enough of a date for you to go to Prom with me, right?" he couldn't help but blurt out, this whole high school dynamic apparently having taken on an unsettling influence over his priorities.
"Oh, definitely," Sally grinned, and then Sonic was already pointing toward one of the exits,
"That way! Let's go, Shads, you coming?!"
"Yes," Shadow nodded and then they were already off, running in a final rush to save the world.
xxx
"-soon to be the world's greatest PINGAS!"
"Soon to be the world's greatest what? I swear, it almost sounds like he's saying p-"
"Maria!"
Shadow's shout cut off his sister's words as he, Sonic and Amy burst down into the laboratory of Gerald's house, where several screens were already showing loops and freeze frames of the mad Doctor's speech. Tails and Maria were both busy eyeing them with scrutinizing glares while their fingers clattered away on their respective keyboards.
"Ah, you guys! Good thing you're here, I think we've almost managed to pingas - I mean, ping the location he transmitted that message from," Tails said, barely glancing up from the computer he was typing on, eyes alight with focus.
"Yeah, that weird transmission error gave him away, made him almost too easy to track," Maria said, also completely transfixed by what she was coding, then glancing up at the larger world map displayed on one of the few screens that wasn't showing Robotnik, "he's in -"
"Sand Ocean!"
The shout came from Tails, Maria, Amy and Sonic simultaneously as the location lit up bright and red on the display screen.
Sonic smacked the palm of his left hand with his fist. "That's it, great work, you guys. Now let's go there and take that screen-hijacking Eggomaniac down a notch!"
"That also makes sense now why I got a signal from one of the Emeralds from there on my radar," Tails exclaimed excitedly. "He must have a secret base there or something!" Then he frowned, for the first time actually properly looking at their group. "Uh, say, Amy, what's on that pillow you're holding...?"
"War crimes," Sonic said briskly (and a bit desperately), also stepping in front of it. "Secret base, you say?"
"Probably, there's a lot of ruins up there it would be easy to conceal one in," Maria said, for a moment distracted but now eyes narrowed at the screen again. "With the Tornado we should be there in an hour or two."
"Okay, hold on," Shadow said, raising his hands "One, this is clearly too dangerous and two, what is the professor even saying about all of this?"
"Grandpa? As soon as the news broke, he barricaded himself in his office," Maria said, switching to another tab on her screen, showing a horde of news reporters and campus security personnel in a bitter battle at a closed office door, shaky cam footage recording the whole event. "No getting through to him, even calling his phone goes straight to voicemail."
"Great," Shadow said, already imagining the next family dinner with Colin and Hope to have an even more frosty atmosphere if they managed to survive all of this, "But yeah. No way you're coming."
"Oh really," Maria said, blue eyes narrowing in a very familiar way, "And who, brother dear-"
They were all interrupted by a violent banging at the door upstairs. Shadow could feel his stomach clench in remembered terror, was this the police already, or the military, coming after his family again for a crime they didn't commit-
No, a voice said within him, and it was made of steel. This time they will not.
"Maria," he said, "Stay downstairs. I'll go see who it is."
"Um - okay," Maria replied, Amy raising an eye ridge at her turn in compliance, but just for a moment Shadow had been able to see the same fear flash through her eyes, his sister's expression that of a girl who had never forgotten the moment when a GUN soldier had shot her at point blank range.
"If it's GUN, they might want me," Sonic said. "Let me come with you."
Shadow didn't reply, merely nodded as he turned and climbed the stairs again, also considering whether he should take out the weapon he had retrieved from the GUN soldier on prison island.
When they arrived on the landing upstairs, absolutely nothing was visible through the window in the front door, set at human head-height .
Shadow frowned.
Then the knocking came again.
"Um," Sonic said. "Should we…open it?"
Shadow glared. Then he stalked forward.
"I swear, if this is Sticks again with yet another dead animal or, I don't know, voodoo love doll made entirely from porcupine quills-"
He yanked the door open.
"Ah-hah! So here is where you've been hiding, you slowpoke of a mammal!"
"...I live here," Shadow couldn't help but growl back at the assembled feathery Mobians on his doorstep, very much the same group of Jet, Wave and Storm standing on his porch with crossed arms. At least they'd left the chicken at home.
"What the hell do you want?"
"A race."
"What?" Shadow asked, incredulous (while at the same time Sonic went "Oh gods" behind him).
"You disrespected us on school grounds, furball," Jet sneered. "Which means we need to have an Extreme Gear tournament to show you your place. Which is in the dust behind us."
"The world is literally about to end in 23 hours," Shadow felt he needed to point out. "Or, well. Liechtenstein at least."
"Yes. Which means it's even more important we have the tournament now."
"I don't have time for this," Shadow growled, attempting to close the door again, but Storm's arm shot out, preventing this. Remembering how the last contest in pure strength against the albatross had gone, Shadow bared his teeth.
"Look, even bearing in mind the absolute insanity of caring about a High school pecking order-"
("'Pecking' order, good one, Shads," Sonic commented from the back)
"-when the apocalypse is about to happen-"
"Shadow, are these guys bothering you?"
"What?" Shadow broke off, turning around to look toward the stairs where Amy had appeared, her hands curled into loose, worried fists in front of her chest.
"Oh. It's really nothing, they're just here because me and Shads got into a scrap with them in school-" Sonic started, but Amy started to frown.
"Wait, were these the ones who picked on you in school and made you not want to spend time with anyone?" Amy asked, worried expression melting off and becoming sharper, more focused as she strode forward.
"Uh," Shadow managed. "Yes?"
"And wait," Amy said, walking past Shadow and now standing in front of Jet and Storm, her expression turning into a worryingly sweet smile. "You guys were also the ones who planted bombs into Sonic's Extreme Gear board the last time you challenged him to a race, right?"
"Errr," Jet started, beginning to back off, but Amy turned back to Shadow.
"Sonic, Shadow? I'll be just a moment," she said, still smiling, then also grabbed the door handle from the outside and, seemingly not caring for Storm's resistance, closed the door effortlessly. Shadow thought he could just see the tip of a very large hammer materializing in the door's window, while he thought Amy cheerfully said something along the lines of 'Oh, and Wave, you know how Sonic and Knuckles have compunctions about hitting girls? Guess what-'
"Sonic? Is everything-?"
"Yes!" Sonic yelped as Tails was sticking his head also up from the staircase and hurriedly skittered back towards his little brother, "Everything's absolutely fine up here, no, uh, R-rated violence going on at all, let's all go downstairs again, right? Right."
"Everything okay?" Maria asked, frowning as the three of them came downstairs again. "Is that screaming outside?"
"...no?"
"Okay, not going to ask," Maria said, before turning back and picking something up from the workbench. It glowed yellow in her hand and Shadow was immediately mesmerized. "This is what Tails and I have been working on while you were off canoodling."
"We were not - doing anything of the sort," Shadow snapped back immediately, not being able to stop the embarrassing heat he could feel rising in his cheeks. This was definitely a defect Gerald could have eliminated from his genetic specs. "Is that Tails' Emerald?" he asked instead, staring at the gem stone in his sister's hands.
"Not…quite." Maria gave a coy smile. "It's the one we made!"
"That…you created this?" Shadow asked, once again struck slightly speechless by what his sister could do, the soft yellow glow illuminating her features and letting her eyes shine for a moment as she looked at him, so proud of herself and filled with the sheer joy of being alive and in her element and excelling at it, it was hard to find words to describe the feelings coming up when you looked at her like this.
"Look closely enough at their eyes and sometimes you think you can see the universe spinning in their heads, huh?"
Sonic had murmured the question next to him, startling Shadow out of his reverie for a moment - the blue hedgehog had spoken softly, but was looking in quite the same way at his own kid brother who didn't look any less proud than Maria, shouting "Yeah! We did it together and it came out perfect!", while giving Sonic the widest foxy grin.
"Well, uh," Maria gave a slightly lopsided smile, thereby ending the moment of marvelling, "I mean, almost perfect. Not even grandpa managed to create a true copy way back then, so Tails and I weren't gonna do it one afternoon - this fake one has the same wavelength and properties, but is less powerful than the original."
"Yeah! It should be accurate enough to be used as a funnel to draw in Chaos Energy, but we synthesized it in a way we can use it as a trap!" Tails said, grinning at Shadow and Sonic excitedly. "It's designed to reverse the energy field inside the Chaos Emeralds, so whenever Robuttnik is gonna put this one with the others, whatever machine he's using them in will just blow up!"
"Which would be the Eclipse Cannon," Shadow said and Maria nodded.
"Yeah. Grandpa never wanted to have to build it anyway, and having a planet-obliterating cannon in orbit is just begging for disaster. So, best solution is to destroy it completely."
"It sure looks real, buddy," Sonic said, also eyeing the Emerald. "You sure it will be able to fool Egghead, though?"
"It should," Maria said. "None of our scanners notice the difference and I think you're even able to Chaos Control short distances with it without it breaking or burning out."
"Really?" Shadow asked. "Can I try?"
"Be my guest," Maria said, handing him the Emerald. As Shadow touched it, he was certain his sister had been speaking the truth - it definitely felt like one of the Emeralds he had used in Rouge's prison cell, the gem a brightly burning beacon to his Chaos sense, a focal point for all the surrounding Chaos energy in the atmosphere, sucking it in and offering it up for his use. Not quite as brightly burning as the real Emerald had been, but so much more intense than the mere Chaos crystals.
"Hm," he said. "Tails, could you grab my arm for a moment?"
"Huh? Sure," the fox kit said, hand closing around Shadow's forearm of his hand holding the Emerald. "Why?"
"Because then I can do this," Shadow said, at the same time using his free hand to grab Sonic by the shoulder. "Chaos Control!"
xxx
"Woah!" Tails gasped as the trio of them materialized on the side street behind Shadow's house, muffled sounds of violence happening to birds still emanating from the front. "That was so cool!"
"Yes. Now let's get going to Sand Ocean," Shadow said, releasing the two of them and nodding towards the western horizon. "Sonic said you're able to keep up with him?"
"If he pulls me, yeah," Tails said, "But don't we have to get Maria and Amy first?"
"No," Shadow shook his head. "Maria stays here."
"Uh," Tails hesitated, Sonic also raising his eye ridges. "But…Maria said she wanted to come. And…she's my friend."
"I know," Shadow said. "But she already almost died once on that space station; I'm not risking her life a second time." He paused.
"I mean," he then added, "Our plan literally involves the Eclipse Cannon blowing up."
"Well, he's got a point there, li'l buddy," Sonic said. "Maybe this is a mission just the three of us should take on?"
Tails gave Sonic a rather flat stare. "You just don't want to take Amy along."
"That's an unjust accusation and completely beside the point," Sonic said, very fixedly addressing the tip of Tails' ear. "But I mean - if you guys made a fake Emerald, that means the real one Eggman probably wants is still inside the lab, yeah?"
"Yeah, in the safe," Tails said. "I brought it here from our house."
"There you go, that means Ames and Maria are the perfect team to defend that one," Sonic said brightly. "So us three can go and crack ol' Egghead wide open - either by making him believe that this is the real Emerald and letting him blow his machine up or by giving him a good old-fashioned clobbering."
"Uh, guys, I dunno," Tails said, sharp fox teeth biting his lip as he looked conflicted. "Leaving the girls behind still seems kind of mean. Even if humans kind of die just from getting hit in the head wrong."
"The fewer of us there are saving the world, the more famous we'll be when we get back, of course," Shadow pointed out idly. "Just in case you need some clout to maybe impress a future prom date."
"Oh, do you think Fi- I mean, girls in general, would be impressed by that?" Tails immediately perked up, namesakes wagging in excitement (while Sonic gave Shadow a mildly impressed stare over Tails' head).
"Well, they might be," Shadow said, also trying to project an air like he had vastly more experience than one-interrupted-date-with-a-chipmunk, "So. Let's go?"
"Let's go!" Tails agreed and then, with one sonic boom echoing across the residential neighbourhood, the three of them were already gone.
xxx
"That is…the desert?" Shadow ventured about half an hour later, when the three of them were in and on the Tornado once more, the plane roaring across an near-endless expanse of dunes.
"Yeah," Sonic grinned. "Sucks tail to run in sand, though, which is why we are taking the high route."
"Sucks tail for you, maybe," Shadow pointed out, receiving a stuck-out tongue in return. In truth, he was hardly able to take his eyes off the massive yellow plain - Maria had spoken about how Earth was *large*, but, somehow, seeing it from the ARK it had never seemed as big - but the desert stretched, from impossibly far horizon to impossibly far horizon, with seemingly infinite space in between.
Maria. Shadow could feel a guilty stab inside, already able to guess what his sister was likely thinking right now (and privately thankful Professor Gerald hadn't yet gotten around to buying Maria and him phones so he'd be on the receiving end of a lot of yelling). But there was no way around it. Going up against her cousin meant there likely would be carnage, and there was no way in hell he was risking his sister's life ever again.
Also…
Shadow's fist tightened at his side.
Killing the man would be easier if she didn't have to watch him do it.
The rest of the flight thankfully was spent more or less in silence, the roar of the Tornado's engines making it hard to talk to each other anyway. In the distance, pyramid shapes started appearing on the horizon, dark triangles against the last light of dusk.
xxx
"Okay. This is the closest platform I can land the Tornado on, where it won't topple over and get clogged in sand," Tails said, the plane's engines roaring downwards as he set it onto a square patch of flat, raised stone. There were several of those, maybe remnants of a ruin's fundament in an area of the desert littered with withered witnesses of ages past.
They had gained some more sunlight by flying west, so it was a little brighter now than when they had left Station Square and a few hundred meters away, some of the pyramids still stood tall and were well visible as they climbed out of the Tornado, surveying them. None of them stood out particularly as the secret base of a rotund, mad scientist, but Tails had already gotten out a small gadget that he was now pointing at the biggest of them.
"That one. This is where he relayed his message from."
"Alright. Then let's get going," Sonic said, jumping down into the sand and immediately sinking into it ankle-deep, grains spilling over his shoes and sock cuffs. "Ugh. Gross."
"Wishing you had some of these now, hm?" Shadow smirked, elegantly hovering down from the platform and dropping onto the sand softly, just because he could.
"Not generally in the habit of creating hot air, thank you," Sonic snarked back, before already zooming off toward the pyramid. "Race you!"
"Say, this desert," Shadow began, turning to Tails, "Are there any scorpions he could tread on?"
"Uh, not that I know of."
"Shame."
xxx
"Is…the door supposed to be open?" Shadow asked with a frown as they had arrived at the main entrance of the pyramid where the heavy stone gate indeed was standing open, stale and dusty air wafting out of the dark tunnel inside.
"Well, it's probably a trap. Or Eggman is feeling so secure in his lair defences he left the door open," Sonic shrugged. "Either way, let's go in."
"Yes," Shadow agreed with narrowed eyes. In his opinion, there was something dark and terrible lurking in these tunnels, and it was going to be him.
Before he did venture inside, though, he briefly paused.
"...ah. Before we go in and completely lose reception, can you just check whether anyone back home tried to contact us? Just…to gauge how angry they are?" Shadow forced himself to suppress a slight grimace at imagining what awaited him when they got back. Disappointing Gerald felt awful. Disappointing Maria felt worse.
"Yeeeeah, probably should, huh?" Sonic also winced, reaching into his quills for his mobile phone, then made a face when looking at the screen. "Hooh boy. 27 missed calls from Amy."
"Oh man. That must mean she's super mad," Tails pointed out, eyes wide. "Usually Sonic only has like 25 missed calls from her on any given day!"
"Don't remind me," Sonic mumbled, shoving the phone back into his quills. "Still, I guess if it were anything actually to do with the mission, they'd have sent a text. So, seeing as we've already dug our own graves…"
"...let's go into a real one!" Tails exclaimed, appendages wagging. "Last one to Egghead's secret base is a rotten egg?"
"Hm, maybe let me go in front, alright, buddy?" Sonic asked as they ventured inside, easily taking the lead of their little group.
The dry, stone-scented air enveloped them as they walked into the dark gloom of the pyramid, Shadow once again fighting against the tight feeling in his chest and stomach, his thoughts warning him that he mustn't go in here, that this place was a tomb, a grave, a stone capsule meant to close around him and seal him away forever, entomb him alive in stasis, the air endlessly recycled inside the same cryotube while the electrodes worked in his brain…
Shadow clenched his fists and hoped he would be able to fight something soon.
The pyramid wasn't completely dark, at least. There was the shine of possibly torches coming from around the corner of the corridor they were walking through, the faint light illuminating the painted walls and ceilings of stone around them, hieroglyphs, murals and patterns of green stripes decorating the inside of the stone edifice.
"'kay, even if I'm not usually the one to say this, we should probably be careful," Sonic said."If Eggman's confident enough to leave the door open, this place has to be littered with…robots…"
He trailed off as they rounded the corner. This was because the corridor behind it was littered with robots.
Just, very very smashed robots, brutally dented and crushed to broken pieces, scattered all across the floor as if destroyed by some ungodly rage.
"Oh gosh," Tails whispered, surveying the carnage. "Guys, Amy couldn't possibly have gotten here before us, could she?"
"I…don't think so, li'l buddy," Sonic said, cautiously walking up to one of the robots, giving it a nudge with his foot. It seemed to have been some white-red-black contraption with a squat body and spindly legs, once, but was now severely deformed, only emitting some faint sparks at the sneaker moving it.
"Maybe we're not the only ones after the Doctor," Shadow suggested, feeling a twitch of irritation rise up within him at the thought. Maria's cousin was his prey, and his alone.
"Maybe," Sonic said, moving on from the broken robot as they continued deeper into the pyramid. "Though I don't know who could have tracked him here this fast."
"Um. Well, I kind of have an idea," Tails said, mainly because they had arrived at a technically closed stone door, but the wall beside it had a gaping whole punched into it instead.
And the wall on the other side of the corridor behind that wall, too. In fact, looking through the hole, there seemed to be a pretty straight corridor simply smashed through the pyramid walls going straight to its center, heedless of what seemed to be quite an exciting and interesting labyrinth around them otherwise - looking mostly like someone really wasn't in the mood to waste time. And also leaving piles of mangled and broken guard robots everywhere.
"Ooooh, yeah," Sonic snapped his fingers as they strolled through the carnage, the pyramid here looking much like someone had decided it should be a Swiss cheese piece instead, "didn't he say he wanted to go-?"
"You little thieves! Did you really think you could get out of here alive?"
"Robotnik?!" Shadow had whirled around at the voice, the pyramid also instantaneously bathed in flashing red lights, a cacophony of sirens blaring.
"Something must have triggered the alarm system for this part of the pyramid!" Tails shouted over the noise, pointing toward a large rectangular doorway at the end of the blasted-through tunnel where the voice had come from. "That way must be where the central base is located!"
"Alright, let's go!" Sonic called back, the three of them rushing toward the opening, heedless of the destroyed robots, giant hourglasses(?) and general contraptions littering the floor, jumping over debris in their way until they passed the doorway, the pyramid abruptly opening up into a huge chamber, and a giant hole in the floor right in front of them.
"Woah!" Sonic managed to break just in time, Shadow almost colliding with his back - and stared.
They were in a giant, circular chamber, perhaps 60 feet in diameter, with a ceiling so high it vanished in the darkness above and the floor really only consisting of a circular walkway around the wall, a sheer drop into a round hole awaiting a few feet in front of them. There seemed to be shifting sand at the bottom, far below. The chamber was illuminated by a mixture of torches and electric floodlights installed on the walls, as well as a large screen mounted above a closed stone door on the other side of the room.
A screen, showing a very familiar figure.
"Trying to invade my secret base, are you? What a pity that this shall be your last mistake!"
"I - think that's a recording," Tails said, eyes fixed on the screen. "He's not reacting to us at all, usually when he sees Sonic he always almost has an aneurysm."
"Understandable," Shadow said absent-mindedly, eyes also narrowed at the antics of the human on the screen. "So, we just need to disable whatever he's set up here and then get through the door on the other side."
"Exactly," Sonic said, cracking the knuckles of one of his fists. "So come and get some, Eggman!"
"OHOHOHOHO!" The recording on the screen laughed, as if in response to the taunt. "I call on you to destroy these pests! Come forth, my servant!"
"Look! I think something is emerging!" Tails cried out as the ground suddenly started shaking beneath their feet, the fox kit taking to the air as both Sonic and Shadow reached out to the wall for stability and to not get knocked into the pit.
And in the center of the room, from out of the sands a giant stone statue was rising, its terracotta-coloured form resembling that of a pharaoh in battle armor, and then turned its granite gaze toward them.
"Oh no!" Tails landed beside them again, hands raised in front of his mouth. "It must be one of those ancient Egyptian stone golems that Eggman rewired into a giant robot to use as a security system!"
Shadow turned to stare at him "... sorry, what?"
"WATCH OUT!" There was a shout from his side as Sonic crashed into him, tackling Shadow and taking him down just as the huge hand of the…golem(?) smashed down onto the patch of walkway they had just been standing on.
"Seriously, you can't keep standing and staring whenever Egghead does anything that is completely gaga and yet somehow works, because you'll be gawking all day," Sonic said, clambering onto his feet again as he shook his head, looking down at Shadow. "I said, hey," he then waved a hand into Shadow's face. "You with me? You're still staring holes in the air."
"...Tails," Shadow finally managed, only now raising a finger to point, swallowing. "Tails just got smashed beneath that hand."
"What?!" Now Sonic was whirling around, his face blanching, transforming into a look of slow horror as he stared at the giant flat palm that had slapped down onto where Tails had just been, Shadow's own stomach now twisting and filling with deathly cold in a way he had never expected it to when it wasn't about his family.
Tails had been eight.
"No," Sonic rasped, head twisting and turning, looking for any sign of his kid brother flying about where he could have escaped from the crush, and Shadow felt any words he could have said stuck in his throat, if this had been Maria, there would have been nothing that could have stopped him from screaming, howling with an unbelievable, primal pain -
Until the golem's hand slooowly lifted, revealing a cowering, but unharmed Tails on the floor beneath, while next to him…
"One word from you, hedgehog, and I'll let this hand crush both me and the fox kid."
"Knuckles!" Sonic shouted at the form of the red-furred echidna, their on-and-off companion kneeling on one leg with his hands next to his head, pressing up against the palm of the stone statue and, by the looks of it, winning. Right at this moment, Sonic looked shakily relieved enough that no running gag quips whatsoever seemed to be on his mind, though, just naked relief zeroed in on his unhurt little brother.
"Yeah," the echidna grunted, the muscles in his arms and shoulders visibly trembling as he tried to give another shove to keep the palm from crushing the two of them, the golem apparently not intent on stopping to press down until it had finished the job. "Got here just in time, huh?"
Tails also seemed to have just figured out that he had been saved and uncurled again, giving a sheepish smile at Knuckles. "Uh-huh. Thanks for the save. I guess I was too distracted trying to figure out how Eggman had animated literal stone to pay proper attention," he admitted with a guilty grimace.
"You don't say," Knuckles commented wryly, voice pressed as he tried to put more of his back into it. "I was just hanging on one of the walls trying to figure out how to get through this room without triggering anything when you guys showed up. Great going, by the way."
"Yeah, sorry. But ooh, wait, I think I just had an idea!" Tails said, scrambling to sit up next to Knuckles and fiddling with his scanner excitedly, his new calm underneath the golem's stone hand testament to his trust in Knuckles' strength - "And I was right!" he exclaimed, pointing the scanner toward the golem. "Sonic, Shadow, while he's still trying to crush Knuckles and me, one of you needs to keep his attention in the front while the other one sneaks up on his back, there should be some breakable command unit there! Knuckles, if you could just keep him here for a couple of minutes, I'll just disable the forcefield…"
"Uh, what?" Knuckles asked, still kneeling but now also trying to crane his head to get a look at Tails, who had just started to work on the underside of the stone statue's palm and was apparently being very successful at taking a panel off and then screwdrivering around inside.
"Yeah, Eggman's totally using super ancient redstone circuits in here, I honestly don't know why he thought a pharaoh statue was a good idea at all. But you should be able to get to the command unit in a minute or two!"
"Gotcha," Sonic nodded, apparently managing to recover pretty quickly as soon as it became clear Tails wasn't dead nor in danger of dying. "Shads, something tells me I'm the better distractor of the both of us, so - " he grinned. "Care to do the honor of going for the head?"
Shadow blinked, not quite sure yet how to deal with knowing that apparently, even only knowing some of the members of the Sonic Circus troupe for two weeks was enough to…become attached enough to be absolutely blindsided when you thought they'd died.
Like they'd been something akin to family.
He shook his head. No time for that now.
"Gladly," Shadow therefore responded and then was off, just as the golem attempted to use his other hand to slam down hard on him and Sonic.
Having fully risen now, the stone statue was huge, perhaps some 60 feet tall in total, and somehow seemed to be able to twist its torso around freely, slamming its free hand down again and again while Sonic twisted, turned and dodged each blow, swerving between fingers of the golem as if he were the most elaborate fidget toy in history.
"Yo, old stoneface! Think Eggman really has hit rock bottom creating you?!"
There was another SLAM! and an accompanying laugh from Sonic as the golem was now apparently trying to play a very frustrating game of whack-a-hog with Sonic, (while Shadow privately wished it would succeed, if only to stop the puns).
There was a triumphant cheer from Tails which Shadow took to mean he'd managed to disable the forcefield protecting the control unit, which indeed seemed to be a small metal dome perching atop the pharaoh's head. He skidded to a halt behind the statue, Sonic in front of it darting back and forth to keep it from turning. Looking up, the head was a good 30 feet above Shadow, far too high to jump - however, there seemed to be moving stones jutting out of the statue's back, going out and retreating again, which could probably used as stepping stones-
Shadow paused. He was thinking like Sonic.
But he didn't need stepping stones.
Smirking, he reached into his quills, taking out the fake Emerald his sister and Tails had made. Less powerful than the real one.
But all of the same properties.
"Chaos Control!"
To be continued…
Whelp, that took some time due to IRL difficulties (though the Sonic 2 movie was a highlight), but I do hope y'all are still reading and having fun as the action is ramping up again! :D Would love to hear what you think of it, your reviews give me joy always :)